If we look in James Austen-Leigh’s memoir for the kinds of encounter with the individual life that we have come to expect from literary biographies of the twentieth century we will be disappointed. While his account remains the printed authority for so much of what we know, it is marked by a lack of candour that frustrates reinterpretation. There are several reasons for this, but all can be summed up by the family constraints on its construction. The details of the life of no other famous individual are so exclusively determined through family as are those of Jane Austen. Not only is it the case that surviving letters, manuscripts, and other material witnesses remained largely in family hands for a hundred years after her death, but there is no non-fictional evidence for a ‘self’ other than that constructed within the bounds of family. No diaries or personal writings have come down to suggest the existence of an inner life, a self apart. If there is no autobiographical record, there is also very little by way of a non-familial social or public record. The archive of her later publisher John Murray has yielded nothing but the barest details of a professional relationship conducted with respect and good will on both sides—no hints of literary parties at which Miss Austen might have been a guest. Henry Austen, in his second, 1833 ‘Memoir’, can only mention as noteworthy the meeting with Germaine de Staël which did not take place, while the introduction to the Prince Regent’s librarian, James Stanier Clarke, becomes significant chiefly as it is transformed into the comic ‘Plan of a Novel’. What are left are family memories, which if not totally consensual in the ‘facts’ they collectively register, are sufficiently convergent and mutually endorsing to determine the biographical space as only familial. The modern biographer, for whom the interest of a life generally increases in proportion to its inwardness, is defeated by this absence of a resistant private voice.
The comparison that Austen-Leigh invites us to make is with Charlotte Brontë, and it is more interesting than at first appears. Elizabeth Gaskell’s Life of her friend and fellow-novelist had been published as recently as 1857, setting a standard for the simultaneous memorializing and effacing of its difficult subject, the female writer, that proved influential on Austen-Leigh. In Chapter 7 he compares his aunt’s seclusion from the literary world with the details Gaskell revealed of Brontë’s shunning of public applause. That the Jane Austen we encounter in Austen-Leigh’s account is as inadequate to the novels we now read as is Gaskell’s Brontë can be explained in each case by the Victorian biographer’s project of domestication. But there is an added twist whereby the novelist whom Brontë found too ‘confined’, and from whose ‘mild eyes’ shone the unwelcome advice ‘to finish more, and be more subdued’, becomes liable to a biographical constraint which in some part derives from Gaskell’s earlier authoritative presentation of Brontë as herself the respectable and unpushy lady novelist. Austen-Leigh quotes (at p. 97), via Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë’s now famous denunciation of Jane Austen’s quiet art; but Gaskell’s elevation of the ideal domestic woman, modest spinster daughter of a country parson, one not ‘easily susceptible’ to ‘the passion of love’ in which her novels abound,10 is clearly instructive for his later presentation of an equally saintly heroine whose emotional and intellectual life never ranged beyond the family circle, and whose brushes with sexual love were so slight as to warrant hardly a mention. Where Gaskell’s Brontë walks ‘shy and trembling’ (p. 91) through the London literary scene, Austen-Leigh’s Aunt Jane refuses any and every public notice with an energetic determination that transforms rural Hampshire into a farther retreat than Siberia, let alone Gaskell’s exaggeratedly remote Yorkshire parsonage. Jane Austen lived (we are told), with unnecessarily shrill emphasis, ‘in entire seclusion from the literary world: neither by correspondence, nor by personal intercourse was she known to any contemporary authors’ (p. 90). Austen-Leigh’s biography presents what it cannot (or will not) know about creative genius in terms of a withdrawal of imaginative speculation, a deflection of enquiry into anything as intense, familially disruptive, or counter-social as writing. When he equates Jane Austen’s literary creativity with her other forms of manual dexterity—her use of sealing wax, her games with cup and ball and spilikins—he conceals within domestic pastime what must also have been a profoundly undomesticated, self-absorbed activity. Beyond a certain point the familial perspective is irrelevant, even dishonest.
