In his book A Memoir of Jane Austen, James E. Austen-Leigh writes:
In Mrs Austen … was to be found the germ of much of the ability which was concentrated in Jane, but of which others of her children had a share. She united strong common sense with a lively imagination, and often expressed herself, both in writing and in conversation, with epigrammatic force and point.2
James E. Austen-Leigh might also have mentioned that Mrs Austen was an expert at needlework and ‘wrote in an admirable hand, both powerful and interesting’.3 Her talent for writing poetry was recognised at the age of 6 when her uncle, Theophilus Leigh, Master of Balliol College, Oxford, described her as ‘already the poet of the family’.
When the Revd George Austen married Cassandra Leigh on 26 April 1764, the newly-weds immediately moved to Hampshire and took up residence, not at Steventon, but at the rectory at Deane. This was because Steventon Rectory – invariably referred to as The Parsonage – suffered from damp and was in a state of disrepair. This is not surprising, as the rectory was situated in a valley into which the fields of the glebe lands (lands attached to the parish church), including ‘Quintence Meadow’, ‘South Meadow’, ‘Home Meadow’, ‘East Meadow’, ‘Nursery Meadow’ and ‘Hanging Meadow’, all drained. (Only a fraction of this land was occupied by the Revd Austen, as will be seen.) In the words of William Austen-Leigh:
The rectory had been of the most miserable description but George Austen improved it until it became a tolerably roomy and convenient habitation.4
Rent was payable by the Austens to the Rector of Deane, the Revd William Hillman, who, having private means, chose to live at nearby Ashe Park rather than at the rectory. R.W. Chapman stated that the Revd Austen ‘improved and enlarged [Steventon Rectory] until it was sufficiently commodious to hold pupils [of his] in addition to a growing family’.5
Steventon Rectory was situated on the south side of the Steventon to North Waltham road, near to the corner of Church Walk which led to the Parish Church of St Nicholas, a quarter of a mile away. A woodcut depicting the front of the rectory, which appeared in James E. Austen-Leigh’s A Memoir of Jane Austen, published in 1870, shows it to be a substantial property, even before it was enlarged. As for the Revd Austen’s alterations, they are evident from an illustration of the rear of the rectory – executed by Anna Lefroy – where it is apparent that two substantial two-storey wings have been added, one at either side.
These works took several years to accomplish and it was not until about 1768 that the Austens were able to transfer to Steventon Rectory. In that year, Susanna (née Kelk), the Revd Austen’s widowed stepmother, who had expelled George and his sisters from the family home, died, whereupon George received the sum of about £1,200 from the sale of the family house. Likewise, when Mrs Austen’s mother Jane (née Walker), widow of the Revd Thomas Leigh, died – also in the same year – the former received a legacy of some £1,000.
R.W. Chapman’s work entitled Jane Austen: Facts and Problems contains the following description of the rectory, gleaned from a number of different sources:
The ‘dining or common sitting-room’, which ‘looked to the front and was lighted by two casement windows’, was perhaps to the right of the front door – the position of the chimney suggests a kitchen [as being] on that side of the house. The front door ‘opened into a small parlour’, where visitors were likely to find Mrs Austen ‘busily engaged with her needle’. The larger room to the left may have been the Rector’s study, looking to the garden, ‘his own exclusive property … But the study had a bay-window at the back of the house, and may have been wholly in the added part’.6
Where the Revd Austen’s library was situated is not clear, but it is likely that the pupils’ classroom (with dormitories above) was contained in one of the new extensions.
Servants at the rectory included a cook, a groom/coachman (the Austens kept a carriage and pair of horses), a nanny for the children, a housekeeper/lady’s maid and a washerwoman.
In addition to the rectory, the property included:
… one barn …, one lesser barn … one close [enclosure] of gleib-land [glebe land] adjoining to the said parsonage house and barns, which is by estimation two acres & a half … One parcel of gleib-land lying in the middle-common-field … [which] is by estimation half an acre.
