Memoir of Jane Austen

by Austen-Leigh, James Edward; Sutherland, Kathryn;

  prologues and epilogues… vigorous and amusing: the volume of James Austen’s occasional writings, copied out by JEAL (HRO, MS 23M93/ 60/3/2), contains specimens of James’s prologues and epilogues dating back to the 1780s, with notes of the members of the family who took the relevant roles in family theatricals. Another cousin, the sensible Philadelphia Walter, writes of the performances expected to take place at Steventon over Christmas 1787: ‘My uncle’s barn is fitting up quite like a theatre, & all the young folks are to take their part.’ She describes Eliza de Feuillide, whom she is seeing again after a gap of ten years: ‘The Countess has many amiable qualities… Her dissipated life she was brought up to—therefore it cannot be wondered at… ‘Philadelphia, who kept her letters from her exotic, Frenchified cousin, is our main source of information on Eliza. The Christmas theatricals being planned in 1787 included Hannah Cowley’s Which Is the Man? (1783) and David Garrick’s Bon Ton (1775), and Eliza clearly fancied herself in the leading female roles (Austen Papers, 125–8). According to James Austen’s additional verses for that year, the play eventually performed, with Eliza playing the heroine, was Susannah Centlivre’s The Wonder! A Woman Keeps a Secret! (1714).

  Cassandra… a young clergyman: this was Tom Fowle (1765–97), Mr Austen’s former pupil at Steventon rectory and therefore a childhood friend. He accompanied his kinsman Lord Craven to the West Indies and died of yellow fever off St Domingo in February 1797. He was buried at sea. Cassandra and he may have become engaged around the time that he officiated at the marriage of Jane Cooper and Captain Thomas Williams in December 1792. On his death he left Cassandra £1,000, which invested would have helped to give her a very limited independence. Some details can be found in letters written in May and July 1797 from Eliza de Feuillide to Philadelphia Walter (Austen Papers, 159, 161).

  Her reviewer… January 1821: Richard Whately (1787–1863), later Archbishop of Dublin, in an unsigned review of NA and P in the Quarterly Review, 24 (January 1821), 352–76. The passage quoted here occurs at pp. 366–7. JEAL returns to this important early critical assessment of JA’s work in Chapter 8 of the Memoir.

  In her youth… to affect her happiness: this is one of the significant revisions to the text of the Memoir made between Ed.1 and Ed. 2. Ed. 1 reads at this point: ‘She did not indeed pass through life without being the object of strong affection, and it is probable that she met with some whom she found attractive; but her taste was not easily satisfied, nor her heart to be lightly won. I have no reason to think that she ever felt any attachment by which the happiness of her life was at all affected.’ There the paragraph ends, and JEAL moves at once to his description of domestic life and home comforts at Steventon almost a century before. The details of two romantic episodes, still insubstantial, and quite deliberately so (‘one passage of romance… imperfectly acquainted… unable to assign name, or date, or place, though… on sufficient authority’), which he included in Ed.2, he owed to his sister Caroline Austen. Both can be dated to the turbulent period 1801–4, soon after the family move from Steventon to Bath, when JA was 25–29 years old. The first episode can be fixed precisely, in December 1802, and refers to the proposal by Harris Bigg-Wither, the younger brother of JA and Cassandra’s old friends Catherine and Alethea Bigg, of Manydown Park. JA apparently accepted the offer but immediately had a change of heart and rejected him. Writing to JEAL with details of this and the second, far shadowier, seaside romance, Caroline observed: ‘My own wish would be, that not any allusion should be made to the Manydown story—or at least that the reference should be so vague, as to give no clue to the place or the person.’ Bigg-Wither is not named until Constance Hill does so in her Jane Austen: Her Homes and Her Friends (1902; 1904 edn., 240). The second episode, the seaside romance, is possibly earlier, and refers to a chance meeting when JA was on holiday in Sidmouth, Devon, in the summer of 1801; again it is from Caroline Austen’s account. She got it from the elderly Cassandra, and in the various family versions it becomes steadily more inconsistent. Caroline writes of it to JEAL: ‘My Aunt told me this in the last years of her own life—& it was quite new to me then—but all this, being nameless and dateless, cannot I know serve any purpose of your’s—and it brings no contradiction to your theory that she “Aunt Jane” never had any attachment that overclouded her happiness, for long.’ (See Caroline Austen’s letter to JEAL, included in the Appendix to this collection from transcribed extracts, NPG, RWC/HH, fos. 8–10; Life & Letters, 84–94; and Fam. Rec.121–2, 250–1.)

  soon after I was born: JEAL was born at Deane on 17 November 1798. His father James Austen moved his family into Steventon rectory in May 1801, at which time the Austens went to Bath.

