Jane Austen’s Letters: Letter 56, Sat-Sun, 1-2 Oct 1808, from Castle Square

Alton, Hampshire countryside today (Holybourne)

Dear friends and readers,

Three months have gone by and the sisters are swapped again — or they swap themselves. So now Cassandra at Godmersham and Jane at Castle Square.

There are three areas of concern, of un-guarded, undisguised feeling in this letter: the sudden birth of a 6th son and 11th child, Brooke-John Austen-Knight — and Elizabeth’s worrying state of health; Mary not wanting to return to Southampton (perhaps does not enjoy the reading sessions after all) so the need to find a new place, a suggestion of Alton, as near Henry’s place of business; and especially Austen’s hurt at the end of the letter; she is out of some loop or excluded from some talk Martha has had with Cassandra, and has not told Jane why she is trying not to return to Castle Square. Austen is personally hurt, and in this letter does not take into account that it might be too much for Martha to watch Mary and Frank together (Martha had wanted to marry him, and at the end of his life, he finally did marry her, showing a remarkable uneagerness I’d say) but then Austen might have wanted to think Martha loved her, Jane, best. Martha’s behavior shows this is not so.

More particularly but still in general:

Once again we see that Elizabeth much preferred Cassandra. From the details in the letters we get nothing of Austen’s knowledge of women’s bodies and involvement in the whole cynical of marital sexuality; she didn’t write of it or whatever she wrote is gone. All the cheerful talk of happy recovery is the usual dertermination to say the opposite of reality (as we’ve seen before is typical of this group) — as we will see rather quickly. Austen is glad for Cassandra she missed the trauma crisis. Late in the letter Austen says she realizes Cassandra will have no time to write and will take no news as good news.

This letter records Austen’s reactions to some social visiting: it’s as tedious and little liked by Austen as like the labor of giving birth. She uses this metaphor. Austen not eager for these visits; some striking social commentary, as on the man who lives by odd jobs. How 21st century of her. She is aware of who else is in that castle compound and what they do.

The Austen women realize their Southampton residence is falling apart as Mary is not returning (also might not be keen to live with mother-in-law in charge); and without Frank and his money they cannot stay. We had hints of desires for something else, and talk of cottages, but here we have definite talk of going to Alton and its problems (the cost) as well as nearness to Henry. So like Lear who would bounce from daughter to daughter, they would bounce from Frank to Henry. In the event (Elizabeth’s death removing the obstacle) they bounced to Edward (who had the most wherewithal anyway).

We see her and her mother’s attempts to help Frank: send furniture, food; they worry over the cost of a place they have found in Alton (300 guineas). The unexplained matter here includes a puzzle what how the original “scheme of life” that she and Cassandra proposed to the brothers for herself, Cassandra, and Martha differed from what they now know. Did she want to live apart from the mother? She must’ve known how hard that would be as her mother’s income was the mainstay of the little group of women? Did she want to include Miss Sharp? for at any rate, the way they were living at Castle Square and the ideas for Alton do include Jane, Cassandra, Martha.

News of Miss Sharp. Jane feels left out “And if it does [something prevents Martha from returning] I shall not much regard it on my own account, for I am now got into such a way of being alone that I do not wish even for her.” This remark of Austen’s puts me in mind of Brutus and Cassius: “cold to me?”

Brabourne tried to erase this: phrase “Mrs Tilson’s remembrance gratifies me, & I will use her patterns if I can; but poor woman! how can she be honestly breeding again”. LeFaye is so irritating for not saying which Mrs Tilson and how many children she had dropped/had had inflicted on her by this time.

This is the letter which includes Austen’s possibly obtuse offhand comment about Southey’s Letters from England.

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Woman giving birth: modern sculpture

The opening section tells us Cassandra had been sent for or gone to help Elizabeth with a difficult birth and Jane has now had news that the baby had been born safely.

