Irene Collins (†)

Jane Austen (1775–1817): A Novelist from the Parsonage

The editors are grieved about Irene Collins’ death whose enthusiasm for this project resulted in her essay on Jane Austen and whose daughter we thank for her help and support since Irene’s passing.

On January 21 of 1805, Jane Austen’s father, the Reverend George Austen, died from a stroke, which had been thought to be a fever from which he was recovering. Jane had the difficult task of writing to tell the sad news to Frank, the elder of her two sailor brothers, who was in charge of coastal defense at Portsmouth. The anguish of her grief is apparent in every line. Perhaps she realized for the first time that her father had been her guide in all the important phases of her life. Yet he had never given her any formal teaching, except for a few lessons in writing when she was very young (reading was usually taught by the mother, and writing, which may in the future have legal implication, was taught by the father or a paid scrivener) (Le Faye 1995: 95 – 98).

It gradually became clear that what Jane admired most about her father was the way in which, by adopting an elegant style of living, along with gracious manners and an unpretentious piety, he had managed to commend himself to the gentry of his small country parish. After devoting the first thirty years of his life to the pursuit of an academic career, he had given up his Fellowship at St. John’s College, Oxford, to become Rector of Steventon in Hampshire. His motives were not entirely religious. He wanted to marry the stylish and witty Cassandra Leigh, and university teaching was a celibate profession. The fact that he later became a devoted father to his children: James (February 1765), George (August 1766), Edward (October 1767), Henry (June 1771), Cassandra (January 1773), Francis ‘Frank’ (April 1774), Jane (December 1775), and Charles (June 1779), suggests that the desire to have a family was also among his motives (Collins 1993: 21, 86, 282).

His arrival in Hampshire in 1761 came at a time when middle class tradesmen and professional men had begun to think that the church offered suitable career prospects for their sons. Tithes levied on the gross agricultural product of the cultivated land in the parish were a clergyman’s main source of income, and these had risen in value as a result of the agricultural revolution. In the early half of the eighteenth century, the clergy had come from a lower order of society. Their fathers were small tradesmen and manual workers; their sons, when they became clergy, were content to live in the sort of cottage their parents had known, which consisted basically of one room with a mud floor and perhaps a couple of sheds built outside to serve as kitchen and wash-house. George Austen’s forebears had known something better. Starting out as clothiers in Kent, they had prospered sufficiently to buy small plots of land and become lords of the manor. George Austen was not going to be content with a cottage. He was determined to have a residence, in which he could lead the life of a scholar and a gentleman (Le Faye 1989: 1).

He owed his benefice and his right to a rent-free parsonage not to his academic achievements – B.A. 1751, M.A. 1754, B.D. 1760 – but to a system of patronage which dated from the Middle Ages and pervaded every form of employment from Prime Minister to village inn-keeper. Every parish in England and Wales had a patron whose sole right was to nominate an ordained clergyman to the benefice and whose sole duty thereafter was to provide the latter with a parsonage house. Of the 11,600 parishes in England and Wales, some 4,400 were ‘in the gift’ of private landowners, one of whom was Thomas Knight, George Austen’s second cousin by marriage. Like many another type of patron, they were reluctant to lay out the money necessary to provide their incumbents with accommodation. In 1704, they were allowed to apply to Queen Anne’s Bounty for help, and a great many seized the opportunity. Earthen floors were hastily boarded over, with the result that the ceilings were so low that a tall man could not stand upright under them. Rooms were divided to make a study for the parson and a small extension was added. This was the result of the ‘improvements’ at Deane, the neighbouring parish to Steventon. Jane Austen once likened it to a carriage with a basket and dickey. (Collins 1993: 61) However, when George Austen and his wife saw the parsonage at Steventon, they found it in an equally parlous state and not at all the kind of house George had hoped would enhance his standing as a scholar and a gentleman. To allow time for greater improvements to be made, they decided to move into the ramshackle parsonage at Deane, empty because the incumbent Revd William Hillman preferred to live in greater style in Ashe Park, a Georgian bow-windowed house nearby. In 1733, the Act of Mortmain put an end to the availability of the Bounty for improvements, but Thomas Knight realized that he would have to carry on with the alterations he had begun at Steventon if he was to retain the services of George Austen and subsequently attract any candidate of the same class. He was not going to be at hand to supervise the work: The Austen grandchildren were probably right to attribute the role to their grandfather. There is no documentary account of what he had in mind and the finished house was pulled down shortly after the Austens left, but it seems to have kept the rectangular shape mentioned in a diocesan report of 1686, along with the Georgian front which gave it an air of gentility. Two projecting bays at the back provided a study for the Rector, and a passage leading to it meant that visitors on parish business did not have to interrupt servants and family in the kitchen, as they had to do in most parsonages. All the rooms were small, 12 to 15 square yards being the usual dimensions in eighteenth century houses. This enabled George Austen to have seven bedrooms on the first floor and three other rooms in the attic, which was more than could be found in most newly built parsonages at the time (Squibb 1972: 1 – 3, 74, 486).

