And so it went, for the next two years. The Big Clock struck twenty-five, then twenty-six, was rounding on twenty-seven. Jane Austen was at the outer limit, as even she saw it, of marriageability. When she pulled up in a borrowed coach at Manydown that day, all she had in the way of money was an allowance from her parents—worth about $1,000 per year—but not an income.
Nor was there any way—outside of marriage—for her, or any respectable woman of the gentry class with living male relatives, to get an income. The two options open to gentlewomen of that day were teaching or becoming a governess, but both offered lives bleak and downtrodden, a “sacrifice,” as Jane Austen would call it in Emma, “a retirement from all the pleasures of life, of rational intercourse, equal society, peace and hope, to penance and mortification for ever.”
Less careers than hard judgments, on one’s family as well, exposed as incapable of supporting an unmarried sister, and so naturally shunned by anyone with elsewhere to turn. Both governesses and teachers were subject to offhand scorn by those they served—“served” being the operative word. They were servants—smart servants, fallen servants, poor gentlewomen servants who had had the worst luck of all, true, but servants, and if they were so smart, why weren’t they rich or at least married? Was it the length of the nose, or perhaps the pallor of the cheeks, “a bit too full,” their vapid, silk-clad, bejeweled employers could almost be seen wondering.
Not that they ever asked. Nary a question beyond the references, which these impoverished gentlewomen always had, stellar references, from the vicar, from the bishop, even, because their grandfather had once been rich and had endowed the parish—but that was history, and who cared for history? Outside the schoolroom, that is, from where these ever thinner, ever paler, always shabbier—didn’t they care?—shades rarely strayed, except for the obligatory dinners, Christmas, the family birthdays, when they shook out the one good dress—again?—and took their seat at the far end of the table.
“Dear old Sharpe” or “Fairfax” or “Eyre,” but not Austen, not yet, her father was still alive, and though by no means rich, he could still support her on his retirement stipend. He loved her, respected her even, enjoyed her stories, and would keep her from the governess trade.
But he was her father, not her husband, and he was old. And he had moved her against her will out of what she had thought of till then as her home—but it turned out that it wasn’t her home. It was his home, and when he decided to leave, they left. So though it could have been worse for her, much worse, though she was neither a teacher in a school nor a governess to the stupid rich, she was still a single woman with no way to make any money beyond hoping for it, as she and Cassandra often did in their letters—“I do not know where we are to get our Legacy—but we will keep a sharp look-out”—and with no home at all at this point.
. . .
What she had, though, were her friends from Hampshire. There were five of them who mattered to her, five women whom she probably couldn’t even remember having met, since she had known them all her life. This was what friendship was to Jane Austen—deep and lifelong, friendship with women with links not just to her but to her entire family. And three of the five lived at Manydown.
They were the Bigg sisters, Catherine, Alethea, and a widowed sister, Elizabeth, who had invited the Austen sisters to spend a few nice long leisurely weeks with them, as people did then. The Bigg house, Manydown, was a lovely old place with plenty of room for all, and plenty of people employed there to make it all easy, set in a lovely old park, in Hampshire, Jane Austen’s favorite part of England, a short ride from what she still called “home.” It was winter, and she arrived hoping for “a hard black frost,” which would make the crisp fast walks she loved possible, with no mud, no puddles, and then, after that, true comfort. “To sit in idleness over a good fire in a well-proportioned room is a luxurious sensation,” she’d written earlier, and to sit thus, in that kind of comfort, and with friends, real friends, must have seemed to her, after Bath, like she’d fought her way in from the blizzard.
And then there would be the dinners, delightful, small, with no low end of the table, stretching into long pleasant evenings, since there was, unlike at Bath, nowhere to rush off to. The moment itself could be the thing. And the Biggs knew her, they loved her, there was no judging, only deepening conversation, among the women and also their father, Lovelace Bigg, a widower, who lived there with them, and whom she liked so much. He was jolly, one of those Hampshire dog-and-horse men, that cozy old type she’d come to miss in Bath. An old-time lord of the manor, devoted to his place and his people—family, staff, and tenants—with “a character so respectable and worthy,” as Jane Austen had once written to her sister, leading a life so rooted, so free of the self, so big, in stark contrast to the petty pursuits of health and pleasure that had emptied her hours since her family had left home.
A “life so useful,” she called it, the kind of life she herself aspired to, considered worthiest, worth living. A life with both substance and leisure—which for her had meant, when she still lived at home at Steventon, active help for the poor with both money and food and warm handmade clothing, and time in the afternoon to sit and write. Both of which had been taken from her by the uprooting to Bath. Both of which flooded over her once again as she arrived at Manydown.
“We spend our time here quietly as usual,” she wrote. “One long morning visit is what generally occurs.” She herself was described by one of the sisters, Alethea, as “pleasant, cheerful, interested in everything about her.” Happy, that is. Even if just on reprieve, just for the moment. Even if Manydown was just a port in the storm that was now her life.
