Jane Austen in Perspective: An introduction to Jane Austen

Study Guide
for students

Introduction | The boyfriend: Tom Lefroy | The friend: Mrs Anne Lefroy | The suitor: Harris Bigg-Wither |  The aunt & uncle: the Leigh-Perrots | The best friend: Martha Lloyd | The neighbours: the Digweeeds et al. | The sister: protector or vandal of Austen's legacy | The parents: George & Cassandra Austen 

The people in Jane Austen's life -
Cassandra Elizabeth Austen: protector or vandal of Jane Austen's legacy

Not one of Cassandra’s lifetime of letters to her sister has survived. In fact, only a handful of letters written by Cassandra, to anyone, are still in existence. 

Jane often mentions her sister’s humour and once wrote to her: ‘The letter which I have this moment received from you has diverted me beyond moderation. I could die of laughter at it … you are indeed the finest comic writer of the present age’.² 

Spence concedes that, sisterly hyperbole aside, there must have been some truth in the compliment. R W Chapman shared a similar view: 

[It is] my impression that Cassandra Austen was not the correspondent who best evoked her sister’s powers. The letters to the nieces show more flow of fancy, less attention to the business of news.³ 

Comedy derives from a keen observation of humanity and the ability to feel with great depth. Cassandra’s letter to her niece Fanny Knight, written straight after Jane’s death, is one of the most tender and sad things I’ve ever read. It reveals Cassandra’s capacity for imagination – the ability to put herself in another’s shoes. I have no doubt that Cassandra’s letters made Jane Austen roar with laughter. Perhaps it’s simplistic, but I believe that Jane Austen thought Cassandra was funny, because she says Cassandra was funny. 

Sensibly, Chapman says that: 

the purpose of their letters was to exchange information between not only themselves, but between two branches of a large family. There are indications that these letters and others like them were read by, and to, a number of people. (Letters, p. x) 

– as is frequently the way of family letters. Chapman also points out that: 

it would not have been consonant with the sisters’ temperament, or their way of life, to exchange letters of sentiment or disposition. It would not have suited Jane Austen’s sense of propriety to charge her sister sixpence (or thereabouts) for opinions on religion or politics, on life or letters, which were known already, or would keep. But news would not wait, and news must always give satisfaction. (Letters, p. ix) 

Deirdre Le Faye summarises the letters as: 

the equivalent of telephone calls between the sisters – hasty and elliptical, keeping each other informed of domestic events and occasionally making comments on the news of the day, both local and national. (Letters, p. xvii) 

Another biographer, Valerie Grosvenor Myer tells us that: 

Jane was a keen reader of newspapers. Tantalizingly, she mentions ‘political correspondents’ with whom she discussed the issues of the day but these unknown correspondents would have seen no reason to keep her letters. The letters that have survived, especially those to her sister, Cassandra, are full of gossip and family news, with occasional flashes of spite and anger.⁴ 

On the destruction of many of the letters by Cassandra Austen, Chapman comments: 

A familiar defence is that the letters have been robbed of their general interest by Cassandra Austen’s pious destruction of all that she supposed might possibly excite general curiosity. We know from their niece Caroline that ‘the letters to Aunt Cassandra (for they were sometimes separated) were, I dare say, open and confidential – My Aunt looked them over and burnt a greater part, (as she told me), 2 or 3 years before her own death – she left, or gave some as legacies to the Neices (sic) – but of those I have seen, several had portions cut out’. ... Doubtless this suppression has cost us much that we should value. (Letters, p. ix) 

George Holbert Tucker comments: 

Cassandra’s systematic destruction of her sister’s papers seems almost criminal, but she had her own reasons for acting as she did. 

There are two ways of regarding Cassandra Elizabeth, Jane Austen’s beloved sister. One is to impugn her for her calculated destruction of her sister’s intimate letters and other papers a few years before her own death in 1845. The other is to be thankful that she spared as much as she did from the flames.⁵

We have much to thank Cassandra for. ‘Cassandra was Jane’s first critical audience of one’ says Tucker, who credits Cassandra’s laughter and encouragement for inspiring Jane to write down her juvenilia pieces into the three notebooks that we treasure so dearly today.