Like all university graduates of the period, George Austen was an admirer of John Locke and regarded education as much a matter of upbringing as of formal teaching. The Austens led a relaxed form of lifestyle at Steventon; addressing their children by pet names, taking them on visits with them to relatives and friends, and eating meals at the same table. The effect on Jane was to impress her with the importance of family as a group of friends, an aid to fulfilling one’s potential, and a safeguard against destitution. Jane’s dearest friend throughout life was her sister Cassandra. She greatly admired Cassandra’s practical knowledge and skills, smoothness of temper and unquestioning Christian faith. Cassandra spent long periods of time at Godmersham, tending her wealthy sister-in-law in her eleven confinements, and Jane’s letters to her on these occasions are the chief source of information for Jane’s biographers. The family member with whom Jane felt least empathy was her mother. The latter was impatient with Jane’s lack of interest in the farm and the dairy, regarding her as too much of a dreamer. Some of Jane’s biographers have blamed Mrs Austen’s habit of putting her children out to nurse until they could walk and talk; but whatever the reason, the lack of warmth between the two should not be exaggerated (Tomalin 1997: 6 – 8, Le Faye 1987: 15 – 20).

At some unknown point in her life, Jane realized that she had a brother George who did not live with the family but was none-the-less part of it. George Austen’s second son was subject to epileptic fits from infancy, and in accordance with custom at the time, he was put in the care of a labourer’s family in the village of Deane. His parents and his brother James visited him regularly and Jane may have accompanied them occasionally. He was probably deaf and dumb, and it is thought that she learnt sign-language in order to be able to communicate with him, but there is no direct evidence for this (Tomalin 1997: 7 – 8, Austen-Leigh 2002: 204 – 206, Buchan 1772).

It was to the family circle that Jane read her juvenile stories, which begun when she was twelve. The earliest stories show every sign of the young Jane trying to impress her older brothers: Several of the characters get drunk and fall into vice and crime, others behave in a wild and incomprehensible fashion. The stories could best be described as rather silly versions of the topics the boys discussed with each other after reading the newspaper which Mr Holder sent round each morning from Ashe Park. For all their nonsense, they were written in sophisticated language, which is no doubt why her father gave her a notebook in which to write them out. Many years later, Jane said that when she was young she would have done better to read more and write less, but her father had thought differently. He eventually gave her three notebooks. In the last of them, given to her when she was about 15, she wrote what was virtually a novel, Love and Freindship (sic). In it, she showed herself to be very much her father’s daughter by rejecting sentimentality in favour of reason. Jane also received fatherly guidance in personal matters when appropriate. It was her father who made her realize that Tom Lefroy, a young man she thought was paying her serious attentions whilst staying with his aunt and uncle at Ashe Rectory in 1796, had in fact been merely flirting with her. He wholeheartedly supported Jane’s writing of novels and did his best to get them published. It was he who in 1797 sent First Impressions (the original title of Pride and Prejudice) to Cadell, who returned it ‘sight unseen.’ Sadly, George Austen did not live to see the outcome (Beer 1986: 1 – 7, 15).