Your letter this morning was quite unexpected & it is well that it brings such good news to counterbalance the disappointment to me of losing my first sentence, which I had arranged full of proper hopes about your Journey, intending to commit them to paper to day, & not looking for certainty till tomorrow. — We are extremely glad to hear of the birth of the Child, I & trust everything will proceed as well as it begins; — his Mama has our best wishes, & he our second best for health & comfort-tho’ I suppose unless he has our best too, we do nothing for her. — We are glad it was all over before your arrival; —

She begin with a sort of joke half-truth. She had begun or written a letter and a fine first sentence she liked in which she had done the right thing (“proper hopes” of her Journey and its purpose), gone through the conventions as Henry Tilney might say, as she did not expect the birth until tomorrow (that is October 2nd); instead it happened already. The next line is complicated but paraphrased she means that unless she had equal good wishes for the new born, she is not giving Elizabeth the best wishes as Elizabeth’s strongest concern is for the child as well as herself.

In fact it was all over by the time Cassandra arrived (so maybe it was 3-4 days ago) and Austen is glad for her she missed the traumatic crisis. There have already been hints in the letters Elizabeth was not doing that well in the assertions of how much better she was looking this time round. This is a family which repeatedly evinces the determination to say the opposite of reality (as we’ve seen before is typical of this group)

Austen rejoices at who the godmother is to be — but does not tell us nor does LeFaye. Children are named after godparents so whoever it was will be beating that person’s first name. (This made it explicit the godparent was to give presents and there was this special bond.).

— My Mother was some time guessing the names.-Henry’s present to you gives me great pleasure, & I shall watch the weather for him at this time with redoubled inter­est.–

We don’t know what this present was, the line does signal to us that Henry was at Godmersham at this time of Elizabeth’s giving birth and expected at Castle Square next.

And then we get one of these paragraphs with the usual bunched up names familiar to both Cassandra and Jane. The first set shows Austen again in a world of older woman on narrow means, some cousins, the Maitlands related to James’s first wife

We have had 4 brace of Birds lately, in equal Lots from Shalden & Neatham.-Our party at Mrs Duer’s produced the novelties of two old Mrs Pollens & Mrs Heywood, with whom my Mother made a Qua­drille Table; & of Mrs Maitland & Caroline, & Mr Booth without his sisters at Commerce. — I have got a Husband for each of the Miss Maitlands; —

She can still joke about getting women husbands. There is also here a comment on the Castle Square owners. Why the silly brother is a treasure for Eliza Austen I know not except maybe like Mr Bennet Eliza had said what do we live for but to laugh at our neighbors. LeFaye’s note tells us the Colonel’s wife eloped with a Lord Sackville who became a Duke of Dorset and Powlett sued for damages; if you put LeFaye’s two notes together, you can conclude Powlett sued because he thought money there. Austen thinks the man is silly. She puts herself in the role or Emma Woodhouse: she has planned husbands and now the coming of these two gives her no special ingenuity it came out so naturally — this is how Emma saw her engineering Miss Taylor’s marriage, only Austen is mocking herself for such day dreams of power.

Col Powlett & his Brother have taken Argyle’s inner ,House, & the consequence is so natural that I have no ingenuity in planning it. If the Brother should luckily be a little sillier than the Colonel, ‘what a treasure for Eliza.’

Lyford was a doctor who later treated Austen and here she is referring to his profession as physician: they of course live (they did really for money as well as self-respect) to deal with the sick. Jane must have been feeling some sickness because she now need not use Eliza’s remedy sent to her: oil of sweet almonds was for ear ache:

Mr Lyford called on Tuesday to say that he was disappointed of his son & daughter’s coming, & must go home himself the following morng;-& as I was determined that he shd not lose every pleasure I consulted him on my complaint. He recommended cotton moistened with oil of sweet almonds, & it has done me good.­I hope therefore to have nothing more to do with Eliza’s4 receipt than to feel obliged to her for giving it5 as I very sincerely do.-

The next line is the one the super-sensitive Lord Brabourne bowlderized (Brabourne inflicted quite a number of children on two wives.)

