Memoir of Jane Austen

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

  ‘… full maturity and flavour without them’: closing a long quotation from Whately’s review, Quarterly Review, 24 (Jan. 1821), 352–76, at pp. 362–3.

  Southey… to Sir Egerton Brydges: Robert Southey (1774–1843), poet and biographer, whose early revolutionary sympathies soon gave way to political and social conservatism. He was made Poet Laureate in 1813. In view of the comparison JEAL has already set up between JA and Charlotte Brontë, Southey’s opinion of Austen’s novels might be compared with the well-known advice he gave Brontë when she applied to him about publishing her writings: ‘Literature cannot be the business of a woman’s life, and it ought not to be’ (included in Gaskell’s Life, ch. 8). Southey records his views on JA in a letter of 8 April 1830, in Brydges, Autobiography (1834), ii. 269. For Brydges and his connection with the Austen family, see note to p. 44 above.

  A friend of hers… Rev. Herbert Hill: JA’s friend Catherine Bigg (see note to p. 54) had married Herbert Hill (1749–1828) in October 1808. Hill was Chaplain to the British factory or trading settlement in Oporto (not Lisbon), Portugal, between 1774 and 1801 . Southey visited his uncle Hill there in 1775. Some of JA’s later letters mention visits to Catherine at Streatham, where Hill became rector in 1810 (e.g. Letters, 274).

  S. T. Coleridge: the poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834). His opinion of JA’s novels, to be found in Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Henry Nelson Coleridge (2nd edn., 1836) (in Collected Works, 14 (2), ed. Carl Woodring (1990), 80 n.), is all the more remarkable in view of his open contempt for the modern female novelist. In Lecture 11 of his 1818 Lectures on European Literature he notes that ‘Women are good novelists… because they rarely or never thoroughly distinguish between fact and fiction. In the jumble of the two lies the secret of the modern novel… ‘(Collected Works, 5 (2), ed. R. A. Foakes (1987), 193).

  Miss Mitford: see note to p. 13 above.

  Sir J. Mackintosh: Sir James Mackintosh (1760/5–1832), political and moral philosopher and historian, author of Vindiciae Gallicae (1791), History of England (1830), and Progress of Ethical Philosophy (1830).

  Madame de Staël: (1766–1817), born in Paris Anne Louise Germaine Necker, the daughter of a Swiss banker Jacques Necker, Louis XlV’s finance minister. A prominent intellectual and political opponent of Napoleon, she wrote two major works, Corinne, ou l’Italie (Corinne, or Italy (1807)) and De l’Allemagne (On Germany (1810)). In December 1808 JA can be found recommending an acquaintance to read ‘Corinna’ (Letters, 161). Subsequently, JA and de Staël shared a publisher in John Murray.

  Mons. Guizot: François Pierre Guillaume Guizot (1787–1874), conservative French politician and historian and a prolific writer on general topics. He became French minister of education and prime minister. Susan Ferrier (1782–1854), an Edinburgh novelist whose first novel, Marriage (1818), was her most popular.

  ‘Keepsake’ of 1825: R. W. Chapman notes that this should be 1835. A popular annual miscellany, the issue for 1835 has at p. 27 the verses printed here. They form one of the earliest expressions of the sentimental enthusiasm that came to be known as ‘Janeism’. Their author was George Howard, sixth Earl of Carlisle (1773–1848). Among the female novelists compared unfavourably to JA are Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821); Mary Brunton (1778–1818), already mentioned in this Memoir (see p. 106); and Amelia Opie (1769–1853); Susan Ferrier (see preceding note), was author of The Inheritance (1824).

  admiration felt by Lord Macaulay: Macaulay’s sister, Lady Hannah Trevelyan (1810–73), provided the information from her brother’s journal entry of 1858, where he recorded: ‘If I could get materials I really would write a short life of that wonderful woman, and raise a little money to put up a monument to her in Winchester Cathedral.’ This subsequently finds its way into his nephew George Otto Trevelyan’s biography, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay (2 vols., 1876), ii. 466.

  Sir Henry Holland: (1788–1873), fashionable London physician, doctor to Queen Victoria, and cousin of Elizabeth Gaskell. He was unrelated to Henry Fox, third Lord Holland, here described. See Sir Henry Holland, Bart., Recollections of Past Life (1872), 231 n.

  Sir Denis Le Marchant: (1795–1874), politician, had married in 1835 Sarah Eliza Smith, sister of JEAL’s wife Emma.

