May, Lou & Cass

by Sophia Hillan

  Unsurprisingly, given the prevailing double standard for behaviour in men and women, there appears to have been no immediate consequence for William, who took up his position as planned and, two years later, married Miss Caroline Portal, a match which did not quite please his family socially, but was not actively discouraged.49 His father had, after all, told Lizzy that, with the cost of levelling the old house at Steventon and remodelling it for William, he hoped his son would ‘find a good rich wife to help furnish as well as fill his mansion’, and his son had obligingly done his best.50 As to his affair with the governess at Mersham, though the family kept it a secret ‘from our friends’, the matter leaked out later that year, and caused considerable embarrassment, if not to William, certainly to his brother-in-law Sir Edward Knatchbull, who was by then increasingly prominent in political life.51 Once again, the incident lacks only the ironic assessment of Jane Austen, who had been so unimpressed when George and Henry Knight dallied in their teens with a servant at Godmersham; yet, in her early cautionary tales of George Wickham and John Willoughby, equally handsome and charming, just as capable of disappointing those who loved them and, in both cases, not only subsequently unreproved for their conduct, but actually enabled to make advantageous marriages, she had already made sufficient comment.

  William’s affair with the governess was not to be the only such em- barrassment. By 1826, an even more serious situation took all of Fanny’s attention, not least because it came from an unexpected source. Her eldest stepdaughter, Mary Dorothea, had made a favourable early impression. ‘I never met a more promising child and one more thoroughly disposed and even anxious to do whatever she is told is right,’ she wrote early in their acquaintance. In the first months of the marriage, Mary visited her stepmother each morning before she rose, and Fanny encouraged the ‘dear child’ in her needlework and her study of the piano. ‘Her affection,’ she wrote, ‘I hope to gain in time. She shows ... much excellent feeling.’52

  Her ‘excellent feeling’, unfortunately, was what would cause the next crisis. In the summer of 1824, Fanny wrote with emphasis in her journal, ‘Mary came out, and went to her first ball at Ashford in August.’53 By the end of the next year, she was writing that she had ‘never known so much care and anxiety’, some of which she attributed to her brother Edward’s proposal to and refusal by a Lady Elizabeth Bligh.54 Edward Knight, acting as caretaker for his father at Chawton House, was now in a position to marry and, at almost thirty-two, was apparently anxious to do so.

  The disappointment of a refusal was clearly a blow, yet he was so much recovered by the end of December 1825 that he asked Sir Edward Knatchbull for nineteen-year-old Mary’s hand. If he hoped his near relation to the family would help his suit, he was much mistaken. Fanny wrote in January 1826: ‘We are all under the disagreeable influence of the proposal ... which is now under discussion and deliberation.’ She complained of ‘care, anxiety, worry and uneasiness’.55 Sir Edward refused permission, and the matter was considered closed as far as Fanny was concerned. She described in her diary a pleasant evening in mid-May 1826 when, after her father and Cassandra Jane had left after a visit, and her husband had gone out to dine, she and Mary dined ‘tête-à-tête. Her entry for the next day, Sunday 14 May 1826, was very different. ‘We were thrown into the greatest distress this morning by the discovery that Mary had left the house in the night; and a few lines from Edward soon after explained that she had eloped with him to Scotland!!! Alas for her father! God support him!’56

  This was no exaggeration: on the night of Saturday 13 May 1826 Mary Dorothea Knatchbull and Edward Knight – like Jane Austen’s fictional Lydia and Wickham – eloped. Unlike Lydia and Wickham, they were married at Gretna Green in Scotland on the following Monday. There was no question of keeping this a secret: it was fact. Yet, just as in Pride and Prejudice, because it was fact it had to be accepted. Edward Austen Knight, who was at the same time struggling to conclude his dealings with the claim made some years before on his estate, met the Knatchbulls on the following Wednesday, 17 May 1826. Fanny described it as ‘a wretched meeting’.57 Sir Edward Knatchbull did not blame Fanny. He simply expressed his wish ‘to restore tranquillity with as much propriety as possible and to make the best of a bad business’.58 The difficulty was in the degree of the relationship, as Edward Knight was step-uncle to Mary; for this reason Sir Edward Knatchbull’s fury was directed first towards Edward and then Mary, whom he refused to see.59 Not everyone shared his view. Letters flew among the various Knight, Austen and Knatchbull homes. Sharp-tongued Caroline Austen, James’s younger daughter, reporting with relish some of the family’s reactions – including those of the volatile Jane Leigh Perrot – blamed Sir Edward Knatchbull himself for the situation. Interestingly, Caroline had only limited sympathy for her cousin Fanny, whom she evidently thought somewhat overbearing:

