I wish I had more to write. I often approached the subject, but 4 years have passed away since Mrs. Barrett died.
…. Very truly yours
G. D. Boyle
(Vicar of Kidderminster.)
12. Extract from ‘Family History by Fanny C. Lefroy’ (HRO, MS 23M93/85/2°).
In a note to my Father [Ben Lefroy] announcing her death Sir Francis Austen writes. ‘I do not know if you have heard how very unfavourable the accounts which were brought from Winchester yesterday by my brother were. If not you and Anna will be the more shocked to hear that all is over. My dear sister was seized at five yesterday evening with extreme faintness and on Mr. Lyfords arriving soon after he pronounced her to be dying. She breathed her last at half past four this morning and went off without a struggle. My mother bears the shock as well as can be expected, and we have the satisfaction of hearing that Mrs. J. Austen and Cassandra are well.’
None of her nieces mourned her more deeply than did our mother. I might go further, and say not any one of them so much. She wrote immediately to her Grandmother offering to go to her. I copy the reply.
‘I thank you sincerely for all your kind expressions and your offer. I am certainly in a good deal of affliction, but trust God will support me. I was not prepared for the blow for though it in a manner hung over us, I had reason to think it at a distance, and was not quite without hope that she might in part recover. After a four months illness she may be said to have died suddenly. Mr. Lyford supposed a large blood vessel had given way. I hope her sufferings were not severe—they were not long. I had a letter from Cassandra this morning. She is in great affliction but bears it like a Christian. Dear Jane is to be buried in the Cathedral, I believe on Thursday. In which case Cassandra will come home as soon as it is over. Miss Lloyd does not go.—Your father, Mr Knight who is now here, your Uncle Henry (who is now at Winchester giving the necessary directions) and your Uncle Frank will attend. How fortunate for Cassandra that your mama was with her. She says she is all kindness and affection.’
Our Great Grandmother was 77 when she lost this beloved daughter. To her the separation could not be long, but Aunt Cassandra’s loss in her sister was great indeed and most truly a loss never to be repaired. They were everything to each other. They seemed to lead a life to themselves, within the general family life, which was shared only by each other. I will not say their true but their full feelings and opinions were known only to themselves. They alone fully understood what each had suffered and felt and thought. Yet they had such a gift of reticence that the secrets of their respective friends were never betrayed to each other. They were thoroughly trustworthy and the young niece who brought her troubles to Aunt Jane for advice and sympathy knew she could depend absolutely on her silence even to her sister. A strict fidelity which is I think somewhat rare between any two so closely united.
EXPLANATORY NOTES
ABBREVIATIONS
JA
Jane Austen
JEAL
James Edward Austen-Leigh, her nephew
HRO, MS 23M93
Hampshire Record Office, Winchester, the Austen-Leigh Papers
NPG, RWC/HH
National Portrait Gallery, London, a file of correspondence between R. W. Chapman and Henry Hake, 1932–48
Memoir Ed.1
James Edward Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen, by her nephew (1870)
Memoir Ed.2
James Edward Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen, by her nephew, to which is added Lady Susan and fragments of two other unfinished tales by Miss Austen (2nd edn., 1871)
Memoir (1926)
James Edward Austen-Leigh, Memoir of Jane Austen, by her nephew, ed. R. W. Chapman (1926)
Austen Papers
Austen Papers 1704–1856, ed. R. A. Austen-Leigh (1942)
Fam. Rec.