They made seven at dinner, an agreeable number, enough but not too many. Still, with seven, someone always had something new to bring to the table—an observation from a walk, some news from town, and when that failed, Napoleon, and Pitt, and the terrible Mr. Fox. There was just the right degree of disagreement on the small things to keep it all lively, although the seventh member, the younger brother, Harris, sat mostly in silence, because of his stutter—and his father. His stutter, his father—and where one began and the other left off, no one knew, but in those days, overbearing fathers and stuttering sons were taken more in stride. Just one of the permutations of extended families living together in elaborate, multigenerational houses.
Jane Austen certainly didn’t think anything of it, either way. She’d known Harris for most of his life—had even taught him to dance, years ago, when she’d come to a ball at Manydown, unforgettable, since they’d illuminated the greenhouses. This at a time when light in the night still took one’s breath away—it was so rare and expensive.
That was in 1796, when Jane Austen was twenty, and caught in that brief whirl with her Irish friend—you could say boyfriend—Tom Lefroy. When life itself had seemed a merry dance to her, and one she danced well. And since she danced so well, with grace and real lightness, never tiring or walking through the long numbers, none of the heaviness you saw in some of the other girls, the richer girls, should she have denied herself all expectations from the start? Was she so wrong to have thought that there might have come something for her from it all?
Nearly seven years ago. He, Harris, had been little over fourteen then, and terribly shy, since he wasn’t sent to school, but educated at home by tutors, to spare him the teasing, what with the stutter. Still, they were old friends, she and he, or at least she was his sisters’ old friend, so no one for the backward boy to worry about, no one to judge or be judged by. And she’d taught him both the spirited country dances and the formal minuet, so at least he could join in with the others. Most often with his sisters as partners, or sometimes Jane herself. She would eventually write the scene, by the way, in her unfinished “The Watsons,” except that the little boy there was adorable, charming.
But as for Harris, though he had little “beside his height” to recommend him, as one of her nieces would write, he was twenty-one in 1802, and since his older brother had died, heir to Manydown. He had even taken his rightful place, despite the stutter, at Oxford, though had not finished his degree.
But the only ones who needed degrees in those days were the clergy, and Harris wasn’t going to be a clergyman, he was going to hire a clergyman, like Jane Austen’s father or brother. Give the man a good living, as a proper lord of the manor would do. Which was to be Harris’s lot, his luck, in life. To be lord of the stately splendid Manydown when his father died, and live as pleasant a life as could be had in England, and maybe the world, in those days.
And to live it in as pleasant a place as could be imagined. Manydown was a stone mansion, built around a courtyard, not just grand but also graced with history. The family had held the house for more than a hundred years before the first Queen Elizabeth, with one wing dating from Tudor times. They are mentioned in the Domesday Book, and an ancestor had bought a piece of their land from Henry Wriothesley, Shakespeare’s patron.
And the house had been modernized, too, with its famous ironwork staircase and grand reception room on the first floor. Jane Austen loved the place, loved the combination of old and new, real grandeur, not opulence but beauty, and she loved the park surrounding it as well, the two hundred acres of ancient oaks and the famous cedar—with another 1,500 acres of farmland beyond, all of which made for wonderful walks and views. She had spent many a day and night there, first as a girl after the dances at nearby Basingstoke, and now as the unmarried—was it too soon to say spinster?—friend of Harris Bigg-Wither’s unmarried sisters.
She might have written an account of the night—we don’t know. All the letters she wrote from around that time were burned by her sister, Cassandra. But Cassandra was there, and told their nieces, afterward, how it had all played out.
It seems that Harris’s sisters knew what he was intending, and they let Cassandra in on the plot, and together the four women contrived to leave Jane Austen alone with the young man. This was on their second night there, just before supper. Somewhere in that grand vast house, Harris Bigg-Wither cornered Jane Austen and asked her to marry him.
She was taken completely by surprise. She saw her life, in that moment, flip from black to white. Everything became, all at once, its opposite. She was poor; she would be rich. She was last at the table; she would be first. She had no home; she would have the grandest home of all. Her carriage would be the best one. She would never have to think of that again.
Never have to think about any of it—she would no longer be one of “the girls.” No more “poor Jane.” That would be over, just like that. All in one stroke—lucky Jane, happy Jane, perhaps even eventually Lady Jane. She would return to Hampshire—they would all return to Hampshire. Thanks to dear happy married Jane, her sister, her mother and father, even, would have a home, and what a home. A home with their good friends, for they would all continue to live together. Harris’s sisters, his charming father, Jane and Cassandra, her parents when they were not in Bath—all of them. They would be her guests, for she would be the mistress of the house.
And the estate—mistress, too, that meant, to all the workers, the laborers. And a charitable one, as she’d already proved herself, when it was a hardship. She always reserved between 5 and 10 percent of her own meager yearly allowance for the poor. Imagine what she could do with real money, how beloved she would be, what an object of gratitude. And not just from the poor—from her brothers as well, for their careers in the navy were always needing a connection to move them up the ladder. Now, rather than needing a hand, she would be able to extend one.
