Becoming Jane Austen
The True Love Story That Inspired
the Classic Novels
by John Spence
Part of a continuing series.
Temperamentally the Austens were not what Susannah was looking for as correspondents. They were too rational and philosophical, too unemotional for her taste, and she was too sentimental and too much given to discontent for theirs. George replied to her first letter because Cassandra was in London with her sister Jane, who had jut had her first child. Near the end of the letter George sends his love and tells Susannah that his sons are well, "and what will surprise you, bear their mother's absence with great philosophy: as I doubt not they would mine and turn all their little affection towards those who were about them and good to them: this may not be a pleasing reflection to a fond parent, but is certainly wisely designed by Providence for the happiness of the child."
Jane Austen
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George took a bemused, unsentimental view of children and delighted in the disparity between a parent's emotional expectation and the rational observation of the reality. He attributes the "great philosophy" of his three, four and five year old sons to the design of Providence, but he and Cassandra, themselves so philosophical and so impatient with people who were not, had perhaps already taught the children to follow their example.
Susannah herself might have benefited from a lesson or two. She was a complainer. In her next letter she moaned about not having pleasant neighbours, and Cassandra, back home from London, replied briefly but not unsympathetically: "Indeed my dear sister I do most sincerely pity your lonely situation, should have been most happy had fortune placed us in the same neighbourhood." But fortune hadn't, so that was that.
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