Jane Austen (47 page)

from every reviewer. At the same time, Jane Austen was faced with an obstacle which we do not meet, and she surmounted it. Without the aid of bad grammar, she managed, for example, exactly to

convey the mentality of Harriet Smith, of Mrs. Price and Isabella Thorpe; and if one considers how

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eagerly the writer of today would fly to the aid of exclamation and characteristic faults of speech to express the personalities of Harriet and Isabella, and Mrs. Price, and what his feelings would be if he were told that he must discard them all and create the impact of those personalities in English language that was perfectly correct, we gain some idea once again of the strength of intellectual achievement behind the placing of those simple words. The conversational

emphasis of such a style could never have been formed by someone who was not socially minded, drawn to gatherings of people,

accustomed to converse. It is no more the style of a recluse than that of a scholar.

The late Alice Meynell, who spoke of "the essential meanness of Jane Austen's art," said that her style was "a mouthful of thick words." As Jane herself said of a malapropos remark of Mrs.

Digweed's: "What she meant, poor woman, who shall say?"

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IN DECEMBER of 1816 Henry Austen was ordained and received

the curacy of Bentley, near Alton, but before the transformation of the London banker into the country clergyman was complete, he

performed a last office for his sister in his former capacity. He visited the offices of Messrs. Crosby and, for the sum of £10, regained possession of
Northanger Abbey
. The family tradition says that when the transaction was concluded, and not till then, he told the firm that the manuscript they had had in their possession for the past thirteen years, and had just parted with, was by the author of
Pride
and Prejudice, Mansfield Park
and
Emma
.

It was a pleasant thing to Jane to have Henry so near at hand, and another member of the immediate circle had begun to take a more important part in it. Edward Austen (Mr. Austen Leigh) was in his last year at Winchester. Like all of James Austen's children, Edward was writing a novel. His Aunt Jane read it as a matter of course; she thought it very spirited, which was what she always required of a novel, and it interested her because, after Anna's work, it was so masculine. She thoroughly enjoyed Edward's novel, Edward's

society and Edward's letters. On his coming home for

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his last summer holiday, he had written to her to announce his arrival, with the address of Steventon Rectory at the top of his letter.

She replied to this: "I am glad you recollected to mention your being come home. My heart began to sink within me when I had got so far through your letter without its being mentioned. I was dreadfully afraid that you might be detained at Winchester by severe illness, confined to your bed perhaps, and quite unable to hold a pen, and only dating from Steventon in order, with a mistaken sort of

tenderness, to deceive me. But now, I have no doubt of your being at home. I am sure you would not say it so seriously unless it actually were so." The party in Chawton Cottage, she said, had been amused by watching the procession of countless post chaises coming down the Winchester road as a result of the school's breaking up, "full of future heroes, legislators, fools and villains." She hoped that Edward was going to pay them a visit, but she knew it could not be yet, because his mother had been ill; but after she should be recovered, Jane said: "A little change of scene may be good for you, and your physician, I hope, will order you to the sea, or to a house by the side of a very considerable pond." When Mary was well enough she went to Cheltenham to complete her cure and Cassandra went with her; meanwhile Edward came, as his aunt had hoped, to Chawton

Cottage. When Jane wrote to Cassandra, she said they had all heard as much of Edward's novel as had been written. She added: "It is extremely clever; written with great ease and spirit;--if he can carry it on, in the same way, it will be a first rate work, and in a style, I think, to be popular. Pray tell Mary how much I admire it; and tell Caroline that I think it is hardly fair upon her and myself, to have him take up the novel line."

