MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN
By James Edward Austen-Leigh
PREFACE
THE MEMOIR of my AUNT,
JANE AUSTEN, has been received with more favour than I had ventured to expect.
The notices taken of it in the periodical press, as well as letters addressed
to me by many with whom I am not personally acquainted, show that an unabated
interest is still taken in every particular that can be told about her. I am
thus encouraged not only to offer a Second Edition of the Memoir, but also to
enlarge it with some additional matter which I might have scrupled to intrude
on the public if they had not thus seemed to call for it. In the present
Edition, the narrative is somewhat enlarged, and a few more letters are added;
with a short specimen of her childish stories. The cancelled chapter of
'Persuasion' is given, in compliance with wishes both publicly and privately
expressed.
A fragment of a story entitled 'The Watsons' is printed; and extracts are given
from a novel which she had begun a few months before her death; but the chief
addition is a short tale never before published, called 'Lady Susan.' {0a} I
regret that the little which I have been able to add could not appear in my
First Edition; as much of it was either unknown to me, or not at my command,
when I first published; and I hope that I may claim some indulgent allowance
for the difficulty of recovering little facts and feelings which had been
merged half a century deep in oblivion.
NOVEMBER 17, 1870.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS--BIRTH OF JANE
AUSTEN--HER FAMILY CONNECTIONS--THEIR INFLUENCE ON HER WRITINGS.
More
than half a century has passed away since I, the youngest of the mourners, {1}
attended the funeral of my dear aunt Jane in Winchester Cathedral; and now, in
my old age, I am asked whether my memory will serve to rescue from oblivion any
events of her life or any traits of her character to satisfy the enquiries of a
generation of readers who have been born since she died. Of events her life was
singularly barren: few changes and no great crisis ever broke the smooth
current of its course. Even her fame may be said to have been posthumous: it
did not attain to any vigorous life till she had ceased to exist. Her talents
did not introduce her to the notice of other writers, or connect her with the
literary world, or in any degree pierce through the obscurity of her domestic
retirement.
I have therefore scarcely any materials for a detailed life of my aunt; but I
have a distinct recollection of her person and character; and perhaps many may
take an interest in a delineation, if any such can be drawn, of that prolific
mind whence sprung the Dashwoods and Bennets, the Bertrams and Woodhouses, the
Thorpes and Musgroves, who have been admitted as familiar guests to the
firesides of so many families, and are known there as individually and
intimately as if they were living neighbours. Many may care to know whether the
moral rectitude, the correct taste, and the warm affections with which she
invested her ideal characters, were really existing in the native source whence
those ideas flowed, and were actually exhibited by her in the various relations
of life. I can indeed bear witness that there was scarcely a charm in her most
delightful characters that was not a true reflection of her own sweet temper
and loving heart.
I was young when we lost her; but the impressions made on the young are deep,
and though in the course of fifty years I have forgotten much, I have not
forgotten that 'Aunt Jane' was the delight of all her nephews and nieces. We
did not think of her as being clever, still less as being famous; but we valued
her as one always kind, sympathising, and amusing. To all this I am a living
witness, but whether I can sketch out such a faint outline of this excellence
as shall be perceptible to others may be reasonably doubted. Aided, however, by
a few survivors {3} who knew her, I will not refuse to make the attempt. I am
the more inclined to undertake the task from a conviction that, however little
I may have to tell, no one else is left who could tell so much of her.
Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, at the Parsonage House of Steventon
in Hampshire. Her father, the Rev. George Austen, was of a family long
established in the neighbourhood of Tenterden and Sevenoaks in Kent. I believe
that early in the seventeenth century they were clothiers. Hasted, in his
history of Kent, says: 'The clothing business was exercised by persons who
possessed most of the landed property in the Weald, insomuch that almost all
the ancient families of these parts, now of large estates and genteel rank in
life, and some of them ennobled by titles, are sprung from ancestors who have
used this great staple manufacture, now almost unknown here.' In his list of
these families Hasted places the Austens, and he adds that these clothiers
'were usually called the Gray Coats of Kent; and were a body so numerous and
united that at county elections whoever had their vote and interest was almost
certain of being elected.
' The family still retains a badge of this origin; for their livery is of that
peculiar mixture of light blue and white called Kentish gray, which forms the
facings of the Kentish militia.
Mr. George Austen had lost both his parents before he was nine years old. He
inherited no property from them; but was happy in having a kind uncle, Mr.