  Pope… ‘to mark their way’: slightly misquoting Pope, Epistle 1, To Cobham, ll. 31–2.

  ‘to chronicle small beer’: to make something trifling appear important. Cf. Shakespeare, Othello, 11. i. 160 (‘To suckle fools, and chronicle small beer’).

  the dinner-table… general use: for the splendid appearance, notionally desirable for the mid-Victorian dinner-table, see the table plans in Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861). It was usual in the eighteenth century to have dinner, the main meal of the day, in the mid-afternoon. But from the end of the century mealtimes slowly changed, with the emergence of luncheon and an increasingly late dinner hour among the fashion-conscious. In the grand surroundings of Godmersham Park, her brother Edward Knight’s Kent estate, JA dines at a comfortable family time of half past four; and on special occasions as late as half past six. But at Steventon in 1798 dinner is at ‘half after Three’, with the knowledge that they are finished before Cassandra, then staying at Godmersham, has even begun (Letters, 251, 244, and 27). In P&P the smart Bingleys dine at half past six (ch. 8), while Tom Musgrave, in The Watsons, hopes to impress by the extreme lateness of his dinner hour —‘For whether he dined at eight or nine… was a matter of very little consequence.’ The barely genteel Watsons, however, are discovered dining inelegantly early, at three.

  Dos est… Virtus: Adam von Bremen, an eleventh-century theologian, in his Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum (‘German Church History’), of which an edition was published in Hanover in 1846. It should read ‘Dos est magna parentum Virtus’ (‘excellence is the great legacy of parents’).

  furmity, or tansey-pudding: furmity or frumenty, a dish of wheat boiled in milk with spices and sugar; tansy-pudding, traditionally eaten at Easter, flavoured with the bitter herb tansy. Mrs Austen thanks her sister-in-law Mrs Walter for her ‘receipt for potato cakes’ on 12 December 1773 (Austen Papers, 30). In a letter to Cassandra, then staying at Godmersham Park, JA jokes of her own good housekeeping, which she defines as pleasing ‘my own appetite’, mentioning her favourite dishes—’ragout veal’ and ‘haricot mutton’ (17 November 1798, Letters, 20). At Chawton, after 1809, Martha Lloyd shared the housekeeping with Cassandra, and her manuscript recipe book from that time survives. See Maggie Black and Deirdre Le Faye, The Jane Austen Cookbook (1995).

  ‘… costly to rear’: when in her seventies and living at Chawton Cottage, Mrs Austen, according to family tradition, still kept the kitchen garden and dug her own potatoes: ‘I have heard my mother [Anna Lefroy] say that when at work she wore a green round frock like a day labourer’ (Fanny Caroline Lefroy, ‘Family History’, in Fam. Rec., 158).

  A small writing-desk… in the closet: in the Lefroy Manuscript, the Austen family history that Anna Lefroy embarked on in the 1850s but left uncompleted, is included a description from her own childhood memories, perhaps refocused in later conversations with her aunt Cassandra, of the two modest rooms and their cheap furniture—a dressing room and smaller bedroom—which JA and Cassandra shared at Steventon in the 1790s. Its defensive tone, though not its detail, is echoed by JEAL: ‘… one of the Bed chambers, that over the Dining room, was plainly fitted up, & converted into a sort of Drawing room… This room, the Dressing room, as they were pleased to call it, communicated with one of smaller size where my two Au
nts slept; I remember the common-looking carpet with its chocolate ground that covered the floor, and some portions of the furniture. A painted press, with shelves above for books, that stood with its back to the wall next 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 work boxes of oval shape, fitted up with ivory barrels containing reels for silk, yard measures, etc. I thought them beautiful, & so perhaps in their day, & their degree, they were. But the charm of the room, with its scanty furniture and cheaply papered walls, must have been, for those old enough to understand it, the flow of native homebred wit, with all the fun & nonsense of a clever family who had but little intercourse with the outer world’ (Lefroy MS, quoted in Fam. Rec., 69).

  There must have been more dancing: this marks the beginning of a long section, added to Ed.2, explaining late eighteenth-century manners and customs. The inserted passage ends six pages later at: ‘nor can I pretend to tell how much of what I have said is descriptive of the family life at Steventon in Jane Austen’s youth.’ In his ‘Biographical Notice’ of 1818, Henry Austen writes of his sister: ‘She was fond of dancing, and excelled in it.’

