May, Lou & Cass Page 4

  I shall send you such of your mourning as I think most likely to be useful, reserving for myself your stockings and half the velvet — in which selfish arrangement I know I am doing what you wish. — I am to be in Bombazeen and Crape, according to what we are told is universal here; ... My Mourning however will not impoverish me, for my having my velvet Pelisse fresh lined and made up, I am sure I shall have no occasion this winter for anything new of that sort.43

  Yet, practical and even light-hearted as her discussion of her mourning clothes may seem, there can be no doubt of the depth of Jane’s feelings for her brother in his loss:

  I see your mournful party in my mind’s eye under every varying circumstance of the day; — & in the Evening specially, figure to myself its sad gloom — the efforts to talk — the frequent summons to melancholy orders & cares — & poor Edward restless in Misery going from one room to the other — & perhaps not seldom upstairs to see all that remains of his Elizabeth.44

  Within a few days, Jane was able to give the help she had wished when Edward and George were brought from Steventon to join their aunt and grandmother in Southampton. Edward was fourteen and George, at thirteen, was no longer ‘itty Dordy’. The boys were very cold and miserable when they arrived, having chosen to travel on the outside of the coach without overcoats. Jane showed great sensitivity and encouraged them to settle down, play games, draw, make models, and choose their own style of mourning. Above all, she encouraged them to express their grief in their individual ways:

  They behave extremely well in every respect, showing quite as much feeling as one wishes to see, and on every occasion speaking of their father with the liveliest affection. His letter was read over by each of them yesterday, and with many tears; George sobbed aloud, Edward’s tears do not flow so easily; but as far as I can judge they are both very properly impressed by what has happened ... George is almost a new acquaintance to me, and I find him in a different way as engaging as Edward. We do not want amusement; bilbocatch, at which George is indefatigable, spillikins, papers ships, riddles, conundrums, and cards, with watching the ebb and flow of the river, and now and then a stroll out, keep us well employed; and we mean to avail ourselves of our kind papa’s consideration, by not returning to Winchester till the evening of Wednesday... Edward has an old black coat, which will save his having a second new one; but I find that black pantaloons are considered by them as necessary, and of course would not have them made uncomfortable by the want of what is usual on such occasions.45

  Meanwhile, at Godmersham, fifteen-year-old Fanny had begun her new role, comforting her father and undertaking the overall supervision of the household. Henry and William, who were eleven and ten would, like their older brothers, return to their schools after the funeral. The very youngest children, five-year-old Charles, Louisa, nearly four, Cassandra Jane who was not quite two and the newborn John had their nurse, Susan Sackree, known to the family as Cakey. It was still not clear, however, who should take charge of Lizzy and Marianne. In one letter to Cassandra, written during the first Christmas following Elizabeth’s death, Jane sent a special message to seven-year-old Marianne, who had thrown her energies into making a present for her mother’s bereaved brother, John Bridges: ‘Pray let Marianne know, in private,’ she wrote, ‘that I think she is quite right to work a rug for Uncle John’s Coffee urn, & that I am sure it must give great pleasure to herself now, & to him when he receives it.’46 Jane herself took great satisfaction in needlework, the only accomplishment to which she admitted, and she understood that an absorbing occupation, and a private word of encouragement, might go a little way to assuage her niece’s grief.

  Her letter of 24 January 1809, equally bright and encouraging, sends ‘best Love to dear little Lizzy and Marianne in particular’.47 She had a particular reason for sending special love to them, for a solution had been found to the problem of their education and Jane, with first-hand experience, was in a position to understand how they might now feel. Like Jane and Cassandra twenty-seven years earlier, the two little girls were about to be sent away, at seven and nine, to board at Mrs Boyce’s School at Wanstead in Essex. They left home on a miserable day at the end of January, sixteen weeks after their mother’s death, and Jane felt for them. ‘Here is such a wet Day as never was seen,’ she wrote to Cassandra. ‘I wish the poor little girls had better weather for their Journey; they must amuse themselves with watching the raindrops down the Windows. Sackree I suppose feels quite broken hearted.’48 Sackree was indeed broken hearted: after Lizzy and Marianne went away to school, she wrote a heartfelt expression of grief, not only at the plight of the motherless baby, but also at her own loss: ‘What tears have I shed over this Darling Child Night and day and the parting with the dear Little Girls has been all most too much for me but all this avails nothing.’49

