Book Review

A Naval Officer’s Wife draws on ’s novels and letters was a fact of to create a portrait of a “gentle and ami- life on board Jane Austen’s Transatlantic Sister: able” woman whose “association with a ship, and The Life and Letters of Fanny Palmer Austen. [her sister-in-law] may have contributed Charles was to Jane Austen’s creative process,” espe- able to warn By Sheila Johnson Kindred. cially and . his wife in ad- Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Fanny’s twelve extant letters, published vance, Kindred Press. 2017. for the first time in this book, and her questions how Hardcover. 291 pages. 35 black & white/color illustrations. $34.95. pocket diary, “her only surviving per- Fanny coped sonal possession,” provide a picture of a “with the cru- Review by Laurie Kaplan. Captain’s life on sea and shore. Fanny’s elty of flogging Frances (Fanny) FitzWilliams Palmer newsy letters contain compelling infor- when she heard the unmistakable sounds Austen’s short life (1789–1814) resounds mation about how she negotiated the of suffering and the ominous pulsating with Romantic overtones. A graceful codes and manners of naval society, of the drums.” while simultaneously worrying about beauty at sixteen, she caught the eye of On 31 August 1814, Charles and Fanny’s such domestic concerns as the price of Charles Austen, Jane Austen’s brother, a fourth daughter was born on board the fabrics, eggs, and butter, and about her naval officer serving in the West Indies. Namur. On 6 September, Fanny Palmer children’s welfare, especially when they The youngest daughter of the Attorney Austen died, aged 24 years. Devastated were staying with their Austen aunts in General of , Fanny became by the death of his beloved wife, Charles Chawton or with their Palmer grand- engaged to Charles Austen in 1806 and sought solace in an active life at sea. parents and Aunt Harriet at 22 Keppel was married, at the age of seventeen, in Six years after Fanny’s death, in August Street in London. May 1807. Her first child, Cassy, was 1820, Charles married his sister-in-law, born in December 1808. When Fanny In a variety of ways Fanny’s letters Harriet Palmer, Fanny’s older sister. (pregnant again) left Bermuda for the reveal her bravery as she rode out Harriet had been caring for her nieces first time in September 1809, her life the storms at sea and coped with the since their mother’s death. Kindred pattern of sailing aboard her husband’s doldrums at anchor. Capable, organized, recounts the opinions of Jane Austen’s ships was established. Between 1809 and and resilient, she wrote about Charles’s family about Charles’s choice of wife, and 1812, the new mother made the journey professional anxieties and her own she addresses the Church of England’s between Bermuda and Halifax five domestic uncertainties, and she also prohibition against marriage to a dead times, and for much of her married life acknowledged the fears and tribulations wife’s sister. Charles and Harriet’s new she was in transit on Captain Austen’s experienced by all naval and military domestic arrangements make fascinating ships. From 1812–1814, Jane Austen’s families. For Fanny, weathering storms, reading. “transatlantic sister” and children lived suffering from seasickness, worrying Jane Austen’s Transatlantic Sister adds aboard Captain Austen’s HMS Namur about her husband’s career, and caring a compelling chapter to the biographical stationed off Sheerness, Kent. And in for ill children formed part of the material about the Austen family. As 1814, after seven years of marriage, continuing pattern of displacement. Fanny died aboard the ship. Kindred weaves the letters into the text In her chapter “Afloat and Ashore, 1812,” of the biography, the reader perceives In Jane Austen’s Transatlantic Sister: Kindred points out how for Fanny “the the development of Fanny’s sense of The Life and Letters of Fanny Palmer charm of living at sea” soon resulted in self from ingénue to bride to mother to Austen, Sheila Johnson Kindred has cre- claustrophobia, a feeling exacerbated officer’s wife. In this detailed account of ated an absorbing biography of an adapt- by the recurrent fogs. The perimeter of naval family life in the early nineteenth able and resourceful woman. Professor Fanny’s life aboard the Namur was cir- century, Kindred chronicles the life Kindred grounds the biography in the cumscribed geographically: “The only story of an impressive woman who faced social and naval history of the period, place she could go to outside the apart- immense challenges and (unlike her which she embellishes with docu- ment was a small part of the quarterdeck sister Harriet) rarely complained. ments, letters, and con- and the poop deck over the captain’s temporary sketches, Laurie Kaplan, a former Editor of quarters.” But what may have been more Persuasions and Persuasions On-Line, lives paintings, and engrav- disturbing about life afloat was the fact ings from museums in the UK and teaches for Florida State that “Fanny was virtually cut off from University, London. A recent publication and private collections. female company . . . . She had no com- is “Jane Austen’s Allusive Geographies: In addition, Kindred panions of her class to discuss topics of London’s Streets, Squares, and Gardens” Sculpture at the Nelson- common interest and everyday concern.” in Jane Austen’s Geographies, edited by Atkins Museum of Art. Moreover, although public flogging Robert Clark. 16 JASNA News