Sadly, too, the fertile imagination which had enabled her to produce drafts of two great novels, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice whilst living in her father’s Rectory at Steventon faltered when in 1801 she learnt that he had retired from active ministry and they were moving to Bath. It was a considerable shock as her father had shown no signs of a need to retire. There were material losses, too. As it would take some time to find settled accommodation in Bath, he sold the collection of 500 books Jane had relied upon. She, too, sold a small collection of books of which she was so proud. It seems to have been Mrs Austen who decided they must move to Bath, where they would no longer have to produce all their own food, and servants would be easier to find. But after George Austen’s death, the three ladies were obliged to move into cheaper and cheaper lodgings. The one novel, which Jane had started, The Watsons, was now abandoned (Austen 1974). It was not until 1809, when Edward settled them in a cottage at Chawton, that Jane began to write again. She began almost at once on the arduous task of adapting Elinor and Marianne to become Sense and Sensibility, re-writing the whole novel by hand with a quill pen dipped in ink, possibly ground from a solid block. Her brother Henry used his influence as a banker to persuade Egerton to publish the novel in 1811, with a print of the usual 750 copies. It was a modest success; the Prince Regent’s impulsive daughter, Princess Charlotte, was pleased to liken herself to Marianne, but few of Jane’s own reactions are recorded. She expressed much more excitement when First Impressions, now Pride and Prejudice and expedited by Henry, was published by Egerton in 1813. Knowing that the brothers were as devoted to the family as she was, he sent copies not only to Jane but also to James, Edward and Frank. Like all of Jane’s novels, Pride and Prejudice was published anonymously, since it was thought degrading for a woman to write novels for money. Yet, she was so excited that she could not resist asking her mother to read the novel out aloud with herself and a neighbor, Miss Benn, as audience. She criticized it as being ‘too light and bright and sparkling,’ and thought it should have a long, serious passage (about something completely irrelevant!) by way of ballast. Happily, the suggestion was not carried out, and the novel has become increasingly popular as more and more affordable editions and stage and television versions have appeared. Jane Austen has long been classed along with Shakespeare as the greatest of English writers (Collins 1998: 201 – 205).

Emma was published by John Murray in 1815, and Henry also succeeded in buying back the copy of Susan, a mock-gothic novel which was bought and advertised by Crosby & Co. in 1802 – 3 but never published. Jane now went through the laborious task of writing out a fair copy of the novel, changing the heroine’s name from Susan, which had been used by another author, to Catherine, but she never offered it again to any other publisher – perhaps because, now that her father was dead, she lacked the money that would be involved. With a new name, Northanger Abbey, it was published by Henry after Jane’s death, along with her last novel, Persuasion. Meanwhile, Mansfield Park had been published by John Murray in 1815. Although the public had become more religious during the war against Napoleon, Jane was afraid that the novel was too serious. It sold slowly and, to Jane’s bitter disappointment, the publisher could not be persuaded to produce a second edition (Le Faye 1995: 297 – 298, 293 – 294, 175).

Thanks to her father’s profession, the six complete novels Jane Austen had produced contain valuable information about the clergy in small country parishes. They feature nine clergymen, three of them the heroes of the novel in which they occur. By producing worthy characters such as Edmund Bertram in Mansfield Park, Jane was hoping to inspire as much respect for the clergy as her father had achieved at Steventon. The only fictional characters that despise them are selfish women such as Mrs Ferrars and her prize ass of a son, Robert (Manfield Park: ch. 9, Sense and Sensibility: chs. 3, 17, 33). The novels illustrate vividly the problems the clergy faced at the beginning of their career, when they needed to find a benefice. With the increasing value of tithes, the profession had become vastly overcrowded. Some sixty percent of all undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge were seeking ordination. Yet, the majority of the 11,600 benefices that existed in England and Wales were barred to them by the gift of patrons, either ‘institutional’ (Bishops, Cathedral Chapters, the Crown, the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, some grammar schools such as George Austen’s old school at Tonbridge) or individuals such as landowners and ‘Founder’s Kin.’ Almost all had their own clientele: Jane Austen’s brothers, James and Henry, were given scholarships to St John’s College, Oxford, by virtue of their mother’s descent from the sixteenth century founder of the college, Sir Thomas White. Some ten to fifteen percent of ordinands failed to find a benefice, or even a curacy, and were obliged to leave the profession (Virgin 1989: 141, 220).

