According to Austen family legend, one member of every generation is the spitting image of Aunt Jane. Of those who came of age before the Second World War, that mantle fell on Diana Shervington.
Diana’s grandmothers, Louisa and Elizabeth, were sisters, both granddaughters of Edward Austen Knight, Jane Austen’s elder brother.
He was adopted by the wealthy Knight family, relatives of the Austens, as they needed an heir. He inherited Chawton House and estate in Hampshire, and provided Chawton Cottage for Jane and her sister Cassandra.
In the mid 1920s Diana and her family moved to Chawton House where they cared for an elderly relative from whom Shervington inherited many of Austen’s possessions. She was particularly fond of a rose cockade from 1798.
“Jane was always part of the scene,” she said of her youth. “I was given a set of the books when I was about 15.” Her grandmothers would speak of elderly family members who had known Austen. “They remembered her as being great fun,” Shervington said.
While much of Shervington’s adult life was given over to raising a family and pursuing her career as a sculptor, in recent years she had been a popular presence with Jane Austen fans (or Janeites), her extravagant hats and excited laughter brightening even the dampest of days. “I started researching [Jane Austen’s] music books ,” she said. “Gradually I realised that I could help others by showing them artefacts and giving talks. I’ve given some of Jane’s things to the Lyme Regis Museum, including some of her embroidery, the set of spillikins and some bone counters with letters on them that Jane probably used to learn her alphabet.”
Shervington was acutely aware of the many spin-offs from her ancestor’s oeuvre, although she had doubts about some of them. “I always fear these adaptations will not be very good,” she told The Times in 1971 when BBC Two was serialising Sense and Sensibility. “I’ve been reading a novel by Jane Austen again instead.”
After the BBC’s 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth, the Austen “industry” took off. Shervington, the closest descendant of the original Austen family in years and looks, became something of a celebrity, with fans anxious to meet her. Visitors to Lyme Regis would be regaled with ever-growing tales of her family memories, often delivered from the spot on the Cobb where Louisa Musgrove falls in Persuasion, and would be invited to inspect heirlooms that had once been owned by Austen.
Although Shervington relished the attention, she never changed her view that some of the film adaptations of her great-great-great-aunt went too far. “They need to be kept in check,” she told Jane Austen’s Regency World magazine. “They are too sexy. There’s plenty of sexiness in Jane’s writing. It doesn’t need any more adding.”
Diana Shervington, descendant of Jane Austen’s family, was born on 10 January 1919. She died on 24 July 2018, aged 99.