CHAPTER Eleven

‘Till this moment, I never knew myself.’

Pride and Prejudice – Chapter 36

It was astounding to discover online seemingly never-ending research, assumptions, commentary and opinions about the history of Chawton House and the Austen and Knight families. Students, academics and authors had combed the records and registers filed at the Hampshire Record Office and other source materials and written all manner of material about my ancestors and Chawton estate. It was uncomfortable looking at our history laid out for all to see and pass judgement—we had been such a private family. I leapt to Edward’s defence as I came across an article titled ‘Edward Austen Knight: A Tightwad or a Man with Heavy Responsibilities?’ which speculated about why it took until 1809 for Edward to provide accommodation for his mother and sisters, four years after their father had died. I couldn’t help but be dismayed to see Montagu’s bookplate for sale online.

At my next session with Marilyn, I told her about my intention to speak at Janefest. ‘What are you going to say?’ she asked. I hesitated for a moment; I hadn’t thought about the details of my speech. We talked through a couple of options—perhaps I could talk about cooking with Granny or about the Jane Austen AGM we used to host on the lawns at Chawton House, but every topic brought me to tears. I couldn’t even think about our lives in Chawton without becoming emotional, let alone deliver a public speech on the topic.

I was on the verge of cancelling my speaking engagement when, on 24 July 2013, the Governor of the Bank of England announced Jane Austen as the face of the next ten-pound note, most likely from 2017—the bicen­tennial of her death. I couldn’t quite believe it and checked a number of news sources, including the BBC: ‘Jane Austen certainly merits a place in the select group of historical figures to appear on our banknotes. Her novels have an enduring and universal appeal and she is recognised as one of the greatest writers in English literature,’ the Governor said. I was speechless. Jane—our Jane—had become so revered that she was going to feature on British currency. I couldn’t think of a higher honour than this and was ecstatic. Jane was finally receiving the ‘award’ she deserved.

All of a sudden, there were references to Jane Austen everywhere I went. Talks on Jane’s life and work were advertised in Melbourne, and Austen-related questions were asked on television quiz shows. The Jane Austen Tea Room had opened only twenty minutes from my house in Melbourne, and the movie Austenland was due for release. I had thought Australia would be far enough away for me not to be reminded of Chawton, but Jane’s popularity had spread to the other side of the world, and it was impossible for me to avoid.

The more I thought about Jane and my connection with her, the more I became aware of the philanthropic opportunities I could pursue, and an idea began to form in my mind. One hundred million children across the world do not receive an education and face an uncertain future. How different our lives and the literary world would have been if Jane Austen had not been able to read and write or to fulfil her dream to be an author. If so many people around the world loved Great Aunt Jane, there had to be a way to harness that collective passion to help improve literacy rates in the world’s poorest communities. It was difficult to imagine just how challenging everyday life must be for the 775 million adults around the world who are unable to read or write. Applying for a job or housing, completing a form, reading dosage instructions on medicine, using the Internet, voting at elections or writing a shopping list—all would be a challenge. It was impossible to comprehend the talent that would never be discovered and the skills that would be wasted.

I had to prepare my speech for Janefest. I wanted to give the audience an idea of what it was like to live at Chawton House, and I planned to share photographs of my family. I needed time to talk to my parents, research and read, and that would be impossible with a busy CEO role. I knew it was time to take a break from my career. I was terrified of giving up the security and status of the position I had worked so hard to achieve, but I simply had to do it. I resigned from the Blueprint Group and started my own consultancy business, The Greyfriar Group, where I could work part time and invest time in my new project in honour of Jane and my heritage.

It took some time, but I eventually became accustomed to the articles online about my family, and I started to piece together the stories I had heard as a girl into an accurate timeline, although so much of the information online was either inaccurate or conflicted. I spent hours on the phone to my parents as they patiently answered my never-ending questions and encouraged me. Country Life, the magazine I had flicked through many times in the library at Chawton, ran a feature on Jane Austen and Chawton House, which was published on my birthday at the end of August. It seemed an extraordinary coincidence.

