Jane Austen and her works E-Book

Sarah Tytler

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

My intention in this book is to present in one volume to an over-wrought, and in some respects over-read, generation of young people the most characteristic of Jane Austen’s novels, together with her life. I think the tales and the life are calculated to reflect light on each other; I think, also, that the arrangement of the tales—which I have selected as the author wrote them, and not as they happened to be published, particularly in reference to the fact that the two which I have given first were written more than ten years before “Emma” and “Persuasion”—is an advantage, in permitting the growth of the author’s mind and taste to be recognised. I have used my own judgment in the selection of the stories, and in the degree and manner in which I have condensed them. It is with reverent hands that I have touched these great English novels, for the purpose of bringing them into such compass as may make them readily accessible to all, and especially to young readers, apt to be wearied by the slightest diffuseness.

Leseprobe

JANE AUSTEN AND HER WORKS.

JANE AUSTEN.

JANE AUSTENAND HER WORKS.

BYSARAH TYTLER.

WITH A PORTRAIT ON STEEL.

1880

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385741242

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Jane Austen

1

Jane Austen’s Novels

42

Pride and Prejudice

54

Northanger Abbey

129

Emma

200

Sense and Sensibility, and Mansfield Park

322

Persuasion

331

PREFACE.

My intention in this book is to present in one volume to an over-wrought, and in some respects over-read, generation of young people the most characteristic of Jane Austen’s novels, together with her life. I think the tales and the life are calculated to reflect light on each other; I think, also, that the arrangement of the tales—which I have selected as the author wrote them, and not as they happened to be published, particularly in reference to the fact that the two which I have given first were written more than ten years before “Emma” and “Persuasion”—is an advantage, in permitting the growth of the author’s mind and taste to be recognised. I have used my own judgment in the selection of the stories, and in the degree and manner in which I have condensed them. It is with reverent hands that I have touched these great English novels, for the purpose of bringing them into such compass as may make them readily accessible to all, and especially to young readers, apt to be wearied by the slightest diffuseness. Wherever it has been possible, in view of my aim, I have used the author’s own words, as incomparably the best for the characters and situations. I have pointed out here and there the great changes in social standards, customs and fashions since Jane Austen wrote; while it is her glory that the human nature in her books and the human nature in every generation are the same. I have occasionally called attention to an unrivalled piece of art, which a too eager or an inexperienced reader may be in danger of overlooking.

So far from presuming to wish to draw readers from Jane Austen’s novels in their complete form, it is my earnest desire to send many a young student who may be tempted to quench her intellectual thirst at sources utterly unworthy of the great English novelist, to the originals of the tales I have abridged.

I have much pleasure in acknowledging the obligation I owe to Mr. Austen Leigh, Jane Austen’s nephew, who, with tender and reverent care, gathered together and recorded all the particulars that remained of her personal and family history. I have drawn solely and largely from this biography, which is, indeed, the only authorised memoir of the author.

⁂ The portrait which, by the kindness of the Austen Leigh family and Mr. Bentley, we are enabled to put as the frontispiece to this work, has the interest of being a faithful copy of the only portrait that was ever taken of Jane Austen, a rough sketch made by her sister Cassandra, and afterwards touched by the hand of a professional artist, and while it cannot claim to be a perfect portrait, it is considered by those who have seen and known the great novelist to be a fairly good likeness of her.

JANE AUSTEN AND HER WORKS.

JANE AUSTEN.

I.

It is said there is an ancient tradition in the East, that close on a certain date of the year are born the men to whom are given special gifts to enlighten and delight their fellow-creatures. To, or near to, this date we can assign the birthdays of William Caxton, by the invention of printing the father of widely-diffused learning; William Shakespeare, with his marvellous knowledge of human nature; Cervantes, the great humourist; and William Wordsworth, to whom skies and hills, trees and flowers, beasts and birds, had a voice, and told a story which he could make plain to the duller comprehension of thousands. But no Oriental sage had a word to say in anticipation of the birthday—at a very different season of the year—when there looked out for the first time on the world and its wonders, the child-eyes of a woman who was to edify and charm some of the wisest men of her own and succeeding generations.

Women may well be proud of the woman who has been held, on high authority, second only to Shakespeare in the comprehension of the springs which move the heart.

Girls may well be proud of the girl who, strange to say, wrote two of her masterpieces, “Pride and Prejudice” and “Northanger Abbey,” before she had completed her twenty-third year. When other girls were practising their music and working at their embroidery, having their youthful gaieties and youthful dreams, Jane Austen, who was fair to see and charming to listen to, who practised her music, sewed at her worsted-work, joined in gatherings of young people, and had her morning visions with the best, possessed in addition the power, and found the time, to accomplish those wonders of fiction which, for their subtle reproduction of character, and exquisite weaving of a web so like that of the common lot, have been the instruction and solace—not of companion girls alone, but of statesmen and historians, philosophers and poets, down to the present day.

Both men and women may be proud of the woman who did this great thing, yet who never forfeited a tittle of her womanliness; who was essentially as good, true, and dear, as devoted to home, as cherished in its narrow circle, as the most obscure of her sisters, who are nothing to the world while they are everything to their own people.

The slight yet not unsatisfactory record of Jane Austen’s life came late to literature, after most of the materials which might have supplied a fuller memoir had been destroyed, and nearly every contemporary recollection of her was lost. The relatives who were left to accomplish a biography of the “Aunt Jane” whose personal kindness had made so deep an impression on them half a century before, and of whose permanent and still-increasing fame they have remained justly proud, were more or less elderly people, and were not writers like the subject of the biography. But any disadvantages which exist are not without their ample compensation in the affectionate simplicity and pathos of the narrative.

Jane Austen was born a hundred and four years ago, on December 16th, 1775, at the parsonage house of Steventon, in Hampshire. The Austens were a Kent family, originally one of those aristocratic clothworkers who, possessing landed property in the Weald, did not disdain to work in wool, and who were generally known as “the Greycoats of Kent.” Mr. Austen Leigh, Jane Austen’s nephew, writes that a trace of the family origin survives in the family livery of light blue and white, called “Kentish Grey.”

