Dearest Cousin Jane

by Jill Pitkeathley

  ‘Well girls, it is all settled. Your father and I have decided to leave Steventon and go to Bath.’ But yet for Jane to faint away entirely was a great shock—I have never seen her overpowered before, and she was as white as a sheet.

  She has done her best since to put a brave face on it, but whenever the conversation veers towards the move or arrangements connected with it, a strange look comes over her and she is often sharp and even rude in her responses to me. She misses having Cassandra about to support her, I think, but Cassandra shows no sign of wanting to return and indeed has said she will stay away until after the move is accomplished. This is not kind of her and may not make my life easier, as Jane is far from compliant. If truth be told, she has never liked me, or at least not since I married her brother. She was tolerably kind before that, but I believe she thinks I have not been a good enough stepmother to Anna, of whom she is inordinately fond. She has not seen how difficult the child can be and how hard I have had to work to make her mind me. In my opinion, it is all due to the child’s being vastly spoiled by Jane and Cassandra after the sad death of her mother. Then again, Jane has always been too greatly influenced by cousin Eliza, ‘Madame la Comtesse,’ as my father-in-law still calls her. She gives herself so many airs I do not think she needs more flattery from him. Of course James was misguided enough to ask Eliza to marry him, though only because he was still mourning Anne and had not quite come to his senses. La Comtesse as the wife of a parish priest—I do not think so! Surely Jane did not really wish for that match—Henry is more suitable a husband by far for such a woman. It might perhaps add to Jane’s reasons for being hostile to me. None of them consider what a trial it is to have the woman your husband wanted to marry in the same family as yourself. I always wonder if they are thinking that James took me only because Eliza refused him. Few women have as much to endure as I and a larger house and grounds and more possessions would be scant reward.

  April 1801

  Letter from Mary (Mrs JA) to Eliza (Mrs HA)

  Deane Parsonage

  Dear Cousin Eliza,

  I address you as cousin, though of course we are sisters. But as I understand that you still sign yourself by your French name as well as Mrs Henry Austen, it seems appropriate.

  First, may I wish you joy of your new abode and assure you of the very best wishes of James and myself for your new life in London. I understand that dear Henry is finding life as a banker most agreeable and that your house is very fine. I shall look forward to receiving firsthand reports of it when Cassandra returns to us after her visit to you, which I believe is to take place soon.

  I was disconcerted by the letter I have recently received from you. I quite fail to understand why you felt it necessary to intercede on Jane’s and Cassandra’s behalf about their move to Bath. Cassandra seems so little concerned about it all that she has scarcely been at home since the plan was fixed upon. Indeed she is to depart again shortly for her visit to you. Jane, meanwhile, after her initial distress seems quite reconciled and even looking forward to the relocation. We are overwhelmed with callers who come almost daily to pay their farewell visits. The Bigg Withers, the Chutes, and the Harwoods were here only yesterday, and Jane had them all in gales of laughter about the servants they are to keep, ‘a steady cook and a giddy housemaid,’ and as they left professed themselves envious of the life the family was to enjoy in Bath, with much warmer winters and the prospect of summers at the seaside in Wales or Devon.

  I know Jane expected to receive more money for her father’s library, but James did not want it, so you must see that selling it was the only option. It is hardly our responsibility that only £70 was received. They were perfectly at liberty to take any furniture they wanted and I only offered to take Jane’s pianoforte as a favour, as I thought it would save the cost of transporting it, especially as they have not yet finally settled on where they are to live in Bath. I did not intend her to make a present of it to me, though she might indeed have done better to do so as she received only a derisory sum from the auctioneer. But as for Jane’s accusation that ‘the whole world is in conspiracy to enrich one half of the family at the expense of another’ I really must beg you to seek confirmation of such behaviour before you take it upon yourself to criticise my husband and me. They have yet one month more here in the Parsonage as the Rector wishes to celebrate his last Easter Festival and to visit each of his parishioners. James has made no quarrel with this, even though many might say that it would have been an ideal time for him to become acquainted with his new flock.