I started to read Jane’s novels again, in the order of their publication, and I watched movies and television productions of each. I was able to look at Jane’s work through different eyes, and it was magnificent. It was a challenge to capture the brilliance of her words on screen, but I enjoyed most of the filmed adaptations. I wasn’t too concerned about the minor alterations to the stories and Jane’s dialogue. I enjoyed the films that best captured the essence and experience of the characters she had so skilfully created. I loved Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility and the 2003 BBC Television adaptation of Persuasion as well as the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, which I watched again.

I downloaded a couple of films about Jane herself. Miss Austen Regrets portrays Jane in Chawton. In one scene, Jane and Edward discuss the legal challenges to Edward’s ownership of the Chawton estate. Jane is dismayed that the security of their home is not settled. I had become used to Jane as public property, but I felt a little nauseated watching an actor play Edward Austen Knight, my fourth great-grandfather. It was hard to watch the dramatisation of my family’s challenges. In another scene, Jane watches her brothers play cricket on the family’s pitch in the middle of Chawton. It was a delight to watch, and I was reminded of the many joyful afternoons I had spent as a child, sitting on the edge of the same pitch while my father, uncle and brother played. The Austens are joined by Henry’s wife, Eliza, who laughs without restraint as they play.

By this time, I knew a lot about Jane Austen’s family. Jane was very fond of Eliza de Feuillide—her cousin and sister-in-law—and dedicated an early novella, Love and Freindship [sic], to her. Eliza had fled to England during the French Revolution in 1790, leaving her first husband, Jean-Francois Capote Feuillide, in France. She feared London had become unsafe and fled to the Austen’s in Steventon in 1792 in the bloodiest months of the gruesome period. The September Massacres of that year saw the Tuileries Palace stormed and fourteen thousand people slaughtered. Priests, political prisoners, women and children were among the victims. France abolished its monarchy and formally established a republic. The details were well reported in the English press, and Eliza was terrified for her husband. Her worst fears were realised when, in 1794, Jean-Francois was arrested for conspiracy against the republic and guillotined. To think people believed Jane led a dull and sheltered life!

Jane’s life wasn’t dull at all. She lived in a time of wars and cultural and political change. She travelled extensively in the south of England and was a frequent visitor to friends and relatives in the country and London. Jane was educated, well read, intelligent and witty. William Austen Leigh in Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters, A Family Record, published in 1913, wrote about Jane’s good humour. Jane and her niece Anna ‘could joke so heartily over their needlework and talk such nonsense together that Cassandra would beg them to stop out of mercy to her, and not keep her in such fits of laughing.’ Jane’s nieces and nephews remember her fondly as a ‘favourite aunt’—Jane was generous with her time and her talents, mentoring her nieces Fanny and Anna, both of whom were budding authors. But Jane never played with the serious responsibilities of life. In Montagu’s book, a niece of Jane is quoted as saying, ‘When she was grave, she was very grave.’

I had always known Jane was a remarkable woman. She had stuck to her guns to achieve her dream and, against all odds, had become a successful author. But, as an adult myself, the more I thought about Jane, the more impressed I became by her self-belief, resilience and approach to her ‘business’. ‘There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me,’ Jane wrote as dialogue for Elizabeth Bennet, but the words seemed to reflect Jane’s own determination and perseverance. Her strong rebuke to the Prince Regent’s librarian, Reverend Clarke, at his suggestion for the topic of her next novel was proof of her resolve: ‘No—I must keep to my own style & go on in my own Way; And though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.’

While Jane no doubt wrote for her own satisfaction and in her own style, she wanted her books to be commercially viable, to appeal to the audience of the day and to make some money. Jane weaved her contemporary commentary on the culture of the day into a romantic story to increase the chances of her books being circulated by travelling libraries that catered to the genteel women of the growing literate middle class.

Jane wrote with wit and masterfully painted the essence of her flawed characters, often in just a few carefully chosen words of dialogue. Montagu wrote:

There were depths in the quiet, self-contained nature of the author which were not easily fathomed; and the idea that she was in any way deficient in emotional consciousness (though they would not have used that phrase) would have been scouted by all her family as preposterous. . . . hers was an emotional nature, capable of deep feeling.

