Only a Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen

by Jane Aiken Hodge

Fish and game were brought home on occasion by the sporting sons. In 1785 James, Edward and Henry Austen (the latter only fourteen) all took out a game duty certificate, as the new law required. (6) Henry, particularly, was to be a keen shot all his life.

  All this produce was converted into meals or, with certain items, into supplies of preserved food which would last until the next season came round. Vast quantities not only of time but of space indoors and out were devoted to the cultivation, production and storage of food.

  The only commodities that had to be purchased from outside were tea, coffee, chocolate, sugar, spices, wine, dried fruit and citrus fruit. These items were valued and guarded accordingly. 'I carry about the keys of the wine and closet', wrote Jane on one occasion, (L, 23) and there are many references in her letters to keeping careful watch on the levels of their stocks, particularly of sugar and tea - not so much against pilfering as against running out unawares.

  It is not known where the Austens purchased these commodities while they were living at Steventon, but their nearest town was Basingstoke, and the principal grocer there in the 1780s was J. Bickham in the Market Place. The business changed hands in 1791 and again in 1794, the new owner advertising that his stock included 'Old Raisin Wine, Confectionery, Perfumery, Stationery, &c. Oils, fine Westmoreland Hams, Burgess's Essence of Anchovies, Mushroom and India Soy, Sauce Royal, Devonshire Sauce, Lemon Ketchup, Olives, Capers, Vinegar &c'. (7) The purpose of many of these articles would seem to be to disguise tainted meat, a purpose not necessary at Steventon Rectory.

  For a household to be virtually self-sufficient in food sounds a happy and healthy state of affairs; and so it was, of course, in terms of economy and wholesomeness. But such a system has its drawbacks, as a moment's reflection will suggest. For if all the food required by ten or a dozen people three times a day, day in, day out, is to be produced on the premises, the burden on the housekeeper is considerable - not just in terms of cooking, but in organisation and planning. Variety and plenty at the table depended on just the right quantities of everything being produced and preserved in season, and then served to the family judiciously throughout the year.

  We do not know how Mrs Austen felt about her housekeeper's role. She probably accepted it as a duty, performed it for forty or so years as a skill in which she could take pride, and eventually relinquished it as a burden which she was happy for her elder daughter to take over. Mrs Austen was a religious woman who would have seen the cheerful regulation of her household, the provision of wholesome food for her family and the good management of her husband's income as her share of the marriage partnership. Notwithstanding her aristocratic and intellectual connections and her own highly developed ability to express herself 'both in writing and in conversation, with epigrammatic force and point', she was a practical, down-to-earth woman - whether made so by nature or necessity. (8) Long after her 'retirement', she continued to exhibit a lively curiosity wherever she went, in those little details of domestic economy which are so interesting to someone who has known the satisfactions and struggles of housekeeping on a large scale.

  Of course Mrs Austen had servants to help her - there is no suggestion that either she or her daughters were involved in the actual cooking of meals. But the servants were simple country people and required constant direction. Jane Austen wrote in a letter of taking on a new servant who knew nothing of dairy work, but was to be taught. The same maid was to do the cooking 'and says she can work well with her needle', which gives some indication of the unspecialised nature of the servants to be had at Steventon. (L, 36) Even when servants were familiar with techniques, however, it was Mrs Austen's responsibility to decide what must be done when; what was the work of that day, what was to be served and what preserved. It was Mrs Austen who had always to be looking ahead and ensuring that stores of food were maintained. In this she would have involved her daughters as they grew up, both as a present help to herself and, more importantly, as part of their training to be wives and housekeepers themselves.