This area of 3 acres (which corresponds to plots 1, 2 and 3 as shown on the Plan of the Glebe Land of Steventon), served as part of the Revd George Austen’s benefice. Also, the rector was entitled to tythes ‘of what nature and quality soever, arising within the said parish’, and to ‘five eggs, payable on Good fryday’ from every house within the said parish. For officiating at a marriage ceremony the rector’s fee was 1S 6d, and for ‘Churching of a woman’ (taking a woman who has recently given birth to church for a service of thanksgiving), 6d. By 1727, however, the land adjoining ‘ye Parsonage house’ was recorded as being 1½ acres.7 In addition, the Revd Austen farmed the 200-acre Cheesedown Farm, situated in the north of the parish.
At Steventon, George Austen occupied himself in his spare time by revising the Parish Register. (In this his daughter Jane would subsequently take a hand, albeit an unauthorised one, in making her own additions to the register, as will shortly be seen).
As a clergyman, George’s income was a modest £100 per annum approximately, which was augmented by the profits from Cheesedown Farm. This income was further increased when he took in pupils from well-to-do families – half a dozen or so in number who boarded at the rectory and whom he tutored, along with his own sons, prior to them being admitted to Oxford University. They included George (born 1757), son of Warren Hastings of the East India Company and subsequently Governor-General of Bengal, and Richard, son of William Buller, Bishop of Exeter.
When the Revd Hillman died in 1773, George became Rector of Deane as well as of Steventon; this living having been purchased for him by his Uncle Francis Austen of Sevenoaks, Kent, who, as already mentioned, had also paid for his education. Reverend Austen now received an extra £100 per annum in consequence.
Mrs Austen, in addition to her wifely duties, kept a ‘Little Alderney’ – a small fawn-coloured cow, the strain of which originated from the Channel Island of Alderney and which yielded rich milk and creamy yellow butter. She also had a ‘nice dairy fitted up with a bull and six cows’.
According to author Maggie Lane:
At Steventon, the Austens … enjoyed one of those old-fashioned gardens in which flowers and vegetables jostled for space. The family were always experimenting with growing things: their strawberry beds were famous, and they were the first people in the neighbourhood to grow potatoes – to the astonishment of their parishioners, who had never seen or tasted that vegetable, and who could not be convinced that it was worth cultivating! Alongside this more homely branch of gardening, the Austens kept up with the fashionable improvements of their time: designing the carriage sweep, and planting trees to screen a farmyard, or to create sheltered walkways.8
With eggs from poultry kept in the yard, the Austens were largely self-sufficient in food.
In addition to socialising with those neighbours of theirs who were on the same social plane, the Austen family made, and received, visits to and from their relations in Kent, Bath and elsewhere. What with the Austen family, its servants, and the Revd Austen’s pupils and visitors, the rectory was indeed a busy and bustling place. It became more so when Mrs Austen’s eldest sister Jane, widow of Dr Cooper, Vicar of Sonning near Reading in Berkshire, died in 1783, whereupon her children Edward and Jane spent much of their time at Steventon.
The Austens came into contact with the nobility and gentry at balls, held by the owners of stately homes and set in large estates which comprised woodland, expansive lakes and extensive parkland complete with trees and grazing sheep and cattle. Such people included Lord Dorchester (Kempshott Park); the Earl of Portsmouth (Hurstbourne Priors); Lord Bolton (Hackwood Park); the Holders (Ashe Park); the Bigg Withers (Manydown Park); the Chutes (Th
e Vyne, Sherborne St John); the Portals (Freefolk); the Harwoods (Deane House); the Bramstons (Oakley Hall, Overton), and others.
Besides these balls, it appears that the Austens established ‘no great intimacy with any of the neighbours [with whom they] were upon friendly but rather distant terms’. Nonetheless, Jane herself, and probably the rest of the family, had ‘a regard’ for their neighbours and ‘felt a kindly interest in their proceedings’.9
Beyond this largely tranquil and self-contained world was a wider one. In 1778, for example, 1,000 French prisoners of war were imprisoned at Winchester (France’s King Louis XVI having declared war on Great Britain on 10 July). The following year, some 8,000 men were imprisoned at Andover and Basingstoke.