  In short, dear Eliza, I feel my husband and I need attract no criticism for the manner in which we have conducted this difficult situation. It is clearly time for the Rector to take life a little easier in order that his health may be preserved for as long as possible, thus ensuring that his wife and daughters are not thrown upon the mercy and generosity of the brothers, which we all know will be the case once his income ceases. In taking on the parish, my husband is fulfilling his filial obligations, and I am sure his sisters will benefit from his dutiful behaviour. Once they have grown used to their new abode and the wider society it affords them I am sure they will be grateful and that the discontent that has been expressed to you will be a thing of the past.

  I believe you are planning a visit to Edward at Godmersham soon. I am sure you will receive a warm welcome and I trust you will pass an enjoyable stay.

  Please remember me kindly to Henry.

  Your affectionate cousin and sister-in-law,

  Mary Austen

  TWENTY-TWO

  Eliza in Upper Brook Street, London

  May 1801

  What a fine view of Portman Square is offered by this drawing room window. I can sit here and await the arrival of dear cousin Cassandra. How I wish both sisters were to be here, but Jane seems so preoccupied with the move to Bath, which is to take place this week. Henry was cross with me for writing to Mary and James, but I felt I had to try to take Jane’s part. Without husbands or money of their own, those girls are so powerless. Jane is making the best of it, but I know she is unhappy and I long to receive up-to-date news of her spirits from Cassandra.

  I have often reflected on my own good fortune in terms of money and preferment and never more than now, when I see Jane and Cassandra being forced, yes forced, there is no other way to put it, to adopt a life they have no wish for simply because they are totally dependent on their parents. To be fair, Cassandra has £1,000 left her by her dead fiancé, but that is not sufficient to support a household even if it were deemed proper for unmarried ladies to live alone. It is fortunate that Charles is home on leave so that he can escort Cassandra here, otherwise the duty may have fallen to James, and I would not have relished such a meeting after the recent falling out. Indeed, I doubt that Mary would have permitted it!

  We shall have a fine celebration this evening. I have ordered a splendid dinner—how good it is to have a French chef again after the efforts of those cooks in Surrey—and our two drawing rooms are so suitable for entertaining now that the new hangings are arrived and the plate and silver are all unpacked. Henry’s partners in the bank, Mr Maunde and Mr Tilson, are to join us, and I expect they will both invite Charles to visit their offices in Cleveland Court. While they do so I shall take Cassandra shopping. She is not as interested in her appearance as Jane, but I expect she could be prevailed upon to accept a present of something special to wear when we go to see Mrs Jordan at the Opera.

  Oh, I think I see the post chaise on the other side of the square—yes, there is Charles waving from the window!

  June 1801

  Cassandra is to leave us tomorrow and I cannot tell whether she looks forward to going to Bath or not. At first the news received in Jane’s letters was tolerably cheerful. Having her own room at her aunt and uncle’s residence seemed welcome to her. But clearly seeking accommodation became a depressing task—how well I understand that, having done it so very frequently myself!—especially as they had constantly to confront the
ir financial limitations. They looked at lodgings that were damp, that flooded, where the sun never reached or that were in entirely the wrong part of town.

  ‘When you arrive,’ she wrote to Cassandra, ‘we shall have the pleasure of examining some of these putrefying houses all over again. But for the moment I have nothing more to say on the subject of housing.’

  Cassandra is worried, I know, even though they have now settled on Number 4 Sydney Place, which seems to meet their requirements tolerably well. The rent is low, there is a lease for three years, and it is near both the Leigh-Perrots and the Pump Room for my aunt and uncle’s daily walk. Jane has made a sketch and sent it to her sister and it certainly looks most acceptable.

