The Prime of Miss Jane Austen – Chapter 1

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in want of a good fortune must marry well. 

“The journey alone must be quite shocking,” said Cassandra, passing the soup to Mrs. Austen. “How Tom will bear it, I cannot conceive.”

“But, my dear, it is too late now,” said Mrs. Austen. “Tom is a healthy and sensible young man, and will certainly come back with a ready living in Shropshire. Only think of your future. The year will run quickly enough, my dear.”

After a spoonful of soup, Mrs. Austen thought to add, “My health, you know, could never support such a journey, even at Tom’s age. To be in such an uncivilized country! Whatever would there be to eat? And how I would suffer in the heat! I would be quite unequal to it, I can assure you.”     “And yet, Mamma,” said Jane, “there are thousands of young men in the West Indies. Tom will not be a regular soldier, you know. He will not be in real danger. His circumstances will undoubtedly be as good as Lord Craven’s, who will surely be as attentive to Tom as may be. Pray, let us hear no more on that score when we have our own Cassandra for but one more year before she leaves us.”

“Quite right, my dear,” said Mr. Austen, touching a napkin to his lips. “Providence will steer the course of young love as it will. There is a certain derring-do in young Tom that I admire, I daresay. And now’s the time for it. Your lives will be long enough, if God wishes it, for Tom’s service abroad to be but a brief interruption of your courtship.”

“And we have so much to do in the way of your wedding clothes, to which I do not think you have given proper thought, my dear,” consoled Mrs. Austen, leaning towards Cassandra. “You have been so very agreeable and patient in all respects towards Tom that you’ve neglected your own mother’s feelings. Every mother, you know, longs for the day she can advise her daughter on matters of matrimony, and on seeing her finally out of the house. It will be the happiest day of my life, I can tell you,” she said with a satisfied smile.

On this unsettled ground, supper was concluded in the Austen household on the eve of Cassandra’s leave-taking to Kintbury at Christmas time in 1795. She was to stay with the Fowle family to say farewell to Tom, her fiancé of two years, before he left for the West Indies as chaplain to Lord Craven’s regiment. Having taken holy orders a few years prior, Tom had still not found a living sufficient to marry. Luckily, Lord Craven, Mrs. Fowle’s wealthy cousin, had several livings in the surrounding area to bestow, one of which Tom hoped for as a reward for his time well served.     Mr. Austen had himself only been able to marry when he was offered the living of the village of Steventon some twenty-one years earlier. As the rector now of both Steventon and neighboring Deane, he was gratified that Cassandra, his oldest daughter, was to marry a clergyman. This was particularly so since, as a gentleman without independent fortune, Mr. Austen was able to provide neither substantial dowries nor inheritances for his daughters. And Tom Fowle was a particular favorite to join the family, not only because of his personal qualities, but because he had been one of the family since he was a boy. He had been a pupil of Mr. Austen’s in the early years when the Austens took in student boarders to supplement their income. He had been a fine and devout student with an exemplary character, a boy whom everyone could love.

Of the Austen daughters, Cassandra was the most even-tempered. That she would become an excellent wife and mother could be doubted by no one, for she had long been a mother to her sister Jane, two years younger. Mrs. Austen, though energetic and charming in her earlier years, had had but little time for her girls. She had six sons to raise and to see off into the world in addition to four or five other boys boarding as students in the house. Now with much less to do since the boys had grown, she took to quarreling with the servants and taking colds as often as possible.

Jane and Cassandra became all the more inseparable, with that fortunate balance of constitutions found in the happiest of marriages. If Jane went too far afield towards impertinence, Cassandra raised her eyebrows and cautioned. And if Cassandra was in a somber mood, Jane devised elaborate stories, sometimes stretching over entire days, abusing all their ill-natured relatives and neighbors. Anyone who might be passing the rectory on fine days, in fact, would likely see the two young women in their every-day bonnets and long muslin dresses and shawls, Jane the taller, walking through the garden and into the surrounding lanes in the midst of deep intrigues of Jane’s invention.Jane took to writing some of these stories in her brown writing book, disguising characters’ names in such a way that only she and Cassandra would know their true identities. The stories were later read aloud to her family, for all the Austens loved the opposition of reason and passion, especially foolish passion.

These stories and peals of laughter constituted many evenings by the glowing fireside of the old stone rectory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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