Edward arrived in Hampshire with his daughter Fanny and her cousin Fanny Cage. There were two Fanny Cages, mother and daughter. It was the daughter who was mocked by Jane Austen as being ‘all superlatives and rapture’. Edward’s daughter Fanny was romantically involved with a neighbouring gentleman, Mr John Pemberton Plumptre, and full of confidences about him.
In June 1812 Mrs Austen and Jane spent a couple of weeks with James at Steventon. Mary met them at Basingstoke with the carriage. Mrs Austen had decided to stay at home in future and said that she intended this, her last visit, to be to her eldest son. On 25 June, Jane and her mother went back to Chawton, taking Anna with them. Anna was prettier and quicker-witted than Fanny but Jane loved Fanny more. Anna stayed three months. Searching the circulating library at Alton for something enjoyable to read, she picked up a copy of Sense and Sensibility, but threw it aside with careless contempt saying, ‘Oh, that must be rubbish! 'I'm sure of it from the title.’ Jane and Cassandra, who were standing by, suppressed their mirth.
On 14 October old Mrs Knight died. It was at this time that Edward changed his name, though for convenience he and his children are generally referred to as Knight from the time of his adoption in 1783. Fanny hated changing her name from ‘Miss Austen’ to ‘Miss Knight’. Jane decided to learn to write the letter K more elegantly. Unfortunately Edward’s inheritance was disputed and he ended up paying the other claimants £30,000, most of which was swallowed up in legal costs.
In November Edward and Fanny visited with Fanny’s twelve-year-old sister Lizzie and their cousin Mary Deedes. Jane referred to the party as ‘Edward and his harem’. Jane was able to write to Martha who was away on a visit, ‘P and P is sold. Egerton gives £110 for it.’ She added ruefully that she would rather have had £150 but she was unsurprised that her publisher was unwilling to risk more. The sale would save Henry the trouble of touting it elsewhere. The money was due in a year’s time. Her publisher had spotted a bestseller.
Charles had a third daughter, another Fanny, born in December 1812. He and his wife, Fanny, left the other two with their grandmother and aunts at Chawton. The children were much improved but the maiden aunt thought method had been wanting in their upbringing. Little Cassy could be a very nice child if her parents would ‘only exert themselves a little’. Jane had never tried living on shipboard with three small children.
Meanwhile Mrs Austen was busy knitting gloves and Jane was reading An Essay on the Military Policy and Institutions of the British Empire by Captain Sir Charles William Pasley of the Royal Engineers, which she found highly entertaining and delightfully written. She declared herself in love with the author, as much so as with Thomas Clarkson, author of History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade (1808), and Claudius Buchanan, author of Christian Researches in Asia (1811). Yet some people are convinced that Jane Austen’s interests were purely trivial.
20
A Bestseller, 1813
Pride and Prejudice was the hit novel of 1813. It was advertised in the Morning Chronicle for 28 January at eighteen shillings the three volumes. Jane wrote to Cassandra, who was at Steventon, from Chawton on 29 January, ‘I want to tell you that I have got my own darling child from London.’ Like other authors Jane spoke of her books as her babies, the ones she never had. ‘On Wednesday I received one copy, sent down by Falknor, with three lines from Henry to say that he had given another to Charles and sent a third by the coach to Godmersham, The advertisement is in our paper today for the first time: eighteen shillings. He shall ask a guinea for my two next.’
Miss Benn dined with them on the very day of the book’s coming out. It was read aloud to this guinea-pig listener but its authorship was kept a secret. Jane told Cassandra that Miss Benn found the story amusing and seemed to admire Elizabeth. Jane told Cassandra, I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know.’ Mrs Austen was the reader and in Jane’s opinion perfectly understood the characters but read too quickly and lacked the dramatic talent to make them speak as they ought. Jane was better able to read ‘in character’. Although Miss Benn was not told why the book was of particular interest, she sensed the suppressed excitement and put two and two together. Next day Miss Benn called with Mrs Harry Digweed, née Jane Terry, who could be relied on to spread the news among the numerous Terry clan.