Her long memory, with the aid of original manuscripts and other memoranda no longer in existence, enabled her to record the dates of composition for her sister’s six famous novels.⁶ 

Jan Fergus comments on the letters written by Cassandra Austen after Jane’s death: 

Her need to write out such details despite her natural stoicism reveals the depth of her love and grief. She was to some degree keeping her sister alive by writing this letter – and other less explicit ones to friends and relations, enclosing mementoes of Austen. Later, Cassandra kept her sister’s memory alive by arranging for the publication of her two remaining novels and at last by carefully apportioning the letters and manuscripts among the family when she herself was nearing death.⁷

So, was Cassandra the greatest literary vandal of all time, or was she Jane Austen’s greatest, and kindest, critic? Some may even say that Cassandra was her editor, and PR manager. 

What is actually missing from the letters? Well, it’s impossible to say because ... it’s missing. Le Faye points out: 

Cassandra Austen’s weeding-out and censoring of her sister’s letters, as mentioned by their niece Caroline Austen, shows itself more in the complete destruction of letters rather than the excision of individual sentences; the ‘portions cut out’ usually only amount to a very few words, and from the context it would seem that the subject concerned was physical ailment. This destruction of letters can usually be noticed when the dates of those surviving are compared. When the sisters were apart, they wrote to each other about every three or four days – another letter begun as soon as the previous one had been posted. ... 

Where a series of letters does not contain this pattern and frequency of correspondence, it means that Cassandra destroyed some of the group in later years, when she was planning to bequeath a token few to her nieces as souvenirs of their Aunt Jane. Close consideration shows that the destruction was probably because Jane had either described physical symptoms rather too fully ... or else because she had made some comment about other members of the family which Cassandra did not wish posterity to read. (Letters, pp. xv-xvi) 

I think that Mr Tucker, again, sums it up nicely: ‘Letters exchanged between the sisters, like countless other intimate personal communications of that or any other era, were not written with posterity in mind’.⁸ 

There is a distinction to be made between claiming that a letter was actively destroyed, and speculation about a letter that may or may not have been written during this period. During some periods of Austen’s life we can assume there would have been correspondence that has now disappeared for some reason. Some critics have been bold enough to actually say what they believe to be missing. 

Commenting on an uncharacteristic remark about Mr Austen in one letter Jon Spence says: ‘Cassandra destroyed the letters Jane wrote in the first month after their parents announced the plan to move to Bath, but Jane’s remark about her father slipped through Cassandra’s net’.⁹ 

Grosvenor Myer thinks that: 

Cassandra later destroyed the letters covering the Bigg-Wither episode, but not before letting her niece Catherine Hubback, Frank [Austen]’s daughter, read them. Catherine gathered that Jane was much relieved when the affair was over, and that she had never been attached to him ... Jane’s letters between 1801 and 1804 are missing, either because they dealt with this matter which Cassandra considered private, or because Jane was generally disgruntled and Cassandra did not wish to be reminded of her sister’s unhappiness.¹⁰ ... 

Some letters over the Christmas period that year [1801] seem to be missing. Possibly Jane poured out her grief and rage to Cassandra at this time, for Cassandra was at Godmersham. If so, Cassandra suppressed the letters’. ¹¹ 

Jon Spence believes it was a thorough cull: ‘Cassandra took particular care to destroy personal family material. The first letter about Tom Lefroy can have survived only by mistake’.¹² 

Claire Tomalin reviews the process by saying (harshly, in my view): 

Cassandra’s culling, made for her own good reasons, leaves the impression that her sister was dedicated to trivia. The letters rattle on, sometimes almost like a comedian’s patter. Not much feeling, warmth or sorrow has been allowed through. They never pause or meditate but hurry, as though she is moving her mind as fast as possible from one subject to the next. You have to keep reminding yourself how little they represent of her real life, how much they are an edited and contrived version.¹³ 

In her work Jane Austen’s Textual Lives, Kathryn Sutherland agrees that it is difficult to see into Austen’s true frame of mind: 

We need only to concede a potential difference between modern and earlier assumptions about the contents of private letters, but we must face the possibility that the authenticity of a letter, unlike a novel, is bound inextricably to its original material form, to such an extent that we cannot disentangle its textual from its documentary identity without imperilling its status as biographical evidence. Words alone provide an incomplete account of a form in which the manner of their disposition on paper, the handwriting and the pressure of the hand, even the paper itself, its folds, and the method of sealing, may all offer eloquent clues to the writer’s identity and state of mind.¹⁴ 

It’s not just chunks of the letters, or groups of Cassandra’s letters, that may be missing. Her correspondence to almost everyone has vanished. Of the 160 or so that survive, 95 letters are to Cassandra, the rest mainly written to brothers, nieces, friends or business associates. 

