The removal of the Austens to Chawton in 1809 represented a new beginning for the whole family. The dynamic had changed. Mrs George Austen was almost seventy, and made it clear that she was prepared to resign as head of the family. She withdrew to her gardening, her sewing and her patchwork, favourite occupations which she shared with both daughters, and Cassandra Austen, assisted by the family’s great friend Martha Lloyd, took over the management of the household. Jane took on the responsibility of making breakfast at nine o’clock, and had the keys of the cupboard which held the precious, expensive store of tea and sugar. ‘That was her part of the household work,’ Caroline wrote. ‘The tea and sugar stores were under her charge — and the wine’. Before breakfast, however, Jane had another private ritual of her own. The selling of her first pianoforte, when the family removed from Steventon, had caused her great distress and it was a sign of her new happiness in Chawton that she wanted to play again. Caroline remembered her aunt’s delight in choosing a new pianoforte for Chawton. She wanted ‘as good a one as can be got for thirty guineas’, and Jane herself told Cassandra, ‘I will practise country dances, that we have some amusement for our nephews and nieces, when we have the pleasure of their company.’70 Caroline described her joy:
[She] ... began her day with music — for which I conclude she had a natural taste, as she thus kept it up — tho’ she had no-one to teach; was never induced ... to play in company; and none of her family cared much for it. I suppose, that she might not trouble them, she chose her practising time before breakfast — when she could have the room to herself — ... Much that she played from was manuscript, copied out by herself — and so neatly and correctly, that it was as easy to read as print —71
Caroline’s brother James Edward added: ‘In the evening she would sometimes sing, to her own accompaniment, some simple old songs, the words and airs of which, now never heard, still linger in my memory.’72 This Jane Austen – open, affectionate, thrifty and hard-working – was the aunt whom the Godmersham children knew from 1809 onwards when, without a mother, they naturally turned to the company of their family. Whatever coolness may have existed between Elizabeth Austen and her sister-in-law was now forgotten, and a new closeness developed. Yet, as the first sharpness of grief passed, and the children grew older and more independent, another shift took place. The unmentioned but obvious difference in their social positions was once more underlined when, in October 1812, Catherine Knight died. Edward was now obliged, under the terms of his adoptive father’s will, to take the name of Knight. Jane’s comment, in a letter to her friend Martha Lloyd of November 1812, was humorously guarded: ‘We have reason to suppose the change of name has taken place, as we have to forward a Letter to Edward Knight Esq’re from the Lawyer who has the management of our business. I must learn to make a better K.’73 Fanny, almost twenty, declared herself incensed, writing furiously in her diary: ‘Papa changed his name about this time in compliance with the will of the late Mr Knight and we are therefore all Knights instead of dear old Austens. How I hate it!!!!!’74 There was no altering the fact, however, and from late 1812 onward, Edward Austen’s family was known by the name of Knight.
