From two letters which have survived, it is apparent that Jane Austen did have a personal connection
with a Cambridge don - the Reverend Samuel Blackall. He was an hereditary Emmanuel man who became a
Fellow of the College in 1794. In a letter to Mrs Lefroy (1798), he expressed the pleasure it would
give him to have an opportunity of improving his acquaintance with the Austen family - 'with the hope
of creating to myself a nearer interest. But at present I cannot indulge my expectation of it', the
reason being that as a Fellow he was bound to celibacy. Later, when she heard of his marriage to a Miss
Lewis (1813) after he had obtained a desired living in North Cadbury, Jane Austen recalled him as,
'a peice of Perfection, noisy Perfection himself, which I always recollect with regard' and acknowledged
that 'I should very much like to know what sort of woman she (his wife) is.'
Jane Austen's great-nephew, Augustus Austen-Leigh, was Senior Tutor, Vice-Provost and finally Provost of
King's College over the late nineteenth century and just into the twentieth. He presided over the conversion
of King's from a small gathering of old Etonians into one of the most forward looking academic communities in
Cambridge. He was appointed Vice Chancellor of the University in 1893-4. To this day there is the 'Augustus Austen-Leigh Studentship'
at King's, a scholarship for Ph.D. students.
Augustus' brother William, also a Fellow of King's, wrote The Life and Letters of Jane Austen (1913) with his nephew
R.A.Austen-Leigh (King's 1891). There are also archive records of Edward Compton Austen-Leigh, rowing for King's
from 1858 to 1860.
The long association of the Austen family with King's influenced Mary Isobella Lefroy to give the manuscript of
Sanditon to the College in 1930.
The University of Cambridge Library and the library at King's are the repositories for very important collections
of Jane Austen manuscripts and first editions. Dorothy Warren and David Gilson, the Jane Austen bibliographer, have
made splendid donations of Austen manuscripts and books to King's.
In the novels, Henry Tilney of Northanger Abbey bears the same name as a contemporary of Samuel Blackall's
at Cambridge - Tilney, who was at Caius. East Anglian names are unusual in the novels. Unlike the charming but worthless
George Wickham of Pride and Prejudice and Henry Crawford of Mansfield Park, who were both Cambridge men,
Henry Tilney of Caius was attractive, lively and talkative, like his namesake in the novel.
|