William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen: A Family Record, revised and enlarged by Deirdre Le Faye (1989)
Gilson
David Gilson, A Bibliography of Jane Austen (1982, revised 1997)
Letters
Jane Austen’s Letters, ed. Deirdre Le Faye (3rd edn., 1995)
Life & Letters
William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh, Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters, A Family Record (1913)
MAJA
Caroline Austen, My Aunt Jane Austen: A Memoir (written 1867; first published 1952; included here in a revised edition from the manuscript)
Minor Works
Minor Works, The Works of Jane Austen, vol. 6, ed. R. W. Chapman (1954; revised B. C. Southam, 1969)
RAJ
Anna Lefroy, ‘Recollections of Aunt Jane’ (written 1864; first published 1988; included here in a revised edition from the manuscript, HRO, MS 23M93/97/4/104)
Reminiscences
Reminiscences of Caroline Austen, ed. Deirdre Le Faye (written 1870s; first published 1986)
Sailor Brothers
J. H. and Edith C. Hubback, Jane Austen’s Sailor Brothers: Being the Adventures of Sir Francis Austen, G.C.B., Admiral of the Fleet, and Rear-Admiral Charles Austen (1906)
Tucker
George Holbert Tucker, A History of Jane Austen’s Family (1983; revised 1998)
S&S
Sense and Sensibility (1811)
P&P
Pride and Prejudice (1813)
MP
Mansfield Park (1814)
E
Emma (1816)
NA
Northanger Abbey (1818)
P
Persuasion (1818)
References to the Jane Austen Society Reports are to articles as they are paginated in the collected volumes, where these exist: 1949–65; 1966–75; 1976–85; and 1986–95.
J. E. AUSTEN-LEIGH, A Memoir of Jane Austen
The text of the Memoir printed here follows the second, expanded edition of 1871, with minor misprints and errors corrected. I have, however, made certain changes. I have omitted the bulk of the manuscript writings which JEAL appended to this enlarged edition—the cancelled chapter of Persuasion, Lady Susan, and the unfinished novels The Watsons and Sanditon (the last mainly paraphrased by JEAL); and I have restored some features of the first edition text of 1870—namely, the set of five illustrations and the second postscript, dated 17 November 1869. In this, I follow the example of R. W. Chapman who edited the 1871 Memoir for the Clarendon Press in 1926. Chapman retained the cancelled chapter of Persuasion but omitted the other manuscript writings. He also restored the illustrations and second postscript and supplied running titles for each of the chapters, drawn from JEAL’s own chapter head notes. I have adopted these, together with the frontispiece portrait of JEAL added to the 1926 edition. In other respects this is a reprint of the 1871 Memoir, collated against the 1870 edition for misprints and to record the substantial changes made between the two editions. The most important of these textual changes and expansions are signalled and described in the notes which follow. It is worth mentioning that neither JEAL nor his assistants in the Memoir were overly concerned to reproduce accurately the documents which they transcribed or quoted. Among the Austen family, there was much passing around of copies and much making of further copies of JA’s letters and unpublished writings, and I alert the reader in the notes which follow to the more significant differences between JEAL’s texts and the earlier, often autograph, copies published more recently. Such changes are particularly marked in his treatment of JA’s letters, where not only was JEAL not concerned to follow scrupulously the original text (or perhaps he was not supplied with a wholly accurate copy), but he had a tendency to correct or improve grammar and sentence structure. In addition, as a near family member, he was sensitive to the substance of his material, and occasionally he omits or alters details which might still, in 1871, have caused offence to the living or cast JA or others in an unfavourable light. Wherever possible, I refer the reader to Jane Austen’s Letters, ed. Deirdre Le Faye (3rd edn., 1995) for the most accurate text.
p. 29, l. 34: if we look] if we could look [1870]
p. 52, l. 8: the chiffonniere, is] the chiffonniere, which is
p. 75, l. 8: on strict survey] on strict survey, [1870]
p. 82, l. 22: till,] till
p. 91, l. 15: worth] worthy [1870]
p. 112, l. 3: dear style] clear style
p. 123, l. 33: Ah, ah!] Ah, ha! [1870]
called ‘Lady Susan’: the cancelled chapter of P etc. are not included in this edition.
epigraph: Sir Arthur Helps, The Life of Columbus, the Discoverer of America (1869), 9–10, slightly misquoted, from a description of Prince Henry of Portugal, the promoter of the discovery of America.
the Dashwoods… and Musgroves: families who appear in the six completed novels on which JA’s nineteenth-century reputation rested. JEAL lists them in the order of the novels’ first publication: the Dashwoods in S&S (1811); the Bennets in P&P (1813); the Bertrams in MP (1814); the Woodhouses in E (1816); the Thorpes in NA; and the Musgroves in P (published posthumously with NA in 1818).
Hasted, in his History of Kent: Edward Hasted, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, 2 (1782), 387–88; 3 (1790), 48.
