Austen Letter 150: Fri, 24 Jan 1817, to Alethea Bigg, Chawton to Streatham

Manydown — old print of the house the Bigg girls grew up in, Austen went to balls in, and she could have been mistress of had she been willing to marry Bigg-Wither

Aloft on yonder bench, with arms dispread,
My boy stood, shouting there his father’s name,
Waving his hat around his happy head — Southey, Proem to Poet’s Pilgrimage to Waterloo

Dear friends and readers,

We have 12 letters left — by Jane Austen. Three to Fanny Knight — one of them contains the striking description of Anna as “poor animal” brought down and aging from miscarriages and pregnancies. Two to friends, Alethea Bigg and Anna Sharp. 3 to Caroline, 1 to James-Edward Austen Leigh (JEAL). Two rare ones to Charles. Her last to Francis Tilson, the wife of Henry’s partner, someone Jane had described twice as perpetually pregnant, this one in scraps showing that Austen herself was censoring out any real description of what she had been experiencing.

Then 3 — by Cassandra, 2 to Fanny Knight and 1 to Anne Sharp.

Alethea was an old and close friend, one of the sisters of Harris Bigg-Wither; the other close friend was sister Catherine who found a hard berth by marrying an old wealthy man who then perpetually impregnated her (Austen comments on this at least three times). Alethea, Le Faye reports, spoke candidly to Austen of the novels with words that suggest intelligent reading MP superior to S&S and P&P in many points but lacked the spirit of P&P; Althea thought Emma not equal to P&P or MP — many readers of the era were (alas) bored by Emma as too much like real life. Austen seems to have taken this seriously too — Persuasion marks a departure to include the war frame, the sea, Bath, allusions to colonial world and Sanditon further yet in a new direction of commercial seaside spas.

The letter to Alethea is not short but it is not hard to decipher as there is a directness and plainness about it that show a real confiding friendship and some congenial (ironic?) joking: the “real purpose of the letter” held off until the postsript is a recipe for orange wine. Here is another woman friend I assume others wish we had more of Austen’s letters to.

She is putting the best face on a series of calamities that she can — from her illness (she’s got it under control now), to Henry’s drop in status to a curate, from Anna’s weakness (but must spare donkeys) to her spinster friend’s misplaced gown. What is really needed is some orange wine from Manydown.

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Streatham Common

Austen opens with the assertion that it’s “time there should be a little writing between us.” They have been parted enough, they have not been in contact in too long a time; Austen says the “epistolary debt” is on Alethea’s side. In other words, Austen was the far more regular correspondent — as often happens between friends (when you have not the Internet to find people who like to write). Alethea is is involved with Catherine’s family at Streatham nearby and Austen hopes all are well.

An older drawing of Chawton with the street in front flooded

Then there’s been a break in the frost and Austen describes the near by roads “great many ponds” near by the meadow with “fine running streams.” She does not look upon this as something to be drained, but beautiful and providing subject for talk. anyone looking at the early 20th century photos of the huge body of water in front of the block with Chawton cottage recognizes damp raw damp, fetid horse manure would get into the place. Disease ridden as well as smelly and making for weather discomfort. The Austens blocked up their front window from the street with good reason. So when Austen writes “it is nothing but what beautifies us & does to talk of,” she is again putting a good face on something not desirable, is perhaps ironic?

All on her side in “good health” — a few precious words are cut out — these are about her sickness – but we can see from the previous letter and this it is still in remission and Austen is believing she may be able to beat it. She says “bile” is at the bottom of her ailment. She’s putting a good face on her illness and like others in such a grave frightening state trying to convince herself she can cope with her condition by herself (as her doctors are no help).

That is a reference to a psychological state too – part of the humors theory. Paula Byrne in her Real Jane Austen adheres to the older theory that Austen had Addison’s disease where adrenal glands don’t make enough cortisol which helps the person against stress — and it’s thought is a disease brought on by stress too — so Byrne connects this to Leigh-Perrot leaving the family nothing (all to the miserly mean aunt — and Austen mentions this in one of the remaining letters connecting it to her collapsed state), Henry’s bankruptcy, Edward’s law suit, and after all writing and publishing books is stressful. Remember Job who wished on other people they should publish books — she has probably heard far more remarks than she wanted to. She may have realized that after all she should have taken Murray’s good offer of 450 — all she would get now is 38 pounds and some shillings as profit for Emma. But she did not write for money — she wrote to write and then would have liked to make money.