  Tender-hearted Sackree was correct in her assessment: no amount of grief or complaint would change matters. Even Jane, while expressing compassion for her nieces, does not appear to have thought it unfair or unusual to send the little girls away so soon. It may have been because she and Cassandra had endured, and survived, a similar early exile. Always practical, she preferred to consider how they might make the best of the situation rather than dwell on its cause. Of all the adults, only Sackree seems to have thought it strange that they were sent away so young, despite their protests and those of Fanny. No attempt to bring them home seems to have been made for some time, apparently because no new governess had been appointed. Fanny’s diary and letters record her repeated attempts to find someone suitable to educate a gentleman’s daughters, further emphasising the difference in social status between her family and that of Jane and Cassandra who, like the Bennet girls in Pride and Prejudice, had never expected to have a governess.

  Fanny’s diary also shows, however, that a regular correspondence was kept up with the children while they were at school. On 17 June 1809, she wrote: ‘Sent a letter by Fox to Fanny Cage at Ospringe, where she went to fetch the dearest little Girls Elizabeth and Marianne & arrived here about 9 quite well & happy.’50 Like their brothers, they came home for the summer holidays: the boys went back to Winchester in September and by October 1809, Fanny’s diary records: ‘Papa, Uncle H., Charles & I went to Wanstead saw the dear girls all well.’51 It was not until the end of 1810 that Fanny noted, in her summary of the year: ‘Lizzy & Mne. leaving school at Christmas.’52 It was April 1811 before a suitable new governess, Miss Allen, was brought to Godmersham to take over their education. Her beginning was not auspicious: she was shy and disinclined to make conversation. She improved, gradually, so that even Jane and Cassandra thought she might do very well, and Jane began to be hopeful that she would stay for a whole year.53 In fact, she stayed until November 1812 when, abruptly, she was gone. ‘Miss Allen after much vile behaviour treated Liz. so ill that it was resolved she should go away on Wedy. next,’ Fanny wrote, grimly.54 It is not clear whether Miss Allen proved unequal to the task of teaching the little girls, or whether they made her life so difficult that she could not carry out her tasks. While it may be tempting to imagine prefigurings of Jane Eyre or The Turn of the Screw, it seems wise to remember Jane Austen’s note of caution shortly after Miss Allen arrived in April 1811: ‘By this time I suppose she is hard at it, governing away — poor creature! I pity her, tho’ they are my nieces.’55 Jane knew the real Marianne and Lizzy so, as usual, was devoid of any sentimental glossing over of facts; and it is quite possible that, having been away for so long, and still aged only nine and eleven, they were difficult to manage. In the end, unlike Jane and Cassandra, they were not sent away again, for in 1814 a Miss Clewes was appointed. She was described by Fanny as ‘quite a treasure’ and by Jane as ‘the governess they have been looking for these ten years’. In the end, she stayed until 1820, when Louisa was nearly sixteen and Cassandra almost fourteen, and was greatly missed when she left.

  While Lizzy and Marianne were still away at school, however, and Louisa, Charles, Cassandra and John were safely in t
he nursery with Sackree, other pressing matters needed attention. Catherine Knight, Edward’s adopted mother, had made her will in November 1808, and its contents were to be significant to her granddaughters. Mrs Knight was already an important figure in Jane’s life. She had, almost uniquely, recognised the difficulty of the young woman’s decision to devote herself to her art and, unprompted, acted as her first and only patron. Now, she made a kind gesture towards the girls of her family or, as Jane mischievously described them, Edward’s ‘Harem’.56 Under the terms of her will, while all her remaining property was to be divided among her brothers Charles and Wyndham Knatchbull, she left legacies specifically to her granddaughters. Fanny was to have the sum of £2,000, and each of the younger girls £1,000.57 The little girls might have been sent away from home, but they did now have some money belonging only to them.