  Mr. Whewell: William Whewell (1795–1866), Professor of Moral Theology at Cambridge, 1838–55, and Master of Trinity College from 1841 to his death.

  Lord Lansdowne: Lord Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, third Marquis of Lansdowne, referred to at p. 66 above. In his edition of the Letters of Jane Austen (1884), i. 79, Edward, Lord Brabourne, Fanny Knight’s son, records on the authority of his aunt Louisa Knight, now Lady Hill, that Lord Lansdowne was ‘grieved and affected’ to hear of JA’s death.

  Sydney Smith: (1771–1845), essayist and wit, one of the founders, in 1802, of the Edinburgh Review, a hugely influential periodical aimed at educating middle-class taste. He was a member of the great Whig political and intellectual salon of Lord and Lady Holland (Elizabeth and Henry Fox), at Holland House.

  ‘Catena Patrum’: literally, ‘chain of fathers’, list of authorities. finely written: Scott wrote ‘very finely written’.

  list of criticisms: for the ‘Opinions of Mansfield Park’ and ‘Opinions of Emma’, collections of comments with their authors, gathered and transcribed by JA, see Minor Works, 431–9. They were first printed, in part and less accurately, in Life & Letters, 328–32. The manuscripts, in JA’s hand, are now in the British Library.

  ‘Quot homines, tot sententiœ’: ‘as many opinions as there are men’, Terence, Phormio, 454.

  a long letter of his sister’s: this is the letter to Martha Lloyd, Frank Austen’s second wife, sent to the American autograph hunter Susan Quincy. It is included in Ed.2 of the Memoir, at p. 53 above, thanks to Susan Quincy, who returned a copy of it to JEAL. For the exchange of correspondence between the Boston Quincys and Frank Austen, see note to p. 53.

  ‘Northanger Abbey’ in 1798: according to Cassandra’s memorandum, it was ‘written about the years 98 & 99’. See note to p. 44 above.

  merely took a likeness of that actor: Joshua Reynolds (see note to p. 90 above). He painted several portraits of his friend the actor David Garrick, but the more allegorical representation, ‘Garrick between Tragedy and Comedy’, was exhibited in 1762. Interestingly, Reynolds considered the same distinction in an address to the Royal Academy in 1786 (Discourse 13), where he contrasts ‘all the truth of the camera obscura’ and truth as ‘represented by a great artist’, interpreted and mediated, that is, by the imagination (Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses on Art, ed. Robert R. Wark (1975), 237).

  drawn by Miss Mitford: see note to p. 13 above. ‘The Talking Gentleman’, like ‘The Talking Lady’, ‘The Touchy Lady’, and ‘A Quiet Gentlewoman’, is a character sketch from Our Village.

  A reviewer in the ‘Quarterly’: this is Walter Scott, in his unsigned review of E, Quarterly Review, 14 (Oct. 1815), 194, where he writes: ‘A friend of ours, whom the author never saw or heard of, was at once recognized by his own family as the original of Mr. Bennet, and we do not know if he has yet got rid of the nickname.’

  by a friend: in October 1869 JEAL received a letter from the Revd G. D. Boyle, vicar of Kidderminster, with an account of a Mrs Barrett, now dead, who he claimed had, in her younger days, known and corresponded with JA. JEAL here includes extracts from Boyle’s letter in which he apparently quotes the sentiments of JA as remembered by Mrs Barrett. (See the Appendix for the letter, from a transcript held in the NPG, RWC/HH, fos. 26–9.)

  personal affection for Darcy and Elizabeth: in two letters to Cassandra of 29 January and 9 February 1813 (nos. 79 and 81). The relevant extracts are printed at pp. 83 and 84 above.

  ‘to see your Jemima’: this was Anna Jemima, eldest daughter of Ben and Anna Lefroy, born 20 October 1815. JEAL here paraphrases no. 135 in Letters, a scrap only: ‘As I wish very much to see your Jemima, I am sure you will like to see my Emma, & have therefor
e great pleasure in sending it for your perusal.’ Emma was announced as published on Saturday 23 December 1815, and it is not possible to date the scrap of letter closer than December 1815 or January 1816.

