The Austens

Austens’ stoical philosophy in action.

Posted: 16 August 2007 (printer-friendly)

Henry

Francis

Charles

Jane

Cassandra

The Stoical Christian philosophy underpinning Austen’s novels were not a fine idea but a way of life as is evident from Austen’s life and those of their brothers and sisters.  All the evidence we have of this comes from their correspondence, of course, and in seeing how they represented and coped with the crises in their own lives gives a sense (if another is needed) of the realism of Austen’s novels.

Henry

Here Park Honan describes both Austen’s philosophy and her brother’s banking failure towards the end of her life, and the way Henry Austen copes with disgrace and financial ruin.

Here, perhaps, his fate played a trick.  Henry Austen’s linked banks were risky, as if he had a ship which would sink if punctured anywhere.  Still the breezes were fair.  Once paper money had been rare, but after 1798, when few gold and silver coins were struck, banks issued much paper.  Everyone accepted tradesmen’s tokens and Spanish dollars over-stamped with the English King’s head and became used to hearing of forgeries, credit, money.  At Chawton Park James Tilson talked of little else: ‘Mr. Tilson admires the trees,’ Jane wrote, ‘and grieved that they should not be turned into money.’[1] She laughed over Henry’s talk, too[. …]

by 1815 Henry’s bank in a flush of success had riskily issued many bank-notes in small denominations and had relied, for its solvency, on merchants taken in as partners.  Henry also risked much by putting his brothers and servants in jeopardy, banking their funds.  To meet a suretyship of £30,000 he had got £10,000 from his Uncle Perrot and £20,000 from his brother Edward Knight, who was now fighting to save his Chawton holdings.  If Henry should bring down Edward, Mrs Austen and her daughters [Cassandra and Jane] could be turned out of their house.  The crisis came with a sharp, sudden deflation and a cutback in government orders for foodstuffs, cloth and other stores in southern counties; when Gray the grocer-partner wavered he brought down Austen, Gray and Vincent at Alton, and a panic began. […] ‘A bad year’, Caroline recorded.  Henry’s bankruptcy on 6 March was ‘an entire surprise at our house and as little foreseen I believe by the rest of the family’, Jane wrote to Murray in April in deep anxiety over ‘the late sad Event in Henrietta S^t.’[2]

Henry was the one partner to be disgraced not only in London but at three provincial towns – one of them a mile from Chawton – and would face an ordeal of gazetting, commissions and being bled financially to death or ‘sued out’ of existence.  Mr Leigh Perrot’s £10,000 and Edward’s £20,000 would disappear and Henry’s servants would suffer with savings gone.  Charles Austen lost hundreds in the bank’s failure.  This was a heavy calamity, but, in the crisis, Jane Austen felt for Henry, yearned for him and did not lose faith in him.  With no belief in static virtues, his or her own or anyone else’s, she viewed life as a struggle never won, and felt that even a conquest of the self was meaningful only for a moment.  People revealed themselves to her as they advanced and fought against their contraries.  She could be glad that Henry saw the town as hostile and that he was not dashed, snivelling or playing a martyr to his failure.  In repose nobody was anything, she felt, and she might have accepted Cowper’s truth,

By ceaseless action all that is subsists.

She was relieved that Edward survived the bank failure, and that Charles was not flattened.  Henry aimed to pay back some of his debts by taking clerical orders, and indeed he took orders with ease to become Papillion’s assistant at Chawton from December 1816.  Six years later at Farnham after briefly holding Steventon parish, he still owed money, but, as he told Charles, ‘in the midst of all my struggles, doubts and difficulties, my heart beats as warmly towards you as in the days of sunshine – of sunshine never to return as far as regards my worldly circumstances’.  He could only ‘mourn to see so little chance of healing those wounds by me inflicted on the property of others. … I had hoped by this time to have paid off Made Perigord entirely, and thereby to be on the threshold of repayment to you – but I still owe her One hundred pounds.  The cheif cause of my error in calculation was that I was obliged to reduce the tithes of Steventon Seventy pounds a year for two years.  – Do not think I am in any present distress.  Not at all – We are up to this moment before hand with the world.’[3]

Park Honan, Jane Austen: Her Life, pp. 375-7

There is no question but that Henry Austen was the author of his own misfortune, but shows great strength of mind in the way he sets about his life’s work of trying to repair the damage he has inflicted on his family and friends.  It certainly isn’t romantic: no wailing and gnashing of teeth or ostentatious demonstrations of contrition but (sincere) regret, resolve and reparation; to the Austens anything else would be seen as self-indulgent.

