Jane Austen (16 page)

The storm that wrought this sensational ruin was so high, blowing down some trees in the meadows besides those in the Rector's

plantation, that they all felt considerable alarm. However, no damage was caused in the neighborhood except to trees. "We grieve therefore in some comfort."

In the middle of November, with Cassandra still away,

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Jane was going to visit Martha at Ibthrop. Martha had suggested that if she had anything to read, she had better bring it. Jane said: "You distress me cruelly by your request about books, I cannot think of any to bring with me, nor have I any idea of our wanting them. I come to you to be talked to, not to read or hear reading. I can do that at home."

Before she went, there had been a visit from Charles. "About two o'clock he walked in on a Gosport hack." He seemed much better in health than they had expected to find him; he walked over with Jane to James and Mary's, where they had dinner, and went to a dance afterwards. "He danced the whole evening and today is no more tired than a gentleman ought to be." It says something for Charles' state of health that he felt nothing more than gentlemanly lassitude after a journey, a long ride, and a night spent in dancing from which they did not get back to Deane till nearly five in the morning. Cassandra and Jane had had gowns made out of the same length of stuff, and Jane wearing hers, Charles said he did not like it. James, however, liked it so much that he said it was the best dress of the kind he had ever seen, so the devoted Mary asked Jane to find out whether she might buy Cassandra's from her.

The Rectory received a parting visit from Mr. James Digweed, the son of the tenant of Steventon Manor. Mr. James Digweed was

leaving Hampshire for Kent, and Jane said to Cassandra: "I think he must be in love with you, from his anxiety to have you go to the Faversham Balls, and likewise from his supposing that the two Elms fell from their grief at your absence. Was not it a gallant idea? It never occurred to me before, but I daresay it was so." Charles sent his best love to Cassandra and promised to write to her when he got back to his ship. The postscript added: "Charles likes my gown now."

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The visit to Martha Lloyd was memorable for what happened

immediately afterwards. Jane brought Martha back with her, and when they walked into the house, Mrs. Austen abruptly greeted

them: "Well, girls! it is all settled. We have decided to leave Steventon and go to Bath." Mrs. Austen was not one to beat about the bush, but she may have regretted being quite so precipitate on this occasion, because Jane fainted. When she was a little girl she had made the heroine of Love and Friendship say: "Run mad as often as you choose but do not faint," and nothing but a very severe shock could have been responsible for making her faint herself. The circumstance indicates how extremely rapid her perceptions were.

The ordinary girl, on being told that she is to leave the home where she has spent the first twentyfive years of her life, cannot

understand, immediately, the full force of the statement: the

realization comes by degrees; it is at first resisted by the mind and makes its way only with difficulty. When Jane received the news, in one instant she understood the whole of its implication, and the shock was too much for her. That she was extremely agitated by the idea of leaving Steventon is suggested, as the family record points out, by the fact that though Cassandra was still at Godmersham, there are no letters from Jane to her preserved from November 30th, when Jane was still at Ibthrop, till January 3rd, 1801. This gap in a correspondence which sometimes extended to three or four letters a week would be significant, even if her descendants had not known that Cassandra Austen destroyed of set purpose the parts of Jane's correspondence which she thought showed too much intimate feeling to be made public. But by January of the new year Jane was quite herself again and looking forward to the move and all its attendant arrangements with interest.

James was to succeed his father as the Rector of Steventon,

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and it became necessary to find another curate for Deane. The curacy was offered to Mr. Peter Debary, but he declined it because he said he wanted to be nearer London. "A foolish reason!" said Jane. "As if Deane were not near London in comparison of Exeter or York!--

Take the whole world through, and he will find many more places at a greater distance from London than Deane, than he will at a less."

Mr. Austen then thought of offering it to James Digweed, but Jane did not think it would suit him, unless Cassandra were to remain there too. "Were you indeed to be considered as one of the fixtures of the house! but you were never actually erected in it, either by Mr.