Jane contained her writing to characters, situations and surroundings that her audience would be familiar with but provided only the scantest of details, allowing her readers to paint their own mental images. Jane reveals only that ‘Mr. Darcy soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien’. The readers project their own secret fantasies to imagine Mr Darcy’s face, hair, eyes and clothes. Jane doesn’t ask us to picture her idea of a perfect man but to imagine our own. Perhaps this is one of the reasons many consider Mr Darcy one of the best romantic heroes of all time.

From an early age, Jane wanted to be a published author. I had read about the power of envisioning goals or ‘beginning with the end in mind’, as Stephen Covey called it. Jane had done just that and had kept going, even in the face of challenges and disappointments. It is believed that in 1795 she wrote Elinor and Marianne, an epistolary novel in the form of letters from one character to another, the first incarnation of Sense and Sensibility. Like so many ‘facts’ about Jane, this is an assumption based on the available evidence and is subject to conjecture. She began writing her second novel in 1796 and a year later had a finished work she titled ‘First Impressions’. Her first attempts to publish this work failed. Her father’s approach on her behalf to publisher Thomas Cadell with ‘First Impressions’ was ignored. In hindsight, that may have been a blessing, as the maturity and skill she brought to the revisions of her earlier manuscripts led to the Pride and Prejudice that has been cherished by readers and academics for two centuries, but Jane would not have known that at the time.

In 1803, George Austen sold the copyright of Susan, Jane’s first complete narrative work for £10 to Benjamin Crosby, who promised to publish the novel, but failed to keep his word. Six years later in desperation, Jane wrote to Mr Crosby under the pseudonym Mrs Ashley Dennis—M.A.D. for short. She implored him to publish the novel, or she would have no alternative but to seek publication elsewhere. After only two days, she received a quick response informing her there was no obligation on Mr Crosby’s part to publish the book, and action would be taken to stop sales if publication were attempted elsewhere. I could only imagine how frustrated Jane must have been.

Jane could have decided not to subject herself to such disappointment and to give up, but she didn’t. Despite her limited funds, Jane paid for Sense and Sensibility—the first of her works to be finished in Chawton and prepared for print—to be published on commission, which guaranteed that her book would be printed and available for sale. Jane would share in the profits from any sales of the book but also carry the financial risk if it didn’t sell. Jane backed herself and made a profit of £140 (the equivalent of about £5,000 today)—no doubt a welcome boost to the Austen ladies’ modest income.

For Jane’s second published novel, Pride and Prejudice, she again revised an earlier story she had drafted. But this was the last revision of her early works; she never finished ‘The Watsons’, a story about a clergyman and his daughters. Her father had died in Bath while she was writing it, and as far as we know, she never looked at the incomplete manuscript again. Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion, and the incomplete novel known as ‘Sanditon’ were all new stories conceived in Chawton.

Jane was resilient. She looked after her body, mind, heart and soul, and was ‘sharpening the saw’ long before Stephen Covey coined the phrase. Frequent walks kept Jane physically fit, and hours of daily practice at her piano cleared her mind of the issues of the day, allowing her to write creatively and productively. ‘Composition seems to me Impossible, with a head full of Joints of Mutton & doses of Rhubarb,’ Jane wrote to Cassandra just after she had completed the manuscript of Persuasion.

Jane was clearly the talent and the driving force, but it was a family affair. Paper and writing materials were expensive, and without the generosity and support of her father and brothers, Jane would not have been able to afford to pen her novels, and Mr Darcy would never have been shared with the world. Clearly, the household at Chawton Cottage was organised to allow Jane to write for hours each day. Her sister, Cassandra, and friend Martha Lloyd undoubtedly took on more than their fair share of chores. Jane read her stories to her family and sent draft manuscripts to her closest friends and family for comment—much like a modern-day focus group. Her father and her sister, Cassandra, gave her editorial advice and support, while her brother Henry, a banker, acted as her agent. I had been so determined to succeed on my own without any help from anyone and had kept friends and family at arm’s length for years. I had thought it a position of strength, but I had isolated myself. ‘Other than for Roger, I am lonely,’ I told Marilyn at my next session.