  For if Jane and her elder sister Cassandra were to marry men of limited income - and Cassandra, at least, became engaged to exactly such a man, the Reverend Thomas Fowle - such knowledge would be of vital importance to their families' wellbeing. (9) Mrs Austen would have seen it as part of her maternal duty to prepare her daughters to make the full female contribution to any station in life in which they found themselves. The closest Jane herself came to marriage was in 1802 with her acceptance, subsequently withdrawn, of Harris Bigg Wither, heir to nearby Manydown Park. But even had she become mistress of Manydown, with a larger income and more numerous servants than her mother could command, she would still have found her knowledge of housekeeping useful. Certainly Harris's sister Alethea was not above taking an interest in such details, since on one occasion Jane wrote to her for the Manydown recipe for orange wine.

  It was this readiness on the part even of well-off ladies to take a practical interest in the provision of food and the running of their households which struck Jane's nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh, in writing his Memoir of Jane Austen, as marking a great change in the hundred years between his grandmother's early married life and his own old age. 'I am sure that the ladies there [Steventon] had nothing to do with the mysteries of the stew-pot or the preserving-pan; but it is probable that their way of life differed a little from ours, and would have appeared to us more homely', he wrote in 1870. (10) His Victorian sensibilities prevented him from quite crediting the truth: that although they may not have stirred the pot or the pan themselves, Mrs Austen and her daughters perfectly understood what was going on within them. 'Eliza remembered that Miss Austen had said she did not think it had been boiled enough', reported Jane when one of their preserves was opened and found to be 'neither solid nor entirely sweet'. (L, 241) The fact that their friend and one-time house-mate Martha Lloyd made a collection of recipes to which Mrs Austen contributed is proof that the processes of cookery were understood by women of their class.

  One of Mrs Austen's contributions to Martha Lloyd's collection was made in rhyme, a demonstration of that blend of unselfconscious interest in practical matters, verbal facility and lively sense of fun which so marked her character- and marked her as a woman of her age. At a later period, how many cooks would have the time, inclination or ability to write verse; how many amateur poetesses would confess to a know­ ledge of cookery? 'A Receipt for a Pudding' is given in seven stanzas, of which four contain the detailed instruction:

  First take 2 lbs of bread

  Be the crumb only weigh'd,

  For the crust the good housewife refuses.

  The proportions you'll guess

  May be made more or less

  To the size the family chuses.

  Then its sweetness to make;

  Some currants you take

  And sugar, of each half a pound

  Be not butter forgot.

  And the quantity sought

  Must the same with your currants be found.

  Cloves and mace you will want,

  With rose water I grant,

  And more savoury things if well chosen.

  Then to bind each ingredient,

  You'll find it expedient,

  Of eggs to put in half a dozen.

  Some milk, don't refuse it,

  But boiled ere you use it,

  A proper hint for its maker.

  And the whole when complete,

  In a pan clean and neat

  With care recommend to the baker. (11)

  With such a mother, there can be no doubt that Jane Austen absorbed from an early age a store of housekeeping knowledge.

  In her fiction, however, we find her conforming far more to her nephew's notions of gentility on such subjects. In Pride and Prejudice Mrs Bennet boasts several times that, unlike their neighbour Charlotte Lucas, who 'was wanted at home about the mince pies', her girls have been brought up to have nothing to do with cookery. (P&P, 44) Mrs Bennet of course is no maternal exemplar and,
considering the doubtful financial future of her daughters, she could certainly be considered remiss in neglecting this aspect of their upbringing. Despite her best efforts in another direction, she cannot guarantee wealthy husbands for her girls. Considered realistically, it is more by luck than inevitability that Jane and Elizabeth find themselves, at the end of the novel, each the mistress of a large establishment. As Jane Austen was to acknowledge elsewhere, 'There certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them'. (MP, 3)

  In Pride and Prejudice it is Lydia, and Lydia's children, who are set to be the chief sufferers from Mrs Bennet's mode of education. Lydia will be another Mrs Price, and her home as comfortless. Yet it is Lydia's moral, rather than her practical shortcomings, for which Mrs Bennet is held culpable. Neither Elizabeth nor the narrator ever breathe the slightest reproach on her for bringing up her daughters 'high' (to use Lady Catherine's terminology and meaning). (P&P, 106)

