Jane Austen’s letters: Letter 50, Sun-Mon, 8-9 February, 1807, from Southampton

Castle Square, Southampton

THE CASTLE, &C.

This stands near the middle of the south part of the town. From the High-street, the approach to it is up Castle-lane. The area of the castle seems to be of a semicircular form, of which the town wall to the sea, formed the diameter. The keep stood on a very high artificial mount, and from its ruins a small round tower has been constructed, from the leads of which there is a delightful bird’s-eye view of Southampton, and of the environs, lying like a map before the eye of the spectator.

” The high mount, and circular form of the keep,” says Sir H. Englefield,” indicate an Antiquity much higher than the time of Richard II. who probably only repaired and strengthened the castle.” This ingenious and learned antiquary seems to think it of Saxon origin.

Dear friends and readers,

This is the second letter by Jane Austen from Southampton, Castle Square, to Cassandra, at Godmersham. The women (Jane, Cassandra when there, Martha, Mrs Cassandra Austen mere, Mary Gibson Austen [Mrs F.A.]) and Frank are settling in. In reverse of many of Fanny Burney’s diary entries which are letters, this is a letter which is a series of diary entries.

It centers on the family turning the commodious house inside a castle into a home, and the visit of a young not-shy girl, Charlotte Foote, the sister of one of Frank’s naval associates.

It’s not common for Cassandra to have saved a cache of letters that come several in a row — the ones after this are missing. If they were not, I was going to suggest that when Austen begins to be comfortable (as she will after they move to Chawton), Cassandra saves more letters.

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Queen Mary’s Lamentation

As with Letter 49, so Letter 50 opens with another very stilted sentence to Cassandra, very uncomfortable again; the idea is she has “nothing to say to you”. She has but little to say to Cassandra. She is not above acknowledging receipt and of replying to every part of it which is capable of an answer.” She’ll ring the changes on glad and sorry. She does go to write all the same but this opening shows real discord between them – and we have no idea what happened to cause this tension.

An interesting (to me) self-reflexive observation: “Unluckily I see nothing to be glad of (unless she makes it a matter of joy that Mrs Wilmot has a son and Lord Lucan taken a mistress which we now know enough to say she would hersefl not rejoice in even if “joyful to the Actors”) “but to be sorry I find many occasions.”

Which Cassandra would not like.

The first is her lament Cassandra’s return delayed. The reference is to a song Austen copied out for her song book. It was a song by Stephen Storace intended to be read as a lament by Marie Antoinette but Austen altered it to apply to Mary Queen of Scott (see Piggot, The Innocent Diversion). I have been inclined to see her adherence to Mary Queen of her Scots in her early history as parodic but there is evidence to suggest Jane was seriously on Mary Queen of Scot’s “side.” Here she identifies.

“We are all sorry, and now this subject is exhausted.” It’s significant because she does harp on her lack of something to say. She feels her lack of daily social encounters, things happening.

Then a long sentence where several people come up but is about Martha Lloyd. It’s Martha’s itinerary. Who she is will be visting. Jane longs for Martha to return “Tuesday fortnight” but “dare not depend on it.” I don’t know if she’s serious that she fears Martha may marry Peter Debary, but that it occupies her mind even as a joke in telling. Apparently Austen sent four small fishes to Kintbury and is anxious to know they have arrived. As has been common since Austen was about to leave Steventon (before too — as for example, when she visited Bath), she worries over a small sum. The fish cost 6 shillings and she would be glad to know they got there. She also insists on sharing whatever this costs Cassandra who is “only 18 pence in her debt.” I take it Cassandra has said she will not take money from Jane as she is so in Jane’s debt. Jane sees through this.

Mrs E Leigh is the unmarried sister of that Thomas Leigh who rushed to Stoneleigh Abbey to try to lay claim to it. This refers to a letter this Mrs Elizabeth Leigh sent about which Austen comments that she did not “say a word” about “my Uncle’s Business.” As we now know the uncle had tried to get the property too; eventually he was to be handsomely bought out (bribed). Mrs Austen has written to her a week ago. I suggest the next sentence means that Mrs Austen had knitted Martha a rug — Austen says the border has fault but the middle is dingy. Doubtless a traveling rug. Mrs Austen offers to knit one for Cassandra.