It appeared, at first, that the connection between the Knights and Austens would be further strengthened when Edward decided to have Godmersham painted in the spring of 1813 and decamped with his entire family to Chawton. It was the first time the younger children had stayed there, and the two families were in constant contact, though Fanny remained as unimpressed as ever with Chawton Great House. ‘We are half frozen at the cold uninhabited appearance of the old house,’ she wrote in her diary.75 The proximity of the Austens, however, was to make this long visit not only tolerable but also, in the end, unforgettable. ‘I thought we never should get back again,’ Fanny later told Miss Chapman, ‘& yet we were very comfortable at Chawton & enjoyed the society of our friends at the Cottage very much. Mrs Austen’s house is very near ours & of course we met every day frequently’.76 This was the year in which Jane Austen was in the final stages of writing Mansfield Park. Completed in July 1813, it was accepted for publication that November. It was also the period when the Knight girls, now all at home, were afforded unique insights into their aunt’s working life. After seeing them almost daily, Jane then travelled back with them to Godmersham, staying until November, and taking in a visit to London on the way. Many years later, in 1856, Louisa would recall, most vividly, hearing a conversation between the Austen sisters about the plot of Mansfield Park, and would describe its author as she, not yet nine, had seen her:
She had large dark eyes and a brilliant complexion, and long, long black hair down to her knees. She was very absent indeed. She would sit silent awhile, then rub her hands, laugh to herself and run up to her room ...77
Louisa’s memory was told to Pamela, Lady Campbell, daughter of the executed Irish rebel Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Lady Campbell, in ‘extasies’ passed it on, in great excitement, to the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Carlisle, adding the extraordinary revelation that Cassandra had tried to persuade Jane to revise her plot: ‘Miss Austen’s sister Cassandra tried to persuade her to alter the end of Mansfield Park and let Mr Crawford marry Fanny Price,’ Lady Campbell recounted, in astonishment. ‘She [Louisa] remembers their arguing the matter but Miss Austen stood firmly and would not allow the change.’78
This unique glimpse of the authorial confidence of Jane Austen serves as a useful reminder that the playful companion of the Knight children and their friends did not permit interference in her work, even from a dear sister. Louisa’s account of her aunt suddenly seized by inspiration is echoed by another recollection of that time, told many years later by her sister Marianne:
I ... remember how Aunt Jane would sit quietly working beside the fire in the library, saying nothing for a good while, and then would suddenly burst out laughing, jump up and run across the room to a table where pens and paper were lying, write something down, and then come back to the fire and go on quietly working as before.79
These were the two Janes whom the girls were privileged to see – the aunt who sewed, mended, and went quietly about normal daily activities; and the artist, joyously inspired, oblivious of her surroundings or her company. Their accounts demonstrate either their ability to remain unnoticed, or the degree to which Jane trusted the children. Louisa must have been in the room with her aunts to have heard the discussion about the ending of Mansfield Park, perhaps when they were dressing, and brushing their hair – she may have been young enough not to be considered a distraction. There were limits, however. When it came to Jane’s rare readings of the novels, neither Marianne, at eleven, nor Louisa, at eight and a half, was included. Marianne remembered throughout her life sitting outside, excluded and disconsolate, with Charles, Louisa, Cassandra and John:
I remember that when Aunt Jane came to us at Godmersham she used to bring the MS of whatever novel she was writing with her, and would shut herself up with my elder sisters in one of the bedrooms to read them aloud. I and the younger ones used to hear peals of laughter through the door, and thought it very hard that we should be shut out from what was so delightful ...80
Though Marianne believed this occurred at Godmersham, Elizabeth Jenkins suggests in her biography that this memory may in fact refer to the family’s visit to Chawton in the autumn of 1812, as Fanny recalls her aunt reading to her there from the manuscript of Pride and Prejudice. ‘The room in Chawton House where Jane usually sat with the children,’ Jenkins writes, ‘is one over the porch, lined with panelling and known as the Oak Room.’81 Whether Marianne’s memory is of Chawton or not, the Oak Room, used in Jane Austen’s time as a ladies’ withdrawing room after dinner, is still there. Even today, the sense of peace and tranquillity in the little alcove above the window, looking out over the park and beyond to the countryside, makes it easy to believe that Jane Austen did, as family tradition maintains, sit there to observe the world. It is equally possible to believe that she read in that room to the older
girls, Fanny and Elizabeth, while Marianne sat on the stairs outside with the little ones, baffled and disappointed, listening to the laughter. Though Marianne does not say, and probably could not know, whether it was Pride and Prejudice or Mansfield Park which was being read, it is certain that Jane Austen did read from Pride and Prejudice to at least one of her elder nieces not only during the autumn of 1812, but also during the Chawton visit in the spring of 1813. ‘A[un]t Jane spent the morning with me & read P&P to me,’ Fanny recorded in her diary for 5 June 1813.82 The fact that she had been inspired several weeks earlier to write a letter to her aunt in the guise of Mr Darcy’s sister, Georgiana, suggests that readings may have taken place even before June.83 The atmosphere for the children must have been extraordinary. Young though they were, Marianne and Louisa did not fail to perceive that their aunt was uniquely gifted, and it was this perception, undimmed by the passing of many years, which distinguished their later recollections from those of the increasingly conventional and censorious Fanny. Their chances of seeing Jane at work that year were greatly increased by a happy accident. The family remained at Chawton until September 1813, though Edward had not intended to stay quite so long. As Fanny told Miss Chapman, the painting of the house at Godmersham had taken longer than was thought, ‘& the smell would not go off sooner’.84 If the renovations had gone according to plan, Marianne and Louisa might never have had their unforgettable glimpses of Jane Austen in the act of creation.
