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.

A Spot of Professional Jealousy

I've been reading this edition of James Edward Austen-Leigh's Memoir of Jane Austen while waiting patiently for a copy of the Oxford edition, which has a few extra bells and whistles.

And finally, we discover the reason for Mary Russell Mitford's nastiness about Jane Austen - she was jealous because Jane was a much better writer! James Edward Austen-Leigh writes:

I remember Miss Mitford's saying to me: 'I would almost cut off one of my hands, if it would enable me to write like your aunt with the other.'

Although poor Mr. Austen-Leigh was not at all happy when he read the "prettiest, silliest, most affected husband-hunting butterfly" comments made by Miss Mitford, and was driven to add a postscript to the first edition, denying that his esteemed aunt had been anything of the sort.

I suppose that might show up a difference between Georgian and Victorian sensibilities, and also between Victorian and modern-day sensibilities. Personally I find the description of Jane's lively, youthful personality far more attractive than the impression of a somewhat dour Jane many people have had - until Anne Hathaway's inspired portrayal turned that smartly on its head.

What They Said About Her: Henry Austen

This is what Jane's favourite brother Henry wrote about her, in his "Biographical Notice of the Author", which accompanied the posthumously published (1818) Northanger Abbey and Persuasion.

"Of personal attractions she possessed a considerable share. Her stature was that of true elegance. It could not have been increased without exceeding the middle height. Her carriage and deportment were quiet, yet graceful. Her features were separately good. Their assemblage produced an unrivalled expression of that cheerfulness, sensibility, and benevolence, which were her real characteristics. Her complexion was of the finest texture. It might with truth be said, that her eloquent blood spoke through her modest cheek. Her voice was extremely sweet. She delivered herself with fluency and precision. Indeed she was formed for elegant and rational society, excelling in conversation as much as in composition."

It has been noted that part of Henry's description - "her eloquent blood spoke through her modest cheek" - owes a debt to the poet John Donne, and consequently to Henry Fielding, who employed the same passage in Tom Jones (see my earlier post on this blog: Jane Austen & "Sophia Sentiment").

However, in the same Biographical Notice, Henry (at left) also avows that his sister had her reservations about Fielding. This latter assertion needs to be taken with a large grain of salt, considering the references in Jane's letters and the themes and character names used by her that also appear in Tom Jones. (A few of these have been pointed out by Jon Spence in Becoming Jane Austen, although a diligent reader will discover plenty more that he did not specifically note.)

Re-reading the famous Tom Lefroy white coat reference will reveal that the similarity to Jones is one envisaged by Jane Austen, not one that Lefroy himself professed or was necessarily aware of. "He is a very great admirer of Tom Jones, and therefore wears the same coloured clothes, I imagine, which he did when he was wounded." (Jane to Cassandra, 9 January 1796, emphasis in bold added).


Henry Austen's tribute to his deceased sister can therefore be considered the first of many attempts by her relatives to whitewash her image, whereby the sharp and witty Jane Austen becomes transformed into that sanctimonious creature, Saint Jane. Personally, this blogger much prefers the Jane whose halo is just ever so slightly askew!

On Women "Seeking Their Fortune"

One of Jane Austen's most intriguing letters was written from Cork St, London in August 1796. Jon Spence has shown that this was the home of Benjamin Langlois, Tom Lefroy's great uncle, with whom Tom lived in London. It is letter no 3. in Deidre Le Faye's Jane Austen's Letters and the text can be found online here at the Republic of Pemberley site.

The relevant passage begins:

Edward & Frank [Jane's brothers] are both gone out to seek their fortunes; the latter is to return soon & help us seek ours.

We must ask to whom is Jane referring in speaking of “us” when her brothers have obviously both gone out? Even more intriguingly, what does she mean by saying that Frank will be returning from seeking his fortune to “help us seek ours”? In her first paragraph describing the journey to London, she uses “I” and “my” repeatedly, so the change to “us” and “ours” once she has arrived is noteworthy. She did not travel to London alone, as subsequent letters make it clear that her brothers would not have countenanced the idea. The “us” must refer to another person present in the Langlois household, apart from Jane and her brothers.

Tom Lefroy is the obvious conclusion, despite Joan Klingel Ray's quite unwarranted assumption, in my view, that he would not have been there. Her statement is based on the fact that Irish law students usually returned home during the long vacation. However, as Lefroy's uncle was a permanent resident of London and highly interested in Tom, his welfare and his education, it is by no means a foregone conclusion that Tom would have been obliged to go home only three weeks into his summer vacation. (Among the many things with which I disagree in this article, I am also unconvinced by Professor Ray's statements about the lengths of the various terms, although will leave that aside for the moment.)

But to return to Jane Austen's letter. To seek one’s fortune in a woman’s case meant to find it through marriage, as is best illustrated by Jane’s own aunt, Philadelphia Austen Hancock. Philadelphia, orphaned by the age of five, at twenty-one elected to become one of the notorious “fishing fleet” – young women who were shipped off to the colonies to catch the husbands they could not catch at home. As Austen biographer Claire Tomalin puts it: “Men went to India to make their fortunes through trade, honest or dishonest, and women went with a somewhat similar object, as everyone knew even if no one said so. Their business was to find a husband, the richer the better, among the Englishmen working there”.

There is a further reference to seeking one's fortune through marriage in Emma, Chapter 40, in a scene set a few days after Harriet's encounter with the gypsies and her "rescue" by Frank Churchill, and where she finally consigns her souvenirs of Mr Elton to the fire. The perennially misguided Emma is now keen to see Harriet get together with Frank Churchill:

'...There it goes, and there is an end, thank Heaven! of Mr Elton.'
'And when,' thought Emma, 'will there be a beginning of Mr Churchill?'
She had soon afterwards reason to believe that the beginning was already made, and could not but hope that the gypsy, though he had told no fortune, might be proved to have made Harriet's.'

References:
Deirdre Le Faye Jane Austen's Letters Oxford University Press, 1997
Joan Klingel Ray The One Sided Romance of Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy Persuasions Online, Vol 28, No. 1 (Winter 2007)
Jon Spence Becoming Jane Austen Continuum International Publishing Group, 2007
Claire Tomalin Jane Austen: A Life Penguin, 2000

Anna Austen Lefroy had read her "Emma"

Here we have Jane Austen's niece, Anna Austen Lefroy (pictured at left) writing to her own niece, Emma Austen-Leigh, on 24 May 1869, on the subject of the Jane Austen-Tom Lefroy romance:


"I am the only person who has any faith in the tradition – nor should I probably be an exception if I had not married into the family of Lefroy – but when I came to hear again & again, from those who were old enough to remember, how the Mother had disliked Tom Lefroy because he had behaved so ill to Jane Austen, which sometimes the additional weight of the Father’s condemnation, what could I think then? Or what except to give a verdict… [of] ‘under mitigating circumstances’ – As – First, the youth of the Parties – secondly, that Mrs. Lefroy, charming woman as she was, & warm in her feelings, was also partial in her judgments – Thirdly – that for other causes, too long to enter upon, she not improbably set out with a prejudice against the Gentleman, & would have distrusted had there been no Jane Austen in the case. The one thing certain is, that to the last year of his life she was remembered as the object of his youthful admiration."
[emphasis in bold added]

Compare this to Jane Austen's character Mr Knightley, discussing Frank Churchill with Emma Woodhouse, in Emma, chapter 51:

"I was not quite impartial in my judgement, Emma; but yet, I think had you not been in the case, I should still have distrusted him."
[emphasis in bold added]