Jane’s novels also give valuable information about the gentry in their country manor houses, where, as ‘the parson’s daughter,’ Jane Austen was always a welcome guest. In most of the novels, she stresses the pressure put on grown-up daughters to find husbands. The account in Pride and Prejudice of Charlotte Lucas’s reasons for marrying Mr Collins must be one of the most poignant passages in English literature. Jane herself never married, though she had two opportunities of doing so. On December 22, 1802, when she was staying with her friends Catherine and Alethea Bigg at Marydown Park, she received a proposal of marriage from their brother Harris. She accepted it from a sudden fear that her parents had moved to Bath to give her a chance of marriage, but withdrew her promise the following morning. A few years later, when she was staying with her brother at Godmersham, she sensed that she was about to receive a proposal from one of his wealthy relatives. She discouraged him because it would have been a marriage of convenience (Le Faye 1989: 121 – 122, 257, Collins 1998: 170, Tucker 1994: 51).

As soon as it was known that George had left the university and was now married to Cassandra Leigh, Warren Hastings sent his four-year old son from India to be cared for and taught by the Austens. The Leighs had been the Hastings’ neighbors in Gloucestershire. Sadly, the Hasting’s boy died in the Austens’ care of a ‘putrid sore throat’ (diphtheria) when he was seven, and Mrs Austen, who had become fond of him, was said to have grieved for him as much as if he had been her own child. His father never assigned any blame to the Austens; on the contrary, he became a firm friend of George Austen, with whom he shared a love of Latin poetry. In future years, Warren Hastings’ skill at translation was to be held up as a model to teenage pupils at the boarding school, which George Austen set up at Steventon Parsonage (Collins 1998: 218).

When the house was at last ready for occupation, it provided enough rooms for George Austen to start on his plan of taking four or five teenage boys (hopefully sons of the gentry) as boarding pupils; but he was delayed yet again, this time by the arrival of Lord Portsmouth’s little son, not yet six years old, to be coached and cared for by the Austens. Mrs Austen pronounced the little Lord Lymington young for his age, but thought that two of her older boys, Jemmy (James) and Neddy (Edward) would be able to accept him as a playmate. However, they had scarcely got to know him when his mother whisked him off to London to receive treatment for a bad stammer. He became more and more mentally impaired, but he nevertheless welcomed Jane warmly and spoke with gratitude of his time at Steventon Parsonage when, on October 31 in 1800, he was hosting one of the grand balls given annually at Hurstbourne for the clergy and gentry of the neighborhood (Collins 1998: 15 – 16, Le Faye 1995: 53, 564 – 565).

The term ‘neighborhood’ features prominently in Jane Austen’s novels. In the parish of Steventon, the adults among its population of 153 souls, were agricultural laborers and household servants. The only ‘family’ with which the Austens could consort on social terms was the Digweeds who leased the manor house and its estate on 170 acres from Thomas Knight. Jane seems to have been none too pleased with the familiar way in which the Digweed brothers paid frequent calls at the parsonage, but she amused herself by pretending that James Digweed was in love with Cassandra. Understandably, there emerged a circle of ‘families’ in the surrounding countryside – the Chutes of the Vyne, William Portal of Laverstock, Lord Bolton of Hackwood Park, Lord Portsmouth of Hurstbourne, William Branston of Oakley Hall – whose members met occasionally to pursue their common interest in politics and agriculture, and regularly for companionship. George Austen realized that as a parish priest it was in his interest to support the Tory cause in Hampshire, and attending agricultural shows put him on terms of mutual respect with local farmers. Jane was far more interested in the social gatherings, whose elaborate ritual of morning calls, dinner parties and balls revealed class distinctions, which she used to great effect in her novels. In Emma, they occupy almost the whole of the plot. Unfortunately, only a clergyman with a ‘very sufficient income’ like Mr Collins in Pride and Prejudice could afford to do much socializing in the neighborhood. There was considerable expense involved in acquiring suitable dress, and the necessary travel arrangements, and especially in returning the hospitality enjoyed (Le Faye 1995: 31, 62, 78, Tucker 1994: 34, Pride and Prejudice, ch. 15).

