By April Jane Austen was seriously ill, and a young niece who had walked over with an elder sister to inquire for her aunt, received the impression of her as quite like an invalid. She was in her dressing-gown, sitting in an arm-chair, though she could get up and kindly greet the visitors. She was very pale, her voice was weak and low, and there was about her a general appearance of debility and suffering. She was not equal to the exertion of talking, and the visit of the nieces to the sick room was a short one, their other aunt, Cassandra, soon taking them away.
In the following month, May, Jane Austen was induced to go to Winchester, to be near a skilful doctor, who spoke encouragingly to his patient, but who from the first entertained little expectation of a permanent cure. She was accompanied by her life-long friend and sister Cassandra. They could leave their aged mother behind them with the friend and family connection who made one of the household at Chawton Cottage. Besides, Mrs. Austen was near several of her children and grandchildren. In Winchester, where the sisters had lodgings in the corner house in College Street, at the entrance to Commoners, the Austens had old and valued friends among the residents in the Close. Still Jane wrote hopefully about herself to the nephew to whom she appears to have been so much attached. There was no better way of thanking him for his affectionate concern for her during her illness than by telling him herself, as soon as possible, that she continued to get better. She seems to have been aware of the change in her penmanship, which struck him also, and hastened to observe gaily that she would not boast of her handwriting: neither that nor her face had yet recovered their proper beauty, but in other respects she gained strength very fast. She was then out of bed from nine in the morning until ten at night—upon the sofa, it was true, but she ate her meals with Aunt Cassandra in a rational way, and could employ herself and walk from one room to another. Mr. Lyford (the surgeon) said he would cure her, and if he failed, she would draw up a memorial to the Dean and Chapter, and had no doubt of redress from that pious, learned, and disinterested body. The sisters’ lodgings were very comfortable. They had a neat little drawing-room with a bow window, overlooking Dr. Gabell’s garden. Thanks to the kindness of her correspondent’s father and mother in sending her their carriage, her journey to Winchester on Saturday had been performed with very little fatigue, and had it been a fine day, she thought she would have felt none; but it had distressed her much to see Uncle Henry and William Knight, who had kindly attended them on horseback, riding in the rain almost the whole way.
The cheerful letter ends solemnly: “God bless you, my dear E——. If ever you are ill, may you be as tenderly nursed as I have been. May the same blessed alleviations of anxious sympathising friends be yours; and may you possess, as I dare say you will, the greatest blessing of all, in the consciousness of not being unworthy of their love. I could not feel this. Your very affectionate aunt, J. A.”
For amidst the sweet and jubilant sights and sounds of an English May and June in the old grey cathedral town, the great English novelist was fast passing away. Jane Austen had always been a sweet-tempered, contented woman, and all that was best and noblest in her nature and her faith came out in the patience, humility, and thankfulness with which she met her last enemy. “I will only say farther,” are her loving words, in one more letter, that “my dearest sister, my tender, watchful, indefatigable nurse, has not been made ill by her exertions. As to what I owe her, and the anxious affection of all my beloved family on this occasion, I can only cry over it, and pray God to bless them more and more.”
The sister who had lived together with Jane in their home—who had been with her waking and sleeping for forty-two years—who had served the little girl as a model—who had held the office of the young author’s sole confidante beforehand, as to her characters and plots—who had rejoiced and suffered with her, stood by and soothed Jane Austen’s death-bed; so did a sister-in-law, to whom the dying woman said, almost with her last breath, “You have always been a kind sister to me, Mary.”
Two of her brothers, whom she had so cherished in her faithful affection, both clergymen living near, were frequently with her, administering the consolations and services of their church, as well as testifying their constant regard. She was fully acquainted with her danger, though she continued hopeful. She had much to bind her to life. “We may well believe,” Mr. Austen Leigh writes, “that she would gladly have lived longer; but she was enabled, without dismay or complaint, to prepare for death. She was a humble, believing Christian.” And she was strengthened to rule her spirit to the last. Her sweetness of temper never failed. She was always considerate of, and grateful to, those who attended on her. At times, when she felt a little better, the ruling spirit of playfulness revived, and she amused her companions even in their sadness. She sank rapidly in the end. On being asked whether there was anything she wanted, her reply was, “Nothing but death.” These were her parting words. In quietness and peace, records Jane Austen’s nephew, she breathed her last, on the morning of July 18th, 1817, at the age of forty-two years. She was buried on the 24th of July, in Winchester Cathedral, near the centre of the north aisle, opposite the tomb of William of Wykeham. A slab of black marble marks the place.[11]
The words with which Mr. Austen Leigh concludes the memoir are full of simple pathos. “Her own family only attended the funeral. Her sister returned to her desolated home, there to devote herself to the care of her aged mother, and to live much on the memory of her lost sister, till called many years later to rejoin her. Her brothers went back sorrowing to their several homes. They were very fond and very proud of her. They were attached to her by her talents, her virtues, and her engaging manners; and each loved afterwards to fancy a resemblance in some niece or daughter of his own to the dear sister Jane, whose perfect equal they yet never expected to see.”
Surely to be thus prized and mourned by her nearest and dearest was beautiful and good—in one sense best—while it need not have interfered with wider interests and influences; and, doubtless, to be so cherished was the meet reward of Jane Austen’s faithful performance of the home duties from which no literary career, however arduous and distinguished, absolved her, and of her unswerving loyalty to the domestic affections which form the inner citadel of all true natures. For charity or love must always begin at home, and reign paramount there, wherever it may end, though the extremities of the earth may own its sway.
Jane Austen’s mother survived her ten years, dying at the great age of eighty-eight. Cassandra Austen lived nearly twenty years after her mother’s death, nearly thirty years after the death of Jane, dying at the age of seventy. On the death of Cassandra Austen, Chawton Cottage was suffered to fall far down in the social scale of houses: it was divided into tenements for labourers. The rooms continued to be so used while the walls were still standing, nine or ten years ago.