Jane Austen (5 page)

Mrs Austen wrote after James’s early death that Edward was ‘quite a man of business’, while James had ‘classical knowledge, literary taste and the power of elegant composition’. Both, she added, were equally good, amiable and sweet-tempered. Their mother recognized and accepted that Edward was not as academically gifted as James or Henry.

A silhouette group shows Edward’s father presenting the boy to his wealthy patrons. Edward, in tight-fitting coat and knee-breeches, stretches out his hands towards them, his back towards his father, while Mrs Knight looks up coolly from the game of chess she is playing with another lady. Mr Knight stands at the extreme right of the picture. The women wear stays and high coiffures with beribboned caps, while the grown men wear wigs tied behind. Edward’s hair is his own, and hangs long at the back.

Edward missed out on Oxford but was more than compensated by the opportunity of the Grand Tour. He visited Switzerland, Dresden and Rome, staying in Dresden for about a year. But his family ties were strong and he was always specially close to Cassandra, while there was a strong bond of intellectual compatibility between Jane and the fourth son, Henry.

Henry, born 8 June 1771, was brilliant and charming, but seems to have been the least stable among the brothers, although, in his father’s opinion, Henry was the ‘most talented’ of the children. He was generally considered the handsomest of the young Austens, though to modern eyes and in the opinion of their friend Mrs Lefroy the best-looking among the lot was the baby of the family, Charles. Henry was agreed to be a wonderful conversationalist. Jane delighted in his companionship. He had an optimistic outlook, which was just as well, as his career, unlike those of his brothers, was chequered. He followed his elder brother James to Oxford, where their mother’s aristocratic connections entitled them to financial concessions as ‘Founder’s Kin’. The statutes provided for the maintenance of six scholars who could prove their relationship to Leighs, Walkers, Perrots or Whites. They became Fellows on entering the college and could remain so until they followed the usual route to Holy Orders. They were not Fellows in the modern sense, as their erudite father was, but rather privileged scholarship holders. This custom of giving preference to descendants of founders of colleges was peculiar to Oxford and was discontinued during the nineteenth century.

The immediate Austen family was warm and affectionate. George Austen was fond of his wife and children. When Mrs Austen left for a month in 1770 to take care of her sister, Jane Cooper, who had had a premature baby, he complained to his ‘Dear sister Walter’, ‘I don’t much like this lonely kind of life, you know I have not been much used to it, and yet I must bear with it about three weeks longer, at which time I expect my housekeeper’s return, and to make it the more welcome she will bring my sister Hancock and Bessy along with her.’ Bessy was Eliza Hancock, Philadelphia Hancock’s daughter. Sisters and sisters-in-law nursed one another through childbirth. Mrs Austen, writing to Mrs Walter during her fifth pregnancy, described herself as ‘heavy and bundling as usual’. ‘I believe,’ she wrote, ‘my sister Hancock will be so good as to come and nurse me again, for which I am sure I shall be much obliged to her, as it will be a bad time of the year for her to take so long a journey.’

The baby Cassandra, born 9 January 1773, like her sister Jane later, was sent away to live with a neighbouring farmer’s wife, where she was visited ‘almost daily’ by her parents. The motive was not wet-nursing, though that was quite usual at the time. A contemporary, William Cobbett, said, ‘Nothing is so common as to rent breasts to suck.’ However, Mrs Austen was proud of suckling her babies, at least for the first few months, and found them entertaining companions when they could talk. But it seems to have been the custom then to send tiny children away from home for a year or two, both in England and in France. French parents often sent a blank death certificate with the baby in case it died. The foster parents for the little Austens were John and Elizabeth Littleworth, whose family worked for the Austen family for nearly a century.

Mrs Austen wrote proudly to her sister-in-law Mrs Walter that Cassy ‘has been weaned and settled at a good woman’s at Deane just eight weeks; she is very healthy and lively, and puts on her short petticoats today. Jemmy and Neddy are very happy in a new play-fellow, Lord Lymington, whom Mr Austen has lately taken charge of.’