Jane Austen’s father, an orphan, brought up by an uncle, a lawyer in Tunbridge, was, in succession, a scholar at Tunbridge School, a fellow of St. John’s, Oxford, and rector of the two livings of Deane and Steventon, Hampshire villages little more than a mile apart, and numbering a united population of not more than three hundred.

The young rector married Cassandra Leigh, a daughter of the incumbent of Harpenden, near Henley-on-the-Thames. The Leighs were a Warwickshire family, descended, on the mother’s side, from the Chandos house. Jane Austen’s grand-uncle, Dr. Theophilus Leigh, was Master of Balliol College for upwards of half a century. I mention him because he was a man famous in his day for ready repartee, and it is possible his wit may have descended to his grand-niece Jane.

For thirty years the Austens resided at Steventon; and there Jane Austen spent, for the most part, the first twenty-five years of her life, in a quiet country circle, certainly not without its cultured members, among whom was her father, a scholarly and accomplished man.

When Mr. and Mrs. Austen were still a young couple, they were entrusted with the charge of a son of Warren Hastings, but the child died in infancy; otherwise we might have had a long train of life-like Anglo-Indians in fiction, many years before they were conjured into existence by Thackeray.

The next parish to Steventon was Ashe, of which the clergyman then happened to be Dr. Russell, grand-father of Mary Russell Mitford.

The Rev. George Austen was so good-looking a man, from youth to age, as to have been called “the handsome proctor” at Oxford, and to be still noticed at Bath, when he was over seventy years of age, on account of his fine features and abundance of snow-white hair. I have already said he was a man of ability. He directed the studies of all his children, and increased his income by the practice, usual with clergymen, of taking pupils. Mrs. Austen was also reputed a clever woman, endowed with a lively imagination, in addition to much good sense.

Jane Austen’s biographer says rightly, the members of her own family were so much to her, and the rest of the world so little, that a brief sketch of her brothers and sister is necessary, to furnish a complete idea of her life. He remarks elsewhere, in alluding to the retirement in which she generally dwelt, that she had probably never been in company with anybody of greater literary ability and reputation than herself. In these observations, he touches inadvertently on what I think formed the root of the defects—to which I shall refer afterwards—in an otherwise fine character.

Jane Austen had five brothers and one sister. James, the eldest of the family, and the father of Jane’s biographer, is described as well read in English literature, writing readily and happily both in prose and verse. When yet a young man at Oxford, he originated a periodical called the “Loiterer,” and by his example may have turned Jane’s attention to authorship. He was a clergyman, and succeeded his father at Steventon. Edward Austen was early adopted by his cousin, Mr. Knight, of Godmersham Park, in Kent, and Chawton House, in Hampshire. He adopted the name of Knight, and was, like Frank Churchill in “Emma,” a good deal separated from his family in their youth. But it was to his neighbourhood, and to the support of his position as the squire of the parish, that the women of the Austen family returned at last. This brother Edward is said to have been full of amiability and fun. He seems to have borne some resemblance in his character, as well as in his circumstances, to the Frank Churchill of Jane’s story.

Henry Austen was a good talker, but he was the least successful of the brothers. While he resided in London, he appears to have been the literary authority, and the means of communication between his sister Jane and her publishers.

Francis and Charles Austen were both sailors, and both lived to become admirals. Francis possessed a firm temper and a strong sense of duty. He was distinguished by his religious principles at a time when a religious profession was rare in the service. At one station he was pointed out as “the officer who knelt in church.” Charles—specially beloved in his family for the sweet temper and affectionate disposition which resembled Jane’s—was, on one occasion, seven consecutive years absent from England on active service. He died of cholera in the course of the Burmese war, Lord Dalhousie expressing his admiration of the staunch, high spirit which, notwithstanding his age (seventy-four) and previous sufferings, had led the admiral to take his part in the trying service that closed his career.

Cassandra Austen was three years Jane’s senior. The warmest affection subsisted between the two, Jane, in her maturity and fame, continuing to look up to her elder sister, a beautiful, staid, thoughtful woman from her girlhood. When Cassandra was sent to the school of a Mrs. Latourville (probably a French émigrée), in the Forbury of Reading, Jane went with her, not because she was old enough, but because she would have been miserable without her sister, her mother observing “that if Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane would insist on sharing her fate.”

Steventon was one of those villages and parsonages which Jane Austen so often described. “It was situated among the low chalk hills and winding lanes of North Hants. The parsonage house stood in a shallow valley, surrounded by sloping meadows well sprinkled with elm-trees, at the end of a small village of cottages, each provided with a garden, scattered about prettily on either side of the road.” Within the house, though it was reckoned rather above the average of the parsonages of its day, no cornice marked the junction of wall and ceiling, while the beams which supported the upper floors projected into the rooms below in all their naked simplicity, covered only by a coat of paint or whitewash. About five years after Jane Austen’s death, her old home at Steventon was pulled down.

“At the front of the house was a carriage-drive through turf and trees. On the south side the ground rose gently, and was occupied by an old-fashioned garden, in which flowers and vegetables kept each other company, flanked on the east by a thatched mud wall, and overshadowed by fine elms. Along the upper side of the garden ran a terrace of fine turf, where Jane in her childhood might have emulated young Catherine Morland in rolling down the green slope.”

Mr. Austen Leigh says the chief beauty of Steventon was in its hedgerows—borders of copsewood and timber, often wide enough to contain a winding footpath or rough cart-track. “There the earliest primroses, anemones, and wild hyacinths were to be found, the first bird’s-nest, and sometimes an unwelcome adder.” Two such hedgerows radiated from the parsonage garden. One, a continuation of the turf terrace, ran westward, and formed the boundary of the home meadows. It was made into a rustic shrubbery, with occasional seats, and was called, in the sentimental language of the day, “the Wood Walk.” No doubt Jane Austen often strolled or sat there, alone, or with her sister, or one of her brothers. She might carry there her little work-box, or the volume of “Evelina,” or “Cecilia,” the “Mysteries of Udolpho,” or the “Romance of the Forest,” which she was devouring. It was to such a shrubbery or “wilderness” that she sent Elizabeth Bennet to seek her father—to read an important letter—or to hold her famous interview with Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

The other hedgerow bore the name of “the Church Walk,” because it climbed the hill to the parish church, near which, surrounded by sycamores, was a manor-house of Henry VIII.’s time, tenanted for upwards of a hundred years by a yeoman family bearing the appropriate name of Digweed.