In December, Edward left Winchester for good, and his

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Aunt Jane wrote to him saying: "One reason for my writing to you now, is that I may have the pleasure of directing to you
Esqre
. I give you joy of having left Winchester. Now you may own how miserable you were there; now, it will gradually all come out--your crimes and your miseries--how often you went up by the mail to London and threw away fifty guineas at a tavern, and how often you were on the point of hanging yourself." Henry Austen had not yet preached his first sermon in the neighborhood, but he had written some, and Jane had read them. She said to Edward:

"Uncle Henry writes very superior sermons.--You and I must try and get hold of one or two, and put them into our works;--it would be a fine help to a volume; and we could make our heroine read it aloud of a Sunday evening, just as well as Isabella Wardour in the

Antiquary
is made to read the history of the Hartz Demon in the ruins of St. Ruth--though I believe, upon recollection, Lovell is the reader." And speaking of novels, she remembered Mary's telling them that some of Edward's manuscript had become mislaid. "By the by, my dear Edward, I am quite concerned for the loss your mother mentions in her letter, two chapters and a half to be missing is monstrous! It is well that I have not been at Steventon lately, and therefore cannot be suspected of purloining them;--two strong twigs and a half towards a nest of my own, would have been something--I do not think however that any theft of that sort would be really very useful to me. What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited sketches, full of variety and glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produced little effect after much labor?" This famous description of her own work, tossed off in a letter that appears to consider her nephew's writing on the same level of impor tance

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as her own, has been frequently applied by other people as an

objective criticism of Jane Austen's writing. When one remembers that brilliantly rapid opening of
Pride and Prejudice
, that sets its characters moving almost as soon as we hear their names; the

vigorous delineation of Mr. Price and his family; the sense of space she conveys in the drawing of her great houses--Northanger,

Pemberley and Mansfield; to say nothing of her wide range of

characters, none of whom ever repeats another, the universal nature of her comic vision, the depth of the emotional passages in

Persuasion
, to name but a few of the aspects of her work, "the little bit (two inches wide) of Ivory," and, above all, the brush, so fine that it produces little effect after much labor, seem altogether

inappropriate as images of her workmanship. The passage requires the context of the letter in which it was written to set it in correct proportion; it was a figure conceived to form a complete contrast to the scale of Edward's work, rather than a considered, impartial definition of her own. The "little result" attained after "much labor"

is characteristic, not perhaps of her own genuine estimation of her work, but of the way she chose to speak of it to anyone but

Cassandra. Though we know that she thought Elizabeth Bennet as delightful a creature as had ever appeared in print, no one but Cassandra knew it at the time.

In January of 1817 Jane felt better than she had for some months and able to undertake a wider correspondence. She wrote to Alethea Bigg, who was staying with relations-in-law at Streatham, saying: "I think it time there should be a little writing between us." She began by speaking of the floods and hoping nobody at Streatham had

become rheumatic in the damp. As for the rain, she said: "Though we have a great many ponds and a fine running stream through the meadows, on the other side of the road,

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it is nothing but what beautifies us and does to talk of." She then went on to say that she had become stronger during the winter. She had come to the conclusion that bile was the cause of her trouble, which, she said, "makes it easy to know how to treat myself." She gave Miss Bigg news of the Steventon family. Edward was more and more a favorite with both his aunts; while Anna, whose second baby had been born the previous October, was looking better than she had done since her marriage; they could not see her often, however; her grandmother, who was so very fond of her, could not move from the cottage, and the roads had been so wet and dirty, Anna had not been able to get over to them. The donkey carriage was not in use either, and both donkeys were out at grass, so altogether communication was hardly possible at present. Henry was to preach for the first time at Chawton the next Sunday. His sister said: "I shall be very glad when the first hearing is over. It will be a nervous hour for our pew, though we hear that he acquits himself with as much ease and

collectedness as if he had been used to it all his life."

The illness from which she thought she was recovering pursued its insidious course. In March of 1817 the future, as it is for most people, was cut off from the family as by a wall; they were anxious about her, but if they had been told it, they could not have grasped the idea that she had only four more months in which to live. But when the train of events is reviewed from the other end, it casts an impressive shade over the last letters which she wrote immediately before she realized that she was very ill; such are the two letters to Fanny Knight, written in March, and though they are lively as ever, they are more tender than before, and they contain advice which must have made Fanny thankful that she had brought on the

correspondence, when by the

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margin of a few weeks she might have lost the chance of doing it for ever.