Francis Austen, a successful lawyer at Tunbridge, the ancestor of the Austens
of Kippington, who, though he had children of his own, yet made liberal
provision for his orphan nephew. The boy received a good education at Tunbridge
School, whence he obtained a scholarship, and subsequently a fellowship, at St.
John's College, Oxford. In 1764 he came into possession of the two adjoining
Rectories of Deane and Steventon in Hampshire; the former purchased for him by
his generous uncle Francis, the latter given by his cousin Mr. Knight. This was
no very gross case of plurality, according to the ideas of that time, for the
two villages were little more than a mile apart, and their united populations
scarcely amounted to three hundred. In the same year he married Cassandra,
youngest daughter of the Rev. Thomas Leigh, of the family of Leighs of
Warwickshire, who, having been a fellow of All Souls, held the College living
of Harpsden, near Henley-upon-Thames. Mr. Thomas Leigh was a younger brother of
Dr. Theophilus Leigh, a personage well known at Oxford in his day, and his day
was not a short one, for he lived to be ninety, and held the Mastership of
Balliol College for above half a century. He was a man more famous for his
sayings than his doings, overflowing with puns and witticisms and sharp
retorts; but his most serious joke was his practical one of living much longer
than had been expected or intended. He was a fellow of Corpus, and the story is
that the Balliol men, unable to agree in electing one of their own number to
the Mastership, chose him, partly under the idea that he was in weak health and
likely soon to cause another vacancy. It was afterwards said that his long
incumbency had been a judgment on the Society for having elected an Out-College
Man.
{5} I imagine that the front of Balliol towards Broad Street which has recently
been pulled down must have been built, or at least restored, while he was
Master, for the Leigh arms were placed under the cornice at the corner nearest
to Trinity gates. The beautiful building lately erected has destroyed this
record, and thus 'monuments themselves memorials need.'
-----
{0a}
The Watsons and Lady Susan are not included in this reprint.
{1} I went to represent my father, who was too unwell to attend himself, and
thus I was the only one of my generation present.
{3} My chief assistants have been my sisters, Mrs. B. Lefroy and Miss Austen,
whose recollections of our aunt are, on some points, more vivid than my own. I
have not only been indebted to their memory for facts, but have sometimes used
their words. Indeed some passages towards the end of the work were entirely
written by the latter.
I have also to thank some of my cousins, and especially the daughters of
Admiral Charles Austen, for the use of letters and papers which had passed into
their hands, without which this Memoir, scanty as it is, could not have been
written.
{5} There seems to have been some doubt as to the validity of this election;
for Hearne says that it was referred to the Visitor, who confirmed it. (Hearne's
Diaries, v.2.)
His fame for witty and
agreeable conversation extended beyond the bounds of the University. Mrs.
Thrale, in a letter to Dr. Johnson, writes thus: 'Are you acquainted with Dr.
Leigh, {6} the Master of Balliol College, and are you not delighted with his
gaiety of manners and youthful vivacity, now that he is eighty-six years of
age? I never heard a more perfect or excellent pun than his, when some one told
him how, in a late dispute among the Privy Councillors, the Lord Chancellor
struck the table with such violence that he split it. "No, no, no,"
replied the Master; "I can hardly persuade myself that he split the table,
though I believe he divided the Board."'
Some of his sayings of course survive in family tradition. He was once calling
on a gentleman notorious for never opening a book, who took him into a room
overlooking the Bath Road, which was then a great thoroughfare for travellers
of every class, saying rather pompously, 'This, Doctor, I call my study.' The
Doctor, glancing his eye round the room, in which no books were to be seen,
replied, 'And very well named too, sir, for you know Pope tells us, "The
proper study of mankind is Man."' When my father went to Oxford he was honoured with an invitation to
dine with this dignified cousin. Being a raw undergraduate, unaccustomed to the
habits of the University, he was about to take off his gown, as if it were a
great coat, when the old man, then considerably turned eighty, said, with a
grim smile, 'Young man, you need not strip: we are not going to fight.
' This humour remained in him so strongly to the last that he might almost have
supplied Pope with another instance of 'the ruling passion strong in death,'
for only three days before he expired, being told that an old acquaintance was
lately married, having recovered from a long illness by eating eggs, and that
the wits said that he had been egged on to matrimony, he immediately trumped
the joke, saying, 'Then may the yoke sit easy on him.' I do not know from what
common ancestor the Master of Balliol and his great-niece Jane Austen, with
some others of the family, may have derived the keen sense of humour which they
certainly possessed.
