Jane Austen (30 page)

She was not, of course, entirely serious, or she would never have lopped and cropped’. But this wry comment shows that she recognized how rarely comedy is accorded the respect it deserves as art. Jane had received a polite letter of congratulation from Fanny Knight but her spontaneous enthusiasm, relayed through Cassandra, was the more to be valued. Fanny’s praise Jane Austen found Very gratifying’, especially as she had taken to Darcy and Elizabeth.

‘Now I will try to write of something else; it shall be a complete change of subject. Ordination. 1 am glad to find your enquiries have ended so well. If you could discover whether Northamptonshire is a country of hedgerows, I should be glad again/Jane told her sister. This passage has been much discussed. Until recently, readers have taken it to mean that Jane saw ‘ordination’ as the main theme
of Mansfield Park
. Edmund Bertram’s vocation as a Church of England clergyman is certainly one strand of the plot, but hardly the most important. More recently, scholars have thought that the word ‘ordination’, which stands grammatically and syntactically isolated, introduces the sentence which follows it: Cassandra was staying with James at Steventon, and may have been requested to ask him about technicalities of entering the Church, for instance how long it would take for Edmund Bertram to be ordained. The interpretation of this letter is still undecided. At this time Jane was already halfway through writing
Mansfield Park
. Her sister-in-law Mary ‘Mrs JA, may have provided some of Mrs Norris’s characteristics. Like Mrs Norris Mary was bossy and careful with money

Jane herself wrote on 20 May 1813 to lay claim to a paper foil of half-pence she had left on the drawing-room mantelpiece. She said lightly that though she was in no distress for money she chose to have her due as well as the devil She was alluding to the old saying ‘Give the devil his due’, meaning one must be fair to an enemy

In February 1813 she wrote to Cassandra describing a rather dull party of whist she had attended and mentioned ‘just as many for
their
round table as there were at Mrs Grant’s’. Mrs Grant is a character in
Mansfield Park
. Jane had made an excuse and left, wishing the real people had been as ‘agreeable a set’ as her imaginary ones. She was soon complaining, ‘There is nobody brilliant these days.’ Four visitors had arrived, all of whom Mrs Austen was glad to see, but Jane was glad to escape by having gone out for a walk. Boring neighbours could hardly compete with the excitement of inventing a parallel society.

Enthusiastic reviews encouraged Jane in her current writing. The
British Critic
for February said
Pride and Prejudice
was far superior to others of its kind: the story was well told, the characters well drawn. The
Critical Review
for March summarized the plot and again praised the ‘domestic scenes’ as superior; all the characters were integrated into the tale. The
New Review
for April gave an admiring synopsis with quotations.

Everybody was guessing at the author’s identity. Richard Brinsley Sheridan said at a dinner party that it was one of the cleverest things he had ever read. Another literary gentleman announced it was too clever to have been written by a woman. Annabella Milbanke, the future Lady Byron, told her mother how excellent a novel it was. She liked it because it was so probable, with none of the clichés of novel writers: ‘no drownings, no conflagrations, nor runaway horses, nor lapdogs and parrots, nor chambermaids and milliners, nor rencontres and disguises’. Annabella, though primarily interested in mathematics, had a shrewd literary sense. Lady Davy however did not like the book. She thought the ‘picture of vulgar minds and manners’ should have been relieved by the agreeable contrast of ‘more dignified and refined characters’. We can only wonder how she interpreted Mr Darcy. The first Earl of Dudley admired Mr Collins. The first edition sold out and a second was printed in the autumn but Jane had sold her copyright and was unable to correct misprints.

On 9 February Cassandra had left Steventon for Manydown. The Leigh-Perrots were at Scarlets. They had given up renting the house in Bath and had bought another in Pulteney Street. Mr Leigh-Perrot was confined to a chair with a broken chilblain on one foot and a violent swelling on the other. They were anxious to get to Pulteney Street, fearing the house would be broken into.

On 16 February Jane wrote to Martha. Frank and his family were at Deal again in fresh lodgings. Jane thought they must have tried lodging in every house in that town. Lodgings in Deal were cheaper than in Ramsgate, an important consideration.

As usual, and despite the excitement of the publication of
Pride and Prejudice
, Jane was keeping abreast of the national news.

On 14 January the then Princess of Wales had written to her estranged husband stating her grievances. On 8 February the letter was published in the
Morning Chronicle
and was reproduced on 15 February in the
Hampshire Telegraph
. Prince George was Regent, or King in all but name, because his father
_?
King George III, suffered from mental illness. The poor man probably had porphyria, a rare hereditary condition, which induces irritability and delirium. In 1811 Parliament had voted the Prince as eldest son the authority to rule. He was forty-eight and his youthful good looks had dissolved in blubber. The Prince of Wales had secretly married a Roman Catholic widow, Maria Fitz-herbert, whom he loved, but under family pressure set her aside to make a dynastic marriage with his cousin Princess Caroline of Brunswick. Her person and manners disgusted him: he complained her underwear was smelly, and the marriage was over before she gave birth to their only child, a daughter, nine months after the ceremony. She took advantage of her freedom and had various lovers, many of them naval officers. When the Prince died, as George IV, in 1830, he chose to have a picture of his dear Maria buried with him.