The book had been lopped and cropped, so Jane believed it was now shorter than Sense and Sensibility, She was exasperated to find a misprint on page 220, where two speeches had been made into one. She wrote:
On the whole however I am quite vain enough and well satisfied enough. The work is rather too light and bright and sparkling; it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter - of sense if it could be had, if not of solemn specious nonsense - about something unconnected with the story; an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Bonaparte - or anything that would form a contrast and bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness and epigrammatism of the general style.
She was not, of course, entirely serious, or she would never have lopped and cropped’. But this wry comment shows that she recognized how rarely comedy is accorded the respect it deserves as art. Jane had received a polite letter of congratulation from Fanny Knight but her spontaneous enthusiasm, relayed through Cassandra, was the more to be valued. Fanny’s praise Jane Austen found Very gratifying’, especially as she had taken to Darcy and Elizabeth.
‘Now I will try to write of something else; it shall be a complete change of subject. Ordination. 1 am glad to find your enquiries have ended so well. If you could discover whether Northamptonshire is a country of hedgerows, I should be glad again/Jane told her sister. This passage has been much discussed. Until recently, readers have taken it to mean that Jane saw ‘ordination’ as the main theme of Mansfield Park. Edmund Bertram’s vocation as a Church of England clergyman is certainly one strand of the plot, but hardly the most important. More recently, scholars have thought that the word ‘ordination’, which stands grammatically and syntactically isolated, introduces the sentence which follows it: Cassandra was staying with James at Steventon, and may have been requested to ask him about technicalities of entering the Church, for instance how long it would take for Edmund Bertram to be ordained. The interpretation of this letter is still undecided. At this time Jane was already halfway through writing Mansfield Park. Her sister-in-law Mary ‘Mrs JA, may have provided some of Mrs Norris’s characteristics. Like Mrs Norris Mary was bossy and careful with money
Jane herself wrote on 20 May 1813 to lay claim to a paper foil of half-pence she had left on the drawing-room mantelpiece. She said lightly that though she was in no distress for money she chose to have her due as well as the devil She was alluding to the old saying ‘Give the devil his due’, meaning one must be fair to an enemy
In February 1813 she wrote to Cassandra describing a rather dull party of whist she had attended and mentioned ‘just as many for their round table as there were at Mrs Grant’s’. Mrs Grant is a character in Mansfield Park. Jane had made an excuse and left, wishing the real people had been as ‘agreeable a set’ as her imaginary ones. She was soon complaining, ‘There is nobody brilliant these days.’ Four visitors had arrived, all of whom Mrs Austen was glad to see, but Jane was glad to escape by having gone out for a walk. Boring neighbours could hardly compete with the excitement of inventing a parallel society.
Enthusiastic reviews encouraged Jane in her current writing. The British Critic for February said Pride and Prejudice was far superior to others of its kind: the story was well told, the characters well drawn. The Critical Review for March summarized the plot and again praised the ‘domestic scenes’ as superior; all the characters were integrated into the tale. The New Review for April gave an admiring synopsis with quotations.
Everybody was guessing at the author’s identity. Richard Brinsley Sheridan said at a
dinner party that it was one of the cleverest things he had ever read. Another literary gentleman announced it was too clever to have been written by a woman. Annabella Milbanke, the future Lady Byron, told her mother how excellent a novel it was. She liked it because it was so probable, with none of the clichés of novel writers: ‘no drownings, no conflagrations, nor runaway horses, nor lapdogs and parrots, nor chambermaids and milliners, nor rencontres and disguises’. Annabella, though primarily interested in mathematics, had a shrewd literary sense. Lady Davy however did not like the book. She thought the ‘picture of vulgar minds and manners’ should have been relieved by the agreeable contrast of ‘more dignified and refined characters’. We can only wonder how she interpreted Mr Darcy. The first Earl of Dudley admired Mr Collins. The first edition sold out and a second was printed in the autumn but Jane had sold her copyright and was unable to correct misprints.
