They were usually covered in red leather, and were just over 3 inches deep by 4 inches wide.

As you can see, mine, which dates from 1778, is not in pristine condition.

The folding top flap has the remains of a marbled paper lining, which you can just discern in the photograph above

Teh firs two pages are fashion plates, to enable a lady in the shires to see exactly what were the latest fashions worn at court. Do note you can enlarge all these photographs by clicking on them, and I do recommend you do so , in order to see the details of the pocket-book pages:

The first hows “A Lady in Full Dress and Another in an Undress of 1777. The next plate show the sumptuous scene at The Windsor Ball:

The ladies who dominate the print are , from left to right, Lady Barrymore, The Duchess of Devonshire and the Duchess of Gloucester

These fashion plates were an important part of the contents of the Pocket Books for Ladies, and if you look at this page from Barbara Johnson’s Book, which has  been produced in facsimile by the Victoria and Albert Museum in whose collection it is, under the title: A Lady of Fashion: Barbara Johnson’s Album of Styles and Fabrics:

you will see that Miss Johnson, a contemporary of Jane Austen, kept, year on year, these little prints all pasted in her album so that she could keep track of the latest fashions. She was surely not alone….Next we have the contents page:

and you can see, for the first time, that while this has much in common with our diaries of today- with useful information -notable dates etc, – there are striking differences. For example, the insertion of Hints to Unmarried Ladies and the Essay on Modesty, strikes an odd note. It is interesting to me that such conduct book fodder is to be found in this very practical diary. But before we examine those pages in detail in our next post, let’s go back to the beginning of the pocket-book. After the Introduction,which, you can see, is simply an advertising “puff” telling the purchaser just how useful this little book will prove to be (!), we have  the Holidays to be observed in 1778 at the Exchequer, Bank, Stamp Office, Excise Office, East India House, South Sea House and Custom House. We may be astonished at the sheer amount of days upon which these important institutions were closed. Today in England and Wales there are six Bank Holidays plus two pubic holidays- Christmas Day and Good Friday. as you can see, in the late 18th century , these institutions observed   saints’ days and religious festivals as holidays.

There are 53 days,by my reckoning, when the offices of most of these institutions would be closed, subject to the individual exceptions shown under the table. Again you can see that they are mostly religious holidays. This  situation continued during Jane Austen’s life time but, in 1834, this was reduced to just four holidays: 1 May , 1 November (All Saints Day), Good Friday, and Christmas Day.

Next we have a Table of the Moon for 1778, and a note of all the Legal Terms, when the courts were in session, plus details of the terms at the only two  universities in England and Wales at that time, Oxford and Cambridge:

Next, history: a Table of the King and Queens Reigns, plus on the opposite page The Birth Days of the Sovereigns in Europe

Next we have An Index to the Remarkable Days in 1778

These are dominated by dates in the Christian Calendar, together with dates relating to the Royal Family, which underlines the importance of the Anglican Church, and the Royal Family in Georgian England. These dates do still form the basis of the rhythm of the year for many people today, but I think I might be right that they are of a general lesser importance now than they had in the late 18th century . It is interesting to see just how many dates were celebrated, and which ones were thought important.

In my next post we shall continue our look at the contents of these intriguing little books. I do hope you will join me.

He was killed by John Bellingham, shown below.

He was, thus far, the only British Prime minister to have been assassinated. The assassination  came at a time that has so many parallels with our dire economic situation today. Britain was suffering from a credit crunch and  was in a recession, one of the causes  of which was the effects of the infamous Orders in Council  issued by Perceval’s government in 1809, which expanded the Orders in Council of 1807 that had been brought in by the previous Portland administration, and were designed to restrict the trade of neutral countries with France. These had been enacted in retaliation to Napoleon’s embargo on  trade by Britain with all allies of France.  Controversially, the Orders gave the British Navy the  right to board all neutral ships in search of goods destined for France. Exports sharply declined with the result that ports such as Liverpool, dependant on trade with Russia and the United States, had their trade severely reduced: legitimate trade dwindled.

John Bellingham was a merchant from Liverpool who had become involved in the Baltic trade, trading with Russia. He was imprisoned in the Russian port of Arkangel for a fraud he claimed did not commit. As a result , he lost a sum that would  amount to many hundreds of thousands of pounds today. He  appealed for help to the British ambassador in St Petersburg, who passed the case on to the consul, who did little to help Bellingham. When eventually released and back in Britain, Bellingham regarded the government as morally bound to indemnify him for his losses for his dependant family’s financial future depended upon him recovering all he had lost. He was married and had 12 children.

