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Posts Tagged ‘Cassandra Austen’

Cassandra Austen: Jane’ confidante, supporter and helpmate

Posted in jane austen, Jane Austen's World, Regency Life, Regency Period, tagged , , , , , , on October 4, 2009| 18 Comments »

My dear Cassandra, Where shall I begin? Which of all my important nothings shall I tell you first? – Jane Austen, June 15, 1808

Cassandra Elizabeth AustenWhenever we catch sight of Jane Austen in recollections and letters, her sister Cassandra is usually not far away. Although the two spinster women were frequently separated by visits to their friends and relatives, they shared a bedroom all their lives and presumably each others’ thoughts and secrets. Cassandra was separated from the family in her crucial formative years as a baby. After her birth, Mrs. Austen breast fed her first daughter for three months before handing her over to a village woman to be cared for until she was 18 months of age. The Austens, it seemed, followed this unusual habit with all their children, which must have worked well for them, for all eight survived in an age when child mortality was high.

Cassandra's silhouette

Cassandra's silhouette

Two years after Cassandra’s birth, the Austens were blessed with a second daughter, Jane. Wherever Cassandra went, Jane followed. When 10-year-old Cassandra was sent off to boarding school in 1783, 8-year-old Jane demanded to go, refusing to be separated from her older sister…

…not because she was thought old enough to profit much by the instruction there imparted, but because she would have been miserable (at home) without her sister; her mother observing that ‘if Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane would insist on sharing her fate. – Constance Hill, Jane Austen, Her Homes and Her Friends

Visits played an important part of Regency life and we have the frequent separations between Jane and Cassandra – who was often called to Godmarsham Park to help with her widowed brother Edward’s brood of children – to thank for their prolific correspondence. The letters between the two sisters reveal the intimate details of ordinary life, talking of purchasing ribbons and refashioning clothes or sending gifts. The sisters might well have written about more earth shattering events, but we shall never know, for Cassandra burnt or destroyed so much of Jane’s correspondence in 1843. The letters that do remain provide us with a glimpse into their relationship:

I saw some gauzes in a shop in Bath Street yesterday at only 4s. a yard, but they were not so good or so pretty as mine. Flowers are very much worn, and fruit is still more the thing. – 1799

and

I cannot possibly oblige you by not wearing my gown, because I have it made up on purpose to wear it a great deal, and as the discredit will be my own, I feel the less regret. You must learn to like it yourself and make it up at Godmersham. – 1800

Cassandra and Jane in Becoming Jane

Cassandra and Jane in Becoming Jane

After moving to Chawton Cottage, Cassandra and Mrs. Austen took over most of the duties of the house and garden, allowing Jane to capitalize on the most fruitful period of her writing. Once settled in a routine, she polished off earlier drafts of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, getting them published, and began to write new novels. The Austen women made do with very little, always economizing. Caroline Austenn, their niece, wrote, “The house was well furnished, and it was altogether a comfortable and ladylike establishment. Tho’ I believe the mean which supported it were but small.” In Chawton Cottage, Cassandra mourned the women’s lack of complete self-sufficiency, noting, “We have not even so much as a cow.” Chawton villagers recorded that “the Austen’s manservant would walk up to Chawton House each day accompanied by Cassandra’s dog “Link”, who would carry home the pail of milk in his mouth.” (Maggie Lane, p. 19). It is evident from the letter Jane sent to Cassandra in 1816, that she was grateful for Cassandra’s housekeeping activities:

It had been a busy week, and I wanted a few days quiet, and exemption from the thought and contrivances which any sort of company gives. I often wonder how you can find time for all you do, in addition to the care of the house; and how good Mrs West could have written such books and collected so many hard words, with all her family cares, is still more a matter of astonishment! Composition seems to me impossible, with a head full of joints of mutton and doses of rhubarb. – Jane Austen, Sept 8

A Times Online article describes Greta Scacchi’s portrayal as Cassandra in Miss Austen Regrets “as a bedraggled bread baker, chicken plucker and general rural dogsbody.” But the fact was that without Cassandra’s physical, mental and emotional support, and her brothers’ contributions to their annual income, Jane would not have had the freedom to actively pursue her career as a writer.

Greta Scacchi as Cassandra reads Jane's letter

Greta Scacchi as Cassandra reads Jane's letter

An older Cassandra

An older Cassandra

After Jane died in Cassandra’s arms, one can only imagine how bereft the older sister must have felt for the remaining 28 years of her life. Like Elinor Dashwood, she held her emotions in check. When Cassandra’s short engagement to Thomas Fowle ended in tragedy, Jane worried over her sister’s restraint in grieving.  It is our tragedy that Cassandra chose not to follow a similar restraint in preserving Jane’s letters.  In 1843, Cassandra wrote on a bundle of Jane’s letters: “To be burned.” Of the letters that survived, her niece Caroline noted that a number had “portions cut out“.  How ironic that in the twilight of her life Cassandra destroyed the very letters that must have given her a great deal of comfort and made her laugh or cry, and that, for a very short while, brought her sister back to life during the long evening hours she spent alone.

