Green Park Buildings, Bath
14 February 1805
My dear Eliza,
Your kind letter was, I suspect, prompted by some intelligence from my sister. I do not doubt she has told you of my low spirits, I am sure she has asked you for some advice. Please believe me when I say that, at the moment, there is nothing to be done for me. Were there a way out of my gloom, I should find it. I am acutely conscious of being a drag on the household. My poor mother and sister have enough to concern them without tearing their hearts further. I am a poor wretch. All these potions and receipts create yet more work for Cass, and make no earthly difference. They cannot heal me. I beg that you offer no further suggestions, I wish only to be left alone.
Yrs,
J. Austen.
“Dearest?” Cassy sat on the edge of the bed in their Bath lodgings and gently shook her sister’s shoulder. “There is news. We have now heard from our brothers. Jane?” It was late morning, but the curtains were closed. “You must try and rise now, my dear. We need to talk with Mama and make all sorts of decisions. Come now. Neither of us wishes to do it without you. These matters concern us all.”
Jane stirred, turned, and looked up. Her white face appeared like a moon in the darkness. “You do it, Cass. I am sorry. I cannot. I simply cannot bear…” Her voice was reduced to a hoarse whisper. “I cannot see what there is to discuss on the subject of poverty. It brings with it no choices. If we have options, then I opt not to be poor. Anything beyond that, I trust you to decide on my behalf.”
“But the news is good! That is what I want you to hear. Please. This is our future and we must face it together. Nothing will be as bad as you fear.”
Jane turned away again. Cassy, surrendering, went back down to the parlor. Her mother, whom she had only ever known to be the most talkative, busy, and bright of women, now sat, bleak in her mourning: quiet, crumpled, defeated, alone. It was two weeks since the funeral, but still, every time she caught sight of such a sad alteration, it shocked and tugged at this fond daughter’s heart.
Cassy stood for a moment to gather herself. Truly, there was within her a well of love and tenderness for these two women, so deep as to be unfathomable. She prayed too that there was also the strength, somewhere, to lift up and carry them both through this difficult period.
“Mama,” she said quietly. “It is time now, I think, for us to discuss our business, if you do not mind?”
Mrs. Austen started out of her thoughts, blinked, and looked up at her. “Forgive me, my dear. Yes. Our business.” Her chin wobbled, and Cassy feared another outburst of grief. But then she swallowed, controlled herself, and rose to sit at the table.
Cassy drew out a chair for herself and collected the letters of the morning, when her eye was caught by the appearance of a figure in the doorway. “Jane!” she cried out in relief. “How good to see you downstairs.”
Her sister was still in nightgown and robe, with a shawl pulled round her shoulders. Her hair, which had not been brushed for days, hung about her face. Pale, thin, and wild looking, she was more ghostly apparition than human. Cassy guided her to the place nearest the fire.
“This should not take us long.” She returned to her seat, determined to be brisk. None of them needed to dwell on this subject. “Now, of course, we can no longer rely on our dear father’s income and annuity.” She spoke hurriedly. “They stopped with his death and left a little—a little—er—deficit in our finances.” Understatement was such a useful tool in these sorts of moments. “But, Mother, I am happy to say that your sons have risen to the occasion, as all we who love them could only expect. I hope you will be most touched by their proposal, which I received just this morning.”
No one else spoke. Cassy wondered if anyone really was listening.
“At first Frank was insistent on offering us one hundred pounds per annum.”
“Oh, the dear boy!” That aroused her mother. “But that is too magnificent from him, even with his new promotion. Cass, I am sorry I cannot accept. He will want to be married soon, he cannot afford to waste that on us and should not commit to that which must soon be taken away again.” She wiped her eyes. “Tell him it is enough for me to know that he offered it. Such a good, fine man! His father would be so—”
“I agree, Mama. We have all agreed. But I can now tell you that his generosity has been matched and shared among his brothers. It is now arranged that Frank, James, and Henry will each pledge fifty pounds per annum to your—and our—welfare. And from Edward, we are to receive a further one hundred a year!”
“Oh, was there ever such an excellent set of children as these!” Mrs. Austen exclaimed.
“Indeed. Altogether,” Cassy continued, feeling rather like a king in his counting house—albeit a king of somewhat limited munificence, “it means that—”
“Sorry, Cass, to interrupt you.” At some point, it seemed, Jane had come to and now sought to contribute. “But am I to understand that Frank, the hardworking sailor who has not yet known a home of his own, offered one hundred pounds and Edward Austen of Godmersham, Kent, agreed to the exact same and no more?”
