May, Lou & Cass

by Sophia Hillan

  Yet, just as Cassandra, like Anne Elliot, picked up the threads of her life despite her great disappointment, so, like Captain Wentworth, did Lord George Hill. He continued, for the moment, in his military career, although he might just as easily have entered politics. The symbiotic connection between army and society in nineteenth-century Ireland was, in the words of the daughter of a serving army officer of a later generation, ‘an order so unreal and preposterous as to be like theatricals in fancy dress’. A first-hand account by this lady, Nora Robertson, illustrates its nuances by dividing Irish society into imaginary rows, adding, in echo of the opinion which ended the hopes of Lord George and Cassandra, that ‘though breeding was essential it still had to be buttressed by money’:

  Row A. Peers who were Lord or Deputy Lieutenants, High Sheriffs and Knights of St Patrick. If married adequately their entrenchment was secure and their sons joined the Guards, the 10th Hussars or the R.N.

  Row B. Other peers with smaller seats, ditto baronets, solvent country gentry and young sons of Row A, (sons in Green Jackets, Highland Regiments, certain cavalry, gunners and R.N.). Row A used them for marrying their younger children.

  Row C. Less solvent country gentry, who could only allow their sons about £100 a year. These joined the Irish Regiments which were cheap; or transferred to the Indian Army. They were recognised and respected by A and B and belonged to Kildare St. Club.

  Row D. Loyal professional people, gentlemen professional farmers, trade, large retail or small wholesale, they could often afford more expensive Regiments than Row C managed. Such rarely cohabited with Rows A and B but formed useful cannon-fodder at Protestant Bazaars and could, if they were really liked, achieve Kildare Street.50

  Lord George naturally belonged in Row A: he was, therefore expected to marry ‘adequately’, and was not without opportunity. An account of the Hillsborough House Twelfth Night Ball, held in January 1828, gives a long list of ‘most of our resident Nobility and Gentry’. The Marquess and Marchioness of Donegal were there; as were Lord and Lady Dufferin, the Misses Blackwood and Colonel Ward of Bangor and his family; and an array of young ladies: ‘the Misses Saurin, Batt, Greg, Moore, D’Arcy, Curteis, Trevor, Innes &C’. When ‘the dancing was resumed, with increased spirit, after supper’, Lord George was much in evidence for, as the contemporary account relates, in the absence of Lord Arthur Hill, ‘prevented from attending the ball by an unlucky accident in dismounting from his horse ... the attentions of the Noble Host and Hostess were most ably assisted by his brother, Lord George Hill who, with several of the Officers of the 8th Royal Irish Hussars, added much to the brilliance of the scene’.51 Had Lord George wanted to marry he had, like Captain Wentworth, no shortage of young ladies eager to accept him.

  Instead, he concentrated on his career. In 1829, two years after his parting from Cassandra, he was stationed in Portobello Barracks in Dublin. Following the passing of the Catholic Relief Act, signalling the beginning of Catholic Emancipation, there was considerable disquiet in England. In her diary for 1829, Fanny records with agitation: ‘The Bill for Catholic Emancipation [has] passed in spite of our opposition!’52 In Ireland, a simmering unrest continued as a new movement began for the repeal of the Act of Union itself, led by the first Catholic to be allowed to take his seat in the House of Commons, Daniel O’Connell. Yet when, only three months later, Lord George wrote to his brother, Lord Downshire, of his imminent move from Dublin to the North of Ireland, he refrained from political opinion, confining himself to his life as a soldier:

  July 20, 1829

  We acquired orders last night to hold ourselves in readiness to march to the north on Monday. I suppose Enniskillen will be our direction; there is therefore no chance of my getting to the House. Don’t let her Ladyship fag herself. The General and I arrived at noon on Friday evening, having seen the troops at Dundalk and Drougheda [sic] on our way, we were well lodged at Newry and we dined with McKay [?] of the 50th. My last purchase has been dying of inflammation but there are hopes as she is not yet dead. Tell Arthur that his Grey Mare is well.