Egerton Brydges or Mrs. Lloyd." The arrangements connected with the church were Mr. Austen's province, but there was plenty to do indoors for Mrs. Austen and Jane. Cassandra's being away just now was very inconvenient and Jane wanted her opinion on all kinds of things. In the middle of a long letter full of household concerns, she suddenly broke off to say: "I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told, is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth; I have been talking to you almost as fast as I could the whole of this letter."

Cassandra's advice, and also Mrs. Austen's, as to leaving things behind did not always meet with Jane's approval. They both thought a cabinet of Jane's might be very well left in the house for Anna.

Jane said: "You are very kind in planning presents for me to make, and my Mother has shown me exactly the same attention--but as I do not choose to have generosity dictated to me, I shall not resolve on giving my cabinet to Anna till the first thought of it has been my own." In the meantime, Mary wanted to know if Cassandra could let her have the pattern of "the Jacket and Trowsers, or whatever it is, that Elizabeth's boys wear when they are first

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put into breeches." As for their own clothes, Jane said she should want two new colored gowns for the summer, as her pink one would not do more than "clear her" from Steventon; but if Cassandra would buy her a length of brown cambric muslin in Kent, she should buy a yellow muslin when she got to Bath.

How long Cassandra stayed away once they had got her at

Godmersham! Jane said: "Neither my affection for you nor for letter-writing can stand out against a Kentish visit. For a three months'

absence I can be a very loving relation and a very excellent

correspondent, but beyond that I degenerate into negligence and indifference." The move was to be made in May, and Cassandra would be at home for the previous two months; in May they would all go to the Lloyds at Ibthrop for a short visit, and then Mrs. Austen and Jane would go on to Bath and leave Cassandra to follow them.

Jane had become quite resigned to their departure now that she had had time to get used to it. She said: "I get more and more reconciled to the idea of our removal. We have lived long enough in this

neighborhood . . . there is something interesting in the bustle of going away and the prospect of spending future summers by the sea or in Wales is very delightful." A house had not yet been fixed upon; Mrs. Leigh Perrot had wanted to establish them in Paragon, or in Axford buildings opposite: but as, in Jane's words, they all united in a particular dislike of that end of the town, they hoped to escape.

Jane and Cassandra had previously agreed that it would be very agreeable to be near Sydney Gardens, as they could then walk in the gardens every day; and the house finally chosen was to be No. 4

Sydney Place, overlooking the classical pavilion and the trees behind it.

While house-hunting was still in progress, Jane and her mother were to stay for a while at No. 1 Paragon, and when

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Cassandra joined them, they were to go to Sidmouth. Jane looked forward to this trip intensely, and was extremely glad that an invitation from some of the Coopers that would have interfered with it was refused. Another year, she said; this year the sea was more to them than their relations.

The journey to Bath with their personal possessions was

accomplished without any accident except to Cassandra's drawing ruler, which was found, on being unpacked, to have broken in two.

Jane wrote to Ibthrop to tell her so, and to describe their doings in Paragon. This time they entered the city in fine weather, but she said:

"I think I see more distinctly through rain. The sun was got behind everything and the appearance of the place from the top of

Kingsdown was all vapor, shadow, smoke and confusion." The search for a suitable house went on, and Jane went with Mr. Leigh Perrot to look at one, having first been with him to the Pump Room for him to take his second glass of water. Her uncle and aunt took her to a ball at the Assembly Rooms, for which, she said, "I dressed my self as well as I could, and had all my finery much admired at home." At this ball, she was on the lookout for a certain Miss Twistleton, whom she did not know by sight, but of whom she had heard a good deal. In describing how she picked her out, Jane said:

"I am proud to say that I have a very good eye at an adulteress, for tho' repeatedly assured that another in the same party was she, I fixed upon the right one from the first."

The next evening Mr. and Mrs. Leigh Perrot had a staid party at home. Their niece said it was very stupid; three ladies--Lady Fust, Mrs. Busby and Mrs. Owen--were among the guests, and they had

sat down to whist with Mr. Leigh Perrot "within five minutes after the three old Toughs came in," nor did the card table break up until the Toughs' chairmen were announced.

