May, Lou & Cass

by Sophia Hillan

  In Gweedore, meanwhile, the hotel had begun to recover from its boycotting, and even to benefit from the aftermath of the murder of Inspector Martin. A party of ladies from London wrote in the Hotel Book for 13 September 1889: ‘We regret that this comfortable hotel is not near Derrybeg as the walk is a long one to Father McFadden where the interest of the district is centred.’58 Marianne understood that Arthur, when he visited Donegal, wanted to see a return from his investments in the property and the business. She understood too that, like the tenants, she and Cassandra were expendable. With all that was happening in her immediate family it is perhaps unsurprising that Marianne’s letters do not, after that unambiguous statement of 1887, comment on the social upheaval all around her, though in a sense, her carefully apolitical letters may make in themselves an oblique comment on the uncertainty of the times. In every way, it would have been inappropriate for her to comment on Inspector Martin’s death.

  The only passage which could be taken to refer to the volatile state of the countryside in 1889 came in November, when she apologised to Montagu and Florence because she could not invite their son, Henry Knight, then stationed in Ireland, to come and visit. Fourteen years before, when he was a chronically seasick naval cadet, Louisa had sent Henry detailed instructions on finding Ballyare. Now, Cassandra had met him, and been concerned for his appearance of ill-health: yet, he could not be invited. November, the month when he might have come, was when tenants were required to pay their rents.59 Arthur, in examining his accounts, would decide the future of his aunt and sister. November 1889 would be too tense a time to have a visitor in Ballyare. ‘I greatly dislike,’ Marianne wrote, ‘knowing he is in Ireland, & not being able to ask him to come here & pay us a visit: but I am afraid it can’t be — but if affairs mend, & we can invite him sometime or other I trust he will be able to come & see us.’ Marianne missed her family and this letter, like so many following Louisa’s death, reflects an ever-deepening loneliness, which she no longer tried to conceal. ‘I have grown in my old age so idle, & get so soon tired of writing that I put it off … but that does not mean that I forget my dear relations, be they at Chawton or elsewhere, & I highly enjoy hearing tidings of them.’60

  To add to Marianne’s loneliness, Cassandra was again with her sister Norah in November 1889. During that long, difficult autumn, Marianne stayed at Ballyare, accompanied only by her nephew Augustus Hill and, though she continued to interest herself in the garden, the weather and the rituals of everyday life, her sadness and anxiety were palpable:

  Our weather too has been beautiful & mild till the few last days, when rain & wind, & now snow have succeeded, & I have not been out of the house since Tuesday, & then only to Church in the carriage. Today seems better, between the snow showers, sunny & nice — Augustus & I have been here for nearly 7 weeks, whilst Cass. is holidaying — she gives us hopes of returning home next week, & I hope very much she will, & will be much the better for her visits.61

  In the end, having examined his accounts in November, Arthur allowed his aunt and sister to stay on at Ballyare. Marianne, with her niece and one of her nephews, visited the hotel in person in September 1890. It is unsurprising that no comment beyond the careful, ‘Hotel very comfortable’, was made in the Hotel Book. Interestingly, it was eighty-nine-year-old Marianne and not her middle-aged nephew who signed the book for all three.62

  Though they had been permitted to stay on at Ballyare, however, Marianne had enough experience to know this could not be more than a stay of execution. The death of Inspector Martin and its aftermath had altered irretrievably the relation of landlord and tenant in Gweedore. Arthur’s making it clear that Marianne and Cassandra’s tenure depended on their ability to manage their finances, and Montagu’s offer of a home for one but not the other, brought home the reality of their situation.

  Isolated in Donegal, they were at the last outpost, almost at the edge of the world as far as their family was concerned. Marianne’s last letters, sent between the death of Louisa in 1889 and her own six years later, reflect a growing sense of detachment, despite the realisation that Arthur could and might at any moment ask her to find herself another home. She did not want to be parted from her dear niece, the youngest Cassandra: they had come to share, in a late-found symbiosis, a certain ironically mordant humour, ostensibly mild, yet just short of acerbic, reminiscent of their aunt Jane. The letters of this period reflect that bittersweet acceptance of life as it was, not as they might have wished it to be.