  An interesting case is that of Catherine Morland. We hear many details of her education, but none of it is in the domestic arts. 'Catherine would make a sad heedless young housekeeper to be sure', is her mother's first remark on hearing that her daughter is to be married. (NA, 249) In her brisk, matter-of-fact character and her situation as the wife of a clergyman and mother of a large family, Mrs Morland very much resembles Mrs Austen. Her immediate response to Catherine's news is proof of the practical turn her thoughts habitually take. So why has she neglected this branch of Catherine's training? It is true that the Morlands appear to be somewhat richer than the Austens, but they are far from demanding or expecting great matches for their children. Most probably Mrs Morland has been just too busy with the little ones to 'finish' her eldest daughter's education in this way, thinking there was plenty of time, and being caught unawares by such an early engagement.

  Poor Catherine, with all she has yet to learn, will also have to face the ordeal of her father-in-law's scrutiny of her table. Her melted butter is sure to be oiled, or her menu inadequate, on the day General Tilney comes to dinner. But at least, as clergymen go, Henry Tilney has a comfortable income. Elinor Dashwood is the heroine whose married destiny most closely resembles that of Mrs Austen, or of Cassandra had Tom Fowle survived to marry her and take her to his Shropshire rectory. It will certainly be among Elinor's daily concerns to make a small income stretch as far as possible. There is no suggestion that supervising the baking, brewing or churning form part of the Dashwood ladies' 'employments' at Barton Cottage, still less at Norland - but who can doubt that Elinor will be equal to the demands of her new life? Neither Elinor nor Edward has the slightest experience of farming, but they seem to be taking to it with the same enthusiasm as the young Mr and Mrs Austen; our only glimpse of them after marriage shows them mundanely concerned about 'rather better pasturage for their cows'. (S&S, 375)

  As for Emma, she is the capable and practised mistress of a household even before her marriage; but it is a wealthy household, well able to afford an experienced cook and a housekeeper. Emma's role is to preside, to give orders and occasionally to consult (she needs the housekeeper's advice, for example, as to the best invalid food to send Jane Fairfax). In general Emma probably visits the housekeeper's room once a day, after breakfast, to settle menus. There her involvement ends; certainly it does not appear to occupy a great deal of her time or thought (though she is a little busier just before Christmas, in preparing for the visit of the John Knightleys - a realistic detail passed over in barely a sentence, but evidence of the author's own experience of what a family visit entails). Emma indeed is the model of the gracious Victorian matron, hands unsoiled, so familiar to James Edward Austen-Leigh.

  Far more than any of her heroines, therefore, Jane Austen in her girlhood or young womanhood was initiated into the arts of domestic economy. Even had her mother neglected so to train her - which is inconceivable - her own observations of life at Steventon would have impressed upon her consciousness the primacy of food provision in the scale of female duties and occupations.

  For it was one of the assumptions on which her society was organised that any woman might at any time be called upon to take responsibility for the smooth running of a household: if not by marrying, then by looking after an aged parent or a single or bereaved male relation. No man could run his own home. The few who did live alone, like Mr Knightley, relied on a paid housekeeper; but this was in general considered a comfortless way to live - especially if the income was smaller than Mr Knightley's, when less good servants could be afforded, or if the man in question was more particular about his creature comforts than the master of Donwell. As a bachelor, Mr Elton is always ready to leave his own lonely hearth for the good dinners and womanly smiles on offer at Hartfield. At the beginning of Sense and Sensibility when old Mr Dashwood loses his sister he cannot manage alone; his niece-in-law, with her husband and children, has to leave her own comfortable home to look after him in his. Mr Bingley has his sister Caroline to keep house for him; Mr Rushworth has his mother. Mr Collins, having got himself a house, can't wait to get a wife - any wife will do.

  Even the temporary absence of the woman of the house made a difference, if she had no daughter old enough to deputise. In 1770 when Mrs Austen was away from home for about a month looking after her sister in childbirth, Mr Austen wrote forlornly to his own sister-in-law: 'I don't much like this lonely kind of life, you know I have not been much used to it, and yet I must bear with it about three weeks longer, at which time I expect my housekeeper's return.' (12) 'My housekeeper', not 'my wife' - and this from the most affectionate and reasonable of husbands!

