Jane Austen's final days
Jane is well known for living in Chawton and Bath, so it comes as a surprise to some that she is buried in Winchester Cathedral. However, Winchester was where Jane spent her final days, and her sister Cassandra, in a letter to her niece Fanny Knight, explained that Winchester Cathedral was "a building [Jane] admired so much".
Jane was beginning to become increasingly unwell in 1816. In January 1817, she wrote that she felt better to her niece Caroline Austen declaring "I feel myself getting stronger than half a year ago" and was able to walk to Alton, a village 2-3 miles from Chawton. Early in 1817, Jane began writing Sanditon but sadly due to her illness she never finished it, abandoning the manuscript in March 1817.
On 24th May 1817, Jane travelled with her sister Cassandra, from Chawton to Winchester, where they took up rented lodgings in College Street near the Cathedral. Winchester is only 16-17 miles from Chawton, so the journey was not of significantly long duration. Her eldest brother James lent her his carriage for the journey and they were accompanied by their brother Henry and nephew William Knight (son of her brother Edward), who road on horseback "in the rain almost all the way".
The move to Winchester was to acquire help from a celebrated surgeon, Mr Giles King Lyford, at the newly established Winchester Country Hospital as recommended by her apothecarist Mr Curtis in Alton, who no longer knew how to deal with her illness. Mr Lyford told Jane he would cure her (as expressed in a letter to her nephew on 27th May 1817), but unfortunately this wasn't to be.
It was clear that Jane was very well loved and cared for by her family and friends until the end. In her letter, dated 27th May 1817, to her nephew James Edward Austen (who wrote her memoir), she tells him: "If ever you are ill, may you be as tenderly nursed as I have been".
In a short biography by her brother Henry Austen, published in the introduction to Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, he notes: "She supported, during two months, all the varying pain, irksomeness, and tedium, attendant on decaying nature, with more than resignation, with a truly elastic cheerfulness. She retained her faculties, her memory, her fancy, her temper, her affections, warm, clear and unimpared, to the last".
Due to her illness, Jane became unable to write. Her last complete surviving letter was the aforementioned to her nephew in May 1817. However, she didn't let go of writing easily, her brother Henry noting in his biography: "She wrote whilst she could hold a pen, and with a pencil when a pen was become too laborious".
Jane was in good spirits in the days before her death, dictating to Cassandra the following comic poem to mark St Swithin's Day on 15th July 1817:
When Winchester races first took their beginning It is said the good people forgot their old Saint Not applying at all for the leave of Saint Swithin And that William of Wykeham’s approval was faint.
The races however were fixed and determined The company came and the Weather was charming The Lords and the Ladies were satine’d and ermined And nobody saw any future alarming.–
But when the old Saint was informed of these doings He made but one Spring from his Shrine to the Roof Of the Palace which now lies so sadly in ruins And then he addressed them all standing aloof.
‘Oh! subjects rebellious! Oh Venta depraved When once we are buried you think we are gone But behold me immortal! By vice you’re enslaved You have sinned and must suffer, ten farther he said
These races and revels and dissolute measures With which you’re debasing a neighboring Plain Let them stand–You shall meet with your curse in your pleasures Set off for your course, I’ll pursue with my rain.
Ye cannot but know my command o’er July Henceforward I’ll triumph in shewing my powers Shift your race as you will it shall never be dry The curse upon Venta is July in showers–‘.
Jane died with her head resting on a pillow on Cassandra's lap early in the morning of 18th July 1817 at the tragically young age of 41. Cassandra notes in her letter to Fanny: "I was able to close her eyes myself, and it was a great gratification to me to render her those last services".