Bellingham believed every man in Britain had the right to petition Parliament to bring attention to grievances, and wanted to petition Parliament  about compensation for his losses.  Perceval insisted that the government had no obligation to recompense him, and refused to receive his petition. Bellingham reasoned that the only remaining chance of a remedy was to kill the prime minister. He claimed that he had no personal grudge against Perceval, but considered that to kill the Prime Minister would be a simple act of justice and would be the means of bringing his claim to court. He sincerely held the belief  that once he explained the reasons for his action at his trial, he would  be acquitted and his losses would be  repaid by the Government. This defence, which his lawyers insisted was the workings of a deranged mind, cut no ice and, indeed Bellingham insisted he was sane.  Bellingham was tried four days after Perceval died and was hung a week after the assassination.

What I find fascinating in all this, are not only the parallels with today’s economic situation, but  the reaction to the assassination of Jane Austen’s sister-in -law, Mary Austen, neé Lloyd, who was married to James Austen. She recorded her thoughts in her pocket-book, which is now in the collection of the Hampshire Record Office . This, below, is a silhouette of Mary, who was Jane Austen’s eldest brother’s second wife:

Pocket books were small red leather covered booklets which contained standardised useful information- much more on this in my next post-and a section for diary entries, and were used by many people in the early 19th century .They were rather like the small diaries we carry about today- if we don’t rely upon electronic means to keep track of our engagements. Indeed, Jane Austen kept one, and one page of it, detailing her expenses in 1807, survives in the collection of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York. Go here to read more about it. If only the other interesting pages of Jane Austen’s pocket books could be found…..

Back to Mary Austen. Most of Mary’s pocket-book entries are concerned with day-to-day life at the Steventon, where her husband, James was rector. And in themselves these domestic entries are fascinating, giving us some glimpses of their life at home, detailing visits made , visitors received. The entries have been transcribed by Deirdre le Faye into her fantastic book, The Chronology of Jane Austen, and so if you cannot visit the Hampshire Record Office to see the real thing, you can read its interesting entries by purchasing a copy of this book. This picture of the entry in Mary Austen’s pocket-book concerning Jane Austen’s death on 17th July, 1817 comes from the Chronology:

It translates as:

Jane Austen was taken for death about 1/2 past 5 in the evening

I like to compare Mary’s sometimes  terse entries with those of Fanny Knight’s entries for the same day,especially when they are in the same company. For example  in her entry for May 4th 1812, Fanny writes:

Sweet Day.We all went to The Vine a beautiful old place of Mr Chute’s & spent the morning in going all over the House & Grounds. Mr Trimmer brought me a letter from  At.Cass.

Mary,who was used to intercourse with the Chutes at the Vyne simply wrote:

We all went to the Vine.

So, it really was with some surprise that I noticed that Mary had included a note on the Perceval assassination  in her pocketbook:

Mr Perceval was shot as he entered the house of Commons, he was the prime minister.

And , further, that this entry was actually made on the 11th May 1812, the very day the murder had taken place. This is, as far as I can see, the only political event Mary Austen ever comments upon in her pocket-book. What does that tell us? That the event was so momentous that even in sleepy Steventon the news had travelled from London the same day.Well, yes. But I think it might also tell us something about Mary and her view of politics. It sounds as if she is recording  Perceval’s status (He was the prime minister)almost  as if that  information was news to her. Perhaps I am doing her an injustice, but it does seems if she is writing a note  to herself  to explain who exactly had been killed and what his status was.

Respectable Georgian women were not, of course, supposed to entertain political ideas. It was somewhat surprising therefore to find Mary Austen including this item of news, having become aware of it the day it happened, in her pocketbook which was otherwise full of rather more mundane matters.I thought you might be interested to note that this terrible event was in some way, important to Mary Austen living in Steventon in 1812.

It comes from the collection of the Grey family who lived at Nunnington Hall in Yorkshire, shown below. The property is now in the care of  the National Trust.

As you can see it, the decoration on the tea caddy  is made of filigree work – which can be known as rolled paper work or quill work. I’ve written about it before, here, as it was of course mentioned by Jane Austen in Sense and Sensibility: Lucy Steele, attempting to curry favour with the Middletons, in particular with Lady Middleton, creates a filigree work basket for the Middleton’s spoilt daughter, Annamaria:

“Perhaps,” continued Elinor, “if I should happen to cut out, I may be of some use to Miss Lucy Steele, in rolling her papers for her; and there is so much still to be done to the basket, that it must be impossible, I think, for her labour singly, to finish it this evening. I should like the work exceedingly, if she would allow me a share in it.”

Sense and Sensibility, Chapter 23

The structure of the tea caddy is made from wood, and has internal compartments for two different types of tea:

But it is the outside decoration which is so stunning. The decoration on the lid of the caddy has sadly faded as it has been kept  in sunlight:

You can see that only the slightest trace of colour remains in the rolled paper pieces:

However the side panels , which have escaped the ruinous effects of the sun, are a different matter. You can see from this series of photographs  how very beautiful the decoration is. Do note that the individual side panels are differently decorated : one incorporates  a print or engraving…

and some include pieces of mica, set behind some of the quilled decoration. Mica is a mineral known as sheet silicate which gives a very shiny effect. The term  ”mica” is derived from the Latin word mica, probably and very appropriately derived from the verb by micare, which means “to glitter”.

