The inspiration behind Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Elizabeth Wentworth, and another captivating true life character among Jane Austen’s relatives, Chandos Leigh

Stoneleigh Abbey

Having spent the last few blogs telling you about Jane Austen’s ancestors and the house they developed which she visited in 1806, today I am going to share two more detailed stories of Jane Austen’s family. These are my favourite two stories from Jane Austen’s ancestral history.

Elizabeth Wentworth

The first is Elizabeth Wentworth’s story – yes Wentworth as of Captain Wentworth fame from the novel ‘Persuasion’. Well Elizabeth Wentworth was a deceased relation of Jane Austen’s from the generation before Jane’s birth and her portrait hangs in the dinning room at Stoneleigh Abbey. Jane could have and certainly probably did see it when she visited the abbey in 1806, and with a writer’s mind I can imagine her busy discovering all her ancestors’ stories while she was there – if she did not already know them. Elizabeth’s story would have still been fresh in 1806 and certainly Jane Austen’s mother would have known it and probably told it. When you hear the links between Elizabeth’s story and that of Persuasion you’ll see there is a clear implication that Jane Austen was inspired by one to write the other.

So let me tell you Elizabeth’s story. She fell in love with a young solider who was neither wealthy nor particularly well-born and therefore there was nothing to credit the young man to her family. When the idea of a match was suggested to her mother it was wholeheartedly denied and the gentleman in question sent away with his coattails between his legs. But being thoroughly in love with said young soldier Elizabeth refused to be denied and with the help of her (already married) sister wed her soldier. He then went off abroad ‘soldiering’ and none of the family were told of the secret marriage, both Elizabeth and her sister kept silent on the subject for more than two years.

While Elizabeth’s husband was away other more suitable suitors were thrown at Elizabeth by her mother, invited to dine and presented at social events but of course Elizabeth – already secretly married – turned them all away. Meanwhile Elizabeth’s soldier worked hard and progressed up through the ranks, earning honours and acclaim and so when he returned to England he was no longer unsuitable but exactly the sort of man with prospects Elizabeth’s mother had been throwing at Elizabeth for the past two years.

Now Elizabeth’s soldier was returned though, of course Elizabeth had to find a way to establish him as her husband without telling the secret and risking falling out with her mother and father. So she and her sister plotted and developed a plan to re-introduce her mother to the now successful soldier. Her mother had no idea that this ‘worthy’ individual with fortune and fame was the same man she had sent away as an utterly inappropriate match two years before. Elizabeth’s mother fell for the scam entirely and invited Elizabeth’s soldier (husband) to dine and then and there approved the match and they were officially married.

So, as you can hear, the story is not the same as Anne Elliott’s in Persuasion but it is very similar to the way I write in that the real life story appears to have set a seed in Jane Austen’s imagination which has germinated into the story of Persuasion which was written in 1815 – 1816. Anne Elliott, Jane’s Austen’s character, did not marry her suitor when he was considered inappropriate, Anne just held a flame burning during the years he went away and made his fortune. Also Anne’s beau was not a soldier but a sailor, which was obviously Jane Austen’s preferred profession as her admired brothers were sailors. Yet the basic tale of an inappropriate suitor being sent away and returning still loved and now eligible is there in Persuasion.

Chandos Leigh

So on to my other favourite of Jane Austen’s relatives and this is a man much younger than her when Jane was 35 her cousin Chandos Leigh was 15. The reason that I find him particularly interesting is that he was a close friend of Lord Byron’s. Chandos was at School and College with Byron. He went to Harrow and then to Christ Church, Oxford and was one of Byron’s trusted set. He wrote poetry, of course, but many of Jane’s family did write, and Chandos had some acknowledgement for his work but obviously achieved nothing like Byron’s fame. Chandos was one of those who dined with Byron on the last evening before he fled England on the back of scandal in April 1814. I would so have loved to be a fly on the wall to that friendship. Byron’s real life stories fascinate me but those stories I am saving until my books are published. The first is due to be published by Sapphire Star Publishing on the 2^nd May 2013.