  To gallop… caught no cold: the lines are probably by Walter Scott. They occur in slightly different form in his novel The Antiquary (1816), ch. 11: ‘When courtiers gallop’d o’er four counties | The ball’s fair partner to behold, | And humbly hope she caught no cold.’

  Sir Charles and Lady Grandison… at their own wedding: a reference to Samuel Richardson’s The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753–4), vol. vi, letter 53.

  lappet: a kind of flap.

  Gloves immaculately clean… performance: in Fanny Burney’s novel Camilla, book 2, ch. 2, the vulgar Mr Dubster is prevented from dancing with Camilla, much to her relief, because he has lost one of his gloves. The name of ‘Miss J. Austen, Steventon’ is printed in the list of subscribers to Camilla; and JA refers to the novel in an early letter to Cassandra (Letters, 6).

  Hornpipes, cotillons, and reels: all lively country dances. Where hornpipes would be of English origin and reels Scottish or Irish, the cotillon would have been a modified version of a French peasant dance, its name deriving from the French word for ‘petticoat’. See Letters, 330, where JA writes to her niece Fanny Knight: ‘Much obliged for the Quadrilles, which I am grown to think pretty enough, though of course they are very inferior to the Cotillons of my own day.’

  the concoction of home-made wines: JA writes in her letters of ‘brewing Spruce Beer again’ (a drink made from sugar and the green tops of the Spruce, a variety of fir-tree); and she asks her friend Alethea Bigg for the recipe for ‘orange Wine’ (Letters, 156 and 328). Extracts from the letter to Alethea Bigg (no. 150) are included by JEAL in ch. 11 of the Memoir.

  a little girl… leaving her chamber: middle-class children’s books of the 1780s and 1790s regularly taught the value of practical self-sufficiency, of self-denial, and the rejection of excessive idleness and luxury. JEAL is probably remembering R. L. and Maria Edgeworth’s Early Lessons (1801), where Lucy must make her bed before she is allowed breakfast.

  Music: according to Caroline Austen’s memories: ‘Aunt Jane began her day with music—for which I conclude she had a natural taste; as she thus kept it up—tho’ she had no one to teach; was never induced (as I have heard) to play in company; and none of her family cared much for it’ (see p. 170).

  ‘The master’s eye… serve yourself’: both self-explanatory sayings, implying the advantages of self-reliance.

  Catherine Morland… her father’s parsonage: the reference is to NA, ch. 23, where Catherine, the heroine, is being shown the kitchen and domestic offices of Northanger Abbey, all of them to her dismay modernized and with no trace of medieval privation. The narrator observes: ‘The purposes for which a few shapeless pantries and a comfortless scullery were deemed sufficient at Fullerton [her father’s parsonage], were here carried on in appropriate divisions, commodious and roomy.’

  useful articles… in the old-fashioned parlour: in a letter from Steventon to Cassandra (1 November 1800) JA appears to be sewing shirts to send out by the half-dozen, as they are finished, to their brother Charles who is waiting to set sail (Letters, 53). But see also JA’s letter complaining of the ungenteel behaviour of a Mrs A[rmstrong], who ‘sat darning a pair of stockings the whole of my visit’ (quoted in Ch. 4 below). One senses already a generational self-consciousness about the display of such homely activities as she advises Cassandra ‘I do not mention this at home, lest a warning should act as an example’ (Letters, 94).

  I have been told: the source of the story of little Frank (known in the family as ‘Fly’) Austen’s pony and his scarlet suit, made in fact from his mother’s wedding-dress, may be JEAL’s half-sister Anna Lefroy, who got other childhood tales from Frank himself, now Sir Francis, in 1855 (see Fam. Rec., 44–5 and 260, n. 34). These details are not included in Ed. 1., which omits the section: ‘The early hour… conspicuous figure in the hunting-field.’

  pattens: wooden soles, and mounted on iron rings, for raising the normal footwear out of the mud. The source for this detail is Anna Lefroy. See p. 157.

  Gay… Patty takes the name: John Gay, Trivia (1716), book 1, ll. 281–2.

  Cowper… three-legged stool: a reference to one of JA’s favourite poets, William Cowper (1731–1800). In Book 1 of his long poem The Task (1785), he fancifully traces the evolution of the sofa from the stool: ‘Thus first necessity invented stools, | Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs, | And luxury th’ accomplish’d SOFA last’ (ll. 86–8).

