Becoming Jane Austen
The True Love Story That Inspired
the Classic Novels
by John Spence
Part of a continuing series.
Susannah herself might have benefited from a lesson or two. She was a complainer. In her next letter she moaned about not having pleasant neighbours, and Cassandra, back home from London, replied briefly but not unsympathetically: "Indeed my dear sister I do most sincerely pity your lonely situation, should have been most happy had fortune placed us in the same neighbourhood." But fortune hadn't so that was that.
Susannah held to her theme, saying she knew the Austens put off a visit to Kent because the Walter's neighbours were not worth meeting. This time Cassandra replied more bluntly:
I wish my dear brother and sister Walter were not more than thirty instead of eighty miles from us, for believe me 'tis the distance, not the place you live in, which prevents my visiting you so often as I could wish. For your own sake I wish you were removed from the parsonage, as I think you would be happier any where else, but as to myself it is a matter of indifference. I know and care so very little about your neighbours, that they would never prevent my coming, as my visit would be to you, not to them.
Jane Austen
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She set Susannah right: Susannah was attributing her own feeling about her neighbours to the Austens and, even worse, confusing reason with feeling. The truth of why the Austens did not go to visit the Walters in Kent was rational, not emotional. Kent was too far to too.
In fact, on the rational side, Cassandra could have said a lot more: it wasn't just distance that kept them away from Kent; they had three small children, and she was pregnant with her fourth child; the Austens were relatively poor and George had a profession that demanded his time and energies. In the light of these facts, Cassandra's only mentioning distance seems almost delicate and reticent.
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