It rained all the way to Winchester that 24th of May, and Jane, in the carriage with Cassandra, was anxious about her brother Henry and her nephew William Knight, who rode beside them. Did she peer out, through the spring rain, at the new green of rolling downs and leafing hedgerows and remember that other hedge, where Anne Elliot had heard more than she bargained for, or how she herself had written, long ago, to ask Cassandra what the hedges were like in Northamptonshire? Whatever she thought, she probably felt that it was her last sight of spring.
Their old friend Mrs. Heathcote had found them excellent lodgings in College Street, with “a neat little drawing room with a bow-window overlooking Dr. Gabell’s garden”. The house still stands, with its green view towards the Palace wall. Mrs. Heathcote was nearby in the Close, but her sister Alethea Bigg was “frisked off like half England, into Switzerland”. There were nephews, one Knight and one Heathcote, at Winchester College to keep them in touch with life, which Jane Austen would not let go easily. On May 27th she was writing to another nephew, James Edward Austen, who was now at Exeter College, Oxford, to say that she was “gaining strength very fast ... Mr. Lyford says he will cure me, and if he fails I shall draw up a memorial and lay it before the Dean and Chapter, and have no doubt of redress from that pious, learned, and disinterested body.” Did she believe Mr. Lyford? It seems doubtful. The end of this letter strikes an unusual note of gloomy introspection. “If ever you are ill, may you be as tenderly nursed as I have been, may the same blessed alleviations of anxious, sympathising friends be yours, and may you possess — as I dare say you will — the greatest blessing of all, in the consciousness of not being unworthy of their love. I could not feel this.”
Jane Austen may sometimes have written a sharp thing, but I am sure she never consciously wrote a false one. She must have meant it when she told her nephew that she felt unworthy of her family’s love. Was this simply the depression attendant on her illness, or was she spiritually casting up her accounts? Owing to Cassandra’s ruthless destruction of so many of her letters we do not know all the sharp things that Jane Austen said or wrote in her lifetime, but her standards were high: she would have remembered. And, particularly, writing to James Edward, son of James and Mary, she must have remembered the impatience towards them that shows even in the expurgated letters that remain. Facing death, she may well also have regretted that long failure of communication between herself and her mother.
One more letter survives from this time, undated, and to an unknown recipient. Quoted by Henry in his Biographical Notice of his sister, it has been heavily cut. After speaking of Cassandra, her “tender, watchful, indefatigable nurse”, Jane Austen must have gone on to describe the bitter blow of James Leigh Perrot’s will. This passage has been cut, but the characteristic conclusion preserved: “But I am getting too near complaint. It has been the appointment of God, however secondary causes may have operated ... You will find Captain — a very respectable, well-meaning man, without much manner, his wife and sister all good humour and obligingness, and I hope (since the fashion allows it) with rather longer petticoats than last year.” It was like Jane Austen to go on trying “To move wild laughter in the throat of death”.[16]
But though she would go gallantly on pretending to the last, her family could no longer be deceived. Cassandra, it is true, went on writing hopefully to their mother at Chawton, and Mrs. Austen passed on the deceptively good news to her grand-daughter, Anna Lefroy. “Mr. Lyford says he thinks better of her than he has ever done, though he must still consider her in a precarious state.” Mrs. Austen would not be warned. “I had a very comfortable account of your Aunt Jane this morning; she now sits up a little.” She was writing to Caroline, and added a significant note: “Your Mamma is there ... which I am very glad of. Cassandra did not quite like the nurse they had got, so wished Mrs. J. A. to come in her stead, as she promised she would whenever she was wanted.”
It was an irony Jane Austen was equipped to appreciate that of all the women she had known, and the few that she had really loved, it should be her sister-in-law, James’s Mary (“not a liberal-minded woman”) who promised Cassandra to come when she was needed, and came. Martha was busy looking after old Mrs. Austen; Frank’s Mary was occupied with her ninth child; and Fanny, the beloved niece, was only twenty-four. She stayed in Kent and noted in her diary, “another hopeless account from Winchester”. But she went on writing “those kind, amusing letters” to her aunt, and one actually arrived, and was opened and looked at, on the last morning of Jane Austen’s life.