Mrs Tilson’s remembrance gratifies me, & I will use her pat­terns if I can; but poor Woman! how can she be honestly breeding again?

Austen sewed a handkerchief for Mary Lloyd Austen (reminding me of how Mary Garth made clothes for Rosamund Vincy in Middlemarch). Austen expects James to come to Castle Square soon. This reminds me of how he would escape Mary to Steventon before the Austens were replaced by James and Mary. His comfort in gardens part of the sentence. Expecting him at three or four reminds me of Frank Churchill’s expected coming.

I have just finished a Handkf. for Mrs James Austen, which I expect her Husband to give me an opportunity of sending to her ere long. Some fine day in October will certainly bring him to us in the Garden, between three & four o’c1ock. –She hears that Miss Bigg is to be married in a fortnight. I wish it may be so. —

LeFaye does not provide a note to the letter to tell us which Miss Bigg is meant here; you must go to the biographical index to discover it’s Catherine who married Revd Herbert Hill in 1808. Austen wishes it may be so; she does trust to it.

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1995 P&P: Playing cards at Mrs Philips’s

Then a vignette of an afternoon’s visit where they played cards. Austen’s sense here is social life is a toil and tedium. Cassandra’s vigil ended last Wednesday — as did Elizabeth’s. Austen’s began this 1st day October – she likens such an afternoon to enduring labor pain at length. Austen envies Mr Harrison who escaped this card table by coming late and then had the chance to sit by the fire – where it was warmer too. The line of how it was wet they came but dry by the time they left — they all drain one another. She does not find the Miss Ballrds such great company: they don’t open up.

I don’t feel this is an Emma Woodhouse prying, but rather Austen valuing general content-ful conversation which none of them here had. A sting of resentment is felt when Austen goes on to damn the Miss Ballards to no tour as they have no taste or feeling to appreciate it — as (it’s obvious what’s on Austen’s mind) the way she, Jane, would. They are also gambling with small sums (on spillikins).

About an hour & half after your toils on Wednesday ended, ours began;-at seven o’clock, Mrs Harrison, her two daughters & two Visitors, with Mr Debary & his eldest sister walked in; & our Labour was not a great deal shorter than poor Elizabeth’s, for it was past eleven before we were delivered.-A second pool of Commerce, & all the longer by the addition of the two girls, who during the first had one corner of the Table & Spillikins to themselves, was the ruin of us; — it completed the prosperity of Mr Debary however, for he won them both. – Mr Harrison came in late, & sat by the fire for which I envied him, as we had our usual luck of having a very cold Eveng• It rained when our company came, but was dry again before they left us. — The Miss Ballards are said to be re­markably well-informed; their manners are unaffected & pleasing, but they do not talk quite freely enough to be agreable — nor can I discover any right they had by Taste or Feeling to go their late Tour

They came at 7 and it took 4 hours to deliver themselves of these people. “The ruin of us” refers not to just to killing time and tedium (ennui) but money lost, small sums probably but Austen cares about small sums. According to LeFaye’s note, this Miss Austen was someone Jane was mistaken to think related to the Steventon Austens (p. 494).

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Wm Hogarth’s portrait of his servants.

A new turn: some joking at Mr Choles’s expense (he’s disappeared) and the way people don’t mention when people go away. The implication is how people don’t really have an attachment to one another. The “her still being there” is a way of imitating a phrase which suggests the people at Godmersham nowadays sometimes tire of the fairy stepmother.

Choles is another servant that Jane pays attention to. I’d like to think she perhaps would have paid more attention to servants in the novels but that snobbish conventions forbade it. For whatever reason she did not, but pleasingly (to me) she does regard the servants, reports about them as people with equivalent burden of life and human concerns as she. Hence her ability to have a 21st century awareness of how someone lives by odd jobs. She Jane has so little money what would she be reduced to floats in her consciousness. Austen will not forget the garden any more than her mother.

