Early Adulthood at Steventon & Bath
Jane Austen enjoyed social events, and her early letters tell of
dances and parties she attended in Hampshire, and also of visits to
London, Bath, Southampton etc., where she attended plays and such.
There is a famous statement by one Mrs. Mitford that Jane was the
"the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly
she ever remembers" (however, Mrs. Mitford seems to have had a
personal jealousy against Jane Austen, and it is hard to reconcile
this description with the Jane Austen who wrote The Three Sisters
before she was eighteen).
There is little solid evidence of any serious courtships with men.
In 1795-6, she had a mutual flirtation with Thomas Lefroy (an Irish
relative of Jane Austen's close older friend Mrs. Anne Lefroy). On
January 14th and 15th 1796, when she was 20, she wrote (somewhat
sarcastically), in a letter to Cassandra:
"Tell Mary that I make over Mr. Heartley and all his estate to her
for her sole use and benefit in future, and not only him, but all
my other admirers into the bargain wherever she can find them, even
the kiss which C. Powlett wanted to give me, as I mean to confine
myself in future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for whom I do not care
sixpence. Assure her also, as a last and indisputable proof of
Warren's indifference to me, that he actually drew that gentleman's
picture for me, and delivered it to me without a sigh.
Friday. -- At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last
with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will be over. My
tears flow at the melancholy idea."
However, it was always known that he couldn't afford to marry Jane.
A year later, Mrs. Lefroy tried to fix Jane Austen up with the Rev.
Samuel Blackall, a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but Jane
wasn't very interested.
In late 1800 her father, who was nearly 70, suddenly decided to
retire to Bath, and the family moved there the next year. During
the years in Bath, the family went to the sea-side every summer,
and it was while on one of those holidays that Jane Austen's most
mysterious romantic incident occurred. All that is known is what
Cassandra told various nieces, years after Jane Austen's death, and
nothing was written down until years after that. While the family
were staying somewhere on the coast (probably in south Devonshire,
west of Lyme), Jane Austen met a young man who seemed to Cassandra
to have quite fallen in love with Jane; Cassandra later spoke
highly of him, and thought he would have been a successful suitor.
According to Caroline "They parted -- but he made it plain he
should seek them out again"; however, shortly afterwards they
instead heard of his death! There is no evidence as to how
seriously this disappointment affected Jane Austen, but a number of
people have wondered whether or not Jane Austen's 1817 novel
Persuasion might not reflect this experience to some degree, with
life transmuted into art; Jane Austen would have been 27 (the age
of Anne Elliot, the heroine of Persuasion) during 1802-1803, and a
crucial scene in Persuasion takes place in Lyme.
A more clearly-known incident occurred on December 2nd. 1802, when
Jane Austen and Cassandra were staying with the Bigg family at
Manydown, near Steventon. Harris Bigg-Wither, who was six years
younger than herself, proposed to Jane, and she accepted, though
she did not love him. However, the next day she thought better of
it, and she and Cassandra showed up unexpectedly at Steventon,
insisting they be taken out of the neighbourhood to Bath the next
day. This was socially embarrassing, but her heart does not seem to
have been seriously affected -- Mr. Bigg-Withers, though
prosperous, was "big and awkward".
Notoriously, none of Jane Austen's letters to Cassandra from June
1801 to August 1804, in which she probably would have alluded to
these incidents, have been preserved. In the end, Jane Austen (like
Cassandra), never married.
In 1803 Jane Austen actually sold Northanger Abbey (then titled
Susan) to a publisher, for the far-from-magnificent sum of £10;
however, the publisher chose not to publish it. It was probably
toward the end of the Bath years that Jane Austen began The
Watsons, but this novel was abandoned in fragmentary form.
In January 1805 her father died. As would have been the case for
the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice if Mr. Bennet had died, the
income due to the remaining family was considerably reduced --
since most of Mr. Austen's income had come from clerical "livings"
which lapsed with his death. So they were largely dependent on
support from the Austen brothers, summing to a total of about £450
yearly. Later in 1805, Martha Lloyd (sister of James Austen's wife)
came to live with Mrs. Austen, Cassandra, and Jane, after her own
mother had died.