You can also see that some of the quills were made from gold, foiled papers.

If you would like to see this object on the programme you can do so by accessing it here via the BBCs iPlayer for the next five days. You will need to access the programme at 20 minutes in, in order to see the item about Nunnington Halk. Sadly this is not, I fear, available to  any of you resident outside the UK.

However, in spite of that restriction, I thought you might like to see another example of the type of work with which Lucy Steel was attempting to ingratiate herself into the Middleton household

It was then on the outskirts of Bath and was near to the Sydney Gardens where Jane enjoyed visiting the pleasure gardens, though she was not always too keen on the music performed there, as evidenced by this comment in her letter to Cassandra of the 2nd June 1799

There is to be a grand gala on Tuesday evening in Sydney Gardens-A concert with Illuminations and Fireworks; to the latter Elizabeth and I look forward with pleasure, and even the concert will have more than its usual charm with me, as the Gardens are large enough for me to get pretty well beyond the reach of its sound.

The garden to a house a few doors down from Number 4 is open to the public to visit on Saturday 19th may and again on the 1st July. So if you can manage to go you will get an idea of the type of garden the Austens would have enjoyed while they lived at Number 4, and also get a view of the rear of number 4 in the bargain.

The garden is opened to benefit a local charity, The Dorothy House Hospice Care, and all the details of how to ge to the garden plus opening times and price of entry can be accessed here. I do wish I could attend!

Recently there has been flurry of activity surrounding it, mostly published in the Times Literary Supplement.

The first article was by Paul Byrne, and this reiterated, in the main, the arguments she made for positively identifying the portrait as Jane Austen, and having been taken from life, in her BBC 2 programme, Jane Austen: The Unseen Portrait. However, there are a few new points and you might like to hear them. Dr Byrne has  been investigating the view shown on the portrait and seems to have positively identified  it as the view of Westminster Abbey, St Margaret’s Church and Westminster Bridge, which could be seen from one specific place: No.3 The Sanctuary. This house was occupied, in the early 19th century, by Edward Smedley, an Anglican priest who was also senior usher at Westminster School.  Dr.Byrne writes:

He was a man with literary interests, whose published poems included Transmigration (1778) and Erin: A geographical and descriptive poem (1810). He was married to Hannah (1754-1825), the daughter of George Bellas, a gentleman who worked as public notary in the High Court of Admiralty, which dealt with all shipping disputes, and who owned estates in the parish of Farnham on the border of Hampshire and Surrey. Their eldest son, also called Edward Smedley (1788-1836), had serious literary aspirations. He won the Seatonian Prize for English Verse at Cambridge in 1813 and from 1814 onwards he published with John Murray of Albemarle Street. His works with Jane Austen’s publisher ranged from The Death of Saul and Jonathan, a Poem (1814) and The Parson’s Choice, or, Town and Country: An Epistle (1821) to Sketches from Venetian History (1831).

Edward Smedley Junior therefore had the same publisher as Jane Austen, John Murray, and a slight family connection (see below). However, he also appears to have been a fan of Jane Austen’s works from the evidence of his published correspondence:

Pious, antiquarian and serious-minded, the Smedleys seem a far cry from Jane Austen. So it comes as something of a surprise to discover in “Poems by the late Rev. Edward Smedley, A.M.: with a selection from his correspondence and a memoir of his life “(1837) that Smedley Junior was an avid reader of her novels 

In addition Dr Byrne notes that a daughter of Anna Austen, Louisa, married the Reverend Septimus Bellas of Monk Sherborne in Hampshire, who was “a collateral relative of George Bellas”

Dr Byrne poses the question: do we know exactly what Jane Austen did when she was in London negotiating the terms for the publication of Emma? She poses the theory that Jane Austen may have known the Smedleys and may have visited them at No 3 ,The Sanctuary,where the portrait was made , and where it probably stayed in the Smedley family for some time, most probably in an album of drawings as there appears to be evidence of old glue on the reverse of the portrait. Smedley Junior had two daughters, who grew up to be novelists and Dr Byrne considers they were even influenced by Jane Austen:

They both grew up to become novelists strongly influenced by Jane Austen. Menella’s The Maiden Aunt (1849) begins in a very familiar-sounding style – “Emma, the youngest sister of Margaret Forde, married James Ferrars, a captain in the navy, and was left a widow, with two children” – while Elizabeth Anna’s The Runaway (1872) is manifestly a rewriting of Emma (with a mildly lesbian twist). Its publication was welcomed by the Sun newspaper with the announcement that “The future before her as a novelist is that of becoming the Miss Austin of her generation”.

One lead might be interesting, regarding the provenance of the portrait. It was sold to Mr Davids by the executrix of Sir John Forster, Barrister. The executrix, on his instructions, burnt all his papers when she had finished administering his estate. However, Paula Byrne has discovered that it was given to him by his nanny, Miss Helen Carruthers and she is investigating if there are any links between Miss Carruthers and the Smedley daughters. If anyone reading this can help her, please contact me and I’ll gladly send on any information.

