Jane Austen (39 page)

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drawing of Devereux Forester, whom she liked "a great deal better than if he had been very good or very bad." "A few verbal corrections" were all she felt moved to make. She pointed out, for one thing, that "as Lady H. is Cecilia's superior, it would not be correct to talk of her being introduced; Cecilia must be the person introduced." Then she demurred at the lovers' speaking in the third person, which, she said, sounded too much like Lord Orville (who, it will be remembered, on seeing Evelina unexpectedly at the opera, exclaimed, "Good God! Is it possible that I see Miss Anville?"). Jane thought the habit unnatural; but she added: "If you think differently, however, you need not mind me."

Of the next installment she said, "My corrections have not been more important than before." Here and there she and Cassandra thought the sense might have been expressed in fewer words, and Jane had scratched out Sir Thomas from walking out to the stables the very day after breaking his arm; because, she said, "though I find your papa did walk out immediately after his arm was set, I think it can be so little usual as to appear unnatural in a book." Then a question of geography presented itself. "Lyme will not do. Lyme is towards forty miles distance from Dawlish and would not be talked of there. I have put Starcross instead. If you prefer Exeter, that must be always safe." This installment also contained a mistake over introductions. "I have also scratched out the introduction between Lord P. and his brother, and Mr. Giffen. A country surgeon (don't tell Mr. C. Lyford) would not be introduced to men of their rank."

Then came a very important piece of advice. "We think you had better not leave England. Let the Portmans go to Ireland, but as you know nothing of the manners there, you had better not go with

them." And another: "You describe a sweet place, but your descriptions are often more minute

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than will be liked. You give too many particulars of right and left."

"Your Aunt C.," said another paragraph, "does not like desultory novels, and is rather fearful yours will be too much so." But Aunt C.

had read in manuscript at least one of the most remarkable novels in the English language, and her standards were necessarily high; Aunt Jane, who had merely written it, was more lenient. "I allow much more latitude than she does, and think nature and spirit cover many sins of a wandering story."

But over what she did think important, she was ruthlessly exacting.

"A woman, going with two girls just growing up, into a

neighborhood where she knows nobody but one man, of not very

good character, is an awkwardness which so prudent a woman as

Mrs. F. would not be likely to fall into. Remember, she is very prudent;--you must not let her act inconsistently." Henry Mellish, she was afraid, would be "too much in the common novel style,--a handsome, amiable, unexceptionable young man (such as do not

abound in real life) desperately in love, and all in vain." Miss Egerton did not satisfy her either; Jane said that she was "too formal and solemn in her advice to her brother not to fall in love, and it is hardly like a sensible woman; it is putting it into his head. We should like a few hints from her better." The question of language was commented upon. Sir Thomas was not allowed to say--Bless my

heart! It was too familiar and inelegant for him; and--"Devereux Forester's being ruined by his vanity is extremely good; but I wish you would not let him plunge into a "vortex of dissipation." I do not object to the thing, but I cannot bear the expression; it is such thorough novel slang--and so old, that I dare say Adam met with it in the first novel he opened."

But the letters contained as much praise as criticism; from

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the aesthetic point of view, the latter is perhaps less interesting, except that Jane Austen said the work was so good that, "I hope when you have written a great deal more, you will feel equal to scratching out some of the past." She felt a responsive sympathy with the scene of some of the chapters. "You are now collecting your people delightfully, getting them exactly into such a spot as is the delight of my life; three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on, and I hope you will write a great deal more and make full use of them while they are so very favorably

arranged." She commented with interest upon Anna's choice of names; besides Newton Priors, she praised the name of Lesley,

though Rachel, she said, was as much as she could bear. She was especially delighted with Progillian; it came home to her with such force that she and Anna rejoiced in it as in a sort of talisman which could not be expected to operate outside the family. Anna had shown Ben Lefroy the novel; quite rightly, Jane said; she was very glad to hear how much Ben liked it; but, she added, "We have no great right to wonder at his not valuing the name of Progillian. That is a source of delight which he hardly ever can be quite competent to."

