Becoming Jane Austen
The True Love Story That Inspired
the Classic Novels
by John Spence
Part of a continuing series.
There was another aspect to the situation that the Austens, flushed with the recent providential good fortune of their son Edward, would not have overlooked: a childless widow with £6000 might take a fancy to one of the girls and decide to make her the heir to that fortune. The possibility was fairly remote - after all, Jane Cooper was the obvious choice to inherit since she was Mrs. Cawley's niece - but then Dr. Cooper was a rich man and already able to provide his daughter with a handsome dowry. The Austens had nothing to lose by sending the girls to Mrs. Cawley. They would get more instruction than they received in the busy Steventon household and they would have the company of their cousin, whom they adored. The plan seemed to offer definite benefits to everyone involved and to have the possibility of even greater ones if Mrs. Cawley became attached to one or both of the Austen girls. It must have looked like a very sensible arrangement to the parents, but thirty years later Jane Austen gives a hint as to what her feelings were when she was sent away to Mrs. Cawley. She was not happy to leave her family.
In 1813, only a few month after she had finished writing Mansfield Park, Jane recognized that the situation of her own childhood was about to be repeated with her brother Charles' daughter Cassy. Charles, a naval officer, and his family were living on board his ship at Sheerness, but Cassy was often made seasick by the winter storms. Jane's sister Cassandra suggested that Charles and his wife send the child to stay with her aunts, but Cassy did not want to go, and Jane wrote to Cassandra concerning the plan that "the chief, indeed the only difficulty with Mama (Charles' wife) is a very reasonable one, the Child's being very unwilling to leave them. When it was mentioned to her, she did not like the idea of it at all." Jane knew that the word "reasonable" held powerful sway over her sister.
Jane Austen
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But for Cassandra feelings did not weigh much in the balance; she judged by the commonsense convenience to Cassy and her parents. Jane knew her sister's tenacity, and when she heard a few weeks later that Charles and his family were going to spend Christmas with his mother and sisters, Jane urged Cassandra, "do not force poor Cass to stay if she hates it."
In 1783 her own parents had not considered her being unwilling to leave them a "reasonable" difficulty. The reasonable thing was for Jane to go to Mrs. Cawley's. Mrs. Cawley was not just the sister of Mrs. Austen's brother-in-law, she was a life-long acquaintance, having grown up with Mrs. Austen in the neighbourhood of Harpsden. Moreover, James was in Oxford and would be able to keep an eye on his sisters. True, Jane was very young to be going away to school, even to such a casual arrangement as Mrs. Cawley's but sometimes pupils even younger than seven were sent to Steventon. Jane would become better educated; she might even become an heiress, in a modest way.
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