Travels with Frank Austen
This display showcases two newly acquired objects that reveal much about the Austen family and their history: an unpublished manuscript biography of Frank Austen and an album of watercolours and drawings by Frank and his daughter Cassandra.Admiral Sir Francis Austen, Jane Austen’s older brother, was born on 23 April 1774 – 250 years ago.
This display showcases two newly acquired objects that reveal much about the Austen family and their history: an unpublished manuscript biography of Frank Austen and an album of watercolours and drawings by Frank and his daughter Cassandra. Previously in family ownership, these objects go on display for the first time, offering new insights into Jane Austen and her family through the lens of the brother most intimately connected with the domestic lives of the Austen women.
With thanks to the Friends of the National Libraries and the V&A Beecroft Bequest for their help with these acquisitions, and to Professor Kathryn Sutherland for curating the display.
Enter the exhibition…
Jane Austen’s brother Francis (known in the family as Frank) entered the Royal Naval Academy, Portsmouth, aged twelve. Over a long and distinguished career, he saw service in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and was one of Nelson’s commanders at Trafalgar. He travelled the world from the North Atlantic and West Indies to India and China and rose to become Admiral of the Fleet and a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.
Frank Austen’s life illuminates an increasingly scrutinised period in British history: when abolition of the trade in slaves intersected with the rise of empire. A keen abolitionist after the cruelty he witnessed in the West Indies, he profited from lucrative trade missions for the East India Company. He sent letters home from the East and West Indies, the Middle East and Mediterranean, the North Sea and North American waters. Jane posted replies from Chawton to the Baltic and as far away as China.
The Austen women shared a home with Frank and his wife in Southampton from 1806. From 1809 to 1817 his growing family of children regularly visited Chawton or lived nearby at Alton. In 1828 Frank married as his second wife Martha Lloyd. One of Jane’s closest friends, Martha was part of the all-female household here at Chawton Cottage.
Austen’s fictional sailors owe much to Frank. For Mansfield Park she borrowed the names of two of his ships: HMS Canopus and HMS Elephant. Persuasion’s hero, Frederick Wentworth, is promoted to captain after the action off St Domingo in the Caribbean, in February 1806, where Frank commanded the Canopus. Like Captain Harville in Persuasion, Frank was a skilled carpenter. Frank also made ‘very nice fringe for the Drawingroom-Curtains’, as Austen recorded in a letter of 21 February 1807. In another letter, 12 October 1813, she joked: ‘Southey’s Life of Nelson;—I am tired of Lives of Nelson, being that I never read any. I will read this however, if Frank is mentioned in it.’
Object 1: Frank Austen’s Memoir
This memoir (dated c.1863) is written in the third person but is Frank Austen’s own account of his life, written when he was almost 90. Beginning with a description of his education at Portsmouth Naval Academy, it ends with his final years on the North America and West Indies Station. In his memoir, Frank describes the challenges, frustrations, and successes of a naval career: battles and blockades, long voyages far from home, promotions gained and denied, and the importance of capturing enemy vessels and a share of prize-money to establish financial independence. He comments on the ships in which he sailed, on fellow naval officers and those under whom he served, including Lord Nelson. Frank Austen might have stepped straight out of the pages of his sister’s most navy-inspired novel, Persuasion.
Jane Austen’s House acquired Frank Austen’s handwritten memoir at auction in 2023 with financial support from the Friends of the National Libraries John R. Murray Fund.
In this extract from 1799 (seen on the pages above), Frank Austen describes how he has taken command of the sloop HMS Peterel and is patrolling the Mediterranean on the lookout for enemy French ships:
‘The Petrell was shortly after attached to the Fleet under the command of Lord Keith, and was present at the capture of a squadron of three French Frigates and two Brig Corvettes under the command of Commodore Perré returning from Egypt to Toulon. On it’s being ascertained early in July that the combined French and Spanish Fleets had gone down the Mediterranean, and our’s in consequence followed, the Petrell was ordered to form one of a small Squadron under the command of Captain Geo. Cockburne in the Minerva, to be employed in annoying the Enemy’s trade on the coast of Genoa, on which service Captain Austen remained (with the exception of being once during that time sent to Palermo with despatches to Lord Nelson) until the middle of October, and was tolerably successful, taking and destroying a number of the Enemy’s trading Vessels.’
Object 2: Album of watercolours and pen and ink sketches, mainly dated 1845-8
Between 1844 and 1848 Frank Austen, now Vice Admiral Sir Francis Austen, was Royal Navy Commander in Chief North America and West Indies Station, with official bases in Bermuda and Nova Scotia. One of his duties was protecting British commercial interests and disrupting slave traders during the turbulent period of the Mexican-American War (1846-8).
This Austen family album contains 73 topographical watercolours and pen and ink drawings dating from this tour of duty. Quick, informal sketches capture impressions of the West Indies and Canada: landscapes and seascapes of Grenada, Martinique, St Vincent, Antigua, Jamaica, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. Most are studies made by Frank Austen’s daughter Cassandra Eliza (1814-49) who was his companion.
The album is open at four watercolour sketches: ‘Bridgetown Barbados’, dated ‘Jan. 1846’; ‘view of Morne Garon from Richmond St Vincent’, signed with Cassandra’s initials, CEA; ‘HMS Trincomalee leaving Barbados Jan 29. 1848 CEA’; and ‘view from the top of the Souffriere St Vincent Feb. 18. 1848’.
Jane Austen’s House acquired the album at auction in 2023 with financial support from the Friends of the National Libraries John R. Murray Fund.
Transcription Project
In April 2024 we launched a community engagement project to make the first full transcript of Admiral Sir Francis Austen’s unpublished Memoir.
We asked our audiences around the world to work with us to transcribe the manuscript and discover more about Frank Austen’s life and the world in which Jane Austen lived and wrote. Volunteers were invited to transcribe a single page, contributing to a mass engagement activity that will bring together amateur historians, friends of the museum and fans of Jane Austen’s work on a unique project.
We were inundated with responses, receiving 2000 applications from all over the world to transcribe a page within the first 24 hours! It was thrilling to see such enthusiasm to be involved with this exciting project.
We have now allocated all the pages of the manuscript and our global community of transcribers is hard at work, working from high resolution photographs of the original manuscript to accurately copy down each word and punctuation mark, to create a full, accurate transcript.
We will check each page and collate a full transcription. Eventually, the full Memoir will be published here on our website for all to read.
You can find out more about the manuscript here.
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