Jane Austen (25 page)

While Cassandra was at Godmersham, mourning clothes became more urgently necessary than ever. Edward’s gracious wife Elizabeth died suddenly on 10 October. Although not excessively clever, she had beautiful manners and the gift of making her guests as well as her nearest and dearest happy. Her loss was a dreadful blow for her husband, her eleven children, her widowed mother and her in-laws, who were all fond of her. Her new baby lived to be seventy. Jane was shattered, but thankful that poor Edward had a religious mind to bear him up, and that Fanny had her Aunt Cassandra with hen

Fanny wrote in her diary with an unsteady hand: ‘Oh! the miserable events of this day! My mother, my beloved mother torn from us! After eating a hearty dinner, she was taken
violently
ill and
expired
(may God have mercy on us) in half an hour!’

The boys at Winchester were sent away for a few days. They went to Steventon to stay with James, though Jane would have liked them to be with her. She consoled herself for what she frankly confessed to be a disappointment by thinking there would be more in the way of exercise and amusement for them there than they would have had in Southampton. Jane grieved for all the bereaved and promised to do her share of writing the necessary letters to relatives and friends. She was sure that the news would be anguish for Henry but he would exert himself to be of use and comfort. Martha was a rock, a friend and sister under every circumstance. With warmth and sincerity, Jane concluded her letter to Cassandra:

We need not enter into a panegyric on the departed - but it is sweet to think of her great worth, of her solid principles, her true devotion, her excellence in every relation of life. It is also consolatory to reflect on the shortness of the sufferings which led her from this world to a better.

In Jane’s next letter she said how terrible Edward’s loss was and that it was too soon to think of getting over it. She hoped that Fanny, who was prostrated, would exert herself to comfort her beloved father. As for little Lizzie, only eight years old, Jane’s heart ached for her. Jane was sending Cassandra black clothes and shoes. Jane was to wear bombazine and crepe, according to Southampton fashion. However, Jane reflected that going into mourning would not impoverish her (always a consideration) for having had her black velvet pelisse newly lined she would not need any new clothes for the winter. She had used her old cloak for the lining, and was sending Cassandra’s with the like idea in mind, though she believed Cassandra’s pelisse was in better repair than her own. One Miss Baker was to make Jane’s mourning gown, and another her bonnet, silk covered with crepe. It was a great relief to Jane to know that the shock of Elizabeth’s death had not made Mrs Knight or Elizabeth’s mother, the dowager Lady Bridges, physically ill. Edward’s boys were to continue to stay at Steventon. Meanwhile, the funeral had to be got through. Jane was not sure whether Edward would be able to face it. She took it for granted that Cassandra would take a last look at the corpse before the coffin lid was screwed down.

‘Tomorrow will be a dreadful day for you all! Mr Whitfield’s will be a severe duty! Glad shall I be to hear that it is over,’ wrote Jane. ‘That you are forever in our thoughts, you will not doubt. I see your mournful party in my mind’s eye under every varying circumstance of the day; and in the evening especially figure to myself its sad gloom -the efforts to talk - the frequent summons to melancholy orders and cares - and poor Edward restless in misery going from one room to another - and perhaps not seldom upstairs to see all that remains of his Elizabeth … We are heartily rejoiced that the poor baby gives you no particular anxiety.’

Jane’s cool detachment in society could not be maintained in the bosom of her family. She was grief-stricken and in this crisis offered her sister, her bereaved brother and his motherless children all the warmth of her concern and love. Her practical side came into action, enhanced by her strong sense of family loyalty.

The following week Edward’s eldest sons, Edward and George, arrived at Southampton, very cold, having chosen to sit on the outside of the stage-coach without overcoats but sharing the one Mr Wise the coachman kindly gave up to them. Jane was delighted with her nephews, now in their early teens: they behaved well and spoke affectionately of their father. George, the younger boy, sobbed aloud.