Interesting the apology that comes next. Cassandra had been “affronted” by some remarks Austen made about Mr Moore. Harriet Brydges had married George Moore. Austen is “sorry” but will not retract her dislike of George Moore. The next enigmatic sentence seems to say Austen will not pity her for not being about to be in two places at one time by which Austen means live two different lives at the same time — “enjoy the comforts of being married and single” for someone who enjoys the comforts of living in two places.

I like how she forthrightly says “You see I have a spirit as well as yourself” but we have not seen the worm turn thoroughly enough as yet.

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William Cowper

The happy home-making:

Frank & Mary cannot at all approve of your not being at home in time to help them in their finishing pur­chases, & desire me to say that, if you are not, they shall be as spiteful as possible & chuse everything in the stile most likely to vex you, Knives that will not cut, glasses that will not hold, a sofa without a seat, & a Bookcase without shelves.-Our Garden is putting in order, by a Man who bears a remarkably good Character, has a very fine complexion & asks something less than the first. The Shrubs which border the gravel walk he says are only sweetbriar & roses, & the latter of an indifferent sort;-we mean to get a few of a better kind therefore, & at my own particular desire he procures us some Syringas. I could not do with­out a Syringa, for the sake of Cowper’s Line. We talk also of a Laburnam.- The Border under the Terrace Wall, is clearing away to receive Currants & Gooseberry Bushes, & a spot is found very proper for Raspberries. – The alterations & improvements within doors too advance very properly, & the Offices will be made very convenient indeed.-Our Dressing-Table is constructing on the spot, out of a large Kitchen Table belonging to the House, for doing which we have the permission of M'” Husket Lord Lansdown’s Painter,-domestic Painter I shd call him, for he lives in the Castle-Domestic Chaplains have given way to this more necessary office, & I suppose whenever the Walls want no touching up, he is employed about my Lady’s face

Mary and Frank tease, but they register how often Cassandra is away. Jokes. Then the man who is hired contrasted to a man who was not. Cowper’s poetry from “The Winter Walk at Noon,” lines 149-50: “… Laburnum, rich/In streaming gold; syringa, iv’ry pure …” This is a particularly beautiful rich passage in the poem:

. . . Laburnum rich
In streaming gold; syringa pure
The scented and the scentless rose; this red
And of an humbler growth, the other tall,
And throwing up into the darkest gloom

Of neighb’ring cypress or more sable yew ~
Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf –
That the wind severs from the broken wave.
The lilac various in array, now white,
Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set –
with purple spikes pyramidal, as if
Studious of ornament, yet unresolv’d
Which hue she most approv’d, she chose them all …

The passage does contain some sharp strokes at the end: the domestic painter is by association connected to the Lady Lansdown’s domestic chaplaine and Austen (nastily) suggests after prayers and walls they make up her face.

This gives us a chance to contemplate where the Austens were living: in a gothic fantasy house built by a solitary man (see LeFaye, Family Record, p 343). He has to sell his father’s art collection and library to do this. The nasty crack is about his wife, who had been his mistress, Irish (so despicable?) and said to be “fat and vulgar.” Austen is looking her gift horse in the mouth it seems to me.

Lady Bessborough visited and from her conventional stance thought the house “strange”and even more the wife, “stranger” – with 3 daughters dressed over delicately in the wind and rain and stones.

Probably they were not socially acceptable quite. I for one feel for them.

Here’s an interesting connection. NO one forgets Mrs Gardiner’s comment about a phaeton will be just the thing around Pemberley after Elizabeth marries Darcy. Well JEAL remembered the Marchioness had a phaeton — 8 ponies is not so little – which she’d drive around the castle premises. However dim, JEAL (Austen-Leigh of the Memoir) ever has a kindly heart and he remembered the scenes as “fairy” delight he could look down on from his window in the lodgings Frank took.

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Fallen spillikins — the modern US version is called “Pick-up Sticks”

This letter contains two extended passages on Catherine Foote which are of interest as showing us something of Austen’s attitude towards children. In the novels, what she writes is often shaped by a theme or satiric point she wants to make; art is not life. But underlying the art there is a view of the elements of the book when found in living realities. Austen holds what seems two contrasting attitudes at once.­

The morning was so wet that I was afraid we should not be able to see our little Visitor, but Frank who alone could go to Church called for her after Service, & she is now talking away at my side & examining the Treasures of my Writing-desk drawer; — very’happy I beleive;- not at all shy of-course.– Her name is Catherine & her Sister’s’ Caroline. ­She is something like her Brother, & as short for her age, but not so well-looking.- What is become of all the Shyness in the World?­[P.3] Moral as well as Natural Diseases disappear in the progress of time, & new ones take their place. Shyness & the Sweating Sickness have given way to Confidence & Paralytic complaints …

