BRUSH UP YOUR JANE AUSTEN - 2

Jane Austen was born in the small village of Steventon in Hampshire on December 16, 1775; she was the seventh of the eight children — six boys and two girls — of the country parson, the Reverend George Austen. He was a classical scholar and a Fellow of his Oxford College, St John’s. His lineage came from Kentish yeomen engaged in the wool trade since the Middle Ages.

Jane Austen was born in the small village of Steventon in Hampshire on December 16, 1775; she was the seventh of the eight children — six boys and two girls — of the country parson, the Reverend George Austen. He was a classical scholar and a Fellow of his Oxford College, St John’s. His lineage came from Kentish yeomen engaged in the wool trade since the Middle Ages.

A wealthy uncle funded George Austen’s education at Tonbridge School and later at Oxford. In 1764, after being ordained as a preacher, he married Cassandra Leigh at Walcot Church in Bath. Cassandra Leigh was the youngest daughter of the Reverend Thomas Leigh; she had aristocratic cousins, and her uncle Theophilus was president of Trinity College, Oxford. A woman of great constitution, mental fortitude, and wit managed with obvious success the upbringing of her eight children, in the Rectory at Steventon, a little village near Basingstoke in Hampshire.

There, at the Rectory, Jane Austen spent the first twenty-five years of her life in idyllic existence.

George Austen, besides his religious duties, farmed the small plot of land he owned, earning enough income to support his growing family not only in comfort but also with dignity and financial means as proven by their carriage and fine horses.

Jane Austen’s infancy coincided with the Anglo-American war, a source of private and public concern to their father, who was a trustee for an estate on the island of Antigua. This connection was to be important to her later, but as a girl she was more impressed by the keen interest of her two clever elder brothers in the social and political events emerging in the republican states of America. Her two ambitious, career-minded younger brothers were concerned as naval officers to learn something of North American history and geography.

Jane Austen’s Brothers

The six boys were James, George, Edward, Henry, Frank, and Charles.

George Austen

George Austen — (1766–1838) Jane’s second brother was nine years older than her. He was an invalid and cared for in a neighboring small town. Although he was sickly George lived for twenty-one years after his sister.

Edward (Austen) Knight

Edward (Austen) Knight — (1767–1852) was Jane’s third brother. A rich and childless cousin adopted Edward in the early 1780’s so that he could inherit their estate of Gosherham, in the county of Kent. To honor his cousin, Edward changed his last name to Knight. His oldest daughter Fanny Knight (1793–1882) was a favorite with both of her aunts; Jane dedicated some of her Juvenilia works to her.

Charles John Austen

Charles John Austen — (1779–1852) Jane’s sixth and youngest brother, entered the Royal

Naval Academy at Portsmouth at 12 in 1791. He fought in the British navy during the Napoleonic wars with his brother Frank. He also rose to the rank of admiral, dying in 1852 at 73.

Francis William Austen

Francis William Austen — (1774–1865), usually called Frank, was only a year older than Jane and was her fifth brother. He also entered the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth at 12 and fought in the British navy during the Napoleonic wars. He eventually rose to the rank of admiral and knighted for his knighted for gallantry in battle.

Frank took part in Nelson’s celebrated run to the West Indies in search of the enemy, and later, as commander of the ship Elephant, he captured an American privateer, the Swordfish, in the Baltic. Charles, on board the frigate Unicorn, captured of the French ship La Tribune after a 200-mile chase and with his prize money, bought two topaz crosses which he sent to his sisters. In Persuasion, Jane Austen writes warmly of the Navy, giving glowing accounts of Captains Wentworth, Harville and Benwick, and of Admiral Croft. In Mansfield Park, Jane uses this incident of the war booty when the young midshipman William Price buys an amber cross also with his prize money, sending it to his sister Fanny, for her to wear at her first ball.

After the war with France ended, Frank Austen did not go to sea again for thirty years. His last appointment was to the post of commander-in-chief of the North American and West Indies Station. His official residences were in Bermuda and Nova Scotia, but much of his time he spent at sea. The role of admiral had to be carried out with an almost vice-regal dignity and conscientious attention to naval efficiency and to the diplomatic duties involved on shore, such as pursuing slave ships trading under Brazilian and Portuguese flags, the warships at his command had duties; the British Government had outlawed the slave trade in British territories. It was also required that a show of force, both naval and military, should go into action to protect property and British interests in Venezuela and Nicaragua. The admiral made courtesy calls in the U.S. His memoirs, written much later, show a much-reserved person yet a comment on American manners after a visit to Saratoga Springs is sharply critical of:

“Some vile habits especially that of frequent discharges of saliva, and that without much regard to where they may be… and there was a sort of flippant air amongst the women which seemed rather at variance with the retiring modesty so pleasing in the generality of English women.”

After the admiral’s return to his home near Portsmouth, he began an acquaintance with some very different American ladies, whom he treated with generous courtesy. They were members of a very distinguished Boston family — the Quincy’s. Miss Susan Quincy wrote in glowing terms of the enthusiasm of their whole family for the novels of Jane Austen. In a correspondence that was to continue for several years, the admiral responded in measured tones after reading the memoir of her famous grandfather:

“You will scarcely be surprised that as an English subject I do not entirely agree with all the sentiments relative to Government avowed and advocated by your Grandfather, but I have no hesitation in saying what I have always thought since I was capable of forming an opinion, that the conduct of the British Ministry in all that regarded the transatlantic Colonies was most besotted, as well as unjust and oppressive and could lead to no other results. Had measures of conciliation been adopted such as the Colonies had a right to expect, much bloodshed as well as a vast expenditure of treasure would have been avoided.”

Some four years later, a younger daughter from Boston, now Mrs. Waterson, visited Portsdown Lodge and clearly appreciated its dignified calm. The Quincy sisters had early on noted the resemblance between Francis Austen and Captain Wentworth, the character in Persuasion. The whole extended family appreciated the gift of one of Jane’s letters preserved by the admiral. This must have been the first Jane Austen manuscript to cross the Atlantic.

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