Only a Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  Charles and his family were coming at last, but to a house that already had its complement of visitors, though luckily the billiard table occupied the young men in the evening, leaving Edward, Fanny and Jane, “the library to ourselves in delightful quiet”. This quiet was happily interrupted at dinner time next evening by the arrival of Charles and his family, “safe and well, just like their own nice selves ... dear Charles all affectionate, placid, quiet, cheerful, good humour ... but poor little Cassy is grown extremely thin and looks poorly.” Life on board ship did not suit Cassy and one of the subjects of discussion during this visit was whether she should spend the winter with her grandmother and aunts at Chawton, but Cassy “did not like the idea of it at all”, and Charles, a devoted father like all the Austens, did not want to part with her. Jane obviously thought him almost too devoted. “Charles ... will be as happy as he can with a cross child or some such care pressing on him ...” And, again, “I think I have just done a good deed — extracted Charles from his wife and children upstairs, and made him get ready to go out shooting, and not keep Mr. Moore waiting any longer.” Cassy took too much after her mother’s family. “Poor little love — I wish she were not so very Palmery,” and her cousins were “too many and too boisterous for her”. James’s Caroline had felt the same way years before. Clearly, there was something rather overwhelming about the young Knights.

  Cassandra was just off to visit Henry in London, no doubt leaving Martha with old Mrs. Austen. “I suppose,” said Jane, “my mother will like to have me write to her. I shall try at least.” It is a depressing sidelight on her relationship with her mother at this point. Henry had been unwell again, and the next letter, written to Cassandra in Henrietta Street, hopes that she is “seeing improvement in him every day”. Charles and his family had left, but their old friend Harriot Moore (née Bridges) was still there with her husband and little boy. “I do believe that he makes her — or she makes herself — very happy. They do not spoil their boy.” These were two important points for Jane Austen. She was against the spoiling of children and did not “think it worth while to wait for enjoyment until there is some real opportunity for it”.

  In Hampshire, Anna’s affairs continued to be a problem. Ben Lefroy had been offered a curacy, “which he might have secured against his taking orders”, and had refused it. “Upon its being made rather a serious question, [he] says he has not made up his mind as to taking orders so early, and that, if her father makes a point of it, he must give Anna up rather than do what he does not approve. He must be maddish,” adds Jane Austen. It seems an extraordinary comment from the creator of Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram. Clearly the rules of Mansfield Park were not those of the real world that Jane Austen lived in.

  The next letter has a more encouraging report of Anna and her Ben. Jane has had “a very comfortable letter” from her mother about a satisfactory visit from Anna. “This will be an excellent time for Ben to pay his visit — now that we, the formidables, are absent.” It is a fascinating, and revealing, comment on Jane and Cassandra and their position in the family. They were “the formidables”. In fact, Ben Lefroy did marry Anna in the winter of 1814, and did not take orders until some years later.

  Cassandra had sent good “tidings of S. & S.”, presumably the second edition. “I have never seen it advertised,” said Jane, and, later, “I suppose in the meantime I shall owe dear Henry a great deal of money for printing &c.” She had received “more of such sweet flattery” from Miss Sharpe, their friend who had once been governess at Godmersham, and could report proudly that she was “read and admired in Ireland too ... I do not despair of having my picture in the exhibition at last — all white and red with my head on one side — or perhaps I may marry young Mr. D’Arblay.” Since Fanny Burney’s son by her French emigrant husband was only born in 1794, this is just Austen-nonsense, like the references, about this time, to Jane’s hypothetical marriage to her favourite poet, Crabbe. In fact, she was resigning herself to middle age. “By the bye, as I must leave off being young, I find many douceurs in being a sort of chaperon for I am put on a sofa near the fire and can drink as much wine as I like.” It was the young ones now who played the piano, while Aunt Jane could sit on the sofa, and listen, and think her own thoughts.

