For thirty years the Austens resided at Steventon; and there Jane Austen spent, for the most part, the first twenty-five years of her life, in a quiet country circle, certainly not without its cultured members, among whom was her father, a scholarly and accomplished man.
When Mr. and Mrs. Austen were still a young couple, they were entrusted with the charge of a son of Warren Hastings, but the child died in infancy; otherwise we might have had a long train of life-like Anglo-Indians in fiction, many years before they were conjured into existence by Thackeray.
The next parish to Steventon was Ashe, of which the clergyman then happened to be Dr. Russell, grand-father of Mary Russell Mitford.
The Rev. George Austen was so good-looking a man, from youth to age, as to have been called “the handsome proctor” at Oxford, and to be still noticed at Bath, when he was over seventy years of age, on account of his fine features and abundance of snow-white hair. I have already said he was a man of ability. He directed the studies of all his children, and increased his income by the practice, usual with clergymen, of taking pupils. Mrs. Austen was also reputed a clever woman, endowed with a lively imagination, in addition to much good sense.
Jane Austen’s biographer says rightly, the members of her own family were so much to her, and the rest of the world so little, that a brief sketch of her brothers and sister is necessary, to furnish a complete idea of her life. He remarks elsewhere, in alluding to the retirement in which she generally dwelt, that she had probably never been in company with anybody of greater literary ability and reputation than herself. In these observations, he touches inadvertently on what I think formed the root of the defects—to which I shall refer afterwards—in an otherwise fine character.
Jane Austen had five brothers and one sister. James, the eldest of the family, and the father of Jane’s biographer, is described as well read in English literature, writing readily and happily both in prose and verse. When yet a young man at Oxford, he originated a periodical called the “Loiterer,” and by his example may have turned Jane’s attention to authorship. He was a clergyman, and succeeded his father at Steventon. Edward Austen was early adopted by his cousin, Mr. Knight, of Godmersham Park, in Kent, and Chawton House, in Hampshire. He adopted the name of Knight, and was, like Frank Churchill in “Emma,” a good deal separated from his family in their youth. But it was to his neighbourhood, and to the support of his position as the squire of the parish, that the women of the Austen family returned at last. This brother Edward is said to have been full of amiability and fun. He seems to have borne some resemblance in his character, as well as in his circumstances, to the Frank Churchill of Jane’s story.
Henry Austen was a good talker, but he was the least successful of the brothers. While he resided in London, he appears to have been the literary authority, and the means of communication between his sister Jane and her publishers.
Francis and Charles Austen were both sailors, and both lived to become admirals. Francis possessed a firm temper and a strong sense of duty. He was distinguished by his religious principles at a time when a religious profession was rare in the service. At one station he was pointed out as “the officer who knelt in church.” Charles—specially beloved in his family for the sweet temper and affectionate disposition which resembled Jane’s—was, on one occasion, seven consecutive years absent from England on active service. He died of cholera in the course of the Burmese war, Lord Dalhousie expressing his admiration of the staunch, high spirit which, notwithstanding his age (seventy-four) and previous sufferings, had led the admiral to take his part in the trying service that closed his career.
Cassandra Austen was three years Jane’s senior. The warmest affection subsisted between the two, Jane, in her maturity and fame, continuing to look up to her elder sister, a beautiful, staid, thoughtful woman from her girlhood. When Cassandra was sent to the school of a Mrs. Latourville (probably a French émigrée), in the Forbury of Reading, Jane went with her, not because she was old enough, but because she would have been miserable without her sister, her mother observing “that if Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane would insist on sharing her fate.”
Steventon was one of those villages and parsonages which Jane Austen so often described. “It was situated among the low chalk hills and winding lanes of North Hants. The parsonage house stood in a shallow valley, surrounded by sloping meadows well sprinkled with elm-trees, at the end of a small village of cottages, each provided with a garden, scattered about prettily on either side of the road.” Within the house, though it was reckoned rather above the average of the parsonages of its day, no cornice marked the junction of wall and ceiling, while the beams which supported the upper floors projected into the rooms below in all their naked simplicity, covered only by a coat of paint or whitewash. About five years after Jane Austen’s death, her old home at Steventon was pulled down.