Dr John Lyford of Basingstoke sometimes visited Steventon in order to attend Mrs Austen who suffered from indifferent health; after which he joined the family for dinner and ‘partook of our elegant entertainment’.10
In November 1800 there was great excitement in the Steventon household when some new furniture arrived. Jane said:
The tables are come & give general contentment. I had not expected that they would so perfectly suit the fancy of us all three [presumably herself, her mother and her father] or that we should so well agree in the disposition of them … The two ends put together form our constant Table for everything, & the centrepiece stands exceedingly well under the glass [mirror]; holds a great deal most commodiously, without looking awkwardly. The Pembroke has got its destination by the sideboard, & my mother has great delight in keeping her Money & papers locked up. The little Table, which used to stand there, has most conveniently taken itself off into the bed-room & now we are in want only of the chiffonier, which is neither finished nor come.11
This implies that the furniture had been hand-made to order.
Notes
1. William Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters, p. 16.
2. James E. Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen, p. 15.
3. Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh, Personal Aspects of Jane Austen (Philadelphia: Pavilion Press, 2003), p. 15.
4. William Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters, p. 12.
5. R.W. Chapman, Jane Austen: Facts and Problems, p. 21.
6. Ibid.
7. From an eighteenth-century Terrier, compiled by John Church, Rector of Steventon, 1727–33, and quoted by Deirdre Le Faye in Jane Austen’s Steventon.
8. Maggie Lane, We left Bath for Clifton, in Collected Reports of the Jane Austen Society, Report for 1987.
9. Caroline Austen, My Aunt Jane Austen, p. 46.
10. Letter from Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen, 1/2 December 1798.
11. Letter from Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen, 8/9 November 1800.
3
The Young Jane Austen
Jane was born on 16 December 1775 at Steventon Rectory, which would be her home for the next twenty-four years. Her father, the Revd George Austen, expressed his delight at the new arrival and he wrote to his sister Philadelphia to say: ‘We now have another girl, a present plaything for her sister Cassy [Cassandra], and a future companion’.1 Undoubtedly Jane’s mother, Mrs Cassandra Austen, was equally delighted.
According to Jane’s nephew, James E. Austen-Leigh, Mrs Austen
followed a custom, not unusual in those days … of putting out her babies to be nursed in a cottage in the village. The infant was daily visited by one or both of its parents, and frequently brought to them at the parsonage, but the cottage was its home, and must have remained so till it was old enough to run about and talk.2
Of her daughter Cassandra, Mrs Austen said:
I suckled my little girl thro’ the first quarter; she has been weaned and settled at a good woman’s at Deane just eight weeks; she is very healthy and lively, and puts on her short petticoats today.3
In the case of Jane (and probably Cassandra also), Deirdre Le Faye believes that the foster parents referred to were John and Elizabeth Littleworth of nearby Deane.
Anna Lefroy recalled that in a room on the first floor of the rectory, the youthful Jane and her sister made a dressing room [used for dressing and for the storage of clothes] ‘as they were pleased to call it’. This ‘communicated with one of a smaller size’ where Jane and Cassandra slept:
I remember the common-looking carpet with its chocolate ground that covered the floor and some portions of the furniture. A painted press [wardrobe], with shelves above for books, that stood with its back to the wall next [to] the Bedroom, & opposite the fireplace; my Aunt Jane’s Pianoforte – & above all, on a table between the windows, above which hung a looking-glass, 2 Tonbridge-ware workboxes of oval shape [made at Tunbridge Wells and at Tonbridge in Kent], fitted up with ivory barrels containing reels for silk, yard measures, etc…. But the charm of the room with its scanty furniture and cheaply painted walls must have been, for those old enough to understand it, the flow of native homebred wit, with all the fun & nonsense of a large and clever family.4
Jane learnt her letters and words using ivory tablets, on which was written a letter of the alphabet. A sampler – worked in various stitches as an indication of proficiency and intended to be framed and hung on the wall – embroidered by Jane, measured 10in by 11.5in. It portrayed a compilation of various phrases from The Book of Common Prayer, with her name and the date:
Praise the Lord oh my Soul and all that is within me
Praise his Holy Name as long as I live will I praise
The Lord I will give thanks unto God while I have
My Being sing unto the Lord oh ye Kingdoms of the
Earth sing praise unto the Lord Give the Lord the
Honour due unto his name worship the Lord with holy
Worship in the Time of trouble I will call upon the
Lord and he will hear me Turn thy Face from my
Sins and put out all my Misdeeds.