  I sincerely wish he could take all the suffering on himself, as he is the sole cause of the mischief. He made no objection except the connection which was I think most childish. I am very sorry for my Uncle and Lady K., but it will teach her that people cannot always be schooled and advised out of their feelings. Mama heard today from Mrs Leigh Perrot. She wrote full of the news. It had disturbed the party at Scarlets very much, and taken them away sooner than had been intended that Aunt Cassandra might be at Chawton to receive the fugitives. She was very much agitated. How soon do you think they will let the world have a peep at the Bride? I suppose not under two months as a runaway Bride must be twice as great a curiosity as any other.60

  In a rather bitter twist, Edward Knight and Mary Dorothea Knatchbull were then married under English law, on 15 June, by the reformed scapegrace of the previous scandal, the Reverend William Knight. The whole episode cries out for the relief of Jane Austen’s humour, sadly missing in the reactions of both families, except in Caroline’s mischievous wish to have ‘a peep at the Bride’. Caroline’s comment on Fanny also shows how radically the eldest of the Knight girls had changed since her youth, when she was Jane Austen’s favourite niece, and longed for love and romance. Nonetheless, whatever Fanny’s feelings on the subject of Edward’s marriage to her stepdaughter, he was her brother, and she was fearful that his attitude had caused a real rift, writing on 19 May 1826: ‘Oh! That my dear husband would suffer Christian feelings to influence him!’ Her summary for the year 1826 showed her very despondent:

  The events of this wretched year have been greatly influenced by the decided negative Sir E. gave to Edward’s proposal for Mary, which after causing great discomfort between the families ended in her eloping with him on 14th May from London and being married at Gretna Green and afterwards at Steventon by my brother William. This deplorable step occasioned imm- ediate estrangement between Hatch and Godmersham. Sir Edward’s mind is so extremely alienated from his daughter, & disgusted at her conduct ... that I fear matters can never be set to rights.61

  Fanny’s prediction was accurate: strain, however well-disguised, entered the relationship of the Knight and Knatchbull families, and was never quite eased. Even worse, though all the Knights welcomed Mary after the initial scandal, Sir Edward Knatchbull was to see his daughter only once more in her lifetime.62

  With all that was happening, it is perhaps not surprising that Marianne was left to deal with Godmersham, where even the youngest were now almost grown. By the time of Edward’s elopement in 1826 their brother John, Fanny’s ‘little darling’, was almost eighteen, about to leave Winchester and go into the army. Louisa was twenty-one and Cassandra Jane nineteen. After Edward and Mary’s shocking breach of conduct, and their betrayal of Fanny’s trust, the family intended to make sure that the two youngest sisters would not go the same way.

  Chapter 3: ‘No Money – All Charms’

  Pride, Prejudice and Persuasion

  1827–1834

  ‘The gentleman is in the army then?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Aye – there is nothing like your officers for captivating the ladies, young
or old. – There is no resisting a cockade, my dear.’

  THE WATSONS

  It is one of the oldest devices in literature, well-known to Jane Austen, to have a stranger – mysterious, handsome, or dangerous – arrive in the middle of a settled community, upsetting all previous assumptions. The introduction in 1827 to the Knight family circle of Lord George Hill would have great and far-reaching consequences, not just for Cassandra but also for Louisa, and even for Marianne. He was the catalyst that would change everything.

