Only a Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  Later, Cassandra and Henry (who presumably helped her as he had Jane) sold the copyrights of the five novels (excluding Pride and Prejudice) to Richard Bentley for two hundred and fifty pounds, for inclusion, in 1833, in his Standard Novels series. Later still, when they were out of copyright, George Routledge included Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility in his cut-price Railway Library (published at between one and two shillings a volume). But it was not until the publication of James Edward Austen-Leigh’s Memoir of his aunt in 1870, and Lord Brabourne’s edition of her Letters in 1884 that the “dear Aunt Jane” cult began, and with it the steady increase in the sales of her novels that has continued until today.

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  That spring of 1811, Jane Austen must have been happy. Her metaphor of the sucking child is one that must have occurred, at one time or another, to most female authors. A first book is very like a first child, but with the advantage that when it appears the hard work is over. And when one considers that Sense and Sensibility had been in embryo, in one form or other, for well over ten years, one can understand how its proud author must have felt as she corrected sheet after sheet of proofs.

  She was publishing anonymously, as “A Lady”, but the secret of her authorship seems to have been a fairly open one, at least among the older members of the family. Fanny Knight knew; for an entry in her pocketbook for September 28th, 1811, reports a “letter from Aunt Cass. to beg we would not mention that Aunt Jane wrote Sense and Sensibility”. The younger members of James’s family, on the other hand, though they lived so much nearer, were kept in ignorance. Anna Austen had heard her aunts reading Pride and Prejudice aloud, years before, when it was First Impressions, but when she and her Aunt Jane were looking over new novels in the local library, she dismissed a copy of Sense and Sensibility as rubbish. Her half-brother James Edward only learned of his aunt’s authorship when he was fifteen, in 1813, and sat down to write a set of congratulatory verses:

  No words can express, my dear Aunt, my surprise

  Or make you conceive how I opened my eyes ...

  When I heard for the very first time in my life

  That I had the honour to have a relation

  Whose works were dispersed through the whole of the nation!

  In 1811, Mrs. Knight, like the older members of the family, knew all about Jane Austen’s writing, and seems to have given some advice about the financial affairs of the Dashwoods. “The incomes remain as they were, but I will get them altered if I can.” Jane Austen had a passion for accurate detail, and did, in fact, make some small alterations in the description of the complicated Dashwood finances, but not until the second edition of Sense and Sensibility. Meanwhile, “I am very much gratified by Mrs. K.’s interest ... I think she will like my Elinor, but cannot build on anything else.” There is something touching about the way Jane Austen uses “my” of her heroines. To a great extent, they were her life.

  On the surface, there was much else. “Our party went off extremely well.” She went straight on to report the sixty-six guests (“considerably more than Eliza had expected”) the musicians, the hot drawing-room, the friends and relations. Best of all, there was a Captain Simpson there who told her that Charles “was bringing the Cleopatra home, and that she was probably by this time in the Channel — but as Capt. S. was certainly in liquor, we must not quite depend on it.” In fact, Jane rather hoped that Charles would not reach England until she was at home “and the Steventon party gone”.

  The James Austens had been staying with Mrs. Austen and Martha while Cassandra and Jane were away, and, “My mother and Martha both write with great satisfaction of Anna’s behaviour. She is quite an Anna with variations — but she cannot have reached her last, for that is always the most flourishing and showy — she is at about her third or fourth which are generally simple and pretty.” It is a charming instance of Jane Austen’s knowledge both of music and human nature. Anna was always to be an “Anna with variations”.

  Jane had had a compliment of her own. One of the Knatchbulls had been at Eliza’s party, and Cassandra, who was in Kent, had passed on his comment. “‘A pleasing looking young woman,’” Jane quoted it back. “That must do,” she went on, “one cannot pretend to anything better now — thankful to have it continued a few years longer!” She turned at once to a more interesting subject. Mrs. Knight had been sleeping a little better, and Jane was glad of it, “But upon this occasion I wish she had another name, for the two nights jingle very much.” Words fascinated her. A while before, she had made an acute remark about Fanny’s admiration of her letters. “I am gratified by her having pleasure in what I write — but I wish the knowledge of my being exposed to her discerning criticism, may not hurt my style, by inducing too great a solicitude. I begin already to weigh my words and sentences more than I did, and am looking about for a sentiment, an illustration or a metaphor in every corner of the room.” She was mocking herself, of course, as well as Fanny. Sentiments, illustrations and particularly metaphors were always her abhorrence, and it is one of the reasons why her books continue so readable. There is nothing so dead as an old-fashioned metaphor.

  Writing to Kent, Jane Austen was thinking about the family there. They had a new governess. “Poor creature! I pity her, though they are my nieces.” Cassandra and Jane had made firm friends with a previous Godmersham governess, Miss Sharpe, and Jane Austen obviously wrote with authority when she spoke of the Bertram girls’ tyranny over a series of governesses.

  She had been watching the Parliamentary reports for Edward’s sake as he was much concerned over the Weald of Kent Canal Bill, and she could congratulate him, in some of her rather halting verses, on its postponement.