The little church without a spire, with its narrow early English windows, is said to have been upwards of seven hundred years old.[1] Sweet violets, purple and white, grew in profusion beneath the south wall. The churchyard had its hollow yew coeval with the church, its old elms and thorns among its mossy stones and green mounds.

We hear many regrets in our day for the demolition of the old church of Haworth, in which the Brontë family worshipped, that may very likely be followed by the destruction of the old parsonage house. Jane Austen’s admirers, though they are choice spirits and cannot be denied the merit of fidelity, have not been so enthusiastic. I do not know that one protesting voice was raised when the iconoclast’s changes and improvements reached the peaceful old parish. I am not sure whether many pilgrims ever sought that birthplace, and as to those who have visited the grave in Winchester Cathedral, we have Mr. Austen Leigh’s authority for the statement that they drew from the verger the puzzled inquiry—what was there particular about the lady buried there that people should come and ask to see her resting-place? No: Jane Austen and her work must always be regarded in one of two lights—that of quiet though intense appreciation, or that of puzzled non-comprehension.

The large family at Steventon were worthy, prosperous, and happy. They had in some respects the position and privileges of the family of the principal squire, as well as the rector of the parish, since the Rev. George Austen represented the absentee cousin, of whom the clergyman’s second son was the adopted son and heir. The Austens kept a carriage and pair of horses, and lived in a style equal to that of the neighbouring county gentry, whose near relatives or intimate friends the household at the parsonage were. In reckoning up the special advantages of such a home in one of her novels, Jane Austen lays stress on its being well connected, “a well connected parsonage.”

Among the most frequent visitors at Steventon were two families of cousins, who could both of them bring fresh experiences to the country parsonage. The one family, the Coopers, lived in the brilliant Bath of their generation, where Cassandra and Jane Austen, as young women, visited their relations long before they ever thought of Bath as a residence for themselves. Jane was still able to enjoy the gay watering-place with the keen appetite of a country-bred girl, and it is these vivid reminiscences which she transfers to the pages of “Northanger Abbey,” while she reserves the much more sober, rather adverse estimate of later years for the concluding chapters of “Persuasion.” One of these cousins, Jane Austen’s dear friend and namesake, was married from her uncle’s house at Steventon to a captain in the navy, under whom Charles Austen served. A few years afterwards, this favourite cousin was suddenly killed in a carriage accident.

Another cousin had been brought up in Paris, and had married a Count de Feuillade, who was guillotined during the French Revolution. His widow escaped through many perils, took refuge in her uncle’s parsonage of Steventon, and ended by marrying her cousin Henry Austen, with whom she went to France, during the short Peace of Amiens, in 1802, and narrowly escaped being detained among the unfortunate English prisoners of war, by Napoleon.

Thus the quiet Hampshire parsonage was not entirely without its excitements, in addition to the arrivals and departures of its sailor sons, the naval battles and sieges in which they were engaged, the ship-intelligence which was always eagerly scanned on their behalf. Had the future author been so disposed, she might have found in the conversation and adventures of her cousin and sister-in-law materials for novels which would have been more to the taste of a large section of the public than Jane Austen’s perfect tales. As it was, the chief immediate results of the young widowed countess’s stay at Steventon, when Jane Austen was just entering on her teens, were the improvement of the family French, and the performance of amateur theatricals in a summer theatre in the barn and a winter theatre in the little dining-room. Out of these theatricals Jane Austen made stock for “Mansfield Park,” in which, by the way, she infers decided disapproval of the amusement. Whether or not the real theatricals led to the attachment and engagement of Henry Austen and Madame de Feuillade we may conjecture, but cannot ascertain from Mr. Austen Leigh’s narrative.

Jane Austen’s biographer writes of the Austens’ long stay at Steventon as having remained unshadowed by any serious family misfortune or death. But one great disaster, which, though it did not concern Jane directly, touched her nearly, befell a member of the family. Cassandra Austen, more regularly beautiful than Jane, wise for her years, and good, was engaged to be married to a young clergyman who had a prospect of early preferment from a nobleman, his relative and friend. The two men went together to the West Indies, the one to act for a time as chaplain to the regiment of the other. Very soon the chaplain died of yellow fever. The melancholy news, descending like a thunderbolt on the cheerful Hampshire parsonage, brought great grief to Cassandra Austen, and Jane was certain to suffer with her sister.

II.

In person Jane Austen seems to have borne considerable resemblance to her two favourite heroines, Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse. Jane, too, was tall and slender, a brunette, with a rich colour—altogether “the picture of health” which Emma Woodhouse was said to be. In minor points, Jane Austen had a well-formed though somewhat small nose and mouth, round as well as rosy cheeks, bright hazel eyes, and brown hair, falling in natural curls about her face.

With regard to her knowledge and accomplishments, Jane Austen was well acquainted with the English history and literature of her day. When very young she was an ardent partisan of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Charles I., though one may be tolerably sure she modified her views in later years. She read the Queen Anne essayists and their followers. She was a warm admirer of the works of Johnson, Crabbe, and Cowper. Of Crabbe she said jestingly, in reference to the author—not the man, whom she had not seen—that if she ever married at all she could fancy herself Mrs. Crabbe. She knew Richardson’s novels almost by heart. She had great pleasure in Sir Walter Scott’s poetry. Of his novels, only “Waverley,” “Guy Mannering,” and “The Antiquary” had come out before her death. She has expressed more than once in her tales her lively appreciation of the novels of Mrs. Radcliffe, Madame d’Arblay, and Miss Edgeworth.