She concluded thus:

Until we find another writer who was middle-aged in about 1815, who had a taste for long sleeves and a cap, who was tall and spare, straightbacked, with dark curly hair and facial features bearing an uncanny resemblance to Jane Austen’s brothers, we must keep open the possibility that this truly is a lifetime portrait of the woman who signed her own name on the back of John Murray’s royalty cheque for Emma as “Miss Jane Austin”.

This article prompted  two letters to the Editor. The first was from Roy Davids, the dealer who sold the portrait at auction to Dr Byrne , and was published in the TLS  on the  20th April, 2012. In his letter he defended his catalogue description of the portrait,thus:

Dr Byrne not entirely accurately had me cowering before the formidable Deirdre Le Faye (given the correspondence with that doyenne of the Austen industry which I shared with her). Vendors, it should be said, have an obligation towards a sobriety of tone, balance and judgement that need not constrain an enthusiastic new owner in quite the same way. But, of more consequence, Byrne tends to minimize what was said in the catalogue, which at least hinted at some of her more significant discoveries, when she writes: “Deterred by Le Faye, Davids did no further work on the portrait and it was accordingly given a low estimate in a sale of his literary manuscripts and portraits at Bonham’s in March 2011, where I bought it. The sale catalogue reproduced Le Faye’s opinion, but also noted that Henry Austen’s ‘Biographical Notice’ (1818) of his late sister did not include any specific details of her appearance, so it would have seemed an unlikely source for a portrait”.

A week later another letter was published  from Professor Richard Jenkyns ,who is, in fact, a descendant of Jane Austen’s eldest brother, James. He doubts that the portrait is of Jane Austen. His first objection is the setting:

Dr Byrne treats the picture like a photograph – as though Jane Austen had visited an unattested friend who chanced to live due west of the Abbey and someone snapped her there. But of course portraits were not like that; the backgrounds signify. The sitter is a Londoner: she is at home with her cat beside her. No one would take a likeness of a person with somebody else’s cat. She may have been wife, daughter or sister of a Rector of St Margaret’s or a Dean or Canon of Westminster, or perhaps a literary lady who wrote about Westminster. It seems improbable that this is a view from the window of someone who happened to live at just this spot, because the setting is not naturalistic: note the theatrical column and curtain. The artist could have sketched the churches on site but more likely used an engraving.

He also pointed out that the lady portrayed in the portrait is shown as having light-coloured eyes:

Jane Austen’s eyes were shown as brown  in Cassandra Austen’s sketch-the only authenticated  image of Jane Austen’s face- that is now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery:

She was described as having had hazel eyes by people who know her in life, particularly Caroline Austen, her niece. He also disputes that the nose depicted in the “Austin” portrait is an example of The Austen Nose.

The same point about the colour of the “Austin’s ” lady’s eyes is made in the Spring 2012 JASNA newsletter. Dr Andrew Norman who has written a biography of Jane Austen (Jane Austen, An Unrequited Love) wrote to the editor to make the same point about the colour of the sitters eyes: that these are pale and Jane Austen had dark coloured eyes.

On the 4th May, Dierdre Le Faye published her thoughts on the drawing.  Amongst other points, she doubts that Jane Austen would have wanted to be depicted as a writer, a point that has also been made by Claire Tomalin. She points to the lack of books in the portrait: if Jane Austen and wanted to be shown as a proudly, published author, where are her books? She also dismissed the face depicted as being of the real Jane Austen: it is too thin and long , and the eyes are of the wrong hue.

As to the dating of the portrait by the fashionable clothes on show, Le Faye points out that Jane and Cassandra Austen were constantly altering and updating their clothes due to their limited income:

The sitter’s high neck and long sleeves, with copious lace trimmings, suggest rich respectability. is clear from Jane’s letters that as she and Cassandra were far from wealthy, they were constantly altering their dresses by unpicking and dyeing them and adding different trimmings, until finally demoting them to be used as petticoats or linings. No dresses of theirs could ever be precisely dated.

She also comments on the profusion of jewellery on show:

The amount of jewellery worn by the sitter is far more than Jane Austen is known to have possessed…Even if Jane had possessed all these items – and surely her brother Charles’s present of a topaz cross would have been shown? – it would be thoroughly uncomfortable to wear four rings while writing. This strongly suggests that the portrait was only meant to be symbolic, emphasizing the wealth of the sitter.