Wyards Farm (where Anna Austen Lefroy was living)

Then several sentences on JEAL — all testifying to her liking for him – I see his kindness in his continual visits to his sister at Wyards Farm; she is not well or strong enough to come to Chawton; she says of JEAL the “sweet temper and warm affections of the Boy confirmed in the man.”

A modern donkey cart

She turns to thoughts of Anna by implication. They don’t have a horse and carriage but donkeys and cart — and these they take care of. They use but one at a time. Donkeys are not easy to force to carry you places and they haven’t been using them in a while. Still it does seem like an avoidance again. Imagine how these spinster women looked to others. She does wish for Anna that Ben would be ordained already and with a parsonage house. It did happen but alas he died young, she was widowed and after that lived a penurious life off other relatives. JEAL was one of those who helped her a lot.

Their own new clergyman is Henry of course and they want to see him acquit himself very well as they have now heard he is doing. She does not register what a come down this is (banker to rich people to country curate) but it is understood.

Then a recognition that Alethea is a spinster living off others — if there should be “any change” in the circumstances at Streatham and Winchester, ” let the Austens and Mary Lloyd know and come to them. That underlying more somber reality prompts a joke: her comic alarm that Alethea left her gown at Steventon (visiting Mary?) She will want to look right for another friend, Mrs Frere.

I find the long passage on Southey’s Poet’s Pilgrimage to Waterloo takes us to a prose elegy on the death of Southey’s young son — he pays a moving tribute to his boy, spared such a battlefield. (Austen had been reading Scott’s Antiquary, now she moves to meditations on a battlefield.) We see how she identifies with Southey as a person part of their circle — the genteel circles of the UK were intertwined. Southey was Catherine Bigg’s husband’s nephew and his elder son has died — part of the mournful thoughts of the poem. She finds the proem “very beautiful” but the “poor man” rings flatly — too cliched? — even if the words that follow show she does empathize to this extent: that fondness of Southey for this boy has come across to her and so his grief. It is propaganda and against the French revolution as having “caused all this” — without regard for the reasons for the revolution, why it failed to produce the reformed society people said they wanted (did they?) and thus a Tory poem. Austen is liking it — more than his earlier critique of English life in his Letters from England: she disliked that: ever the partisan.

More single lady friends: Miss Williams and Charlotte from abroad but being determinedly anti-anything but English Austen declares she would not like their letters unless they breathed regret at not being in England — as usual LeFaye (p. 585) tells us about the family and nothing about the two women which might light up the passage with understanding — such as where they were, it’s they as individuals. It’s a circle of spinsterhood — Donoghue sees lesbian patterning in these too — and they are amorphous, mentioning now this woman and that and over the years we’ve seen Austen tried to add women to it, who were pulled away by relatives.

The last is kind love to Catherine’s children with positive comments and an attempt to show interest — a social gesture. “I suppose his holidays are not yet over” — these people sent their sons away. It may be she has in mind persuading Alethea she did the right thing in refusing Harris Bigg-Wither but we must remember how many years have gone by since then. I do doubt Austen would think that Alethea would have such a thing in mind: H B-W had long since married, had many children, Austen had written books. It is old and dead history by now.

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The P.S.

Home-made orange wine

A joke about the purpose of the letter really being to get a recipe for Orange wine from Manydown — though perhaps it is no joke and Austen is hoping for a medicinal effect from the wine. If Austen was worried she was drinking wine that was too strong, associated with black bile, her request for the wine recipe may have been more urgent and poignant than we realize.

And let us recall that she has begun and is writing Sanditon at a frantic pace: I’d call it filled with a form of nervous hilarity when (for example), she has her Diana write of how it deranges the nerves don’t you know to have 3 teeth pulled at once, and other such funny jokes about fatal illness ….

See comments for text and other readings.

Ellen