As to foreign languages and literature, Jane Austen had a considerable knowledge of French, and a slight acquaintance with Italian. In music she could play and sing pleasantly, with much the same degree of proficiency that she attributed to Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse. Jane was accustomed to practise her music before breakfast, with the laudable purpose of not disturbing other members of the family less musically inclined. She would sing of an evening, when required, simple old songs to her own accompaniment. She was fond of dancing, and danced very well, like several of her own heroines, and like her sister-author, Anna Maria Porter.

Jane Austen was exceedingly neat-handed, with a quick eye and a firm grasp. Her handwriting was at once strong and fine, as well as very legible,[2] I should say, in broad contrast to what may be called the Italian hand—an overflow of characterless elegance which belonged to the generation. She sewed and embroidered, as she did everything else, with exquisite finish. She was great in satin-stitch. She spent much of her time in sewing—not being above making her own clothes, as well as those of the poor. She was an adept in any of the old-fashioned games founded on dexterity of hand, such as spillikins, and cup and ball. She liked to play at such games when unable to read and write long at a time, from weakness and weariness in those bright, searching eyes of hers.

The great novelist was very fond of children, and much beloved by them, like Anna Maria Porter again. She could tell no end of fairy stories, was the make-believe visitor in the children’s make-believe houses, and readily improvised for her young listeners’ benefit.

Jane Austen was not without suitors, whom her independent spirit, absorption in her family, and quiet reserve could not repel. Her descendants were aware of addresses paid to her by one gentleman who had every recommendation of character, connections, and position, to whom nothing was wanting save the lady’s favour. There is also the lingering recollection of a sorrowful little romance, bearing a resemblance to that of her sister Cassandra, in connection with the brilliant, witty, successful author. It was told by Cassandra Austen to her young relatives long after Jane’s death. The two girls, while spending some weeks during their youth at a seaside place, became acquainted with a gentleman whose attractions of person, mind, and manners made even Cassandra think him worthy of Jane, and likely to win her. When the young people parted, the new friend expressed his intention of soon seeing the sisters again, and Cassandra at least had no doubt of his motives; but the second meeting never took place. The sisters heard, not long afterwards, of the gentleman’s sudden death, and with him perished, in Cassandra Austen’s opinion, her sister Jane’s solitary, short love-dream.

III.

Jane Austen wrote stories, in addition to all manner of quips and cranks, impromptu verses, and mocking stanzas, from her childhood upwards. In admitting the childish practice, after she was a middle-aged woman, she called it an innocent amusement, but a waste of time which, as she had found to her regret, might have been more profitably employed. She had accumulated numerous copies, full of such stories—for the most part burlesques of the melodramatic extravagances of other writers—by the time she was sixteen. The published story which is nearest to this style is “Northanger Abbey.” She seems to have completed two stories, which were not parodies, between the age of sixteen and twenty. Both of these were in the old-fashioned form of letters. One of them she re-wrote, in another shape, and it was ultimately published under the title of “Sense and Sensibility.” The other, “Lady Susan,” was only published along with the little memoir of the author, nine years ago.

Two among her masterpieces were written between her twenty-first and twenty-third years. “Pride and Prejudice,” named originally “First Impressions,” was written in ten months, between 1796 and 1797; “Sense and Sensibility,” the reproduction from the earlier story, in letters, called “Ellinor and Marianne,” occupied the author between 1797 and 1798; but “Northanger Abbey,” which holds a place beside “Pride and Prejudice,” was written also in 1798.

Jane Austen wrote with the knowledge and approval of her father and mother and the rest of her family. There is still in existence a letter written by Mr. Austen and addressed to Mr. Cadell, in November, 1797, immediately after the completion of “Pride and Prejudice.” The father simply states that he has in his possession a MS. novel in three volumes, about the length of Miss Burney’s “Evelina.” He asks whether Mr. Cadell would choose to be concerned in bringing it out, what would be the expense of publishing if at the author’s risk, and what the publisher would venture to advance for the copyright if, on perusal, it was approved of.

The proposal was declined by return of post, more from excess of caution than from erring criticism, since the MS. was never in the publisher’s hands. It is almost needless to say that the rejected novel has been considered the best, as it is unquestionably among the best, of English novels.

“Pride and Prejudice” was not published till sixteen years after it had been composed; “Sense and Sensibility,” the first published of Jane Austen’s novels, not for thirteen years after the first time it was re-written. “Northanger Abbey” was the first sold of these earlier novels, but it cannot be considered more lucky than its predecessors. Its fate was, if possible, still more mortifying. It was disposed of to a publisher in Bath for the modest sum of ten pounds, five years after it was written, and two years before the death of Jane Austen’s father. It lay ignominiously in a drawer in the shop of its purchaser for many years. At last it was bought back for the sum originally given, by one of the author’s brothers, who, when the transaction was finished, triumphantly informed the dilatory publisher that he had just re-sold a work by the well-known author of “Pride and Prejudice.” “Northanger Abbey,” on which Lord Macaulay set such store, was not brought out till 1818, after Jane Austen’s death, when it appeared together with her last story, “Persuasion,” just twenty years from the date at which the former novel was written. Surely, few young authors have had to suffer greater and more prolonged disappointment in finding a publisher and a public. The experience may serve as a consolation to all struggling literary aspirants. On the other hand we may seek generation after generation of authors doomed to obscurity, temporary or permanent, before we find another Jane Austen. Of a nephew and a niece of the author’s who took to youthful novel-writing in their aunt’s lifetime, and received all indulgence and encouragement from their kinswoman, it is recorded that neither of their novels ever saw the light; yet we might have said of them that they had novel-writing in the blood. One of them wrote with the inspiring association of dwelling in Steventon Parsonage, the other received invaluable hints and suggestions from a mistress of her art; but it was all of no avail.

It is said that Jane Austen bore her early literary disappointments very philosophically. She did not write for money; her father was in easy circumstances. She might not then anticipate fame—though she was far from undervaluing her powers—and she did not over-rate the worth of a literary reputation; still I can scarcely comprehend the equanimity of a very young woman remaining entirely unshaken by the unbroken train of undeserved failures and rebuffs. There is one thing that I feel sure Jane Austen must have grieved for:—her father, who had superintended her education, and taken a fatherly interest in her first attempts at authorship, did not live to see the faint dawn of the success which, though it came late, has proved ample.