  13

  Henry continued unwell. “Dearest henry! What a turn he has for being ill!” At her own suggestion, Jane visited him that autumn on her way home from Godmersham, travelling up with Edward, who left her in Henrietta Street and took Cassandra down to Chawton with him, doubtless for further discussion of the alterations at the Great House. Henry had his own carriage still, so Jane, like Cassandra, must have been able to visit the Hills at Streatham. When she left, the carriage probably took her down to Great Bookham in Surrey, where she stayed for a while with the Cookes, parents of George and Mary. Jane’s godfather, Samuel Cooke, Vicar of Great Bookham, had married Mrs. Austen’s first cousin, Cassandra, daughter of Theophilus Leigh, the Master of Balliol. They must have been an interesting household. They were also close to Box Hill. This visit, like the one at Godmersham, must have been germinal to Emma.

  Unfortunately, there are no letters until the following spring, so we do not know whether Jane Austen actually picnicked on Box Hill, or, for that matter, how she got home from Bookham, but Cassandra’s note on the dating of her sister’s books records that Emma was begun in January 1814, presumably when Mansfield Park had had its final polishing and was at the printer’s. No doubt the quiet winter months when muddy lanes made visiting difficult were the best for composition. There would be little need for the protection of that invaluable creaking door in the extra cold winter of 1814, when the Thames froze so solid that there were booths and a fair on it, and Napoleon was on the run at last, back across Europe after his defeat by the allied armies at Leipzig the autumn before. “What weather! And what news!” Jane Austen had written in November, while the Duke of Wellington’s brother, Lord Wellesley, quoted Pitt to Parliament. Once again, England had saved herself by her exertions, and would, he hoped, save Europe by her example.

  By March 1814, when Jane Austen’s letters begin again, the long war seemed almost over. Wellington was across the Spanish border, working his way north towards Paris, while the allied armies were closing in from the east. But Jane had matter nearer her heart to think of. She was writing to Cassandra from Henrietta Street after driving up from Chawton with Henry, and they had been reading Mansfield Park aloud on the way. The book came out in May, but this was clearly the first time Henry had seen it. Cassandra undoubtedly saw Jane’s first drafts, but even Henry seems not to have been consulted until the book was in its final form. Jane Austen may have minded criticism too much to risk exposing herself to it at an earlier stage. Luckily, “His approbation hitherto is even equal to my wishes. He says it is very different from the other two, but does not appear to think it at all inferior ... He took to Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris most kindly, and gives great praise to the drawing of the characters. He understands them all, likes Fanny, and, I think, foresees how it will all be.” Impossible not to like Henry for this.

  The two of them reached London to find that “peace was generally expected”, and to have it start snowing again. Jane was reading Lord Byron’s Corsair, and The Heroine by E. S. Barrett, which she found “a delightful burlesque, particularly on the Radcliffe style”. This was handsome of her, considering the unlucky fate of her own Susan (Northanger Abbey). But she could afford to be generous. They had gone on reading and Henry “admires H. Crawford: I mean properly, as a clever, pleasant man”. The next letter reports that he “likes my Mansfield Park better and better ... I believe now he has changed his mind as to foreseeing the end: he said yesterday at least, that he defied anybody to say whether Henry Crawford would be reformed, or would forget Fanny in a fortnight.” And, at last, “Henry has finished Mansfield Park, and his approbation has not lessened. He found the last half of the last volume extremely interesting.”

  As always, writing t
o Cassandra, there was no need to fill in the gaps, but it is impossible not to wish for Henry’s view of Mary Crawford, who seems so clearly to trace her ancestry by way of Lady Susan to his own wife Eliza, now dead a year. Of course, it is entirely possible that neither Jane nor Henry recognised this. The Eliza on whom Mary Crawford was ultimately based had been dead much more than a year. She was the frivolous young Eliza of the early letters; the girl who wrote of beaux and balls, of “dear liberty and yet dearer flirtation”. Probably Henry, who always loved her, and Jane, who had learned to, had forgotten the early Eliza in the beloved wife and kind sister-in-law, and Jane, if she thought about it at all, merely thought of Mary Crawford as having some affinity with that early, suppressed heroine of hers, Lady Susan. After all, in those happy days before Freud, an author and his or her public did not have to look too closely into the derivation of themes and characters. Shakespeare could write about Hamlet without reference to Oedipus, and Jane Austen, spinster though she was, about love without reference to anything. It was a great advantage to them.