Mr. and Mrs. George
Austen resided first at Deane, but removed in 1771 to Steventon, which was
their residence for about thirty years. They commenced their married life with
the charge of a little child, a son of the celebrated Warren Hastings, who had
been committed to the care of Mr. Austen before his marriage, probably through
the influence of his sister, Mrs. Hancock, whose husband at that time held some
office under Hastings in India. Mr.
Gleig, in his 'Life of Hastings,' says that his son George, the offspring of
his first marriage, was sent to England
in 1761 for his education, but that he had never been able to ascertain to whom
this precious charge was entrusted, nor what became of him. I am able to state,
from family tradition, that he died young, of what was then called putrid sore
throat; and that Mrs. Austen had become so much attached to him that she always
declared that his death had been as great a grief to her as if he had been a
child of her own.
About this time, the grandfather of Mary Russell Mitford, Dr. Russell, was
Rector of the adjoining parish of Ashe; so that the parents of two popular
female writers must have been intimately acquainted with each other.
As my subject carries me back about a hundred years, it will afford occasions
for observing many changes gradually effected in the manners and habits of society,
which I may think it worth while to mention. They may be little things, but
time gives a certain importance even to trifles, as it imparts a peculiar
flavour to wine. The most ordinary articles of domestic life are looked on with
some interest, if they are brought to light after being long buried; and we
feel a natural curiosity to know what was done and said by our forefathers,
even though it may be nothing wiser or better than what we are daily doing or
saying ourselves. Some of this generation may be little aware how many
conveniences, now considered to be necessaries and matters of course, were
unknown to their grandfathers and grandmothers.
The lane between Deane and Steventon has long been as smooth as the best
turnpike road; but when the family removed from the one residence to the other
in 1771, it was a mere cart track, so cut up by deep ruts as to be impassable
for a light carriage. Mrs. Austen, who was not then in strong health, performed
the short journey on a feather-bed, placed upon some soft articles of furniture
in the waggon which held their household goods. In those days it was not
unusual to set men to work with shovel and pickaxe to fill up ruts and holes in
roads seldom used by carriages, on such special occasions as a funeral or a wedding.
Ignorance and coarseness of language also were still lingering even upon higher
levels of society than might have been expected to retain such mists. About
this time, a neighbouring squire, a man of many acres, referred the following
difficulty to Mr. Austen's decision: 'You know all about these sort of things.
Do tell us.
Is Paris in France, or France in Paris? for my wife has been disputing with me
about it.' The same gentleman, narrating some conversation which he had heard
between the rector and his wife, represented the latter as beginning her reply
to her husband with a round oath; and when his daughter called him to task,
reminding him that Mrs. Austen never swore, he replied, 'Now, Betty, why do you
pull me up for nothing? that's neither here nor there; you know very well
that's only my way of telling the story.' Attention has lately been called by a
celebrated writer to the inferiority of the clergy to the laity of England two
centuries ago.
The charge no doubt is true, if the rural clergy are to be compared with that
higher section of country gentlemen who went into parliament, and mixed in
London society, and took the lead in their several counties; but it might be
found less true if they were to be compared, as in all fairness they ought to
be, with that lower section with whom they usually associated. The smaller
landed proprietors, who seldom went farther from home than their county town,
from the squire with his thousand acres to the yeoman who cultivated his
hereditary property of one or two hundred, then formed a numerous class--each
the aristocrat of his own parish; and there was probably a greater difference
in manners and refinement between this class and that immediately above them
than could now be found between any two persons who rank as gentlemen. For in
the progress of civilisation, though all orders may make some progress, yet it
is most perceptible in the lower.
It is a process of 'levelling up;' the rear rank 'dressing up,' as it were,
close to the front rank. When Hamlet mentions, as something which he had 'for
three years taken note of,' that 'the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel
of the courtier,' it was probably intended by Shakspeare as a satire on his own
times; but it expressed a principle which is working at all times in which
society makes any progress. I believe that a century ago the improvement in
most country parishes began with the clergy; and that in those days a rector
who chanced to be a gentleman and a scholar found himself superior to his chief
parishioners in information and manners, and became a sort of centre of
refinement and politeness.
-----
{6}
Mrs. Thrale writes Dr. Lee, but there can be no doubt of the identity of
person.
Mr.
Austen was a remarkably good-looking man, both in his youth and his old age.
