Jane Austen

by Claire Tomalin

  While these cheerful matters were arranging themselves, Eliza and her mother were suffering. Mrs. Hancock was ill, with a hard and painful swelling in one breast, and Eliza was desperate to find a remedy for what they both knew must be a serious condition. There are always charlatans ready to prey on the desperate by offering miracle cures; they heard of, and called in, a “Doctress” who offered “most flattering hopes of a perfect cure.” And whatever her method, which she warned would take time, it may not have been any worse than most other available treatments. 7 Mrs. Hancock said the pain was reduced, and Eliza allowed herself to hope for “the unspeakable happiness of seeing my beloved parent restored to Health.” Each tried to reassure the other. As the summer went by, Eliza gave up all other activities and remained shut up in Orchard Street, trying to divert her mother’s thoughts from the illness, and suffering her own “racking anxiety.” She was too busy and unhappy even to inform the Austens until June; after this Edward called on her. He was bound for the Lake District, and Eliza was able to summon enough of her old spirit to tease him about his indifference to making such a pleasure trip without his beloved. “I asked him how he would be able to exist; which enquiry he answered with that calm smile of resignation which his sex generally wear under circumstances of this nature.”8 There was no word of Henry.

  Mrs. Hancock could not travel to Steventon. In August she was experiencing acute pain. Eliza wrote, “the progress of her amendment is so very slow, that in spite of all my endeavours my spirits sometimes sink, and I shudder at the possibility that all our efforts may be ineffectual . . . how dreadful it is to experience even the shadow of uncertainty where those we love are concerned!”9 The Doctress continued to promise a cure, but Eliza now called in a surgeon, Mr. Roops; and by October Mrs. Hancock was confined to bed and seeing no one but her daughter and Roops. At the end of the month she suffered a “very dreadful attack” and Eliza summoned a physician. He prescribed laudanum. Eliza was in a state of distress “bordering on distraction,” unable to make out Roops’s real opinion of the case.

  The sequence of hope, despair and revived hope continued. “Never will the year 1791 be effaced from my memory for from the first Month of its commencement . . . my feelings have constantly been exposed to some fresh trial,” wrote Eliza.10 At Christmas Mrs. Hancock had a violent cough, no appetite, disordered bowels, as much pain as ever, and the tumour remained as before; gallantly, she told Eliza she thought “the complaint itself” was getting better. “To my unutterable Sorrow—I cannot flatter myself with a similar Belief.” A flash of the old Eliza appears when she tells Phila she has been invited to two elegant balls; but she has no intention of attending either. Phila wrote sanctimoniously to her brother about poor Eliza’s “gay and dissipated life” now bringing its just deserts, and predicted that she would be left “friendless and alone.”11

  The care of five-year-old Hastings became more difficult now that his “second Mamma” was unable to take part in it, but she refused to give up her hopes for him. Eliza promoted him from petticoats to trousers and jacket, in the hope that they would help him to walk better, although he had difficulty in keeping upright at all.

  There was nothing but bad news from France. In September the Count was attacked by a mob of angry peasants at the Marais; he escaped with his life, but his new house was pillaged, and all work on the drainage scheme stopped. He made his way to Paris; he had no money and owed his mother-in-law £6,500.12

  Mrs. Hancock died at the end of February 1792, in Hampstead, where Eliza took her in the hope of better air for the last weeks of her life. She had adventured and endured much in her sixty years; the inscription on the tombstone spoke of “Philadelphia wife of Tysoe Saul Hancock” as one “whose moral excellence united the practice of every Christian virtue,” and of the pious resignation with which she bore “the severest trials of a tedious and painful malady.”13 Jean Capot de Feuillide managed to make his way to England to comfort his wife and son, and they took a rather grim trip to Bath; he soon heard that his whole property would be forfeit and he himself declared an émigré if he remained abroad, and hurried back to Paris.

