The wisdom of Jane Austen: an address delivered in Winchester Cathedral on Friday 10 October 2003.

Wheeler, Michael

"She openeth her mouth with wisdom and in her tongue is the law" of kindness."

(Proverbs 31.26)

I HOPE THAT MEMBERS OF JASNA feel warmly welcome, here in Winchester, as I have always felt amongst you in North America. What better way could there be to discover the nature of American hospitality than by staying with a JASNA host? What quicker way could there he to discover the variety in American states and cities than by addressing, one week, the New Orleans chapter (sorry, Norlins chapter), still exhilarated and in party mood after Mardi Gras, and the following week, the New York chapter, always ready with the most probing of questions, amidst the elegance of the Grolier Club? Thank you for some wonderful evenings.

It was in this diocese of the Church of England, in Steventon church, that the young Jane Austen listened to her father's sermons and followed the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, week in, week out. There she imbibed an eighteenth-century Anglicanism that was based upon Reason, that was suspicious of Evangelical Enthusiasm, and that placed a heavy emphasis upon conduct. Steventon church is an important Austen shrine, much visited by her worldwide fanclub.

Here in Winchester Cathedral, headquarters of the diocese, we are gathered at the most impressive of all the shrines to the Blessed Jane! For literary pilgrims, including members of the Jane Austen Society of North America, come here in droves and make straight for the north aisle, and the now famous ledger stone beneath which rest the physical remains of Jane Austen. But as we stand there, reading those familiar words, a question arises: Whose voice is this, addressing us over a space of almost two hundred years?

 In Memory of JANE AUSTEN, youngest daughter of the late
 Revd. GEORGE AUSTEN, formerly Rector of Steventon in this
 County. She departed this Life on the 18th. of July 1817, aged 41,
 after a long illness supported with the patience and the hopes of a
 Christian.

 The benevolence of her heart, the sweetness of her temper,
 and the extraordinary endowments of her mind obtained the
 regard of all who knew her, and the warmest love of her intimate
 connections.

 Their grief is in proportion to their affection, they know
 their loss to be irreparable, but in their deepest affliction they
 are consoled by a firm though humble hope that her charity,
 devotion, faith and purity have rendered her soul acceptable in the
 sight of her REDEEMER.

It is thought that these words were written by her favourite brother, Henry, who had recently been examined for ordination by the Bishop of Winchester, Brownlow North. Henry certainly seems to have taken charge after his sister's death, but on the matter of the wording he would most probably have consulted other members of that very close family of "intimate connections," including old Mrs. Austen, who still lived in the cottage at Chawton which had also been her daughters' home since 1809. We hear in the inscription the blended voices of a bereaved Christian family.

One hundred fifty years ago, in the 1850s, the Cathedral vergers (in Winchester spelt "vergers") were baffled when American visitors--yes, American visitors--asked for the whereabouts of Jane Austen's grave. What was special, they wondered, about this unknown lady? These days the virgers know precisely who Jane Austen was and where she is buried, and there are always cut flowers beside the Cathedral's most frequently visited tomb, specially organized by kind volunteers. These days the question on every visitor's lips is not Where is the grave? but Why does this inscription make no reference to her being a writer?

Well, first, it was perfectly normal to make no reference to a writer's calling on memorial stones: the same is true in the cases of Swift, George Herbert, and Dickens, for example. (1) Secondly; as in a funeral address, and indeed throughout the Burial Service that was said over her a week after her death, the emphasis is not upon her worldly achievements, but her spiritual gifts; not upon her fame in the world, but the sense of loss among those she loved; not upon the life that was lost, but the life that is to come. Thirdly, the beautiful, high-flown language, that might seem rather remote to us, reflects the style of the day in such a context. So does the intensity of the inscription.

The reference to God's judgment at the end of the inscription--"have rendered her soul acceptable in the sight of her REDEEMER"-- again reflects the religious spirit of her age, which was often informed by an acute sense of sin and of the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell. We have said one of her prayers this evening, and you see what I mean. As her brilliant novels also reveal, Jane Austen is one of our most searching moralists. But, of course, these serious themes provide the ground bass to the most subtle higher notes of delicious comic writing in the fiction.

The brass plaque on the wall adjacent to the grave was funded by the proceeds from the first full biography--the Memoir of 1870 by her nephew, the Revd. James Edward Austen-Leigh. It was designed by the architect Thomas Henry Wyatt, who had worked on Austen-Leigh's parish church at Bray. The wording immediately sets the record straight:

 JANE AUSTEN, known to many by her writings, endeared to her
 family by the varied charms of her Characters and ennobled by
 Christian faith and piety, was born at Steventon in the County of
 Hants Dec. xvi, MDCCLXXV, and buried in this Cathedral July
 xxiv, MDCCCXVII. "She openeth her mouth with wisdom and in
 her tongue is the law of kindness" (Prov. xxxi, v. xxvi).

Let's think for a moment about that most significant biblical text: "She openeth her mouth with wisdom and in her tongue is the law of kindness".

The wisdom books of the Jewish Bible, or "Old Testament" as Christians call it, are wonderfully rich and are generally neglected--until, that is, someone wants a quotation to attach to a writer. And never more appropriately than in the case of Jane Austen. The New English Bible translates some famous verses from Proverbs 8 like this: "You stupid people, understand what sense means. Listen! For I will speak clearly, you will have plain speech from me; for I speak nothing but truth and my lips detest wicked talk." Jane Austen knew that wisdom is "better than rubies," as the Authorized Version has it: "no jewels can match her." She knew, in the words of St. Paul, something of "the secrets of God."

