Persuaded: Jane's Secret

The brother Austen relationally abandoned

Original image found here

Austen came from a large family, and as with any bigger clan, they had their favorites and their feuds. They also shared a secret—one so well kept that it’s hard to find much information on it, or rather, on him.

This week’s newsletter features some difficult material—at least in my opinion. I’ll caution you before you read on that some aspects of my own life make this topic one I have opinions about. Some facts of history are simply difficult to swallow. George Austen’s life is one of those.

Jane was one of eight children, although the accurate number of her siblings can be hard to find, as many list her as one of seven. This is a common mistake because Jane’s first biographer, her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh, left one sibling out of his writings.

George, named after their father, was Austen’s lost brother. He lived a long life only a few miles from the rest of his family, but he was entirely removed from them. Perhaps “forgotten” brother fits better than “lost.”

The second oldest of the Austen clan, George was said to have suffered from seizures extremely early, and he had a mental disability, although the details of that are unclear. There is evidence he was possibly deaf, and this was interpreted as mental deficiency, but diagnoses in these days were vague. The family had limited correspondence about him to clue us any further in on what ailed him.

Children with disabilities during the Georgian era had few options and often a sad fate. They were commonly sent to asylums with horrific living conditions and forced labor. While George escaped this, his family abandoned him in many other ways. He was sent to live with caretakers at a young age and remained in removed care for the rest of his life. The family who took him in already cared for Jane’s maternal uncle, Thomas Leigh, who had a similar diagnosis to George.

Jane never once mentions George in her letters. It’s possible his name lay within her incinerated correspondence. (Have you noticed I can’t seem to make it a single week without mentioning those blasted letters that her sister burned?) Few family members ever mentioned or visited him. While he had surviving siblings upon his death at age 72, none attended his funeral.

It is easy to insert the context of the time as their excuse for such behavior here. The fact that the family provided financially for George was more effort than many families of their status. Even after his parents’ passing, a brother financed his care. Many people with disabilities in this period of history had it much worse.

But while they may have leaned on such excuses, I can’t give the Austens a pass here. It’s difficult to sympathize with Jane’s lack of devotion and attention to one brother when she clearly held strong affection for the others.

I, too, have a sibling with a physical disability, and it makes her scenario much too vivid. To pretend George didn’t exist and make no effort to see him when he was unable to make the journey to her seems particularly cold. Because acknowledging the time period doesn’t change what we know of human hearts.

George deserved love and affection, and to be summarily brushed under the rug when he was the most vulnerable child is heartbreaking. We see this behavior in families still today, but I cannot believe the Austens’ consciences didn’t smart them when they were honest with themselves.

Jane’s own cousin, Eliza de Feuillide, also had a son with special needs. Eliza had married a French Count and gave birth to a baby boy she named Hastings. Personal correspondence shows that Hastings suffered from learning disabilities, but Eliza took ownership of his care. He stayed with her even when she became a single parent (after her husband was guillotined during the French Revolution). Hastings remained with his mother until his early death at fifteen years old.

Eliza shows us that sending children with disabilities away wasn’t a family’s only choice. And here comes the Persuasion tie-in. In her writings, Jane championed the culturally vulnerable and focused this novel on choice. She celebrated women, the impoverished and those who found themselves at a disadvantage of fate.

The character of Anne is a caretaker and nurturer, though she is in an unfavorable situation as an unmarried “older” woman. Anne loves her nephews better than their mother, Mary. Jane emphasized this flaw in Mary as a clear deficiency. Yet this same author seems to have rarely cared for her own disadvantaged brother.

Perhaps history has buried some of Jane's affections. Perhaps she and her siblings visited George and simply left the subject out of their correspondence because it was painful. Jane mentions speaking sign language with a deaf person, and biographers have suggested that this could have been George. But we don’t have any proof of this.

Further evidence of the family’s lack of feeling towards George is that he was the only child left out of his mother’s will. There’s something tragic in that. It’s one thing for a sibling to forget a brother, but a mother her own child?

I have learned that there is always more to the story than we see. So, I will try to have grace for a graceless situation. Mercy for those who seemed to lack it. And hope that I am not judged harshly for my own failings. I will tell you one thing, fellow reader": When I learned that upon George’s passing, he was placed in an unnamed grave with only his caretaker in attendance, I said a prayer. A prayer for a life already lived. These are the moments where I desperately hope scriptures such as “the last shall be first and the first shall be last” will prove true.

It’s easy to celebrate our heroes and curse our foes, but this situation illustrates that no person is a full slate of virtue or evil. We are nuanced, and as Wentworth forgave Anne her youthful judgment and rejection of him, may we also give and receive mercies without dismissing the pain that the wrongs have caused.

For more information on George Austen and how disabilities were handled during this period, Bridget McAdams has a brilliant deep-dive piece here.

If you’re interested, this blog also has a few more details on George Austen’s life.

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This week I’m grateful for…

Every newsletter, I share something(s) that is currently bringing me joy. This week, that’s the lovely Galentine’s event I attended this week. A large group of ladies held a book exchange and I had the best time. One woman brought this beautiful edition of Pride and Prejudice and I about swooned. My best friend took it home and I have a fun paperback mystery to dive into now. Not my usual genre, which is exactly why I picked it!

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The information about Jane’s life comes from her biographies, including The Life and Works of Jane Austen, by Devoney Looser, and The Real Jane Austen, A Life in Small Things, by Paula Byrne, as well as numerous internet deep dives.