Jane Austen by Valerie Grosvenor Myer Page B

Very penurious correspondents sometimes ‘double-crossed’ their letters. In November 1813 Jane received a ‘black and red letter’ from her brother Charles, written in black and crossed in red for clarity. Envelopes were hardly known and letters consisted of single sheets, folded and sealed with a thin wafer. Folding and sealing were necessary skills and while some people’s letters were loose and untidy, Jane’s were perfectly symmetrical, with the wafer always correctly placed. Although her own handwriting was neat and attractive, she thought it inferior to Cassandra’s. ‘I took up your letter again,’ she wrote to her sister, ‘and was struck by the prettiness of the hand, so small and so neat! I wish I could get as much on to a sheet of paper.’ Another time she wrote, ‘I am quite angry with myself for not writing closer; why is my alphabet so much more sprawly than yours?’ Ladies did not write ‘copperplate’ roundhand: that was for ledger clerks. ‘Ladies’ hand’, as it came later to be known, was a pointed style, enabling the reader to identify it as a woman’s writing.
    Jane was clever with her hands in general. ‘An artist cannot do anything slovenly,’ she wrote lightly in a letter. She excelled at spillikins, a game in which each player takes pieces of wood off a pile with a metal hook without disturbing the others.
    From her mother Jane learned the then essentially practical skills of needlework, including embroidery. She was specially good at overcasting and became expert at satin stitch, no easy accomplishment. A sampler made when she was twelve can be seen at Chawton Cottage, as can a patchwork quilt, as exquisite in design as in workmanship. Made, of course, entirely by hand, this full-sized quilt, whose weight cannot be negligible, is assembled with tiny, almost invisible, stitches of perfect evenness and tension. Mrs Austen and her daughters were expert needlewomen indeed. Jane refers to collecting the pieces of material for it in a letter of May 1811. As an adult, Jane made many of her own clothes and on one occasion had to take an outfit botched by a dressmaker to pieces and remodel it herself. Sometimes she wished it were possible to buy clothes ready-made. In her day all clothes were sewn by hand by tailors and dressmakers, some more skilful than others. She preferred quality to quantity, but was forced to count her pennies.
    Women rarely learned Latin or Greek, then the basis of male education. ‘Literacy’ at the time meant mastery of classical literature, not the ability to read English. The rare women who had shared their brothers’ lessons in the ancient languages, before the boys were sent away to school, and who found these studies of interest, were advised to keep quiet about it. Perhaps Mr Austen, who taught Latin to his own boys as well as to paying pupils, and cared enough about his daughters’ education to send them to boarding school, included them in these lessons, but if so Jane’s brothers do not mention it. She knew enough Latin to write 'Ex dono mei patris' (my father’s gift) in the manuscript book her father gave her when she was fifteen. Wit was dreaded in women and clever women learned to keep their tongues under control. As the narrator
of Northanger Abbey
remarks, ‘A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.’ Jane was well read in English literature: her favourite writers were William Cowper in verse and Dr Samuel Johnson in prose. Her copy of Johnson’s
Rasselas
, volume two, survives, with her signature in it. She had read Henry Fielding’s picaresque and outspoken novel
Tom Jones
, but preferred Samuel Richardson’s
Sir Charles Grandison
, which she knew extremely well. She was familiar with Shakespeare and Milton, and in
Persuasion
Byron’s poetry is mentioned. There was not much money to spare but the Austens always bought books.
    Jane, like her character Fanny Price, was a