  ‘What is it, Cassy?’ I asked her this morning. ‘surely now that your have good lodgings and you and Jane can once again settle into your easy life together, you can look forward to Bath? Yet you seem unhappy and I beg to know the reason.’

  Cassy, always reluctant to reveal her feelings, hesitated and then said: ‘I am a little anxious about poor Hastings, I confess.’

  ‘How kind you are—it is a source of great worry to his stepfather and to me. That seizure he had yesterday was one of the most violent and his doctor tells me we must expect more of them.’

  ‘Dr Baillie seems a very competent physician—is there nothing more he can do for the boy?’

  ‘He says not. As you know, it is my belief that the fits are due to epilepsy, but it defies all treatment. I can only hope that God will give me the strength to bear the worst if—‘

  ‘Oh surely you do not expect…’

  ‘I am afraid we must be prepared, my dear, and sometimes when I see him in those painful paroxysms I can only wish him peace.’

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘At least you have the devotion of my brother to help you through, although that cough of his…’

  I needed no reminding of the worries Henry’s hacking cough caused me, though Dr Baillie had assured me he was not consumptive, so I sought to divert Cassandra’s attention.

  ‘Is that all my dear? I fear you have more worries about Jane that you have not yet confided.’

  Reluctantly she drew from her pocket Jane’s last letter, received yesterday, and laid it upon the worktable that stood between us.

  ‘The last line,’ she said, pointing.

  I read:

  Unless something particular occurs, I shall not write again.

  I read it and looked at her curiously.

  ‘I would not expect her to write again, as you return home so very soon.’

  ‘No, she does not mean letters, she means her real writing—her stories, her novels.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, understanding at last. ‘But perhaps she just means she will be too busy in your new life.’

  Cassandra spoke more sharply than I had ever heard her. ‘Allow me to know my sister better than anyone. Without her writing she will shrivel, she will die inside. You might as well tell her never to laugh again. On the last night we spent together at Steventon in our sweet blue room—the night before I came here—Jane looked all around, then clasped her little mahogany writing desk to her bosom, the one my father gave her for her nineteenth birthday and is her most treasured possession, and sobbed as if her heart would break. ‘I shall not be able to do it, Cass,’ she said. ‘Without this place I cannot do it. I must have a settled place—we shall be nomads. I shall no longer be able to compose.’

  ‘I tried to comfort her,’ Cassandra went on, the tears shining in her eyes, ‘but it was in vain.’

  I was shocked by her vehemence and could think of no way to respond but to try to take her out of herself.

  ‘Come, Cass, let us change for the Opera. We are to meet Lord and Lady Acton. Put on your sweet gold muslin, which so well sets off the topaz cross dear Charles brought you from his last voyage.’

  She smiled wanly.

  ‘Even those sweet crosses did not raise Jane’s spirits. “How foolish our brother is to spend his prize money on his sisters,” she said to me. “We shall be intolerably fine.”’

  ‘“Yet it is an incident you could use in a story, my dear, is it not? That is, er…”—I hesitated, as I am only too well aware of my own limits as to composition—“if you had a naval gentleman in your story.”’

  ‘“I shall never have another gentleman of any kind in a story” was her retort,’ and as she related this, Cassandra turned to go to her room.

  In the face of her distress I could think of nothing comforting to say to her.

  October 1801

  For a short time after her departure I waited eagerly upon correspondence from Bath to hear how my dear cousins progressed in their new abode. But within a few weeks all such thoughts were driven from my mind by the anxieties I myself suffered. First, my husband did not enjoy a day, indeed scarcely an hour, of good health. His complaints of a cough, a pain in the side, and the loss of weight and energy were so clearly an indication of galloping consumption that I could not entirely believe Dr Baillie’s assurances, and I am sure all our acquaintance had the same fears. Knowing that Dr Baillie is one of the most respected physicians in London and even consulted by royalty prevented me from seeking another opinion—a wise decision as it turned out, because at length, one of the good doctor’s prescriptions proved to be efficacious and removed most of the symptoms. I am glad to say he is well again, and how I have had need of him these last terrible weeks as we have endured the loss of my poor dear Hastings. His sufferings were dreadful, so dreadful, in fact, that the end came as something of a release, as I am writing at present in response to the letter of condolence from cousin Philly—how many touching letters I have received.

