“My dear Caroline, The enclosed Ring once belonged to your Aunt Jane. It was given to me by your Aunt Cassandra as soon as she knew that I was engaged to your Uncle. I bequeath it to you. God bless you.”
This was the note that came with a simple
gem-set gold ring, once owned by Jane Austen, offered at
Sotheby's on July 10. Something that has escaped the attention
of those many admirers and ardent chroniclers of her life and
works, it was sent for sale by a descendant and bid to £126,000 by
a collector.
The stone is probably odontolite, which came
into fashion in the early 19th century as a cheaper substitute for
turquoise, and the ring (still in the original London jeweller's
box) is a simple but attractive piece that, as the cataloguer
observed, befits not only its owner's modest income but also what
is known of her taste in jewellery.
When Jane died in 1817, her jewellery and
other personal possessions passed to her sister, Cassandra, who
appears to have given away a number of pieces to family and friends
as mementos.
Three years after Jane's death, Cassandra
gave this ring to Eleanor Jackson, who was to marry her brother,
the Reverend Henry Thomas Austen. Jane's favourite brother, and one
who had been closely involved in getting her work published, Henry
had failed as a banker but by this time was a member of the clergy
and curate at Chawton, where Cassandra still lived and where Jane
spent the last eight years of her life. Eleanor, his second wife,
was the niece of the rector.
Eleanor kept the ring for many years, but in
1869 gave it to her niece, Caroline, who had been assisting her
brother, James Edward Austen-Leigh, in writing his Memoir
of Jane Austen, published that very year. It seems likely that
Eleanor felt the ring should pass to someone who had been so active
in helping preserve Jane's memory, and who had so many childhood
memories of her own.
First Editions
In that same Sotheby's sale, an 1813 first
of Jane's most popular novel, Pride and
Prejudice (someone has apparently worked out that it has
sold 20 million copies worldwide over the last 200 years) was sold
at £18,750.
Not a high price where this book is
concerned - the record currently standing at £115,000 - but this
was a copy, in repaired and rebacked half calf and marbled boards,
that lacked half-titles and advertisement leaves, showed some
gatherings standing proud, one leaf crudely opened and had some
spotting and browning to the text.
Bearing the ownership signatures of the
novelist Hugh Walpole, along with his Brackenburn bookplates and a
short note in his hand, dated 1938, an 1847 first of Charlotte
Brontë'sJane Eyrewas sold for a record £55,000 in the New Bond
Street sale. A few leaves were slightly stained or spotted, and the
hinges remain a little fragile or starting, despite earlier
repairs, but the price betters the $95,000 (then £49,350) paid at
Sotheby's New York in 2004 for the extraordinarily well preserved
copy in the Insley Blair library.
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