“Jane Austen at Home: A Biography”, by Lucy Worsley

 

400 pages, St. Martin’s Griffin, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1250799968

Jane Austen at Home: A Biography by Lucy Worsley (i.e., The Queen of PBS) is as complete a biography of the Divine Jane as one could wish for. In her opening statement Lucy describes her purpose in focusing her biography of Jane on her many abodes, for “where you were born and who you were born to for most 18^th Century people delimited where you ended up”. Geography counts, folks. And from there we have a history of Jane’s life told through the medium of her never-ending quest for a permanent home of her very own. And there were many homes, make no mistake: often inadequate, never permanent and sometimes grim, all Jane ever wanted for herself, her mother and her constant companion, elder sister Cassandra (her brothers could always, and did, take care of themselves) was a safe haven in which she could live in at least a little comfort, afford a good lamp and writing materials and spread her creative wings.

And so, throughout Jane Austen at Home, we are treated to one detail after another of the many homes the Austen women occupied, their furnishings, gardens and neighborhoods, and even some of the more memorable neighbors and relations whom Jane knew. Through it all, we see how this constant changing of address affected Jane’s novels; their subject matter, their focus, their drive. Lucy describes all of the ups and downs of Jane’s life, the family celebrations and disasters, the turns of fortunes both good and ill and, perhaps most revealingly, the everyday aspects of men and women that Jane so realistically observed and captured in her novels. And of course, seeing as this is a book written by Lucy Worsley, it is shamelessly ebullient and often breathless (I guess we shouldn’t be surprised; after all, she warns us in the forward that “[t]his is, unashamedly, the story of my Jane, every word of it written with love”).

Lucy is also given to some speculative writing – there are a great many “she must have” and “I believe that” and “it is possible” peppered throughout the book – which is understandable, seeing as so much of Jane’s insightful (and acerbic) correspondence was burned by her devoted, discreet, overbearing (envious?) older sister, Cassandra, after her death (Lucy’s theory as to why Cassandra did this was to protect the rest of the Austen clan from Jane’s lashing tongue; the woman said what she thought, make no mistake). But Lucy’s speculation centers, above all, on Jane’s motives and emotions; while she was, throughout the whole of her too-brief life, wonderfully free and sharp in her opinions and observations in the letters that remain, she never said much about her feelings, except when shielded under cover of irony (many of her observations about potential mates falls under this category, the sincere wishes of Austenites to the contrary).

What about these potential mates, anyway? Did Jane really have to end life a spinster? Lucy argues that Jane chose spinsterhood to preserve her freedom as she simultaneously locates no fewer than nine – NINE! – potential husbands for Jane: Tom Lefroy (of course), Samuel Backall, William Digweed, Edward Bridges (this was the most serious after Lefroy), Harris Bigg-Wither, an unnamed seaside wooer, William Seymour (her brother Henry’s partner), William Gifford and Charles-Thomas Haden (this is one spinster who saw a whole lotta action). What to say about this? As usual, let’s turn to Jane: she wrote of her most self-effacing heroine, Anne Elliot, that “[s]he had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older – the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning”; Cassandra, reading the manuscript, underlined this passage and added: “Dear, dear Jane…this deserves to be written in letters of gold”.

Should we feel bad that Jane never married? I, for one, still do, even though, as Lucy points out, “[i]f she had married, she would doubtless have produced human rather than paper progeny”. Perhaps. Depending upon whom she managed to corral, she may have been able to hire all the help an upper-middle class matron could afford to care for the living little darlings while she continued to produce her literary little darlings. But this is all speculation, and we must cherish that which Jane gave to us: six of the most perfect books ever to grace the English language. Meanwhile, I prefer to remember Jane as Lucy would have us: “What Mrs. Luff’s grandmother clearly remembered was their description of Jane Austen in the act of ‘running across the field to call on her friends’. Let our final image of Jane be one of speed and power, not lying immovable upon her unfamiliar bed in the cramped rented upper room in Winchester, but instead running, running across the field to see her friends once again”. A better ending to an Austen novel one could hardly imagine.