Becoming Jane Austen
The True Love Story That Inspired
the Classic Novels
by John Spence
Part of a continuing series.
Jane soon discovered a new pleasure at home, a friendship with Anne Lefroy at neighbouring Ashe parsonage. Anne was not a playmate, a little girl of Jane's age. She was the thirty-four-year-old wife of the rector, George Lefroy. They had come to live at Ashe with their two young children in May while Jane and Cassandra were with Mrs. Cawley. The Lefroys' daughter was four years younger than Jane, and though Jane was fond of Lucy it was the mother who became her valued friend. Mrs. Lefroy was an ideal that can be discerned behind the faults and imperfections of all of Jane Austen's heroines. Jane expressed this ideal in a sketch of Mrs. Lefroys character in a poem she wrote after her friend's death many years later:
Jane Austen
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I see her here with all her smiles benign
Her looks of eager love, her accents sweet,
That voice and countenance almost divine.
Expression, harmony, alike complete.
Listen! It is not sound alone, 'tis sense,
'Tis genius, taste and tenderness of soul.
'Tis genuine warmth of heart without pretense.
And purity of mind that crowns the whole.
In Jane's eyes, Anne Lefroy embodied a harmony and balance of sense and sensibility, intellect and heart, reason and feeling. This is too vague and generalized for us to form a clear picture of Mrs. Lefroy, but one thing is quite specific: she singled out the child Jane as an object of particular interest - "her partial favour from my earliest years", as Jane says in her poem. Mrs. Lefroy's "partiality" was not just flattering; it was an important affirmation to a child who still lacked confidence and self-assurance. And they shared a love of literature.
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