  With Henry’s approval secured for Mansfield Park, Jane Austen could settle to be happy in London. Edward and Fanny Knight were to visit Henry too, and they were all going to Drury Lane to see the famous Kean in The Merchant of Venice. “So great is the rage for seeing Kean that only a third and fourth row could be got.” They were great playgoers, those Austens, and one can only wish for a record of a family discussion of the use of the play in Mansfield Park. Meanwhile, the cold weather continued, snow saved Jane Austen from calls, and Edward and Fanny had a hard drive of it up from Bath, where they had been visiting Edward’s ailing mother-in-law, Lady Bridges.

  Lucky Edward was in trouble for once. There was some problem about the prosecution of a boy for assault, but Edward’s opinion inclined “against a second prosecution”. Much more serious and more lasting was a legal assault made on him at this time by the blood heir to the Knight estates, a Mr. Baverstock, who claimed the Hampshire property through his mother, arguing that an entail had not been properly set aside. This must have been a cause of very considerable anxiety at Chawton cottage, which would, of course, have been affected, though Jane wrote hopefully at this point, “Edward has a good chance of escaping the lawsuit. His opponent knocks under. The terms of agreement are not quite settled.” They were not, indeed. The claim was only settled, at considerable expense to Edward, in 1817, the year of Jane’s death.

  But for the moment all was gaiety. Edward and Fanny arrived just in time for The Merchant of Venice, and next night they all went to The Devil to Pay by Charles Coffee, and an Italian Opera. “Excepting Miss Stephens, I daresay Artaxerxes will be very tiresome.” The snow was so deep that Edward and Fanny stayed an extra night and they saw Miss Stephens again in The Farmer’s Wife. She proved a disappointment. “All that I am sensible of in Miss Stephens is, a pleasing person and no skill in acting.” Edward and Fanny set off for Kent next day, but not before Henry was suspecting “decided attachment” between Fanny and John Plumtre, the young man Jane had earlier described as “sensible rather than brilliant”. He had been their constant companion during this visit and had organised the last party to see The Farmer’s Wife. It was the nieces’ turn, now, to be watched and speculated about.

  Jane Austen had the usual London errands to do. Her mother wanted her to order their tea at Twining’s and pay their bill, but had unfortunately not provided her with the money for it. The public were in mourning for six weeks because of the death of Queen Charlotte’s brother, the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and Jane had been “ruining myself in black satin ribbon with a proper pearl edge”. She never lost her interest in clothes, and sounds rather touchingly like one of her own younger heroines when she worries, at thirty-eight, whether long sleeves will do for the evening.

  Cassandra was to join them in town after Edward and Fanny left. “Prepare for a play the very first evening, I rather think Covent Garden to see Young in Richard.” Martha was at home to look after Mrs. Austen and they had had Charles’s daughter Cassandra staying with them. “If Cassandra has filled my bed with fleas, I am sure they must bite herself.” Little Cassandra was coming to town with her aunt to rejoin her parents, who were living in Keppel Street. Charles must have been between commands and they were staying with his wife’s family. Jane had discovered that Cassandra senior’s visit would have to be a short one. As usual the sisters’ plans must depend on Henry’s rather indefinite ones, and, “By a little convenient listening, I now know that Henry wishes to go to Godmersham for a few days before Easter.” This meant a complicated rearrangement of Cassandra’s and Jane’s own plans, since Cassandra wanted to go to the Leighs at Adlestrop and the two of them also meant to visit the Hills at Streatham. Visits together were a rare indulgence.

  In May, Mansfield Park came out, being announced in the Morning Chronicle for May 23rd and 27th. Disappointingly, it received no reviews, and seems to have made altogether less of an impression than the two previous books. Perhaps it was as a compensation for this lack of critical response that Jane Austen made a collection of the opinions of her family and friends (published in Dr. Chapman’s collection of her Minor Works). Although there was much praise, the majority view does seem to have placed Mansfield Park below Pride and Prejudice, but it is pleasant to think of Mrs. James Austen enjoying Mrs. Norris particularly, and Admiral Foote, “surprised that I had the power of drawing the Portsmouth scenes so well”.

