Jane Austen (34 page)

After Christmas Cassandra and Jane went to Winchester to stay with Mrs Heathcote and her sister Alethea Bigg, now living at No. 12 Cathedral Close. It had been Jane’s most fruitful year to date.

O
N 2 JANUARY
1815 Cassandra and Jane left Winchester for Steventon, staying till 16 January calling on the Bramstons at Oakley Hall, the Portals at Laverstoke and the Rector of Ashe, John Henry George Lefroy He and his wife had six children and were to have five more. Later in the year their five-year-old son went to stay with Ben and Anna. Jane thought him terribly in want of discipline and hoped he got ‘a wholesome thump or two whenever it was necessary. Physical punishment of children was taken for granted. Jane wrote calmly in an early letter that Edward’s eldest boy had been put into his first breeches and soundly whipped into the bargain.

In March Napoleon escaped from Elba and took over France again, ruling from Paris. Only the battle of Waterloo in June finished the war. Napoleon was exiled to the island of St Helena where he died some years later. Lord Byron wrote a poem as spoken by Bonaparte which began:

Jane liked it enough to copy it out and keep it.

Charles was in the Mediterranean. On 6 May he wrote to Jane from Palermo telling her that when he had praised Walter Scott’s novel
Waverley
in conversation another man had told him there had been nothing for years to compare with
Sense and Sensibility
and
Pride
and Prejudice
. This person, a nephew of the late Charles James Fox, was however not so fond of
Mansfield Park
. Mrs Austen too liked
Waverley
only second to her own daughter’s books.

James’s wife, Mary, came to stay at Chawton Cottage, bringing her observant daughter Caroline, now aged ten, with her. Caroline regarded Cassandra coolly but adored Jane. Cassy, Charles’s eldest girl, lived at Chawton intermittently with her grandmother and aunts, educated by Cassandra, and Frank’s Mary-Jane was often there as well. Jane supplied the children with dressing-up clothes and played house with them. She always told them that Cassandra knew more than she did and could teach them things better than she could. Caroline received this in polite silence, preferring Jane. In later life she believed that Jane genuinely looked up to her elder sister. ‘The most perfect affection and confidence ever subsisted between them - and great and lasting was the sorrow of the survivor when the final separation was made,’ wrote Caroline.

The Knight family did not come to Chawton the summer of 1815, as there were celebrations for young Edward’s coming of age. His elder sister Fanny had to arrange his twenty-first birthday party, though there had been none for her. Jane had finished
Emma
on 29 March and began
Persuasion
on 8 August. She probably made little headway as that day Ben and Anna Lefroy arrived. They were moving from Hendon to a farmhouse called Wyards, within walking distance of Anna’s grandmother and aunts. Meanwhile Ben and Anna stayed at Chawton Cottage. Anna was Mrs Austen’s favourite granddaughter and the old lady was delighted to have the young couple in the house, and about to settle so near.

Jane was so disgusted with Egerton that
Emma
was not offered to him. By 29 September it had received a favourable report from John Murray’s reader, though he felt it needed a little subediting. This reader, William Gifford, was also editor of the
Quarterly Review
. Murray sat on the manuscript for three weeks, thinking it would do no harm to let Jane Austen sweat a little.

That autumn she was in London again. Henry was suffering from ‘a dangerous fever’ of some kind. Indeed, he was expected to die and his brother James was summoned to the house. Jane nursed Henry through his illness and then his slow convalescence. He was dosed with calomel, a grey powdery medicine whose mercury and chlorine were probably poisoning him. The apothecary took twenty ounces of blood on two consecutive days and threatened to take another twenty on the third. Henry was an excellent patient, lying quietly in bed and ready to swallow anything. He lived on tea, aperient medicine and barley water. No wonder his recovery was slow. Jane sent her dirty washing home by Collyer’s coach and laid plans for changing places with Cassandra when Henry next went to Oxford on business.

Murray, who had spotted a winner, offered £450 for
Emma
but wanted the copyrights of
Mansfield Park
and
Sense and Sensibility
included. Jane was angry and told Cassandra wearily that he was a rogue and she was likely to end up publishing
Emma
herself.

Before his collapse Henry dictated a letter to Murray. He found Murray’s praise of the novel satisfactory but quibbled with the terms, pointing out that his sister had cleared as much as Murray was offering by the sale of the small first edition of
Mansfield Park
. Jane wrote requesting a meeting. ‘A short conversation may perhaps do more than writing,’ she suggested. Eventually a deal was struck: Murray would publish 2,000 copies
of Emma
on commission and would print a second edition of
Mansfield Park
with a print run of 750, also on commission.

Anna had had a baby, making her half-sister Caroline, now ten years old, an aunt. Jane wrote kindly to Caroline, ‘Now that you are become an aunt, you are a person of some consequence … I have always maintained the importance of aunts.’

Jane corrected the proof sheets of
Emma
during this time. Writing to Cassandra, she noted that the printer had queried her spelling of ‘arrowroot’, which she had written as ‘arraroot’. We remember that in the novel Emma sends some to Jane Fairfax, who proudly rejects it. It was until fairly recently a favoured invalid food, farinaceous, bland and easily digested.