  Their experience did not harden Marianne and Cassandra towards anyone, even Arthur, for when he came down with a cold while visiting Ballyare in February 1890 – coincidentally, on the first anniversary of the murder of Inspector Martin – they nursed him through it with their usual care and affection.63 Nonetheless, Marianne clearly felt her own increasing infirmity. ‘I can do very little,’ she wrote in July 1890, ‘indoors or out.’ Unable to engage in her greatest pleasure, she had to be content to watch. ‘This fine weather is very pleasant for being out in the garden & sitting on benches admiring the flowers,’ she told Florence, ‘particularly my favourite roses which had been abundant & delicious, & so has our fruit been.’64 In that winter, with frosts and what she described as ‘an immense flood’, she felt the cold, keenly, and had to make an effort to finish her letters, rather than rest by the fire.65

  Despite her increasing infirmity, Marianne did not become selfish or inward-looking, though she tended to wish for more letters than she received. She continued to try to cheer the others, keeping a faithful record in her head of all their joys and problems, rarely failing to enquire or offer to help. When Florence Knight fell ill in January 1891, Marianne comforted her with the words of the eighteenth-century poet James Thomson, whose work Jane Austen had known : ‘ “Gentle Spring Ethereal, mildness come”, — as Thompson [sic] prettily says in his Seasons —.’66 She would write that Cassandra was recovering from her own ill-health, or had just come in from the garden, and regret again that she could not join her and work with her. ‘I have not been out of the house for many weeks,’ she wrote in early April 1891, ‘though I am very thankful to say I am almost, if not quite well again; but the Doctor begged me not on any account to go out whilst this bitterly cold wintry East Wind continued, & as it still keeps on, I obediently stay in the house longing daily to pace round the garden.’ 67

  Home was still ‘beloved England’, yet, even when summer came, though she travelled as far as Norah’s house in County Down, she was in two minds about travelling further: the journey was too long and wearying and, though she hated to admit it, she felt too ‘shaky and tottery’.68 In the end, she appears not to have gone: her spirits were low and, writing to Florence, feeling deprived of news for a long time, she was uncharacteristically distant. ‘I have but little to say,’ she wrote, with a touch of asperity, ‘so my epistle will not detain you long from more important business.’69 By September 1891, however, she had clearly received a series of kind letters from Montagu and Florence, who may have realised how lonely and unwell she was beginning to feel. ‘They all rejoiced my heart, & my warmest thanks are due to each beloved writer,’ Marianne wrote in gratitude. That winter was severe, with a ‘terrible gale’ which cost the grounds of Ballyare many trees. ‘It was wondrous fierce,’ she marvelled, in one of those expressions which, so reminiscent of eighteenth-century diction, serve as a reminder that she was more familiar with that world than the more modern one around her.70In the summer of 1892, Ballyare House was to be painted, and Marianne, Cassandra and Augustus all decamped, not to the Gweedore Hotel, but to Moville – just as almost eighty years before, the young Marianne and her family had moved to Chawton while Godmersham was redecorated. Then, in addition to her father, brothers and sisters, Marianne had had family nearby in her grandmother and her aunts Cassandra and Jane. Now it was one very old lady, with a middle-aged niece and nephew, who moved out for the summer. To their surprise, the change suited them all: yet, as none of them was rich, ‘expense [was] the
counter-irritant for’, as Marianne wrote, ‘we like being here very much.’71

  The following winter weakened her further and, in February 1893, once more unable to go out, she was greatly cast down by the deaths of Lizzy’s son Cecil Rice, and Fanny’s eldest son, Lord Brabourne. Increasingly conscious of her age and frailty, she began to withdraw into herself. ‘I can’t write fit to be seen,’ she wrote to Florence in April 1893, ‘as you will see, for which reason I very seldom now write any letters and very rarely receive any.’ Her nephew George had gone to visit the Wards, and she felt the loneliness of the house, unrelieved even by the presence of Cassandra.72 Cassandra had been ill again, and by May was ‘gone for a fortnight to her brother Arthur’s to be braced up’. Left alone with George, Marianne sorely missed her niece.73 On her ninety-second birthday in 1893, she thanked Florence for ‘remembering my old birthday’, adding ruefully, ‘my writing power is well nigh over, & I shall be obliged to ask you to put up with a few lines only’.74 By her next birthday, 15 September 1894, she had not only Cassandra, but also Augustus and George with her in the house. She was now very frail, and her mode of conveyance was similar to that used by Jane Austen when, in her last illness, she could no longer walk:

  I am steadily losing strength and the use of my limbs — I can scarcely walk at all but I do not complain as I am well-provided with vehicles from some of our kind neighbours and also have a very comf. basket chair, drawn by a capital donkey led by a famous boy … We keep one horse, a very good one who draws the very nice little Phaeton our friend lends me — So you will see that I am very well off. I dislike cars and never get into one if I can help it.75

  Marianne had now entered the last year of her life. She was obliged to have letters read to her; yet she managed in February 1895 to write in her old conversational teasing style to her eldest nephew, Edward Bridges Rice, on the occasion of his son Henry’s forthcoming marriage. Though now in his mid-seventies Edward was still, to Marianne, the first child she had welcomed into the world; and their shared history seemed to awaken her old brightness of spirit:

  ... if I were as young as you are I would write my thanks & congrats on a larger sheet of paper, but as the case stands, I am obliged to content myself with this tiny miserly scrap which I hope you will manage to read, before you throw it into the blazing fire. I hope writing your very nice letter to me did not tire you too much. I liked your letter so much, & so did Cassandra, who helped me read it. I think the sound of Henry’s Missis a very nice one, and I send him and you my hearty congratulations, & best love. It seems to be the fashion to be poor, so of course I am, but if I can hunt up a new 6d before very long, I shall send it to Henry to spend on a wedding present for himself — if it never arrives, tell him I am probably frozen, or in prison. I am so very sorry you have been ill, dearest Edward, and sincerely trust you are getting better, and will soon be well again. What severe weather we are having! Not at all pleasant, and very cold indeed. I have not been out of the house for ever so long, & I hope you have not either. I am pretty well, thank you, but weak enough to satisfy anybody — this is very pretty and nice to write upon — the paper I mean — I can’t write any more now; so Goodbye my dearest Edward …76

  It is a return to the lively, funny, generous Marianne whom Edward Rice had undoubtedly known, the sadness and depression following her last sister’s death and the possibility of yet another house move seeming, however fleetingly, to recede. She was aided in her enjoyment of this forthcoming wedding by Cassandra’s adding her own postscript to the cousin who had once, long ago, been in love with her sister, Norah. The same tone, the same ironic, playful turns of phrase, indicate how well attuned she and her aunt were:

  So ‘the girl that had hold of the tow rope’ has landed her ‘boy’ safely! & I enclose a line in Aunt May’s letter to wish you & Cecy joy very heartily, as Miss Godley sounds so nice & moreover has Irish blood in her; I do not think that is a drawback in your opinion (remembering pathetic reminiscences of Julia O’Sullivan!) (poor thing, I always think you behaved rather badly to her, so you had better be doubly kind to Miss Helen Godley on the other’s account. Of course you won’t show this to Cecy). An’t I a bad girl? I mean old woman, how one does forget that one gets old …77

  In this, which may be Cassandra Hill’s only surviving letter, it is possible to see that something of Jane Austen’s liveliness of spirit had transferred itself to her. Yet, unlike most of her English relatives, as Jane herself might have been the first to acknowledge, Cassandra clearly valued her Irish heritage. It is unlikely that Jane Austen would have told this great-niece that she did not know the manners of Ireland.

  Happy though they were, Marianne and Cassandra did not have much longer together. Marianne’s last letter of all was written to Montagu on 22 July 1895 and, rather poignantly, concerns a gift he had made to her of Jane’s charade book.78 Marianne, struggling to write her thanks, was indeed touched by the gift. Yet, she had clearly quite forgotten that her aunt was also the acclaimed novelist, Jane Austen:

  A grand party of thanks with my best love I send you for yr 2 last letters & dear Aunt Jane’s Charade book, which I very much enjoy looking at. I had no idea of its existence till you informed me of it: I knew she was clever, but in what way I did not know. I am very nearly an idiot & can scarcely do anything — that’s why I directed my letter wrong just now — but I have made it right now I hope — I have burnt it — I thank you very much, drst Monty for yr famous act of the Rice wedding —it did famously… Now Good bye, Cass & George join me in best love to you and drst Flo — I hate sending you such a tiny scrawl, but I can’t help it, and hope you will be able to read it.79

  This was, indeed, goodbye. It is strange to see Marianne, who remembered for so long the disappointment and frustration she felt on being excluded from Jane Austen’s readings, unable to remember at the end of her life what it was that made her aunt Jane clever. Nonetheless, in this gallant last letter, she held on to her own mind and her wit long enough to remember the family members she was used to, if not the one she had last seen almost sixty years before.

  Born in the first year of a new century, Marianne Knight almost saw it out. In a life of genteel servitude, she was able to accept and support the tradition which shunted her about from house to house in the wider interests of the family and of the society she knew. The series of land acts which effectively signalled the end of the privileged life prized and sustained by landowners, not only in Ireland but also in England, almost over-stretched her comprehension and her compassion. In the end, however, through her own ability to be at home wherever she found herself, and through her deep bond with Cassandra Hill, who was as conscious of her Irish blood as of her English, Marianne appears to have become resigned to Ireland and its contradictions.

  ‘She was a humble, believing Christian,’ James Edward Austen Leigh wrote, in his Memoir of his aunt Jane. ‘Her life had been passed in the performance of home duties, and the cultivation of domestic affections, without any self-seeking or craving after applause. Her sweetness of temper never failed.’80 He might have said the same of his cousins May, Lou and Cass. Quite unacquainted with the ways and the history of Ireland, struggling with varying degrees of success to come to terms with the place, they all ended their days and lie buried there. On the grave of the youngest, Cassandra, the inscription chosen by her husband speaks to his grief at her untimely death: ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord.’ Death indeed came early for Cassandra Knight, as it had for her mother, and for the aunt who admired the young girl’s bright eyes and stoic spirit. Yet, of the three youngest daughters of Edward Knight, indeed of the five youngest children left outside on the stairs while their sisters listened to Jane’s story, only Cassandra seems to have experienced the heights and depths of romantic passion. She paid dearly for it, dying far from her family and the home she had loved, leaving behind a devoted husband and four little motherless children.

  Louisa knew a
different kind of love: equally faithful and openly affectionate, she left all she knew first from loyalty and kindness, and later through a genuine attachment. For her, there was the comfort of a companionate marriage. Doubtless, she was loved and valued by her husband and stepchildren, and by her only son; yet, her husband chose to be buried beside his first love, Cassandra. When Louisa died, she lay alone for six years until Marianne joined her. It may indeed be for Marianne, the eldest and last of the three Knight sisters in Ireland, who so reminded James Edward of his aunt that he fell in love with her, that his tribute to Jane Austen has a particular relevance. Despite her likeness to the aunt they both so admired, when Marianne Knight died at Ballyare House on 4 December 1895, the world she had inherited and understood was rapidly disappearing.81

  If death came too early for Cassandra, it left Marianne until she had outlived not only her own generation, but a number of the next. She had never known the joys or troubles of marriage and children; yet, she had lived, and she, too, was loved. Something of the eager young girl she had been stayed with her to the end: her never-failing delight in her garden; the remembered joy of charades played with Jane and her family during long-ago winters; a sudden recollection of the excitement of teaching her first nephew to walk. Even when she had put away her dancing slippers, long after anyone thought her ‘bewitching beautiful’, Marianne’s quick humour and lively sympathy, her dignified bearing in loss and adversity and, above all, her own natural grace endeared her to those who knew her, and enabled her to find her way in an increasingly incomprehensible world. At the end of her life, as ever, she went where she was welcome, slipping quietly into a space beside her sister.