Francis

The next excerpt is taken from Brian Southam’s study of Austen’s sailor brothers.

Their story begins in 1786.  This was the year in which Francis, a boy of almost twelve, travelled the forty or so miles from Steventon to Portsmouth to enter The Royal Naval Academy.  He was followed, five years later, by Charles. Run by the Admiralty, the Academy was the Navy's official training college for officer cadets.  But only a minute fraction of naval officers took the Academy route.  The vast majority of youngsters, as many as 97 or 98%, went straight to a ship and received their training at sea.  But this needed the patronage of a ship's Captain and the Austens had no naval connections to help them.  […]

It happens that naval records are very well kept.  Even to this day, we still have the Academy reports for the brothers during their time at Portsmouth.  Francis had an outstanding record.  His final report at the Academy commends his “disposition” as “lively and active.”  At the same time, from beginning to end, it was a path to success.  His reports were glowing, his conduct irreproachable, his work exemplary.  This is reflected in Francis's own Memoir.  This is a short autobiography which Francis composed towards the end of his life and it remains unpublished.  This is what he has to say about his Academy days.  As you will hear, Francis was no victim of false modesty.  “Very soon after his admission into this seminary; he was distinguished by all the Masters as a youth of superior abilities, which joined a possessing appearance and a regularity in his conduct but rarely seen in so young a boy, gained him the esteem and regard of them all, and especially Mr Bayly [the Master of the Academy] who to the day of his death always treated him with the most flattering marks of attention ...” (qtd. in Jane Austen's Sailor Brothers: Francis and Charles in Life and Art, 26).  Francis had good reason to feel pleased with himself.  He was the outstanding student of his year and he went forward to his training at sea, a further three years, with high hopes.

Brian Southam, Jane Austen's Sailor Brothers: Francis and Charles in Life and Art

That Francis should rise to the top of the navy so few connections to help him was no mean feat and his frank summing up of his own early progress is without any affectation.

Blessed with good health, as those above him passed away the vacancies opened up, and Francis rose steadily in rank: to Rear-Admiral, Vice-Admiral, full Admiral in 1848.  […] In 1863, at the age of 89, he achieved the Navy's highest rank, Admiral of the Fleet.  Two years later, having outlived all his contemporaries, he reached the ultimate pinnacle as Senior Admiral of the Fleet.  On 10 August 1865, Francis died.  Aged 91, he was the last surviving of Jane Austen's six brothers.

But behind this chronology of success, there is another story to tell, a harsher story of a man ill-used, as he felt, and disappointed.  [O]nce he became an officer, Francis's ambitions were never quite fulfilled.  Promotion, he felt, came too slowly; his prize-money was too small; and the great disappointment of his life was to miss Trafalgar.  His ship was in Nelson's fleet.  But just before the Battle, it was away in the Mediterranean, off the coast of North Africa picking up fresh food and water; and it arrived back in Spanish waters only after Trafalgar was fought and won.  We know every detail of this from a long letter which Francis wrote at the time to his fiancée, Mary Gibson.  It extends over this very period of nearly four weeks.  From this letter, we can understand what it meant to a naval officer to miss a great victory, and at what cost to his fortune and his career.  Here is part of the letter.  The news of Trafalgar has just reached him.  As you will hear, Francis moves very quickly from a stance of altruistic patriotism to marked dismay and complaint:

 As a national benefit, I cannot but rejoice that our arms have been once again successful, but at the same time I cannot help feeling how very unfortunate we [meaning his ship, the Canopus] have been to be away at such a moment, and by a fatal combination of unfortunate though unavoidable events to lose all share in the glory of a day, which surpasses all which ever went before, is what I cannot think of with any degree of patience, but as I cannot write on that subject without complaining, I will drop it for the present till time and reflection have reconciled me a little more to what I know is now inevitable. (qtd. in Jane Austen's Sailor Brothers: Francis and Charles in Life and Art, 95)

Brian Southam, Jane Austen's Sailor Brothers: Francis and Charles in Life and Art

Although bitterly disappointed he never loses perspective, by turns acknowledging the ‘national benefit’, his ships misfortune, but also catches himself, knowing that focusing on his personal disaster will only make matters worse but instead resolves to reconcile himself to ‘what I know is now inevitable’.