  As 1827 began, the Austen and Knight families were still reeling from the shock of Mary Knatchbull’s elopement with Edward Knight the previous spring, and it was beginning to become apparent that Edward’s allegiance had shifted from Godmersham to Chawton.1 More change was to follow. Charles Knight, who had been studying for the Ministry, was ordained, and the youngest brother, John, who had left Winchester College in October 1826 and become an Ensign in the 37th Regiment of Foot, went in the spring of 1827 to join his regiment in Ireland.2

  Mrs George Austen, Jane’s mother and grandmother to the Godmersham family, died on 22 March of that year, aged seventy-two, and was buried at Chawton.

  Major alterations were being made to the Knatchbull house at Mersham le Hatch in Kent and, in February 1827, Fanny and her family went to their London house at 30 Great George’s Street, accompanied by Louisa. At the end of March, shortly after their grandmother’s funeral, Fanny brought Louisa home and took Cassandra Jane to stay in London until the end of June. Though Louisa did make a few short visits to her sisters in London that spring, Cassandra was essentially on her own with Fanny, who could not fail to be conscious that her sister might now feel the loss of her schoolroom companion; the former Mary Knatchbull remained so deeply in disgrace with her father that he would not see her, though she was shortly expecting her first child. Fanny undoubtedly did her best to ensure that, apart from the customary and probably painful visit to the dentist, her young sister enjoyed her days and evenings. They walked in the park, dined out or went to the opera. They attended musical evenings at the homes of their friends, where Cassandra, on at least one occasion, played on the harp and sang.3 They wrote letters every day, including some to poor banished Mary and, like Jane and Cassandra before them, they loved to go out driving and shopping. They paid many social calls and received a great number of visitors, both family and old friends. There were also some new friends, carefully scrutinised by Fanny, one of whom was a young Irish nobleman named Lord George Hill.

  His name first appears in Fanny’s diary in the spring of 1827. On 8 May, she wrote: ‘Lord George Hill ... accompanied Cass, Lou and me’ on a shopping expedition.4 Over the next two months his name would recur with increasing frequency. His place in society was unquestioned, Fanny noting that they had attended an evening gathering on 17 May at the home of Lady Salisbury, who was Lord George’s aunt.5 He joined them on their shopping trips twice in early June, and on 9 June, Fanny and Cassandra went to the opera, ‘where,’ Fanny wrote, ‘Lord George Hill joined us’. Four days later, on 13 June, he called and accompanied Fanny, Cassandra and one of Fanny’s little daughters on their walk to Kensington Gardens; two days after that he called and drove with them again on a shopping trip. On 25 June they went out shopping and visiting yet again and, as Fanny wrote, ‘met Lord George Hill, who accompanied us a little way and afterwards dined here’. The next day, however, her diary records that ‘Lord G. Hill left town early for Ireland to join his regiment.’ Yet, the day after that, Fanny found to her great surprise that Cassandra had received a proposal from a ‘Mr Boroughs’.

  Mr Boroughs, or Burrows, was immediately refused.6 It is difficult to avoid the impression that his offer was most ill-timed. If he was in London, he can hardly have been unaware of Lord George’s attentions; perhaps it was that, combined with the fact that the family was just about to return to Kent, which precipitated his sudden proposal. Yet, there was clearly no contest. The diary account of Lord George’s courtship reads almost uncannily like Jane Austen’s description in Persuasion of Anne Elliot’s fateful meetings in Bath with Captain Wentworth, echoing her sense of his growing interest and her desolation at his departure after the musical performance where they have tried, unsuccessfully, to spend a little time together.7 There is in this part of the diary, though Fanny could not be said to have inherited her aunt’s gift for narrative any more than for irony, the same charged sense of an unspoken affinity and a steadily developing attachment, and the same sense of frustration and anti-climax at the gentleman’s sudden removal.