Origins
The decision to prepare a biography of Jane Austen was taken by the family in the late 1860s. Admiral Sir Francis Austen, her last surviving sibling, had died in August 1865, aged 91. His death marked the end of her generation and therefore a moment for gathering the family record in written form. In addition, those nieces and nephews who had known her in their childhoods were also now old and wished to hand on, within the family, some account of their distinguished relative. ‘The generation who knew her is passing away—but those who are succeeding us must feel an interest in the personal character of their Great Aunt, who has made the family name in some small degree, illustrious’ (p. 166), wrote Caroline Austen in her 1867 essay, subsequently published as My Aunt Jane Austen. Significantly too, at about this time, the public interest in Jane Austen’s novels, mounting gradually since the 1830s, showed signs of developing in at least two ways that provided cause for concern. One was the anxiety that a non-family-derived biography might be attempted; and the other was the equal risk that another branch of the family might publish something injudicious. As the only son of the eldest branch, James Edward Austen-Leigh assumed the task as a duty and in a spirit of censorship as well as communication. Before him, the public biographical account necessarily derived from Henry Austen’s ‘Notice’ of 1818 or its revision as the 1833 ‘Memoir’ (both printed here), where even Henry, purportedly Jane Austen’s favourite brother, eked out his brief evaluation with lengthy quotation from the views of professional critics. According to Brian Southam’s estimate, there were only six essays devoted exclusively to Jane Austen before 1870; but from the 1840s Lord Macaulay, George Henry Lewes, and Julia Kavanagh were publicly attesting to her importance. In private, in his journal in 1858, Macaulay noted his wish to write a short life of ‘that wonderful woman’ in order to raise funds for a monument to her in Winchester Cathedral.11 The correspondence, in 1852, between Frank Austen and the eager American autograph hunter Eliza Susan Quincy, referred to by Austen-Leigh in the Memoir, suggests a ready circle of devotees as far away as Boston, Massachusetts.
James Edward Austen-Leigh was supported in his decision to write the official family life of Jane Austen by his two sisters and several of his cousins. As early as 1864 his elder, half-sister Anna (Jane Anna Elizabeth Austen) Lefroy (1793–1872) was writing down her memories in response to his enquiries (‘You have asked me to put on paper my recollections of Aunt Jane, & to do so would be both on your account & her’s a labour of love’ (see p. 157)). They are printed in this collection as ‘Recollections of Aunt Jane’. His younger sister Caroline Mary Craven Austen (1805–80) provided her reminiscences, as noted above, in 1867. These, too, are included in this collection. As the children of Jane’s eldest brother, Anna, James Edward, and Caroline had inhabited her natal home of Steventon, after their father James took over as rector there on the retirement to Bath of his father George Austen. All three were closer to Jane’s Hampshire roots (socially as well as geographically) than other branches of the family, notably the grander Knights of Godmersham, Kent, the descendants of her third brother Edward. Of the numerous nephews and nieces (of her six brothers, Edward, Frank, and Charles produced eleven, ten, and eight children respectively), James’s children had unique personal knowledge of their aunt and were of an age to remember her. Anna Lefroy had known her aunt from earliest childhood when she was brought to live at Steventon after the death of her mother, James Austen’s first wife Anne Mathew. Caroline, though much younger and only 12 when her aunt died, stayed often at Jane Austen’s later home at Chaw ton, while James Edward (known as Edward in the family) was the only one of his generation
