MPT Online | Afternoon Tea

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

by John Spence

The first certain link between the Austens and Warren Hastings came in early 1759 when Phila and Tysoe moved to Calcutta and became friends of Hastings and his wife. Maryland Hasting's second child, a daughter, had been born but soon died the autumn before, and Mary herself had never regained her strength. She died a few months after the Hancocks came to Calcutta.

Phila and Tysoe were still childless, a state often taken to indicate that they had a bad marriage. Tysoe, though, once wrote to Phila: "I am certain nothing shortens a woman's days so much as her being married when too young," that is, by beginning to have children so young. Perhaps they purposely waited until Phila was older and more acclimated to the conditions in India before they had a child. Hancock was a physician and so knew more about human physiology than most people. In December 1761 Phila had her first and only child, a girl they called Betsy after the daughter Warren Hastings had lost in infancy. Hastings was Betsy Hancock's godfather.

Jane Austen

There were rumours that Phila had been Hastings' mistress. Lord Clive wrote to his wife that there was no doubt Phila had "abandoned herself" to Hastings, but he makes no mention that Hastings was Betsy's father. That seems to be a later assumption. Hastings himself never acknowledged paternity. A few months before Phila's daughter was born, Hastings sent his four-year-old son back to England and put him in the care of George Austen. This too may indicate that George knew Hastings before he went to India. Whatever the origin of George's connection with Warren Hastings, he was entrusted with the care and education of the boy.

Odd as such an arrangement seems now, it was not so unusual at the time. There was a long tradition of Oxford scholars taking responsibility for the care and education of a child. It was a way scholars had of making ends meet. The Hastings boy might have remained in George Austen's care for many more years, but in the summer of 1764 the child died, only a few months after George had married Cassandra Leigh and taken up his duties as rector of Steventon in Hampshire.