A Memoir of Jane Austen

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xlvi
Introduction
Esten, Charles’s daughter, and was considered by Anna Lefroy to
be ‘hideously unlike’. Writing to her cousin on 18 December
1869, immediately after publication of the Memoir, Cassy Esten
expresses her relief at how the picture has turned out: ‘I think the
portrait is very much superior to any thing that could have been
expected from the sketch it was taken from.–– It is a very pleasing,
sweet face,–– tho’, I confess, to not thinking it much like the
original;–– but that, the public will not be able to detect.’ Caroline
records something similar, telling her brother ‘there is a look
which I recognise as hers–– and though the general resemblance is
not strong, yet as it represents a pleasant countenance it is so far a
truth–– and I am not dissatisfied with it.’ 35 It is tempting to find in
the story of the portraits a lesson for the biography reader.
Other Family Recollections
One of the purposes of this collection of family biographies is to
help the reader of Jane Austen’s life recover the texts and contexts
from which it continues to be rewritten; and to help
reconsider the steps by which we have moved from a reticent to a
revelatory view of the individual life. Because of what we can now
see it does not say, the early family record can also help us gain
critical understanding of our own less perceptibly partial
accounts. Recognized or not, Austen-Leigh’s Memoir stands as
pre-text for the large-scale Austen biography industry of the
twentieth century. His sisters’ less mediated recollections
interpellate his narrative to provide its most particular, unshaped
moments. Situated within his expansive prose, the vivid illuminations
of their childhood memories, in themselves profoundly
located, stand out as sharp dislocations–– texts out of context.
Caroline’s is the more consciously crafted account. To her we owe
the most intimate details of Jane Austen’s daily routine at
Chawton–– how she looked at that time; her piano-playing; her
35
NPG, RWC/HH, from typescript of a letter from Anna to James Edward, ‘July 20’
[1869], unfoliated; NPG, RWC/HH, fo. 15, typescript of part of a letter from Cassy E.
Austen to JEAL, 18 December 1869; and Appendix, p. 192.