Mary Pearson, who was engaged to Austen’s brother, is thought to have been model for Pride and Prejudice’s bad Bennet girl

This article is more than 5 months old

This article is more than 5 months old

A newly discovered portrait of a woman who may have inspired one of Jane Austen’s most gleefully spirited characters has been acquired by a museum devoted to the novelist’s life and work.

Mary Pearson was briefly engaged to Austen’s dashing brother Henry and is widely thought to have been the model for Lydia, the bad Bennet girl who runs away with a soldier in Pride and Prejudice.

On Tuesday Jane Austen’s House museum in Chawton, Hampshire, announced it had acquired the only known portrait of Pearson, one which shines fascinating light on the world of Austen and the importance for women to find the right man to marry.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, Hampshire. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/The Guardian

Sophie Reynolds, collections and interpretations manager, said the William Wood portrait miniature was “a beautiful, very delicate object” in its own right but also came with “such a wonderful story.”

Austen knew Pearson fairly well because she was engaged to her favourite brother Henry, who was in the militia.

It was a hasty engagement and the novelist’s letters reveal Austen’s doubt over whether it would take off. Writing to her sister Cassandra in September 1796, Austen notes: “If Miss Pearson should return with me, pray be careful not to expect too much Beauty.”

Henry did indeed, rather unceremoniously, end the relationship after a couple of months. For a while the two women kept in touch and Austen was at one point tasked with returning all the letters Pearson wrote to her brother.

It is thought the newly acquired portrait was part of Pearson’s attempt to get back on the marriage market after the debacle of the engagement.

At the same time, Austen was writing her novel First Impressions, renamed Pride and Prejudice.

“There is a theory that she inspired Lydia Bennet and there are striking similarities between the characters,” said Reynolds.

Lydia, played by Julia Sawalha in the classic BBC TV drama, is the youngest of the Bennet sisters and described as a “self-willed and careless” 15-year-old with “high animal spirits, and a sort of natural self-consequence, which the attention of officers, to whom her uncle’s good dinners, and her own easy manners recommended her, had increased into assurance”.

Julia Sawalha as Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Photograph: BBC

In other words, obsessed with boys and determined to net a good husband – and quickly.

Lydia, like Pearson, jumped into a romance with a soldier which soon went wrong although she did manage to cling on to her partner, the scoundrel George Wickham. Poor Mary Pearson was single for two decades.

“Lydia is a rather fantastic character,” said Reynolds. “She’s really gleeful about the fact she gets married first, she thinks it is a real triumph.

“It is quite easy for our society to see that obsession about marriage as a kind of problem but back then it was, 100%, what you had to do.”

The miniature was bought from the dealer Philip Mould, thanks to money from the Beecroft Bequest and the Art Fund.

It arrived this week but cannot be properly seen because of the lockdown, so short videos of new acquisitions have instead been posted on Chawton’s website.

They also include portraits of the Digweed family, who were among the Austen family’s nearest neighbours in Steventon, Hampshire; and a modern fan created by the artist Aafke Brouwer with a depiction Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy.

It is an important acquisition, said Reynolds. “Here at the museum we are really interested in filling in the gaps of Jane Austen’s life and having visuals for visitors to understand the look and feel of her world is so helpful.

“We do all love to think who inspired which character. We get people writing in all the time with theories.”