Jane Austen, 1797
Beneath the text are several trees, one of which has a bird sitting atop it, and the whole is surrounded by a patterned motif.5 She also made herself clothes and hats, including a cap decorated with lace for indoor use which was worn with ribbons, the colours of which were chosen according to the occasion.
Jane was visited at the rectory by her music master George William Chard, assistant organist at Winchester Cathedral, who rode the 14 miles from that city to Steventon in order to teach her and, presumably, other pupils in the area. Jane said, ‘I practice [sic] every day as much as I can – I wish it were more for his sake’.6 She practised the pianoforte each morning before breakfast, and entertained visitors with her playing whenever the occasion demanded it. She also spent time collecting songs and musical scores which she copied into her music book. She enjoyed singing, and a favourite song of hers which she loved to sing was by Scottish poet and songwriter Robert Burns entitled Their Groves O’ Sweet Myrtle:
Their groves o’ sweet myrtle let foreign lands reckon
Where bright-beaming summers exalt the perfume
Far dearer to me yon glen o’ green breckan
Wi’ the burn stealing under the lang yellow broom.
When Cassandra was sent at the age of 8 to a small, private school in Oxford, Jane, despite her tender age, insisted on joining her there. The school subsequently moved to Southampton where Jane and Cassandra were both taken ill with sore throats (possibly caused by diphtheria), whereupon their mother took them back to Steventon to be nursed back to health. They were then sent to a boarding school in Reading where Jane remained until she was 11. After this they were taught at home, availing themselves of their father George’s his extensive library – with his permission.
Jane was taught French by Mrs Sarah Latournelle (nèe Hackitt), an Englishwoman who despite being married to a Frenchman could herself speak not a word of that language!7 Mrs Latournelle ran a school in the Forbury, formerly the outer courtyard of Reading Abbey.
George Austen encouraged his children, Jane included, to appreciate poetry and literatur
e. For example, in the evenings it was his habit to read to them works by the English poet William Cowper (whom Jane, when she became a novelist, often quoted in her novels). As James E. Austen-Leigh said of the Revd Austen:
Being not only a profound scholar, but possessing a most exquisite taste in every species of literature, it is not wonderful [surprising] that his daughter Jane should, at a very early age, have become sensible to the charms of style and enthusiastic in the cultivation of her own language.8
And William Austen-Leigh, in his book Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters, declared:
Jane Austen inherited from her father her serenity of mind, the refinement of her intellect, and her delicate appreciation of style.9
Jane’s brother Henry also encouraged her in reading and, according to him, her ‘favourite moral writers were Samuel Johnson in prose, and William Cowper in verse’.10 This was not to say that Jane did not read the occasional raunchy novel, such as Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, or even works showing the darker side of life such as Mathew Lewis’s Gothic novel The Monk, featuring rape, incest and poisoning.
Jane’s talent for writing manifested itself in the plays which she wrote as a child and dedicated to various members of her family, including her father George and her brother Edward, and also to friends. But being a playwright was not enough. She also took part, with her siblings, in amateur theatricals which were normally performed in the large barn, except at Christmas time when they were held in the rectory dining room. A play was chosen – for instance, The Sultan by Anglo-Irish playwright Isaac Bickerstaffe (whose real name was Jonathan Swift), which was enacted at Steventon in 1790 – for which eldest brother James would normally compose a prologue and an epilogue. Other plays which were performed included Mrs Susannah Centlivre’s farcical comedy The Wonder: A Woman Keeps a Secret; Henry Fielding’s Tom Thumb (a burlesque of the popular playwrights of the day), and the Revd James Townley’s farce High Life Below Stairs.
Jane Austen Page 2