  Yrs affecly 53

  He was evidently not estranged from his family, and he had not given way to misery. Stationed in Dublin, he busied himself with the discipline of military life. Increasingly, however, he showed himself willing to assist his brother in political matters: he was, after all, the son of a mother who took politics very seriously. Lady Downshire was prepared to spend money on political campaigns, though she held back in matters of the heart. In 1807, during the 3rd Marquess’s minority, she had spent £13,000 in an election in County Down, and at the same time purchased an estate at Carrickfergus which, though a speculative investment, increased the family’s political strength in County Antrim.54 Such support had become even more important with the gathering strength of agitation for Catholic Emancipation and, after 1829, for repeal of the Union of Great Britain and Ireland. Lord George, as his letters to his brother from 1828–1830 show, was fully prepared to support his family in whatever action they took.55

  The world Jane Austen left in 1817 had almost disappeared. In June 1830, William IV succeeded George IV who, as Prince Regent, had caused Miss Austen to be made aware that a dedication of her new novel, Emma, would not be unwelcome. His death brought an end to the England Jane Austen understood, inherited from the eighteenth century. In Ireland, by contrast, it seemed the troubles, which had ended the eighteenth century with a rebellion, were likely to resurface at any moment. The implementation of the Act of Union of Great Britain and Ireland on 1 January 1801 had brought in its wake the hope, almost the expectation, that the last main legal restriction on Catholics, namely the right to sit in Parliament, would be lifted. That this process did not really begin until 1829, with the passing of the Catholic Relief Act, and then only after a long and often bitter struggle, occasioned continuing tension between Catholics and Protestants, in both England and Ireland.56 The charismatic Irish Nationalist Daniel O’Connell, who had lobbied tirelessly for Catholic Emancipation, moved immediately to a new campaign for repeal of the Union itself. This growing movement, combined with widespread famine followed by cholera, ensured an unsettled political climate. Lord Anglesey who, during his previous tenure as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, had urged ‘earnest consideration of Catholic Emancipation’, now, when re-appointed to the new government formed by Earl Grey in November 1830, declared himself opposed to O’Connell’s demand for repeal of the Union. In 1833, Lord Downshire, commenting on the unavoidable interconnection of land value and politics, wrote:

  Mr O’C[onnell] threatens to have the Boro’ [Carrickfergus] disenfranchised. If that be the case the Lyndon property [bought by Lady Downshire in 1807] will sink one half, but if the Solicitor comes in for it, the Boro’ would be preserved ... and if the Franchise is raised as supposed, the value of the Votes and Estate would rise.57

  The ‘Solicitor’ mentioned in the letter was Philip Crampton who, through Lord George, had requested Lord Downshire’s support at Carrickfergus. Why approach the Marquess through his youngest brother? By a strange irony, shortly after the marriage with Cassandra was forbidden, Lord George’s standing in the world had begun to improve. Having reached the rank of Major at twenty-eight, he retired from the army in 1830, shortly afterwards standing for Parliament and becoming MP for Carrickfergus, in County Antrim, a seat owned by his brother. Though this ensured a further strengthening of the political power of his family according to Lady Downshire’s grand plan, it was costly, as Downshire had to provide Lord George with £300 per year as a property qualification to represent Carrickfergus. Lord Downshire’s letters of this time lament the straitened circumstances of the family, and the unlikelihood of any improvement in the foreseeable future. In hard economic terms, it seems Lady Downshire’s objection to her youngest son’s choice of bride was not without basis so that, whatever Lord George’s feelings may have been about his broken engagement to Cassandra, and however much his standing had improved, his financial position had not. It did not
seem, in 1830–1831, that there was any possibility of his renewing his proposals.