At Steventon, there were no illusions now. Mary Austen had been summoned to Winchester early in June, and at that time her husband wrote to their son James Edward in Oxford, “I grieve to write what you will grieve to read; but I must tell you that we can no longer flatter ourselves with the least hope of having your dear valuable Aunt Jane restored to us ... She is well aware of her situation ... with such a pulse it was impossible for any person to last long, and indeed no one can wish it — an easy departure from this to a better world is all that we can pray for.”
Jane was incorrigible. She went on thinking about living, and the living. It must be at about this time that she sent her message to Caroline Austen about reading more and writing less. No doubt this was conveyed by Caroline’s mother, now installed as second nurse, sharing the nights with Cassandra and the maid, in the comfortable lodgings in College Street. Edward, Henry and James were all close at hand now, and Frank not far off at Alton. Did Jane Austen remember the old, sociable family days at Steventon? The day before her death, according to Henry, she wrote a set of mildly comic verses about Winchester and St. Swithin. But then, verse had never been her strong point. What she was doing, and doing brilliantly, was keeping the family tone light to the last.
“She retained her faculties, her memory, her fancy, her temper, and her affections, warm, clear, and unimpaired, to the last.” It is Henry speaking, only five months after her death. “Neither her love of God, nor of her fellow creatures flagged for a moment. She made a point of receiving the sacrament before excessive bodily weakness might have rendered her perception unequal to her wishes. She wrote whilst she could hold a pen, and with a pencil when a pen was become too laborious.”
She had two clergymen brothers, now, to administer the sacrament. That duty done, her manners remained perfect to the end. “Her last voluntary speech,” says Henry, “conveyed thanks to her medical attendant.” James Edward Austen-Leigh, writing his Memoir, years later, recalled an even more significant remark. On her deathbed, Jane Austen turned to her sister-in-law, James’s tiresome wife, Mrs. Norris in petto, who had come to help nurse her. “You have always been a kind sister to me, Mary.” That last duty done, she was, to all intents and purposes, alone with Cassandra, as, in a way, she had always been. She slept a great deal through the last few days of her life, but even Cassandra did not realise how near the end was, that night of July 17th. Writing to Fanny, after it was all over, Cassandra said she “had no suspicion how rapidly my loss was approaching — I have lost a treasure, such a sister, such a friend as never can have been surpassed — she was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow.” The end, at last, came quickly, as her brother had hoped for her, and she had hoped for others. “She felt herself to be dying about half an hour before she became tranquil and apparently unconscious. During that half hour was her struggle, poor soul.” When asked if she wanted anything, she replied, “Nothing but death,” and died, as she would have wished, in her sister’s arms, very early on the morning of July 18th.
She was buried in Winchester Cathedral on the 24th, early in the morning, so as not to interrupt the regular services, with three of her brothers, Edward, Henry and Frank in attendance, and James Edward there representing his father, who was unwell. Years later, writing his Memoir of his aunt, James Edward remembered the occasion. “Her brothers went back sorrowing to their several homes. They were very fond and very proud of her. They were at
tached to her by her talents, her virtues, and her engaging manners; and each loved afterwards to fancy a resemblance in some niece or daughter of his own to the dear sister Jane, whose perfect equal they yet never expected to see.”
“Not to have found Aunt Jane at Chawton,” wrote Caroline Austen, long afterwards, “would have been a blank indeed,” and a nephew who visited the house in later years confessed to being always disappointed. He expected particular happiness in that house, and found it there no longer. The laughter had died from Chawton Cottage; but only half of Jane Austen’s double life was over. The laughter lives on: in Elizabeth and Emma; in Mr. Collins and Miss Bates; at Sotherton and Box Hill and Sanditon. Jane Austen did not deal much in death in her novels. It was life, and the living of it, that she cared about. And the testament she left, more important than any memorial, whether at Winchester or Westminster, lies in the six novels, where:
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter.[17]
Bibliography
For Jane Austen’s Novels, Letters and Minor Works, the Oxford Edition. Edited by R. W. Chapman.
