Jane Austen (7 page)

despair. These drawbacks are much more pronounced in the second two books. For
Evelina
, written in deadly secrecy, by a girl whose stepmother didn't approve of scribbling, has the true stamp of the first novel: written to please nobody but the writer, unmodified by any idea of public

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taste; but the instant and overwhelming success of
Evelina
transformed its author from the retiring young lady who could not help sometimes going upstairs to scribble, though she had been told, and had agreed, that she ought not, into the famous Miss Burney, who had become a writer conscious of an eager audience. She was not strong enough to withstand the sensation; the rage for moralizing and sentiment which beset the latter end of the eighteenth century, from whose hampering cerements started forth the true sensibility of the Romantic Revival, is most dutifully pandered to in
Cecilia
and
Camilla
.

Jane Austen already knew
Evelina
and
Cecilia
. One of her nieces remembered, as a very young child, hearing her read a part out of
Evelina
, one of the chapters concerning the Branghtons and Mr.

Smith, and she thought it sounded like a play. The scheme of

Evelina
, in which the lovely, country-bred girl of seventeen is brought to town by some very well-bred and charming friends, but has to spend part of her time with a shocking old grandmother, Madame Duval, and her vulgar relations, the Branghtons--who very seriously interfere with the progress of her acquaintance with Lord Orville, which she made under the auspices of her friends the

Mirvans--is excellently framed to bring in a wide variety of contrasts among scenes and people. The comic, the vulgar, the embarrassing parts of the story are brilliantly done. The serious love interest is much less successful, and years later, when Jane Austen was reading and commenting upon a story of the then grown-up Anna, she said:

"I do not like a lover's speaking in the third person; it is too much like the formal parts of Lord Orville, and I think is not natural."

Cecilia
, the story of an heiress, with a doleful plot and a set of principal characters each one more tiresome and long-winded

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than the last, has nevertheless a crowd of incidental figures who do full justice to Fanny Burney's power of vigorous observation and wit.

One of the most successful is Miss Larolles, a young and pretty little creature, a perfect humming-top of fashionable nonsense. Miss

Larolles in the theatre explained to Cecilia her disappointment at being unable to attract the attention of a much-sought-after young man, and said: "I sat on the outside on purpose to speak to a person or two that I knew would be strolling about; for if one sits on the inside there is no speaking to a creature, you know, so I never do it, at the Opera, nor in the boxes at Ranelagh nor anywhere. It's the shockingest thing you can conceive, to be made sit in the middle of those forms; one might as well be at home, for nobody can speak to one." Nearly twenty years later, when she wrote
Persuasion
, Jane Austen's mind reverted to this speech. Anne Elliot, when she begins tremblingly to hope that Captain Wentworth is becoming reconciled to her, finds herself present at a concert with him in the Assembly Rooms of Bath. She is obliged to talk to her neighbor during the pauses between the songs, but at the interval he leaves her for the bench behind, and Anne, seeing Captain Wentworth standing near, changes her seat to one much nearer the end of the row: "She could not do so without comparing herself with Miss Larolles, the

inimitable Miss Larolles, but still she did it, and not with much happier effect."

It is at the end of
Cecilia
, however, that one receives a start of surprise and recognition. The physician and family friend, Dr.

Lyster, is reviewing the progress of Cecilia's affair with young Delville. "The whole of this unfortunate business," said Dr. Lyster,

"has been the result of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE . . . yet this, however, remember; that if to PRIDE AND PREJUDICE you owe

your miseries, so wonderfully are

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good and evil balanced, that to PRIDE AND PREJUDICE you owe

also their termination."

But it is with
Camilla
that we approach Jane Austen most nearly. At the time of its publication, the enthusiasm of Edmund Burke, who put his name down for five sets, probably gave Madame D'Arblay the most pleasure. If she had been asked to say whose name she valued next, she could have made her choice from amongst the most distinguished figures in society; she perhaps never even noticed that of the quite unknown young lady living in a Hampshire parsonage.