  ‘… no one but myself will much like’: JEAL’s Memoir is the source for this now famous authorial comment. The family view was that the character of Emma was, perhaps unintentionally, based on Anna Austen Lefroy (Fam. Rec., 208, on the authority of Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s ‘Family History’).

  subsequent career of some of her people: these subsequent adventures of her characters are preserved from the memories of Anna Lefroy and JEAL. The anecdote relating to Mr Woodhouse was added in Memoir Ed.2. Life & Letters, 307, records a further example of the post-print continuations, spun for the amusement of JA’s nieces and nephews: ‘According to a less well-known tradition, Jane Fairfax [in E] survived her elevation only nine or ten years.’

  some family troubles: apparently a discreet reference to Henry Austen’s bankruptcy, which occurred in March 1816. But the letters from which JEAL goes on to quote date from April and May 1817 and refer to the disappointment felt in the Austen family at the will of James Leigh Perrot, Mrs Austen’s brother, who had died on 28 March 1817. As he was childless, his sister’s family reasonably expected immediate benefit under his will, and since Henry’s bankruptcy had hit several members of the family hard they were much in need of this. However, although he made generous provision for the Austens in the longer term, Uncle Leigh Perrot left everything to his wife for her lifetime. For the Leigh Perrots, see notes to pp. 37, 58, and 59 above. As chief beneficiary on Mrs Leigh Perrot’s death in 1836, JEAL would obviously be discreet in recording this disappointment as he was earlier in his omission from the Memoir of Mrs Leigh Perrot’s prosecution for theft. But family tradition, as well as her own correspondence, suggest that the terms of the will were a considerable shock to JA and even exacerbated her illness (Fam. Rec., 221–3).

  a letter… to Charles: no. 157, where it is dated 6 April 1817. JEAL prints a severely edited extract. JA wrote: ‘I have been suffering from a Bilious attack, attended with a good deal of fever. —A few days ago my complaint appeared removed, but I am ashamed to say that the shock of my Uncle’s Will brought on a relapse… I am the only one of the Legatees [JEAL alters this to ‘party’] who has been so silly, but a weak Body must excuse weak Nerves. My Mother has borne the forgetfulness of her extremely well;—her expectations for herself were never beyond the extreme of moderation, & she thinks with you that my Uncle always looked forward to surviving her’ (Letters, 338–9).

  to another correspondent: a short extract from no. 161, in Letters, where Le Faye conjecturally dates it 28/9 May 1817 and from College Street Winchester. JA and Cassandra had arrived there as recently as 24 May, in a last attempt to seek medical advice which might delay the progress of the illness. This is JA’s last known letter and the first to be published: it is only known through Henry Austen’s use of extracts from it in his ‘Biographical Notice’ (1818). Le Faye further conjectures that the letter’s recipient was Mrs Frances Tilson, wife of Henry’s partner in the now failed Austen, Maunde, & Tilson bank in London (see Le Faye, ‘JA: More Letters Redated’, Notes and Queries, 236 (1991), 306–8). In his ‘Notice’ Henry made it quite clear that the letter was written ‘a few weeks before her death’ (p. 142), which makes JEAL’s insertion of it into a narrative of Spring 1816 the more surprising. R. W. Chapman, the first editor of the collected Letters, thinks, naturally enough, that Henry himself may have been the recipient (see Letters (1932; 2nd edn., 1952), note to Letter 147).

  ‘My Dear E.’: JA wrote ‘My dear Edward’. This is no. 142 in Letters, and JEAL is now drawing on materials which do relate to Summer 1816. He is himself the recipient of the letter, the autograph of which is now on deposit in the British Library.

  your mother: James Austen’s second wife, Mary Lloyd. In her Reminiscences, 48, Caroline Austen records under the year 1816: ‘My mother was very unwell [for a] great part of this summer, and in August she was advised to go to Cheltenham. Aunt Cassandra accompanied us.’

  finesse: artifice, trick.

  Mary Jane: Frank Austen’s eldest daughter, then aged nine.

  cleared off the rest yesterday: in JEAL’s edited version of this letter a section is here omitted detailing various family comings and goings—trips to London and Broadstairs—in which JA is not included. It concludes with an interesting postscript mentioning a forthcoming journey to France by Henry and two of his Godmersham nephews. For the full text, see Letters, 315–17.

  go to Oxford and not be elected: JA first wrote ‘must not go to Oxford’ and then cancelled ‘not’. The election in question was presumably JEAL’s award in 1816 of a Craven Founder’s Kin Scholarship at Exeter College, Oxford.

  improvement: JA wrote ‘improvements’, a precise term in landscape gardening at this time. Cf. MP, ch. 6, where the foolish Mr Rushworth is looking to improve the grounds on his estate.