Mrs. Austen, who was exceedingly fond of Anna, loved to hear the novel read aloud, and followed it minutely. "Your grandmother,"

said Jane, "is more disturbed by Mrs. F.'s not returning the Egertons'

visit sooner than by anything else. They ought to have called at the Parsonage before Sunday." Mrs. Austen was making a pair of shoes for Anna, a process which the fashion for silk and satin shoes sewn on to a soft kid sole allowed to be followed out at home; when these were finished, the old lady thought they would look very well. But the public readings of Which Is the Heroine? were interrupted; in the middle of September news arrived

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of a family tragedy: Mrs. Charles Austen had died of her fourth baby, while her husband was stationed off the Nore. She died

leaving him three little girls, of whom the eldest was six; the baby died with her.

Mrs. Austen was now seventy-five, and such news was the worse

because she was not young enough to be resilient. Jane could only tell Anna when she wrote next that "Your Grandmother does not seem the worse now for the shock." Jane did not send back the manuscript; she was keeping it to read to Mrs. Austen a little later; meanwhile she read it to Cassandra in their bedroom while they undressed--"and with a great deal of pleasure." She said: "I have made up my mind to like no novels really, but Miss Edgeworth's, yours and my own."

In November, Anna was married quietly from Steventon Rectory.

There was no wedding party except of the immediate family: Anna's father and stepmother, Edward, who had the morning off from

Winchester, the Rector of Ashe and his wife, and Ben's brother Edward Lefroy. Caroline and Ben's niece, little Anne Lefroy, were the two bridesmaids, and wore white frocks and bonnets trimmed with white; the bride wore a white muslin robe and a silk shawl of palest yellow, embossed with white satin flowers, and a small cap trimmed with lace.

The bride, with Mrs. James Austen and the two little bridesmaids, went in the carriage to church between nine and ten. Caroline

remembered the cold grey light of the November morning coming

through the narrow windows of the church, as her father gave the bride away and Mr. Lefroy married them. Afterwards they all drove back to Steventon Rectory for a simple wedding breakfast, which was made into a feast by the wedding cake and chocolate being

added to the usual hot rolls, buttered toast, tongue, ham and eggs.

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Ben and Anna were to begin their married life by sharing a house with Edward Lefroy at Hendon, and they made haste away from

their wedding breakfast because they did not want to be crossing Hampstead Heath after dark; there were still highwaymen upon it.

Anna's marriage did not put a stop to her novel-writing, of which she continued to send fresh installments to her Aunt Jane. The latest one said that Sir Julian had previously been in love with Cecilia's aunt before he was attracted by Cecilia. Jane said: "I like the idea;--a very proper compliment to an aunt--I rather imagine indeed that nieces are seldom chosen but in compliment to some aunt or other. I dare say Ben was in love with me once, and would never have thought of you if he had not supposed me dead of a scarlet fever."

Anna also wrote describing her surroundings. Her aunt said: "I think I understand the country about Hendon from your description. It must be very pretty in summer." She used the irate Cobbet's term for London: "Should you guess you were within a dozen miles of the Wen from the atmosphere?" "Make everybody at Hendon admire
Mansfield Park
," she said.

At the end of November she paid a brief visit to Henry, who had moved house once more and was now back again two doors off his old quarters in Hans Place. She went over to see Anna, and Anna begged her to come again, but the visit was to be so short and Henry had made so many plans that Jane had to say it was impossible. In the letter to Anna which said how sorry she was not to be able to manage it, she said they had been to the theatre the night before to see Miss O'Neal in
The Fatal Marriage
. Eliza O'Neal, who was twenty-three at the time, with features of a Grecian cast and jet-black ringlets, was making a name for herself as a tragic

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actress. Jane said: "I do not think she was quite equal to my expectation. I fancy I want something more than can be. Acting seldom satisfies me. I took two pocket-handkerchiefs but had very little occasion for either. She is an elegant creature, however, and hugs Mr. Younge delightfully."

