Town & Country
IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single museum in possession of a good book, must be in want of people to read it. Only 24 hours after launching a plea to the public for help in deciphering the ‘spider y’ scrawl of a certain celebrated novelist’s brother, the Jane Austen’s House museum in Chawton, Hampshire, had to halt its campaign after some 2,000 people volunteered. Such is the fer vour of the Janeite.
Admiral Sir Francis William Austen (known to his family as Frank), was a year older than his sister Jane and outlived her by almost 50 years. Last year, the museum acquired his 78- page memoir, written towards the end of his life when his handwriting was affected by arthritis and which has ‘never before been seen outside of family ownership’. Jane Austen died in 1817, aged 41, and, despite her novels’ posthumous fame and 161 surviving letters, very little is known about her life. This memoir could shed some light, if only it can be read. ‘We don’t have anything detailed from her so we have to look to the family to see what they were writing and recording,’ explains Sophie Reynolds, the museum’s head of collections.
‘We know that Frank and Jane lived together as ch