Jane herself seems to have enjoyed the long visit greatly, though writing to her brother Francis during the summer, she was as detached as ever in her assessment of character. Edward might have become a great landowner, but Jane declined to see him differently. To her, he was still one of the Austens of Steventon Rectory:
The pleasure to us of having them here is so great, that if we were not the best Creatures in the World we should not deserve it. — We go on in the most comfortable way, very frequently dining together, & always meeting in some part of every day. — Edward is very well & enjoys himself as thoroughly as any Hampshire born Austen can desire. Chawton is not thrown away upon him. — He talks of making a new garden; the present is a bad one & ill situated, near Mr Papillon’s; — he means to have the new, at the top of the Lawn behind his own house. — We like to have him proving and strengthening his attachment to the place by making it better. — He will soon have all his children about him, Edward, George and Charles are collected already, & another week brings Henry and William. — It is the custom at Winchester for Georges to come away a fortnight before the Holidays, when they are not to return any more; for fear they should overstudy themselves just at last, I suppose.85
The little nudge at the chronic indolence of George, her petted ‘itty Dordy’ of some years before, suggests that she understood him rather well. George, rather like his uncle Henry Austen, Jane’s favourite brother, never quite did what everyone one else did, and only rarely what was expected. He continued this pattern throughout his life – his nephew Lord Brabourne, Fanny’s son and first editor of Jane Austen’s letters, would later sum him up as ‘one of those men who are clever enough to do almost anything, but live to their lives’ end very comfortably doing nothing.’86 Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Jane loved him. She was rather less impressed, however, with another aspect of his behaviour that summer, when he and his slightly younger brother Henry, or Harry, as the family knew him, ‘showed more interest in one of the servants at the Great House than was considered desirable by their careful aunts’.87 Young men of the Austen family, brought up in the Rectory at Steventon, did not dally with servants. The young gentlemen brought up in the Great House at Godmersham, however, no longer Austens but Knights, clearly felt quite at liberty to do so.
That interesting summer eventually came to an end, and Jane travelled with the Knights to Godmersham for what would be, though no one could have guessed it, her last visit there. On 14 September, after the servants and household had been sent ahead into Kent, Edward set out for London with Jane, Fanny, Lizzy and Marianne, who was to have her twelfth birthday the next day. They were rather confined in their coach, ‘all 4 within, which was a little crowd’. Jane wrote to Francis on 25 September:
My Br., Fanny, Lizzy, Marianne and I composed this division of the family, and filled his carriage, inside and out. Two post-chaises under the escort of George conveyed eight more across the country, the chair brought two, two others came on horseback, and the rest by the coach — and so by one means or another we all are removed. It puts me in mind of the account of St Paul’s shipwreck, where all are said by different means to reach the shore in safety.88
Despite the discomfort of the journey, a playful letter to Cassandra from their first stop, Henry’s house in Henrietta Street near Covent Garden, shows that Jane’s buoyant mood of the summer had continued. ‘I am going to write nothing but short sentences,’ she declared, possibly poking fun at the staccato style of delivery favoured by some of the popular actors of the time, for they had attended the first play of their visit, a very light comedy, the previous night:
There shall be two full stops in every line. Layton and Shear’s is Bedford House. We mean to get there before breakfast if it’s possible. For we feel more and more how much we have to do. And how little time. This house looks very nice.89
A hairdresser called, and attempted to style Jane’s hair in the latest fashion: ‘Mr Hall was very punctual yesterday & curled me out at a great rate,’ she told Cassandra. Though less than impressed by the hairdresser’s attempts, Jane submitted with good humour to the transformation as part of the novelty of the holiday. ‘I thought it looked hideous,’ she confided, ‘and longed for a snug cap instead, but my companions silenced me by their admiration.’90 With greater enthusiasm, she went shopping, a favourite Austen occupation when circumstances allowed, and this outing was made all the more delightful when she received, most unexpectedly, a present of £5 from ‘kind, beautiful Edward’.