It had not occurred to Cassy to make the comparison, and she would prefer not to examine it too closely. She could, though, choose to take comfort from this evidence of Jane’s acuity. Her sister was not, after all, losing her mind. There was something on which to hold. “Are they not generous?” she replied. “We must always be grateful to them for their willing and fulsome support.” She returned to her sheet of numbers and sums. “So that is a full two hundred and fifty from the men, then … To which we can add the yield of your own money, Mother, and mine … Which should leave us four hundred and fifty clear for the year!”
“To which I contribute nothing.” Jane gave a low moan. “Not a farthing. What a wretched creature I am!”
Cassy pressed on. “We shall be comfortable enough on that, will we not? Of course some changes must be made. We cannot stay here in Green Park Buildings, but then these rooms are more than we need now. I think, Mother, you are set on staying in Bath for the winters? That seems entirely sensible. We can find somewhere smaller and cheaper, and then if we are able to visit our family and friends in the summer months, that will cut down on our expenditure considerably. We need only to think of our transport, and then trifles such as—”
Jane rose and drifted, weightlessly, out of the room.
“You have done very well, my dear.” Mrs. Austen put a hand on Cassy’s. “You are a great strength to me, as your father always knew you would be. We shall manage quite handsomely, I am sure.” She moved back to the armchair by the window. “Oh, yes, we will always get by. Three women alone”—she swallowed—“require so very little.” Cassandra arranged a rug around her knees. “And soon God will remember to send for me. He cannot intend to leave me down here much longer.”
“Oh, Mama. Please.” Cassy stayed for a little to comfort one mourner, before setting off up the stairs to deal with the other.
Jane was lying, face in the pillow, and weeping. Cassy got up beside her and gathered her in.
“It pains me, my dear, to see you in this much suffering. Tell me, what can I do to help you?”
“Nothing.” Jane turned and laid her head in Cassy’s lap. “There is nothing anyone can do to help a woman who has spent thirty years on this earth yet has nothing to show for it.”
“But that is not true!” Cassy cried. “There is your ten pounds from Mr. Crosby. Forgive me. I omitted to mention it. It was cruel of me. Those ten pounds were earned, dearest, not the profit of a legacy. That is a great thing indeed.”
“They were not worthy of a mention, as I have spent them. And I am at last facing the fact: Nothing will ever come of it.” At that the tears poured down Jane’s cheeks.
Cassy stroked her hair. For the first time, she could see through to the heart of Jane’s crisis. It was not just the loss of their father, but also her writing—and perhaps some interconnection between the two.
After the debacle with Mr. Bigg-Wither, Jane had not, as Cassy had feared, slumped into regret and dismay. She had returned to Bath with no backward look but in its place a renewed, almost furious energy. She tidied up her latest manuscript, asked Henry Austen to see if he might sell it on her behalf and—to universal delight and no small pride—this he had done. A Mr. Crosby of London, whom none of them had met, had accepted Susan and promised its “immediate publication.” There was an advertisement in the press, which they had all pored over and exclaimed upon. Jane, now officially An Authoress, acquired a great confidence and began the composition of a new work, to be called The Watsons. Her mood was good, her industry estimable: The household was calm.
But it was to turn out that this Mr. Crosby was a man of bad faith. Cassy did not approve of hatred in general, and had no previous experience of the emotion, but she now hated Mr. Crosby of London with the depth of passion that only sisterly devotion could bring. For although Jane watched out for her novel’s appearance, seized every periodical and notification from the circulating library, Susan failed to appear. The family chose not to mention the fact, not wanting to shine light on the humiliation. Instead they had watched on, with sadness and sympathy, and prayed.
Almost two years had passed, and now Jane, vulnerable in her grief, sharp in her vulnerability, had at last, it seemed, accepted that it was but a false dawn. She lay in Cassy’s arms, weak and wounded as a mistreated animal: clinging reluctantly to life though in mortal pain.
“Hush now,” Cassy urged. “Many a writer has known disappointment at some stage.” In truth, she knew nothing of the fortunes of writers, but the words had a plausible ring to them. “And as you certainly sold one book, then you have every chance of selling another. Anyway, may I remind you: You do not write only for profit. You write too, surely, for your own pleasure, and that of your family. To us it is priceless. Do pick up and continue with your new one. We were all enjoying it hugely, Papa—may God rest his soul—particularly so. And you must never forget, now he has left us, how sound his judgment was on these matters and how much he valued your work.”