And she would have children of her own too, not just nieces and nephews. She would not just marry, but make a brilliant match. Unheard-of, at her age, and in her situation—a woman of no money and no consequence, well on her way to being an old maid, already treated like an old maid, raising no eyes when she entered a room, causing not a ripple in the social current, unnoticed, unconsulted, unmarried. “Poor Jane.”
And now, here was a chance that even a beautiful young girl in her social position could scarcely dream of. Besides, she knew Harris, he didn’t frighten her, he was younger, the younger brother of her good friends. There would be no dreadful family to confront, none of the petty jealousies and wranglings she would chronicle so minutely in her books.
Did his sisters know he was going to ask her? she asked him. Did her sister?
Yes, he told her. Knew and supported. All of them.
Then yes, she said.
That evening passed as in a dream. There were the whoops, the shouts, the congratulations to the happy couple! Tears of joy, genuine joy, from the sisters, hers and his. His father brought out a French claret, a rare luxury in those days of homemade orange wine and mead, and they toasted the two, Jane and Harris. Long may they live. Happy forever.
She floated through it all. She was amazed, stunned, could hardly believe any of it. She would be married—she! Herself, Jane Austen, married! Just as she’d thought when she was young—not to Jack Smith of “God knows where” but to Harris Bigg-Wither of Manydown. It was hard almost to fathom, so sudden, so unexpected. So radical a change of circumstances, well beyond even the happy endings that were starting to come from her pen. For all the good that pen sought to do, it had never yet attempted such an out-of-the-blue, high-and-wild a leap as this one.
She floated up to bed. Her sister kissed her good night. They had shared a room all their lives, but here they had separate bedrooms. Maybe if Cassandra had slept with her that night, rubbed her temples, seen her to sleep—but she didn’t. All she did was kiss her and tell her how happy she was, how happy they all were, and then continue down the hall to her own room.
And Jane Austen closed the door.
Oh, God, if she’d only had someone in the room, to brush away the demons that must have come at her from every side. She knew that what Cassandra had said was true, that she was happy, that they were all happy. And how happy would be those who didn’t yet know, her own family, the ones who worried about her and, worse, faced the prospect of keeping her for the rest of her life. Here was her way out of that dreadful position, and more than that—her chance to turn the trick back on them, to become, like magic, at the stroke of twelve, their benefactor.
Eventually, she would put the very words that must have crossed her own family’s minds in the mouth of Sir Thomas in Mansfield Park, to the unhappy Fanny Price, as she turns down a rich suitor: “The advantage or disadvantage of your family, your parents, your brothers and sisters never seems to have held a moment’s share in your thoughts . . . throwing away such an opportunity to be settled in life, eligibly, honourably, nobly settled as will, probably, never occur to you again.”
She knew that. It would never occur to her again. As her niece Caroline would write many years later, “All worldly advantages would have been to her, and she was of an age to know this quite well. My aunts had very small fortunes, and on their father’s death, they and their mother would be, they were aware, but poorly off. I believe most young women so circumstanced would have gone on trusting to love after marriage.”
As did her own sweet Marianne, in Sense and Sensibility. Jane Austen married her off to Colonel Brandon, and we are happy about it—what other options were there for her? After the fiasco with Willoughby?
None, nor were there for Jane Austen, but who was there right then to marry her off to Harris Bigg-Wither? No one.
And in the still of that dark night, she found she couldn’t do it. Despite everything—just could not. In the dark of night, it was suddenly not them all but her, and not just her, but her and Harris, a big young man whom she did not love. Barely liked. Might have grown to love “after marriage,” but until then? What would she do in his bed? That became the toughest angel of all, in her wrestle that night: What would Jane Austen, the one who had sat alone in a room once, happy with her pen in hand, do in that young man’s bed?
She was dressed and packed and downstairs waiting by the door in the morning when the first of the household arose. She excused herself and begged forgiveness. She was in tears. She had to renege, take back her word, she could not marry Harris. She begged the sisters to bring round the carriage and take her off, right away, to her brother who lived closest, in her old house, in Steventon.
The household was shocked, offended. Her sister hastily gathered her things, and the two Austen women left in disgrace. The Bigg sisters accompanied them in the carriage. Her brother and his wife were likewise shocked to see them pull up, so soon after leaving, shocked to see the four women embracing each other in tears, and then turning away from each other. Shocked further when they heard the reason. Her brother’s wife, Mary, felt Jane had made an incomprehensible mistake, the mistake of her life. She could not refrain from voicing this.
And what answer was there for Jane Austen to give her, to give them all? None, no answer, since there wasn’t one, not yet. For the one and only time in her life, she insisted that her brother take her in his carriage, immediately, back to Bath. It was bad timing for him—a Saturday, he had his sermon to write, and then preach on Sunday. He would have to somehow wrangle a substitute at very short notice. If she could wait till Monday—
But she wouldn’t wait till Monday. For the only time on record, Jane Austen would not wait. She begged her brother to take her away from there, that day, right then. To his credit, he did.