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

I pretend to tell how much of what I have said is descriptive of the family life at Steventon in Jane Austen’s youth.  I am sure that the ladies there had nothing to do with the mysteries of the stew-pot or the preserving-pan; but it is probable that their way of life differed a little from ours, and would have appeared to us more homely.  It may be that useful articles, which would not now be produced in drawing-rooms, were hemmed, and marked, and darned in the old-fashioned parlour.  But all this concerned only the outer life; there was as much cultivation and refinement of mind as now, with probably more studied courtesy and ceremony of manner to visitors; whilst certainly in that family literary pursuits were not neglected.

I remember to have heard of only two little things different from modern customs.  One was, that on hunting mornings the young men usually took their hasty breakfast in the kitchen.  The early hour at which hounds then met may account for this; and probably the custom began, if it did not end, when they were boys; for they hunted at an early age, in a scrambling sort of way, upon any pony or donkey that they could procure, or, in default of such luxuries, on foot.  I have been told that Sir Francis Austen, when seven years old, bought on his own account, it must be supposed with his father’s permission, a pony for a guinea and a half; and after riding him with great success for two seasons, sold him for a guinea more.  One may wonder how the child could have so much money, and how the animal could have been obtained for so little.  The same authority informs me that his first cloth suit was made from a scarlet habit, which, according to the fashion of the times, had been his mother’s usual morning dress.  If all this is true, the future admiral of the British Fleet must have cut a conspicuous figure in the hunting-field.  The other peculiarity was that, when the roads were dirty, the sisters took long walks in pattens.  This defence against wet and dirt is now seldom seen.  The few that remain are banished from good society, and employed only in menial work; but a hundred and fifty years ago they were celebrated in poetry, and considered so clever a contrivance that Gay, in his ‘Trivia,’ ascribes the invention to a god stimulated by his passion for a mortal damsel, and derives the name ‘Patten’ from ‘Patty.’

The patten now supports each frugal dame,
Which from the blue-eyed Patty takes the name.

But mortal damsels have long ago discarded the clumsy implement.  First it dropped its iron ring and became a clog; afterwards it was fined down into the pliant galoshe—lighter to wear and more effectual to protect—a no less manifest instance of gradual improvement than Cowper indicates when he traces through eighty lines of poetry his ‘accomplished sofa’ back to the original three-legged stool.

As an illustration of the purposes which a patten was intended to serve, I add the following epigram, written by Jane Austen’s uncle, Mr. Leigh Perrot, on reading in a newspaper the marriage of Captain Foote to Miss Patten:—

Through the rough paths of life, with a patten your guard,
   May you safely and pleasantly jog;
May the knot never slip, nor the ring press too hard,
   Nor the Foot find the Patten a clog.

At the time when Jane Austen lived at Steventon, a work was carried on in the neighbouring cottages which ought to be recorded, because it has long ceased to exist.

Up to the beginning of the present century, poor women found profitable employment in spinning flax or wool.  This was a better occupation for them than straw plaiting, inasmuch as it was carried on at the family hearth, and did not admit of gadding and gossiping about the village.  The implement used was a long narrow machine of wood, raised on legs, furnished at one end with a large wheel, and at the other with a spindle on which the flax or wool was loosely wrapped, connected together by a loop of string.  One hand turned the wheel, while the other formed the thread.  The outstretched arms, the advanced foot, the sway of the whole figure backwards and forwards, produced picturesque attitudes, and displayed whatever of grace or beauty the work-woman might possess. {41}  Some ladies were fond of spinning, but they worked in a quieter manner, sitting at a neat little machine of varnished wood, like Tunbridge ware, generally turned by the foot, with a basin of water at hand to supply the moisture required for forming the thread, which the cottager took by a more direct and natural process from her own mouth.  I remember two such elegant little wheels in our own family.

It may be observed that this hand-spinning is the most primitive of female accomplishments, and can be traced back to the earliest times.  Ballad poetry and fairy tales are full of allusions to it.  The term ‘spinster’ still testifies to its having been the ordinary employment of the English young woman.  It was the labour assigned to the ejected nuns by the rough earl who said, ‘Go spin, ye jades, go spin.’  It was the employment at which Roman matrons and Grecian princesses presided amongst their handmaids.  Heathen mythology celebrated it in the three Fates spinning and measuring out the thread of human life.  Holy Scripture honours it in those ‘wise-hearted women’ who ‘did spin with their hands, and brought that which they had spun’ for the construction of the Tabernacle in the wilderness: and an old English proverb carries it still farther back to the time ‘when Adam delved and Eve span.’  But, at last, this time-honoured domestic manufacture is quite extinct amongst us—crushed by the power of steam, overborne by a countless host of spinning jennies, and I can only just remember some of its last struggles for existence in the Steventon cottages.

CHAPTER III.

Early Compositions—Friends at Ashe—A very old Letter—Lines on the Death of Mrs. Lefroy—Observations on Jane Austen’s Letter-writing—Letters.

I know little of Jane Austen’s childhood.  Her mother followed a custom, not unusual in those days, though it seems strange to us, of putting out her babies to be nursed in a cottage in the village.  The infant was daily visited by one or both of its parents, and frequently brought to them at the parsonage, but the cottage was its home, and must have remained so till it was old enough to run about and talk; for I know that one of them, in after life, used to speak of his foster mother as ‘Movie,’ the name by which he had called her in his infancy.  It may be that the contrast between the parsonage house and the best class of cottages was not quite so extreme then as it would be now, that the one was somewhat less luxurious, and the other less squalid.  It would certainly seem from the results that it was a wholesome and invigorating system, for the children were all strong and healthy.  Jane was probably treated like the rest in this respect.  In childhood every available opportunity of instruction was made use of.  According to the ideas of the time, she was well educated, though not highly accomplished, and she certainly enjoyed that important element of mental training, associating at home with persons of cultivated intellect.  It cannot be doubted that her early years were bright and happy, living, as she did, with indulgent parents, in a cheerful home, not without agreeable variety of society.  To these sources of enjoyment must be added the first stirrings of talent within her, and the absorbing interest of original composition.  It is impossible to say at how early an age she began to write.  There are copy books extant containing tales some of which must have been composed while she was a young girl, as they had amounted to a considerable number by the time she was sixteen.  Her earliest stories are of a slight and flimsy texture, and are generally intended to be nonsensical, but the nonsense has much spirit in it.  They are usually preceded by a dedication of mock solemnity to some one of her family.  It would seem that the grandiloquent dedications prevalent in those days had not escaped her youthful penetration.  Perhaps the most characteristic feature in these early productions is that, however puerile the matter, they are always composed in pure simple English, quite free from the over-ornamented style which might be expected from so young a writer.  One of her juvenile effusions is given, as a specimen of the kind of transitory amusement which Jane was continually supplying to the family party.

THE MYSTERY.
AN UNFINISHED COMEDY.

DEDICATION.

To the Rev. George austen.

Sir,—I humbly solicit your patronage to the following Comedy, which, though an unfinished one, is, I flatter myself, as complete a Mystery as any of its kind.

I am, Sir, your most humble Servant,
The Author.

THE MYSTERY, A COMEDY.

dramatis personæ.