Stephanie Barron: Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House

This book is dedicated with love to my uncle,

Charles Cornelius Sibre,

A Heart of Oak

Who has sailed many a voyage with Nelson's Navy

From the comfort of his armchair

Louisa … burst forth into raptures of admiration and delight on the character of the navy — their friendliness, their brotherli-ness, their openness, their uprightness; protesting that she was convinced of sailors having more worth and warmth than any other set of men in England; that they only knew how to live, and they only deserved to be respected and loved.

— Jane Austen,

Persuasion,

The Oxford Illustrated Edition, page 99

WHEN JANE AUSTEN CREATED THE CHARACTER OF Louisa Musgrove in her final novel, Persuasion, she endowed the young woman with a “fine naval fervour” that present readers might trace to the author's experience of the port towns of Hampshire between 1806 and 1809, a period of considerable naval warfare in which her two brothers — one a post captain and the other a master and commander — were engaged. Austen took up residence in Southampton in the autumn of 1806, but her knowledge of the Royal Navy began as early as her seventh year, when she was sent briefly to school in Southampton with her sister, Cassandra, and cousin Jane Cooper. A few years later, elder brother Frank left home for a stint at the Royal Naval Academy in Portsmouth, and the Austens' collective naval fervor was unleashed in earnest. The fortunes of Frank and younger brother Charles would occupy a large part of Jane's energy and correspondence throughout her life. Both men ended their careers as admirals — Frank, as Admiral of the Fleet Jane and the Prisoner of Wool House is the sixth of the manuscripts to be collated and edited from a collection of papers discovered in 1992 in the cellar of a Georgian mansion outside of Baltimore. I find the present account to be one of the most fascinating I have been privileged to handle — because it places Jane Austen firmly in the midst of a world she knew intimately, admired profoundly, and cherished for its domestic virtues as much as its military importance. Her observation of naval men — their preoccupations, their endurance, their zest for hard living — is rife in these pages, as it is in her two “naval” novels, Mansfield Park and Persuasion. In this account, we may trace her steps through the streets of the port towns she would revive years later in fiction, and find the originals of Austen's characters among the naval men of her acquaintance.

In editing this volume, I found several works of significant aid. Deirdre Le Faye's edition of Austen's letters (Jane Austens Letters, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995) was, as always, invaluable. A Sea of Words by Dean King (Henry Holt, New York, 1995) was a useful lexicon for translating the terms of art relevant to Nelson's navy. J. H. and E. C. Hubback, descendants of Francis Austen and the authors of Jane Austen s Naval Brothers (Meckler Publishing, Westport, CT, 1986, reprinted), are greatly to be thanked. Naval Surgeon: The Voyages of Dr. Edward H Cree, Royal Navy, as Related in His Private Journals, 1837–1856 (Michael Levien, editor; E. P. Dutton, New York, 1981) was absorbing and informative. Band of Brothers: Boy Seamen in the Royal Navy (David Phillipson; Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, 1996) enlightened me regarding the Young Gentlemen at sea during the late Georgian period. Men of War: Life in Nelson's Navy by Patrick O'Brian (W. W. Norton & Co., New York, 1974) offered a pithy and lighthearted survey of fighting ships. But nothing compares to the tome that is The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy (general editor, J. R. Hill; Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995). If time permitted, I would be reading it still.

I am deeply grateful for the generosity and scholarly depth of Dr. Clive Caplan and William C. Kelley, members of the Jane Austen Society of North America, who shared their knowledge, resources, and enthusiasm for Austen's naval connections with me in conversations and letters over the past few years. The “fine naval fervour” of Austen's most intelligent fans is a constant inspiration.

STEPHANIE BARRON

Monday,

23 February 1807

Southampton

HAD I SUFFERED THE MISFORTUNE TO BE BORN A MAN, I should have torn myself early from the affections of my family and all the comforts of home, and thrown my fate upon the mercy of the seas.

That fresh salt slap, as bracing as a blow; the bucking surge of wave upon wave, a riderless herd never to be bribed or charmed into complaisance; the endless stretch curbed by no horizon, that must unfold an infinite array of wonders before the eyes — exotic climes, benighted peoples, lost cities set like rubies among the desert chasms — oh, to sail the seas as my brothers have done before me! Free of obligation or care beyond the safety of oneself and one's men — free of the confines of home and earth-bound hopes and all the weight of convention like an anchor about one's neck!

Casting my eye across the extent of Southampton Water to the New Forest opposite — verdure indistinct behind a scrim of morning fog — I shuddered from suppressed excitement as much as from the chill rising off the sea. From my position on Southampton's Water Gate Quay I might dip my hand for a time in the cold current of English history. Southampton Water, and the Solent that runs between the mainland and the Isle of Wight just south, have ever been the point of departure for great adventure — for risk, and high daring, and fortunes made or lost. Here the troops of King Henry embarked for the battle of Agincourt; here the Puritan colonists hauled anchor for the New World. It is impossible to stand within sight and sound of the heaving grey waters, and be deaf to their siren call; and not for Jane Austen to resist the force that has bewitched so many Hearts of Oak.

A forest of masts bobbed and swayed under my gaze: men o'war newly-anchored from Portsmouth; merchant vessels and whalers from the far corners of the Atlantic; Indiamen, rich and fat with the spoils of Bombay; and a thousand smaller craft that skimmed the surface of the Solent like a legion of water beetles. Hoarse cries of boatmen and the creak of straining ropes resounded across the waves; a snatch of sea-chanty, an oath swiftly quelled. The smell of brine and pitch and boiling coffee wafted to my reddened nostrils. This was life, in all its unfettered boldness — and these were Englishmen at their most honest and true: a picture of glory enough to drive a thousand small boys from their warm beds, and send them barefoot to the likeliest ship, hopeful and unlettered, ill-fed and mendacious as to right age and family, for the sake of a creaking berth among the rats and the bilge-water below. Were I returned in spirit to the days of my girlhood, a child of seven sent to school in Southampton — I might be tempted to steal my brothers' Academy uniforms, and stow away myself.

“Are you quite certain you wish to accompany me to Portsmouth, Jane?” enquired my brother Frank anxiously at my elbow.