The wheel has come full circle, and whatever the intrinsic merits of
Camilla
, we read it now because we know it pleased Jane Austen.

The merits are considerable; the book has not the young gaiety of
Evelina
, but it has much more depth and the interest is more continuously sustained; the aridity of
Cecilia
it avoids altogether, and though its length would prevent its being reprinted now, at the time of
Camilla
's publication a good novel in five volumes was better by two-thirds than a good novel in three.

Camilla was clearly destined, by her family's wishes and the

author's, for a Mr. Edgar Mandlebert; but though they were mutually attracted and there was no reason why they should not marry

immediately, the union was postponed for five volumes by Edgar's sage friend Dr. Marchmont, who, preying on the young man's

reflective turn of mind, put this diabolical idea into his head: he was not henceforth to admire Camilla's gaiety and enthusiasm as a mere spectator, but every time she said or did anything, he was to say to himself: "How should I like this, were she mine?" Unhappily for the satisfaction of the female sex, Madame D'Arblay did not see fit to provide Camilla with a female confidante who would encourage her in a similar line of conduct. Dr. Marchmont's

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interference is, like the irresolution of Hamlet, the mainspring of the action; but the feelings we enterrain for Edgar Mandlebert and his affairs are the most tepid to which the book gives rise; and the enjoyment of the novel consists in the solid, brightly colored secondary characters and the scenes which have a nominal

connection with the story but are really there on their own merits.

The most famous of these is the celebrated episode of Mr. Dubster's summer house. In all Madame D'Arblay's novels there is a strain of extremely vigorous horse-play supplied by mischievous young men: in Camilla, by the heroine's brother Lionel. Mr. Dubster was a self-made man, uncouth and bumptious to the verge of farce. He had

been attracted by Camilla at a village assembly, and had no idea that his attentions might be unacceptable. Lionel, having seen as much, drove his unsuspecting sisters out to a bare, flat country district where Mr. Dubster was building a staring villa; the latter, delighted at the interest in his work he supposed Camilla to feel, insisted on taking her and her sister Euphemia up to his summer house, which overhung the lane and was reached by a single ladder. When the party were inside, they looked out of the window to see Lionel joyously riding off down the lane, and realized that he had taken away the ladder. It was the builders' lunch hour, and Mr. Dubster was particularly annoyed that he could not go after them to see they didn't waste the time for which he was paying them. Camilla in acute dismay tried to attract the attention of people passing in the lane, and the party were finally rescued by a passing troop of huntsmen. This is the episode to which Jane Austen referred when she said that she was obliged to stay with Edward and Elizabeth at their house at Rowling until the end of the month, because her brother Frank, who was to take her home, was going away

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till then. "Tomorrow I shall be just like Camilla in Mr. Dubster's summer house; for my Lionel will have taken away the ladder by which I came here, or at least by which I intended to get away; and here I must stay till his return. My situation, however, is somewhat preferable to hers, for I am very happy here, though I should be glad to get home by the end of the month."

While Camilla was on a visit to Tunbridge Wells, she was in the awkward position of staying with a good-natured but unperceptive hostess much richer than herself. She accompanied a party to a toy shop and selected some little objects which she thought would cost a few shillings, and when she was told their alarming price, was too nervous not to take them. When the heroine of
Sanditon
was standing in the village library which sold trinkets as well as hiring out books, she felt she had spent enough money for her first evening and turned away from "all the useless things in the world that could not be done without." . . . "She took up a Book; it happened to be a volume of
Camilla
. She had not Camilla's Youth, and had no intention of having her Distress--so she turned from the Drawer, of rings and Brooches, repressed further solicitation and paid for what she had bought."

The exertions of Dr. Marchmont in keeping Edgar and Camilla so long apart provided the reader with many hours of entertainment, but Jane Austen, who might reasonably have been expected to approve of him on this account, was not at all magnanimous. In September of 1796, when she herself was at Rowling, she wrote to Cassandra:

"Give my love to Mary Harrison, and tell her I wish, whenever she is attached to a young Man, some
respectable
Dr. Marchmont will keep them apart for five volumes"; and at the end of her edition of
Camilla
there is a note in her handwriting,

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which has been encroached upon by the re-binding of the book.