During his year of office at Oxford he had been
called the 'handsome Proctor;' and at Bath,
when more than seventy years old, he attracted observation by his fine features
and abundance of snow-white hair. Being a good scholar he was able to prepare
two of his sons for the University, and to direct the studies of his other
children, whether sons or daughters, as well as to increase his income by
taking pupils.
In Mrs. Austen also was to be found the germ of much of the ability which was
concentrated in Jane, but of which others of her children had a share. She
united strong common sense with a lively imagination, and often expressed
herself, both in writing and in conversation, with epigrammatic force and
point. She lived, like many of her family, to an advanced age. During the last
years of her life she endured continual pain, not only patiently but with
characteristic cheerfulness. She once said to me, 'Ah, my dear, you find me
just where you left me--on the sofa. I sometimes think that God Almighty must
have forgotten me; but I dare say He will come for me in His own good time.'
She died and was buried at Chawton, January 1827, aged eighty-eight.
* * * * *
Her own family were so much, and the rest of the world so little, to Jane
Austen, that some brief mention of her brothers and sister is necessary in
order to give any idea of the objects which principally occupied her thoughts
and filled her heart, especially as some of them, from their characters or
professions in life, may be supposed to have had more or less influence on her
writings: though I feel some reluctance in bringing before public notice
persons and circumstances essentially private.
Her eldest brother James, my own father, had, when a very young man, at St.
John's College, Oxford, been the originator and chief supporter of a periodical
paper called 'The Loiterer,' written somewhat on the plan of the 'Spectator'
and its successors, but nearly confined to subjects connected with the
University. In after life he used to speak very slightingly of this early work,
which he had the better right to do, as, whatever may have been the degree of
their merits, the best papers had certainly been written by himself. He was
well read in English literature, had a correct taste, and wrote readily and
happily, both in prose and verse. He was more than ten years older than Jane,
and had, I believe, a large share in directing her reading and forming her
taste.
Her second brother, Edward, had been a good deal separated from the rest of the
family, as he was early adopted by his cousin, Mr. Knight, of Godmersham Park
in Kent
and Chawton House in Hampshire; and finally came into possession both of the
property and the name. But though a good deal separated in childhood, they were
much together in after life, and Jane gave a large share of her affections to
him and his children. Mr. Knight was not only a very amiable man, kind and
indulgent to all connected with him, but possessed also a spirit of fun and
liveliness, which made him especially delightful to all young people.
Her
third brother, Henry, had great conversational powers, and inherited from his
father an eager and sanguine disposition. He was a very entertaining companion,
but had perhaps less steadiness of purpose, certainly less success in life,
than his brothers. He became a clergyman when middle-aged; and an allusion to
his sermons will be found in one of Jane's letters. At one time he resided in London, and was useful in
transacting his sister's business with her publishers.
Her two youngest brothers, Francis and Charles, were sailors during that
glorious period of the British navy which comprises the close of the last and
the beginning of the present century, when it was impossible for an officer to
be almost always afloat, as these brothers were, without seeing service which,
in these days, would be considered distinguished. Accordingly, they were
continually engaged in actions of more or less importance, and sometimes gained
promotion by their success. Both rose to the rank of Admiral, and carried out
their flags to distant stations.
Francis lived to attain the very summit of his profession, having died, in his
ninety-third year, G.C.B. and Senior Admiral of the Fleet, in 1865. He
possessed great firmness of character, with a strong sense of duty, whether due
from himself to others, or from others to himself. He was consequently a strict
disciplinarian; but, as he was a very religious man, it was remarked of him
(for in those days, at least, it was remarkable) that he maintained this discipline
without ever uttering an oath or permitting one in his presence. On one
occasion, when ashore in a seaside town, he was spoken of as 'the officer who
kneeled at church;' a custom which now happily would not be thought peculiar.
Charles was generally serving in frigates or sloops; blockading harbours,
driving the ships of the enemy ashore, boarding gun-boats, and frequently
making small prizes. At one time he was absent from England on such services for seven
years together. In later life he commanded the Bellerophon, at the bombardment
of St. Jean
d'Acre in 1840. In
1850 he went out in the Hastings, in command of the East India and China
station, but on the breaking out of the Burmese war he transferred his flag to
a steam sloop, for the purpose of getting up the shallow waters of the
Irrawaddy, on board of which he died of cholera in 1852, in the seventy-
fourth year of his age. His sweet temper and affectionate disposition, in which
he resembled his sister Jane, had secured to him an unusual portion of
attachment, not only from his own family, but from all the officers and common
sailors who served under him.