She then turns to talk of two sick women, “Mrs Whitfields’ encreasing illness, & of poor Marianne Bridges’s having suffered so much …” She seems to write for a while while the child is at play. Then she breaks off and comes back at Evening and begins with Catherine:

Our little visitor has just left us, & left us highly pleased with her; — she is. a nice, natural-hearted, affectionate girl, with all the ready civility one sees in the best Children of the Present day; — so unlike anything that I was myself at her age, that I am of often all astonishment & shame. — Half her time here was-spent at Spillikins; which I consider as a very valuable part of our Household furniture, & as not the least important Benefaction’ from the family of Knight to that of Austen.

One might say in the first we have someone lamenting conventionally that things were better in “our” time when discipline was established, but I suggest it’s half-tender mockery. And she likens shyness to a “moral disease” which like natural ones disappear. The sweating sickness was a deadly complaint that people did die and suffer from from the early 15th through the 17th and then it seems to have gone away. The words have a touching feel. Then when she leaves a genuine Rousseauian (I’d call it) tribute. What she likes is the “natural-hearted”ness, that the child is not a poseur and has been taught or encouraged to be civil overtly and take civility in return. Austen feels humbled to think of what she was at this age. She wishes she could have been more this way. So she is not the anti-Rousseauist here as is sometimes supposed.

The news inbetween projects attitudes we have seen before. The sorrows of Marianne Bridges and Mrs Whitfield’s illness are likened to (poor) Mrs Deedes having (yet) another child which Austen “supposes I may lament.” We have a characteristic refusal of social hypocrisy. Mrs Wyndham Knatchbull dead and Austen: “I had no idea that anybody liked her. So therefore felt nothing for any Survivor …” It makes me see the pious way somee of the characters in _Emma_ speak after the death of Mrs Churchill either what Austen thought she must say in public (as novelist) or what she felt forced to concede to (her first readers before publication being her family). She is not going to be solemn even but uses the demand she “feel away” (emanating from Cassandra) to “think he had better marry Miss Sharpe.”

Anne Sharpe in her mind as often as Martha Lloyd. She’s wishing for Anne Sharpe a well-heeled husband. Hastings is Eliza Austen’s little boy by De Feuillide, tellingly named after Warren Hastings (the grandfather-godfather) Kitty was another Catherine in the Foote family and Austen says she may calls Kitty a friend the way little Hastings called H. Egerton (the relative). Perhaps Kitty Foote was prepared to help Anne Sharp marry Wyndham Knatchbull? This is the family into which Fanny Austen Knight would marry. They were rich.

And then another long passage. In an earlier letter we saw Henry Austen

But I must tell you a story. Mary has for some time had notice from Mrs Dickson of the intended arrival of a certain Miss Fowler in this place;- Miss F. is an intimate friend of Mrs D. & a good deal known as such to Mary. – On Thursday last she called here while we were out; – Mary found on our return her card with only her name on it, & she had left word that she wd [sic] call again.­The particularity of this made us talk, & among other conjectures Frank said in joke “I dare say she is staying with the Pearsons.” – The con­nection of the names struck Mary, & she immediately recollected Miss Fowler’s having been very intimate with persons so called;-and upon putting everything together we have scarcely a doubt of her being ac­tually staying with the only Family in the place whom we cannot visit.­What a Contretems!-in the Language of France; What an unluckiness! in that of Mde Duval- The Black Gentleman has certainly employed one of his menial imps to bring about this complete tho’ trifling mischeif. – Miss F. has never called again, but we are in daily expecta­tion of it. – Miss P. has of course given her a proper understanding of the Business;-it is evident that Miss F. did not expect or wish to have the visit returned, & Frank is quite as much on his guard for his wife, as we cd desire for her sake, or our own.-[p. 4]

Way back in Letter 6 (16 September 1796) we saw a reluctant Jane bring Mary Pearson back to Steventon with her from Bath; and in Letter 7 (18 September 1796) Jane telling Cassandra that Mary was no beauty; that she did not resemble a (too flattering?) picture. Frank was planned to return at the same time so Mary Pearson would have known him. In 1799 (Letter 22) Austen had heard from Miss Pearson, wrote to her about a parcel under her care which she felt obliged to write about “after all that had passed” (p. 47). What happened is not recorded only that Miss Pearson broke off the engagement and left, and Henry returned to London to flirt with Eliza Austen (LeFaye has a compact account, Family Record, 90-91)

And now Mary Gibson has a good friend, Miss Fowler who is also friend with Mrs D (eedes) and who is living with the Pearsons.

