Jane Austen: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE; (by Henry Austen) (1816).

 

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Jane Austen: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE; 

(by Henry Austen) (1816). 

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"The very first biographical work on Jane Austen.", says a subtitle. Of course. It was written as a notice, shortly after her funeral, by one of the brothers, one who had encouraged her reading, writing, and publishing. 

It's what one would expect from someone close, loving, and mindful of her privacy, and so on. Still, it's invaluable, in a first-hand description and a tribute to someone who was known and read exponentially more over centuries after her time.

One does get first-hand information from reading thus, of course, however closely guarded her privacy, and however sweet and soft her description, well deserved as it must have been - for not even those close and loving can completely cover or falsify the person and the relationships. 

So one gets a picture of the youngest daughter of a clergyman in the small village of Steventon, growing up in a large family with five brothers - one younger to her - and a sister, who remained close to the author through her life. The picture is soft, but definite, and corresponds well enough with the impressions we get through her work and her letters. 

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"Jane Austen was born on the 16th of December, 1775, at Steventon, in the county of Hampshire. Her father was Rector of the parish upwards of forty years. There he resided, in the conscientious and unassisted discharge of his ministerial duties, until he was turned of seventy years. Then he retired with his wife, our authoress, and her sister, to Bath, for the remainder of his life, a period of about four years. ... "

The place names are familiar to those who have read her letters, of course. 

"On the death of her father she removed, with her mother and sister, for a short time, to Southampton, and finally, in 1809, to the pleasant village of Chawton, in the same county. From this place she sent into the world those novels, which by many have been placed on the same shelf as the works of a D'Arblay and an Edgeworth. Some of these novels had been the gradual performances of her previous life. For though in composition she was equally rapid and correct, yet an invincible distrust of her own judgement induced her to withhold her works from the public, till time and many perusals had satisfied her that the charm of recent composition was dissolved."

And to think most of us, familiar with her work betweenover a century to two centuries later after she was gone, have never heard of "... a D'Arblay and an Edgeworth" whom the brother values as he writes this, perhaps not personally as much, but definitely as those then very well established as esteemed autjors. Jane Austen we all have heard of, and most of us read, if at all familiar with English language and literature, and millions who are not, at that, for her work is translated in other languages too - and transcends her time just as it does her country. 

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"But the symptoms of a decay, deep and incurable, began to show themselves in the commencement of 1816. Her decline was at first deceitfully slow; and until the spring of this present year, those who knew their happiness to be involved in her existence could not endure to despair. But in the month of May, 1817, it was found advisable that she should be removed to Winchester for the benefit of constant medical aid, which none even then dared to hope would be permanently beneficial. She supported, during two months, all the varying pain, irksomeness, and tedium, attendant on decaying nature, with more than resignation, with a truly elastic cheerfulness. She retained her faculties, her memory, her fancy, her temper, and her affections, warm, clear, and unimpaired, to the last. ... She wrote whilst she could hold a pen, and with a pencil when a pen was become too laborious. The day preceding her death she composed some stanzas replete with fancy and vigour. Her last voluntary speech conveyed thanks to her medical attendant; and to the final question asked of her, purporting to know her wants, she replied, 'I want nothing but death.'

"She expired shortly after, on Friday the 18th of July, 1817, in the arms of her sister, who, as well as the relator of these events, feels too surely that they shall never look upon her like again. 

"Jane Austen was buried on the 24th of July, 1817, in the cathedral church of Winchester, which, in the whole catalogue of its mighty dead, does not contain the ashes of a brighter genius or a sincerer Christian."

While one does not question, much less doubt, her values, if one has read anything she wrote, one has to wonder why her brother felt he needed to assert those, to reassure people who might have not known her personally. 

Was it doe to the prevailing atmosphere of lingering memories of inquisition not yet a distant memory, coupled with the then still fresh new breezes of renaissance helped by the French revolution, scientific inquiry newly freed from shackles of church, and women being not burnt at stake if suspected of having a mind at all a phenomenon not yet old enough in Europe- or U.S. - to be reassuring enough? 