Clergymen who, like George Austen, were lucky enough to have been presented with a benefice, did not have to face the problem of poverty. During a debate in Parliament in 1802, it was ascertained that of the 11,600 benefices in England and Wales, 1,000 were worth less than £100 annually while another 3,000 or so ranged between £100 and £150. Norman barons had swarmed over the fertile southern counties and could only be given small plots of land, which yielded only a small amount of tithes. Others were offered larger tracts to entice them to the turbulent north, but the land was mostly moorland, unsuitable for growing corn, and it was on corn that the ‘great tithe’ was levied. A clergyman worth £150 could afford to buy only the barest necessities, especially since most of them had large families. It was for this reason that Henry VIII at the Reformation had wanted the clergy to remain celibate. A poor clergyman was hampered in his ministry by being unable to buy books, associate with educated society, or give help to the sick and needy. Some tried to supplement their income by teaching, or by renting more farmland to add to the glebe or acquiring extra parishes to be held in plurality. George Austen did all three. It could be argued that he was hampered in his ministry by all this extra work, but his farming was sufficiently profitable to enable him to pay a steward, and for his extra parish he was able to employ his son James as curate and house him in the vacant parsonage. When it came to teaching, it could be argued that this was not a hindrance but an enhancement of his ministry. It was clear from the willingness of the gentry to offer hospitality to the Pretender during the Jacobite invasion of 1745 that they needed instruction in the Protestant nature of the Church of England. By taking in five or six of their teenage sons as boarding pupils, he would be giving them the experience of life in a Protestant household, which would be a start; hopefully they would convey its principles to their parents (Collins 1993: 28 – 30, Virgin 1989: 259).

In 1783 – 4, George Austen finally felt himself to be in a position to set up his boarding school. His reason all along for wanting to establish such a school had been in order to educate his sons and meet the expense by taking in four or five fee-paying pupils each year, hopefully from among the sons of the gentry. Since all undergraduates at Oxford followed the same syllabus, sons of the gentry would give George Austen’s offspring some useful contacts, for whatever career they chose to follow. In order to see all the Austen boys educated and settled in life, their father had to keep on with his school until 1796, the fees rising from £35 a year to £65. Three of the Austen brothers were eventually considered suitable for Oxford. James, the eldest, was a studious youth and had expressed an interest in being ordained. Edward was not at all studious. He was gracious and conversable and had already attracted the attention of the second Thomas Knight and his wife Catherine, who were shortly to adopt him and endow him with their vast estates in Hampshire and Kent. He was ideally suited to be the perfect country gentleman. Henry’s initial intention of taking Holy Orders was abandoned when the outbreak of war made other careers, first the Militia and then Army Commissioning, seem more attractive; but he had a lively mind and his father forecast rightly that he may yet become a scholarly clergyman. Frank was courageous and practical and his father planned to prepare him for entry to the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth (Le Faye 1995: 4b1, 3, 4, 486 – 488, 488, Sullivan).

Neither Jane nor Cassandra could join the classes in their father’s schoolroom, not because it was thought improper for girls to be with boys, but because two thirds of the syllabus, like the Oxford syllabus itself, consisted of classical studies, including classical literature and culture, which was considered inappropriate for girls. Females were said to have no use for Latin and Greek, and the study of pagan gods and goddesses was thought to be inappropriate; the role of women being to marry and create Christian homes. Interestingly, however, George Austen found time to teach a certain amount of modern history, perhaps because it cast light on human behaviour in all ages. Frank, who was less than two years older than Jane, had long been her playmate, and it is not surprising to learn that they discussed the history he had had to read in class and she in her father’s library. The effect of this exclusion from classes is that there are no letters from Jane to Cassandra during the latter’s lengthy visits to Godmersham. Hence, we have no knowledge of George Austen’s teaching methods, other than that his pupils found them sufficiently palatable to remember him with affection.