present at his aunt’s funeral. Of the other nieces to have known their aunt, Cassandra Esten Austen (1808–97), Charles Austen’s eldest daughter, and Mary Jane Austen (1807–36), Frank’s eldest daughter, were both regular visitors to Chawton in their childhood. Mary Jane was now dead, but Cassy Esten was her aunt Cassandra Austen’s executrix for her personal effects, and since her own father’s death had inherited many papers belonging either to Jane or Cassandra. She shared information, recollections, and copies of Aunt Jane’s letters with her cousin James Edward. Another promising source of memories and archival materials should have been Fanny Knight, now Lady Knatchbull (1793–1882), Edward Austen Knight’s first child who, just three months older than Anna, was Jane Austen’s eldest niece. At the division of their aunt Cassandra’s papers after her death in 1845, Fanny had inherited the bulk of those letters from Jane to her sister that Cassandra had chosen to preserve. But by the 1860s Fanny’s memory was confused, she was senile, and other family members were unable or reluctant to trace the whereabouts of the letters. His cousin, Fanny’s sister, Elizabeth Rice (1800–84), wrote to Austen-Leigh at this time: ‘it runs in her head that there is something she ought to do till her brain gets quite bewildered & giddiness comes on which of course is very alarming—I really do not think that it is worth your while to defer writing the Memoir on the chance of getting the letters for I see none.’12 Lady Knatchbull’s daughter Louisa returned the same reply to requests for letters, adding ‘I only wish the “Memoirs” had been written ten years ago when it would have given my Mother the greatest pleasure to assist, both with letters and recollections of her own’.13
The gap which these unforthcoming letters and recollections suggest for our retrospective understanding of Austen-Leigh’s account is worth considering. Fanny Knight has been represented to posterity as the favourite niece, in Jane Austen’s own words ‘almost another Sister’ (to Cassandra, 8 October 1808).14 It was a bond strengthened by the death of her mother when Fanny was only 15. As Anna Lefroy, another motherless niece, records in her ‘Recollections of Aunt Jane’: ‘Owing to particular circumstances there grew up during the latter years of Aunt Jane’s life a great & affectionate intimacy between herself & the eldest of her nieces; & I suppose there a [sic] few now living who can more fully appreciate the talent or revere the memory of Aunt Jane than Lady Knatchbull’ (see pp. 158–9). But in the same place Anna also writes that Fanny’s family, the Knights of Godmersham, felt a general preference for Cassandra Austen and that they viewed Jane’s talent with some suspicion—intellectual pursuits and a passion for scribbling did not fit with their finer family pretensions. Though Jane was welcome at Godmersham, she stayed there less frequently than Cassandra, was less intimate in the family circle, and expressed some unease with its ways. Time undoubtedly dulled Fanny Knight’s earlier attachment to Aunt Jane; so much so that Anna’s recollections quoted above assume a wonderful inappropriateness when set against the record we do have of Fanny’s opinion in 1869. Senile or not, she had energy enough to write down this memory for her sister Marianne when she in turn raised Austen-Leigh’s enquiries:
Yes my love it is very true that Aunt Jane from various circumstances was not so refined as she ought to have been from her talent & if she had lived 50 years later she would have been in many respects more suitable to our more refined tastes. They were not rich & the people around with whom they chiefly mixed, were not at all high bred, or in short anything more than mediocre & they of course tho’ superior in mental powers & cultivation were on the same level as far as refinement goes—but I think in later life their intercourse with Mrs. Knight (who was very fond of & kind to them) improved them both & Aunt Jane was too clever not to put aside all possible signs of ‘common-ness’ (if such an expression is allowable) & teach herself to be more refined, at least in intercourse with people in general. Both the Aunts (Cassandra & Jane) were brought up in the most complete ignorance of the World & its ways (I mean as to fashion & c) & if it had not been for Papa’s marriage which brought them into Kent, & the kindness of Mrs. Knight, who used often to have one or other of the sisters staying with her, they would have been, tho’ not less clever & agreeable in themselves, very much below par as to good Society & its ways. If you hate all this I beg yr. pardon but I felt it at my pen’s end & it chose to come along & speak the truth.15
The discrepancy between Anna Lefroy’s confidence in Fanny Knight’s reverence for her aunt’s memory and the details of Fanny’s own late outburst, both recovered across a fifty-year gap, exposes something important about biographical truth—it is not just that Anna’s sense of what Fanny will remember and hold dear is sharply at odds with what Fanny does indeed retain as significant, but that the two impressions are based on different readings of the same basic ingredients—the long visits to Godmersham, the value placed on talent and cleverness, social distinctions, and the Knights’ powers of patronage within the wider Austen family.
