Diana Shervington
Descendant of the Austen family who was eagerly sought out by ‘Janeites’ from around the world
DIANA SHERVINGTON, who has died aged 99, carried the torch of Jane Austen through much of the 20th century. Her grandmothers, Louisa and Elizabeth, were sisters, and granddaughters of Edward, Jane Austen’s brother. He had been adopted by wealthy relatives and in 1812 had taken their surname, Knight.
Family tradition states that one woman in every generation of the Austen/knight family bears a striking relation to “Aunt Jane”, an accolade that Diana Shervington carried with relish. Dorothy Darnell, founder in 1940 with her sister Beatrix of the Jane Austen Society, painted a delightful portrait of Diana as Jane Austen.
When Diana was a child, interest in Jane Austen was not as strong as it is now. Nevertheless, the author’s presence was always around and she was given a beautiful set of the six novels when she was 15. Meanwhile, her grandmothers would recall stories they had heard from friends and family who had known Jane.
Diana Shervington was too busy raising her family to be much involved in the early days of the Jane Austen Society, but she drove the Misses Darnell, who were neighbours in Hampshire, to committee meetings. For many years Diana’s parents cared for elderly Aunt Flo, the wife of one of Jane Austen’s great-nephews, who had inherited many of Jane’s possessions. These were in turn passed to Diana and her mother.
The BBC’S 1995 production of Pride and Prejudice, starring Colin Firth, brought forth an explosion of interest in Jane Austen and the Regency era. Austen fans from around the world now sought out Diana Shervington, with her bright clothing and habit of producing from her bag a glove or a bright pink cockade that had once belonged to the author. She would often greet them on the Cobb at Lyme, where Louisa Musgrove took a tumble in Persuasion, Diana Shervington’s favourite of the Austen canon, her colourful hats and shrill, piping laughter brightening even the dampest of days.
While Diana Shervington was in her element amid such attention, she was disapproving of some of the more outré interpretations of Austen’s novels. “The books and films need to be kept in check,” she told Jane
Austen’s Regency World magazine in 2016. “They are too sexy. There is plenty of sexiness in the writing. It doesn’t need any more adding.”
She was born Diana Elizabeth Bradford on January 10 1919, the second of three children of Lieutenant-colonel Edward Austen Bradford, DSO, and his wife Margaret (Maggie) née Hardy. At the time of her birth the family was in Ireland, where her father was involved in trying to curb the Uprising.
In 1920 her parents took a farm on the Isle of Man, where they kept shire horses and she and her older sister Felicity learnt to tickle trout, carrying the fish home on their shoulders. Occasionally they caught a salmon.
By time she was 10 they were living on Edward Knight’s estate in Chawton, Hampshire, where Jane Austen had spent her last years (1809-17). Diana was educated locally before studying at St Mary’s, Calne, where she excelled in the arts in general and music in particular. She played piano and cello and recalled Sir Malcolm Sargent and Ralph Vaughan Williams visiting to conduct the school orchestra. Back home she played through the music books that Jane Austen had written out by hand.
During the Second World War her sister was a pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary, but she recalled how “mummy wasn’t having both her daughters flying”. Duly grounded, Diana – as Sergeant Bradford of the WAAF – found herself in charge of six young men in Harrow at “Z”, the telephone exchange that connected Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt.
Once, a young man turned up claiming that he had been sent to mend the equipment. Diana, however, had her suspicions and reported him. When he invited her on a date she was ordered by her superiors to do whatever he asked. “He drove me to Soho, not a nice area,” she recalled. Before her honour could be compromised, the man was arrested. As he was jailed for 12 years for trying to plant a bug, he declared that, on his release, he would kill her. “For years I was worried sick,” she said.
Her next encounter with a young man was more fortuitous. She was living in West Sussex, caring for her sick mother. One day she was helping in a military canteen when the air-raid siren sound. She was thrown into a slit trench by Rupert Shervington, a young sergeant, who threw himself on top of her. Moments later German aircraft opened fire: three men were killed and several injured. “So Rupert saved my life,” she said.
Despite Sergeant Shervington’s heroism, Diana’s parents were not convinced that a non-commissioned officer was a suitable match for their daughter. Eventually Diana got her way and the couple were married at St Mary’s, Paddington, in February 1941.
Rupert, who became a captain with the Royal Engineers, spent much of the rest of the war in Burma and India, not seeing their eldest daughter until she was three; afterwards he worked his way up the hierarchy of British Railways, eventually managing the LNER line from King’s Cross to Edinburgh. “He got called out so often in the night, and I had to drive him to the stations, that I really feel I deserve my free tickets,” she insisted more than 30 years after his retirement.
Meanwhile, Diana Shervington brought up their family and trained as a potter at St Albans School of Art.
She produced stoneware and ceramics, which she sold at a gallery in Blakeney, Norfolk, twice a year. Later, Rupert began to take art classes after work and, after taking early retirement, studied art full-time. He had brought back from the war a large amount of ivory, which he felt was the perfect material to work with. One of his carvings was a three-inch brooch of a naked Diana, which she wore with pride into her late nineties. “I modelled for it naked in the garage,” she recalled just before her 97th birthday. “We had to lock ourselves in the garage to make sure the children didn’t see. It was freezing.”
The couple moved to Lyme Regis in 1986, ostensibly for the better quality of clay for her pottery enterprise. Rupert taught art locally and the couple kept Jacob sheep and worshipped at Uplyme Church. She was also increasingly sought out by “Janeites” from around the world, anxious to press the flesh of the closest descendant of the Austen family to Jane.
Rupert died in 2003 and Diana Shervington is survived by their son and two daughters.
Diana Shervington, born January 10 1919, died July 24 2018