Only a Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  Back in 1812, Henry’s wife Eliza, the lively original of Lady Susan and Mary Crawford, was probably beginning to ail. She died after a long and painful illness in April 1813, and Henry went down to Chawton to be comforted. Jane went back to London with him, and her letter to Cassandra reports the journey cheerfully enough. Mercurial Henry does not seem to have needed too much comforting. In London, Jane was busy helping him close his Sloane Street house in preparation for moving to chambers over his bank at 10, Henrietta Street. At the moment the chambers were “all dirt and confusion, but in a very promising way”, and so, apparently, was Henry, who took his sister to an exhibition by the Society of Painters in Oil and Water Colours where she found “a small portrait of Mrs. Bingley, excessively like her”, but looked in vain for one of Mrs. Darcy. She rather hoped to find her at the British Academy. They were also going to an exhibition of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s paintings at the British Institution in Pall Mall, but there was no picture of Mrs. Darcy anywhere. “I can only imagine that Mr. D. prizes any picture of her too much to like it should be exposed to the public eye.” Though Mansfield Park must have been well advanced (it was published next May) it was for Elizabeth Bennet that Jane Austen looked, not for either Elinor Dashwood or Fanny Price.

  Despite Henry’s mourning, they had plenty of visitors. Jane was threatened with a meeting with Miss Burdett, probably a sister of Sir Francis Burdett, the famous Whig Member of Parliament and supporter of civil liberties, who had actually been sent briefly to the Tower in 1810 for breach of Parliamentary privilege. They seem odd acquaintances for a Tory Austen, but one must remember that Henry was also a banker, and Sir Francis had married a Miss Coutts, daughter of the famous banker. Jane “would like to see Miss Burdett very well, but that I am rather frightened by hearing that she wishes to be introduced to me — If I am a wild beast, I cannot help it. It is not my own fault.” It was inevitable that Henry should betray the secret of his sister’s authorship; but, in fact, she was never lionised like Scott, or Fanny Burney, or Maria Edgeworth. Her pleasures were simple and private ones. “I had great amusement among the pictures; and the driving about, the carriage being open, was very pleasant — I liked my solitary elegance very much, and was ready to laugh all the time, at my being where I was — I could not but feel that I had naturally small right to be parading about London in a barouche.”

  Henry, who obviously enjoyed giving such pleasures to his favourite sister, was going to drive her home, and visit James at Steventon, but his plans were uncertain as usual. “Whatever I may write or you may imagine we know it will be something different,” said his sister. Meanwhile life at Chawton was lively too. The Charles Austens’ little girls had been visiting there, and had been much improved in manners, and the Edward Austens, or rather, as one must now call them, the Knights, were staying at Chawton House while Godmersham was repainted. Fanny Knight’s diary for 1813 speaks of constant meetings between the families and a “delicious morning” with her Aunt Jane.

  Two of Jane Austen’s few surviving letters to her brothers date from this year. They are both to Frank, who was captaining H.M.S. Elephant on convoy duty in the Baltic. Like all the best letter-writers, Jane Austen wrote differently to different correspondents, and these two to Frank are some of her most engaging letters. “God bless you — I hope you continue beautiful and brush your hair, but not all off.” She congratulated him on his chance to see Sweden. “Gustavus-Vasa, and Charles 12th, and Christina, and Linnaeus — do their ghosts rise up before you?” And, like a good sister, she told him plenty of family news. They were seeing the Knights every day. “Edward is very well and enjoys himself as thoroughly as any Hampshire-born Austen can desire.” And Henry had been promoted from Deputy Receiver for Oxfordshire to be Receiver-General and was planning a trip to Scotland with his nephew, Edward Knight. “Upon the whole his spirits are very much recovered — If I may so express myself, his mind is not a mind for affliction. He is too busy, too active, too sanguine.” Love would never blind Jane Austen to facts. This same letter has that delicious description of Miss Lewis, the new wife of an old admirer of Jane’s, who was to be “of a silent turn and rather ignorant”. It also reported the death of Thomas Leigh, who had succeeded to the Stoneleigh estates, and Jane Austen wrote with sympathy of Mrs. Leigh Perrot “who would now have been mistress of Stoneleigh had there been none of that vile compromise”. It was not, in fact, a sentiment that Jane Leigh Perrot shared. She was happy to take the settlement, and let the estate go.