  Between session and session

  The First Prepossession

  May rouse up the Nation,

  And the villainous Bill

  May be forced to lie still

  Against wicked men’s will.

  It is characteristic of Jane Austen that, though she seems always to have been au courant with the affairs of the nation, she tends only to mention them when they affect the family. In those days when postage was paid by the recipient, one would not fill one’s pages with information that could be culled from any newspaper.

  By the end of May, Jane had visited Catherine Hill and her husband at Streatham and was home at Chawton, but Cassandra was still at Godmersham on one of those interminable visits. It was the Austen ladies’ second spring at Chawton, and the garden had obviously flourished under Mrs. Austen’s direction. “Our young peony at the foot of the fir-tree has just blown and looks very handsome, and the whole of the shrubbery border will soon be very gay with pinks and sweet-williams, in addition to the columbines already in bloom. The syringas, too, are coming out.” It sounds the ideal, sweet-scented, old-fashioned garden, and Jane had doubtless had a hand in its planning, since there were syringas as at Castle Square.

  There were complicated plans, as usual, for family visiting. Frank (still without a ship) would be visiting Steventon with his Mary, and Jane hoped for a visit from them on their way back, but if Martha was at home there would be problems of accommodation, as Frank and Mary now had three children and two maids. The house at Chawton was comfortable, but it was not large. As for their friend Miss Sharpe, from whom Jane hoped for a visit, it looked as if she would have to be put off until August. The family always came first.

  Anna was staying with them when Jane wrote, and seems to have been something of a problem, for her aunt admitted to relief that she would not be at home for an engagement with the James Digweeds, who now lived at Chawton. “I think it always safest to keep her away from the family lest she should be doing too little or too much.” The same letter contains one of Jane Austen’s few admissions to suffering from what we would call “nerves”. “We sat upstairs and had thunder and lightning as usual ... Thank God! we have had no bad ones here. I thought myself in luck to have my uncomfortable feelings shared by the mistress of the house, as that procured blinds
and candles.” Jane Austen does not often thank God, so thunder and lightning probably affected her severely.

  The next letter, among its references to Anna’s gaieties and “pieces for the patchwork”, has one of Jane Austen’s glancing comments on world events. “How horrible it is to have so many people killed! — And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!” It sounds heartless enough, when one considers that it refers to the unusually bloody battle of Albuera, in which Wellington had defeated Soult on May 16th. But, as always, one must remember the kind of intellectual shorthand used between the two sisters. Jane Austen did not need to explain to Cassandra that she meant it was a mercy that none of their friends had been hurt. The Buffs, a Kentish regiment, had been involved, and with British casualties of seven thousand men it was indeed remarkable that none of their acquaintance had been killed.

  They had had a visit from Henry and his banking partner, Mr. Tilson, and taken them for a walk to Chawton Park. “Mr. Tilson admired the trees very much, but grieved that they should not be turned into money.” Another of Jane Austen’s quietly ironic comments follows swiftly. Their mother had been sorry that Anna was away during her uncle’s visit. “A distress which I could not share.” Anna does seem to have been something of a problem, but Jane hoped that on her present visit she would have “plenty of the miscellaneous, unsettled sort of happiness which seems to suit her best”. As for Henry, he was his engaging self, and would bring Cassandra and Martha home in his gig. “Should the weather be tolerable, I think you must have a delightful journey.” The poor old King’s death was expected once again, and they were planning to walk into Alton to buy mourning. The Regency that Jane Austen had predicted in 1809 was finally established in 1811, but in fact George III was to live on until 1820.

  Only one letter of Jane Austen’s survives between June of 1811 and January of 1813. It was written to Martha Lloyd in November, 1812, and reported, among the usual selection of family news, that Pride and Prejudice had been sold to Egerton for a hundred and ten pounds. Later, Jane Austen must have bitterly regretted that outright sale, but for the moment, “Its being sold will I hope be a great saving of trouble to Henry, and therefore must be welcome to me.”

  Because of this gap in the letters, we have no way of knowing whether Jane Austen was aware that Sense and Sensibility had been favourably noticed in the Critical Review for February 1812, and the British Critic for May of the same year. “We think so favourably of this performance,” said the latter, “that it is with some reluctance we decline inserting it among our principal articles.” It was no wonder that Egerton was prepared to take a chance on Pride and Prejudice. Neither he nor Jane Austen could have known that Lady Bessborough was recommending Sense and Sensibility in a letter to Lord Granville Leveson-Gower as “a clever novel. They were full of it at Althorp, and though it ends stupidly I was much amused by it.” If Lady Bessborough, sister of the famous Duchess of Devonshire and mother of the equally famous Lady Caroline Lamb was reading Jane Austen, then so was society.

