A Memoir of Jane Austen

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xxvi
Introduction
Godmersham, the Knights, and other Kent associations.
‘[B]efore one can thoroughly understand and feel at home with
the people of whom Jane Austen writes . . . one should know
something of the history of Godmersham.’ 16
Competition to shape the record also came in another form,
from Frank Austen’s daughter, Catherine Austen Hubback
(1818–77), who had already stolen a march on the senior branch
of the family. Aunt Cassandra frequently stayed with Frank, since
1828 married to her long-time companion Martha Lloyd, and
during these visits would read and discuss Jane’s manuscript writings
with his family. In 1850 Catherine Hubback had published a
novel, The Younger Sister, with a dedication ‘To the memory of
her aunt, the late Jane Austen’. The first five chapters are based
quite closely on the Austen fragment ‘The Watsons’, and it
appears that Mrs Hubback simply remembered the opening,
from Cassandra’s retelling, and completed it. Writing to her
brother on 8 August 1862, Anna Lefroy fears that their Hubback
cousin, now with several more novels to her credit, is ready to do
the same with the fragment known in the family as ‘Sanditon’.
‘The Copy [of ‘Sanditon’] which was taken, not given, is now at
the mercy of M rs . Hubback, & she will be pretty sure to make use
of it as soon as she thinks she safely may.’ 17 Not only did Anna
Lefroy resent this appropriation by the lesser novelist of Aunt
Jane’s voice, she was now the legal owner of the ‘Sanditon’ fragment.
Of all her family correspondents Anna, herself a would-be
novelist, could claim to have had the deepest fictional communing
with Aunt Jane, as letters included in Austen-Leigh’s Memoir
attest. It was, after all, with Anna that Aunt Jane discussed her
views on novel-writing and, in any case, Catherine was born only
after Jane’s death. Here, then, is another reason why, when the
Memoir was enlarged for a second edition, it sought to place some
mark on the manuscript writings as well as the life, though as
Lord Brabourne would tetchily observe in his edition of the Letters,
the autograph copy of ‘Lady Susan’ belonged to his mother,
16
Letters of Jane Austen, ed. Brabourne, vol. i. pp. xi–xiii and 6.
17
HRO, MS 23M93/86/3c-118(ii), Hampshire Record Office, the Austen-Leigh
Papers.