Here you can see the necklaces, numbering three in my counting:

And here you can see the profusion of rings:

She also dismisses the view of Westminster as having any connection with Jane Austen, and thinks the links with the Smedley family are only circumstantial.  She also notes the lack of any documentary evidence connecting Sir John Forster’s nanny with the portrait. The inscription “Miss Jane Austin” on the reverse of the portrait is commented upon:

The title on the verso, “Miss Jane Austin”, also turns out to be a red herring. As it is in ink, it was added at a later date – otherwise, the artist would have written the name in plumbago as s/he finished the drawing. Secondly, the word “Miss” is written in modern style; had it been written in Regency times the ligature of “MiFs” would have been used. Austen’s eldest nephew and nieces, who were taught to write between about 1795 and 1815, all used this ligature for a double “s” till their dying days in the 1870s and 80s. Anyone writing “Miss” was obviously born much later in the nineteenth century. 

Here is an example in Jane Austen’s own handwriting, which demonstrates how the word “Miss “would have been written by any contemporary of her:

This is  a copy of the later she wrote to her sister Cassandra on the 20th February 1807. You can clearly  see that she addressed Cassandra as “MiFs” Austen. The use of the word “Miss” in this form is clear evidence  that this inscription was added much later in the 19th century than in 1816.

She concludes:

As Byrne has not provided any incontrovertible documentary evidence to support her claims, the portrait, even if it does date from the early nineteenth century, cannot be accepted as a genuine representation of Jane Austen.

So..there you are. The controversy continues.

What do I make of it all?

I went to see the portrait recently, for it is currently on show at Jane Austen’s House Museum. What struck me on viewing it was indeed the large amount of jewellery that adorned the sitter. If this really is Jane Austen, where is that jewellery now? And why wasn’t Charles Austen’s quite magnificent topaz cross included, for this must have been Jane Austen’s most grand piece of personal jewellery, and if she was “showing herself to her best advantage” would she not have included that piece ? I do think on close examination that there is some form of pendant hanging from the first, shortest necklace. It is not clear, however, what form that pendant takes, and it may be another brooch, not attached to the chain at all.

The provenance of the portrait is still very uncertain, and seems to end in the 1980s with the death of Sir John Forster.  I am still not convinced that the view,which is very carefully delineated, has any connection with Jane Austen.

The presence of the cat still make no sense to me at all in relation to Jane Austen.

I still feel that this is, at the very best, a portrait of a real life Miss Austin, who had links with Westminster Abbey and St Margaret’s, which was made in the early years of the 19th century, but that it is not our Jane Austen. The attribution on the frame, which was made much later, seems to me to have been a case of wishful thinking by a later owner and, until there is any other strong documentary evidence to prove otherwise, I remain unconvinced ( not that my opinion really matters!)

If you would like to see it yourself, then do go to the Museum to see it: I do urge you to go if you can for it is interesting to see it “in the flesh”. I hadn’t realised how prominent the cat was. It certainly cannot be glossed over as it is an important part of the composition. But what does a cat have to do with Jane Austen? And will we ever find the answer? Fascinating.

Her essay is entitled Jane Austen’s Dealing with John Murray and his Firm and this is published in the latest edition of the journal, The Review of English Studies. It was originally delivered by Professor Sutherland as the John Murray Lecture on the 27th October 2011 at the National Library of Scotland. I’ve only had time to skim it this afternoon, but it looks fascinating.  I’m sure it is going to provoke some discussion. Go to it!

They were, in fact, playing a glass harmonica.

This is a fascinating instrument which was invented by the American polymath, Benjamin Frankin in 1761 while he was living  in London. He had heard Edward Delaval , a Fellow of the Royal Society, play on his set of musical glasses in 1759. This was an idea with which we are more familiar, I think , as we can still see these types of glasses played today by some variety artists. In fact these glasses -wine glasses filled to different levels with water which were played by rubbing wetted fingers along the rims- seems to have been the  brain child of a Mr Puckeridge of Ireland,  but he and his glasses perished in a fire. Edward Delaval was fascinated by the properties of glass and he studied the specific gravities of several metals and their colors when bonded with glass, and also how to use it in the manufacture of artificial gems, hence his interest in this instrument. Benjamin Franklin improved upon his idea- of the rows of glasses fitted in a cabinet, by creating a very different instrument.  Here is his design from the modern exponent,  Thomas Bloch’s fascinating website:

You can see that it is quite radically different: scores of glass bowls are nested within each other, strung centrally on a spindle that spins, and which is turned by means of a treadle.  Here, below,  is a late 18th century version in its wooden cabinet, with a handle to turn the glass bowls, not a treadle:

Here is a photograph of  Thomas Bloch’s  own glass harmonica, which shows the position of the players hands when operating the harmonica :

Frnaklin’s instrument was so improved that it  transformed the performance aspects of the harmonica. Now duets could be played,as in the adaptation of Mansfield Park, and individual players could now play chords .If you go here you can see the example in London Horniman Musuem which was used in the linked BBC Radio 3 programme below.