"Since this work went to the Press a Circumstance of some Importance to the happiness of Camilla has taken place, namely that Dr. Marchmont has at last . . ." Dr. Chapman suggests that Jane Austen had devised Dr. Marchmont's death.

The references to
Camilla
in
Sanditon
, written in the year of her death, are a proof of Jane Austen's constant affection for the book, but the most brilliant use she makes of it is, naturally enough, a very few years after its publication. In
Northanger Abbey
, Isabella Thorpe's brother John has just arrived in Bath, and Catherine

Morland, engrossed with
The Mysteries of Udolpho
, cannot resist talking of them even in such unpromising company. John Thorpe

swore at once that he didn't read novels, and that if he did, they should be those of Mrs. Radcliffe; Catherine reminded him gently that
Udolpho
was written by Mrs. Radcliffe, whereupon he exclaimed: "'So it was. I was thinking of that other stupid book, written by that woman they make such a fuss about; she who married the French emigrant.'

"'I suppose you mean
Camilla
?'"

"'Yes, that's the book; such unnatural stuff! An old man playing at seesaw; I took up the first volume once and looked it over, but I soon found it would not do; indeed, I guessed what sort of stuff it must be before I saw it; as soon as I heard she had married an emigrant, I was sure I should never be able to get through it.'"

"'I have never read it.'"

"'You had no loss, I assure you; it is the horridest nonsense you can imagine; there is nothing in the world in it but an old man's playing at seesaw and learning Latin; upon my word, there is not.'"

This critique, the justice of which was unfortunately lost

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on poor Catherine, brought them to the door of Mrs. Thorpe's

lodging, and the feelings of the discerning and unprejudiced reader of
Camilla
gave way to the feelings of the dutiful and affectionate son, as they met Mrs. Thorpe, who had descried them from above, in the passage. "'Ah, mother, how do you do?' said he, giving her a hearty shake of the hand; 'where did you get that quiz of a hat, it makes you look like an old witch?'"

In reading and writing, in dancing and visiting, with friends and relations falling in love and marrying, in household occupations and country walks, the time went on with much present enjoyment and a great deal of hope.

Jane was twenty-one in December 1796. In January of that year Tom Lefroy was with his uncle and aunt at Ashe, and was invited with the rest of the neighborhood to the ball given by Mr. Bigge for his daughters at Manydown Park. Cassandra was on a visit to a member of the Fowle family, and had perhaps thought that Jane was getting too lively on the subject of Mr. Lefroy, seeing that the affair was not expected to end in a marriage. Jane wrote to her, saying: "You scold me so much in the nice long letter which I have this moment

received from you, that I am almost ashamed to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together. I
can
expose myself, however,
only once
more, because he leaves the country soon after next Friday, on which day we
are
to have a dance at Ashe, after all."

Their profligacy began to attract general attention, and Tom Lefroy seemed to feel that he had gone far enough. Jane said, in trying to make Cassandra think lightly of the matter, that they really had not met except at the balls. "He is so excessively laughed at about me at Ashe that he is

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ashamed of coming to Steventon, and ran away when we called on Mrs. Lefroy a few days ago." The day before Mrs. Lefroy's ball she wrote: "I look forward with great impatience to it, as I rather expect to receive an offer from my friend in the course of the evening. I shall refuse him, however, unless he promises to give away his white coat." Cassandra was to have bought some silk stockings for her, but as she had said nothing about them in her last letter, Jane hoped they had not been bought after all, because she had spent all her money now on white gloves and some pink figured silk.

Invitations for balls and evening parties in the country, at a time when roads between towns and villages lay silent and unlighted between meadows and woods, were always issued for the moonlight nights of the month, and Bottom's cry: "Look in the almanac; find out moonshine, find out moonshine," was echoed by every intending hostess. In the Rectory at Ashe they made room for dancing by