  It was at this time that Edward addressed the question of providing a home for his mother and sisters. Since the death of the Reverend George Austen in Bath on 21 January 1805, their new lodgings in Southampton had been adequate but not ideal. Jane’s brother Francis, well established in the navy, had been stationed in Southampton, but had left for the Isle of Wight, so that a move seemed appropriate for Mrs Austen and her daughters. Edward offered them the choice of either a house in Wye, near Godmersham, or the house which had belonged to his Chawton bailiff, recently dead. They chose Chawton because of its proximity to Alton, where Henry Austen had a branch of his bank, and because of its situation within twelve miles of James Austen, in the original family home at Steventon. The Chawton house was inspected by Henry, and found to Jane’s relief to contain ‘six bed-chambers ... [and] Garrets for store-places’.58 James’s daughter Caroline thought the house ‘delightful to children ... [and] ... altogether a comfortable and ladylike establishment’.59 Her elder sister Anna, however, thought the house rather small and inadequate, though she acknowledged that it became, under the care of her aunts and grandmother, ‘if not all that their home might & should have been, ... [still] such as fully satisfied the moderate desire of one, who had no taste for luxury or worldly state, and lived besides in the happy belief that what was decreed by those she loved must be wisest’.60 What Anna does not say is that Edward, who frequently made the big house at Chawton available to his brothers and their families, thought the house of one of his servants quite adequate for his mother and sisters, and that he did not provide even that until they had been without the security of a permanent home for some years.

  Though they were very pleased at the prospect of the house, they could not move at once. Cassandra’s stay at Godmersham extended well into the New Year, so that she could help Fanny take over the running of the house and then, in the spring, both she and Jane had to tend their mother when she fell ill. It was not until 7 July 1809 that the move to Chawton was finally made, yet it proved immediately successful. Jane had found it almost impossible to write since 1800 when, near her twenty-fifth birthday in December of that year, her father had made the sudden announcement that the family would be leaving Steventon within a week, that her brother James was to take over the parish and that James’s family would from now on live in Steventon Rectory. Jane, who had known no other home, fainted at the news.61 It was a traumatic time for her: not only her father’s library, but also her own precious books and pianoforte were sold. Though she entered into her father’s plan for his retirement with proper filial compliance, she was almost silenced by the shock, and had little inclination to work on her novels in either Bath or Southampton.62 It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that within a month of arriving in Chawton she began to revise her early novel Sense and Sensibility, which would be accepted for publication in 1810. She then started to plan Mansfield Park in February 1811. By the winter of that year, she was revising another early work, First Impressions, published as Pride and Prejudice in January 1813, by which time she was half way through the writing of Mansfield Park. Emma was begun a year later, in January 1814, and Mansfield Park published in May of that year. In March 1815, Emma was finished, and Persuasion begun in August.

  Throughout this extraordinary period of creativity, Jane was in regular contact with Edward’s family who, after 1813, tended to spend their summers at Chawton rather than Godmersham.

  Edward, despite his preference for Godmersham, did not neglect the upkeep of Chawton, making structural alterations to both the Great House and the cottage from 1809 onward. ‘Chawton is not thrown away upon him,’ Jane told her brother Francis in July 1813.63 Yet, his first visit had been less than successful, as Elizabeth had written in 1807 to seven-year-old Lizzy. Fanny had been equally unimpressed. She found the Great House a warren of unnavigable corridors and rooms, and could hardly wait to get back to Kent. No one was eager to repeat the visit and the fact that Edward and his children made increasingly extended visits to Chawton from 1809 may owe much to the presence there of his mother and sisters.