In 1813, when Frank was in Sweden preparing to convoy Bernadotte’s troops to Germany for the final assault on Napoleon, she wrote to remind him of the history they had read, he in class and she in her father’s library: “Gustavus Vasa and Charles 12th, and Christina, and Linnaeus – do their ghosts rise up before you? I have a great respect for former Sweden so zealous as she was for Protestanism” [sic] (Collins 1993: 42). One of the subjects recommended as likely to be ‘useful’ for entry to the Royal Naval Academy, though not actually required, was French. This played no part in the Oxford undergraduate syllabus, so George Austen could find no reason for teaching it to his classes. Instead, he devised a course of study to be followed by Frank after school hours under the supervision of Mrs Austen. The latter had played an important part in the running of her husband’s school from the start, by supervising the pupils’ health, diet, clothes and discipline; making sure that there was no rowdy behaviour and also that they handed in their Latin homework on time. She was now called in to supervise a part of their study. As the daughter of the Revd. Dr. Theophilus Leigh, who for many years had been Master of Balliol College, Oxford, and renowned for his wit, she was well qualified to do so. It was no doubt she who decided that Jane Austen should join Frank in studying French, which was regarded as one of the accomplishments a mother should instill in her daughters. Jane’s Aunt Philadelphia, who spent most of her time in France, had recently given her as a Christmas present a book of fables for French children. She now recommended it to Jane as a French primer, but neither Jane nor Frank found it helpful. Jane confessed to being bored by scribbling notes on the last page of the book before passing it to Frank (Collins 1998: 77 – 78).

George Austen’s success in achieving his pupils’ entry to Oxford University is a testimony to his knowledge of the classics. Jane Austen acknowledged this when, many years later (in 1813), she reported to Cassandra that she had heard a young relative described as “the best classick (sic) in the University,” adding proudly: “How such a report would have interested my Father.” (Collins 1993: 44) Jane’s father also taught Astronomy, which passed for science in the University and formed one third of the syllabus. At neither Oxford nor Cambridge was natural science taught as a specific subject, since the great discoveries of the age were regarded as general knowledge. At the end of the list of Sweden’s rulers, which Jane Austen saw fit to bring to her brother Frank’s mind in 1813, the mention of Linnaeus is a particular tribute to the way science was taught by George Austen in his boarding school at Steventon parsonage. On the continent of Europe, the philosophes regarded science as destroying the credibility of Christianity and the Catholic Church thereupon banned all study of the new learning. In England, philosophers at Oxford regarded Linnaeus (1707 – 1778) as a key figure in their attempts not only to reconcile science with religion but enhance it. Linnaeus himself believed that his intricate classification of species, both plant and animal, showed that the world had been created by an all-powerful, all-seeing, and beneficent God, who had made an environment fit for human beings to live in. Others found that the instruments used in empirical research, the telescope and microscope, brought the Heavens nearer. George Austen could not afford to follow his gentry neighbors in having an observatory built on top of his house, but when he died, Jane found among his possessions a small astronomical instrument which she called ‘a Compass & Sun-Dial.’ (Collins 1998: 65) He is also thought to have had a microscope and a terrestrial globe. Archdeacons recommended astronomy to clergy as a suitable occupation for their leisure hours, but George Austen may have used his astronomical instruments for teaching purposes since a number of his pupils were hoping to be ordained.

The story of Newton watching apples falling from a tree and deducing from his observations the intricate workings of gravity seemed to make science everybody’s subject, women as well as men. Jane knew enough about ‘natural religion’ for Fanny Price in Mansfield Park to rhapsodise on the view from the window of her uncle’s sitting room: “Here’s harmony! Here’s repose! When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world.” (Le Faye 1995: 96, 199, 215 – 215, Austen 1985: 139)

Compared with the excellent teaching Jane’s brothers received at George Austen’s parsonage school, such formal teaching as Jane received was meagre, desultory and unrewarding. As the Austen boys grew up, shortage of space at the parsonage became acute. In term time, the house had to accommodate seven members of the family, four or five boarding pupils and three domestic servants. In theory, the boarding pupils could have been sent home, but in practice George Austen needed the money they brought in. The only solution seemed to be to send Jane and Cassandra away to school. The first episode, in 1783, was disastrous. Mrs Austen heard that her elder sister, Jane Cooper, was sending her daughter (also called Jane) to Oxford where an old school friend, the widow Ann Cawley, was taking in a few girls as fee-paying pupils and arranging for them to have tutors. When Jane Cooper wanted her cousin Cassandra to go with her, Jane insisted on going too. George Austen was loth to lose ‘his girls,’ but was won over by memories of his alma mater and also by knowing that James would be there to see his young sisters settled in. James’s idea of seeing them settled in, however, was to impress them with a tour of ‘dismal chapels, dusty libraries and greasy halls’ so formidable that Jane swore she never wanted to go there again. They had been in Oxford for a few months when Mrs Cawley moved to Southampton, taking the girls with her. After a few weeks there, the town was swept by one of its periodic bouts of typhus fever brought by troops arriving from Gibraltar in crowded, insanitary ships. Mrs Cawley kept quiet about the danger, but Jane Cooper wrote home with the alarming news that both her Austen cousins were seriously ill. The two mothers promptly set off for Southampton and took their daughters home. Mrs Cooper, however, had already caught the fever and died on reaching home. The whole unfortunate episode had lasted a mere five months (Collins 1993: 35, Le Faye 1989: 44 – 45).

Jane made a slow recovery. During this period, her mother supervised her education. A mother’s traditional role with regard to her daughters was to fit them to compete in the marriage market. It was assumed that Jane would in all probability marry a clergyman: clergymen usually sought a clergyman’s daughter as a bride on the assumption that she would be better educated than most young women at the time. To prepare them for their coming role, their mothers instructed them in the management of a household which had to be run as economically as possible since their husbands would not be rich. Their mothers would equip them with a few accomplishments such as needlework and piano playing. The Austens, however, looked further. Jane and Cassandra were to occupy their leisure time with reading the books in their father’s library. These, in accordance with the ‘charge’ delivered to the clergy of the Hampshire diocese in 1761, included works of general interest such as History and English Literature (Collins 2001: 75, Collins 2012: 4 – 6, Austen 1982: 39).

In 1785, Dr Cooper, Jane’s uncle decided to send his daughter off to school again, to the Abbey School, a girls’ boarding school at Reading. The nearby boys’ boarding school was run to grammar school standard by Dr Richard Valpy, who sent his teachers to help with the more academic lessons at the girls’ school. Again, both Austen girls had had to be allowed to go with their cousin although Jane, who was not quite ten, was obliged to attend classes with the junior girls. Hence, like Harriet Smith who had attended Mrs Goddard’s school in Emma, she received some very poor lessons from totally untrained teachers. However, the girls were well cared for. A comment Jane made afterwards on a letter from Cassandra suggests that both of them had enjoyed themselves: “I could die of laughter at it as they used to say at school.” (Collins 1993: 134) There were no lessons in the afternoons, and the pair could have enjoyed themselves exploring the gateway of the ruined abbey in which the school was situated, or puzzling how the Headmistress, Mrs La Tournelle, came to have a French name when she could not speak a word of French. They were not supposed to go outside the school grounds, but supervision was lax and it is possible that they wandered on occasion into the forecourt of the abbey (now a public square) where fairs were held. There are no reports of the elopements, which Jane Austen suggests in her novels were a discreditable feature of most girls boarding schools.

However, George Austen withdrew his two girls from the school at the end of 1786, possibly because the fees, which were twice as high even as those he received for his teenage pupils. The income from his farming had fallen when the severe winter of 1785 – 6 caused crops to die. In any case, it was not unusual for girls boarding schools to be used simply as ‘finishing schools,’ and Cassandra at the age of thirteen was thought to have acquired enough social graces to equip her for polite society, whilst Jane, not yet eleven, was too young to need finishing. After little more than twelve months at school, the girls accepted cheerfully their return home to educate themselves by reading. In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet takes great delight in telling Lady Catherine de Bourgh that this is the best form of education for girls (Le Faye 1988: 421, Le Faye 1995: 5, Austen 1972: 199).

Successful as most of her novels had been, Jane Austen had felt for some time that she might have ‘over-written’ herself on the topic of the clergy and their relationship with the gentry in their country manor houses. At the beginning of 1817, she began hopefully on a new novel. Sanditon is set in the seaside resort, which the lively Mr Parker is trying to promote on the south coast. It has no clergymen other than visitors. Jane Austen uses her literary skill to satirize the hypochondria displayed by Mr Parker’s siblings, and their dependence on patent medicines and tonics for their imaginary illnesses. In doing so, she makes them into a crazy group of characters the like of which can be found only in the earliest of her juvenile stories. The fragment is thus, at the same time, both a new beginning and a return to the past. Sadly, the work had to be set aside in March when only twelve short chapters had been written, as Jane was already suffering from Addison’s disease leading to pneumonia from which it is thought she died.