In other words, Austen-Leigh’s memoir of his aunt is not just a family production, it is the production of a particular family view of Jane Austen, and against it might be set other, different family recollections and therefore different Aunt Janes. Here we have Jane Austen as remembered by the Steventon or Hampshire Austens, for whom she is nature-loving, religious, domestic, middle class. The Godmersham (Knight-Knatchbull) or Kentish Jane Austen was not to be made public until 1884. When in that year Lord Brabourne, Fanny’s son and Jane’s great-nephew, published his mother’s collection of Jane Austen letters, he attached to them a short introduction whose chief purpose appears to be to oust Austen-Leigh’s biography and assert his rival claims to the more authentic portrait. Not only is Brabourne’s Jane Austen located in Kent as often as in Hampshire, she is a more emotional figure, inward and passionate, and of course more gentrified, improved willy-nilly by contact with her fine relations. These letters, mainly Jane’s correspondence with Cassandra, ‘contain’, he promises, ‘the confidential outpourings of Jane Austen’s soul to her beloved sister, interspersed with many family and personal details which, doubtless, she would have told to no other human being’. More pointedly, these letters ‘have never been in [Mr. Austen-Leigh’s] hands’ and they ‘afford a picture of her such as no history written by another person could give’. To settle the matter of significance, the collection is dedicated to Queen Victoria and proceeds by way of a hundred-page biographical prelude, just under half of which situates its subject in relation to Godmersham, the Knights, and other Kent associations. ‘[B]efore one can thoroughly understand and feel at home with the people of whom Jane Austen writes . . . one should know something of the history of Godmersham.’16
Competition to shape the record also came in another form, from Frank Austen’s daughter, Catherine Austen Hubback (1818–77), who had already stolen a march on the senior branch of the family. Aunt Cassandra frequently stayed with Frank, since 1828 married to her long-time companion Martha Lloyd, and during these visits would read and discuss Jane’s manuscript writings with his family. In 1850 Catherine Hubback had published a novel, The Younger Sister, with a dedication ‘To the memory of her aunt, the late Jane Austen’. The first five chapters are based quite closely on the Austen fragment ‘The Watsons’, and it appears that Mrs Hubback simply remembered the opening, from Cassandra’s retelling, and completed it. Writing to her brother on 8 August 1862, Anna Lefroy fears that their Hubback cousin, now with several more novels to her credit, is ready to do the same with the fragment known in the family as ‘Sanditon’. ‘The Copy [of ‘Sanditon’] which was taken, not given, is now at the mercy of Mrs. Hubback, & she will be pretty sure to make use of it as soon as she thinks she safely may.’17 Not only did Anna Lefroy resent this appropriation by the lesser novelist of Aunt Jane’s voice, she was now the legal owner of the ‘Sanditon’ fragment. Of all her family correspondents Anna, herself a would-be novelist, could claim to have had the deepest fictional communing with Aunt Jane, as letters included in Austen-Leigh’s Memoir attest. It was, afte
r all, with Anna that Aunt Jane discussed her views on novel-writing and, in any case, Catherine was born only after Jane’s death. Here, then, is another reason why, when the Memoir was enlarged for a second edition, it sought to place some mark on the manuscript writings as well as the life, though as Lord Brabourne would tetchily observe in his edition of the Letters, the autograph copy of ‘Lady Susan’ belonged to his mother, and when Austen-Leigh printed it he did so from a different copy and without his express permission.
One thing is clear, that without the Godmersham perspective Austen-Leigh’s account cannot give proportionate space to the part played by Cassandra Austen in her sister’s life. But it was Cassandra herself who had done much to obscure and fragment the record. As Caroline Austen observed to her brother: ‘I am very glad dear Edward that you have applied your-self to the settlement of the vexed question between the Austens and the Public. I am sure you will do justice to what there is—but I feel it must be a difficult task to dig up the materials, so carefully have they been buried out of our sight by the past generat[ion]’ (pp. 186–7). She herself supplied her brother with an intimate picture of Aunt Jane’s daily routine at Chawton Cottage, punctuated with the kind of inconsequential visual detail that only a child would store up as significant. As my annotations to the Memoir point out, Austen-Leigh drew heavily on Caroline’s essay, and when he does so his prose comes to life. Like him, Caroline was the child of James Austen’s second wife, the Austens’ family friend Mary Lloyd, and Caroline came into possession of her mother’s pocket books, in which over many years she kept a brief diary of events as they occurred. Mary Lloyd Austen had been at her sister-in-law’s bedside when she died, having travelled to Winchester to help nurse her. Caroline thus had her mother’s recollections, written and spoken, to draw on as well as her own. As one of the unmarried nieces she also spent much time with Aunt Cassandra in her later years. On the strength of this, their older half-sister Anna reminds James Edward, Caroline must have some unique knowledge: ‘Caroline, though her recollections cannot go so far back even as your’s, is, I know acquainted with some particulars of interest in the life of our Aunt; they relate to circumstances of which I never had any knowledge, but were communicated to her by the best of then living Authorities, Aunt Cassandra’ (p. 162).
Memoir of Jane Austen Page 2