  Edward’s marriage had taken place in December 1791; it was a double wedding, shared with one of Elizabeth’s sisters. Jane’s dedication to him of a distinctly brutal story about mercenary matchmaking, The Three Sisters, made a somewhat two-edged wedding gift; even the most good-humoured bride might have found it tactless. Weddings did not then call for large gatherings of relatives, so Jane is unlikely to have attended Edward’s, but she may have been at James’s in March 1792, since it took place close to home, at Laverstoke. James and Anne soon moved closer to Steventon, taking over Deane parsonage from the Lloyds. On their departure Jane wrote a poem for Martha and dedicated to Mary her story Evelyn, full of hasty marriages and marriage settlements, house moves, forgetfulness and funerals. The Lloyds moved eighteen miles away, to Ibthorp; it was too far for daily calls, but Cassandra and Jane were soon invited to stay.

  In June, Eliza was frightened by a mob fighting with mounted Guards in Mount Street in central London. She was not alone in asking if the spirit of revolution might be about to cross the Channel. The principal county personages of Hampshire gathered to express their approbation of Pitt’s government, their lack of sympathy with the National Convention in France, and their disapproval of revolutionary societies in England.14 Since Hampshire was solid Tory, the mere fact of its land-owners finding it necessary to mention the French and the English revolutionary societies indicates their disquiet.

  Later in the summer Eliza and her little boy appeared at Steventon, where Hastings became “the plaything of the whole family.” She relaxed and allowed herself to be happy looking at Mr. Austen, whose “likeness to my beloved mother is stronger than ever,” and sometimes reduced her to tears: “I always tenderly loved my uncle, but I think he is now dearer to me than ever, as being the nearest and best beloved relative of the never to be sufficiently regretted parent I have lost.” Jane had grown taller than Eliza, was as fond of her as ever, and remained her favourite; she commended both sisters for their greatly improved manners and appearance, and their good sense. And Henry—Henry was now over six foot, also much improved, in fact “endowed with uncommon abilities.” The coolness was over, or partly over, and they were on “very proper relation-like terms; you know that his family design him for the Church.” 15 And Eliza queened it at the Club balls in Basingstoke.

  Jane was sixteen, an uncomfortable age in itself, and made no easier when you are the youngest member of the family at home, and a witness to elder brothers and sisters engaging in romances beyond your reach. Another wedding was planned for December. Jane Cooper was also living at Steventon, following the death of her father; she was engaged to a naval officer, Captain Thomas Williams. They had met in July on the Isle of Wight, and before the month was out he had proposed and been accepted, and they were to be married before Christmas. A naval bridegroom with his fortune to make, confident enough to sweep beautiful Jane off her feet and silence any prudent warnings, made this the most romantic of the family weddings. It was solemnized in Steventon church, with Jane as one of the witnesses and Cassandra another. The service was taken by Tom Fowle; he and Cassandra were also on the brink of becoming engaged.

  Only there was no whirlwind courtship for them, since Tom Fowle had hardly any resources beyond his almost worthless parish in Wiltshire, and no immediate prospect of anything better; Cassandra had no money at all. Both were dutiful and sensible, and they knew, without either family having to put any pressure on them, that they would have to wait, possibly for years, before they could marry. Without money there could be no marriage. Both James’s Anna and Edward’s Elizabeth were already “in the increasing way” as Eliza put it; or, in the less delicate language of Lord Portsmouth’s brother Coulson, “in for it!”16 The gleeful menace contained in this phrase struck Jane forcibly enough for her to quote it later; even the most treasured wife had no control over this pa
rt of her fate.

  The question of how much control a woman had over her own life was one to ponder during that year of weddings and engagements. Money, money, money, again. There was no freedom for a woman without it, married or unmarried. Eliza talked to Jane about her mother’s experience, how Aunt Philadelphia had been obliged to travel out to India alone as a girl and marry a man she did not care for, making the basic bargain, her body and companionship for his money; and Jane was so struck by this part of her aunt’s story that she incorporated it into her writing that summer. In Catharine, or the Bower , Catharine’s friend, the orphaned Miss Wynne, is given the experience of young Philadelphia Austen:

  The eldest daughter had been obliged to accept the offer of one of her cousins to equip her for the East Indies, and tho’ infinitely against her inclinations had been necessitated to embrace the only possibility that was offered to her, of a Maintenance; Yet it was one, so opposite to all her ideas of Propriety, so contrary to her Wishes, so repugnant to her feelings, that she would almost have preferred Servitude to it, had Choice been allowed her—. Her personal Attractions had gained her a husband as soon as she had arrived at Bengal, and she had now been married nearly a twelvemonth. Splendidly, yet unhappily married. United to a Man of double her own age, whose disposition was not amiable, and whose Manners were unpleasing, though his Character was respectable. Kitty had heard twice from her friend since her marriage, but her Letters were always unsatisfactory, and though she did not openly avow her feelings, yet every line proved her to be Unhappy.17

  This bleak, frank summary of her late aunt’s experience was written out a few months after Mrs. Hancock’s death. What Mr. and Mrs. Austen thought of it is not known; Jane was sixteen, and it was dedicated to Cassandra. In the story, the brutal selling of the girl stands apart from other experience, which seems to be ruled by sunnier conventions, and is a satirical comedy of English country life, beginning to approach the tone of Austen’s later novels; but it is recurred to several times, as though the writer does not want to let it go. Catharine’s friend Camilla Stanley, the daughter of an MP, declares Miss Wynne very lucky to have been sent out to India to be married to “an immensely rich man.” To which Catharine responds, “Do you call it lucky, for a Girl of Genius and Feeling to be sent in quest of a Husband to Bengal, to be married there to a Man of whose Disposition she has no opportunity of judging till her Judgement is of no use to her, who may be a Tyrant, or a Fool or both for what she knows to the Contrary. Do you call that fortunate?” Camilla’s speech is that of an empty-headed rich girl who talks of “good fun.” Catharine, who has an imagination, expresses her shuddering repulsion. Camilla brushes this aside again: “she is not the first Girl who has gone to the East Indies for a Husband, and I declare I should think it very good fun if I were as poor.” We are hearing a real argument here, provoked by the direct reporting of Aunt Phila’s experience: a unique moment in Austen’s writing.

  Eliza and Hastings stayed on into the autumn. There was room for them even when the pupils were in residence, because there were no longer any Austen boys left at home; Charles had followed Francis to the Portsmouth naval school at twelve, and Francis, promoted to Lieutenant, was still in the East Indies. Mr. Austen’s finances were stable, thanks to his pupils and helped by a legacy from Uncle Francis, who died at last at the great age of ninety-two; he might not have approved of his nephew spending some of it on a government lottery ticket, a flutter that failed.

  Edward’s and Elizabeth’s daughter Fanny was born in Kent in January, soon after Jane’s seventeenth birthday; James’s and Anne’s daughter Anna in April when, according to family legend, Mrs. Austen was summoned to Deane in the middle of the night, and rose from her bed to walk stoutly through the muddy lanes with a lantern to be with her daughter-in-law for the birth of the grandchild who became her favourite.18 Jane took due notice of becoming an aunt by writing nonsense offerings for her new nieces: “Opinions and Admonitions on the conduct of Young Women” for Fanny, “Miscellaneous Morsels” for Anna.

  The distant thunder in France had grown steadily more menacing for three years, and now war broke out between England and France in February 1793. An immediate effect on the Austens was that Henry gave up his plan to become a clergyman, took leave of his college studies, was signed up with the Oxford Militia as a “Gentleman to be Lieutenant” and joined his regiment in Southampton. For the next seven years he served as an officer, taking time off to complete his degree but rising in rank, popular with his fellow officers, and stationed in places as various as Brighton, Ipswich and Dublin. A new world opened to him, and proved much to his taste. Eliza was more deeply affected by the combined effects of revolution and war. In February 1794 her husband was arrested. He was in Paris, and had gone to the assistance of an elderly marquise imprisoned for allegedly conspiring against the Republic. With more gallantry than understanding of what he was up against, he set out to bribe one of the secretaries of the Committee for Public Safety. The man tricked him and testified against him. Other witnesses were his housekeeper and a woman described as his former mistress; his maidservant Rose Clarisse, a coloured girl, could neither read nor write, and was not called. On 22 February, Jean Capot de Feuillide was condemned to death and guillotined within hours of his trial. Eliza’s marriage had lasted for twelve years.