.-Miss Austen & her nephew are returned — but Mr Choles is still absent;­ “still absent” say you, “I did not know that he was gone anywhere” — Neither did I know that Lady Bridges was at Godmersham at all, till I was told of her being still there, which I take therefore to be the most approved method of announcing arrivals & departures. — Mr Choles is gone to drive a Cow to Brentford, & his place is supplied to us by a Man who lives in the same sort of way by odd jobs, & among other capabilities has that of working in the garden, which my Mother will not forget, if we ever have another garden here. —

There have been hints of other schemes to move, a mention of a cottage her, but we are now come upon naming the first definite place and expressed desire to move from Castle Square. The Austen women are realizing this idyll must come to an end as Frank and Mary are not there with them But could Mrs Austen afford 130 guineas a year though, especially alone (without Frank’s income say). Austen’s ironical because she doubts her mother could (and that means she and Cassandra too). They would have to buy furniture (the Castle Square lodgings came with furniture we recall). Now Jane registers awareness of how these women are again dependent on their scheme being approved by a brother. Austen depends on Henry liking this plan.

— Mrs Lyell’s 130 Guineas rent have made a great impression. To the purchase of furniture, whether here or there, she is quite reconciled, & talks of the Trouble as the only evil. – I depended upon Henry’s liking the Alton plan, & expect to hear of something perfectly unexceptionable there, through him.

LeFaye’s note tells us they would have been a mile from Chawton and that Henry’s banking firm was on the high street of this country town. There were markets and fairs so it would be a lively enough place with somewhere to shop. In general however she thinks much more of Alton, & really expects to move there and she speaks of herself in the thickened movement as we were driving home.

Now by association she turns to the part of the family that is forming a separate division as she half-joke puts it. I suggest the distress was that Frank was not coming back to them at Southampton and the worry that all that meant. Mrs Austen has been reassured, perhaps by Henry that he will provide another plan. Apparently Cassandra was making a rug for this new place and Mrs Austen says the star patten will come out all right as she has Godmersham’s (beautiful?) room rug to look at

Our Yarmouth Division seem to have got nice Lodgings; — & with fish almost for nothing, & plenty of Engagements & plenty of each other, must be very happy. — My Mother has undertaken to cure six Hams for Frank; — at first it was a distress, but now it is a pleasure. — She desires me to say that she does not doubt your making out the Star pattern very well, as you have the Breakfast room-rug to look at. —

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Here she moves back to the here and now at Castle Square, reading, and some commentary about Miss Sharpe

Austen turns from the topic of Frank and Mary living on their own, Alton as an alternative new space for the Austen mother and sisters (and Martha?), Austen turns to her own doings. She’s reading aloud with her mother Southey’s Letters from England.

Rereading the two lnies once again, I see no irony, but it may be her comment is meant for Cassandra’s eyes. She’s warning Cassandra or thinking what if Cassandra read it, well she’s better not misrepresent or say some things she Austen likes, except the line: “He deserves to be the foreigner he assumes.” She does not at all register the serious critique of her society, the enlightened ideas, but this is par for the course the way she talks about most books: abrupt semi-hostile comments. She can’t (I suggest) forget herself and that she’s not published or read by others.

We have got the 2d vol. of Espriella’s Letters,9 & I read it aloud by candlelight. The Man describes well, but is horribly anti-English. He deserves to be the foreigner he assumes.

The Debary family members are part of the Austen social group but now she makes effort for someone who is not: Miss Sharp the ex-governess, now paid companion to a crippled single woman. To my mind this certainly puts paid to the polite fiction Anne Sharpe left Godmersham because it was too much for her health: to take care of a crippled older woman is no light task, and Austen says if she could find a better situation, she would. We remember how she tried for a schoolmistress in Bath and failed. She lacked connections probably, also didn’t please enough – -perhaps like Austen understand her own gifts were ignored and unwanted because of who she wasn’t.

Mr Debary went away yesterday, & I being gone with some partridges to St Maries lost his parting visit. — I have heard today from Miss Sharpe, & that she returns with Miss B. to Hinckley, 8 will continue there at least till about Christmas when she thinks they may both travel Southward .Miss B. however is probably to make on y a temporary absence from Mr Chessyre, & I shd not wonder if Miss Sharpe were to continue with her; — unless anything more eligible offer, she certainly will. She de­scribes Miss B. as very anxious that she should do so.

