Out & About June 2017

as an act of good will, read Pride and Prejudice to an elderly blind neighbour, Miss Mary Benn, who had no idea that author and narrator were one and the same. Jane was very young when she died. Can you tell us what happened? GH: She died in Winchester, which is where Cassandra had taken her to be treated by a celebrated doctor. It is believed that she probably had Addison’s Disease, which affects the kidneys. She died in her sister’s arms, at just 41 years of age, on July 18, 1817. The rest of her family lived long lives; two brothers continued well into their 90s. She was laid to rest in Winchester Cathedral. In the summer of 1816, the year before Jane died, the sisters went to Cheltenham to take the waters, and, as they always did en route to Bath or Cheltenham, they stopped in Kintbury to visit the Fowles. One of the daughters of the house, Mary-Jane, remembers that Jane wandered around looking at everything in a very particular way, as if she knew that she would not see these treasured things again. That was the last time she was there. However, Cassandra kept visiting her dear

historians now call “spinster clusters” – little gangs of companions, cousins, sisters and best friends. With their meagre resources pooled together they would have been able to buy a house and live a reasonable life. Because Cassandra didn’t marry, Jane didn’t have to. They had a rich brother who eventually gave them a cottage in Chawton, Hampshire. Jane and Cassandra lived there with Jane’s best friend, Martha Lloyd (the sister of Eliza Fowle, the vicar’s wife in Kintbury) and Jane’s mother, who sat on the sofa, old and toothless. By all accounts, they lived together in complete happiness. Cassandra and Martha ran the house. It was Jane’s job to make breakfast, after which she sat at her little table and wrote. She was at Chawton from 1808 until 1817, when she died, and in that time she had five novels published. Jane Austen’s fame was posthumous. Can you explain why? GH: Actually, Jane Austen’s novels were growing in popularity while she was still alive. Her books were quite famous, even reviewed by the celebrated author Sir Walter Scott. Pride and Prejudice and Emma were especially well-known.

Jane Austen

The reason that she herself was not widely known is that she published her books anonymously, simply ‘By a lady’. The fly in the ointment came when one of her brothers, Henry, a banker and the most worldly of the Austen boys, gave her secret away. Dazzled by celebrity, he just couldn’t resist bragging to people about his talented sister. The secret trickled down until it reached the ears of the physician to the Prince of Wales, hence the reason that Jane had to dedicate Emma to the Prince of Wales. Jane really did closely guard her secret identity. Even her nieces and nephews, and fellow villagers had no idea. Rather charmingly, Jane,

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