The King supported his daughter-in-law against his wayward son although it was rumoured, accurately, that she had had an illegitimate child. In 1806 a Royal Commission had been set up to investigate the Princess of Wales’s morals and although nothing was proven Caroline’s access to her daughter, Princess Charlotte, was restricted. Charlotte wrote to a friend, ‘The print shops are full of
scurrilous caricatures
and infamous things relative to the Prince’s conduct…’

Jane was a keen reader of newspapers, and commented to Martha Lloyd:

Jane deplored the friendship between the Princess and Lady Oxford, a one-time mistress of Lord Byron, who flaunted her promiscuity and whose children by different fathers were known as the Harleian Miscellany’. She was born a Harley, and the Harleian Miscellany is an edited collection of papers in the British Museum. Lady Oxford was opposed to the Tories and the marital quarrel became political, with the Whigs supporting the disgraced Princess. Jane Austen’s championship for the Princess was not infinitely elastic. She would support her only ‘as long as I can’.

In March that year Mr Middleton, who rented the Great House at Chawton on a five-year lease, left when it expired, and Edward came to put everything in order. He frequently dined with his mother and sisters and saw them some time or other every day. This delighted them. Jane commented on the comfort of his company: he was now well and enjoying himself as thoroughly as any Hampshire-born Austen could wish. The beauty of Chawton was not thrown away on him.

Henry’s wife, the fascinating Eliza de Feuillide, died on 24 April 1813 after a long and painful illness. Jane helped nurse her. She was buried in Hampstead parish churchyard in the same grave as her mother, Philadelphia Hancock, and her son, Hastings. Henry’s words on her tombstone tell us that she was ‘a woman of brilliant, generous and cultivated mind’. Soon after her death Jane stayed with Henry at the house in Sloane Street, which he gave up soon afterwards. He was still a partner in Tilson’s Bank, which stood in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, and was planning to move into rooms over the bank. Eliza’s faithful French servants, Madame Bigeon and her daughter Madame Perigord, would go with him.

In May, Henry took Jane to an exhibition of paintings in Spring Gardens. Critical opinion in general was cool but Jane was delighted to find a portrait which resembled her idea of Mrs Bingley in
Pride and Prejudice
. She was dressed in a white gown with green ornaments, ‘which convinces me of what I always supposed, that green was a favourite colour with her’. A novelist, after all, rarely knows everything about the characters she has created. She could find nothing that looked like Mrs Bingley’s sister Mrs Darcy, but imagined that if she did find her Mrs Darcy would be wearing yellow. Another exhibition, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, was similarly disappointing. Jane wrote playfully that this must be because of love, pride and delicacy’ on the part of Mr Darcy who was unwilling to expose his wife’s likeness to the public eye. Jane while in London visited an elegant schoolroom decorated with naked cupids. ‘A fine study for girls,’ was her characteristically dry observation.

Jane was able to report ‘Lady Robert delighted with
P and
P.’ Gratifyingly, Lady Robert Kerr had been impressed with the book before she knew who had written it. ‘Of course she knows now … And Mr Hastings! I am quite delighted with what such a man writes about it. Let me be rational and return to my full stops.’ She had been praised by the great Warren Hastings himself.

There were rumours that the character of Mr Collins was based on a certain Bishop Porteous who had towards the end of the eighteenth century held the living of Hunton in Kent and whose
Reminiscences
were pompous and verbose. It is unlikely there was any one living model though the character is convincing enough to have delighted generations of readers. Jane Austen knew plenty of pompous clergymen.

The secret of her authorship was beginning to leak out and people were asking to meet her.
‘HI am
a wild beast, I cannot help it. It is not my own fault,’ she declared.

Henry had not yet moved as he was negotiating the letting of his house whence Jane was writing to Cassandra. She had been driving round in Henry’s barouche. ‘I liked my solitary elegance very much, and was ready to laugh all the time at my being where I was. I could not but feel that I had naturally small right to be parading about London in a barouche.’ A barouche was a very grand carriage indeed. We remember Mrs Elton’s boasts in
Emma
about her rich sister Selina Suckling’s dislike of ‘being stuck up in the barouche-landau without a companion’. In May 1813 Jane reported that 10 Henrietta Street was still all dirt and confusion but promised well.

James and Charles both came to stay at Chawton that summer. Charles had rented a house in Southend. James’s children were let into their aunt’s secret. They had already enjoyed reading the novels. James-Edward, though only fourteen, had the family fondness for letters in verse. He sent Jane these lines:

James-Edward was gently teasing, as Jane thoroughly disapproved of the Prince’s dissolute life. The boy did not know that Jane’s work had already attracted the royal admiration.

That July Frank was captain of the
Elephant
in the Baltic. He had a fourth child, and third son, George. His wife Mary had moved to Deal so that she could be with him whenever he was in port. Jane wrote to him enthusiastically of his opportunities for seeing the world. ‘Gustavus-Vasa, and Charles XII, and Christiana, and Linnaeus - do their ghosts rise up before you? I have a great respect for former Sweden. So zealous as it was for Protestantism!’

Godmersham was being redecorated and the Knight family spent the summer at Chawton to avoid ‘painter’s colic’. When paint was lead-based, tradesmen suffered from lead poisoning as an occupational hazard. Their customers could escape if they had two homes. Jane told Frank that Edward was at Chawton Great House planning a new garden and intending to have his children with him as soon as school broke up.

Henry was recovering from the loss of Eliza. Jane thought him ‘too busy, too active, too sanguine’ to grieve too long. He had been sincerely attached to her but business had taken him away so often that she was not so badly missed as other wives might be. Her illness had been long and dreadful and her death expected. It was a release.