  Mrs. S Tangier: Mrs Sclater of Tangier Park, Hampshire, a seventeenth-century house near Manydown, home of JA’s friends the Bigg-Wither family.

  ‘My Dear E.’: no. 146 in Letters, where JA wrote ‘My dear Edward’. Again the autograph is on deposit in the British Library. In his ‘Biographical Notice’ of 1818 Henry Austen had slightly misquoted from this letter the now famous disclaimer about ‘the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush’. JEAL omits a final paragraph in which JA alludes to the long-running family joke that she is to marry Mr Papillon, rector of Chawton: ‘I am happy to tell you that Mr Papillon will soon make his offer, probably next Monday, as he returns on Saturday…’ (Letters, 323).

  Charles Knight: Edward Austen Knight’s eighth child, now 13 years old and a pupil at Winchester College.

  very superior sermons: Henry Austen was ordained deacon in December 1816 and priest in early 1817, becoming curate at Chawton. See JA’s letter to Alethea Bigg (24 January 1817), included at p. 126 below: ‘Our own new clergyman is expected here very soon…’

  Lovell is the reader: a reference to Walter Scott’s novel The Antiquary, published in May 1816. The episode to which JA refers occurs in ch. 18. In Scott, the hero’s name (a disguise) is Lovel (with one final ‘l’).

  Two chapters and a half: In a letter of 4 September 1816, JA had informed Cassandra: ‘Edward is writing a Novel—we have all heard what he has written—it is extremely clever; written with great ease & spirit;—if he can carry it on in the same way, it will be a firstrate work, & in a style, I think, to be popular.—Pray tell Mary [his mother] how much I admire it.—And tell Caroline that I think it hardly fair upon her & myself, to have him take up the Novel Line…’ (Letters, 319).

  vigorous sketches: it is so in Henry Austen’s ‘Biographical Notice’, but JA wrote ‘spirited sketches’.

  how well Anna is: Anna Lefroy had given birth to a second daughter, Julia Cassandra, in September 1816, only eleven months after her first, Anna Jemima. Ben was her husband. Writing to Fanny Knight in March 1817, JA expresses concern at Anna’s frequent pregnancies (she was at this time recovering from a miscarriage): ‘Poor Animal she will be worn out before she is thirty’ (Letters, 336).

  ‘tell him what you will’: a joking reference to a line from Hannah Cowley’s Which is the Man? (1783), a play in the repertoire of the family theatricals at Steventon in the 1780s (Austen Papers, 126).

  Joseph Hall: Mrs Austen’s tenant at Steventon (Letters, 460, n. 4).

  Dame Staples: a Steventon villager (Letters, 575).

  importunities of a little niece: this is JEAL’s sister Caroline, who tells the story of the three chairs in MAJA, 177, in this collection.

  brought to an end in July: according to Cassandra’s memorandum, P was ‘begun Augt 8th 1815 finished Augt 6th 1816’. In its unrevised version the final chapter (manuscript now in the British Library) is dated on the last page ‘July 18. 1816’.

  two others, entirely different, in its stead: the tw
o concluding chapters of P were originally numbered 10 and 11 (that is, volume 2, chapters 10 and ii). What JA in fact did was to cancel the greater part of this first version of chapter 10 and substitute for it two new chapters, 10 and 11 . The original chapter 11 was largely retained and became chapter 12. In most modern editions the three chapters are numbered continuously, without regard for the original two-volume division, as chapters 22–4. So, the final version of the ending was completed on 6 August 1816. What we have in manuscript are the drafts for the cancelled chapter 10 and the unrevised chapter 11 (which became volume 2, chapter 12, or chapter 24). The cancelled chapter was first printed by JEAL in Ed.2 of his Memoir but is not included in this edition because of its wide availability as an appendix to most modern editions of the novel. Along with the fragment of the unfinished novel (Sanditon), the manuscript chapters of P descended after Cassandra’s death to Anna Lefroy.

  The following letter: this marks the beginning of a long section (over four pages) added in Ed.2, comprising the letter to Alethea Bigg, the short extract from JA’s letter to Caroline, and the quotation from Caroline’s subsequent recollections. Ed.1 reads: ‘the suppression of which may be almost a matter of regret. [new paragraph] In May 1817 she was persuaded to remove to Winchester…’