Family Records
Biographical Notice by Henry Austen. Published in John Murray’s edition of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, 1818.
A Memoir of Jane Austen. By James Edward Austen-Leigh. Richard Bentley, 1870. Second Edition, 1871, included Lady Susan and other fragments.
Jane Austen: Her Homes and Her Friends. By Constance Hill. John Lane, 1902.
Letters of Jane Austen. Edited with an introduction by Edward, Lord Brabourne. Richard Bentley, 1884.
Jane Austen’s Sailor Brothers. By J. H. and E. C. Hubback. John Lane, 1906.
Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters. By W. and R. A. Austen-Leigh. Smith, Elder, 1913.
Personal Aspects of Jane Austen. By M. A. Austen-Leigh. John Murray, 1920.
Austen Papers. 1704-1856. Edited by R. A. Austen-Leigh. Privately printed by Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co, Ltd., 1942.
Cornhill. No. 973, 1947-8. Letter from Lady Knatchbull to her sister.
My Aunt Jane Austen, A Memoir. By Caroline Mary Craven Austen. Spottiswoode, Ballantyne & Co. Ltd., 1952.
General
Theodore Besterman, The Publishing Firm of Cadell & Davies. Oxford University Press, 1938.
Frank W. Bradbrook, Jane Austen & her Predecessors. Cambridge University Press, 1966.
Arthur Bryant, The Age of Elegance. Collins, 1950.
Lord David Cecil, Jane Austen. Cambridge University Press, 1935.
R. W. Chapman, Jane Austen, Facts & Problems. Clarendon Press, 1948.
R. W. Chapman. Essays in The London Mercury, 1930-31, and in Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, VIII.
Sir Zachary Cope. In British Medical Journal, July, 1964.
W. A. Craik, Jane Austen, the Six Novels. Methuen, 1965.
Reginald Farrer. In the Quarterly Review, No. 452, July, 1917.
E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel. Arnold, 1927.
E.M. Forster, Abinger Harvest. Arnold, 1936.
H. W. Garrod. In Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, VIII.
D. W. Harding. In Scrutiny, VIII, March, 1970.
Elizabeth Jenkins, Jane Austen. Gollancz, 1958.
Margaret Kennedy, Jane Austen. Barker, 1950.
Mary Lascelles, Jane Austen and Her Art. Clarendon Press, 1939.
Marghanita Laski, Jane Austen and Her World. Thames & Hudson, 1969.
Q. D. Leavis. In Scrutiny, June, 1941, September, 1941, January, 1942, Spring, 1944.
Robert Liddell, The Novels of Jane Austen. Longman, 1963.
Percy Lubbock, The Craft of Fiction. Cape, 1921.
Kenneth L. Moler, Jane Austen’s Art of Allusion. University of Nebraska Press, 1968.
Marvin Mudrick, Jane Austen. Irony as Defense & Discovery. University of California Press, 1968.
F.A. Mumby, Publishing and Bookselling. Cape, 1930.
Walter Raleigh, The English Novel. Murray, 1894.
David Rhydderch, Jane Austen. Her Life & Art. Cape, 1932.
Sir Walter Scott. Anonymous article in The Quarterly Review XLV, October, 1815.
Samuel Smiles, Memoir and Correspondence of the Late John Murray. John Murray, 1891.
B. C. Southam. In Notes & Queries. CCVI, 1961.
B. C. Southam, Jane Austen’s Literary Manuscripts. Oxford University Press, 1964.
B. C. Southam, Jane Austen. The Critical Heritage. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968.
B.C. Southam, Critical Essays on Jane Austen. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968.
C.L. Thomson, Jane Austen. A Survey. Horace Marshall, 1929.