Poor little Lord Lymington, son of Lord Portsmouth, must have found his Latin lessons a struggle, as he was considered ‘backward’ and showed his distress in a stammer. Eventually his mother took him away in order to have him cured by a Mr Angier in London, and a pleasant fourteen-year-old ‘Master Vanderstegen’, son of a neighbouring family, took his place. The ‘cure’ seems to have been ineffectual, as after succeeding his father, Lord Portsmouth, the third’ Earl, was declared a lunatic. He was twice married, the second time late in life, as Jane noted in a letter in 1814, to a young Miss Hanson, whose father was Lord Byron’s solicitor. Byron gave the bride away, clumsily ramming the left hands of bride and groom together. Lady Portsmouth, aware that her husband was a sadist and necrophile, brought in her lover to live, and had three children by him. They ill-treated her husband, as he had ill-treated his servants and animals. The Earl’s brother rescued him and in 1823 had the marriage annulled. While he stayed fairly sane, Lord Portsmouth showed his gratitude to the Steventon family by inviting them to his annual ball at Hurstbourne Park near Andover. This suggests he had not found the Revd George Austen’s regime oppressive.

As well as her husband’s pupils and her own babies, Mrs Austen was still concerned with her four-legged and feathered creatures. She wrote to Mrs Walter, ‘I have got a nice dairy fitted up, and am now worth a bull and six cows, and you would laugh to see them; for they are not much bigger than Jack-asses - and here I have got jackies and ducks and chickens … In short, you must come, and, like Hezekiah, I will show you all my riches.’

Little Cassy was followed by Francis on 23 April 1774, and Jane arrived the following year. The baby of the family was Charles, born 23 June 1779. He was to Cassandra and Jane their ‘particular little brother’, a deliberate misquotation from
Camilla
by Fanny Burney, in which the heroine is referred to as ‘my own particular little niece’.

The relationship between the fictional sister and brother Fanny and William Price in
Mansfield Park
reflects Jane’s pride in her nautical brothers. Both Frank and Charles rose to be admirals and Frank was knighted after becoming Admiral of the Fleet. Even as a small boy he showed initiative. Aged seven, he saved up his own money, bought a chestnut pony called Squirrel for a guinea, hunted on him for a year or two, and sold him at a profit of one hundred per cent.

The Austen boys liked nothing better than to follow the hounds after a hasty breakfast in the kitchen. Fox hunting was a new and fashionable sport. William Price, in
Mansfield Park
, enjoys a hunting party when visiting his sister. To tease Frank, his brothers insisted on calling his pony ‘Scug’. His own nickname was Fly.

He entered the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth just before his twelfth birthday, followed later by his young brother Charles. Frank, although intelligent, was not specially good at classical languages. His flair was for mathematics, and he wisely insisted on the navy as a career. This was no inconvenience to their father, for once boys were accepted there, they received free board and tuition. When Frank finished his studies, he left with a glowing report. He joined the frigate HMS
Perseverance
in order to learn practical seamanship for a year. In 1788 he sailed for the East Indies. He became a midshipman in 1789 and stayed on the
Perseverance
for nearly two years before moving to HMS
Minerva
. He was promoted lieutenant at the end of 1792, and did not return to England for another year. When Frank died at the age of ninety-one, in his pocket was a letter of fatherly advice, stained with sea water and almost worn out.

The rest of the family relied mainly on each other for companionship. Mrs Austen wrote to Mrs Walter at Tonbridge in Kent wishing they were a mere thirty miles apart instead of eighty. She assured Mrs Walter that only distance prevented her from visiting as often as she would have wished. Educated people, or even those who could read, were thin on the ground. The moral tone was low. Among the peasantry bastardy was cheerfully accepted and considered no disgrace. In 1800 one-third of the nation’s brides were pregnant. Many parishioners were foul-mouthed, including the apparently wealthy but crude squire Harwood who lived at Deane House, next to Deane church, and habitually decorated his sentences ‘with an oath’. Mr Harwood was so ignorant he once asked Mr Austen, ‘You know all about these things. Do tell us. Is Paris in France, or France in Paris? … my wife has been disputing with me about it.’ People who cannot spell or are ignorant of geography are laughed at in Jane Austen’s novels (though her own spelling was less than perfect).

One of the Harwood ancestors has been suggested as the original of the uncouth Squire Western in Henry Fielding’s novel
Tom Jones
though the identification can be only conjectural. Squire Harwood was involved in a lawsuit with a neighbour, Mr Hillman. In a phrase which might have been penned by his daughter Jane, George Austen wrote that they had commenced actions against each other and seemed to promise good sport for the lawyers’.