  Jane’s last paragraph covers the subject probably nearest to her heart. “You will be glad to hear that every copy of Sense and Sensibility is sold and that it has brought me £140 besides the copyright, if that should ever be of any value — I have now therefore written myself into 250 — which only makes me long for more.” Pride and Prejudice, of course, had been sold outright for a hundred and ten pounds to spare Henry trouble. Since the small edition of Sense and Sensibility had been published in the winter of 1811 it had taken a year and a half to sell out, but a hundred and ten pounds still seems an intolerably bad bargain for Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen went on to say that, “I have something in hand — which I hope on the credit of P. and P. will sell well, though not half so entertaining.” She clearly recognised Mansfield Park for what it was, her problem book. Always a stickler at once for good manners and for accuracy, she went on to tell Frank that she had mentioned the Elephant and “two or three of your old ships”, and ask his permission.

  Mansfield Park was finished in June, so that Jane Austen was free to enjoy that summer’s daily exchange of visits with the Knights at the Great House. In the autumn she went back to Godmersham with them, by way of London, where she and her three nieces, Fanny, Marianne and Lizzy Knight stayed with Henry at 10, Henrietta Street, while Edward slept at a hotel nearby, and the rest of his huge family made the journey home across country, escorted by his second son George, who was then seventeen. The London party made the most of their three nights in town. The first night they went to the Lyceum for Don Juan, “whom we left in hell at half-past eleven”. Lizzie and Marianne were delighted, but Jane’s delight was “very tranquil”, though, “I must say that I have seen nobody on the stage who has been a more interesting character than that compound of cruelty and lust.” It hardly sounds like “dear Aunt Jane”. The next night they went to The Clandestine Marriage and Midas at Covent Garden. Lizzie and Marianne were delighted, “but I wanted better acting”.

  In the daytime they shopped for English poplins, and caps like Harriet Byron’s in Sir Charles Grandison, and “kind, beautiful Edward” gave Jane and Fanny five pounds each. At thirty-seven, and an established author, Jane Austen still found these presents of money very welcome, and would spend this one on twenty yards of poplin for herself and Cassandra. “Do not refuse me. I am very rich.” Edward also, like the devoted father he was, helped Jane take his daughters to the dentist, which “cost us many tears”. Henry had been unwell and was being a little difficult about plans for a visit to Chawton to fetch Cassandra, and, worse still, he had been indiscreet again. He had met Lady Robert Kerr in Scotland, and she had spoken highly of Pride and Prejudice. “Before she knew who wrote it, for, of course, she knows now. He told her with as much satisfaction as if it were my wish.” On the other hand Henry had also told Warren Hastings, and received a reaction to which no author could object. “I am quite delighted with what such a man writes about it.” And, later in the same letter, “His admiring my Elizabeth so much is particularly welcome to me.” And, an odd little phrase, “Mr. Hastings never hinted at Eliza in the smallest degree.”

  Jane Austen had not been to Godmersham for four years, and one inevitably wonders why, but the few letters for the intervening period give no clue, and neither does family tradition. Perhaps she was too much occupied with the pleasures and pains of writing again to find time for one of those interminable Kentish visits in the great house full of nieces and nephews. And of course Edward’s family had visited in Ham
pshire. Certainly, four years had done little to change the pleasant pattern of life at Godmersham, though Jane must have missed both Elizabeth and her old friend, Mrs. Knight.