  For the years between 1808 and 1813, Edward rented out Chawton Great House to a family named Middleton. Unlike Edward and Fanny the Middletons had fond memories of Chawton. John Charles Middleton had a family of six who were, like Edward’s younger children, aged between five and fifteen. He also brought with him, as housekeeper, his sister-in-law, Miss Maria Beckford. Miss Beckford frequently called on the Austen ladies, and her niece, Charlotte-Maria Middleton, played with any visiting cousins. Many years later Charlotte-Maria, by then married to her own cousin, the Reverend Charles Beckford, recorded her impressions of Chawton:

  Our house Chawton House was a very ancient affair — Dogs instead of grates & Tapestry instead of Paper. An immense Hall —, of course a haunted gallery which no Servant wd. Pass alone, — but it was a charming place — one wing was modernised for Comfort — There were Staircases which gave us much fun & many tumbles — as in those happy days we were 6 children — I alas now the only one to remember it ... 64

  She remembered Jane and Cassandra too, and gives a rare picture of Jane, with none of the prejudice or partiality of a relative, in this most creative period of her life. Charlotte-Maria felt an affinity with the writer and remarked on the difference between her ease with children and her distance with strangers, concluding in retrospect that such distance was a device that allowed her to make valuable mental notes for her novels:

  We saw her often. She was a most kind & enjoyable person to children but somewhat stiff and cold to strangers. She used to sit at Table at Dinner parties without uttering much probably collecting matter for her charming novels which in those days we knew nothing about — her Sister Cassandra was very lady-like but very prim, but my remembrance of Jane is that of her entering into all Children’s Games & liking her extremely — we were often asked to meet her young nephews & nieces [when they were] at Chawton with them.65

  Her description accords with the memories of Caroline, James’s younger daughter, who observed the pattern of her aunts’ daily life at Chawton, and leaves a memorable picture of the lively companion the Godmersham children must have known in those years: ready to play games, absorbed in needlework, sociable within her family, yet equally meticulous in the work of her mind:

  I don’t believe Aunt Jane observed any particular method in parcelling out her day but I think she generally sat in the drawing room until luncheon; when visitors were there, chiefly at work — she was fond of work — and she was a great adept at overcast and satin stitch — the peculiar delight of that day — general handiness and neatness were amongst her characteristics — She could throw the spillikens for us, better than anyone else, and she was wonderfully successful at cup and ball — She found a resource sometimes in that simple game, when she suffered from weak eyes and could not work or read for long together — ... After luncheon, my Aunts generally walked out — sometimes they went to Alton for shopping — often, one or other of them, to the Great House — as it was then called — when a brother was inhabiting it, to make a visit — or if the house were standing empty they liked to stroll about the grounds — so
metimes to Chawton Park — a noble beech wood, just within a walk — but sometimes, but that was rarely, to call on a neighbour — They had no carriage, and their visitings did not extend far — there were a few families living in the village — but no great intimacy was kept up with any of them — they were upon friendly but rather distant terms, with all —66

  Charlotte-Maria’s impression of Jane’s appearance is equally vivid, showing a lively, humorous, active woman at the peak of her powers: it is also at variance with surviving images, mostly based on Cassandra Austen’s sketches: ‘I remember her as a tall thin spare person,’ Charlotte-Maria wrote, ‘with very high cheek bones great colour — sparkling eyes not large but joyous & intelligent. The face by no means so broad & plump as represented’.67

  Charlotte-Maria’s memories, like the author’s own letters, demonstrate Jane’s ease with children and young people. There has never been any doubt, however, of the sharp edge of Jane Austen’s wit, and one letter, describing a missed visit from the Middleton contingent, confirms the opinions of both Charlotte-Maria and Caroline on her reserve with adults: ‘Before I set out [for Alton] we were visited by Mrs Edwards, and while I was gone Miss Beckford & Maria, & Miss Woolls & Harriet B. called, all of whom my Mother was glad to see & I very glad to escape.’68 Her feelings towards the Middleton contingent had already been suggested in a droll letter to Cassandra of two years earlier: ‘We shall have pease soon — I mean to have them with a couple of Ducks from Wood Barn and Maria Middleton towards the end of next week.’69If, as it appears from these recollections, Jane Austen let slip her reserve only with her family and, especially, with children, her nieces were even more fortunate than they supposed.