Steventon: Jane Austen's real "true home"

While we are talking about the "true homes" of Jane Austen, please let us not forget Steventon rectory (shown here as drawn by Jane's niece Anna Austen Lefroy).

It was at Steventon that Jane was born, lived most of her life, and started on her writing career. She lived there until her father retired and the family removed to Bath, whereupon her eldest brother James succeeded to his father's position and the rectory. Jane's brother Edward Knight later considered the house too dilapidated for his own son to occupy, and it was demolished in the early 1820s, and a new rectory was built.

If there is anywhere which was Jane Austen's true home, it would have been Steventon, but probably the absence of the original house doesn't satisfy the marketing and tourism industries. Oh dear, how cynical of me.

Fight to claim Jane Austen's "true home"

The Telegraph reports on controversy over whether Chawton, Hampshire or the city of Bath is Jane Austen's "true home". We won't worry at all about the fact that Jane Austen hated Bath, and reported in a letter to Cassandra on 20 June 1808:

It will be two years to-morrow since we left Bath for Clifton, with what happy feelings of escape!

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Austen Autobiographical? "Persuasion"

From Chapter 1 of Persuasion

"ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH-HALL.
"Walter Elliot, born March 1, 1760, married, July 15, 1784, Elizabeth, daughter of James Stevenson, Esq. of South Park, in the county of Gloucester; by which lady (who died 1800) he has issue Elizabeth, born June 1, 1785; Anne, born August 9, 1787; a still-born son, Nov. 5, 1789; Mary, born Nov. 20, 1791."

Precisely such had the paragraph originally stood from the printer's hands; but Sir Walter had improved it by adding, for the information of himself and his family, these words, after the date of Mary's birth -- "Married, December 16, 1810, Charles, son and heir of Charles Musgrove, Esq. of Uppercross, in the county of Somerset," and by inserting most accurately the day of the month on which he had lost his wife.

So Anne Elliot's sister Mary was married on Jane Austen's birthday, which also happened to be the date of Mrs Lefroy's death (Tom's aunt). The Elliots' mother's maiden name was Stevenson, not spelled with a "ph", so it reminds us irresistibly of the village of Steventon, where Jane grew up. Jane also seems to have mined her mother's Leigh and Perrot ancestry in using the name Musgrove, although the actual surname was Musgrave (one of Jane's godparents was Mrs Musgrave).

However, the most interesting thing here is that the stillborn Elliot son was born on the same date that Tom Lefroy's brother Anthony married Elizabeth Wilkin. Son Elliot was born 5 November 1789, Anthony Lefroy was married on 5 November 1798. Coincidence? Given Jane's obsession with dates in both her letters and her fiction, and that she got news of other Lefroy marriages - "the third Miss Irish Lefroy" [Jane to Cassandra, 18 December, 1798] - I very much doubt it.