  So awful a dissolution of a near and tender tie must ever be a severe shock, and my mind was already weakened by witnessing the sad variety and long series of pain that the dear sufferer underwent—but deeply impressed as I am with the heartrending scenes I have beheld I am most thankful for their termination, and the exchange that I humbly hope my dear Child has made of a most painful existence for a blissful immortality.

  We buried him with his grandmother, which is also a comfort to me when I think of them together. The inscription reads:

  Also in Memory of her Grandson Hastings only Child of Jean Capot Comte de Feuillide and Elizabeth his wife. Born 25th June 1786. Died 9th October 1801.

  Henry wishes us to go to stay at Godmersham Park with his brother and sister-in-law. They live in great style, as I have heard from many sources, so perhaps I might accept their invitation at last. I am mindful that it is near four years since they first asked us. Elizabeth is in the increasing way yet again, having produced her last only at the beginning of this year. She is bent on setting records I vow—perhaps His Majesty may reward his subjects who add most to the population! Still, I shall go and hope that Jane and Cassandra may also be visiting that I may have up-to-date news of them.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Philly Walter at Tunbridge Wells

  May 1802

  Some thing is going on and I am not being told about it. I am only picking up hints from letters and it is most frustrating. I should have thought my intimacy with Eliza was sufficient for her to confide in me, and if she cannot confide the whole truth, why mention it at all?

  I had thought that Henry and Eliza might pay a visit here on their way from Godmersham—after all, the distance to this part of the county is not that great from there—but no, they decided to go to Bath.

  ‘That I might have the great consolation of my dear uncle George in my bereavement,’ she wrote to me.

  Well, she won’t get much consolation from Aunt Cassandra, who to my certain knowledge has never liked her and was delighted when she did not accept James—anyway, what a dreadful wife for a clergyman she would have made. Driving out in Elizabeth’s fine carriages is more her style, and they did a prodigious amount of that while at Godmersham, so I gather. Well, Eliza would not be content to sit inside while the men were hunting,
sewing Edward’s shirts, as the women are usually expected to do there. Henry would go out with a gun, I daresay, while Elizabeth and Eliza drove about calling on all those fine neighbours. Eliza wrote to me about how pleasantly they were received by this one and that one. At least it would have been a relief from being plagued by those endless children of whom she complains. She tells me that Lizzie is always undoing her ribbons and that Georgie pulls her hair whenever she comes near him.

  She has written to me from Bath, where they have now been for a sennight at least. There are some intriguing passages in her letters about Jane and Cassandra—‘the girls,’ as uncle George calls them, which for my part I think a most unsuitable way of referring to two women who are almost middle-aged and who everyone now thinks are beyond hopes of marriage. At least that is what I thought, but Eliza hints that Jane has recently met someone of whom she is fond. I believe it was in Lyme, where she and Cassandra spent some weeks earlier this spring. I said at the time that it was not fitting for them to be there alone, even though Charles was able to escort them there. Sure enough, Jane, no doubt without the restraint of her mother, was able to run wild and flirt as she was wont to do in earlier years when everyone described her as ‘madly husband hunting.’ It is highly annoying to have no details, but Eliza hints that another meeting is planned because she and Henry have been asked to escort her back to Lyme later in the year. I wonder if he lives there? Eliza refers to him as ‘the reverend gentleman,’ so I wonder if his parish is nearby? If only I had a name I could look him up in Crockford’s Directory of Clergy and find out more. He must be a widower or he would have no interest in a woman of Jane’s age. But I am sure he must be childless, else he would have more sense than to pay court to Jane. Cassandra is much more suitable for such a position.