  The children were growing up. Fanny, the eldest, was twenty, and there was a John Plumtre to be considered. Jane Austen thought him “sensible rather than brilliant — There is nobody brilliant nowadays.” At thirty-seven, she may have been feeling her age a little as she watched Fanny suffering from “one of the sweet taxes of youth to choose in a hurry and make bad bargains”. A letter from Cassandra had reported that the other grown-up niece, James’s Anna, was causing trouble. Anna had fallen in love with Ben Lefroy, son of that beloved friend of Jane’s who had died in 1804, and Anna’s stepmother and grandmother both seemed to be making difficulties. “How can Mrs. J. Austen be so provokingly ill-judging?” wrote Jane. “I should have expected better from her professed if not her real regard for my mother.” It is an unusually sharp comment for Jane, or at least for what remains of her letters. But she had been suffering from a pain in her face, made worse by a cold caught on the journey.

  The next letter from Godmersham is to Frank, who had answered the one she had written him earlier in the summer. She had to tell him that though she was to be in Kent for two months, there seemed no chance of getting over to Deal to visit his wife Mary and their children. Travelling was still a problem, but at least they were expecting a visit from Charles and his family. She had a sharpish comment on another visitor, the wife of Edward Bridges, who may possibly have proposed to Jane herself in 1808.

  She “is a poor honey — the sort of woman who gives me the idea of being determined never to be well — and who likes her spasms and nervousness and the consequence they give her, better than anything else.” And then, “This is an ill-natured sentiment to send all over the Baltic!” It is sad to think that four years later, Jane Austen was to describe herself as a “poor honey”. For the moment, she seemed almost out of proportion sorry for Edward in his unlucky match. “We have had another of Edward Bridges’ Sunday visits. I think that the pleasantest part of his married life must be the dinners, and breakfasts, and luncheons, and billiards that he gets in this way at Godmersham. Poor wretch! he is quite the dregs of the family as to luck.”

  Frank had given her permission to use the names of his ships, but had warned her that this might betray the secret of her authorship. Her answer is rueful. “The truth is that the secret has spread so far as to be scarcely the shadow of a secret now ... I believe whenever the third appears, I shall not even attempt to tell lies about it — I shall rather try to make all the money than all the mystery I can of it.” She goes on to describe how Henry had given her away to Lady Robert Kerr. And, “A thing once set going in that way — one knows how it spreads! — and he, dear creature, has set it going so much more than once. I know it is all done from affection and partiality — but at the same time, let me here again express to you and Mary my sense of the superior kindness which you have shown on the occasion, in doing what I wish — I am trying to harden myself. After all, what a trifle it is in all its bearings, to the really important points of one’s existence even in this world!”

  It is so rare for Jane Austen to draw this kind of contrast between life here and life everlasting that one can only conclude that she minded Henry’s betrayal very much indeed. The same letter has an interesting comment on a preacher she had heard. “He gave us an excellent sermon — a little too eager sometimes in his delivery, but that is to me a better extreme than the want of animation, especially when it evidently comes from the heart as in him.”

  Anna was engaged to Ben Lefroy by now and her Aunt Jane was not over-hopeful about the match. “There is an unfortunate dissimilarity of taste between them in one respect which gives us some apprehensions, he hates company and she is very fond of it — this, with some queerness of temper on his side and much unsteadiness on hers, is untoward.” And then, an important postscript: “There is to be a Second Edition of S. and S. Egerton advises it.” The second edition of Sense and Sensibility came out in November 1813, again at Jane Austen’s expense.

  The next letter is to Cassandra and has one of Jane Austen’s brief, drastic character sketches. “Mrs. Britton called here on Saturday. I never saw her before. She is a large, ungenteel woman, with self-satisfied and would-be elegant manners.” With Mansfield Park finished and perhaps already at the printer’s, Jane was ready for a new start, and this visit was full of raw material for Emma. Mrs. Britton reappears with her husband. “I had long wanted to see Dr. Britton, and his wife amuses me very much with her affected refinement and elegance.” It sounds as if Mrs. Elton were in the making. And, visiting Canterbury, they called a couple of times on Mrs. and Miss Milles, who were to join Mrs. Stent in composing the Bateses. “I like the mother ... because she is cheerful and grateful for what she is at the age of ninety and upwards.” And as for the daughter, “Miss Milles was queer as usual, and provided us with plenty to laugh at. She undertook in three words to give us the history of Mrs. Scudamore’s reconciliation, and then talked on about it for half-an-hour, using such odd expressions, and so foolishly minute, that I could hardly keep my countenance?”