  He had his share of personal grief. Lord George had only two sisters, both of whom died unmarried, Lady Charlotte six years before he met Cassandra, in 1821, and Lady Mary in 1830. Then, on 10 July 1831, his brother, Lord Augustus Hill, died. He was the brother closest to Lord George in every way, only sixteen months his senior and his travelling companion on the Grand Tour in 1818–1819.58 Yet, whatever his private grief, Lord George’s star continued to rise in the political world. In 1833, he was appointed Comptroller of the Household of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and Viceroy, Lord Anglesey. He was consequently of considerable importance and, while Ireland’s political world was certainly not an easy or comfortable place to be, he was by then quite at home in it. In 1834, in his capacity as Comptroller of the Household, he accompanied the Viceroy on a fact-finding visit to outlying poverty-stricken coastal districts in the west of Ireland. It proved to be a turning point in his life. Their guide was Sir James Dombrain, Inspector General of the Coastguard, who had recently purchased a small estate in Dunlewey, Donegal, and would become a trusted friend to Lord George. ‘I believe,’ he later wrote, ‘I was in some measure instrumental in inducing Lord G. Hill to settle here,’ and went on to explain how it happened:

  The wretched ways he then saw and the bad management on many estates first suggested to his benevolent mind the idea of purchasing a property and working out his own views as to raising the People to a moral and social scale of civilisation. His Lordship eventually succeeded in purchasing the property he now holds on most of Gweedore, a worse selection in its then state he could not have made. In encountering the extreme difficulties incident to all Proprietors ... he may truly have been said to have ‘taken the Bull by the Horns’.59

  Lord George’s interest in Ireland was not confined to politics: he was end- lessly fascinated by its landscape, history, culture and especially its language, in which he had become a considerable scholar.60 When he first visited Donegal, he knew this was an opportunity he could not forego. He was, however, no idle dreamer. Though deeply struck by the countryside and its people, and determined to try to buy property there if and when he was in a position to do so, he was not motivated solely by appreciation of the wild beauty of Donegal. Lord George was eminently practical and had, in addition, the zeal of the reformer. His plans were radical: he was fired by a desire to rid the country of a farming system he thought outdated, and to introduce new and efficient methods. It would be no small undertaking, as Dombrain’s description of his own first sight of ‘this rough-hewn land’ shows:

  My first attempt to see Dunlaoey [sic] was made on Horseback. I left James Gallagher’s at Bunbeg, made to Gortahork to where the road terminates ... I was then four miles from Dunlaoey with nothing but a dangerous Mountain track before me and as night was coming on I was compelled to return … Some months afterwards I was induced again to attempt it. I then walked from Bunbeg and by the side of the River where the Hotel now stands and by the margin of the Lake to Dunlaoey. I subsequently succeeded in getting the line of Road made ... to Gweedore and in effecting other slight improvements ... [M]y official duties ... precluded the possibility of doing more for the improvement of the people, whose habits of self-will and lawlessness ... required ... watchful care to check and amend.61

  A similar spirit of improvement had fired Lord George’s mind and by 1834 he knew that he wanted to own land, and that Donegal in Ireland was where he wished that land to be. Since 1827 he had known that it was Cassandra Knight with whom he desired to spend his life and, accordingly, he now planned to renew his proposals. Cassandra, having apparently reconciled herself to disappointment and to have settled back to life in Godmersham, suddenly announced in July 1834, to the surprise of her entire acquaintance, that she was engaged to be married. It was not, however, to Lord George Hill.

  Chapter 4: ‘Wintering in England’

  Cassandra’s Marriage

  1834–1842

  ‘Irish! Ah! I remember – and she is gone to settle in Ireland. – I do not wonder that you should not wish to go with her into that country ... ’

  THE WATSONS

  ‘Cass’ra looked uncommonly well, but with her chaplet of orange flowers & white veil over it was rather like a victim.’ 1 It was an unusual remark for a brother to make of his sister on her wedding day; yet, this was in many ways a unusual wedding. Because of Charles Knight’s habit of recounting in his diary the details of everyday events, a unique account exists of Cassandra Jane’s marriage on 21 October 1834. Charles could not have known how sadly prescient his careful observations would prove. ‘The people crowded round,’ he wrote, ‘to see her get in & out of her carriage, & poked their faces quite close to her, saying poor thing, how handsome, how very beautiful, generally adding poor thing or some compassionate remark as if she was going to be buried alive.’2