On 9 February Cassandra had left Steventon for Manydown. The Leigh-Perrots were at Scarlets. They had given up renting the house in Bath and had bought another in Pulteney Street. Mr Leigh-Perrot was confined to a chair with a broken chilblain on one foot and a violent swelling on the other. They were anxious to get to Pulteney Street, fearing the house would be broken into.
On 16 February Jane wrote to Martha. Frank and his family were at Deal again in fresh lodgings. Jane thought they must have tried lodging in every house in that town. Lodgings in Deal were cheaper than in Ramsgate, an important consideration.
As usual, and despite the excitement of the publication of Pride and Prejudice, Jane was keeping abreast of the national news.
On 14 January the then Princess of Wales had written to her estranged husband stating her grievances. On 8 February the letter was published in the Morning Chronicle and was reproduced on 15 February in the Hampshire Telegraph. Prince George was Regent, or King in all but name, because his father? King George III, suffered from mental illness. The poor man probably had porphyria, a rare hereditary condition, which induces irritability and delirium. In 1811 Parliament had voted the Prince as eldest son the authority to rule. He was forty-eight and his youthful good looks had dissolved in blubber. The Prince of Wales had secretly married a Roman Catholic widow, Maria Fitz-herbert, whom he loved, but under family pressure set her aside to make a dynastic marriage with his cousin Princess Caroline of Brunswick. Her person and manners disgusted him: he complained her underwear was smelly, and the marriage was over before she gave birth to their only child, a daughter, nine months after the ceremony. She took advantage of her freedom and had various lovers, many of them naval officers. When the Prince died, as George IV, in 1830, he chose to have a picture of his dear Maria buried with him.
The King supported his daughter-in-law against his wayward son although it was rumoured, accurately, that she had had an illegitimate child. In 1806 a Royal Commission had been set up to investigate the Princess of Wales’s morals and although nothing was proven Caroline’s access to her daughter, Princess Charlotte, was restricted. Charlotte wrote to a friend, ‘The print shops are full of scurrilous caricatures and infamous things relative to the Prince’s conduct…’
Jane was a keen reader of newspapers, and commented to Martha Lloyd:
I suppose all the world is sitting in judgment upon the Princess of Wales’s letter. Poor woman, I shall support her as long as I can, because she is a woman, and because I hate her husband - but I can hardly forgive her for calling herself ’attached and affectionate’ to a man whom she must detest… if I must give up the Princess, I am resolved at least always to think that she would have been respectable, if the Prince had only behaved tolerably by her at first.
Jane deplored the friendship between the Princess and Lady Oxford, a one-time mistress of Lord Byron, who flaunted her promiscuity and whose children by different fathers were known as the Harleian Miscellany’. She was born a Harley, and the Harleian Miscellany is an edited collection of papers in the British Museum. Lady Oxford was opposed to the Tories and the marital quarrel became political, with the Whigs supporting the disgraced Princess. Jane Austen’s championship for the Princess was not infinitely elastic. She would support her only ‘as long as I can’.
In March that year Mr Middleton, who rented the Great House at Chawton on a five-year lease, left when it expired, and Edward came to put everything in order. He frequently dined with his mother and sisters and saw them some time or other every day. This delighted them. Jane commented on the comfort of his company: he was now well and enjoying himself as thoroughly as any Hampshire-born Austen could wish. The beauty of Chawton was not thrown away on him.
Henry’s wife, the fascinating Eliza de Feuillide, died on 24 April 1813 after a long and painful illness. Jane helped nurse her. She was buried in Hampstead parish churchyard in the same grave as her mother, Philadelphia Hancock, and her son, Hastings. Henry’s words on her tombstone tell us that she was ‘a woman of brilliant, generous and cultivated mind’. Soon after her death Jane stayed with Henry at the house in Sloane Street, which he gave up soon afterwards. He was still a partner in Tilson’s Bank, which stood in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, and was planning to move into rooms over the bank. Eliza’s faithful French servants, Madame Bigeon and her daughter Madame Perigord, would go with him.