Before quitting the subject of the novelist’s youth at Steventon, I should like to say a word on the influences already referred to, which I believe affected her as a woman and an author. During her whole life she remained to a great extent engrossed by the interests of her family and their limited circle of old and intimate friends. This was as it should be—so far, but there may be too much of a good thing. The tendency of strictly restricted family parties and sets—when their members are above small bickerings and squabblings—when they are really superior people in every sense, is to form “mutual admiration” societies, and neither does this more respectable and amiable weakness act beneficially upon its victims. In the incessant intercourse between the Great House and Upper Cross Cottage in “Persuasion,” we have an example, under Jane Austen’s own hand, of the evils of such constant communication among people of inferior understanding and intelligence. If we look nearer home, we may have a glimpse of disadvantages of a different sort, attendant on what Scotch people call “clannishness” in a higher region. Good as Jane Austen was, there is a certain spirit of exclusiveness, intolerance, condescension, and what may be classed as refined family selfishness, in the attitude which she, the happy member of a large and united family, distinguished by many estimable qualities, assumed to the world without. She was independent of it to a large extent for social intercourse; and so she told it candidly, and just a little haughtily—forgetting, for the most part, the wants of less favoured individuals—that she needed nothing from it.

Fondly loved and remembered as Jane Austen has been, with much reason, among her own people, in their considerable ramifications, I cannot imagine her as greatly liked, or even regarded with anything save some amount of prejudice, out of the immediate circle of her friends, and in general society. I hope I may not be misunderstood. I do not mean that the novelist was other than an excellent woman, pre-eminently a gentlewoman. What I mean is, that she allowed her interests and sympathies to become narrow, even for her day, and that her tender charity not only began, but ended, in a large measure, at home. No doubt I am alluding to the characteristics of a generation and class, which showed themselves, in a marked manner, in the repugnance with which other intellectual gentlewomen shrank from acknowledging the profession of authorship, with its obligations, no less than its privileges, as if it involved a degradation—something distinctly injurious to them, both as women and gentlewomen. Fanny Burney, on the other hand, was brought up among artists of every description, which, perhaps, accounts for the transparent literary vanity which forms so broad a contrast to the shyness—often equally self-conscious—of her sister-authors. But the whole bent of Jane Austen’s disposition and rearing seem to point in the contrary direction.

Jane Austen was the clear-sighted girl with the sharp pen, if not the sharp tongue, who found in the Steventon visiting-list materials for the dramatis personæ of “Pride and Prejudice.” It would have been little short of a miracle if she could have conducted herself with such meekness, in her remote rural world, or during the visits she paid to the great English watering-place—while she was all the time laughing in her sleeve—so as not to provoke any suspicion of her satire, or any resentment at what might easily be held her presumption.

We may grant fully that Jane Austen was far too good an artist to make absolute copies from real persons to figure in the pages of her books, and too good a woman not to regard such a practice as a breach of social honour and propriety. But we all know how human beings—especially the duller among us, distrust and dislike being turned into ridicule. “A chiel amang us takin’ notes” is not half so offensive as an audacious boy or girl convicted of taking us off, whether behind our backs or to our faces. I do not mean to infer that Miss Austen at any age was guilty of the mean and disloyal practice called “drawing out people” until they expose their weakness, and then making game of the weaknesses, whether in the victim’s company or out of it. I have it on excellent authority that, however thoroughly she was able to sympathise with the witty repartees of two of her favourite heroines, in general company she herself was shy and silent; even in more familiar circles she was innocent of speaking sharp words, and was rather distinguished for her tolerant indulgence to her fellow-creatures, than for her hard judgments on them. The tolerance belonged, by right, to her breadth of comprehension, and to the humour which still more than wit characterised her genius. The suggestion I make is that, seeing her neighbours’ foibles, as she certainly did see them, she could not, however generously she might use her superior knowledge, conceal it altogether from her neighbours, and this was less likely to be the case when she was a young girl with some share, presumably, of the thoughtlessness and rashness of other girls, than when she was a mature woman, with the wisdom and gentleness of experience. I have pointed out the softened as well as the more serious tone of her later novels, the difference, for instance, between “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion.” But who is to guess that the boy or the girl is to turn out a great novelist and humourist, whose genius is a fire in the bones, and an excuse for a hundred liberties?

As an author, in the few letters that have been preserved in which we have Jane Austen’s private feelings on the subject of her novels frankly written to her family and friends, she gives one the impression of having always found herself the queen of her company: never in an arrogant, vulgar way; on the contrary, with a sweet playfulness and gracious kindness to those who were closely allied to her by kindred, blood, and the ties of friendship; but all the same she reigned queen. She might come down from her throne and defer to her elder sister Cassandra, or to any other relative, but her sceptre was still in her hand. I do not draw inferences merely from Jane Austen’s hearty, undissembled appreciation of her own work, and her distinct perception, freely announced, of its superior claims; doubtless that was inevitable to such a woman as she was, in the circumstances in which she found herself. It is in the whole assured tone of the half-jesting criticism; the half-pretended impatience that any new great novelist should enter the lists; the total absence—as in the case of Mrs. Radcliffe—of any natural desire to know and be known by her fellow-writers, to measure herself in familiar intercourse with them, above all, to give and receive sympathy.

Of course these peculiarities in the individual woman were not enough to hinder her from admiring at a distance, and occasionally generously proclaiming the admiration for, some of her contemporaries. I am bound also, in fairness, to add to my own impressions that it remained the firm persuasion of Jane Austen’s biographer that she was as far as possible from being censorious and satirical. With regard to the censoriousness, I agree perfectly with this witness; but as to the satire, I must bring forward the opposite and impartial testimony of her own writings. Jane Austen was on the whole more humorous than satirical, yet in the earlier novels the satire is prominent. I can give far more unqualified credence to the statement that, while her unusually quick sense of the ridiculous led her to play with all the common-places of every-day life—whether as regarded persons or things—she never played with its serious duties or responsibilities.