  Of all Jane Austen’s novels, perhaps Sense and Sensibility has drawn the widest range of critical reaction. Some people find it intolerable, with Elinor a prig and Marianne a fool; others hail it as Jane Austen’s romantic novel, with Marianne as the heroine and Elinor’s one burst of real feeling aroused in that curious scene with Willoughby. Everyone agrees that the heroes are mere lay figures. Jane Austen mastered her unscrupulous charmers before she did her heroes. Wickham and Willoughby are in direct descent from the flighty Edward Stanley of Catherine in the Juvenilia, while Edward Ferrars and Colonel Brandon are not much better than the lifeless heroes of that period. The comic characters are admirably drawn, Mrs. Jennings in particular. Where the John Dashwoods and the Miss Steeles are flat, undeveloping caricatures, Mrs. Jennings lives and grows. The old bore who will embarrass a girl by talking about beaux becomes the kind-hearted hostess of Marianne’s illness. Like all Jane Austen’s novels, Sense and Sensibility can be read on many different levels, and will be a different book at each reading. But the fact remains that it is the most uneven. The moral theme is neither fully enough established nor well enough integrated with the plot, and the signs of revision are all too obviously there, as for instance in the otiose character, Margaret, who may once have acted as correspondent, but whose sole function as the book now stands is to keep her mother company when her sisters go to London. She is forgotten in many scenes. If, as I have suggested, Jane Austen began this revision when she was emerging from a psychological crisis, it is possible that she finally grew impatient and wanted to have done with it and turn to what had always been a greater favourite, Pride and Prejudice. If she hoped that Mrs. Knight would like her Elinor, she would not forgive anyone who did not love her Elizabeth.

  It was a curious, though understandable, contradiction in Jane Austen’s character that she passionately wished to remain anonymous and at the same time was just as passionately interested in what people thought of her books. It is particularly maddening, therefore, that there should be no letters for the time that Sense and Sensibility was published. Was she disappointed in its reception? Was that why Cassandra did not keep this batch of letters? Or were there other family problems for that year, which made it seem simpler, to Cassandra in her old age, to destroy all the letters, rather than go through the retrospective anguish of rereading them?

  This is mere speculation. Luckily, two letters of Cassandra’s survive to help fill in the background of this period. They were written to their cousin, Philadelphia Walter, who had corresponded with Eliza de Feuillide more than twenty years before, and who married at last in the summer of 1811. Cassandra’s first letter, dated August 1811, is one of congratulation addressed to her as Mrs. Whitaker: “I think I cannot give you a better wish, than that you may be as happy as you deserve and that as a wife you may meet the reward you so well earned as a daughter.” Cassandra’s style does not seem to have developed in flexibility as her sister’s did. She may once have been “the finest comic writer of the present age” but her later letters do little to confirm her sister’s praise.

  Writing to her cousin, Cassandra had a good budget of family news. Eliza Austen had been visiting them. “I think I never saw her in such good health before.” And while Eliza was with them Charles and his family had actually returned at last from the West Indies. “After an absence from England of almost seven years you may guess the pleasure which having him amongst us again occasioned. He is grown a little older ... but we had the pleasure of seeing him return in good health and unchanged in mind. His Bermudan wife is a very pleasing little woman, she is gentle and amiable in her manners and appears to make him very happy. They have two pretty little girls.” But, “So expensive as everything in England is now, even the necessaries of life, I am afraid they will find themselves very, very poor.” Jane, too, had been at home for this visit, which helps to explain why there is no letter of hers about it.

  Cassandra’s next letter, written in March of 1812, reports the usual family visiting and carries on the story of Charles. He had a ship at last, H.M.S. Namur at Sheerness, and Fanny and the children were “actually living with him on board. We had doubted whether such a scheme would prove practicable during the winter, but they have found their residence very tolerably comfortable and it is so much the cheapest home she could have that they are very right to put up with little inconveniences.” The news from Kent was less good. Edward had been prevented from visiting them by old Mrs. Knight’s illness and, writing of her motherless nephews and nieces there, Cassandra sounds a warning note. “I hope those young people will not have so much happiness in their youth as to unfit them for the rubs which they must meet with afterwards, but with so indulgent a father and so liberal a style of living I am aware there must be some danger of it.”

  Edward and his daughter Fanny stayed at Chawton House for three weeks that April, so there was probably daily visiting, with comfortable time for eighteen-year-old Fanny to get into close touch again w
ith the aunt who had described her earlier as “almost another sister”. But old Mrs. Knight’s illness had been serious. She died that summer, and Cassandra and Jane, who had loved her, must have mourned her sincerely. Edward was now to take the name of Knight and henceforth he and his children were all Knights. “I must learn to make a better K,” says Jane Austen, in one of the few letters to Martha Lloyd that have been preserved. That was in the autumn. In June, Jane and her mother had visited the James Austens at Steventon, and it is perhaps not surprising that Cassandra found it necessary to destroy any letters Jane may have written from there. Relations with James and Mary, never easy, were now complicated by the fact that Anna was eighteen, and more than ever a problem. Whatever happened during that visit, it was the last time Mrs. Austen left home, though she lived for another sixteen years.