Fanny was again in a perplexity about getting married. She was now being pursued by Mr. Wildman of Chilham Castle, a seat in the

neighborhood of Godmersham. When her aunt received the letters telling her everything about the affair, she wrote in reply: "My dearest Fanny, You are inimitable, irresistible. You are the delight of my life. Such letters, such entertaining letters as you have lately sent! Such a description of your queer little heart! Oh, what a loss it will be when you are married. You are too agreeable in your single state, too agreeable as a niece--I shall hate you when your delicious play of mind is all settled down into conjugal and maternal

affections." She felt sure from what Fanny had said, that Mr.

Wildman was determined to be a successful lover. "Do not imagine that I have any real objection. I have rather taken a fancy to him than not, and I like Chilham Castle for you;--only I do not like you should marry anybody. And yet I do wish you to marry very much, because I know you will never be happy till you are." Then, besides being in doubt over Mr. Wildman, Fanny was agitated because Mr. Plumtree, whom she had obliged to think that he had been deceiving himself two years ago, now showed signs of being about to marry somebody else. Her Aunt Jane tried to brace her. "Why should you be living in dread of his marrying somebody else? (Yet, how natural!) You did not choose to have him yourself; why not allow him to take comfort where he can?"

Fanny sent a very long and full letter in reply, and its contents caused Jane to alter her opinion of Mr. Wildman's eligibility. "I have pretty well done with Mr. Wildman. By your description, he cannot be in love with you, however he may try at it, and I could not wish the match unless there

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were a great deal of love on his side." She discussed the question of marriage for women in general. "Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor--which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony." (But it had not prevailed on her to marry Mr.

Bigg Wither.) "Well," she said, "I shall say as I have often said before, Do not be in a hurry; depend upon it, the right man will come at last; you will in the course of the next two or three years meet with somebody more generally unexceptionable than anyone you

have yet known, who will love you as warmly as ever
he
did, and who will so completely attach you that you will feel you never really loved before." Within three years of her death, Jane's words came true; in 1820 Fanny made her happy marriage with Sir Edward

Knatchbull. She must often have thought of her aunt's prophecy.

Jane Austen advanced another reason why postponing marriage for a year or two would be all to the advantage of her favorite niece. Anna Lefroy had had two children in less than two years, and now it seemed that she was to have another. Cassandra had been over to Wyards the day before, and Jane said: "Anna has a bad cold, looks pale, and we fear something else." Ten days later her aunt's fears were confirmed. Jane wrote to Fanny: "Anna has not a chance of escape; her husband called here the other day, and said she was
pretty
well but not equal to so long a walk; she must come in her donkey carriage.--Poor animal, she will be worn out before she is thirty.--I am very sorry for her." But Fanny, said her Aunt Jane, by not "beginning the business of mothering quite so early in life,"

would keep her youthfulness of face and figure while her

contemporaries, who were married already, were growing old by

confinements and nursing.

Fanny had not at all broken off acquaintance with Mr. Wildman; on the contrary, she had obliged him to read one

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of Jane Austen's novels and had then extracted his opinion of it without telling him her relationship to the author. Her father had told her this was unfair, particularly as the opinion expressed by Mr.

Wildman had not been favorable. Fanny sent an account of the

whole to her Aunt Jane, who was interested to hear it all, but had to agree with "your Papa" that it was
not
fair. "You are the oddest creature! Nervous enough in some respects, but in others perfectly without nerves!--Quite unrepulsable, hardened and impudent. Do not oblige him to read any more.--Have mercy on him, tell him the truth and make him an apology." She was much interested nonetheless to hear what Mr. Wildman's views had been, she said: "I
hope
I am not affronted, and do not think the worse of him for having a brain so very different from mine." Mr. Wildman had clearly thought that the heroine of whichever novel he had been obliged to read was