With all her neighbours in the village—her humbler neighbours, I suppose—Mr. Austen Leigh says she was on friendly though not on intimate terms, “She took a kindly interest in all their proceedings, and liked to hear about them. They often served for her amusement, but it was her own nonsense that gave zest to the gossip.” The last is a nice distinction, hardly likely to be understood by the neighbours over whose affairs she laughed.

That Jane Austen, with her singular Shakespeare-like sympathy in little, her power of putting herself in another’s place, could not help feeling both interested and entertained by the proceedings of the fellow-creatures around her, I can easily believe. What I doubt is that she who turned those simple souls, and the incidents of their lives, inside out, for her mingled instruction and diversion, could altogether conceal the process, or render it palatable to the subjects of the operation.

It was the conviction of the Austen family that Jane’s occupation as a novel writer continued long unsuspected by her ordinary acquaintances and neighbours. That may have been, but we cannot imagine that her close study of the characters around her, with her shrewd, humorous conclusions—so extraordinary at the age at which she began to make them—could have been either quite unperceived or wholly approved of by her associates.

There are one or two of Jane Austen’s letters from Steventon published in her memoir. They are bright, chatty letters, not far removed from those which any merry-hearted, clever girl might have written. They deal entirely with domestic and local details. The arrival of a set of tables, with which everybody, for a wonder, was pleased; a great November storm, that made havoc among the Parsonage trees; an accident to a neighbour’s son; an anticipated ball; the fact that Jane was then reading Hume’s “History of England,” form the topics. As there is no continuity, either in the letters or the narrative, of which such incidents might supply a part, they fall vaguely and flatly on the reader. The most interesting paragraphs are those which refer to the absent sailor brothers, and the eagerness of the mother and sisters to hear stray news of them, or to forward letters to them, and procure answering letters by the chances of coming and going ships. There is one passage which tallies with the details of a gift made in “Mansfield Park”:—“Charles has received thirty pounds for his share of the privateer, and expects ten pounds more; but of what avail is it to take prizes if he lays out the produce in presents to his sisters? He has been buying gold chains and topaz crosses for us. He must be well scolded.... I shall write again by this post to thank and reproach him. We shall be unbearably fine.”

IV.

During an absence from home on Jane Austen’s part, it was settled, before she knew, that her father, who at the age of seventy had resigned his living of Steventon to his son James, should remove with his wife and daughters to Bath. However much Jane may have felt the fascination of her girlish visits to Bath, she did not approve of it as a place of residence in her more mature womanhood. We are reminded of a sentence in “Persuasion” where the author remarks drily Anne Elliot did not like Bath; fancied it disagreed with her; would have preferred any other place; therefore, to Bath, as a matter of course, the family went. So much for the unpropitiousness of events.

The Austens went to Bath in 1801, when Jane was twenty-six years of age. The family resided first at No. 4, Sydney Terrace, and later at Green Park Buildings. An attraction to Bath, suggested by Mr. Austen Leigh, is that Mrs. Austen’s only brother, Mr. Leigh Perrot,[3] with his wife, was in the habit of spending his time between Bath and his place of Scarletts. Like his uncle, the Master of Balliol, Mr. Leigh Perrot was a witty man, and some of his epigrams and riddles, in which he must have far outshone Mr. Woodhouse, found their way, among other morsels, into print. The Austens, with their strong family proclivities, were much with the Leigh Perrots.

Jane was still young, pretty, and cheerful enough to enter with a fair proportion of enjoyment into the gaieties of the place. She had given up writing, in a great measure, since she was three or four and twenty, whether chilled by her lack of success or distracted by other engagements and amusements. However, it is thought that it was during her stay in Bath she wrote several chapters of an unfinished novel called “The Watsons,” which, unlike the youthful performance, “Lady Susan,” published along with these chapters in the same volume with the memoir, bear a strong flavour of Jane Austen in her sagacity and banter.

She may have been inspirited to the effort by the sale, though for so small a sum, of the MS. of “Northanger Abbey,” which happened two years after she came to Bath, when she was twenty-eight years of age. We know the sale proved fruitless, so far as speedy publication was concerned, but the mortifying conclusion could not have been foreseen, and the sale of one of her novels for ten pounds was Jane Austen’s first faint gleam of good fortune in authorship, the only one which visited her during her father’s lifetime.

The Austens remained at Bath about four years. In their last autumn there, the autumn of 1804, Jane, with her father and mother, spent some weeks at the lovely sea-bathing place of Lyme, which she admired so much, and has immortalised in “Persuasion.” We cannot avoid being struck by the small number of the opportunities which Jane Austen had of seeing the world, and by the great use she made of them. Her journeyings were not so very much more extensive than those of the Vicar of Wakefield and his wife in the days of their prosperity, but they were sufficient for her to avail herself of them for the information and delight of her fellow-creatures. It is not the amount of what we see, but the eyes with which we see it, that signifies.

In the following spring, that of 1805, the Rev. George Austen died at Bath. His widow and daughters then removed to Southampton—drawn to its society very likely by the sailor Austens—and there they stayed for four more years. Mrs. Austen occupied a large old-fashioned house in a corner of Castle Square. The house had a pleasant garden, bounded on one side by the old city wall. A flight of steps led to the top of the wall, which formed a walk with an extensive view of sea and land.

V.

In 1809 the Austens made their last removal. It was back to the country—of which Jane always makes her heroines fond—back to the old neighbourhood of Steventon, her birth-place. Edward Knight offered his mother a choice of two houses—the one on his estate in Kent, the other on his estate in Hampshire. She selected the house in Hampshire, Chawton Cottage, near the squire’s occasional home, Chawton House.