This was not an  instrument that could be enjoyed by everyone: it was very expensive to produce  and buy and needed very specifically trained teachers. Mozart was a fan and wrote some beautiful music for it. It was used by Mesmer as part of his electronic experiments, to soothe his patients. But this reputation for celestial soothing music was not long lived. One of its most famous exponents was the blind German-born woman, Marianne Kirchgessner, and she was famous for giving concerts on the instrument throughout Europe. She was rumoured to have been driven mad by playing the instrument, but this was probably not due to its strange sound( which I confess I can only listen to for very small intervals as it makes me grind my teeth!) but to lead poisoning. Playing with whetted fingers on glass that had high lead content most probably contributed to her demise.

Modern composers have use the instrument to great effect- in film scores and in rock music; Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, for example. If you would like to know more of the history of this fascinating instrument  you might care to listen to this fabulous BBC Radio 3 programme, presented by Dame Eveyln Glennie, one of our most distinguished percussion players, shown below.

If Chimes Could Whisper is a short (45 minutes long) but totally enthralling history of the Glass Harmonica and contains a lot of examples of the instrument being played- pieces of music which date from the 18th century to the present day.

If you click on the link above you should be able to access the webpage linking got the programme which is available to “listen again” for another five days.

Alternatively here, above, is a video of Thomas Bloch playing his  fabulous glass harmonica, which I’m sure you will enjoy. It is a very evocative sound. How appropriate that the Miss Bertrams were portrayed playing  such an instrument; expensive, exclusive, seemingly celestial but with hidden dangers

The Watsons is one of the few remaining manuscripts written in Jane Austen’s hand to survive, and you may recall that it was bought by the Bodleian Library last year, to ensure that it remains in the UK for scholars and Austen enthusiasts to continue to have access to it. You can see it here on the Jane Austen Fiction Manuscripts website.  The only other manuscripts of Jane Austen’s  adult works that survive are the other unfinished fragment, Sanditon, together with the cancelled chapters of Persuasion. Professor Sutherland, below, has made an especial study of Jane Austen’s existing  manuscripts, partly in an attempt to try to decipher her working methods and so her talk promises to be fascinating.

In her book, Jane Austen’s Textual Lives: From Aeschylus to Bollywood,  Professor Sutherland deals with many fascinating subjects, looking anew and in great detail  on aspects of Jane Austen’s life and works we take for granted as having “always been there”, particularly with regard to the censorship of the Austen and Knight families surrounding the release of biographical information. The part of her book I particularly admired  were the chapters where she goes into amazing detail to try to determine how exactly  Jane Austen wrote: how she revised, amended and fiddled with her manuscripts and what processes her works were subjected to before and after they left her care and control. The Professor has been criticised on the internet and in the press for some of her comments regarding Jane Austen’s grammar. In the book, in layman’s terms if you will allow me, Professor Sutherland details how Austen’s later works  were corrected by a series of editors beginning. Some journalists clearly decided that Professor Sutherland was on the side of the editors, and that she  was agreeing with their “attacks” on Austen’s original idiosyncratic  texts. It is my understanding, on reading the book, that nothing could be further from the truth. This brouhaha has sadly detracted from her main argument, which is  that Jane Austen’s genius should not and ought not be constrained by the workings of and the unasked for (and in many cases unwarranted) imposition of  a Victorian ( or Edwardian or even  modern) man’s idea of correct grammar. And that, in fact, by imposing their own standardised version of correct, written English upon her texts, quite a lot of Jane Austen’s original intent has been diminished as a result.  She conducts a minute forensic  examination of the novels, their publishing history  and the changes various editors have imposed upon Austen( and us). The results will surprise you (and often discomfort). This part of the book is a fascinating and illuminating read. Some of the language used is undoubtedly academic and  it is challenging…but then, why should reading always be a totally effortless pastime?

Reading her book opened my eyes to the terrible power an editor has, especially when the author is not  available to defend her choices. These choices- her use of words, punctuation and grammar- which make perfect sense  in the context of her novel, may be seen as sloppy or careless mistakes to a reader not exactly in tune with the author’s original intent. I had really not considered just how crucial the editorial approach to a text truly is until I had considered the effects on these texts. ( Forgive me, I am not always so dense). This book opened my eyes and made me think critically about the whole process of publishing a book, in detail, for the first time. As a dyslexic with some paralysed fingers, it has taken me years to try to attune myself to grammatical rules, punctuation and spelling: I once had the luxury of secretaries to point me in the right direction but I always had to ensure that their well-meaning additions did not detract from my correct legal turn of phrase. Now spell and grammar checks irritate me in a similar way

I confess I waited to read the paperback edition of her book to be available because the original price for the hardback was prohibitive, and I think much of the outrage written about regarding Professor Sutherland’s comments reveals that  not many of her critics seem to be familiar with the arguments in her book either. On reading her book- which though academic in tone is not inaccessible to the amateur reader of Jane Austen- I promise- it becomes clear that she is firmly on the side of Austen and her creative genius.

The book is available now as a reasonably priced paperback and also as an even more attractively priced Kindle edition. I would urge you to seek it out, and while it is an academic study, its subject matter is so fascinating and revelatory , I am convinced you will find it worthwhile and that it might very well alter your thoughts on Austen’s works and how they are edited .