  That summer, like her aunt Jane thirty-two years earlier, Cassandra had suddenly and most unexpectedly become engaged to a gentleman from a neighbouring family.3 In Jane’s case, the engagement to Harris Bigg-Wither of Manydown lasted less than twenty-four hours; in Cassandra’s, wedding plans were made. In temperament, the two suitors were not dissimilar. Like Harris Bigg-Wither, Musgrave Alured Henry Harris was a youngest son, awkward and shy, much indulged by his parents and older siblings. His father, George, 1st Baron Harris of Seringapatam and Mysore, lived in Belmont House, near Faversham in Kent, and had a distinguished military record, not only in India, but also in the War of American Independence. Musgrave, ‘Mus’ to his family, had been a source of continuing concern to his parents, showing no interest in a military life and preferring to enter the Church. His academic qualifications however, rather precluded this at first, his father remarking that he was not ‘one of the illumine’, and he went to India in 1822, aged twenty-one, to join the Bombay Civil Service. A notoriously poor correspondent, he did not tell his parents of the severe damage caused to his health by his contracting cholera soon after he arrived; as a consequence, he gave up India after six years and returned to England, this time realising his early ambition to enter the Church. In 1833 he became Vicar of St Peter’s, Southborough, Tonbridge in Kent, a mission church, not very far from Godmersham. His appointment left him far from wealthy, and cholera had damaged his constitution. No one could understand why Cassandra had accepted him.4

  Her sister Fanny, the only mother she had really known, was appalled. ‘A letter from Cassandra with the astounding announcement of her having accepted Musgrave Harris!!’ she wrote on 10 July 1834, with the characteristic exclamation marks she reserved for shocking news. ‘I am afraid she is mad!’ The entire family was in agreement, and Fanny went to Godmersham as soon as possible. ‘We all talked over & lamented dearest Cass’s infatuation. Oh that it could by any means be stopped!’ By 12 July, she had written to her father and Louisa ‘in hopes of suggesting some means of stopping her odious match!’ After a week in which no one could talk about anything else, a letter came from Louisa ‘to say Cass’s horrible engagement is put off for at least 6 months, & that she is to go today into Hants with Papa’. Fanny wrote at once to her aunt Cassandra Austen to tell her what was happening, and was rewarded some weeks later by a letter from Chawton on 1 August, ‘with the delightful intelligence that Cass has given up her horrible engagement with Mr Musgrave Harris!!!’5

  A query by her cousin, Caroline Austen, worthy of Elizabeth Bennet at her most acerbic, may give a clue to what happened. ‘We depend upon your being able to tell us,’ Caroline demanded in August 1834 of her sister-in-law Emma, James Edward’s wife, ‘why Cassandra Knight’s marriage is to come to nothing — was she afraid of Mr Harris’ poverty, or did he become less agreeable on further acquaintance?’6 Her barbed afterthought, while almost an echo of George Wickham’s discourteous comment on Georgiana Darcy, gives a less than flattering view of Cassandra, and her family: ‘I dare say she is much improved — I used to like her the least of my cousins. I
thought she had the family faults without their redeeming good humour, but she was scarcely grown up when I saw her.’7 Caroline does not list the family faults of which she found Cassandra guilty. A letter from Jane to Cassandra, however, written during Caroline’s last visit to Godmersham in 1808, when she was three and Cassandra not yet two, may give some explanation of her antipathy: ‘Little Caroline looks very plain among her cousins,’ she wrote, ‘& tho’ she is not so headstrong or humoursome as they are, I do not think her at all more engaging’.8 Cassandra may well have been headstrong: she had, just the summer before, gone bathing in rough seas at Herne Bay when her brother Charles would not attempt it. Caroline’s judgement, however, may not have been without bias: she does not seem to have been overly fond of her Knight cousins, and had once made strenuous attempts to dissuade her brother James Edward from an attachment to Marianne.