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A gentleman called Mr. Evelyn, whose name had been connected

with Miss Twistleton's, was known to Mrs. Leigh Perrot, and though the latter seems to have been doubtful as to whether he ought to be encouraged in the circumstances, he was quite accepted by the

neighborhood, even to the extent of being given groundsel out of their gardens. Jane said: "I really believe he is very harmless; people do not seem afraid of him here, and he gets groundsel for his birds and all that." He asked to be allowed to drive Jane out in his phaeton:

"which," she said, "to confess my frailty, I have a great desire to go out in." The next day she did go out in it; "a bewitching phaeton and four," it was. They drove over the top of Kingsdown and had a delightful airing; the homecoming was delightful too, for when Jane got back she found on the table a letter from Cassandra, and a letter from Charles, who had got thirty pounds as his share of prize money for the capture of a French privateer, and had bought for each of his sisters a topaz cross on a gold chain. Jane said: "Of what avail is it to take prizes if he lays out the produce in presents to his sisters? . . . I shall write again by this post to thank and reproach him.--We shall be unbearably fine."

The crosses were each formed of five stones; but in one the jewels were of an oval shape and all of the same size, while in the other they were rectangular, and the topaz forming the stem of the cross was twice as long as the other four. Topazes, with amethysts and garnets, were very fashionable, especially to wear with the white frocks that were the height of elegance; how nobly extravagant the presents were may be understood from the beautiful episode in

Mansfield Park
. Charles, flushed with prize money, had bought gold chains to go with the crosses; when the midshipman William Price bought an amber cross for his sister Fanny, he had wanted to buy a chain as well, but he had not

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the money to do it. Such was Jane's last letter before Cassandra joined them for Sidmouth.

Eliza Austen writing to Phila Walter on the 29th of October in that year says: "I conclude that you know of our uncle and aunt Austen and their daughters having spent the summer in Devonshire. They are now returned to Bath where they are superintending the fitting up of their new house."

This letter covers the time of what was, to herself, one of the most important periods of Jane Austen's existence. It was certainly the year which has given rise to the most discussion and conjecture of any in her life.

The information we possess about this matter is derived solely from Cassandra Austen, and was given by her, many years after her

sister's death, to her sister-in-law, Mrs. James Austen, and the daughter of James and Mary, Anna's halfsister, Caroline.

Caroline Austen's account of what her aunt Cassandra had said, and the manner in which Cassandra, usually so much reserved, had been led to give it, was this: that when they had all three been staying together at Newtown, the party had become acquainted with a young and very goodlooking man in the Engineers, whom Caroline Austen refers to as Mr. H. E. Cassandra admired and liked the young man, and this struck her niece at the time as something unusual, because Cassandra "so rarely admired strangers." Shortly after they had left Newtown, they heard that Mr. H. E. had died of a sudden illness.

The news shocked Cassandra out of her reserve, and moved by the coincidence which brought back to her what must have been, after the death of her own lover, one of the darkest periods of her life, she told her niece that when she and Jane had been staying in

Devonshire, they had met a young man, of whom Mr. H. E. had

strongly reminded her. He appeared to be greatly attracted

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by Jane; Cassandra's impression was that he had fallen in love with her and was "quite in earnest." He was very anxious to know where they would be the next summer, implying that wherever it was, he should be there too. Cassandra's opinion of him may be inferred from the fact that she thought him worthy of Jane, and she was certain also "that he would have been a successful suitor." They parted in the full expectation of meeting again but more happily.

Shortly afterwards they heard that he was dead.

Such is the only existing mention of the story, and for the next three years none of Jane's letters has survived. The blank is complete, the darkness impenetrable. She was not the woman to be prostrated by a love affair, however tragic; she would not rudely have repulsed all attempts at sympathy and shut herself up in grief till the beauty of the world became a torment instead of a consolation. She thought a person stood disgraced who abandoned him or herself to a private grief and disregarded the claims of others to decency and