Memoir of Jane Austen by James Edward Austen-Leigh (beginner reading books for adults .TXT) 📖

chancel; while its solitary position, far from the hum of the village, and within sight of no habitation, except a glimpse of the gray manor-house through its circling screen of sycamores, has in it something solemn and appropriate to the last resting-place of the silent dead.  Sweet violets, both purple and white, grow in abundance beneath its south wall.  One may imagine for how many centuries the ancestors of those little flowers have occupied that undisturbed, sunny nook, and may think how few living families can boast of as ancient a tenure of their land.  Large elms protrude their rough branches; old hawthorns shed their annual blossoms over the graves; and the hollow yew-tree must be at least coeval with the church.

Steventon Manor House

But whatever may be the beauties or defects of the surrounding scenery, this was the residence of Jane Austen for twenty-five years.  This was the cradle of her genius.  These were the first objects which inspired her young heart with a sense of the beauties of nature.  In strolls along those wood-walks, thick-coming fancies rose in her mind, and gradually assumed the forms in which they came forth to the world.  In that simple church she brought them all into subjection to the piety which ruled her in life, and supported her in death.

The home at Steventon must have been, for many years, a pleasant and prosperous one.  The family was unbroken by death, and seldom visited by sorrow.  Their situation had some peculiar advantages beyond those of ordinary rectories.  Steventon was a family living.  Mr. Knight, the patron, was also proprietor of nearly the whole parish.  He never resided there, and consequently the rector and his children came to be regarded in the neighbourhood as a kind of representatives of the family.  They shared with the principal tenant the command of an excellent manor, and enjoyed, in this reflected way, some of the consideration usually awarded to landed proprietors.  They were not rich, but, aided by Mr. Austen’s powers of teaching, they had enough to afford a good education to their sons and daughters, to mix in the best society of the neighbourhood, and to exercise a liberal hospitality to their own relations and friends.  A carriage and a pair of horses were kept.  This might imply a higher style of living in our days than it did in theirs.  There were then no assessed taxes.  The carriage, once bought, entailed little further expense; and the horses probably, like Mr. Bennet’s, were often employed on farm work.  Moreover, it should be remembered that a pair of horses in those days were almost necessary, if ladies were to move about at all; for neither the condition of the roads nor the style of carriage-building admitted of any comfortable vehicle being drawn by a single horse.  When one looks at the few specimens still remaining of coach-building in the last century, it strikes one that the chief object of the builders must have been to combine the greatest possible weight with the least possible amount of accommodation.

The family lived in close intimacy with two cousins, Edward and Jane Cooper, the children of Mrs. Austen’s eldest sister, and Dr. Cooper, the vicar of Sonning, near Reading.  The Coopers lived for some years at Bath, which seems to have been much frequented in those days by clergymen retiring from work.  I believe that Cassandra and Jane sometimes visited them there, and that Jane thus acquired the intimate knowledge of the topography and customs of Bath, which enabled her to write ‘Northanger Abbey’ long before she resided there herself.  After the death of their own parents, the two young Coopers paid long visits at Steventon.  Edward Cooper did not live undistinguished.  When an undergraduate at Oxford, he gained the prize for Latin hexameters on ‘Hortus Anglicus’ in 1791; and in later life he was known by a work on prophecy, called ‘The Crisis,’ and other religious publications, especially for several volumes of Sermons, much preached in many pulpits in my youth.  Jane Cooper was married from her uncle’s house at Steventon, to Captain, afterwards Sir Thomas Williams, under whom Charles Austen served in several ships.  She was a dear friend of her namesake, but was fated to become a cause of great sorrow to her, for a few years after the marriage she was suddenly killed by an accident to her carriage.

There was another cousin closely associated with them at Steventon, who must have introduced greater variety into the family circle.  This was the daughter of Mr. Austen’s only sister, Mrs. Hancock.  This cousin had been educated in Paris, and married to a Count de Feuillade, of whom I know little more than that he perished by the guillotine during the French Revolution.  Perhaps his chief offence was his rank; but it was said that the charge of ‘incivism,’ under which he suffered, rested on the fact of his having laid down some arable land into pasture—a sure sign of his intention to embarrass the Republican Government by producing a famine!  His wife escaped through dangers and difficulties to England, was received for some time into her uncle’s family, and finally married her cousin Henry Austen.  During the short peace of Amiens, she and her second husband went to France, in the hope of recovering some of the Count’s property, and there narrowly escaped being included amongst the détenus.  Orders had been given by Buonaparte’s government to detain all English travellers, but at the post-houses Mrs. Henry Austen gave the necessary orders herself, and her French was so perfect that she passed everywhere for a native, and her husband escaped under this protection.