The whole party was to go again that night to the theatre in Covent Garden. First, however, everyone had to pay a visit to Mr Spence, the dentist, which no one enjoyed, especially as they were told they would have to return the next day to deal with ‘a very sad hole between two of [Lizzy’s] front teeth’. No one else was due to undergo treatment, which must have been a relief to Marianne, on the eve of her birthday. Once free of Mr Spence, they had their evening out. Theatre had always been a source of joy for the Austens of Steventon, and the habit had passed on to the next generation, with games and charades throughout the winter, and entertainments all through the twelve days of Christmas. The girls had chosen the play – a comedy from 1764 named Midas: an English Burletta. It would not have been Jane’s first choice, she confessed to Cassandra, but it was Marianne’s birthday and she was content that the girls were happy and excited. The performance the night before, Don Juan, or The Libertine Destroyed, had concluded its music and pantomime with a ‘spectacular Representation of the Infernal regions’. They had travelled by coach to see it from a private box, right on the stage, at the Lyceum Theatre, in the grounds of Exeter House in the Strand. Lizzy and Marianne were delighted. ‘They revelled last night in Don Juan,’ she told Cassandra, ‘whom we left in Hell at ½ past eleven. — We had Scaramouche and a Ghost — and were delighted; — I speak of them; my delight was very tranquil.’ In the end, Midas did not thrill the girls quite as much as the wicked Don Juan: ‘& I must say,’ Jane conceded, ‘that I have seen nobody on the stage who has been a more interesting Character than that compound of Cruelty & Lust.’91
On the following day, they were all once again at the dentist, where Lizzy suffered torment and Marianne, on her birthday, had the unpleasant discovery that, after all, she too was to be treated. Jane, as a consequence, flatly refused to let the ‘lover of Teeth and Money and Mischief’ examine her:
Poor Marianne had two taken out after all, the two just beyond the eye teeth, to make room for those in front. — When her doom was fixed, Fanny, Lizzy and I wal
ked into the next room, where we heard each of the two sharp hasty Screams ... He had before urged the expediency of L & M’s being brought to town in the course of a couple of Months to be farther examined, & continued to the last to press for their all coming to him. — My Br would not absolutely promise. — The little girls’ teeth I can suppose in a critical state ... I would not have had him look at mine for a shilling a tooth & double it.92
By the next day all excitements, good and bad, were over, and the entire party was back at Godmersham. This visit, lasting until November, was a happy one for Jane. As Mansfield Park had been accepted for publication, she could relax for a while and, unusually for her, enjoy ‘the luxury of meals especially brought to her on trays, and a fire lit in her bedroom before breakfast’.93 She attended a ball, the last of her life. She found herself with a little less energy for the growing children and, though she tried not to think ill of them, continued to find herself disappointed in her older nephews. In particular, she thought Edward and her former favourite, George, now nineteen and eighteen, had grown very bloodthirsty: ‘Now those two boys who are out with the foxhounds,’ she wrote to Cassandra, ‘will come home and disgust me again by some habit of luxury or some proof of sporting mania — unless I keep it off by this prediction.’94 Yet no prediction in the world could have stopped the boys becoming young men and, for the Knights, becoming young men meant hunting and shooting. Inevitably, and rather more obviously than their sisters, they were growing away from her. It may have been this consciousness that the family was rapidly growing up which caused Jane’s letters, generally so bright, witty and resolutely cheerful, to take on a more serious tone. In late 1814 Fanny had written to Jane of a rather sporadic attachment to a young neighbour, Mr Plumptre, and received sobering, even grave advice:
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