Of Jane Austen’s five brothers, we have one letter to Charles, three to Edward and none to Henry. What did Henry and Edward do with their letters? These two brothers entertained the Austen sisters often in their homes for long periods of time. There must have been letters from the Austen ladies thanking them for their attention in London or Kent, discussing past visits, arranging new ones or just ordinary family business in general. These letters have almost all vanished. 

My personal theory about the survival of seven of Frank’s letters is that, as he was a naval officer on active service in the Royal Navy, his letters would have been shared around the family as widely as possible. Concern for Frank sailing into very dangerous waters would have made those letters particularly precious. Charles was also a naval officer facing the same dangers, but we have just one letter, written three months before Jane’s death. 

The letters we have to the nieces show a friendly and easy correspondence between them. Collectively, they make up the bulk of non-Cassandra letters. Considering the hints in these letters of regular correspondence, I would have expected many more to have survived – especially as the girls were budding novelists, who later in life wrote their own memoirs. 

Only three letters to her dear friend, Martha Lloyd remain, and no letters addressed to Rev or Mrs Austen have been found. 

What of other members of the extended family? We have one to Jane’s cousin Philadelphia Walter, but none to the other cousins, sisters-in-law etc. 

When there are more letters to the Prince Regent’s pompous librarian than to members of her close and immediate family one has to wonder! 

One interpretation of this absence is that friends and family so completely eradicated her letters because they didn’t want the contents read – or they felt that the comments therein were of no interest to anyone but themselves. I don’t believe that Jane Austen was precious about privacy. She had no concept of her own fame. She made some jokes about her audience, but the notion that she would be hailed as the second greatest English writer, after Shakespeare, was beyond her comprehension.

To a biographer trying to explore the depths of Austen’s life, every word that Jane Austen wrote is precious – her own words give us an insight into the mind of this singular genius. To be deprived of any of her writing is a huge loss to the literary history of the world. 

As a non-biographer, I feel that Cassandra – the subject or villain of this piece – knew Jane better than anyone. She knew best her sister’s wishes and opinions about privacy. Her loving memories of her sister led her to cover up those little remarks that people make when they believe they are alone. These flippant, or very truthful, remarks would have been carefully edited by Cassandra when she read them aloud to her mother or other family members, when each new letter arrived at Chawton cottage. Cutting out portions, or whole pages, or whole letters, was a more permanent way of keeping those remarks between themselves. If Cassandra were my sister I would not be criticising her for this action. Perhaps Jane’s own wishes would have been that even more should be destroyed. 

Meg Hayward 

1. Becoming Jane Austen, Jon Spence, Hambledon & London Press, London 2003, p. 134 
2. Spence, p. 114. 
3. Jane Austen’s Letters, ed. Deirdre Le Faye, OUP, 1995, Chapman’s Preface to the First Edition, p. x 
4. Obstinate Heart, Valerie Grosvenor Myer, Michael O’Mara Books, London 1997, p.4 
5. A History of Jane Austen’s Family, George Holbert Tucker, Sutton Publishing, 1998, p. 149 
6. Tucker, p. 155 
7. Jane Austen A Literary Life, Jan Fergus, St Martin’s Press, NY, 1991, p. 170 
8. Tucker, p. 158 
9. Spence, p. 134 
10. Grosvenor Myer, p. 61 
11. Grosvenor Myer, p. 91 
12. Spence, p. 134 
13. Tomalin, p. 122 
14. Jane Austen’s Textual Lives: From Aeschylus to Bollywood, Kathryn Sutherland, OUP 2005, p. 82

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10 April 2007