When Francis writes of losing “all share in the glory” of the “day,” he has something very specific and very material in mind.  These are the honors and rewards that a ship's Captain could expect, following a great victory at sea—and, of course, even at the time, Trafalgar was regarded as the great victory, unparalleled in modern times.  A Captain such as Francis could look forward to a knighthood or Baronetcy, to prize-money, to a commemorative gold medal, and further rewards from the Lloyd's Patriotic Fund.  These material benefits were quite apart from the boost such a victory would give to his naval career.  What added to Francis's pain was the fact that he had been engaged to Mary Gibson since 1804: the delay to their marriage, which came only in 1806, was on account of his financial difficulties at this time.  Trafalgar would have solved all this, and much else besides.

Brian Southam, Jane Austen's Sailor Brothers: Francis and Charles in Life and Art

Charles

Austen’s youngest sibling, ‘dear Charles all affectionate, placid, quiet, chearful good humour’,[4] though very different in temperament, is alike in making the best of his opportunities.

After the war, Charles was in the wilderness.   There was a surplus of naval officers, and to support his family, he was forced to take a job in the Coast Guard service, commanding districts in Devon and Cornwall.  But all the time he longed for the sea, and after seven or eight years, he left the Coast Guard and moved to Alverstoke, a favourite spot for naval men, just across the Harbour from Portsmouth, and with views of the Grand Fleet out at Spithead.  One day in the spring of 1826, engaged in his favourite pastime of scanning the horizon, Charles noticed that a frigate, the Aurora, was about to sail.  At that very moment, however, the anchor was dropped, the ship came to a standstill, and the Captain's flag was brought down to half-mast, the Navy's signal for a Captain's death.  Charles instantly took a small boat alongside, confirmed the sad event and travelled post-haste to London, where he reported the news to the Admiralty and there and then requested the vacant appointment.  His promptitude and persistence were rewarded.  On the spot, he was given the ship's command, joined the frigate “and sailed within four days of the” former Captain's death[5]—leaving behind him, one should add, his wife Harriet and their five children, the youngest only a few weeks old.  His vessel, the Aurora, was ordered to the Jamaica station where Charles recorded his great success “in crushing the slave trade” (O'Byrne (1861), i. 26).

Today we might wonder at Charles's order of priorities.  But there is no evidence that his wife and family felt neglected, nor that anyone criticised him for leaving his home for the sea.  For one thing, his Captain's pay was the family's only source of income, and officers without a ship had to survive on what was called half-pay, and Jane Austen shows us what that meant in Captain Harville's economy existence at Lyme Regis.

Charles was blessed with an easy-going nature, and a natural warmth and charm that continued until the very end of his life.  In 1850, by now Rear-Admiral Austen, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies and China station.  Amazing as it may seem to us, aged 71 he actually led the British forces in the Second Burmese War, with the capture of Rangoon two years later.  However, towards the end of that same year, 1852, heading an expedition up the Irrawaddy River, Charles suffered a recurrence of cholera and, at the age of 73, died in the line of duty.  His nephew, Commander George Rice, was with his uncle throughout the campaign.  In letters home, George would invariably write of “the dear old Admiral,” and the “good old Admiral”; he was “without exception the kindest-hearted and most perfectly gentlemanlike man I ever knew” (qtd.  in Hammond (1998), 329-32).  […]

His brother Francis was able to enjoy Emma comfortably at home, in the company of his wife and young family at Rose Cottage, on the outskirts of Alton.  But, at this time, the spring of 1816, Charles was in the Mediterranean, making his way slowly back to England.  He was in low spirits, having endured the worst indignity that a Captain can ever suffer, that of having had to abandon ship.  This happened when he was chasing Greek pirates off the coast of Turkey.  His ship, the Phoenix, was caught in a storm and, with a pilot on board, was thrown onto the rocks and disabled.  Charles endured an unhappy passage home to England.  We read in his diary how he was caught up in “sad & melancholy reflections”—and these were not only of the shipwreck, for he was also troubled by dreams of his young wife, Fanny, who had died only 18 months before, following the death of their fourth child, an infant barely three weeks old.  Night after night he was haunted by these dreams; to quote his own words, dreams “of my lost & ever lamented Fanny and of our poor little ones!” (qtd. in Southam (2001), 255).

Jane Austen, ever-mindful of her sailor brothers, had arranged for Charles's copy of Emma to reach him on the high seas; and it “arrived,” he wrote to her, “in time to a moment. I am delighted with her, more so I think than even with my favourite Pride & Prejudice.” Emma, he reported, he read “three times” on the passage home (MW 439).