“You fail to understand, Cass—or you are refusing to do so. This ‘change in our circumstances’ of which you talk in such practical fashion. Can you not see? That window of time which allowed me to pursue my writing: It is closed now.”
“I do not see why—”
“With our father’s death, our mother has lost her true companion. It now falls to us to replace him.”
“Of course.”
“So we have lost the little independence we once enjoyed. We can no longer rely on being able to make visits together. You will still be invited on long stays to Godmersham, and I shall be in sole charge of Mama. You, no doubt, will take over our father’s duties to the household. I cannot permit you to bear the brunt of the housekeeping on top. Those afternoons I spent alone with my pen are gone now. I shall be paying calls with our mother, and dealing with Cook. The rest of our time will be spent as guests in other people’s homes, and there I can never work.” She drew a weak, tremulous breath.
“You have protected me for so long, Cass. You have allowed me to be alone in my own head and”—she squeezed Cassy’s hand—“I thank you for it. But we embark on a new period in our lives, and I must face up to my own responsibilities at last. I have had my years of opportunity, and I have squandered them.” Jane sighed, turned her back to Cassy, returned her face to the wall. “Allow me to grieve for that, and our father. I beg you. Strength will return to me. Please just give me time.”
THE NEXT WEEKS WERE DESPERATE. While the immediacy of death throws up many distractions, the business of mourning outlawed any at all. Cassy and her mother stayed in their lodgings, going through the motions of life but hardly living, in any sense of the word. The four walls pressed in on them. Meals were discussed and then eaten, letters received and returned. Eliza wrote regularly, with remedies and receipts for potions. Cassy climbed the stairs six times a day with beef tea, arrowroot, and herbal infusions; Jane took them in, like a well-behaved, sickly infant. She did not, though, come down.
Mrs. Austen was the first to recover her spirits. Cassy had always known her mother to be a woman of great personal strength, but still she was pleasantly surprised, and impressed, by the manner in which she accepted the challenge of widowhood and rose to it. Together they selected their next inferior lodgings and, when the time came to move, Jane seemed to take that as her signal. She left her bed and resumed her duties to both mother and sister.
“So this is our new palace,” she said, looking around the dark, small apartments. Her eye caught the patch of damp, but she did not remark on it. “Twenty-five Gay Street. Such an exquisite name.” She was still frail, pale, and thin, but in her eyes was a return of that twinkle. “It will serve not only as an address but also an instruction. I promise to be only gay while we are here.”
Cassandra’s whole being loosened. She let out her lungs and felt her shoulders descend. The depression was over. It had been misery, but now they could put it behind them. Together they had survived the worst blow that could strike. There was no reason to fear that it could come again.
Southampton
15 October 1806
Dear Eliza,
We are arrived in Southampton for the start of our new venture and with a whole different household: we three Austen ladies, your dear sister, Martha, plus Frank and his bride. One must hand it to our new straitened circumstances; they do bring with them all sorts of unexpected developments. We are certainly kept on our toes! It seems this is our future: to team up with the myriad others who share our limitations and try to make some sort of go of it. This is the first of no doubt many such combinations—what a curious concoction of a family we shall always appear to our new neighbors!—but I have every hope it will work happily enough, in time. It is certainly a great comfort to have a man about the house again—we cannot count on having that privilege very often, if ever again—and of all my brothers, Frank is the most practical and useful. The new Mrs. F. A. seems a mild, easy person and Martha is, of course, a delight and support to us all. She will always have a place with us, wherever we land. You must never worry on her account, I can promise you. Martha is one of us now.
As a place, Southampton seems pleasant enough, though our current lodgings less so. We are a little cramped, which I do not mind so much while the weather remains mild and we can get out and about, and I am now so used to domestic imperfection that I hardly notice it. My only real concern is for my sister, who is struggling again. Jane finds change very difficult—which is unfortunate, as change comes at us so often and without the courtesy of warning us of its arrival—and I fear she may be on the brink of yet another bout of melancholy. Sadly, I have witnessed enough to read all the signs. I had hoped, in my foolish way, that they were brought on by Bath and its winters, and that by quitting that place, we could leave them behind us. I begin to despair of that now …
“LOOK AT THIS!” Martha’s broad, pockmarked face was alive with pleasure and slapped pink by the cold wind. “Are we not blessed, to have this on our doorstep? To think that we can come and look at the sea when so ever we wish! We are fortunate women, on that we can agree.”
