Memoir of Jane Austen by James Edward Austen-Leigh (best books to read for success txt) 📕

Transcribed from the 1871 Richard Bentley and Son edition by Les Bowler.

Jane Austen

The Memoir of my Aunt, Jane Austen, has been received with more favour than I had ventured to expect.  The notices taken of it in the periodical press, as well as letters addressed to me by many with whom I am not personally acquainted, show that an unabated interest is still taken in every particular that can be told about her.  I am thus encouraged not only to offer a Second Edition of the Memoir, but also to enlarge it with some additional matter which I might have scrupled to intrude on the public if they had not thus seemed to call for it.  In the present Edition, the narrative is somewhat enlarged, and a few more letters are added; with a short specimen of her childish stories.  The cancelled chapter of ‘Persuasion’ is given, in compliance with wishes both publicly and privately expressed.  A fragment of a story entitled ‘The Watsons’ is printed; and extracts are given from a novel which she had begun a few months before her death; but the chief addition is a short tale never before published, called ‘Lady Susan.’ {0a}  I regret that the little which I have been able to add could not appear in my First Edition; as much of it was either unknown to me, or not at my command, when I first published; and I hope that I may claim some indulgent allowance for the difficulty of recovering little facts and feelings which had been merged half a century deep in oblivion.

November 17, 1870.

Chapter I.    Introductory Remarks—Birth of Jane Austen—Her Family Connections—Their Influence on her Writings

Chapter II.   Description of Steventon—Life at Steventon—Changes of Habits and Customs in the last Century

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

Chapter IV.   Removal from Steventon—Residence at Bath and at Southampton—Settling at Chawton

Chapter V.    Description of Jane Austen’s person, character, and tastes

Chapter VI.   Habits of Composition resumed after a long interval—First publication—The interest taken by the Author in the success of her Works

Chapter VII.  Seclusion from the literary world—Notice from the Prince Regent—Correspondence with Mr. Clarke—Suggestions to alter her style of writing

Chapter VIII. Slow growth of her fame—Ill success of first attempts at publication—Two Reviews of her works contrasted

Chapter IX.   Opinions expressed by eminent persons—Opinions of others of less eminence—Opinion of American readers

Chapter X.    Observations on the Novels

Chapter XI.   Declining health of Jane Austen—Elasticity of her spirits—Her resignation and humility—Her death

Chapter XII.  The cancelled Chapter of ‘Persuasion’

Chapter XIII. The last work

Chapter XIV.  Postscript

‘He knew of no one but himself who was inclined to the work. This is no uncommon motive.  A man sees something to be done, knows of no one who will do it but himself, and so is driven to the enterprise.’

Helps’ Life of Columbus, ch. i.

Introductory Remarks—Birth of Jane Austen—Her Family Connections—Their Influence on her Writings.

More than half a century has passed away since I, the youngest of the mourners, {1} attended the funeral of my dear aunt Jane in Winchester Cathedral; and now, in my old age, I am asked whether my memory will serve to rescue from oblivion any events of her life or any traits of her character to satisfy the enquiries of a generation of readers who have been born since she died.  Of events her life was singularly barren: few changes and no great crisis ever broke the smooth current of its course.  Even her fame may be said to have been posthumous: it did not attain to any vigorous life till she had ceased to exist.  Her talents did not introduce her to the notice of other writers, or connect her with the literary world, or in any degree pierce through the obscurity of her domestic retirement.  I have therefore scarcely any materials for a detailed life of my aunt; but I have a distinct recollection of her person and character; and perhaps many may take an interest in a delineation, if any such can be drawn, of that prolific mind whence sprung the Dashwoods and Bennets, the Bertrams and Woodhouses, the Thorpes and Musgroves, who have been admitted as familiar guests to the firesides of so many families, and are known there as individually and intimately as if they were living neighbours.  Many may care to know whether the moral rectitude, the correct taste, and the warm affections with which she invested her ideal characters, were really existing in the native source whence those ideas flowed, and were actually exhibited by her in the various relations of life.  I can indeed bear witness that there was scarcely a charm in her most delightful characters that was not a true reflection of her own sweet temper and loving heart.  I was young when we lost her; but the impressions made on the young are deep, and though in the course of fifty years I have forgotten much, I have not forgotten that ‘Aunt Jane’ was the delight of all her nephews and nieces.  We did not think of her as being clever, still less as being famous; but we valued her as one always kind, sympathising, and amusing.  To all this I am a living witness, but whether I can sketch out such a faint outline of this excellence as shall be perceptible to others may be reasonably doubted.  Aided, however, by a few survivors {3} who knew her, I will not refuse to make the attempt.  I am the more inclined to undertake the task from a conviction that, however little I may have to tell, no one else is left who could tell so much of her.

Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, at the Parsonage House of Steventon in Hampshire.  Her father, the Rev. George Austen, was of a family long established in the neighbourhood of Tenterden and Sevenoaks in Kent.  I believe that early in the seventeenth century they were clothiers.  Hasted, in his history of Kent, says: ‘The clothing business was exercised by persons who possessed most of the landed property in the Weald, insomuch that almost all the ancient families of these parts, now of large estates and genteel rank in life, and some of them ennobled by titles, are sprung from ancestors who have used this great staple manufacture, now almost unknown here.’  In his list of these families Hasted places the Austens, and he adds that these clothiers ‘were usually called the Gray Coats of Kent; and were a body so numerous and united that at county elections whoever had their vote and interest was almost certain of being elected.’  The family still retains a badge of this origin; for their livery is of that peculiar mixture of light blue and white called Kentish gray, which forms the facings of the Kentish militia.

Mr. George Austen had lost both his parents before he was nine years old.  He inherited no property from them; but was happy in having a kind uncle, Mr. Francis Austen, a successful lawyer at Tunbridge, the ancestor of the Austens of Kippington, who, though he had children of his own, yet made liberal provision for his orphan nephew.  The boy received a good education at Tunbridge School, whence he obtained a scholarship, and subsequently a fellowship, at St. John’s College, Oxford.  In 1764 he came into possession of the two adjoining Rectories of Deane and Steventon in Hampshire; the former purchased for him by his generous uncle Francis, the latter given by his cousin Mr. Knight.  This was no very gross case of plurality, according to the ideas of that time, for the two villages were little more than a mile apart, and their united populations scarcely amounted to three hundred.  In the same year he married Cassandra, youngest daughter of the Rev. Thomas Leigh, of the family of Leighs of Warwickshire, who, having been a fellow of All Souls, held the College living of Harpsden, near Henley-upon-Thames.  Mr. Thomas Leigh was a younger brother of Dr. Theophilus Leigh, a personage well known at Oxford in his day, and his day was not a short one, for he lived to be ninety, and held the Mastership of Balliol College for above half a century.  He was a man more famous for his sayings than his doings, overflowing with puns and witticisms and sharp retorts; but his most serious joke was his practical one of living much longer than had been expected or intended.  He was a fellow of Corpus, and the story is that the Balliol men, unable to agree in electing one of their own number to the Mastership, chose him, partly under the idea that he was in weak health and likely soon to cause another vacancy.  It was afterwards said that his long incumbency had been a judgment on the Society for having elected an Out-College Man. {5}  I imagine that the front of Balliol towards Broad Street which has recently been pulled down must have been built, or at least restored, while he was Master, for the Leigh arms were placed under the cornice at the corner nearest to Trinity gates.  The beautiful building lately erected has destroyed this record, and thus ‘monuments themselves memorials need.’

His fame for witty and agreeable conversation extended beyond the bounds of the University.  Mrs. Thrale, in a letter to Dr. Johnson, writes thus: ‘Are you acquainted with Dr. Leigh, {6} the Master of Balliol College, and are you not delighted with his gaiety of manners and youthful vivacity, now that he is eighty-six years of age?  I never heard a more perfect or excellent pun than his, when some one told him how, in a late dispute among the Privy Councillors, the Lord Chancellor struck the table with such violence that he split it.  “No, no, no,” replied the Master; “I can hardly persuade myself that he split the table, though I believe he divided the Board.”’

Some of his sayings of course survive in family tradition.  He was once calling on a gentleman notorious for never opening a book, who took him into a room overlooking the Bath Road, which was then a great thoroughfare for travellers of every class, saying rather pompously, ‘This, Doctor, I call my study.’  The Doctor, glancing his eye round the room, in which no books were to be seen, replied, ‘And very well named too, sir, for you know Pope tells us, “The proper study of mankind is Man.”’  When my father went to Oxford he was honoured with an invitation to dine with this dignified cousin.  Being a raw undergraduate, unaccustomed to the habits of the University, he was about to take off his gown, as