The previous year, on learning that Charles, “Poor dear Fellow!,” had not received a single present on his birthday, Jane had joked about sending him all twelve of the early copies of Emma she had for presentation (26 November 1815).  She knew that if any one of her novels could bring Charles closer to home, it was Emma, that incomparable portrait of village England—the English scene and the English way of life.  To borrow the words of a great American writer, Herman Melville, Highbury “is not down on any map; true places never are.”[6] And in that “true place” of his sister's creation, Charles, the Captain without a ship, found his comfort and his consolation.

Brian Southam, Jane Austen's Sailor Brothers: Francis and Charles in Life and Art

Jane

From her correspondence we can see that Jane Austen was close to her family and these loving relationships must have been an important sources of inspiration for her writing.  Only one letter survives from her to Charles, written shortly before her last will and testament to Cassandra; Austen tells Charles how she is coping with a heavy disappointment falling upon the family in the midst of her terminal illness.

My dearest Charles
        Many thanks for your affectionate letter.  I was in your debt before, but I have really been too unwell the last fortnight to write anything that was not absolutely necessary.  I have been suffering from a Bilious attack, attended with a good deal of fever.—A few days ago my complaint appeared removed, but I am ashamed to say that the shock of my Uncle’s Will brought on a relapse, & I was too ill on friday &thought myself so likely to be worse that I could not but press for Cassandra’s returning with Frank after the Funeral last night, which she of course did, & either her return, or my having seen Mr Curtis, or my Disorder’s having chosen to go away, have made me better this morning. [p. 2] I live upstairs however for the present & am coddled.  I am the only one of the Legatees who have been so silly, but weak Body must excuse weak nerves.  My Mother has borne the forgetfulness of her extremely well;—her expectations for herself were never beyond the extreme of moderation, & she thinks with you that my Uncle always looked forward to surviving her.

Jane Austen, Jane Austen's Letters, No. 157, to Charles Austen, 6^th April 1817

We see inheritance quite differently, seeing each person as the owner of their property and more-or-less free to dispose of it as they wish, certainly where anyone beyond the immediate nuclear family is concerned, but in the eighteenth century inheritors were seen more as custodians of estates with responsibilities to ensure that poor, dependent sisters were properly cared for in settling an estate.  That Mr Leigh-Perrot should leave almost all of his estates to his wife was a cruel blow, especially coming hard on the heals of Henry’s bankruptcy, and compounding Austen’s failing health.

She left off her story on 18 March, but managed a letter to Fanny five days later: ‘I have had a good deal of fever at times & indifferent nights,’ Jane admitted, ‘but am considerably better now, & recovering my looks a little, which have been bad enough, black & white & every wrong colour.’  This suggests that she had developed either hyperpigmentation of the skin or vitiligo (sharply demarcated patches of depigmented skin in areas of increased pigmentation).  Increased pigmentation is a feature of Addison’s disease which results from destruction of the adrenal glands.  The adrenals are cup-like structures which sit on the kidneys.  Destruction is usually be tuberculosis or infiltration by tumour, both having spread from primary sites in other organs.  Typically the tuberculosis would have started in the lungs or bowels and may have involved the spine as well.  This would account for abdominal back pain – and the spread of tuberculosis to the adrenals would account for hyperpigmentation.  On the other had, though modern pathologists state it is less likely, cancer of the stomach or bowels is known to spread to the adrenal glands, destroying them, and again, causing Addison’s disease and hyperpigmentation.  The primary cancer would be responsible for abdominal discomfort or pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.  In any case the Addison’s disease would also cause muscle weakness and fatigue, but these may not have been specific symptoms, only general disability from any disease. […]

Her looks were being slowly destroyed.

Park Honan, Jane Austen: Her Life, pp. 391-2

It should be granted that the ‘shock of my uncle’s will’ coming on of top this kind of failure in health will impress very much on the feelings, and indeed it does bring about an immediate relapse of feverish ‘Bilious attack’, but it is telling how Austen and the family respond, looking to a more objective perspective as an antidote to the misery that accompanies the inflamed feelings attendant on a subjective perspective.  Austen notes that she is the only one who has taken it badly, that her mother is not phased, that Charles and her mother agree that her uncle believed he would survive his sister, etc., and concludes that ‘I am the only one of the Legatees who have been so silly, but weak Body must excuse weak nerves’.  She doesn’t reproach herself either seeing how her sickness is making it difficult for her to absorb the disappointment.  We don’t know this, but it likely that the Austens have been especially measured in their response in order to protect the invalid.

Of course this was by no means unique to the Austens or their time, and, in a sense, we all reflexively do this kind of thing all the time.  However, the Austen cultivation of strength of mind, seeking out the objective perspective when our feeling try and bully us into seeing things over-subjectively, was practised much more systematically in their time, and much of our modern philosophy actively undercuts this practice.