Fanny came to stay and went with Jane to Keppel Street to see Charles’s children. Henry’s medical man, Mr Haden, admired Jane’s work, and Fanny found him delightfully clever as well as handsome. Jane liked him as well. He was invited for the evening but to Jane’s dismay Mrs Latouche and Miss East invited themselves to drink tea after dinner. She told Cassandra she was heartily sorry they were coming. She and Henry were living well on hare and rabbits from Godmersham and pheasants from the Fowles, which cheered Jane up. ‘From seven to eight the harp; at eight Mrs L and Miss E arrived.’ For the rest of the evening, there seems to have been crowding to the point of discomfort: the two visitors, Henry and Jane all squeezed on to the sofa, with Fanny and Mr Haden sitting opposite. Mr Haden was invited to dinner next day He was currently reading
Mansfield Park
and preferred it to
Pride and Prejudice
.

Mr Haden was a bright young man with a medical degree from Edinburgh and he admired Fanny He was also musical. Jane enjoyed his clever conversation and although she considered his opinion, lifted from Shakespeare’s Lorenzo in
The Merchant of Venice
, that unmusical people were fit for every kind of wickedness, an 'insanity’, she liked him. Cassandra was worried that her darling niece, the eldest daughter at Godmersham, was engaging in a flirtation with a mere apothecary. Apothecaries ranked low in the social scale and their precise status was defined by the Apothecaries’ Act of 1815. They were below surgeons, who ranked below physicians. Physicians alone among medical men ranked as gentlemen. Physicians prescribed. Surgeons operated. Jane told Cassandra that Mr Haden had never been an apothecary: he was a ‘Haden, nothing but a Haden, a sort of wonderful nondescript creature on two legs, something between a man and an angel…'She refrained from establishing Mr Haden’s exact status. ‘We have been very little plagued with visitors this week,’ added the author, preoccupied with her proof sheets. Edward took Fanny back to Kent on 8 December, after another musical evening.

One day a second and grander doctor who had been called in, Dr Matthew Baillie, who had treated Henry earlier for chest trouble, mentioned to Jane that the Prince, later to become King George IV, was a great admirer of the novels, adding that he read them often, and even kept a set in each of his residences. The Prince, though dissolute in his private life, was a man of taste and culture with an interest in languages, history, art and literature. He commissioned the Brighton Pavilion, a palace on the Indian model, with rooms in the Japanese and Chinese manner. It is a magnificent extravaganza. He died with debts of £400,000. Although Jane Austen’s name had never appeared on any title page her identity was becoming known and the doctor knew that the quiet woman then approaching forty was the author of
Pride and Prejudice
.

On hearing that the author whose fictions he so much enjoyed was in London the Prince as a mark of royal favour sent his librarian the Revd James Stainier Clarke to call on her. Mr Clarke announced that he had the Prince’s instructions to show her the library and to pay her every possible attention.

Jane accordingly went on 13 November 1815 to Carlton House, the Prince’s London residence, and looked at the library, Carlton House was small but luxurious. A hall with green walls and Ionic columns of brown Siena marble led into ante-rooms and drawing rooms of crimson, gold, blue and rose, with flowered carpets and elaborate drapes of velvet and satin. The sombre richness of the blue velvet closet, bronze and blue and gold, contrasted with the opulent crimson drawing room with its gilded plaster, buhl and ormulu in every corner. On the south side overlooking the Mall were a conservatory that reminded her of a cathedral, an Ionic dining room, a Gothic dining room and a Gothic library.

During the visit Mr Clarke declared that if she were at work on another novel she might if she chose dedicate it to the Prince himself. Not caring at all for the Prince, Jane decided to ignore this suggestion. When Henry and Cassandra heard of this they explained that it was not so much a request as a royal command. Jane took the hint and sent the dedication
of Emma
to the printer at once.

If any reader should imagine the self-satisfied pomposity of Mr Collins in
Pride and Prejudice
a caricature, he or she has only to read the correspondence between Jane Austen and Mr Clarke. He was one of the pests authors are beset by, proffering unasked advice on how to write their books. He wanted her to write a novel about the habits of life and character and enthusiasm of a clergyman - who should pass his time between the metropolis and the country - who should be something like Beattie’s Minstrel

Mr Clarke wanted not just the cosy pleasure of identifying with a fictional character: his demand on Jane Austen was for a flattering portrait of himself. She laughed at his request and later made private fun of it. His literary allusions were to a long poem by James Beattie (1735-1803),
The Minstrel; or, the Progress of Genius
, and to a French translation of a work originally written in German. Jane wrote on 11 December 1815 that she had arranged for a copy of
Emma
to be sent to Carlton House three days in advance of publication. She hoped that to those who preferred
Pride and Prejudice
it would not seem less witty than its predecessor, and to those who preferred
Mansfield Park
it would not appear at all inferior in good sense. Tactfully she added:

The humility is mock humility and the ‘boast’ is a real one. Jane is playing the game of pretending to be ‘only’ a woman, not clever or accomplished enough to meet Mr Clarke’s requirements. Her real message lies in her subtext, the reminder to him that she is a successful ‘authoress’ whose talent is not at his disposal. But Clarke was as absurdly egocentric as Mr Collins in
Pride and Prejudice
. Undeterred, he persisted, digging himself into an ever deeper hole. He thanked her for the copy
of Emma
, which despite his professed admiration he had read only a few pages of before passing it on to the Prince Regent, and promised her a copy of a book he had written on King James II. This evidently slightly paranoid man was convinced that many Shylocks were whetting sharp knives to cut ‘more than a pound of flesh from my heart’ when it appeared. He assured Jane that the few pages of
Emma
which he had managed to read had ‘so much nature - and excellent description of character in everything you describe’. This praise was vague enough not to offend and he soon returned to his real concern, his scheme of instructing the most talented writer of the day in her craft, though he could not be bothered to read her latest book when he held it in his hands. He took her tongue-in-cheek disclaimers literally and urged her: