Following the Trail of Jane Austen's Letters

THE 1998 FILM Le Violin Rouge follows the trail of an acoustically perfect violin through three hundred years of existence from its creation in Italy to its present disposition in an auction house in Montreal. This rare and highly valued violin makes its way from Italy to Austria to England, traveling as far as China, before finally emerging in Canada. As I consider Jane Austen's actual handwritten letters--rare and highly valued as well, I wonder how far they have traveled, what hands have held them, and where they presently may be found. Most readers who have delved into Austen's own life beyond her novels eventually discover her letters. For those fortunate enough to have seen the original letters themselves, the privilege of close contact with the great novelist herself is truly thrilling. A relatively scant cache of letters and fragments of letters (both originals and copies)--161--survive. Even if the Austen reader gets only as far as reading one of the many recent biographies, that reader knows that Cassandra, Jane's sister, burned many of Jane's letters before Cassandra's own death in 1845. One hundred sixty-one letters from Jane Austen compare with about twice that number from Frances Burney (who spent a great deal of the latter part of her long life just organizing her correspondence), over five hundred letters by Charlotte Smith (another novelist Austen admired), mostly trying to get money to support her large family, and ten volumes of letters by Sir Walter Scott. (Scott saved some six thousand letters which he himself received.) Because so few of Jane Austen's letters survive (and new ones are unlikely to be discovered), they are the more valuable. How they were separated and dispersed, eventually finding homes far from her native Hampshire, is a singularly interesting story to those who value first-hand evidence of what Jane Austen found worth writing about in her own life. Like the journey of the Red Violin, the journey of Austen's letters fascinates those who like a good detective story. Here we will trace some of Jane Austen's letters from Cassandra and other recipients to their latest homes, and, as we have more than one irreplaceable object to trace, we have many multiple storylines to follow. But first, let us begin with a quiz, the brief answer immediately following the question, a more detailed explanation later. * Who cut the signature or parts of Jane Austen's letters and sent them to Austen admirers? (Answer: Francis Austen, Jane's brother, among other relatives.) * Who sold Jane Austen's letters and for how much? (Answer: This depends. In May of 2005, a fragment of a letter advertised by Bauman's Rare Books for $7500, sold. To whom and for how much? Bauman's would not disclose. However, one representative of the company explained that, unlike an auction house, Bauman's generally sells such an item for very close to the asking price.) * Where might an Austen admirer travel to find the largest group of original Austen letters in the world today--more than five times the number gathered in any other single place? (Answer: With fifty-one, the J. Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City.) * What do Sandy Lerner, Jerome Kern, Amy Lowell, J. P. Morgan and William Randolph Hearst all have in common? (Answer: They all once owned one or more of Jane Austen's letters.) * Where did the National Library of Scotland get the money to pay for the Jane Austen letters, which the library recently acquired? (Answer: As part of a 17.7 million [pounds sterling] lottery grant.) But we should start at the beginning, in this case, 1817, the year Jane Austen died. Cassandra Austen had saved the bulk of her sister's letters, bequeathing ninety-four, of which seventy-seven survive (Modert xxi), although her brothers, nieces, and nephews had received and saved letters of their own. Unlike Charlotte Smith, Jane Austen sent only a few business letters, but she did write to publishers, and she did have friends beyond her family to whom she wrote, one being Miss Sharp, the governess of her brother's children at Godmersham. …

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