Chawton Cottage, in the village of the same name, was not originally a farm house, like Upper Cross Cottage, in “Persuasion;” it had been intended for an inn. Indeed, it stood so close to the high road on which the front door opened, that a very narrow enclosure “paled” in on each side had been necessary to protect the building from the danger of collision with runaway vehicles. In addition to the Gosport Road in front, the Winchester Road skirted the house on one side, so that it could not be regarded as a secluded habitation, but in those days cheerfulness was more prized than seclusion. There was a large pond close to Chawton Cottage, at the junction of the two public roads. Happily the theory which connects insalubrity with such ponds had not yet been aired, so that to the Austens, no doubt, Chawton pond was a very desirable sheet of water, tending still more to enhance the attractions of the scene. They would not much mind the duckweed and other slimy vegetation. Horses and donkeys, ducks and geese, would disport themselves there in summer. In winter village sliders would bestow animation on the ice.

The squire added to the house, and contrived some judicious planting and screening. A good-sized entrance and two sitting-rooms were managed. In the drawing-room a window which looked to the Gosport Road was blocked up and turned into a bookcase, and another window was opened out and made to command only turf and trees, for a high wooden fence and a hornbeam hedge shut out the Winchester Road. Here was a little bit of genteel privacy. A shrubbery was carried round the enclosure, which Mr. Austen Leigh tells us gave a sufficient space for “ladies’ exercise,” though we cannot help thinking the exercise-ground must have been rather limited for the middle-aged women.

However, there was a pleasant irregular mixture of hedgerow, gravel-walk, and orchard, with grass for mowing, made by two or three little enclosures having been thrown together. As it happened, walking had to be relinquished before many years by the younger sister, and Jane Austen, as well as her mother, had to resort to a donkey-carriage for exercise.

Altogether Chawton Cottage was “quite as good as the generality of parsonages, and nearly in the same style.” It was capable of receiving other members of the family as frequent visitors. In this respect it must have contrasted favourably in Jane’s mind with the cottage in which she had established Ellinor and Marianne Dashwood with their mother, in “Sense and Sensibility.” Chawton Cottage was sufficiently well furnished.[4] Altogether it formed a comfortable and “lady-like” establishment for a family of ladies whose means were not large. To Jane Austen it was her own house, among her own people, points which meant a great deal to her. Besides, she was a woman possessed at once of too much self-respect and self-resource, and of too serene a spirit and lively a temper to care much either for outward show or interior luxury.

Jane Austen was thirty-four years of age when she settled down at Chawton, her sister Cassandra was thirty-seven, their mother seventy. They were a household of old and middle-aged women, increased either then or a little later by a family connection—a Miss Lloyd—who lived with the Austens. Their prospects were as clearly defined as earthly prospects could well be, and they accepted the definition. Jane Austen was never seen without a cap, either in the morning or the evening, after she went to Chawton. The Austen sisters assumed early the caps which were then the mark of matronhood or confirmed spinsterhood. Possibly Cassandra Austen first adopted the badge as a quiet sign that she wished to have nothing more to do with love and marriage, and Jane bore her faithful company in this as in everything else. Mr. Austen Leigh mentions also—and every trifle is welcome which bears on the novelist’s character and habits—it was held that his aunts, though remarkably neat in their dress, as in all their ways, were not sufficiently attentive to the fashionable or the becoming. In short, Jane and Cassandra Austen, though they had been the young beauties of Steventon in their time, entertained no fear of being styled dowdies or frights in their middle age, whether by their young relatives or the “dressy” among their contemporaries.

The Austens dwelt in the centre of family interests, several members of the old Steventon household living near, while a younger generation was growing up, with fresh claims on the affectionate sympathies of their grandmother and aunts. In her family and among her old friends Jane Austen was unsurpassed as a tender sick-nurse, an untiring confidante, and a wise counsellor.

In these congenial circumstances it seemed as if a fresh spring of courage and hopefulness, and with them renewed inspiration in her art, came to the author. She began the very year of her arrival at Chawton to revise and prepare her old MSS. for publication. She had found a publisher in a Mr. Egerton, and she brought out in succession two novels—the first, “Sense and Sensibility,” when she was thirty-six years of age, in 1811, fourteen or fifteen years after it was re-written at Steventon. She got for it, though after how short or long an interval, or by what arrangement, we are not told, a hundred and fifty pounds. In her gay way she exclaimed at so large a reward for what had cost her nothing—nothing save genius, ungrudging trouble, and long patience. “Pride and Prejudice” was published two years later, in 1813.

In the meantime Jane Austen began fresh work, for “Mansfield Park” was commenced the year before. She had no separate study; she worked in the family sitting-room, undisturbed by the conversation, or the various occupations going on around her, and subjected to all kinds of interruptions. She wrote at a little mahogany writing-desk, on small pieces of paper, which could be easily put aside, or covered with blotting-paper at the sight of visitors. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that she did not take the greatest pains with her work. She wrote and re-wrote, filed and polished; her own comparison for the process was painting on a few inches of ivory by repeated touches.

“Pride and Prejudice” attracted attention before long.[5] When the secret of the authorship became known, in spite of the author’s name being omitted on the title-page, Jane Austen’s experience was that of a prophet who has no honour in his own country. Mr. Austen Leigh says that any praise which reached the author and her family from their neighbours and acquaintances was of the mildest description, and that those excellent people would have considered Miss Jane’s relatives mad if it had been suspected that they put her, in their own minds, on a level with Madame d’Arblay or even with far inferior writers. A letter is given in which the novelist describes to her sister Cassandra in the liveliest terms her feelings on seeing “Pride and Prejudice” in print. She had got her own darling child from London. The advertisement of it had appeared in their paper that day for the first time. Eighteen shillings! She should ask a guinea for her two next, and twenty-eight shillings for her stupidest of all.

A friend who was not in the secret had dined at Chawton Cottage on the very day of the book’s coming, and in the evening the family had fairly set to it and read half the first volume to her without her having any suspicion. “She was amused, poor soul!” observes the author, and then adds, with admirable naïveté, “That she could not help, you know, with two such characters to lead the way, but she really does seem to admire Elizabeth. I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know.”