The troubled history of Squire Harwood’s second son Earle runs through Jane’s letters. Earle, born in 1773, set up as a coal merchant at the age of twenty-one, then joined the Royal Marines. In 1797 he married to spite his family. His wife was said to have a bad reputation, though Jane Austen suspected that she was only an innocent country girl. Earle and Sarah lived at Portsmouth 'without keeping a servant of any kind’, desperate poverty indeed for the officer class. Jane Austen thought they must be very much in love to survive such conditions. In 1800 Earle managed to shoot himself in the thigh at St Marcouf, an island off Normandy, where a British garrison was stationed. Two young Scottish surgeons wanted to amputate, but he refused. He was put on board a cutter and carried to Haslar hospital in Gosport, where the bullet was extracted. The surgeon who took it out wrote to the family and his brother John left at once to see him. His parents were terrified that he might have been involved in an illegal duel, but the surgeon confirmed that the angle of the wound proved it to have been the result of an accident. However, there was damage to the bone. Earle died in 1811, a captain in the Woolwich division of Marines, two years before his father.

Earle’s elder brother, John Harwood VII, a clergyman, was the heir, but he inherited nothing but debts, previously secret, and a dependent mother and aunt. He had become attached to a wealthy widow, a friend of Jane Austen, Mrs Elizabeth Heathcote, who had a small son. Mrs Heathcote had been a Miss Bigg, of Manydown Park. The Revd John Harwood felt in honour bound to end their association. The poor man loved the house and land which had passed from father to son over six generations. Had he been willing to sell, he could have paid off the loans. Eventually he did part with a small piece of land, but died a broken man. In happier times, he had danced with Jane Austen at a ball when she was twenty -three.

In 1813 Jane, hearing the news of his troubles, wrote, 'Poor John Harwood! One is really obliged to engage in pity again on his account - and where there is lack of money, one is on pretty sure grounds.’ She knew from personal experience what she was talking about.

Other families with whom the Austens mixed were the Portals of Freefolk, the Holders of Ashe Park (though Jane was embarrassed, or afraid, at finding herself alone for ten minutes with Mr Holder), the Bramstons of Oakley Hall and the Biggs of Manydown Park. The squirearchy among whom the young Jane Austen moved was less stable than one might think from a superficial reading of her novels. If one reads between her lines, one finds an exploration of social tensions, social and economic change. Yet the skeletal outline of Jane Austen’s world is still recognizably present in pockets of English rural life, which has something to do with her continued popularity as gentle Jane’, though as we shall see she was tougher and more forthright than many readers have assumed. Jane Austen herself belonged to what has been called the ‘pseudo-gentry’, that is, well-spoken, well-brought-up people without much income. Her father as an Oxford graduate belonged to a cultivated élite, then numerically tiny, and held a position of dignity and influence.

In 1814 baronets, knights, country gentlemen and others having large incomes were reckoned as numbering nearly seven thousand families. Baronets are the highest rank of commoner, and their titles descend to their nearest male heirs. They are not ‘Mr’ but ‘Sir’ and their wives are not ‘Mrs’ but ‘Lady’. Knights and their wives are also ‘Sir’ and ‘Lady’, but their titles are not hereditary. Jane Austen’s fictional world straddles this class and the next class, to which her own immediate family belonged, the professional and business classes, estimated at some twelve thousand families.

Like most country gentlefolk who educated their sons for the professions of the law, the Church, the army and navy, the Austens were Tory in politics. The great landowning families were more likely to be Whigs, some of them even republicans. Jane Austen believed in King and Country, and the established Church of England in which her father was employed. She was a loyal supporter of King Charles I of England and of Mary, Queen of Scots, both of whom had the misfortune to be beheaded. Although herself a convinced Anglican Protestant, she admired Catholic Mary for sticking to her religion. On the whole, she liked traditions without being hidebound or reactionary. She described an acquaintance as ‘as raffish in appearance as I would wish every disciple of Godwin to be’. William Godwin was author of
Political Justice,
 advocating Utopian communism, a book that influenced Karl Marx.

There was tension between the Tory country gentry and the Whig aristocracy. Jane’s novels rarely deal with aristocrats, and the few who turn up in her pages are handled with hostility: Lady Catherine de Bourgh in
Pride and Prejudice
is rude and overbearing, while Viscountess Dalrymple and her daughter in
Persuasion
are vapid, cold and snobbish. Jane Austen’s viewpoint is very much that of the middle class of her day. Darcy in
Pride and Prejudice
is the son of Lady Anne Darcy, the daughter of an earl whose family name is Fitzwilliam. ('Fitz' as a prefix implies royal bastardy in an ancestor.) But the story shows Fitzwilliam Darcy, initially arrogant, being tamed and domesticated. In
Emma
we see the process by which Mr Weston and the rich Coles, originally in trade, infiltrate the landed society of Highbury.