The three ladies walked arm in arm along the seafront, with Jane in the middle. No doubt, Cassy thought, they looked like happy friends, united in their afternoon excursion. In truth she and Martha were all but holding Jane up.
“Oh, Martha.” Jane sighed and sagged between them. “Your gift for contentment, your stubborn cheerfulness, your relentless good humor—I confess that they all baffle me.”
“I fear that is simply my nature.” Martha laughed, undeterred. She was the best possible partner for Cassy at these moments. “And will continue to be so, whether you comprehend it or not, Jane. You must simply find, in that cruel heart of yours, the grace to forgive it. I can be only contented and cheerful wherever I am.”
Cassy smiled fondly. Martha was blessed with far less than the Austens. Indeed, she really had nothing at all. The legacy on which she lived was so small as to be negligible. As the one spinster daughter, she had spent her good years nursing her mother, with much devotion and very little thanks. And when old Mrs. Lloyd was released from her suffering and called to a better place, this Miss Lloyd was then left in a highly precarious state. She was by then forty—a most dangerous age—and though her sisters were most welcoming when she was needed, neither had offered her a permanent home.
Had the Austen ladies not stepped forward and taken her in—and when the time came they had done so with delighted alacrity—it was uncertain what might have become of her: a back bedroom somewhere, companionship to an elderly lady. Yet she had never shown fear, not once complained.
“And to be with you two dear girls in this charming town brings most extraordinary pleasure. I marvel at it, truly. The fun we shall have!”
Despite her refusal to acknowledge it, there was, in fact, one quite glaring imperfection inherent in the Southampton arrangement. Back in the past, there had been an Austen scheme to marry Martha to Frank. She had been most strongly in favor, and refused to think of any other gentleman during her critical, marriageable years. He, though, had not been tempted. It was a cruel disappointment, to which was now added one final indignity: Now here they both were—Frank, with a new bride, and Martha, obliged to help keep their house for them. Soon enough that bride would be bearing his children, with Martha, no doubt—who was to stop her?—acting as nurse. But if she was suffering, she suffered invisibly. And to the running of the house and the care of Mrs. Austen, she found enormous enjoyment in contributing more than her fair share.
“Which way shall we take? I must not be out long. I promised your mother I would walk with her later. She wants, I believe, to watch and assess Southampton society.”
“There. From the list of your previous faults, I forgot to add selflessness,” said Jane. “Southampton society? The very thought of it makes me want to take to my bed. Those endless acquaintances that can never be friends. What is the point of it all? This is like Bath all over again.”
“Come now,” urged Cassy. “Our situation here is very different. We have Frank with us, for instance.”
“Yes,” Jane conceded. “We do have Frank, and he is a joy.” She sighed. “Though we might all enjoy each other a little more in better accommodation. There is not really room for so many of us, and the walls are so thin! I swear I heard every twist and turn of each plum and dumpling on their progress through my mother, as I lay sleepless last night.”
“You slept perfectly soundly.” Cassy was crisp. “And this place is not permanent. We shall find better soon.”
“And when summer comes around,” Martha joined in, “you will no doubt be once again in residence with some grand relation.”
“Ah, yes. And then I shall be happy once more!”
Martha laughed. “You are all Lizzy Bennet—one glimpse of ‘beautiful grounds’ and everything changes.”
“You flatter me twice, dearest.” Jane kissed Martha’s cheek. “Comparing me to Lizzy and quoting my words back at me. You know the way to a novelist’s heart.”
“I wish you would compose something new for us.”
“I cannot. Not here.” Jane sank again. “All that is behind me.”
“Then let us start First Impressions again, after dinner.”
Through all their journeys, as Jane traveled from visit to visit and from one temporary home to the next, her writing box had traveled faithfully with her, each treasured manuscript tight by her side.
“Again? You both know it by heart!”
“And yet it pleases us anew every time,” said Cassy. As they made their plans for the evening—a reading, followed perhaps by a game or two—Jane’s demeanor improved. They followed the river, chatting and laughing, and all was, for the moment, peace and harmony. But, still, Cassy could never quite stop feeling fearful. It was as if a monster were stalking their threshold. She was on permanent guard, her weight against the door, her eyes ever vigilant: desperate to keep it at bay.