In May, Henry took Jane to an exhibition of paintings in Spring Gardens. Critical opinion in general was cool but Jane was delighted to find a portrait which resembled her idea of Mrs Bingley in Pride and Prejudice. She was dressed in a white gown with green ornaments, ‘which convinces me of what I always supposed, that green was a favourite colour with her’. A novelist, after all, rarely knows everything about the characters she has created. She could find nothing that looked like Mrs Bingley’s sister Mrs Darcy, but imagined that if she did find her Mrs Darcy would be wearing yellow. Another exhibition, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, was similarly disappointing. Jane wrote playfully that this must be because of love, pride and delicacy’ on the part of Mr Darcy who was unwilling to expose his wife’s likeness to the public eye. Jane while in London visited an elegant schoolroom decorated with naked cupids. ‘A fine study for girls,’ was her characteristically dry observation.
Jane was able to report ‘Lady Robert delighted with P and P.’ Gratifyingly, Lady Robert Kerr had been impressed with the book before she knew who had written it. ‘Of course she knows now … And Mr Hastings! I am quite delighted with what such a man writes about it. Let me be rational and return to my full stops.’ She had been praised by the great Warren Hastings himself.
There were rumours that the character of Mr Collins was based on a certain Bishop Porteous who had towards the end of the eighteenth century held the living of Hunton in Kent and whose Reminiscences were pompous and verbose. It is unlikely there was any one living model though the character is convincing enough to have delighted generations of readers. Jane Austen knew plenty of pompous clergymen.
The secret of her authorship was beginning to leak out and people were asking to meet her. ‘HI am a wild beast, I cannot help it. It is not my own fault,’ she declared.
Henry had not yet moved as he was negotiating the letting of his house whence Jane was writing to Cassandra. She had been driving round in Henry’s barouche. ‘I liked my solitary elegance very much, and was ready to laugh all the time at my being where I was. I could not but feel that I had naturally small right to be parading about London in a barouche.’ A barouche was a very grand carriage indeed. We remember Mrs Elton’s boasts in Emma about her rich sister Selina Suckling’s dislike of ‘being stuck up in the barouche-landau without a companion’. In May 1813 Jane reported that 10 Henrietta Street was still all dirt and confusion but promised well.
James and Charles both came to stay at Chawton that summer. Charles had rented a house in Southend. James’s children were let into their aunt’s secret. They had already enjoyed reading the novels. James-Edward, though only fourteen, had the family fondness for letters in verse. He sent Jane these lines:
No words can express,
my dear Aunt, my surprise
Or make you conceive how I opened my eyes,
Like a pig Butcher Pile has just stuck with his knife,
When I heard for the very first time in my life
That I had the honour to have a relation
Whose Works were dispersed through the whole of the nation.
I assure you, however, Fm terribly glad;
Oh dear! Just to think (and the thought drives me mad)
That dear Mrs Jennings’s good-natured strain
Was really the product of your witty brain,
That you made the Middletons, Dashwoods and all,
And that you (not young Ferrars) found out that a ball
May be given in cottages, never so small.
And though Mr Collins, so grateful for all,
Will Lady de Bourgh his dear patroness call,
Tis to your ingenuity really he owed
His living, his wife and his humble abode.
Now if you will take your poor nephew’s advice,
Your works to Sir William pray send in a trice,
If he’ll undertake to some grandees to show it
By whose means at last the Prince Regent might know it,
For Fm sure if he did, in reward for your tale,
He’d make you a countess at least, without fail,
And indeed if the princess should lose her dear life
You might have a good chance of becoming his wife.
James-Edward was gently teasing, as Jane thoroughly disapproved of the Prince’s dissolute life. The boy did not know that Jane’s work had already attracted the royal admiration.
That July Frank was captain of the Elephant in the Baltic. He had a fourth child, and third son, George. His wife Mary had moved to Deal so that she could be with him whenever he was in port. Jane wrote to him enthusiastically of his opportunities for seeing the world. ‘Gustavus-Vasa, and Charles XII, and Christiana, and Linnaeus - do their ghosts rise up before you? I have a great respect for former Sweden. So zealous as it was for Protestantism!’
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