Poor Charles Austen's three little girls were being looked after in a house in Keppel Street off Russell Square. Jane told Anna that she was going to see them. "Cassy was excessively interested about your marrying, when she heard of it, which was not till she was to drink your health; and asked innumerable questions in her usual way--

what he said to you? and what you said to him?" Jane was glad that Anna had heard, on her marriage, from her cousin Charlotte Dewar.

"I am glad she has written to you. I like first cousins to be first cousins, and interested about each other."

In the meantime, despite the claims of Anna's wedding and Anna's novel, Jane Austen's favorite niece of all had been much on her mind. Fanny Knight had for some time thought herself in love with a Mr. Plumtree, of Fredville in the same county. But when Mr.

Plumtree had fallen in love with her, she began seriously to doubt whether she did love him after all, and wrote to tell her Aunt Jane all about it. Jane was quite taken by surprise; she had had no idea of any change in Fanny's feelings, and she felt it was very difficult to know what to say. One thing, however, was clear to her: "I have no scruple in saying you cannot be in love. My dear Fanny, I am ready to laugh at the idea; and yet it is no laughing matter to have had you so mistaken as to your own feelings, and with all my heart I wish I had cautioned you on that point when you first spoke to me, but though I did not think you then so much in love as you thought yourself, I did consider you as being attached in a degree--quite sufficiently for happiness, as I had no doubt it would increase

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with opportunity. And from the time of our being in London

together, I thought you really very much in love.--But you certainly are not at all--there is no concealing it." She thought Fanny's own explanation was the true one, that feeling sure of Mr. Plumtree's affections had caused her own to cool. Jane was so full of curiosity and concern that her first letter on hearing the news would, she was sure, contain nothing of any help to Fanny's judgment. She thought that perhaps Fanny had fallen in love originally because Mr.

Plumtree had been the first man to fall in love with her. "That was the charm, and most powerful it is." But, whatever the reason, she said Fanny had no cause to despise herself, because Mr. Plumtree was not only very eligible (and to be thought a respectable suitor for Mr. Knight's daughter, he must have been eligible indeed), but he was very pleasant, and his character was excellent; he had from that point of view everything, said Jane, "that you know so well how to value. All that really is of the first importance--everything of this nature pleads his cause most strongly." The more she thought about him, the more strongly she was inclined to feel the desirability of Fanny's falling in love with him again if possible. Fanny, once she had admitted the spirit of criticism, began to view Mr. Plumtree as somewhat too silent and retiring. Jane said: "If he were less modest, he would be more agreeable, speak louder and look impudenter;--

and is it not a fine character of which modesty is the only defect?"

Besides, she said: "I have no doubt that he will get more lively and more like yourselves as he is more with you." Fanny had also become rather frightened of her lover's being so good. Her own nature was serious, and she wondered very earnestly if she would be able to live up to such a husband. In this year she had written in her diary: "Plagued myself about Methodists all day." The Evangelical

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movement of the early nineteenth century occupied very much the position in the minds of the seriously thinking public that

revolutionary political doctrines occupy today; it might be

unwelcome, but its claims to attention were insistent, and if its tenets were not wholly adopted, at least they formed a touchstone by which to test values taken hitherto for granted. Jane said: "As to there being any objection from his
goodness
, from the danger of his becoming an Evangelical, I cannot admit
that
. I am by no means convinced that we ought not all to be Evangelicals, and am at least persuaded that they who are so from reason and feeling must be happiest and

safest." Then Fanny was rendered nervous by the fact that her brothers were so much wittier than Mr. Plumtree. Jane told her not to think of it: "Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh upon her side; and don't be frightened by the idea of his acting more strictly up to the precepts of the New Testament than others." She thought Fanny might be in danger of exacting too high a standard from a man whom, if she were more reasonable, she would find it easy to love. She reminded her niece that though "there
are
such beings in the world perhaps, one in a thousand, as the creature you and I should think perfection, where grace and spirit are united to worth, where manners are equal to the heart and understanding, such a person may not come your way, or if he does, he may not be the eldest son of a man of fortune, the brother of your particular friend, and belonging to your own country."