  It was doubtless a safety-valve to be thinking of Highbury in the few quiet times of those crowded days when she actually found herself alone, “very snug, in my own room, lovely morning, excellent fire, fancy me. Edward was always kind, but the rest of the household may have been exhausting. Jane probably shared her sister’s anxieties about the nephews and nieces who were being brought up so indulgently. Cassandra obviously felt it necessary to destroy a letter about the nephews, for the next one reads, “As I wrote of my nephews with a little bitterness in my last, I think it particularly incumbent on me to do them justice now, and I have great pleasure in saying that they were both at the sacrament yesterday.” Jane Austen goes on with her usual insight, “After having much praised or much blamed anybody, one is generally sensible of something just the reverse soon afterwards. Now, these two boys who are out with the foxhounds will come home and disgust me again by some habit of luxury or some proof of sporting mania.” They do sound a little like Tom Bertram, but she has a charming picture of them making rabbit nets in the evening. They “sit as deedily to it, side by side, as any two Uncle Franks could do.”

  Jane Austen was rereading Mary Brunton’s Self Control (published in 1810) and not thinking much of it. “My opinion is confirmed of its being an excellently-meant, elegantly-written work, without anything of nature or probability in it. I declare I do not know whether Laura’s passage down the American river, is not the most natural, possible, everyday thing she ever does.” Jane Austen was to remember this book, when she drew up her spoof Plan of a Novel in the last years of her life. There was Southey’s Life of Nelson, too, but, “I am tired of Lives of Nelson, being that I never read any. I will read this however, if Frank is mentioned in it.” Frank had taken a vital despatch to Nelson at Palermo in 1799 and one can only wish we had any record of what he and his sister thought of the curious ménage à trois in which Nelson was then living with Sir William Hamilton and his experienced wife, Emma. Perhaps this explains why Jane Austen did not read lives of Nelson. Frank, on the other hand, who served under Nelson in the desperate chase to the West Indies before Trafalgar, had had nothing but praise for him after his death. “I never heard of his equal, nor do I expect again to see such a man,” he had written to his fiancée in 1805.

  Jane had still not managed to get to Deal. “Here I am in Kent, with one brother in the same county and another brother’s wife, and see nothing of them — which seems unnatural — It will not last so for ever I trust —I should like to have Mrs. F. A. and her children here for a week — but not a syllable of that nature is ever breathed.” With eleven children of his own to think about, it is perhaps natural enough that Edward took his sisters a little for granted. Cassandra was busy overseeing alterations to Chawton House for him. “He desires me to say that your being at Chawton when
he is, will be quite necessary. You cannot think it more indispensable than he does. He is very much obliged to you for your attention to everything — Have you any idea of returning with him to Henrietta Street and finishing your visit then? — tell me your sweet little innocent ideas.” There is something at once dry and unmistakable about that last ironic little sentence. Jane and Cassandra were, indeed, a continuing comfort and support to each other.

  Jane and Fanny had called on a plain family of Lady Fagg and her five daughters, and were being visited by a Mr. Wigram, “not ill-looking and not agreeable”, but at least they had got rid of Mr. Robert Mascall. “I did not like him either. He talks too much and is conceited — besides having a vulgarly shaped mouth.” One begins to detect something unusually sharp in this batch of letters. “Only think of Mrs. Holder’s being dead! — Poor woman, she has done the only thing in the world she could possibly do, to make one cease to abuse her.” Lord Brabourne thinks that this was Jane Austen’s last visit to Godmersham and it seems possible that she was finding the company of eleven nephews and nieces and their over-indulgent father a little too much. Did she have any time for revising Mansfield Park? It seems unlikely, as the letters to Cassandra were obviously fitted in here and there between other calls on her.