In another letter Jane Austen refers to the second reading, which had not come off quite so well, and had even caused her some fits of disgust. She attributed the comparative failure to the rapid way in which her mother, who seemed to have been the reader, got on, and to her not being able to speak as the characters ought, though she understood them perfectly. When we recollect that the old lady was already seventy-four years of age, we are rather astonished that she found voice and breath for such a labour of love as reading aloud her daughter’s novel, than that she was not able to give the dialogue with sufficient point. Upon the whole, the daughter winds up, she was quite vain enough and well satisfied enough, and the only fault which she found with her story was that it was rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wanted to be stretched here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had, if not of solemn specious nonsense. Unquestionably the novelist was not plagued with diffidence, any more than with mock-modesty.

In the same letter she refers to an out-of-the-way book for a woman to read, with which she was then engaged; it was an “Essay on the Military Police, and Institutions of the British Empire, by Captain Pasley, of the Engineers.” She declared it was delightfully written, and highly entertaining, and that the author was the first soldier she had ever sighed for. The last assertion reminds one of Jane Austen’s strong preference for the sister service, which may be best explained by the circumstance that she had two brothers in the navy, and none in the army. Her heroes are squires, clergymen, and sailors, just as the male Austens were. She uses their Christian names, James, Henry, Frank, Edward, as well as her own. Her sister’s name was too singular and conspicuous to be thus employed.

Another letter a year later, in 1814, supplies an account of a journey which Jane Austen made “post” to London, in company with her brother Henry, who read the MS. of “Mansfield Park” by the way. It sounds as if the brother and sister were themselves the bearers of the new work to the publisher, who brought it out the same year.

“Emma,” the heroine of which proved almost as great a favourite as Elizabeth Bennet with their author, was written and published two years later, in 1816. It was in connection with this, the last book of hers which Jane Austen lived to see come out, that she received what her nephew calls the only mark of distinction ever bestowed upon her. She was in London during the previous autumn of 1815, the year of Waterloo, nursing her brother Henry through a dangerous illness, in his house in Hans Place. Henry Austen was attended by one of the Prince Regent’s physicians. To this gentleman it became known that his patient’s nurse was the author of “Pride and Prejudice.” The court physician told the lady that the Prince was a great admirer of her novels; that he read them often, and kept a set in every one of his residences; that he himself had thought it right to inform his royal highness that Miss Austen was staying in London, and that the Prince had desired Mr. Clarke, the librarian at Carlton House, to wait upon her.

The next day Mr. Clarke made his appearance and invited Jane Austen to Carlton House, saying that he had the Prince’s instructions to show her the library,[6] and other apartments, and to pay her every possible attention. The invitation was of course accepted, and in the course of the visit to Carlton House Mr. Clarke declared himself commissioned to say that if Miss Austen had any other novel forthcoming, she was at liberty to dedicate it to the Prince. Accordingly, such a dedication was immediately prefixed to “Emma,” which was at that time in John Murray’s hands.

The first part of the civility, the invitation to Carlton House, was a gracious enough mark of attention from the first gentleman in Europe to the first lady novelist in his kingdom; but at this distance of time, in the full light enjoyed by posterity, it seems passing strange that two such women as Jane Austen and Jane Porter—equal in moral worth, though standing on very different intellectual heights—should have eagerly availed themselves of the permission to dedicate books to George IV., though he had been ten times the Prince Regent, and the future king. And what is if possible stranger, is that the Prince Regent should have been, even professedly, an admiring, assiduous reader of the novels—altogether apart in literary merit, but alike in good tone and taste—of these two upright and blameless women. The fact is enough to tempt people to a disheartening doubt of the moral influence of books.

As a qualification to the pleasure derived from the princely compliment, Jane Austen had to suffer the annoyance of receiving and declining to comply with two rather preposterous suggestions offered to her by Mr. Clarke. The one was for her to pourtray the habits of life, character, and enthusiasm of a clergyman who should pass his time between London and the country, and who should bear some resemblance to Beattie’s Minstrel.

In a letter in which she thanks her correspondent for his praise of her novels, and expresses her anxiety that her fourth work might not disgrace what was good in the others, remarking she was haunted by the idea that the readers who have preferred “Pride and Prejudice” will think “Emma” inferior in wit; and those who have preferred “Mansfield Park” will consider the present novel deficient in sense, she demurely puts aside Mr. Clarke’s hint for her next story, on the plea that, though she might be equal to the comic part of it, the learned side of the clergyman would demand a classic education and an amount of acquaintance with ancient and modern literature that was far beyond her. Perhaps in self-defence from similar assaults, she concludes by boasting herself, “with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.”

But the irrepressible Mr. Clarke was not to be deterred from his purpose of advising the novelist as to the direction of her talents. His second piece of advice was more startling and incongruous than his first. Prince Leopold was then on the eve of his marriage with Princess Charlotte. Mr. Clarke had had the good fortune to be appointed Chaplain and private English Secretary to the Prince. The clergyman might have had a generous desire that another clergyman’s daughter should have the chance of sharing his good luck and assurance of preferment. Or he might have had a wish to procure a compliment for his last princely patron, and might have believed it was specially due from Jane Austen as a small return for the notice which the Prince Regent had condescended to take of her and her work. Mr. Clarke proposed that Miss Austen should write an historical novel illustrative of the august house of Cobourg,[7] which would just then be very interesting, and might very properly be dedicated to Prince Leopold. The date of the proposal brings vividly before us the deliberation with which public events were discussed in those days. For a public event to be dealt with now-a-days so as to take the tide of public interest at its height, an author would require to be as much in advance of the historical circumstance as publishers show themselves in their anticipation of Christmas. It would be necessary, in order that a novel founded on a royal marriage should command readers, that the author should be taken into what Mr. Clarke would have called the august confidence of the principals at the very first step of the negotiations, so that he might be able to bring out his work within twelve hours of the ceremony.

Jane Austen was not so profoundly honoured by the recommendation as Jane Porter felt when she set herself to comply with a royal wish that she should commemorate the first beginnings of the House of Brunswick.

After all, so-called historical novels were in Miss Porter’s way and not in Miss Austen’s. Mr. Austen Leigh speaks of the grave civility with which Jane Austen refused to make such an attempt. It seems to me that while she respectfully acknowledges the courtesies of Carlton House, and readily responds with answering friendliness to the friendly tone of Mr.