One is surprised that their Aunt Mary sent the boys on a journey late in October without seeing they were well wrapped up. Jane excused her by saying she had only had time to get them one suit of clothes apiece. With no ready-mades, outfitting was a slow business. Other suits were being made locally, though Jane sighed that she did not believe Southampton to be famous for its tailoring. She hoped it would be better than what Mary had provided in Basingstoke. Edward had a black coat already but both the boys were in need of black pantaloons. ‘Of course/ said their kind aunt, ‘one would not have them made uncomfortable by the want of what is usual on such occasions.’

She kept the lads amused with bilbocatch (cup and ball), at which George was indefatigable, spillikins, paper ships, riddles, cards, watching the ebb and flow of the river and walks. The three of them had been to church and young Edward was deeply moved by the sermon on the text ‘All that are in danger, necessity or tribulation’. After church they went to the quay where George was happily flying about from one side to the other and skipping aboard a collier. In the evening they had psalms and lessons and read a sermon at home but Jane smiled at the boys’ resilience and return to conundrums as soon as the service was over. That she should have thought such a ceremony appropriate confirms her brother Henry’s description of her as ‘thoroughly religious and devout’.

She was afraid that her brother Edward, after the bustle of the funeral was over, might sink into depression. Fanny had written a pleasing letter. The
St Albans
had sailed the day on which the letters telling Frank that Elizabeth had died reached Yarmouth, so they could not expect to hear from him. Mary (Mrs JA) had written pleasantly to Edward’s boys. Jane sniffed that this was more than she had hoped. She found it hard to give Mary credit for anything. As a treat, Jane had meant to take young Edward and George to see the celebrated ruins of Netley Abbey but it had rained.

‘While I write now George is most industriously making and naming paper ships, at which he afterwards shoots with horse-chestnuts, brought over from Steventon on purpose; and Edward equally intent over
The Lake of Killarney
, twisting himself about in one of our great chairs.’ This is an attractive glimpse of life with Aunt Jane.
The Lake of Killarney
was a novel by Anna Maria Porter published four years previously.

Next day they went out in a boat, rowing up the River Itchen, the boys taking the oars part of the way. Jane found their talk amusing. George’s inquiries were endless, and his eagerness in everything reminded Jane of his Uncle Henry. In the evening she taught the boys a card game, Speculation, which they enjoyed so much that they could hardly be persuaded to give it up.

In the meantime, letters were flying between Southampton and Godmersham every day among various family members. A kind letter had arrived from the Fowles at Kintbury with two hampers of apples: the floor of the little garret was almost covered. At Kintbury, of the four Fowle brothers only Fulwar was still alive. He was vicar of Kintbury and Lieutenant-Colonel in the Berkshire Volunteers. Reviewing the volunteer troops near Reading in June 1805, King George III said to Fulwar, ‘I knew you were a good clergyman and a good man; now I know that you are a good officer.’ Fulwar and Eliza, sister to Martha and Mary Lloyd, had six children. It was their son, Fulwar-William, who described Jane Austen as ‘pretty … like a doll …’ and, memorably, as ‘animated’.

The Stoneleigh business was concluded. Mrs Austen and her daughters got nothing. Jane writes sharply of her Aunt Leigh-Perrot’s complaints and discontent. Mrs Austen was shocked, but Jane was not surprised: her aunt’s was ‘a sad nature’. There was news about which Jane was ambivalent: she heard via Mary at Steventon that the Leigh-Perrots were to allow James £100 a year. ‘My expectations for my mother do not rise with this event,’ she wrote grimly. ‘We will allow a little more time, however, before we fly out.’ James was expected, and Jane hoped he would take her and Martha to the theatre.

His extra £100 a year meant he planned to increase the number of his horses from one to three and Mary wanted two of them fit for women to ride. Jane suspected that Edward would be called upon to provide one of them as a present to his godson James-Edward, then ten years old. James’s income would now be £1,100 a year after paying his curate £50. This was about double what his father’s had been in the same living. John Bond, who had been employed by George Austen, still worked occasionally for James.

Jane was happy on Anna’s account that a children’s ball was planned at Manydown and Anna, now nearly sixteen, had new white shoes. In the event the Manydown ball was a smaller thing than Jane expected but it apparently made Anna very happy Jane said it would not have satisfied her when she was Anna’s age.