I suspect that a meeting with Jane Austen would be rather daunting. She would see straight through you. She understood human motivation, human frailty, human goodness--inside out. She understood the follies and vanities of her own generation and thus of every generation. She knew her own limitations. What she said of heroines she also applied to herself: "pictures of perfection . . . make me sick & wicked." (2) She knew the world and lived in the world. She grounded her Christianity in ethics--our actions in the world. She is our great ironist, cunningly playing with the human language used in the world. But she was not quite of the world. I think she knew full well that the Gospel and the Church are finally against "the world"--against the hierarchies of "Society," against snobbishness, against materialism, against ambition at the expense of others.

Let me offer an example: the first chapter of her last completed novel, Persuasion, and that devastating critique of Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch Hall. "Vanity was the beginning and end of Sir Walter Elliot's character; vanity of person and of situation." This character is fixed and, in terms of human potential for growth, he is emotionally and spiritually dead. "Vanity was the beginning and end" of his character. For the first two chapters, the heroine of the novel, his daughter Anne, says nothing--an eloquent silence that speaks of her being regarded as a nobody within this deeply dysfunctional family of obsessive pomposity. When she finally does speak, in chapter 3, it is to present a view that is contrary to that of her father.

Sir Walter, you will remember, has over-stretched himself financially, keeping up appearances. He has to rent out his house, but cannot bear the idea of a mere naval officer taking it, however senior he may be. My dear, such men were often of "obscure birth." Worse, their appearance was so frightful, with their wrinkled skin, bronzed from years at sea. All this, when the navy had done so much to save England from invasion by Napoleon--a threat which, as Jane Austen knew all too well, from the experience of her brothers, had been very real. So Anne's quiet intervention in chapter 3 of Persuasion comes from the heart, not only of the character, but also of her creator:

 "The navy, I think, who have done so much for us, have at
 least an equal claim with any other set of men, for all the comforts
 and all the privileges which any home can give. Sailors work hard
 enough for their comforts, we must all allow."

Her father is of the world, worldly. His pride, his sell-esteem, will be dented, he thinks, by renting out the house that has been in his family for generations to a mere sailor. His "book of books" is not the Bible, but the Baronetage, where he found "occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one." Anne, on the other hand, takes no thought for herself--for the fact that she is about to lose her own home. She thinks of what her family might do, in a small way, to repay a debt of gratitude to men who have served king and country against Napoleon.

Jane Austen would have been surprised and amused to discover that, today, she is regarded as second only to Shakespeare among English writers. She would have been surprised and amused to hear that, in a building where the bones of Saxon kings and bishops lie, and which contains memorials to some other remarkable women, including Elizabeth Montagu, "queen of the bluestockings," who is buried here, Charlotte M. Yonge, Keble's prolific disciple, who is remembered in the Lady Chapel, and Mary Sumner, founder of the Mothers' Union, her grave is the most frequently visited. She would have been surprised and amused to hear that we have come together to celebrate her and to mark the 25th anniversary of an American organization, founded in her name, which has more chapters than there are weeks in the year. She would surely have been surprised and amused by Rudyard Kipling's poem entitled "Jane's Marriage," in which she is reunited in paradise with Captain Wentworth:

 Jane went to Paradise,
 That was only fair.
 Good Sir Walter followed her,
 And armed her up the stair.
 Henry and Tobias,
 And Miguel of Spain,
 Stood with Shakespeare at the top
 To welcome Jane--

 Then the Three Archangels
 Offered out of hand
 Anything in Heaven's gift
 That she might command.
 Azrael's eyes upon her,
 Raphael's wings above,
 Michael's sword against her heart,
 Jane said: "Love."

 Instantly the under-
 Standing Seraphim
 Laid their fingers on their lips
 And went to look for him.
 Stole across the Zodiac,
 Harnessed Charles's Wain,
 And whispered round the Nebulae
 "Who loved Jane?"

 In a private limbo
 Where none had thought to look,
 Sat a Hampshire gentleman
 Reading of a book
 It was called Persuasion
 And it told the plain
 Story of the love between
 Him and Jane.

 He heard the question,
 Circle Heaven through--Closed
 the book and answered:
 "I did--and do!"
 Quietly but speedily
 (As Captain Wentworth moved)
 Entered into Paradise
 The man Jane loved!

 Jane lies in Winchester
 Blessed be her shade;
 Praise the Lord for making her
 And her for all she made;
 And while the stones of Winchester--Or
 Milsom Street--remain,
 Glory, love and honour,
 Unto England's Jane.

NOTES

(1.) For further details concerning Jane Austen's death and burial, see my Jane Austen and Winchester Cathedral (Winchester: Friends of Winchester Cathedral, 2003). I am deeply indebted to Elizabeth Proudman for the research which she carried out during the preparation of the booklet.

(2.) Jane Austen's Letters, ed. Deirdre Le Faye, 3rd ed. (Oxford and New York: OUP, 1995), 335.

Professor Michael Wheeler is an independent author and lecturer, and Director of the Gladstone Project. He is currently working on the relationship between Catholicism and Protestantism in nineteenth-century English culture. He has lectured in fifteen different countries and frequently visits the USA.