Back to the Chawton House Lecture. It is to take place on the 8th May and tickets are available from Chawton House Library. Go here to see all the details. I do hope many of you can go along .If you can’t , do try to have sight of Professor Sutherland’s book. I really don’t think you will regret it.

I left my Mother very well when I came away & left her with the strictest orders to continue so. My journey was safe and not unpleasant. I spent an hour in Andover, of which Messre Painter and Redding has the larger part-twenty minutes however fell to the lot of Mrs Poore and her mother,whom I was glad  to see in good looks and spirits. -The latter asked me more questions than I had very well time to answer; the former I beleive (sic) is very big but I am by no means certain;- she is either very big, or not at all big, I forgot to be accurate in my observation at the time, & tho’ my thoughts are now more about me on the subject, the power of exercising them to any effect is much diminished - The two youngest boys only were at home; I mounted the highly-extolled Staircase & went into the elegant Drawing -Room,which I fancy is now Mrs Harrison’s apartment;- and in short did everything that extraordinary Abilities can be supposed to compass in so short a time.

The Poore’s house is now the Andover Museum, and as you can see from the photograph of it, below, you can see that  it has  a core of a fine Georgian building, on the left, while it has been added to by the Victorians, on the right.

Inside you can see the very fine staircase that Jane Austen mentioned: from her tone others must have mentioned how grand it was. And with reason ,as you can see:

Set in its own staircase hall, leading off from the main entrance to the museum to the left of the building…

…it is, as you can tell, very imposing and grand indeed.

No wonder it was highly extolled.

Before she was married to Mr Philip Poore,  Mrs Poore was all known to both Cassandra and Jane Austen, and her maiden name was Mary Harrison. She is mentioned in a couple of Jane Austen’s earliest surviving letters: the first dated 5th September 1796 addressed to her sister, Cassandra written from Rowling in Kent, has this intriguing reference:

Give my love to Mary Harrison & tell her I wish  whenever she is attached to a young Man, some respectable Dr Marchmont may keep them apart for five volumes

The second direct mention is in a letter, again to Cassandra and written from Rowling dated 15th September 1796 :

“Buy Mary Harrison’s Gown by all means. You shall have mine for ever so much money, tho’ if I am tolerably rich when I get home, I shall like it very much myself.

Mary Harrison was one of the Austen sisters’ circles of friends. Her  brother was the  Reverend William Harrison (1768-1846). He was, at this time, the vicar of Overton,  which, as you can see from this section taken from my  Cary’s map pf Hampshire for 1797 that it was(and is still) not far from Steventon: the map has been annotated with the positions of Steventon, Overton, Andover and Hursbourne Tarrant, which is near to Ibthorpe, Jane’s final destination of the day she travelled to Andover in 1800:

You can trace  the route Jane Austen would have travelled,  from Dean Gate to Andover. She would have passed through Overton, hone of Mary Harrison’s brother, then through Whitchurch and eventually on to Andover. The arrows are numbered as follows:1, Steventon; 2,Overton;  3, Andover ;4, Hurstbourne Tarrant.

Mary married, as his second wife, Philip-Henry Poore in September 1797. Philip-Henry Poore (1764-1847) was from Andover and he practised as the town’s surgeon, apothecary, and man-midwife. He and Mary had a daughter, Mary-Anne. She was born in March 1799. Was Jane Austen alluding to a possible later and doomed pregnancy in her letter to Cassandra of  November 1800?

…the former I beleive (sic) is very big but I am by no means certain;- she is either very big, or not at all big, I forgot to be accurate in my observation at the time, & tho’ my thoughts are now more about me on the subject, the power of exercising them to any effect is much diminished-…

But what is truly interesting is that Mary Harrison nearly became Jane and Cassandras sister-in-law. Anne Matthews, James Austen’s first wife, died in 1795, leaving him with one daughter, Anna. James, Jane’s eldest brother, had after her death, according to family tradition an infatuation with his glamorous cousin Eliza de Fueillide, but  this was not successfully concluded on his part. He turned his attention instead to  two local Marys: Mary Lloyd, sister of Martha Lloyd, Jane’s great friend, and Mary Harrison. In one of her brittle, carefree, early letters to survive,  Jane Austen asks this question of Cassandra regarding James’ impending martial decision:

Let me know how J. Harwood deports himself without the Miss Biggs-and which of the Marys will carry the day with my Brother James

( See Letter to Cassandra Austen, dated 5th September 1796)

She had still not heard a week later:

I depend  on hearing from James very soon; he promised an account of the  Ball, and by this time he must have collected his Ideas enough , after the fatigue of dancing, to give me one.