Francis, Cassandra, Jane, and Charles were the Austen's youngest children.

Francis, Cassandra, Jane, and Charles were the Austen's youngest children.

More links about this topic:

Gentle reader: In honor of JASNA’s annual meeting in Philadelphia this week, this blog, Austenprose, and Jane Austen Today will be devoting posts to Jane Austen and her siblings. Look for new links each day.

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The Death of a Fiancee in Persuasion and the Constant Heart

Posted in jane austen, Jane Austen Novels, Regency World, tagged , , , , on January 14, 2008| 5 Comments »

In 1795 Cassandra Austen became engaged to Reverend Thomas Fowle, a man eight years her senior. He had been one of her father’s pupils and had known her since she was six years old. The engagement remained a secret, for although Tom’s cousin, Lord Craven, had appointed him his domestic chaplain and presented him with a living at the rectory of Allington in Wiltshire, the couple had almost no money, at least not enough for marriage. Since Tom’s prospects of making a decent income in the near future were slim, the couple decided to wait to marry.
When Lord Craven sailed to the West Indies, he took Tom along with him. It took courage for Tom to make this decision, for a sea voyage was fraught with danger, but he hoped the pay off would result in his marriage to Cassandra. Correspondence between the couple would not be easy, and letters would arrive only sporadically. Tom prudently made out his will before he left, and he and Cassandra spent one last Christmas together before he set sail in the new year.

Nearly two years later, on February 1797, Tom caught yellow fever and died. Upon learning of his death months later, a broken-hearted Cassandra went into full mourning. She faced her loss with a quiet resolution that brought out her younger sister’s admiration. Jane was writing Sense and Sensibility at the time, and one wonders how much of Elinor’s stoic character was inspired by Cassandra’s restrained grieving. Later Lord Craven said he would never have taken Tom along on a dangerous voyage had he known of the younger man’s engagement. The bittersweet irony of that statement must not have been lost on Cassandra.

Jane was to later write about another fiancee’s loss in Persuasion. Like Tom, Captain Benwick waited to marry until he had made his fortune at sea. Ironically, his fiancee Fanny Harville dies without ever knowing about the Captain’s promotion or fortune. The following scene in the novel mirrors the doomed engagement of Cassandra and Tom:

Captain Benwick had some time ago been first lieutenant of the Laconia; and the account which Captain Wentworth had given of him, on his return from Lyme before, his warm praise of him as an excellent young man and an officer, whom he had always valued highly, which must have stamped him well in the esteem of every listener, had been followed by a little history of his private life, which rendered him perfectly interesting in the eyes of all the ladies. He had been engaged to Captain Harville’s sister, and was now mourning her loss. They had been a year or two waiting for fortune and promotion. Fortune came, his prize-money as lieutenant being great; promotion, too, came at last; but Fanny Harville did not live to know it. She had died the preceding summer while he was at sea. Captain Wentworth believed it impossible for man to be more attached to woman than poor Benwick had been to Fanny Harville, or to be more deeply afflicted under the dreadful change

As she wrote her novels, Jane shared her work in progress with Cassandra, her confidante. The following passage occurs near the end of Persuasion:

How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been, – how eloquent, and least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence! – She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older – the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.

When Cassandra had finished reading this passage, she “marked it and added in the margin, ‘Dear dear Jane! This deserves to be written in letters of gold.’ (Grosvenor Myer, p. 54.) More than any action, those written words express the extreme anguish Cassandra must have felt on learning of Tom’s death. They had been so cautious! But had they been ‘over-anxious cautious?’ Is that why the words should have been written in gold? Had Cassandra been able to turn back the clock, would she have married Tom regardless of their lack of money? Would a less prudent Cassandra have encouraged him to tell Lord Craven about their engagement?

In his will, Tom left his fiancee a legacy of 1,000 pounds. The interest from that money would help to support Cassandra for the rest of her life, especially after the death of her father, when the small amount would help to augment the income the Austen brothers contributed to the living expenses of their mother and sisters.

While Cassandra would mourn Tom until she died, Captain Benwick’s heart was not so constant. Although he grieved for Fanny, his heart was soon consoled by Louisa. Jane made her point about the constancy of a woman’s heart through Anne Elliot’s unforgettable statement:

“The one claim I shall make for my own sex is that we love longest, when all hope is gone.”

Image of Cassandra (?), JASA

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