Mr. George Austen: JA’s father, the Revd George Austen (1731–1805), son of William Austen (1701–37) and ward of William’s long-lived elder brother Francis (1698–1791). George Austen entered St John’s College, Oxford, in 1747 at the age of 16, held a fellowship there from 1751 to 1760, and was ordained a clergyman in the Church of England in 1754. Of his two surviving sisters, the elder Philadelphia (1730–92) played a significant role in the Austen family during JA’s early life, while Uncle Francis’s second wife was one of her godmothers. JEAL’s information about George Austen’s clerical livings is not quite accurate. He became rector of Steventon, Hampshire, in 1761 but of the neighbouring parish of Deane only in 1773. To confuse matters, however, the newly-wed George and Cassandra Austen moved into the more comfortable parsonage at Deane in 1764 and only transferred to Steventon after some improvements, probably in 1768. This is clearly the source of JEAL’s mistake, for he seems naturally enough to have assumed that his grandfather was rector of Deane when he lived there in 1764. On a trip to Steventon to collect materials for his Memoir, he writes to his half-sister Anna: ‘The chief discovery that I made is that we were all mistaken in supposing that our Grandfather was not Rector of Steventon, as well as of Deane, from 1764, the year of his marriage. The Steventon Register proves conclusively that he was. He signs himself “Geo: Austen, Rector”, at the bottom of every page from 1764 to 1800’ (HRO, MS 23M93/84/1, letter to Anna Lefroy, 8 July 1869). Himself a clergyman, JEAL is understandably anxious to acquit his grandfather of the contentious charge of pluralism (that is, of holding several livings at once). Though the practice might be justified, as implied here, by the poor financial returns of a single living and the closeness and smallness of the two parishes, pluralism often led to the neglect of responsibilities when a clergyman did not live in his parish. George Austen seems to have taken the matter sufficiently seriously to seek approval from the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1773 (Fam. Rec., 6, 11, 23; Tucker, 29–31).
Cassandra: Cassandra Leigh (1739–1827), JA’s mother. For the Leigh family, their Oxford connections, and their colourful but distant aristocratic pretensions, see Tucker, 53–65.
‘monuments… memorials need’: George Crabbe, The Borough (1810), Letter 2, ‘The Church’, l. 110.
Mrs. Thrale… ‘divided the Board’: Theophilus Leigh (1693–1785), JA’s great-uncle, was Master of Balliol College, Oxford, from 1726 to 1785. He is described by Hester Lynch Salusbury, Mrs Thrale, later Mrs Piozzi (1741–1821), diarist, memoirist, and travel writer, in her Letters to and from the Late Samuel Johnson LL.D (2 vols., 1788), ii. 245; here slightly misquoted by JEAL.
Pope… ‘study of mankind is Man’: Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733), Epistle 2, l. 2.
‘the ruling passion… death’: Pope, Epistle 1, To Cobham (1734), l. 263 (‘Shall feel your ruling passion strong in death’).
in 1771 to Steventon: in 1768, see note to p. 11 above.