  At some time during the next two years Jane Austen wrote a short novel called Lady Susan.19 Like most of her juvenile stories, it is about bad behaviour; but it is finished and polished, sophisticated in its analysis of behaviour, and quite unlike anything she had yet written or was ever to write again; an altogether extraordinary piece of work to come from the pen of a country clergyman’s daughter. Told in letters, it is as neatly plotted and characterized as a play, and as cynical in tone as any of the most outrageous of the Restoration dramatists who may have provided some of her inspiration.20 But Austen’s tone is her own. She creates a female predator who holds centre-stage throughout, and wittily tells her own story; her wickedness is real, but she is also attractive, and so entertaining that we find ourselves sympathizing with her in her battle with the dullards who are her victims.

  Lady Susan is sometimes associated with Eliza de Feuillide, and not only because she was a clever and beautiful young widow. Clearly it is not a portrait; but it has been suggested that Austen was influenced by Laclos’s novel of 1782, Les Liaisons Dangereuses: and who could have shown her a copy of that scandalous book but Eliza? On the other hand, although Eliza may well have owned a copy of Les Liaisons, it is hard to believe she would have shown it to her unmarried cousin. Its cynicism was one thing; its outspoken sexual element quite another. But she could have talked about the book; and in fact there are considerable points of resemblance. Both stories, while maintaining a strictly moral framework, subvert it by giving the evil characters all the enterprise and charm. Lady Susan is a bad mother who is also a dazzling female Don Juan; she uses her charm very much as Madame de Merteuil does, to manipulate, betray and abuse her victims, whether lovers, friends or family. For both women, power is pleasure.

  Lady Susan adjusts to new situations faster than anyone she meets, and never allows herself to be taken by surprise, or to appear upset or angry. Even when things turn against her she remains sweet-tempered, polite and obliging; and even those who distrust her allow that “her Countenance is absolutely sweet, & her voice and manner winningly mild.” One of the points Austen is making is that Lady Susan is just what the conduct books advised ladies to be. You could even add that she displays exactly the “affability, good humour and compliance” recommended by Mr. Austen to his son Francis. She has perfectly mastered the art of using the conventions of society to get what she wants.

  She will try to force her daughter into marrying the man she has chosen for her, but will not be seen to bully her. She sends her to boarding school at sixteen both to humiliate her and to “make good connections”: how well she understands English society. She exerts her power over those who are prejudi
ced against her by charming them: “There is exquisite pleasure in subduing an insolent spirit, in making a person predetermined to dislike, acknowledge one’s superiority.” Where she cannot overcome distrust, she can at least disarm by her sweet irreproachable manners. The worst mistake she could make, as she knows, would be to betray her real feelings (except to the obligatory confidante). Austen hands out the message in the coolest manner: it is not doing but seeming that counts, not character but reputation. Lady Susan commits adultery and breaks up a marriage, but she will not allow her married lover to visit her in the country incognito: “I forbid anything of the kind. Those women are inexcusable who forget what is due to themselves & the opinion of the World.” As long as she reveals nothing, she has nothing to fear; she remains the perfect lady.

  The story has been found sinister, and that is surely part of its point; so is Lady Susan’s “unfeminine” predatory nature. 21 It is much less developed as well as much shorter than Les Liaisons , as you would expect, given the relative ages and experience of the two writers. Lady Susan would be a better book if its heroine were provided with an opponent worthy of her skills; as it is, she does her worst, is partly foiled, grows bored, and ends her story with a shrug. But the energy and assurance shown in trying out such an idea and such a character are truly remarkable. It stands alone in Austen’s work as a study of an adult woman whose intelligence and force of character are greater than those of anyone she encounters, and who knows herself to be wasted on the dull world in which she is obliged to live.