Pence and Sensibility
CHARLES KEEN Jane Austen: The Banker’s Sister By E.J. Clery Biteback £20 Oldie price £13.46 inc p&p A vicar’s daughter, just about managing on her allowance of £20 per annum: not a prime minister in the making, but one of the best novelists of all time. Jane Austen, with help from her brother Henry, just managed to become famous. She earned useful additions to her income from her books, but the sums were meagre and hard earned. Having been cheated at her first attempt, Susan (published after her death as Northanger
Abbey), and paid a pitiful sum for her next, Pride and Prejudice, she adopted the more chancy practice of paying the publisher commission and carrying the costs herself.
Emma Clery tells the story of her life in stages marked by the books she wrote and their publication. She brings into particular focus the close relationship between Jane and Henry, a kindred spirit, who recognised the quality of her writing, and was a bold entrepreneur himself. Following service with the militia, he became a military agent, which led him into private banking. He then moved into London correspondent banking, before becoming Receiver of Taxes in the county of Oxford. And from there to bankruptcy.
Clery, a Professor of English at Southampton University and an expert on Austen, describes in some detail the financial scene in Austen’s time, the national deficit brought on by the Napoleonic Wars, the inflation caused by paper money supplanting bullion and the precarious existence of small country banks, unsupervised and over-dependent on the sole business of agriculture.
A short-lived peace in 1814 freed up trade with France and America, bringing the price of food down, and taking farmers and their bankers down with it. Henry survived until 1816, but was toppled by bad debts, many from Whig grandees, whose influence he had sought, most notably the Earl of Moira, distinguished soldier and statesman, but persistent debtor, and then GovernorGeneral of India, who defaulted on a £6,000 loan.
Henry had loved Jane’s stories from childhood days, when she had entertained her family with romantic tales. He found publishers, and, in the early days, underwrote the costs of
‘commission’ publishing. The two were close in every way. Within this close circle, Henry’s wife, Eliza, was a cousin; a more coquettish girl than Jane, widow of a guillotined French count, goddaughter (some say daughter) of Warren Hastings of India.
We get to know a wide circle of relations and friends in this book. Many share characteristics and even names with players in the novels. It is a wide cast, and the reader needs to pay close attention. No one in the novels is a copy, but features are replicated, and Clery picks them out. Henry is a bit like Henry Crawford (from Mansfield Park), without Crawford’s vices; and so on. At times, one could be forgiven for forgetting if one is reading about a real or a fictitious person. It can be confusing.
Since this book is about Jane and her banker brother, it is right that it addresses the view of many that Jane is excessively interested in money. Had I been a girl in 1800, with no fortune and no prospects, unless by marrying a man with a private income, I should have been very interested indeed in money, in who had it and how much, and what would be a sufficiency.
Jane, it is true, seems quite ‘hardnosed’. In a letter to her niece, Fanny, about whether she will risk a second edition of Mansfield Park, she admits, ‘Tho’ I like praise as well as anybody, I like what Edward calls pewter too.’ Most of the men in the novels have an income figure attached to their name, and the women are quick to find it out and rate them accordingly.
Professor Clery’s book unites Austen with her time and her world, and finds both reflected in her writings. She salutes the ‘realism inflected by irony’ of the works. She quotes the damning ‘faint praise’ of Walter Scott, who complained of lack of ardour in the plot of Emma – a review which damaged sales of the book. Which author would one rather turn to now?
To many of us, Austen’s disciplined control of emotion, clarity of diction and irony harnessed to humanity put her in the top rank. Her life, as told by Clery, adds to the picture.