After a wet Melbourne winter, September 2013 was the warmest on record—our garden was in early bloom and attracting birds and other wildlife. I had lost another twenty-five kilograms over the winter, and after fifteen years of being restricted to plus-size outlets, I was enjoying shopping for clothes in regular shops. I felt fit and strong and was no longer ashamed of my physical appearance.

Rather than stubbornly doing it all myself, I decided this time I would share my plans with family and friends and ask for help. A few years earlier, a colleague had introduced me to Amanda, who also worked in marketing. We were the same age, both married without children, and we shared a passion for music. I still played my guitar almost every day, and Amanda was the lead singer with a local covers band. I enjoyed her company very much. Amanda was my closest friend in Australia, but I had never shared my heritage or my private thoughts with her. We arranged to meet for a coffee. I was nervous, and to help me get through the conversation, I had prepared a PowerPoint presentation to share my connection to Jane Austen, our family home of Chawton and my plans to start a charity to improve literacy rates around the world. I clicked on the first slide and began to tell Amanda my story as she stirred her coffee. ‘What!’ Amanda exclaimed and dropped her spoon on the table.

‘I am Jane Austen’s fifth great-niece, and I grew up in Chawton, where Jane lived and wrote her books,’ I repeated.

‘I love Jane Austen. Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked, clearly excited but a little bewildered that I had kept it secret. I explained as best I could and continued my presentation. As I talked about the idea of a charity to raise money for literacy in Jane’s honour, our excitement grew. We considered the size and scale of Jane’s audience, the purpose of the charity and the way in which it might operate.

‘Do you want to help me?’ I asked, but before I could finish Amanda had said ‘yes’ without hesitation or qualification.

We sat and talked for hours about what we would need to do: register as a not for profit, define the purpose and objectives of the organisation, appoint a board of directors, develop a set-up plan, connect with literacy organisations, establish infrastructure. The list went on and on. I would have to face my fears and immerse myself in the Austen community. I knew it would be difficult at times and no doubt emotional, but it was the only way.

We made some decisions at that first coffee meeting. First, the operating costs of the organisation would need to be kept to a minimum. Perhaps the day would come when the charity was big enough to require paid staff to manage it, but that was a long way off. We would build the organisation with volunteers, including voluntary board members. I had successfully run a company, held charity board positions and developed a strong professional network, but I had no experience of the inner workings of a charity or a literacy organisation. I had much to learn and do and a limited amount of time each week to do it. Second, like Jane, we would take our time, and do it to the best of our abilities.

I knew it would be hard work, would take years and would divert me from my career. I would make mistakes, and no doubt be criticised, but there was no going back. I had a chance to improve literacy rates and couldn’t walk away from it, despite the risks. I was excited to be able to honour Great Aunt Jane’s success and legacy. Jane Austen had brought pleasure to millions, and perhaps together we could raise millions to teach people to read. But there was a lot to consider, and so I pondered the idea for a couple of months to be sure.

In 2013, my parents were due to join Roger and me in Melbourne for Christmas, but they decided to arrive early, at the end of November, to attend Janefest. The day arrived. I had prepared my speech and a presentation of family photographs of Chawton House and estate, my family and ancestors, and private and public events held at Chawton. I spoke candidly about the joys and privilege of growing up immersed in four hundred years of my family heritage and of the circumstances under which our family home—Chawton House—had come to an end.

From the moment I started speaking, the audience listened to every word—I could have heard a pin drop. I choked with emotion when I said how much I missed Chawton, but it was a relief to share these pent-up feelings publicly. For the first time, I talked honestly about how I felt and a weight lifted from my shoulders. I regained my composure and ended the speech with my intention to establish a literacy charity in honour of Jane Austen. The enthusiastic reaction I received to my story and vision of a charity gave me all the encouragement I needed to turn my vision into reality.