  That May and June were sociable months at Chawton. Edward and his five eldest children were staying at the Great House, complete with Miss Clewes, the current governess, and Fanny’s diary reports the usual close relations between the two families. “The cottage dined here”, “Papa and I dined at the cottage”, “Aunt Jane drank tea here”, or, “Aunt Jane and I spent a bustling hour or two shopping in Alton.” The word “cottage” was of course something of an understatement for Mrs. Austen’s house, but served, for the Knights at least, to distinguish it from the Great House.

  The sociable summer was enlivened by the illuminations that celebrated peace, at last, with France, and by a visit from Lady Bridges and her daughter on their way back from their long stay in Bath. In June, Cassandra went up to London to stay with Henry again. Jane was planning another visit to the Cookes at Bookham (perhaps to check a point or two for Emma), but would not go until Edward had left the Great House, “that he may feel he has a somebody to give memorandums to, to the last”. His sisters were obviously very useful to Edward. It was, in fact, a considerable sacrifice on Jane’s part as it meant giving up “all help from his carriage, of course. And, at any rate, it must be such an excess of expense that I have quite made up my mind to it and do not mean to care. I have been thinking of Triggs and the chair, you may be sure, but I know it will end in posting.” There were financial advantages about being an actual, published author, even if they were smallish. Jane Austen had her own travelling purse at last.

  The Cookes had endeared themselves to Jane by admiring Mansfield Park “exceedingly. Mr. Cooke says ‘it is the most sensible novel he ever read,’ and the manner in which I treat the clergy delights them very much.” For a clergyman’s family, Edmund Bertram must have been a great improvement on Mr. Collins. Peace was being celebrated with a will. The Tsar Alexander of Russia and his ally the King of Prussia came to visit England with a long train of generals, statesmen and minor princes, and Jane warned Cassandra, “Take care of yourself, and do not be trampled to death in running after the Emperor. The report in Alton yesterday was that they would certainly travel this road either to or from Portsmouth.” The English were wild with joy, and the only blot on the festivities was the fact that the unfortunate Prince Regent was hissed wherever he went by the supporters of his wife, Princess Caroline. “I long to know,” said Jane Austen cryptically, “what this bow of the Prince’s will produce.” There is no letter to tell us whether the Chawton household did, in fact, see the European potentates driving by in state on their way to or from London.
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  Frank was busy with the naval review at Portsmouth, and Jane hoped that Fanny would see the Emperor. And, “Henry at White’s! Oh, what a Henry!” White’s was one of the most famous clubs of the day, and this must have been a social step up in the world for Henry, perhaps a dangerously expensive one. Apparently Jane and Cassandra were beginning to hope he would marry again, for Jane goes on, “I do not know what to wish as to Miss B., so I will hold my tongue and my wishes.”

  That summer Anna Austen was occupying herself through what seems to have been a rather indefinitely prolonged engagement by starting a novel of her own, which she sent to her Aunt Jane by instalments for her advice. We must be grateful to her, for it elicited some fascinating comments. “I do not like a lover’s speaking in the third person — it is too much like the formal part of Lord Orville, [in Fanny Burney’s Evelina] and I think is not natural.” And then, the established author, the kind and modest aunt goes on, “If you think differently however, you need not mind me — I am impatient for more.”

  More came, and Jane Austen continued encouraging. “I read it aloud — and we are all very much amused.” She apologised for having been slow in answering a set of questions Anna had sent her. Surprisingly, she did not like Anna’s new title, Which is the Heroine, so well as the old one, Enthusiasm, but then she had only just moved on from the abstract, Johnsonian type of title herself. She was full of practical help. There were no “blunders about Dawlish”, but Lyme was too far from it and she had put Starcross instead. She had corrected some minor social errors, and, tactfully, “I do think you had better omit Lady Helena’s postscript; — to those who are acquainted with Pride and Prejudice it will seem an imitation.” She also advised Anna not to take her characters to Ireland. “Let the Portmans go to Ireland, but as you know nothing of the manners there, you had better not go with them. You will be in danger of giving false representations. Stick to Bath and the Foresters. There you will be quite at home.” And then, Aunt Cassandra “does not like desultory novels, and is rather fearful yours will be too much so” but, “I allow much more latitude than she does — and think nature and spirit cover many sins of a wandering story.”