Jane’s home, even now Frank and his family had moved out, can hardly have been anything but cramped. However, plans were now afoot for Mrs Austen and her daughters to move into a house provided by Edward.

He was able to offer his mother and sisters the choice of two houses, one at Wye in Kent near Godmersham, the other near Chaw-ton House, his occasional residence in Hampshire. Without even looking at either they decided they preferred Hampshire. In Kent they would have been conspicuously the poor relations among Edward’s friends. Edward had inherited the Chawton estate at the same time as he had inherited Godmersham but had always lived in Kent. His Hampshire properties he had rented out, merely checking on them twice a year. Now Godmersham held too many memories and he considered taking up occasional residence at Chawton House.

It was a fine large old house, built before the time of Queen Elizabeth I, with a Tudor porch, mullioned windows and a warren of corridors and passages. The older part was of flint and stone, possibly on medieval foundations, and in the middle of the seventeenth century two red brick gabled wings had been added, necessitating extra staircases. There was an immense hall and a supposedly haunted gallery. The walls were not papered but hung with tapestries and the open fireplaces still had firedogs, four-legged long metal supports for logs, instead of grates. There were portraits by the celebrated artist George Romney of Mr and Mrs Knight. This was the manor house, surrounded by a park. Edward offered his mother and sisters a much smaller house on the estate.

Henry obligingly looked the house over for them and reported there were six bedrooms and garrets for storage. Mrs Austen daydreamed of employing a manservant who could sleep in one of the garrets. Jane hoped to be settled at Chawton by the end of the next summer so that Henry could visit them in October for shooting; if they made it early in September, Edward would be able to come after taking his boys back to Winchester.

Jane determined to have as much social life as possible before leaving Southampton. Everybody in their circle seemed to be sorry they were going and everybody claimed to be acquainted with Chawton, speaking of it as a remarkably pretty village. They were all convinced they knew the house but habitually fixed on the wrong one.

Jane and Martha had enjoyed a recent public ball. They arrived at nine thirty and left before midnight. The room was fairly full, with about thirty couples.

Jane was approaching her thirty-third birthday and according to the standards of the day was on the shelf. She reported triumphantly that she had been asked to dance by a foreigner with handsome black eyes, whose name she did not know. Formal introductions no longer seemed indispensable to her. At this stage in her life such attention seemed flattering rather than insulting.

After Christmas Jane was idle and missing her sister. Frank and Mary were at Portsmouth, and Jane had to send on more clothes. Mary had an abscess on a tooth, which had been opened. An evening party with Martha’s relatives had brought an unwelcome visitor, Miss Jane Murden, a relative of the Fowles who lived with them at Kintbury. She had refused to come earlier and sat ungracious and silent from seven till half-past eleven, ‘for so late was it, owing to the chairmen, before we got rid of them’, wrote Jane irritably. The last hour had been deadly dull, shivering and yawning round the fire. However, the supper of widgeon and preserved ginger had been delicious and all the apple butter had been eaten. Jane reflected that at Miss Murden’s age one might come to be as friendless and captious as she was. The prospect of a lonely, penurious old age was never far away. James’s good fortune still rankled.

Edward’s wedding anniversary was 27 December, a day of sad remembrance at Godmersham. Jane talked with her fingers to a man totally deaf, and recommended a book to him. This was
Corinna
, a translation of
Corinne, ou l'Italie
by Madame de Staël, which had been published and twice translated into English in 1807. Miss Murden had found new lodgings with Martha’s help and was more cheerful. Mrs Austen sold some old or useless silver and bought six teaspoons, a tablespoon and a dessertspoon. Jane was sarcastic about the ‘magnificence’ of the sideboard and sighed over the way she had come down in the world. Mrs Digweed was looking forward to having the Austens as neighbours again. Jane hoped Mrs Digweed would enjoy the idea at least of renewed friendship but saw little likelihood of mutual entertaining on the Austens’ restricted income. The Austen women were more likely, said Jane bitterly, to become intimate with Mrs Digweed’s husband’s bailiff and his wife, who were said to be very good sort of people. ‘Very good sort of people’ was often a code phrase for ‘respectable, but not our class’.