I feel for Miss Pearson each time I read these details. Here the interest is in Austen reaching for a French word, and the situation’s discomfort is the sort of thing that happens and bothers people in French memoirs, “what a Contretems!” Austen spells the word in the way of contemporary novels too. She remembers Madame Duvall from Fanny Burney’s Evelina: “what an unluckiness!” The black gentleman is the devil.

It’s a curiosity to me how this social life works. We see here how little the people really care for one another, how shallow the feelings, how much performance is involved . Miss F came but did not want the visit returned. and yet there is Frank “protecting his wife” — against what? The asinity of the behavior does distract from the original depth of offense; perhaps Miss Pearson never married, at any rate her family remained bitter.

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Jane Austen’s supposed central writing desk at Chawton

We should note that in the earlier letters there is no regular record of reading aloud. We get glimpses of someone reading aloud and Austen not being able to listen (her father reading aloud), but as of the time in Southampton we have a kind of regular record. I suggest that as Austen and Cassandra grew older and had less to occupy them externally, they sat around the fire and listened to reading. They now have Mary Gibson with them and can’t very well ignore her, and this is something all four can do together. They just have got to get a book all can agree on. They have a regular schedule, and Jane Austen, I suggest, returned more easily to routines of regular hours writing. Her letters grow longer.

After the description of the contretems over Miss F, the intimate friend of the Pearsons, Austen turns to present doings and a slew of present gossip.

We shall rejoice in being so near Winchester when Edward belongs to it, & can never have our spare bed filled more to our satisfaction than by him. Does he leave Eltham at Easter?- We are reading Clarentine, & are surprised to find how foolish it is. I remember liking it much less on a 2d reading than at the 1st & it does not bear a 3d at all. It is full of unnatural conflict & forced difficulties, without striking merit of any kind.

They’ll rejoice at being so near Winchester school when Edward junior is going to it. We see here an instance of her partisan way of regarding the world. She makes a half-joke of this but she is also downright. Presumably Eltham is another school.

Clarentine is a weak novel by Sarah Burney, Fanny’s younger half-sister who went to live with Burney’s older brother (and no matter how strongly denied there seems to have been some incestuous relationship for a while between this half-brother and sister, recalling Byron and his half-sister). It must’ve killed Austen to see what she knew to be an inferior book in print and not hers. Some of her strong comments come from that. That they are on a third reading reminds me of the joke in _NA _ where a character (Catherine Morland’s mother) rereads Grandison endlessly because she can not get nothing else; Catherine’s own desperation is signaled by her having nothing to do but call on Mrs Allen. Perhaps the Austens could not afford to join a circulating library as yet.

What interests me is the literalism of her criticism: “It is full of unnatural conduct & forced difficulties, without striking merit of any kind.” This is the central criteria in her conscious mind when she writes: strict verisimilitude as far as she understands what is common sense and probably conduct in life. “Forced difficulties” are often understandable since the woman writer is not allowed to transgress, not allowed to show she knows too much of sexual and marital life, her heroine must be exemplary, and yet has to have a middle class girl as her heroine. She is perforce put into trivial difficulties. We see this in here and there in Fanny Burney’s Cecilia and at length in her Camilla.

The various neighbors and what they are doing. Austen writes of this stuff because it’s what Cassandra thinks of interest. She admits this at the end of the letter: “There, I flatter myself I have constructed you a Smartish Letter, considering my want of Materials.” The world is full of people who ignore politics, books, large questions and only what to know what their neighbor is doing to compare it to themselves. She would not put it this way, would not frankly describe her sister this way; Jane only complains when she’s asked to be upbeat too. That she cannot manage.

So being Austen some of her remarks are worth considering for the attitudes she expresses.

It would appear Miss Harrison is a spinster who has to travel with her sister-in-law (see LeFaye’s biographical notes) – she goes to Devonshire as usual. Naturally. The maid-companion. Like guess who? Cassandra.

Then this:

Miss Jackson is married to young Mr Gunthorpe, & is to be very unhappy. He swears, drinks, is cross, jealous, selfish, & Brutal; — the match makes her family miserable, and & has occasioned his being disinherited.

