Only a Novel: The Double Life of Jane Austen by Jane Aiken Hodge

Author:Jane Aiken Hodge [Hodge, Jane Aiken]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2014-10-17T04:00:00+00:00

10

It was April 1811, and Jane Austen was staying with Henry and Eliza, who had moved to a house in Sloane Street and were still enjoying “riches and honours”. Worldly Eliza was obviously an admirable hostess. Where Edward, in Kent, tended to take it for granted that his sisters came to merge themselves (and help) in the family life of Godmersham, Eliza treated them as visitors, to be entertained. But then, Eliza had no children now that Hastings[9] was dead, and Edward had eleven. Anyway, Jane was enjoying herself. She was in touch with the Cooke cousins and had visited the Liverpool Museum and the British Gallery with Mary Cooke, “though my preference for men and women, always inclines me to attend more to the company than the sight”. William Bullock’s Liverpool Museum, now moved from Liverpool to Number 22, Piccadilly, was a curious gallimaufry of natural history, curios and antiquities, while the British Gallery was in fact the British Institution for Promoting the Fine Arts, whose winter exhibitions of contemporary painting were becoming increasingly popular.

As always on London visits, Jane had also gone shopping for muslin and trimmings, bonnets and china. She needed straw hats and pelisses with buttons that “seems expensive — are expensive, I might have said”. Eliza was arranging a busy social life and Jane was finding “all these little parties very pleasant”. There was to be a big party, too, with more than eighty invitations, and professional musicians: “Fanny will listen to this.” It is always interesting, when reading Jane Austen’s letters, to remember that some portion of each one, at least, was intended to be read aloud to whichever members of the family Cassandra might be with.

There was news of the sailor brothers. Frank had been “superseded in the Caledonia” and Charles might be in England at last (after nearly seven years) in the course of a month. Their old patron Lord Gambier was giving up his command to Sir Edward Pellew and “some captain of his succeeds Frank”, who had been Gambier’s flag-captain in the Caledonia. It is a reminder of how careers in the Navy then depended on patronage. Admiral Gambier, who had got Frank his early promotion, had gone back to sea, been ennobled after the Copenhagen expedition and court-martialled after a fiasco in the Basque Roads in April, 1809. It had been an unlucky business. Gambier, a confirmed Methodist, had disapproved of the flotilla of fireships with which his subordinate, the flamboyant Lord Cochrane, proposed to destroy the French fleet. His support had been inadequate, the attempt a failure and Cochrane furious. Called a “canting and hypocritical Methodist” by his subordinate, Gambier insisted on a court martial, which was packed in his favour and gave him an honourable acquittal. He returned to his Channel Command until 1811, when he was finally superseded and, inevitably, Frank went with him. As we have no letters for the period of Gambier’s court martial, we do not know what the Austens thought about it, though we can guess.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.