In December 1788, when Frank Austen set sail for the East Indies as a volunteer midshipman, his father wrote him a letter of advice reminding him that “the first and most important of all considerations to a human being is Religion.” (Collins 1998: 45) He was to say his prayers morning and night and make sure that he followed the rules laid down in the Church’s Catechism. If further help was needed, he should give serious attention to that part of Elegant Extracts in Prose, which contained passages from ‘approved authors on religious beliefs.’ George Austen presumably brought up all his children and even his boarding pupils on similar lines, since he bought three copies of the latest edition as soon as it appeared in 1788. Jane Austen conscientiously attended morning and evening prayer every Sunday, first at her father’s church in Steventon and later at St Nicholas’ Chawton. In spite of George Austen’s acquaintance with the ‘new learning,’ his services were thoroughly orthodox: the phraseology and rhythms of the Book of Common Prayer (1661 edition) became so familiar to Jane Austen that they have been detected in her novels. None of George Austen’s sermons have survived, but he probably followed the usual practice of reading from a book of sermons. On occasions, when no evening prayer was said in church, the service was conducted at home. At Chawton, the duty fell to one of the ladies. On several such occasions, a sermon was read and intercessions composed. Three of Jane’s prayers have survived, their unusual theme being the importance of self-examination. At the end of the third prayer she asks for reunion with the family in the heavenly kingdom. Jane Austen was reticent about her religious beliefs, which she regarded as a matter for the individual. This has led some biographers to argue that she was critical of the Church, but there is no evidence for this in her letters (Chapman 1954: 453 – 457, Collins 2012: 4 – 5).

After her father’s death she became increasingly worried about being the only one of the three Austen ladies without a legacy. Her mother had a small sum left from her marriage settlement; Cassandra’s fiancé, the Revd Tom Fowle, had left her £1000 when he died of fever whilst serving as domestic chaplain to his benefactor Lord Craven on an expedition to the West Indies. Jane became obsessed with the idea that their ‘sovereign cure’ would be a legacy from her mother’s wealthy brother, James Leigh-Perrot (Le Faye 1995: 133). When she learnt that he had died in March 1817, leaving his entire fortune to his wife, the shock made her seriously ill. She gradually recovered sufficiently to be ashamed of her lack of Christian fortitude and trust. The care she received from her sister Cassandra, the concern shown by ‘every dear brother,’ and by her mother, too, made her realize how much she had to be thankful for. Writing to a friend, Anne Sharp, on May 22 of 1817, she expressed her remorse and ended with the words “but the Providence of God has restored me – and may I be more worthy to appear before Him when I am summoned than I should have been now.” (Le Faye 1995: 357)

Arrangements were made for Jane to be taken to Winchester to be treated by Mr Lyford, a surgeon of repute. Cassandra accompanied her, and Jane’s friend Mrs Heathcote, who lived in a house in the Cathedral Close, found lodgings for them at No. 8 College Street. But it was to no avail: Addison’s disease was, at that time, incurable. Jane died peacefully in her sister’s arms on July 18, 1817. She was buried under the north choir aisle of the cathedral and a memorial tablet, with an epitaph composed by her brother Henry, was placed on the floor to mark the spot. The epitaph makes no mention of the novels, which were relatively unknown at the time. Admirers of the novels raised questions as to why she was buried in Winchester Cathedral, which she can hardly have known, instead of Chawton or Steventon. Transport would not have been a problem. The answer can only have been that her brother Henry wanted her to be buried among the great, and had appealed to the dean on the matter. At Winchester, the ground under and around the cathedral was part of the dean’s freehold, and Dean Rendell’s criteria for deciding who qualified for burial in cathedral soil were unashamedly based on social class. The fact that Jane Austen was the daughter of a clergyman and a lifelong friend of Mrs Heathcote guaranteed that she was a gentlewoman. Cassandra was gratified by the decision, which consoled her in her loss (Le Faye 1995: 340 – 341, 345, Proudman 2013: 4 – 6).