  It is not clear whether Lord George signalled any intention of returning, or of proposing. Like Anne Elliot, however, Cassandra made her allegiance clear in her refusal of another suitor. Some days later, at the end of June 1827, the whole family party returned as planned to Kent for the summer. Then, on 11 August, a short entry in Fanny’s diary gave welcome news: ‘Wet morning, but it cleared before 3 when I set out with my 2 babes and 3 maids to dear Godmersham. G. H. W. & Ch. are here to my great delight. Cass told me of her proposal from Ld G. Hill from Ireland, which Papa answered yesterday’.8 No exclamation marks were necessary. It is a calm entry, and the presence at the family home of George, Henry, William and Charles Knight seems to emphasise the sense of general delight over the proposal. Only John, who was still with his regiment; Lizzy, recovering from the birth of her latest child; and Edward, at Chawton, were missing from the gathering. Even Mr Billington, the neighbouring clergyman whom Marianne had, without rancour, turned down five years before, was among the happy party that evening.

  On 27 August, Louisa and Cassandra called with Fanny on their way to visit their Deedes cousins at Sandling, no doubt to share the good news. The next day, everything changed. ‘My dear excellent father,’ Fanny wrote, ‘rode over to see me & told me of Lady Downshire’s disapprobation of Ld. G.H’s marrying Cass, on acct. of not money enough.’9 This terrible news, so much worse because unexpected, had now to be communicated to Cassandra, and it fell to Fanny to deliver the blow. As expected, Louisa and Cassandra called again on their way back from Sandling on 29 August, the day after Fanny had heard of Lord George’s mother’s veto, and her diary simply records, with the understatement of the inevitable, ‘I told Cass of Lady D’s letter.’ She says nothing of her sister’s reaction. There may not have been time: many visitors called that day, and a large party, including Fanny, went to the Ashford ball. It was ‘a good ball’, Fanny wrote, and the party ‘came back to supper & all slept here except the officers’.10 Fanny does not say whether Cassandra and Louisa were of the party; yet, it is hard to imagine which might have been worse – attending in misery the opening ball of the season, or going home. For the two sisters, close in age and temperament as Jane and Elizabeth Bennet, it would have been a dismal evening in either circumstance. In any case, what-ever Cassandra’s reaction, there was nothing to be done. ‘No money – all charms,’ was Lady Downshire’s reported view of Cassandra, worthy of Lady Catherine de Bourgh at her most cutting.11 It is clear by Fanny’s summary written at the end of 1827, that she for one was certain that the affair was over. ‘Ld G. Hill paid [Cassandra] great attention in London & proposed to her in August,’ she wrote, ‘but they could not make money enough and it all went off.’12 As in her aunt’s novels, financial considerations and the veto of a powerful matriarch had dictated the end of love.

  When Cassandra first met him in 1827, Lord George was twenty-five years old, and a career soldier. A portrait by Richard James Lane shows him to have been dark-haired, lean and handsome, and he was also, as Jane Austen preferred a young man to be, courteous, clever and cultured.13 To Cassandra, aged twenty, the young officer must have appeared quite as dashing as Captain Wentworth to the young Anne Elliot, or George Wickham to the Bennet sisters. Like Mr Darcy, he was of a noble family. Born on 9 December 1801, the youngest son of Arthur, 2nd Marquess of Downshire, and his wife, the former Mary Sandys, he had but one fault: like Cassandra, he had no money.

  Lord Downshire
had been the owner of extensive properties in both Ireland and England, his family’s long service to the crown having been rewarded by the granting of extensive tracts of property. The Hill family motto, ‘Per Deum et Ferrum Obtinui. Ne Tentes Aut Perfice,’ translates as ‘Through God and my sword I have obtained. Attempt not, or accomplish.’14 The first of his ancestors to take up land in Ireland had been Moyses Hill, a follower of the first Earl of Essex in his attempted settlement of Ireland in the 1570s, and later a participant in the campaigns by the second Earl of Essex against Hugh O’Neill.15 The 2nd Marquess had died, aged only forty-eight, three months before Lord George’s birth: partly because of debts inherited from the 1st Marquess and mainly because his political expenditure had left the estate in great financial difficulty, his youngest son was largely unprovided for, and could not expect to inherit any sum of consequence. A career was essential and, given the family’s tradition of military service, the army was an obvious choice.