Henry Austen himself, cryptically for those unaware of why, says 

"In the present age it is hazardous to mention accomplishments." 

He does not elaborate - he was writing a notice of her having passed on, and not expecting posterity to read it, centuries later, unfamiliar with reasons, with the prevalent atmosphere as he wrote. He expected those that read to know and understand,  as a matter of course. 

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"If there be an opinion current in the world, that perfect placidity of temper is not reconcilable to the most lively imagination, and the keenest relish for wit, such an opinion will be rejected for ever by those who have had the happiness of knowing the authoress of the following works. Though the frailties, foibles, and follies of others could not escape her immediate detection, yet even on their vices did she never trust herself to comment with unkindness. The affectation of candour is not uncommon; but she had no affectation. Faultless herself, as nearly as human nature could be, she always sought, in the faults of others, something to excuse, to forgive or forget. Where extenuation was impossible, she had a sure refuge in silence. She never uttered either a hasty, a silly, or a severe expression. In short, her temper was as polished as her wit. Nor were her manners inferior to her temper. They were of the happiest kind. No one could be often in her company without feeling a strong desire of obtaining her friendship, and cherishing a hope of having obtained it. She was tranquil without reserve or stiffness; and communicative without intrusion or self-sufficiency. She became an authoress entirely from taste and inclination. Neither the hope of fame nor profit mixed with her early motives. Most of her works, as before observed, were composed many years previous to their publication. It was with extreme difficulty that her friends, whose partiality she suspected whilst she honoured their judgement, could prevail on her to publish her first work. Nay, so persuaded was she that its sale would not repay the expense of publication, that she actually made a reserve from her very moderate income to meet the expected loss. She could scarcely believe what she termed her great good fortune when "Sense and Sensibility" produced a clear profit of about £150. Few so gifted were so truly unpretending. She regarded the above sum as a prodigious recompense for that which had cost her nothing. Her readers, perhaps, will wonder that such a work produced so little at a time when some authors have received more guineas than they have written lines. The works of our authoress, however, may live as long as those which have burst on the world with more éclat. But the public has not been unjust; and our authoress was far from thinking it so. Most gratifying to her was the applause which from time to time reached her ears from those who were competent to discriminate. Still, in spite of such applause, so much did she shrink from notoriety, that no accumulation of fame would have induced her, had she lived, to affix her name to any productions of her pen. ... "

That last sentence is puzzling. While many women then wrote and publ8shed under pen names - male names, since women doing things other than housework, or lowly manual work, if done elsewhere for a living, was seen as abhorrent at worst, or impossible at best, despite Queens having ruled Britain successfully enough, and one in particular (Queen Elizabeth I) having eclipsed most monarchs in her success, still - this author isn't known to have published under any name other than her own! Did she? 

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Curiously, he says - 

"Her power of inventing characters seems to have been intuitive, and almost unlimited. She drew from nature; but, whatever may have been surmised to the contrary, never from individuals."

One somehow had the impression on the whole that her characters, being so diverse, so very alive, and true across time and space and cultures, were from general observations of society, until one reads her letters. Then two or three things emerge, however veiled by mist. 

One, the loving and close relationship between her best known character Elizabeth Bennet and her sister Jane, might have been the unconscious if not conscious regard  that Jane Austen paid her own sister Cassandra and the close, loving relationship they shared. 

Two, her Northanger Abbey might have been inspired from a small episode in her niece Fanny's life, although the resolution thereof was different - we read the author advise her to forget the excellent young man without independent means, whose father objected to the young woman on grounds of her pecuniary circumstances being not up to the expectations the father had of women he considered eligible for the son. 

And finally, the person if not the story, of Mansfield Park, of the loved character of Fanny Price, being probably named after the niece Jane Austen loved and was close to - their being semi-orphaned, for one, and living with close relatives, is somewhat similar, although it's the very righteous, despite her modesty, character of Fanny Price that is now, after reading the letters of Jane Austen, is explained by the love of the author for her niece. 

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August 26, 2021 - August 27, 2021. 

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