  The diaries of Parson Woodforde, a contemporary of Parson Austen though unknown to him, are a rich source of information on food and housekeeping in an ordinary country rectory in the last decades of the eighteenth century. Woodforde, who lived in Norfolk and never married, called on his niece Nancy to keep house for him. Receiving just ten pounds a year and board for her services, Nancy found the life dreadfully dull and made frequent complaints. She stuck at it either because she felt a strong familial obligation to her uncle or because she was grateful for any home and occupation - or probably a mixture of the two.

  Women were certainly not accustomed to consult only their own preference. When two of James Edward Austen-Leigh's bachelor sons asked their aunt Caroline (Jane Austen's niece) to keep house for them, she accepted out of family feeling and a sense of duty, though as a middle-aged spinster she had been living alone quite contentedly hitherto. Similarly, when Jane's brother Charles lost his first young wife, his sister-in-law gave up her independence to look after him and his three little girls - just as had Elizabeth Branwell, forsaking warm Penzance for bleak Haworth, when Maria Bronte died. It was chance only that Jane Austen herself never had sole responsibility for a household - though she assisted Cassandra and deputised when she was away. Had Cassandra died or married, her responsibilities would have devolved upon Jane. While an uncongenial offer of marriage might in good conscience be refused, the cri du coeur of a male relative, which might come at any time, could not.

  There is a passage in one of Jane's letters to Cassandra, written on 8 September 1816, which is most revealing of her attitude to housekeeping at this stage of her life, when she was at the height of her literary output and success, but beginning to feel the first symptoms of the illness which was to kill her in less than a year. Cassandra was in Cheltenham with their sister-in-law Mary, while Mary's eighteen-year-old son Edward (the James Edward Austen-Leigh who was later to write the Memoir of his aunt) had been staying with Jane and her mother at Chawton. 'I enjoyed Edward's company very much, as I said before,' wrote Jane,

  ‘and yet I was not sorry when Friday came. It had been a busy week, and I wanted a few days quiet, and exemption from the thought and contrivances which any sort of company gives. I often wonder how you can find time for all you do, in addition to the care of the house; and how good Mrs West could have written such books and collected so many hard
words, with all her family cares, is still more a matter of astonishment! Composition seems to me impossible, with a head full of 'joints of mutton and doses of rhubarb. (L, 466)

  Most women who, at some stage of their lives, have had other things they would rather be thinking about than what to serve for the next meal - and the next - can sympathise with that. The same women have probably, at other times, derived considerable pleasure from cooking and sharing food with family and friends. Jane Austen was no less ambivalent in her attitude. At the other end of her adult life, when it was a novelty for her to take over the housekeeping (her mother indisposed, Cassandra on another visit) she wrote in a different vein: 'My mother desires me to tell you that I am a very good housekeeper, which I have no reluctance in doing, because I really think it is my peculiar excellence, and for this reason - I always take care to provide such things as please my own appetite, which I consider as the chief merit in housekeeping.' (L, 28) Later in the same letter she returns to the subject: 'I am very fond of experimental housekeeping, such as having an ox-cheek now and then; I shall have one next week, and I mean to have some little dumplings put into it, that I may fancy myself at Godmersham.' Jane was nearly twenty-three when she wrote this, proving, incidentally, that either of the Miss Austens was quite capable of taking over from their mother when the need arose, long before the post was formally surrendered to Cassandra.

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  [1] Farmland constituting part of a clergyman’s benefice.

  [2] Susanna Walter, wife of George Austen’s half-brother, William Hampson Walter.

  [3] Used throughout for Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters by W. and R. A. Austen-Leigh.

  [4] Presumably a Rowling servant.

  [5] As Mrs. Thrale, Mrs. Piozzi had been a close friend of Dr. Johnson.