One who was with him at his death has left this record of him: 'Our good
Admiral won the hearts of all by his gentleness and kindness while he was
struggling with disease, and endeavouring to do his duty as Commander-in-chief
of the British naval forces in these waters. His death was a great grief to the
whole fleet. I know that I cried bitterly when I found he was dead.' The Order
in Council of the Governor-General of India, Lord Dalhousie, expresses
'admiration of the staunch high spirit which, notwithstanding his age and
previous sufferings, had led the Admiral to take his part in the trying service
which has closed his career.'
These two brothers have been dwelt on longer than the others because their
honourable career accounts for Jane Austen's
partiality for the Navy, as well as for the readiness and accuracy with which
she wrote about it. She was always very careful not to meddle with matters
which she did not thoroughly understand. She never touched upon politics, law,
or medicine, subjects which some novel writers have ventured on rather too
boldly, and have treated, perhaps, with more brilliancy than accuracy. But with
ships and sailors she felt herself at home, or at least could always trust to a
brotherly critic to keep her right. I believe that no flaw has ever been found
in her seamanship either in 'Mansfield
Park' or in 'Persuasion.'
But dearest of all to the heart of Jane was her sister Cassandra, about three
years her senior. Their sisterly affection for each other could scarcely be
exceeded. Perhaps it began on Jane's side with the feeling of deference natural
to a loving child towards a kind elder sister.
Something of this feeling always remained; and even in the maturity of her
powers, and in the enjoyment of increasing success, she would still speak of
Cassandra as of one wiser and better than herself. In childhood, when the elder
was sent to the school of a Mrs. Latournelle, in the Forbury at Reading, the
younger went with her, not because she was thought old enough to profit much by
the instruction there imparted, but because she would have been miserable
without her sister; her mother observing that 'if Cassandra were going to have
her head cut off, Jane would insist on sharing her fate.' This attachment was
never interrupted or weakened.
They lived in the same home, and shared the same bed-room, till separated by
death. They were not exactly alike. Cassandra's was the colder and calmer
disposition; she was always prudent and well judging, but with less outward
demonstration of feeling and less sunniness of temper than Jane possessed. It
was remarked in her family that 'Cassandra had the merit of having her temper
always under command, but that Jane had the happiness of a temper that never
required to be commanded.' When 'Sense and Sensibility'
came out, some persons, who knew the family slightly, surmised that the two
elder Miss Dashwoods were intended by the author for her sister and herself;
but this could not be the case. Cassandra's character might indeed represent
the 'sense' of Elinor, but Jane's had little in common with the 'sensibility'
of Marianne. The young woman who, before the age of twenty, could so clearly
discern the failings of Marianne Dashwood, could hardly have been subject to
them h erself.
This was the small circle, continually enlarged, however, by the increasing
families of four of her brothers, within which Jane Austen found her wholesome
pleasures, duties, and interests, and beyond which she went very little into
society during the last ten years of her life. There was so much that was
agreeable and attractive in this family party
that its members may be excused if they were inclined to live somewhat too exclusively
within it. They might see in each other much to love and esteem, and something
to admire. The family talk had abundance of spirit and vivacity, and was never
troubled by disagreements even in little matters, for it was not their habit to
dispute or argue with each other: above all, there was strong family affection
and firm union, never to be broken but by death.
It cannot be doubted that all this had its influence on the author in the
construction of her stories, in which a family party usually supplies the
narrow stage, while the interest is made to revolve round a few actors.
It will be seen also that though her circle of society was small, yet she found
in her neighbourhood persons of good taste and cultivated minds. Her
acquaintance, in fact, constituted the very class from which she took her
imaginary characters, ranging from the member of parliament, or large landed
proprietor, to the young curate or younger midshipman of equally good family;
and I think that the influence of these early associations may be traced in her
writings, especially in two particulars. First, that she is entirely free from
the vulgarity, which is so offensive in some novels, of dwelling on the outward
appendages of wealth or rank, as if they were things to which the writer was
unaccustomed; and, secondly, that she deals as little with very low as with
very high stations in life. She does not go lower than the Miss Steeles, Mrs.
Elton, and John Thorpe, people of bad taste and
underbred manners, such as are actually found sometimes mingling with better
society.
She has nothing resembling the Brangtons, or Mr. Dubster and his friend Tom
Hicks, with whom Madame D'Arblay loved to season her stories, and to produce
striking contrasts to her well bred characters.