I had given the first-ever public talk about our family and our private lives at Chawton House, and I was keen to know what my parents thought. They were both very positive. Later that evening while I cleared the kitchen after dinner, my father approached me in private. ‘I want to talk about something you said in your speech today,’ he said and proceeded to tell me how he had felt when we had left Chawton.

I was surprised. In many ways, my father had been relieved—the responsibility of maintaining the house on a shoestring budget for his elderly parents had been immense. He had worked in the garden, mowed lawns, patched the leaky roof, made repairs on all areas of the house, prepared for events and helped Granny. His sleep had often been disturbed by the same nightmare: the house was flooding from the top floor down, and he had to wade through the water to pull out a plug and drain the house. While he had enjoyed many aspects of living at Chawton, he had been happier in the years since. It was a revelation. I had assumed my entire family felt the same as I did. It was a huge comfort to know that my father had not been crushed by it.

I talked endlessly to my parents about Chawton and our family history after that. We reminisced about Granny’s tea room, the vegetable garden, the Fete and Horticultural Show, the Summer Ball, and family celebrations held in the Great Hall. My father even lit a Snap-Dragon on Christmas Eve. The familiar smell transported me back to the most joyful night of the year at Chawton House and happy memories of my ancestors and extended family.

My parents went home in the new year, and I set up a board for the charity. It would be a steep learning curve, and I reached out to professional friends and colleagues with the experience to help, including Mercia, an experienced lawyer, and the president of the Jane Austen Society of Melbourne. In February 2014, we gathered around my dining room table and voted unanimously to register the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation as a not-for-profit organisation.

Mercia completed the paperwork and filed the registration, and we held our first board meeting in April 2014. Preliminary research had revealed the huge number of experienced and reputable charities that deliver literacy programmes to impoverished communities around the world, and all needed reading and writing materials to support their teaching programmes. We unanimously agreed that one of the goals of the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation (or JALF as we called it for short) would be to raise funds to buy books and literacy kits in support of these existing efforts. This would be an effective use of our resources and an efficient way to help improve literacy rates.

There was a lot to do, but we were not discouraged. Amanda and I spoke almost daily. We had to create everything from scratch, and with our other work commitments, progress was steady but slow. But it would not matter how long it took us to build the foundation and engage the global Austen community; Jane’s fandom continued to grow day by day and didn’t give any indication of being a passing fad.

I contacted some local literacy charities and was very impressed with the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, who, among other things, develop, implement and sustain innovative literacy programmes for Indigenous Australians. I met with the CEO of UNICEF Australia, Norman Gillespie, who was very encouraging. I joined the modern world of social media and opened my first Facebook account. I couldn’t believe what I found—hundreds of profiles and pages dedicated to Jane Austen and her books, characters, adaptations and fan clubs, mostly run by fans as a hobby and out of love for Jane and her stories. One of my favourites was ‘Elizabeth Darcy’, a beautifully written and illustrated story of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy after Pride and Prejudice. I followed a few pages and joined some groups, and I was fascinated by the depth and breadth of conversation about Jane and her novels, and by the modern-day fandom.

News of the foundation spread. I was invited to attend the World Literacy Summit at the University of Oxford in April 2014 to officially announce my intention to build a charitable foundation to provide literacy support and resources for communities in crisis. It would be an extraordinary opportunity to speak about the foundation at a global event and one I could not miss, even at short notice. It was also time for me to visit Chawton to see the house through fresh eyes, with my new perspective. I hadn’t returned to England since I had left for Australia six years earlier and may have delayed it for another few years had it not been for the summit.

Roger stayed at home to look after our animals while I was away. I booked the cheapest flight I could find—it had been a year since I gave up my corporate salary, and our lifestyle had changed dramatically, but Roger never complained. ‘My wife left me for Jane Austen,’ he would joke, but he knew how important it was for me, and he appreciated the opportunity it afforded to raise money for literacy. He supported and accommodated significant changes in our lifestyle and stood by me every step of the way.

