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

by John Spence

Leigh-Perrot had married in 1764 but in 1779 he and his wife were still childless, a fact the Austens must have noted with some satisfaction as the years passed. His parents took for granted that James would be his uncle's heir if Leigh-Perrot had no children.

The possibility marked James out as the potential benefactor to his brothers and sisters. But Providence, as the Austens would have called it, is full of surprises. James' younger brother Edward, the third son, was destined for the role. The same year that James went to Oxford, Thomas Knight, Mr. Austen's cousin and son of the owner of the Steventon estate, called at the parsonage during his honeymoon. At the age of forty-four he had just married twenty-six-year old Catherine Knatchbull. The Knights took an immediate liking to twelve-year-old Edward and invited him to accompany them on the rest of their wedding journey. This incident has an inescapable air of oddness about it - as if the Knights already knew they would be childless and came to Steventon shopping, as it were, for a son. After this suspicious beginning, the Knights often invited Edward to Godmersham, their estate in Kent. The one sent their coachman to Hampshire with a pony for Edward to ride all the way back to Kent.

Three of his brothers were at home when the pony was led up to the parsonage and presented to Edward. The youngest, Charles, was probably only a year or two old, but Frank was five or six, and at about this time became determine to have a pony of his own. It passed into family lore that at the age of seven the high-spirited and ingenious Frank managed to buy himself a pony for a little over a pound, rode to the hounds in a pink coat made from his mother's scarlet woolen wedding dress, and after two seasons sold the pony for a profit. But it was Henry, who in old age remembered the pony the Knights sent to Edward. At nine or ten years old he would have seen more than the pony itself. He didn't want just the pony; he wanted the whole way of life it signified.

Henry was considered by his father the most intelligent of the boys and by his sister Jane the most amusing and charming. When Henry and Edward were children Mrs. Austen remarked that Henry appeared to be the elder because he was so tall and Edward so small. The clever and charming Henry must have felt a strong pang of jealousy, even a bitter sense of injustice, in seeing his brother chosen to be made rich. Perhaps it was when the pony was lead up that Henry first felt stir in him the worldly ambition that was to be the great driving force of his life. He had something of the spark that had motivated his aunt Phila and his great uncle Francis, he had a sense that he was meant to be rich.

Jane Austen

Edward spent more and more time at Godmersham, and Mr. Austen worried that his son was falling behind in his studies. But the shrewd Mrs. Austen perceived that this was the moment when learning had to give way to money. She advised her husband to let the boy go to his cousins. It was a brilliant move. Old Mr. Knight died in 1780, and two or three years later his still childless son and daughter-in-law formally adopted Edward and made him their heir. The Knights had the highest regard for all the Austens although they adopted Edward. Thomas Knight left his estates, if Edward died without children, to the eldest surviving Austen son. This virtually ensured that one of the boys would come into the Knight fortune. In effect, Thomas Knight left his estates to the Steventon Austens.

At a stroke, James's possible inheritance from his uncle Leigh-Perrot became less important, at least as far as the good of the Steventon family was concerned. The Knights were much richer than the Leigh-Perrots; Edward would be the making of his whole family. The turn of events was invigorating. Henry, the family planned, would follow James to Oxford in the course of time, would be ordained, and Edward would purchase a living for him.