J. M. S. Tompkins, The Popular Novel in England. 1770-1800. Methuen 1909.
G. M. Trevelyan, History of England. Longman, 1926.
Rachel Trickett, Address to the Jane Austen Society, 1970.
Lionel Trilling, Beyond Culture. Secker & Warburg, 1966.
Lionel Trilling, The Opposing Self. Secker & Warburg, 1955.
R. J. White, The Age of George III. Heinemann, 1968.
Andrew Wright, Jane Austen’s Novels. A Study in Structure. 1953, revised 1962.
If you enjoyed Only a Novel by Jane Aiken Hodge you might be interested in Jane Austen and Food by Maggie Lane, also published by Endeavour Press.
Extract from Jane Austen and Food by Maggie Lane
Chapter One - Domestic Economy in Jane Austen's Life
'The sweets of housekeeping in a country village!' exclaims Mary Crawford archly when her sister, Mrs Grant, is confessing to some difficulties with her plants and poultry. Town-bred Mary knows nothing, and wishes to know nothing, of either the sweets or the difficulties involved in keeping house and providing food for a family in the country; but these were matters which had been familiar to her author since her earliest consciousness.
Born in 1775 at Steventon Rectory in Hampshire, Jane Austen grew up in a household which was virtually self-sufficient in food. Her father, the Reverend George Austen, besides being a parish priest and a teacher of classics to pupils boarding at the Rectory, was a gentleman farmer, working his land with the help of a bailiff. John Bond, who stood very much in relation to Mr Austen as William Larkins to Mr Knightley, was an important personage in the domestic economy of Steventon, and is often mentioned in Jane Austen's early letters.
The glebe lands attached to the benefice of Steventon were only about three acres, but Mr Austen also rented the neighbouring 200-acre Cheesedown farm from his patron Thomas Knight, the principal landholder of the parish. (1) For the best part of forty years - from 1764 when the Austens were married until 1801 when they retired to Bath - the farm kept the Rectory supplied with pork, mutton, wheat, peas, barley and hops; it also supplied oats and hay for the horses. (2) Surplus produce was sold and could bring in a profit of up to £300 in a year, which made a worthwhile contribution to Mr Austen's income. (L, 81)
It was a characteristic of the Austen family that whatever they turned their hands to they did well, taking an honest pride in their efforts. Mr Austen, despite a wholly scholarly background (before his marriage he was Second Master at Tonbridge School and an Oxford Proctor), took to farming with spirit. 'One of his Leicestershire sheep, sold to the butcher last week, weighed 27 lb. and 1/4 per quarter', reported Jane in November 1798. (L, 29) A fortnight later came news of its consumption: Mr Lyford, apothecary of Basingstoke, 'gratified us very much yesterday by his praises of my father's mutton, which they all think the finest that ever was ate'. (L, 35)
The dairy and the poultry-yard were her mother's province. In 1773 Mrs Austen told her sister-in-law, 'I have got a nice dairy fitted up, and am now worth a bull and six cows'. Three years earlier she had written of an Alderney cow which 'makes more butter than we use'; as with the farm, the dairy surplus could be sold. (3)
The Austens eventually had eight children; by the time the youngest, Charles, was born, the eldest, James, was at university. As the youthful
population of Steventon Rectory swelled and subsided over the years (and as his own sons grew up, Mr Austen ceased to take in pupils), the number of livestock kept to feed them swelled and subsided too. By the turn of the century only the two daughters remained at home, and Mrs Austen's dairy herd was reduced to three Norman cows and calves. Her collection of poultry at this date comprised ducks, chicken, guinea-fowl and turkeys both black and white. (L, 73)
Potatoes, other vegetables, herbs and soft fruit, including strawberries and grapes, were grown in the garden; the Austens also kept bees. The honey was used for mead, which, like beer and home-made wines, was brewed in the brewhouse and stored in barrels in the cellar, which was liable to flood. (4) The 'kitchen, dairy and brewing utensils' at Steventon in 1801 included '13 iron-bound casks'. (5)
Only a Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen Page 26