Like the other friend of Byron’s, William Bankes, I covered in my history blogs, Chandos settled down to a married staid life once he’d finished his raking days with Byron and he inherited Stoneleigh Abbey and was made Baron Leigh in reparation of a line which had previous died out in 1839. (If you’ve read my previous blogs on Jane’s visit there in 1806, the Lady Saye and Sele, who is quite likely the person whom Pride and Prejudice’s Lady Catherine De Bourgh is modelled on was Chandos’s grandmother).

Yes, so Lady Saye and Sele got her way in the end and Stoneleigh Abbey came into the Saye and Sele line because Jane Austen’s cousin Reverend Thomas Leigh, who Jane had travelled with to claim his inheritance, never married and so had no descendents.

Jane Lark is a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional love stories.

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It’s no good I can’t help another deviation to share some recently discovered old trees – Lord Byron may well have walked or ridden along this avenue.

Kingston Lacy Avenue

If you’ve read my early blogs I have spoken before of my passion for old trees, which may sound silly, and my daughter definitely thinks is silly, but when I see things like this avenue at Kingston Lacy I cannot help but be drawn into imagining who has walked past these trees before me, over the same soil. It’s funny because I don’t think about it in the same way when I walk through the house. Kingston Hall was completed in 1667 and it looks as though this avenue was planted then.

When these trees were perhaps ten years old, the Duke of Ormonde lived in Kingston Hall. He was close to King Charles II, having shared the King’s years of exile and was given his title on the King’s restoration. He was in his 70’s when he lived at Kingston Hall, and would have possibly arrived along this avenue, having lived a tumultuous life, in and out of favour in a back stabbing court and holding Ireland for the Crown in the Civil War. He must have had a lot to contemplate as he looked down upon the avenue from the windows of Kingston Hall in his last days.

Then there is the history of William John Bankes, a second son, born in 1786 (The gentleman who explored Egypt and brought home the obelisk). He later became heir and formed a lifelong friendship with Lord Byron, beginning in 1804, when they met at Trinity College,Cambridge. William competed with Byron for the attention and the hand of Annabella Millbanke. He had his own proposal rejected in 1812. Byron writes of him ‘He is very clever, very original and has a fund of information; he is also very good-natured, but he is not much of a flatterer…’ Annabella was clearly not interested in anything beyond perhaps encouraging his adulation and continued attention. ‘One of my smiles would encourage him, but I am niggardly in my glances.’

Of course Byron was not so lacking in flattery. All I have read of him and the letters he has written show a very intelligent man who was extremely capable of flirtation, manipulation and seduction. I would say, if he wished to, he knew how to charm people. We certainly know he had a gift with words. He married Annabella in 1815, after she fell for his fame following the publication of Childe Harold – she read a copy Byron gave to William and William loaned to her. Annabella wrote to Byron then, ‘I am afraid he will hear of us with pain, yet he cannot lose hope, for I never allowed it to exist’.

In an earlier post I showed this picture of the pelisse Annabella is believed to have worn on her departure for her honeymoon, following her marriage to Lord Byron, it is in the possession of the Fashion museum inBath.

I can only wonder if either Byron or Annabella travelled along this avenue, on foot, by horse or carriage. I think there are strong odds that Byron did, as his friendship with William Bankes lasted so many years even surviving his failed marriage to Annabella, though Byron had fled England after this.

Stourhead

Then there are my favourite trees from Stourhead, which out date the Georgian house by centuries, it is believed they may be a 1000 years old, which means they have stood along this entrance way since the medieval period. An army of knights may have ridden past here, escorting carts piled high with household belongs perhaps, as the families moved from residence to residence – their tack jangling, the sound of the horses hooves a low thunder and the bright colours of their clothing and heraldry tabards and banners fluttering in the breeze. Yes, I can imagine it. I have spoken of them before, but now I have a picture.

Old Wardour Yew Alley

My last find however was at Old Wardour, last week. This alley of yew trees was planted in 1730, along a surviving terrace from the second era of the ruins as an element of a ‘formal’ pleasure garden. The terraces had railings along their edge when established and steps. This one overlooked a bowling green, with the ruins as its backdrop. My imagination of course pictures the gentlemen who must have climbed the ruins and engraved their names walking along beside these trees, perhaps flattering a woman, Byronic style. And notably the greatest amount of graffiti is in the entrance facing the site of the bowling green which would match the date of this formal garden. Perhaps these were carved as they waited for their turn or watched a game of bowls.

Jane Lark is a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional love stories.

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