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generally considered the handsomest of the young Austens, though to modern eyes and in the opinion of their friend Mrs Lefroy the best-looking among the lot was the baby of the family, Charles. Henry was agreed to be a wonderful conversationalist. Jane delighted in his companionship. He had an optimistic outlook, which was just as well, as his career, unlike those of his brothers, was chequered. He followed his elder brother James to Oxford, where their mother’s aristocratic connections entitled them to financial concessions as ‘Founder’s Kin’. The statutes provided for the maintenance of six scholars who could prove their relationship to Leighs, Walkers, Perrots or Whites. They became Fellows on entering the college and could remain so until they followed the usual route to Holy Orders. They were not Fellows in the modern sense, as their erudite father was, but rather privileged scholarship holders. This custom of giving preference to descendants of founders of colleges was peculiar to Oxford and was discontinued during the nineteenth century.
    The immediate Austen family was warm and affectionate. George Austen was fond of his wife and children. When Mrs Austen left for a month in 1770 to take care of her sister, Jane Cooper, who had had a premature baby, he complained to his ‘Dear sister Walter’, ‘I don’t much like this lonely kind of life, you know I have not been much used to it, and yet I must bear with it about three weeks longer, at which time I expect my housekeeper’s return, and to make it the more welcome she will bring my sister Hancock and Bessy along with her.’ Bessy was Eliza Hancock, Philadelphia Hancock’s daughter. Sisters and sisters-in-law nursed one another through childbirth. Mrs Austen, writing to Mrs Walter during her fifth pregnancy, described herself as ‘heavy and bundling as usual’. ‘I believe,’ she wrote, ‘my sister Hancock will be so good as to come and nurse me again, for which I am sure I shall be much obliged to her, as it will be a bad time of the year for her to take so long a journey.’
    The baby Cassandra, born 9 January 1773, like her sister Jane later, was sent away to live with a neighbouring farmer’s wife, where she was visited ‘almost daily’ by her parents. The motive was not wet-nursing, though that was quite usual at the time. A contemporary, William Cobbett, said, ‘Nothing is so common as to rent breasts to suck.’ However, Mrs Austen was proud of suckling her babies, at least for the first few months, and found them entertaining companions when they could talk. But it seems to have been the custom then to send tiny children away from home for a year or two, both in England and in France. French parents often sent a blank death certificate with the baby in case it died. The foster parents for the little Austens were John and Elizabeth Littleworth, whose family worked for the Austen family for nearly a century.
    Mrs Austen wrote proudly to her sister-in-law Mrs Walter that Cassy ‘has been weaned and settled at a good woman’s at Deane just eight weeks; she is very healthy and lively, and puts on her short petticoats today. Jemmy and Neddy are very happy in a new play-fellow, Lord Lymington, whom Mr Austen has lately taken charge of.’
    Poor little Lord Lymington, son of Lord Portsmouth, must have found his Latin lessons a struggle, as he was considered ‘backward’ and showed his distress in a stammer. Eventually his mother took him away in order to have him cured by a Mr Angier in London, and a pleasant fourteen-year-old ‘Master Vanderstegen’, son of a neighbouring family, took his place. The ‘cure’ seems to have been ineffectual, as after succeeding his father, Lord Portsmouth, the third’ Earl, was declared a lunatic. He was twice married, the second time late in life, as Jane noted in a letter in 1814, to a young Miss Hanson, whose father was Lord Byron’s solicitor. Byron gave the bride away, clumsily ramming the left hands