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Becoming Jane Austen
The True Love Story That Inspired
the Classic Novels

by John Spence

This month we begin to explore the circumstances that helped mold Jane Austen.

Legacies

In 1704, the presumed heir to the Austen family fortune, John Austen, lay dying of consumption at the age of thirty-four. He was leaving behind seven children and was troubled by what might happen to his daughter and five younger sons. He was his father's only son, but he feared that his father, also named John Austen, would now leave everything to the eldest grandson and do little to provide for the other children.

Old John Austen was in the wool trade, as the family had been for several generations, providing wool to weavers, overseeing the processing of the cloth, and selling the finished product to cloth merchants. When, after his son's death, old John made his last will he referred to himself as John Austen, Clothier, but to his late son as John Austen, Gentleman.

Young John's widow, Elizabeth Well, later wrote an account of the family circumstances so that her children would know exactly what had happened. She believed her father-in-law had made the eldest son rich and left the older children "but as if servants." The bulk of the estate was left to her eldest son, Jack. His sister received £400, and his younger brothers £40 apiece for an apprenticeship and £200 each as their stake in life when they reached the age of twenty-one.

Even in a society in which primogeniture was an established tradition, old John Austen's will was unusual. Common as it was for the eldest son to inherit the bulk of the estate, younger sons (or grandsons) of a rich man would be left the means to establish themselves in a profession. Daughters would be provided with sufficient dowries to give them a certain independence or to attract husbands who were gentlemen. Old John Austen, though, was determined to make his eldest grandson rich and to leave the other children to make their own way in the world.

Jane Austen

Jack was only nine years old when his grandfather died and would not have personal control of his inheritance until he was twenty-one. Elizabeth hoped that he would undo what she considered the injustice of her father-in-law's will when he came into the property. When Jack reached the age of twenty-one, he would have a choice. He could keep everything for himself as his grandfather had wanted, or he might accept an obligation to provide for his sister and brothers as his father had wanted him to do.

Elizabeth's father-in-law had foreseen the possibility that she might try to persuade Jack to diminish his wealth by helping his siblings, and he designed his will to prevent this. The will demanded that the boy be removed from his mother's care and placed under the guardianship of his uncles. If Elizabeth refused to give Jack up, which she had a legal right to do, the boy would receive no income from his inheritance until he was twenty-two. In her already straitened circumstances, with six other children to bring up and very little money for the purpose, Elizabeth could not afford to undertake the support of her eldest son, so she had to agree to his being separated from her and the other children.

In her father-in-law's eyes she was the enemy because she wanted Jack to provide for his sister and brothers. As Jack's mother she would have the power to influence him to consider this his duty. Having Jack removed from her care was meant to put an end to her influence. But it also cut Jack off from his siblings, leaving little opportunity for forming bonds of affection that would make him want to help them. The deepest evil of the old man's will was not its material injustice but its studied intention of destroying the affection that unites a family into a single entity. The scheme was successful.

Jack seems to have been indifferent to the plight of his brothers and sister. He was educated by tutors and was sent to Cambridge, as befitted a gentleman of means. At the age of twenty he married his first cousin, a daughter of his guardian uncle. He died even younger than his father had, and left only one son, who inherited the fortune. Jack's only son was long-lived, not dying until 1807 at the age of ninety-one. He had failed to produce a son, and his only child, a daughter, had died unmarried. He left the fortune to a grandson of his father's second brother.

When Jane Austen heard about the will of Jack's son (also, as usual, called John) in 1807, she wrote to her sister Cassandra:

We have at last heard something of Mr. [John] Austen's will. It is believed at Tunbridge that he has left everything after the death of his widow to Mr. Motley Austen's third son John: & as the said John was the only one of the family who attended the funeral, it seems likely to be true. Such ill-gotten Wealth can never prosper!

Jane seems to have known the whole sorry story, begun when the family fortune had been in one stroke transformed into the "ill-gotten wealth of a single individual."