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Mrs Austen's letter from Stoneleigh Abbey

Jon Spence puts the Austen's visit to Stoneleigh into context, and quotes Mrs Austen’s letter on the subject:

When Jane Austen and her mother and sister left Bath ‘with what feelings of escape’, as Jane said, on 2 July 1806, they went first on holiday at Clifton, near Bristol. From there Jane and her mother (Cassandra’s whereabouts are unknown; she may in fact have been with them, though she is not mentioned in her mother’s letter) proceeded to Adlestrop to visit Mrs Austen’s first cousins the Rev Thomas Leigh and his sister Elizabeth, who lived at Adlestrop Rectory.

On the same day that Jane and Mrs Austen left Bath, the Hon. Mary Leigh, a very distant cousin and the sister of the last Lord Leigh of Stoneleigh, who had died in 1786, leaving the estate to his sister for her lifetime, died in London. Her will – and her brother’s – stipulated that the estate was to go to the eldest male relation bearing the name of Leigh – that is, Mrs Austen’s first cousin, the Rev Thomas Leigh. Mr Hill [mentioned in Mrs Austen’s letter as the initiator of the visit] had been the lawyer of the Hon. Mary Leigh and was one of the executors of her will, as was the Rev Mr Leigh. The summons to Stoneleigh Abbey was a matter of chance, and since Mrs Austen and Jane were staying with the Leighs, they were invited to accompany them.

Just who else was of the party is impossible to say. Certainly the Rev Thomas Leigh’s nephew, James Henry Leigh of Adlestrop Park, the titular head of the family, was among the party. It is he Mrs Austen refers to as the ‘young Mr Leigh.’ (he was forty-one). Since his mother-in-law Lady Saye and Sele was with them, one assumes that her daughter, James Henry’s wife, Julia Twisleton, was of the party. (Julia’s younger sister, Mary Cassandra, was the ‘adulteress’ Jane met in Bath in 1801 and mentioned in a letter to her sister. Incidentally, for those who follow the various Jane Austen connections into the present, the actors Ralph and Joseph Fiennes are descendants of Twisleton family!) Whether or not the Leighs’ fifteen- year-old son Chandos was of the party is the subject of some speculation in the foregoing piece on a visit to Stoneleigh.

The Hamstall Mrs Austen refers to in her letter is Hamstall Ridware in Staffordshire, a family living in the gift of the Stoneleigh Leighs that had been given to Mrs Austen’s nephew Edward Cooper, whose family she and Jane were now going to visit. In the autumn the Austen women went to Southampton, where they joined Frank Austen and his new wife, Mary Gibson, and lived there for three years until they finally settled at Chawton Cottage.

Following is the letter that Mrs Austen wrote from Stoneleigh, the only information we have about Jane Austen’s visit to the place:

Mrs George Austen to Mrs James Austen

Stoneleigh Abbey
Wednesday, August 13th 1806

My dear Mary,

The very day after I sent you my last letter Mr Hill wrote his intentions of being at Adlestrop (with Mrs Hill) on Monday the 4th and his wish that Mr Leigh and family would go with them to Stoneleigh the following day as he was hurried for time and there was much business for the Executors awaiting them at the Abbey. All this accordingly took place & here we all found ourselves on Tuesday (that is yesterday se’nnight) eating fish venison and all manner of good things at a late hour, in a noble large parlour hung round with family pictures – everything is very grand & very fine & very large. The house is larger than I could have supposed. We can now find our way about it, I mean the best part; as to the offices (which were the old Abbey) Mr Leigh almost despairs of ever finding his way about them. I have proposed his setting up directing posts at the Angles. I expected to find everything about the place very fine and all that, but I had no idea of its being so beautiful. I had figured to myself long avenues dark rookeries and dismal yew trees, but here are no such melancholy things.

The Avon runs near the house amidst green meadows bounded by large and beautiful woods, full of delightful walks.

At nine in the morning we meet and say our prayers in a handsome chapel, the pulpit &c now hung with black. Then follows breakfast, consisting of chocolate coffee and tea, plumb cake, pound cake, hot rolls cold rolls, bread and butter and dry toast for me. The House-Steward (a fine large respectable looking man) orders all these matters. Mr Leigh & Mr Hill are busy great part of the mornings. We walk a great deal, for the woods are impenetrable to the sun even in the middle of an August day. I do not fail to spend some time every day in the kitchen garden where the quantities of small fruits exceed anything you can form an idea of. This large family with the assistance of a great many blackbirds and thrushes cannot prevent its rotting on the trees. The garden contains 5 acres and a half. The ponds supply excellent fish, the park excellent venison; there is also great plenty of pigeons, rabbits, & all sort of poultry, a delightful dairy where is made butter, good Warwickshire cheese & cream ditto. One man servant is called the baker, he does nothing but brew & bake. The quantity of casks in the strong beer cellar is beyond imagination: Those in the small beer cellar bear no proportion, tho’ by the bye the small beer may be called ale without a misnomer.

This is an odd sort of letter. I write just as things come into my head. I will now give you some idea of the inside of this vast house, first premising that there are 45 windows in front (which is quite strait with a flat roof) 15 in a row. You go up a considerable flight of steps (some offices are under the house) into a large hall: on the right hand the dining parlour, within [i.e. beyond] that the breakfast room, where we generally sit, and reason good ’tis the only room (except the chapel) that looks towards the river. On the left hand of the hall is the best drawing room, within that a smaller; these rooms are rather gloomy brown wainscoat and dark crimson furniture; so we never use them but to walk thro’ them to the old picture gallery. Behind the smaller drawing room is the state bed chamber, with a high dark crimson velvet bed: an alarming apartment just fit for a heroine; the old gallery opens into it; behind the hall & parlours is a passage all across the house containing 3 staircases & two small back parlours. There are 25 bed chambers in the new part of the house & a great many (some very good ones) in the old. There is also another gallery fitted with modern prints on a buff paper & a large billiard-room: every part of the house and offices kept so perfectly nice, that were you to cut your finger I do not think you could find a cobweb to wrap it up in. I need not have written this long detail, for I have presentiment that if these good people live till next year you will see it all with your own eyes. Our visit has been a most pleasant one. We all seem in a good humour disposed to be pleased, endeavour to be agreeable and I hope succeed. Poor Lady Saye & Sele to be sure is rather tormenting, tho’ sometimes amusing, and affords Jane many a good laugh—but she fatigues me sadly on the whole. Tomorrow we depart, Hamstall is 38 miles from hence. We have seen the remains of Kenilworth Castle which afforded us much entertainment. I expect still more from the sight of Warwick Castle which we are going to see today. The Hills are gone and my cousin George Cooke is come. A Mr Holt Leigh was here yesterday and gave us all franks. He is member for and lives near Wigan in Lancaster, a great friend of young Mr Leigh’s, and I believe a very distant relation, a single man, the wrong side of forty; chatty and well bred, and has a large estate.

There are so many legacies to pay, some heavy fines and so many other demands, that I do not think Mr Leigh will have more money than he knows what to do with this year, whatever he may the next. The funeral expenses, proving the will, and putting the servants at both houses into mourning must have come to no inconsiderable sum. There were 18 men servants at [The rest of the letter is not preserved.]

Jon Spence

This was the ‘best drawing room’, which Mrs Austen found ‘rather gloomy’, and has been re-designed as a really lovely library. Photo: Stoneleigh Abbey

Illustration top left: a silhouette of Mrs Austen, Jane's mother.

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09 January 2004

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