I arrived in England for a whirlwind week. On the first afternoon, Paul and I went to Chawton and walked through the village to the church to visit Granny and Bapops in the churchyard. As we neared the church, I stopped in my tracks. There, on the left side of the driveway, opposite the entrance to the church, stood the newly restored gamekeeper’s hut relocated from the woods, and for a brief moment I was terrified—I had spent a childhood avoiding the hut and the witch who my cousins said lived in it.

It was the first time I had seen the gravestone Granny and Bapops shared. The serenity of the estate and the sounds of the birds, different from those I had become accustomed to in Melbourne, brought back childhood memories of playing in the churchyard and riding my aunt’s horses in the four-acre paddock in front of the church. Paul and I walked back to The Greyfriar—the pub in the middle of the village—and talked for hours. We reminisced about the fun we had in the stables, cellars and attic rooms, but beneath the laughter was an unspoken sadness we both understood and shared.

The next day, I returned to Chawton with Martin, who had had his eighteenth birthday party in the Great Hall thirty years earlier. We had remained friends, and he had offered to support me with the foundation while I was in England. I had arranged for us to meet with a director at Chawton House. As we walked up the driveway, I could feel my heart pounding. We were met at the front door and led straight up the main staircase to the Cross Room at the very top of the house, above Granny’s bedroom, to talk. I enjoyed the conversation, but we were sitting in Cousin Robin’s bedroom. My mind was racing, and I was shaking from head to toe—I don’t know whether it showed. After we had discussed the foundation and the house for an hour or so, Keith asked would I like to look around. Like Anne Elliot, on her visit to the Crofts in Kellynch Hall, I declined the offer and left the house. Jane wrote of Anne:

However sorry and ashamed for the necessity of the removal, she could not but in conscience feel that they were gone who deserved not to stay, and that Kellynch Hall had passed into better hands than its owners. These convictions must unquestionably have their own pain, and severe was its kind.

As we passed the library at the bottom of the stairs, I pictured Granny and Bapops sitting side by side in their armchairs. I didn’t want to open the door and look inside.

Once outside, Martin and I walked to the top of the neatly manicured lawns. The Bottles on the library terrace had been shaped into cylinders, and the large copper beech tree had gone. The brick and flint work of the library terrace and upper-terrace walk had been restored, and the gravel paths were revealed once more. The rose garden was fully stocked and the hedges clipped. We listened to the birds and walked in silence for quite some time until we reached the walled garden.

We pushed open the ornate iron gates and stepped inside. Vegetable plots had been replaced by large beds of flowers neatly edged with low-box hedges. Many of the fruit trees were still in place, although I couldn’t tell whether they were the same trees or had been replanted. The greenhouses had been removed from the north-eastern wall, but otherwise, it looked very familiar. I could vividly remember walking from the house to the walled garden in the summer to help my father plant potatoes or pick runner beans and running away from my father’s geese, all the while trying not to be spiked by rose bushes.

Chawton House was the most difficult place for me to be, but I knew I had to let go of the sorrow. I was about to throw myself into the world of Jane Austen, and I needed to feel comfortable when talking about Chawton. I had seen enough that day, but I vowed to return on my next visit to England and spend as much time at the house as I could.

On Wednesday, 16 April, in the Holywell Music Room within the grounds of Wadham College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, I shared some memories and photographs of growing up in Chawton with Great Aunt Jane and announced my intention to establish the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation in her honour. My family were in the audience, and Amanda watched from Melbourne via video link. The event was a great success and attracted print, television and radio media. I was delighted with the enthusiasm and messages of support I received.

A few days later, I received a call from the organisers of the summit. Simon Langton, director of the BBC Television 1995 production of Pride and Prejudice, had made contact and asked them to pass on a message and his contact details. Simon had read about the foundation in The Telegraph and wanted to offer his help and support. I had to pinch myself to check that it wasn’t a dream. Simon had directed the most popular Austen production of all time, and he wanted to help me raise money for literacy. I was thrilled.