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Anna Maxwell Martin as Cassandra (Becoming Jane, 2008)

And now it’s a new day and Austen registers her awareness of the trouble going on at Godmersham. Elizabeth is very bad, a neonate to care for. In this situation she expects no letters and will look at no news as good news, for if Cassandra were to write, it would only be about some emergency need or distress. Don’t knock talk of the weather, Austen does it well. She is reassuring her sister they are taking care of the sister’s plants. It’s a quiet vignette of Austen’s outward life.

— Sunday — I had not expected to hear from you again so soon, & am much obliged to you for writing as you did; but now as you must have a great deal of the business upon your hands, do not trouble yourself with me for the present; –I shall consider silence as good news, & another Letter from you till Friday or Saturday. You must have had a great deal more rain than has fallen here; — Cold enough it has been but not wet, except for a few hours on Wednesday Eveng, & I could have found nothing more plastic than dust to stick in; — now indeed we are likely to have a wet day-& tho’ Sunday, my Mother begins it without any ailment. – Your plants were taken in one very cold blustering day & placed in the Dining room, & there was a frost the very same night.-If we have warm weather again they are to be put out of doors, if not my Mother will have them conveyed to their Winter quarters. – I gather some Currants every now & then, when I want either fruit or employ­ment. —

A sudden association about herself now, and then as a child (she thought she did not read enough) and so she becomes exemplarily didactic for a moment:

Pray tell my little Goddaughter that I am delighted to hear of her saying her lesson so well. —

And now at letter’s end she turns to her concern for Cassandra, for Miss Sharp and Martha. Austen is hurt. She feels out of the loop, excluded;’ she sees Martha as inventing excuses not to return. Austen does not seem to remember how Martha might feel about Frank still, how it was painful for Martha to see Frank and his wife (rather like Harriet Smith watching the Eltons). These are bisexual women.

You have used me ill, you have been writing to Martha without telling me of it, & a letter which I sent her on Wednesday to give her information of you, must have been good for nothing. I do not know how to think that something will not still happen to prevent her returning by ye 10th And if it does [something prevents Martha from returning] I shall not much regard it on my own account, for I am now got into such a way of being alone that I do not wish even for her.

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Jane (Olivia Williams) pacing, impatient, wants to escape the life on offer and cannot (late in Miss Austen Regrets, 2009).

Turning off her serious mood to end on flippant remarks and reiterating how grating she finds social visiting:

The marquis whom Austen sees as not quite right in his mind; this last section functions as a form of escape, gossip as distraction:

The Marquis has put off being cured for another year;-after waiting some weeks in vain for the return of the Vessel he had agreed for, he is gone into Cornwall to order a Vessel built for himself by a famous Man in that Country, in which he means to go abroad a twelvemonth hence. —

Postscripts to Cassandra:

Austen might have thought Cassandra was in need of being told of pleasant routs: However, in the second case Austen can’t resist making it plain all these visits are impositions too, a taking her away from her books, writing, gardening. Neatham a small village, Maitlands related through James’s first wife, and Miss Cotterell married into the Lefroy family.

[Upside down at top of p. 2]

We had two Pheasants last night from Neatham. Tomorrow Eveng is to be given to the Maitlands;-we are just asked, to meet Mrs Heywood & Mrs Duer.

[Below address panel] From what she has said of social life, she is not delighted to be endlessly visited or asked.

Everybody who comes to Southampton finds it either their duty or pleasure to call upon us; Yesterday we were visited by the eldest Miss Cotterel, just arrived from Waltham. Adieu — With Love to all, yrs affedY JA.

The Cotterels are a distant branch of the Lefroys. Will people never leave them alone? I imagine an important part of her impatience is that she is trying to write her novels in the interstices of time left to her.

Ellen

Letters 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55

Ellen

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