Cassandra

And finally two passages from Cassandra’s letters to their niece Fanny Knight shortly after Austen’s death illustrate how Cassandra deals with her loss.

My dearest Fanny—doubly dear to me now for her dear sake whom we have lost.

She did love you most sincerely, & never shall I forget the proofs of love you gave her during her illness in writing those kind, amusing letters at a time when I know your feelings would have dictated so different a style.  Take the only reward that I can give you in my assurance that your benevolent purpose was answer'd, you did contribute to her enjoyment.  Even your last letter afforded pleasure, I merely cut the seal & gave it to her, she opened and read it herself, afterwards she gave it to me to read & then talked to me a little & not unchearfully but there was then a languor about her which prevented her taking the same interest in anything, she had been used to do.  Since Tuesday evening, when her complaint retournd, there was a visible change, she slept more and much more [p. 2] comfortably, indeed during the last eight and forty hours she was more asleep than awake.  Her looks altered & she fell away, but I perceived no material diminuition of strength & tho’ I was then hopeless of recovery I had no suspicion of how fast my loss was approaching.  I have lost a treasure, such a Sister, such a friend as can never be surpassed,—She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow, I had not a though concealed from her, & it is as if I had lost a part of myself.  I loved her only too well, not better than she deserved, but I am conscious that my affection for her made me sometimes unjust to & negligent of others, & I can acknowledge, more than as a general principle, the justice of the hand that has struck this blow.  You know me too well to be at all afraid that I should suffer materially from my feelings, I am perfectly conscious of the extent of my irreparable loss, but I am not at all overpowered & very little indisposed, nothing but what a short [p. 3] time, with rest and change of air will remove.  I thank God that I was enabled to attend her to the last & amongst my many causes of self-reproach I have not to add any wilfull neglect of her comfort.  She felt herself to be dying about half an hour before she became tranquil & aparently [sic] unconscious.  During that half hour was her struggle, poor Soul! she said she could not tell us what she suffered, tho she complained of little fixed pain.  When I asked her if there was anything she wanted, her answer was she wanted nothing but death & some of her words were “God grant me patience, Pray for me Oh pray for me”. […]  I was able to close her eyes myself & it was a great gratification to me to render her these last services.  There was nothing convulsed or which gave the idea of pain in her look, on the contrary, but for the continual motion of the head, she gave me the idea of a beautiful statue, & even now in her coffin, there is such a sweet serene air over her countenance as is quite pleasant to contemplate.

Cassandra Austen, Jane Austen's Letters, No. CEA/1, to Fanny Knight, 28^th-29^th May 1817, pp. 343-4

I watched the little mournful procession the length of the street & when it turned from sight & I had lost her for ever—even then I was not overpowered, nor so agitated as I am now in writing of it.—Never was human being more sincerely mourned by those who attend her remains than was this creature.  May the sorrow with which she is parted from on earth be a prognostic of the joy with which she is hailed in heaven!—I continue very tolerably well, much better than anyone could have supposed possible, because I certainly have had considerable fatigue of body as well as anguish of [p. 3] mid for months back, but I really am well, & I hope I am properly grateful to the Almighty for having been so supported.  Your Grandmama too is much better than when I came home.—I did not think your Papa appeared unwell, & I understand that he seemed much more comfortable after his return from Winchester than he had done before.  I need not tell you that he was a great comfort to me—indeed I can never say enough of the kindness I have received from him & from every other friend.—I get out of doors a good deal & am able to employ myself.  Of course those employments suit me best which leave me most at leisure to think of her I have lost & I do think of her in every variety of circumstance.  In our happy hours of confidential intercourse, in the chearful family party, which she so ornamented, in her sick room, on her death bed & as (I hope) an inhabitant of Heaven.  Oh! I may one day [p. 4] be reunited with her there!—I know the time must come when my mind will be less engrossed by her idea, but I do not like to think of it.

Cassandra Austen, Jane Austen's Letters, No. CEA/3, to Fanny Knight 29^th July 1817, p. 347

Here we see Cassandra focusing on the temporal in gaining perspective on the feelings engulfing her, which she doesn’t deny (Jane and Cassandra were very close) but reflects on the impermanence of her broken heart, ‘makes sure to get out of doors a good deal’ and seek employment, while knowing that ‘the time must come when my mind will be less engrossed by her idea’.

Copyright © 2007 Chris Dornan
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