She was a clever woman, and highly accomplished, after the French rather than the English mode; and in those days, when intercourse with the Continent was long interrupted by war, such an element in the society of a country parsonage must have been a rare acquisition.  The sisters may have been more indebted to this cousin than to Mrs. La Tournelle’s teaching for the considerable knowledge of French which they possessed.  She also took the principal parts in the private theatricals in which the family several times indulged, having their summer theatre in the barn, and their winter one within the narrow limits of the dining-room, where the number of the audience must have been very limited.  On these occasions, the prologues and epilogues were written by Jane’s eldest brother, and some of them are very vigorous and amusing.  Jane was only twelve years old at the time of the earliest of these representations, and not more than fifteen when the last took place.  She was, however, an early observer, and it may be reasonably supposed that some of the incidents and feelings which are so vividly painted in the Mansfield Park theatricals are due to her recollections of these entertainments.

Some time before they left Steventon, one great affliction came upon the family.  Cassandra was engaged to be married to a young clergyman.  He had not sufficient private fortune to permit an immediate union; but the engagement was not likely to be a hopeless or a protracted one, for he had a prospect of early preferment from a nobleman with whom he was connected both by birth and by personal friendship.  He accompanied this friend to the West Indies, as chaplain to his regiment, and there died of yellow fever, to the great concern of his friend and patron, who afterwards declared that, if he had known of the engagement, he would not have permitted him to go out to such a climate.  This little domestic tragedy caused great and lasting grief to the principal sufferer, and could not but cast a gloom over the whole party.  The sympathy of Jane was probably, from her age, and her peculiar attachment to her sister, the deepest of all.

Of Jane herself I know of no such definite tale of love to relate.  Her reviewer in the ‘Quarterly’ of January 1821 observes, concerning the attachment of Fanny Price to Edmund Bertram: ‘The silence in which this passion is cherished, the slender hopes and enjoyments by which it is fed, the restlessness and jealousy with which it fills a mind naturally active, contented, and unsuspicious, the manner in which it tinges every event, and every reflection, are painted with a vividness and a detail of which we can scarcely conceive any one but a female, and we should almost add, a female writing from recollection, capable.’  This conjecture, however probable, was wide of the mark.  The picture was drawn from the intuitive perceptions of genius, not from personal experience.  In no circumstance of her life was there any similarity between herself and her heroine in ‘Mansfield Park.’  She did not indeed pass through life without being the object of warm affection.  In her youth she had declined the addresses of a gentleman who had the recommendations of good character, and connections, and position in life, of everything, in fact, except the subtle power of touching her heart.  There is, however, one passage of romance in her history with which I am imperfectly acquainted, and to which I am unable to assign name, or date, or place, though I have it on sufficient authority.  Many years after her death, some circumstances induced her sister Cassandra to break through her habitual reticence, and to speak of it.  She said that, while staying at some seaside place, they became acquainted with a gentleman, whose charm of person, mind, and manners was such that Cassandra thought him worthy to possess and likely to win her sister’s love.  When they parted, he expressed his intention of soon seeing them again; and Cassandra felt no doubt as to his motives.  But they never again met.  Within a short time they heard of his sudden death.  I believe that, if Jane ever loved, it was this unnamed gentleman; but the acquaintance had been short, and I am unable to say whether her feelings were of such a nature as to affect her happiness.

Any description that I might attempt of the family life at Steventon, which closed soon after I was born, could be little better than a fancy-piece.  There is no doubt that if we could look into the households of the clergy and the small gentry of that period, we should see some things which would seem strange to us, and should miss many more to which we are accustomed.  Every hundred years, and especially a century like the last, marked by an extraordinary advance in wealth, luxury, and refinement of taste, as well as in the mechanical arts which embellish our houses, must produce a great change in their aspect.  These changes are always at work; they are going on now, but so silently that we take no note of them.  Men soon forget the small objects which they leave behind them as they drift down the stream of life.  As Pope says—

Nor does life’s stream for observation stay;
It hurries all too fast to mark their way.

Important inventions, such as the applications of steam, gas, and electricity, may find their places in history; but not so the alterations, great as they may be, which have taken place in the appearance of our dining and drawing-rooms.  Who can now record the degrees by which the custom prevalent in my youth of asking each other to take wine together at dinner became obsolete?  Who will be able to fix, twenty years hence, the date when our dinners began to be carved and handed round by servants, instead of smoking before our eyes and noses on the table?  To record such little matters