Many of their neighbors lived in far grander circumstances, but the Austen family, with their church and family connections, were respected and made welcome. They were recommended, also, by the fact that they were better educated than many they came face to face with, so that their wit, their liveliness, and their conversation leveled some of the barriers that lack of wealth might place in the way.

It was through her brother Edward that Jane Austen was exposed to the very different realm of great wealth and ease. Edward’s adoption by the Knight family had cast him into the role of landed gentleman, and as a young woman Jane made many visits to Kent, where Edward and his family lived, first at the relatively modest house Rowling, and later at the great family seat of Godmersham. The eighteenth-century dwelling, still standing today, is set in the midst of a private landscaped park. Its marble-floored foyer is beautifully proportioned, and gives way to large, airy reception rooms, including a library where Jane Austen once found herself alone during a visit, musing on the presence of twenty-eight chairs, five tables, and two fires. Her gleeful counting of those twenty-eight chairs tells us something about how she regarded such wealth—as utterly delightful, something to be enjoyed and luxuriated in, and also more than a little bit foolish.

She was, over the years, less a guest at Godmersham than a relation who was sent for in time of need, helping to look after Edward’s very large family and to assist his wife, Elizabeth, when a new baby was due to arrive. Jane must have looked carefully, with a sly and intense regard, at everyday life in a great house. When she later wrote, through the thoughts of Elizabeth Bennet, that “to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!” it is with the full force of admiration for the power of land ownership and a wistful longing for the luxury that attends it. There is an air—coming as it does from Jane Austen, and from the morally fastidious Elizabeth Bennet—just a little vague and unspecified about that word “something,” and we have to let it fall on our ears with all its tones of stunning surprise and exuberance, and certainly a measure of confusion about what material possessions could bring.

Jane Austen’s satirical powers would have been stirred by the exuberant culture of the newly rich, and everything we know about her tells us she would not necessarily have hidden her response. Elizabeth, Edward’s wife, was not fond of her clever sister-in-law, preferring Cassandra, and she made that distinction clear, although Edward’s adopted mother, Mrs. Knight, always treated Jane with kindness and respect.

Probably Austen never got over the sense of being the poor visiting sister. Her favorite niece, Fanny, recalled many years later what Aunt Jane was like. This recollection was put down in 1869, almost fifty years after Jane Austen’s death, when Fanny was an elderly woman writing to a younger sister who would not have remembered her aunt’s visits.

Yes my love it is very true that Aunt Jane from various circumstances was not so refined as she ought to have been from her talent, & if she had lived 50 years later she would have been in many respects more suitable to our more refined tastes. They were not rich & the people around with whom they chiefly mixed, were not at all high bred, or in short anything more than mediocre & they of course tho’ superior in mental powers & cultivation were on the same level so far as refinement goes—but I think in later life their intercourse with Mrs. Knight (who was very fond of & kind to them) improved them both & Aunt Jane was too clever not to put aside all possible signs of “common-ness” (if such an expression is allowable) & teach herself to be more refined, at least in intercourse with people in general.

Both the Aunts (Cassandra & Jane) were brought up in the most complete ignorance of the World & its ways (I mean as to fashion &c) & if it had not been for Papa’s marriage which brought them into Kent & the kindness of Mrs. Knight, who used often to have one or the other of the sisters staying with her, they would have been, tho’ not less clever & agreeable in themselves, very much below par as to good society & its ways. If you hate all this I beg yr. Pardon, but I felt it at my pen’s end, & it chose to come along & speak the truth.

The letter, so cozily couched, stings the heart. It is a measure of the affection in which Jane Austen’s readers hold her, that they are almost always offended by the tone and contents of this letter. The snobbery, the casual disregard, the disloyalty of a beloved niece—all this seems intolerable, even though Jane Austen was perfectly capable of writing blunt letters herself. Perhaps Fanny in her old age had forgotten what her aunt was really like, giving way to an accretion of images that surround departed family members, especially those who have achieved a degree of recognition that surprises and shocks succeeding generations. It may be—there are signs—that Fanny was on the brink of dementia. Or perhaps—and this has to be taken into account—there is a measure of truth at the bottom of her assessment.

What exactly is refinement? And in what might Jane Austen’s presumed lack of refinement lie? Her clothes would have been simpler and fewer than those worn by her brother Edward’s family and friends: During this period wealthy women changed their dress several times a day, a habit that would have been impossible for the Austen sisters. She had country rather than town manners and valued openness over concealment and sense over sentimentality. Her familiarity with servants might have been differently gauged. Her use of language may have been sharper, more direct, lacking the extravagant locutions and fashionable references of Edward’s circle. She lived, it might almost be said, in a different England, a simpler time, before the elaborate courtesies and distinctions of the Victorian age had come to flower. She was used to dining in the midafternoon, not at the newly fashionable hour of half past six. And life at Godmersham, its abundance and wastefulness, may have stimulated in her behavior psychological defenses that were interpreted as antisocial.

Refinement is relative, of course. Jane Austen once wrote to Cassandra about some acquaintances, how “they do not know how to be particular” (her italics), meaning that some lapse of courtesy had been committed, some social roughness of manner displayed.