  Mr. Leigh Perrot… the Patten a clog: James Leigh (1735–1817), Mrs Austen’s brother, added Perrot to his name in 1751 in order to inherit the estate of his maternal great-uncle Thomas Perrot. Some of JA’s books were probably gifts from this uncle (David Gilson, ‘Jane Austen’s Books’, Book Collector, 23 (1974), 27–39). He also stood surety for Henry Austen when he was appointed Receiver-General for Oxfordshire, losing £10,000 on Henry’s bankruptcy in 1816. Punning epigrams seem to have been a speciality in the Leigh and Austen families, and JEAL records two of JA’s in Chapter 5 of this Memoir. A manuscript in JA’s hand of a poem ascribed to James Leigh Perrot, now in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, reads: ‘Thro’ the rough ways of Life, with a patten your Guard, | May you safely and pleasantly jog; | May the ring never break, nor the Knot press too hard, | Nor the Foot find the Patten a Clog’ (Jane Austen: Letters and Manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library (1975), 26). B. C. Southam includes this epigram among JA’s own verses (Minor Works, 452), but he does not explain his decision. We may wonder why the piece did survive among papers attributed to JA. The marriage of Captain Edward James Foote, known to the Austens, and Miss Mary Patton occurred in 1803.

  Tunbridge ware: wooden articles, with a characteristic mosaic decoration made from inlaid wood, manufactured in and about Tunbridge Wells. Cf. E, ch. 40: ‘Within abundance of silver paper was a pretty little Tunbridge-ware box, which Harriet opened.’

  the rough earl… ‘… go spin’: attributed to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke (c.1501–70). It is quoted by Walter Scott, in his journal for 9 February 1826, included in the biography written by his son-in-law, J. G. Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart (2nd edn., 1839), viii. 223, to which JEAL refers below, at p. 43.

  the three Fates: in classical and northern myth, the goddesses who determine the course of human life.

  Holy Scripture… in the wilderness: Exodus, 35: 25.

  ‘when Adam delved and Eve span’: fourteenth-century proverb.

  spinning jennies: early steam-powered machines for spinning a number of threads at once, already in use in the 1770s.

  I know little of Jane Austen’s childhood: this opening section, as far as ‘associating at home with persons of cultivated intellect’, was added in Ed.2.

  putting out her babies… in the village: this account of Mrs Austen’s system of child-rear
ing was added in Ed.2. Her practice seems to have been to breast-feed each baby for a few months and then to hand the child over to a woman in the village for the next year or longer, certainly until he or she was able to walk. This is what she describes in letters to her sister-in-law Susannah Walter: ‘My little boy is come home from nurse, and a fine stout little fellow he is, and can run anywhere, so now I have all four at home, and some time in January I expect a fifth.’ The date is November 1772; so the little boy must be Henry, born in June 1771 . Of the fifth child, Cassandra, she writes in June 1773, five months after the birth, ‘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 to-day’ (Austen Papers, 28 and 29). With a steadily increasing family of children, the parsonage to run, and her husband’s boarding pupils to care for, Mrs Austen may have found this the most efficient plan, and perhaps one that assured the babies a degree of attention she could not provide. It sounds from the account she gives of Cassandra that she used, at least in this instance, a dry nurse, in which case Mrs Austen’s babies were weaned very young. In the course of the eighteenth century there was mounting pressure on middle-class women to set a good example to their sex and rank by breast-feeding rather than farming their children out. The argument was posed as a matter of hygiene and sound medical advice, but also contained a strong moral imperative. There was the added warning in some advice manuals that to hand over one’s baby to the care of another might endanger the natural bond of affection between mother and child (‘That those Mothers who do, as it were, discharge their Children from them, and thus dispose of them, do at least weaken, if not dissolve the Bond of Love and Tenderness which Nature ties between them’, The Ladies Dispensatory: or, Every Woman her own Physician (1740)). Some modern biographers have attempted to explain what they sense as JA’s emotional defensiveness in terms of this early severance (e.g. ‘the emotional distance between child and mother is obvious throughout her life’, Tomalin, Jane Austen, 6). Such theories tend to have a late twentieth-century feel to them. It is worth noting, on the other side of the argument, that the practice of farming out was not uncommon at the time, that the Austen babies seemed to thrive on it, and that they were not banished totally out of sight but were apparently visited daily by their parents. Deirdre Le Faye has suggested that a couple called John and Elizabeth Littleworth may have been regular foster-parents to the Austen children. The extended Littleworth family remained in service to the Austens for several generations, but there is no hard evidence for their fostering (see ‘The Austens and the Littleworths’, Jane Austen Society Report (1987), 64–70).