( see Letter to Cassandra Austen, dated 15th September 1796)

James eventually did make up his mind and asked Mary Lloyd to be his second wife. Mrs Austen seems to have decided to bring matters to a head by asking Mary Lloyd to spend some time at the Steventon rectory in the autumn of 1796. James proposed in November of that year, and they were married at Hursbourne Tarrant on 17th January 1797. There exists a rather lovely letter of welcome to Mary that Mrs Austen sent to her on hearing the news that JAmes had proposed and was accepted: if my son ever marries (he is but 14 at present!) I hope I have the decency to send my prospective daughter-in-law such a letter:

Mr Austen and Myself desire you will accept our best Love and that you will believe us truly sincere when we assure you that we feel the most heartfelt satisfaction at the prospect we have of adding you to the number of our very good Children. Had the Election been mine, you, my dear Mary, are the person I should have chosen for James’s Wife, Anna’s Mother and my Daughter being as certain as I can be of anything in this uncertain World, that you will greatly increase and promote the happiness of each of the three.

(See: Jane Austen: A Family Record, by Deirdre Le Faye, Page 99)

And so, rejected by James , Mary Harrison opted for the charms of Mr Poore and his lovely house in Andover. Which you can now visit, and admire the much extolled staircase;)

I have to convey my sincere thanks to the staff of the Andover Museum, for  allowing me to photograph the stairs, especially Chloe and Ania who were patience and kindness personified. If you are ever in the vicinity do go to the Andover Museum: it is full of interesting Iron Age artefacts amongst other things,  and see for yourself the splendour that surrounded Mrs Poore and her mother , and give a thought to the woman who was once very nearly Jane Austen’s sister-in-law.

I received this book as a gift at Christmas. Its taken me some time to get round to reading it but on my recent holiday I rescued it from the teetering pile of Books to be Read that has been reproaching me silently for some time, and sat down. Within 48 hours I  had devoured it.

I freely confess that , for me, reading about the doings of the generations of Austens/ Knights etc who followed Jane Austen is not high on my list of priorities, but I may have been wrong in this belief for  Sophia Hillan’s account of the children of Edward Knight, Jane Austen’s lucky and rich brother, is a fascinating and very good read. I had not expected to be sucked into their world so quickly nor, more importantly, did I expect to care for them and their fates so much.

Sophia Hillan tells the sometimes complicated but fascinating tale of Edward Knight and his wife, Elizabeth’s children, who featured  so frequently in Jane Austen’s letters. She concentrates on the lives of Louisa (Lou-below) who was Jane’s goddaughter, Marianne (May) and Cassandra (Cass), but of course, during the course of the tale, we hear much about the lives of the other seven children and their aunts and uncles.

Louisa and Cassandra married the same man, Lord George Hill of Gweedore in Donegal.He married first Cassandra who died in 1842, of puerperal fever after the birth of her last child . In 1847, after she had cared for her sister’s children for five years, Lord George Hill married Louisa. This was marriage that caused much discussion and distress as such marriages were then unlawful in Victorian England. Indeed, the couple travelled to Denmark so that they could be married, as it would have been impossible for them to have been married in England, as marriages between brother and sisters-in-law were then considered illegal on the grounds of consanguinity.

The story of their time in Ireland where Lord George was seem as an improving but strict landowner is truly fascinating and absorbing. Sophia Hillan writes with great insight and sensitivity on the terrible time of the Irish Famines and the actions of landlords whose acts, which now seem cruel and incomprehensible. These acts  were often prompted by the desire for efficiency but  ultimately failed, tragically, to understand the customs, habits and nature of the Irish over whom the Anglo-Irish landlords possessed such power. The later part of the book deals with this subject magnificently and I found myself rapidly turning the pages,desperate to know the outcome of Lord George’s actions.

The sister I enjoyed reading about most was Marianne (May-shown above). Her story  could have been heartbreaking, but her strength of character and bravery made it one of triumph over adversity. She never married but devoted herself to looking after her father and then,after his death,  her brothers. She did indeed begin life as  an Emma Woodhouse figure, the daughter of a great house, Godmersham in Kent, administering the household and overseeing the care of the poor in the parish under her care after the marriage of her sister Fanny. She eventually moved from Godmersham to Chawton where she lived with her brother Charles Bridges Knight, who was rector of Chawton, and like her Aunt Jane, she seems to have enjoyed her quiet, settled life in that village. But she ended her life as a Miss Bates, impoverished and without a real home to call her own, settling in Ballyarr in Donegal, with her widowed sister, Lou, where she eventually died. I loved her character, with its refusal to be cowed by circumstances, her positive outlook and above all, her humour. She did indeed seem to inherit some of her Aunt Jane’s strongest character traits. I would love someone to reproduce in facsimile her Garden Book which she kept while she lived in Chawton.

I would urge all of you to buy this book, because the story of these sisters and their lives in England and most of all 19th century Ireland is  so vibrantly presented to us by Sophia Hillan. I’ve read it twice now- the second time to savour all teh twists and turns of  the fascinating tale. It is available as a Kindle edition if you are running out of books space, or prefer e-books. I am certain you will not be disappointed by this wonderfully written book.