This is pure Austen for its candor, downrightness, showing the absurdity of human arrangements for it’s clear the pair of people have just wed. We are not told Miss Jackson is pregnant. If it makes all miserable, why do it? I suggest most people would try to write upbeat about it, but Austen will not be a hypocrite — unlike so many of her characters. We get insight into what she though of her characters’ pretenses here.

And so now they can add someone to the list of those who visit them:

The Browns are added to our list of acquaintance; He commands the Sea Fencibles here under Sir Tho. & was introduced at his own desire by the latter when we saw him last week. – As yet the Gentlemen only have visited, as Mrs B. is ill, but she is a nice looking woman & wears one of the prettiest Straw Bonnets in the place.

This is another networking acquaintance. The Browns are coming over because of Frank, and really it’s only the men who feel they ought to. It’s wry the way Austen gives us the value of Mrs B: she “is a nice looking woman & wears one of the prettiest Straw Bonnets in the place.”

Jane gave out here, and returned on another day.

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A garret or four-poster bed (probably for Mary and Frank)

Monday. They are fixing up the quarters they have rented in the strange castle. Apparently Austen does not involve herself in fixing up furniture. Let us hope she was writing and not simply above it.

Garret-beds are made, & ours will be finished to day. I had hoped it would be finished on Saturday, but neither Mrs Hall nor Jenny were able to give help enough for that; & I have as yet done very little & Mary nothing at all.

Mary is pregnant. That’s her excuse. We see here Cassandra and Jane’s twin beds. Garret-beds? It’s a traditional four-poster bed, mostly made out of wood.

This week we shall do more, & I should like to have all the 5 Beds completed by the end of it. – There will then be the Window [continued below address panel] -Curtains, sofa-cover, & a car­pet to be altered.

We are to assume Jane and her mother will join in here. Then anther of these remarks about her disappointment in what her eldest brother James has become.

I should not be surprised if we were to be visited by James again this week; he gave us reason to expect him soon; & if they” go to Eversley he cannot come next week. I am sorry & angry that his Visits should not give one more pleasure;-the company of so good & so clever a Man ought to be gratifying in itself but his Chat seems all forced, his Opinions on many points too much copied from his Wife’s, & his time here is spent I think in walking about the House & banging the Doors, or ringing the Bell for a glass of Water.

Austen either misses the explanation for James’s behavior or ignores it — the text says that a line was crossed out so is illegible perhaps? – or deliberately evading the obvious which the sentence here and those earlier implied. We have seen James getting away from his wife to Steventon as often as he can, and again in Bath. He gets away as often as he can from his wife but having spent such time with her he’s all out of sorts. She can’t stand books and in his poetry we see that’s his strong love. He was a sensitive melancholy man but could not get himself to talk to others directly. I’ve always felt that JEAL’s memoir with its nostalgia longing for the Austen cottage at Chawton was a reaction to his own miserable home life — tension, quarrels (the wife also got after James to get more appointments and he didn’t want that). To go to the two aunts and grandmother wa a relief. In comparison they were peace and harmony itself.

But she is talking from a selfish point of view. She is looking upon him as entertainment. and perhaps his sister and mother with their conventional silences did not give him openings. The family tendency to discount sentiment would hurt his ability to talk for real too.

There, I flatter myself I have constructed you a Smartish Letter, considering my want of Materials. hope your Cough is gone & that you are otherwise wel1. – And remain with Love, yrs affecte1y JA.

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And so it comes to an end. She quotes Johnson: “But like my dear Dr Johnson I beleive I have dealt more in Notions than Facts.” This is a line Johnson wrote to Boswell in a letter of 4 July 1774, about their twin books of their tour through Scotland into the Western Islands. It was printed in Boswell’s Life of Johnson and Austen’s memory of it shows how well versed she is in Boswell and Johnson. Austen’s own meaning is she has revealed more about attitudes of mind than straight literal “facts”

This is a letter which shows Austen at long last more comfortable with herself — though under considerable strain now and again from others. She has her own space, time, and we see her turning to beloved (and not so beloved) authors, landscape games. She is making herself and her sister and friend and mother a home at last, even if they don’t appreciate necessarily what she does. The first since they were exiled from Steventon. Jane Austen was no nomad.

43, 44; 45, 46, 47, and 48, 49

A Straw bonnet

Ellen