Jane Austen in Love
One of the most-frequent questions our expert tour guide, Dr Moira Rudolf is asked, is ‘Was Jane Austen ever in love, engaged or married?’ In this month’s Musing she provides the answer!
At the time that Persuasion’s Anne Elliot first met Captain Wentworth, ‘He was (…) a remarkably fine young man, with a great deal of intelligence, spirit and brilliancy; and Anne an extremely pretty girl, with gentleness, modesty, taste, and feeling. (…) They were gradually acquainted, and when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love. It would be difficult to say which had seen highest perfection in the other, or which had been the happiest; she, in receiving his declarations and proposals, or he in having them accepted.’
I have often wondered if – when Jane penned this – she had a sudden, vivid recollection of her youthful but serious flirtation with Tom Lefroy, the Irish nephew of her best friend Anne Lefroy with whom – despite their 25 year age gap – the 20-year old Jane had bonded over their shared love of literature, poetry, reading and theatre. Anne, an accomplished horsewoman and reassuring godmother-like figure was, I am certain, the model for the sensible, generously-intended Lady Russell who only had Anne Elliot’s best interests at heart.
Imagine the scene: Jane, who was then living in her childhood home, Steventon Rectory, Hampshire, pays a polite call to her neighbour, Anne at Ashe Rectory, some three miles distant, when she suddenly spots a vision of male beauty in the shape of Tom Lefroy, visiting his aunt en route to continuing his studies for the bar at London’s Lincoln’s Inn. Somehow over a few days crammed with parties and balls, Jane and he form an attachment. Her sister Cassandra is horrified. Tom has five sisters, each sillier than the last (which brings to mind some of Pride and Prejudice’s Bennet sisters) and, as the de facto head of his family, is obliged to provide for them. Jane has no dowry and Tom, having only just embarked on his legal career, is penniless. Cassandra is well aware that convention demands he ‘marries well’ to a lady of some financial standing.
Jane’s first meetings with Tom are adeptly re-imagined in the opening pages of Jessica Bull’s 2024 novel, Miss Austen Investigates (which I urge you to read), as is the later, fictional moment of truth when Anne Lefroy explains that a marriage could not take place: ‘They’re all dependent on him. I’m so very sorry. I wish it were otherwise … but it’s not’.
Jane makes light of this in a letter to Cassandra (9th/10th January 1796) in which she remarks that Cassandra and he share the same birthday, though not the same age, and comments on the previous night’s ball at Manydown Park, the home of her close friends, the Bigg sisters.
‘You scold me so much in the nice long letter which I have this moment received from you, that I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I have behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together. I can expose myself, however, only once more, because he leaves the country soon after next Friday, on which day we are to have a dance at Ashe after all. He is a very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man, I assure you. But as to our having ever met, except at the three last balls, I cannot say much;’
Whether Jane had hoped for an offer of marriage is unclear, but she continues – after a visit from Tom and his cousin, George – that Tom ‘has but one fault, which time will, I trust, entirely remove – it is that his morning coat is too light. He is a very great admirer of Tom Jones, and therefore wears the same coloured clothes, I imagine, which he did when he was wounded’.
This refers to Henry Fielding’s 1749 novel, The History of Tom Jones, jokingly implying, I think, that Tom Lefroy was wounded by Jane in the same way that his hero was while defending the honour of his beloved, Sophia Western.
In a letter (14th/15th January 1796), Jane adds:
‘Friday, …. At length the Day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, & when you receive this it will be over – My tears flow as I write, at the melancholy idea.’
The ironic tone might betray much greater heartbreak than Jane was prepared to admit, especially when she found out that her great friend Anne, had packed him off to Ireland for a holiday immediately afterwards and they never saw each other again. As for Tom, he married well and went on to enjoy a glittering legal career as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland. It is perhaps telling that when his first daughter was born, she was named Jane.
Jane’s friendship with Anne survived but I cannot believe that she appreciated her provision of a consolation prize in the shape of a clergyman, who may have been Dr Samuel Blackwell. Jane disliked him on sight, finding him pompous and annoying. Could he be the model for Pride and Prejudice’s Mr Collins? Further research is required!
By mid-1801, Jane, Cassandra and the Revd and Mrs Austen had made the bitterly resented move to Bath and were enjoying their summer holiday in Sidmouth while the landlord repainted the first floor of 4 Sydney Place. It was here that Jane met a mystery suitor (a never definitively identified clergyman of whom we know nothing), whom Cassandra thought ideally suited to Jane. Alas, he died suddenly just before they could be introduced to each other’s families.
Perhaps Jane was thinking of this as she described Persuasion’s Anne Elliot being approvingly noticed by Cousin Elliot in Lyme Regis:
‘She was looking remarkably well; her very regular, very pretty features, having the bloom and freshness of youth restored by the fine wind which had been blowing on her complexion, and by the animation of the eye which it had also produced. It was evident that the gentleman, [completely a gentleman in manner] admired her exceedingly.’
In December 1802 on a visit to Manydown Park, Hampshire, the home of her good friends, Elizabeth, Catherine and Alethea Bigg, Jane accepted a proposal from the friends’ awkward younger brother, Harris Bigg-Wither. However, after a sleepless night, she withdrew her consent. It is clear that, although she was flattered, she was not in love with him and, besides, she would have known that the responsibilities of running a household would make it impossible for her to concentrate on her real job, writing.
The sisters’ (who may well have egged on their brother to make Jane a real sister) friendship, survived this setback and it is touching that in Jane’s final weeks in Winchester, Elizabeth Heathcote (née Bigg), then living in Cathedral Close, provided emotional support to Jane and her beloved sister, Cassandra. Jane also provided advice on marriage to her niece, Fanny Knight, in at least three letters: 18th/19th and 30th November 1814 and again 20th/21st February 1817.
Jane is acknowledged to have been attractive, lively, entertaining, witty, an excellent dancer and self-confessed ‘desperate walker.’ She may not have married, but I remain certain that she was no novice to affairs of the heart and that love/friendship/family/neighbourly attachments/affection remain central to her novels.