the celebrated Warren Hastings: plenty of speculation hangs around the relationship between Warren Hastings (1732–1818), the future Governor-General of Bengal (1773–85), and the Austen family. Taking his cue from the other main source of family authorized biography, Life & Letters, R. W. Chapman finds it ‘very doubtful’ that Hastings would have committed his son, only 3 years old when sent to England in 1761, to the charge of George Austen, a young bachelor. He therefore concurs with the later generation of Austen-Leighs in assuming a confusion with Hastings de Feuillide, another sickly and short-lived child, the son of George Austen’s niece Eliza, ‘who undoubtedly did stay at Steventon and did die young’ (Memoir (1926), 215). But earlier family memory has it that Hastings’s small son (also named George) died in the Austens’ care in autumn 1764 and that Mrs Austen was deeply upset by his death. JEAL was clearly hoping to find confirmation on his 1869 visit to Steventon, but was disappointed, writing to Anna Lefroy: ‘There is certainly no entry of the burial of young Hastings either at Deane or Steventon; & the beautiful accuracy with which our Grandfather kept his register prevents the possibility of his having omitted to make an entry of such interest to him. I can only suppose that the child died elsewhere (possibly having been sent somewhere for his health) or that by the desire of his family he was buried elsewhere’ (HRO, MS 23M93/84/1). George Austen’s elder sister Philadelphia had gone out to India in 1752 in search of a husband and there married Tysoe Saul Hancock, a surgeon and associate of Hastings. Hastings became a close family friend of the Hancocks and stood godfather to their daughter Elizabeth, for whom he subsequently made generous financial provision. It would be a natural reciprocal gesture for Philadelphia to recommend little George Hastings to her brother’s charge in England. Further speculations by Austen scholars, that Warren Hastings may have known Mrs Cassandra Austen through a childhood link with her cousins, the Adlestrop Leighs, or the conjecture of a boyhood association between George Austen and Hastings, remain just that, speculation, with no substantial proof (see Fam. Rec., 15; and Maggie Lane, Jane Austen’s Family through Five Generations (1984), 39). However, the record becomes more tangled, with suggestions that Mrs Hancock’s daughter Eliza, George Austen’s niece, was her love-child by Hastings and not by her husband. Tucker (39–41) treats the family scandal (if such it was) cautiously, while David Nokes (Jane Austen: A Life (1997), 31–3, 48–50) is far more sensationalist and, though without proof, unequivocal. Certainly Hastings’s interest in the welfare of the Hancock women, mother and daughter, remained strong, and his association with the Austens survived little George Hastings’s death. But Deirdre Le Faye, whose biography of Eliza is forthcoming, has found no evidence at all to confirm Hastings’s paternity or the scandal. JA’s brother Henry, who became cousin Eliza’s second husband in 1797, wrote to congratulate Hastings on his acquittal for impeachment in 1795 and maintained an occasional and obsequious correspondence with him thereafter. Hastings also used his influence with the Admiralty in Frank Austen’s favour in 1794. (Austen Papers, 153–4, 176–8, 226–7; Keith Feiling, Warren Hastings (1966), 39–40; Robin Vick, ‘The Hancocks’, Jane Austen Society Report (1999), 19–23. JEAL refers to G. R. Gleig, Memoirs of the Life of Warren Hastings (1841).)
Mary Russell Mitford: (1787–1855), letter-writer, poet, dramatist, but best known for her popular sketches of village life, collected in Our Village (5 vols., 24–32). Her grandfather, the Revd Dr Richard Russell, was rector of Ashe until 1783, at which time the Revd George Lefroy and his wife Anne, who was to become JA’s great friend, took up residence there. At several points in the Memoir JEAL makes comparisons between JA and Mary Mitford, as near contemporaries and observers of Hampshire village society. The likely connections between their two families provided the source for an obviously malicious (but not necessarily fa
lse) representation of JA in The Life of Mary Russell Mitford, ed. A. G. L’Estrange (3 vols., 1870), to which JEAL alludes in Ed.1 of the Memoir, though he suppresses the reference in Ed.2 and later editions. See p. 133 below.
in 1771… not then in strong health: the move to Steventon took place in 1768 (see note to p. 11 above.) Most likely Mrs Austen was again pregnant. If so, the baby miscarried. The Austens first three children, all sons, were born in three successive years, 1765–7; so a further pregnancy in 1768 is not unlikely. On the other hand, 1771, though not the year the family moved to Steventon, did see the birth of their fourth child, Henry. JEAL could be confusing and compressing these events.
Ignorance and coarseness… ‘… telling the story’: in Fam. Rec., 14, the ignorant squire is named as John Harwood (1719–87) of Deane House, and is further described as the reputed original of Squire Western in Fielding’s novel Tom Jones (1749). But the real point of this and other similar family anecdotes is to stress the intellectual superiority of the Austens over their immediate neighbours, though their social standing was more uncertain.
‘the toe of the peasant… courtier’: Shakespeare, Hamlet, v. i. 136–7.
‘the handsome Proctor’: George Austen was ‘Junior Proctor for the academic year 1759–60’ (Fam. Rec., 4). Proctors are annual appointments from the academic community at Oxford and Cambridge, chosen to enforce university regulations.
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