Jane Austen (32 page)

Writing when she was all alone, Edward having gone to his woods, she noted that ‘I have five tables, eight and twenty chairs and two fires all to myself.’ This was in the south drawing room: the second fireplace has now been closed up. She reported to Cassandra that various readers, whose opinion she valued, were delighted with
Pride and 
Prejudice
. She was amused by the curiosity as to who the author could be. It was gratifying to learn that she was read and admired in Ireland.

There was a Mrs Fletcher, an old lady, wife to a judge, ‘and very good and very clever’, who was dying to know what the writer was like. Jane was flattered, of course, and may have been only half joking when she said, I do not despair of having my picture in the Exhibition at last -all white and red, with my head on one side.’ She allowed herself the fantasy that she might marry the son of Fanny Burney, some twenty years younger than herself. Then she turned to practical matters: ‘I suppose in the meantime I shall owe dear Henry a great deal of money for printing, etc.’

After a concert Jane felt so tired she wondered how she would get through the ball that was planned for the following Thursday, though she was keeping her China crepe for it. Fanny wore white sarcenet, a soft silk fabric, and silver, with silver in her hair, but despite good company there was no dancing. Officers were idle and there was a scarcity of county beaux. Jane discovered compensation for growing older: being a sort of chaperone, she found herself on the sofa near the fire and was pleased to think she could drink as much wine as she liked. Old Lady Bridges, Jane heard, ‘found me handsomer than she expected, so you see I am not so bad as you think for’. Lady Bridges was to spend the winter in Bath. Dr Parry, said Jane drily, would not mind having a few more of her ladyship’s guineas.

Pride and Prejudice
had established Jane’s reputation and she tasted the sweets of success. Sometime during the year a nobleman suggested to Henry that Jane might like to meet the French writer, Germaine de Staël. She was a dazzling celebrity, though large, coarse-featured and considered ugly. The Prince of Wales, patron of the arts, had made a point of meeting her. As a writer, Jane admired her. But Madame de Staël had been an early supporter of the French Revolution and was separated from her husband. From 1796-1806 she had been involved in a stormy affair with the writer Benjamin Constant. Jane unhesitatingly relinquished the chance to meet her. Anyway, although Jane could read French, she was far from confident about speaking it, which may have been an additional reason for avoiding embarrassment.

Jane was home for the end of the year, when a big freeze set in. London was shrouded in impenetrable fog. Heavy snowfalls made travelling almost impossible. Jane was already gestating her next book and started writing
Emma
on 21 January 1814. Visiting nephews and nieces, seeing her quietly writing at her desk in the living room, often imagined her to be merely writing letters and felt free to interrupt her.
Mansfield Park
had been accepted for publication on commission, but Egerton had not enough confidence in it to offer for the copyright.

I
N MARCH OF
1814, Jane took the opportunity offered by a journey in a post chaise with Henry to London to read Mansfield Park aloud. Henry’s approval was all that Jane had hoped for. He said, shrewdly enough, that it was different from
Sense and Sensibility
and
Pride and Prejudice
, but did not think it at all inferior to either of them. Jane only had time to read as far as Maria Bertram’s ill-fated marriage to Mr James Rushworth, owner of the magnificent Sotherton estate, and feared that Henry had already gone through the most entertaining part. Henry took most kindly to Lady Bertram and her sister Mrs Norris and warmly praised the drawing of the characters. He understood them and liked Fanny. He admired the characterization of Henry Crawford in so far as Crawford was a clever, pleasant man. Jane must have been reading the proof sheets as the book was published the following May A fragment of a letter from Jane, possibly to Frank, mentions that
Mansfield Park
was due out before the end of April. It had been due out in April, but was delayed. When Henry Austen had reached the third volume he ‘defied anybody to say whether Henry Crawford would be reformed, or would forget Fanny in a fortnight/ A week later Henry had finished
Mansfield Park
and his admiration had not lessened.

Jane liked to read the latest publications. She had enjoyed reading
The Heroine, or Adventures of Cherubina
, a novel by Eaton Stannard Barrett, published the previous year. It was ‘a delightful burlesque, particularly on the Radcliffe style’. She wrote, ‘I have read
The Corsair
, mended my petticoat and have nothing else to do.’
The Corsair
was a new poem by Byron. She was exercised about the six weeks’ official mourning for the Queen’s brother, the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Most people at parties were wearing black but Jane had felt comfortable in brown. She decided to trim her lilac sarcenet with black ribbon, since ribbon trimmings were all the fashion in Bath and she hoped would do elsewhere.

During that visit Jane had the good luck to see the actor Edmund Kean at Drury Lane Theatre in his first London part, Shylock in Shakespeare’s
The Merchant of Venice
. For once she was not disappointed. She could find no fault with him anywhere and said his scene with Tubal was exquisite. She wanted to see Kean again, but, apart from him and Miss Smith, who did not quite come up to Jane’s expectation, the play was badly cast and the whole dragged. The Indian jugglers, who gave daily performances in Pall Mall, seem to have been more satisfactory.

Jane’s judgment that Kean was different from other actors of the day seems validated, though he was small and his voice was harsh. Lord Byron, who never met Jane Austen, saw the same production and enthused about Kean’s acting: he said it was a new and natural style. William Hazlitt said Kean’s was a radical reinterpretation of the part. Melesina Trench, author of
Remains
, a memoir, saw Kean as Richard III and said he was like a lion in a cage. Coleridge said watching him was like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning. Mary Russell Mitford, however, sneered that the ‘monarch of the stage’ was a little insignificant man, slightly deformed and ungraceful, unpleasing to eye and ear.

Jane’s mother had asked her to buy some tea but had given her no money. Jane was regretting the rise in the price of tea: they dealt with the firm of Twinings, which is still trading at the end of the twentieth century.

There was the usual problem of transport. Jane’s letter to Cassandra sounds almost farcical, but their difficulties were real and acute:

The Godmersham family arrived at Chawton Great House for two months, accompanied by Edward’s in-laws. This made Fanny happy: she preferred her maternal grandmother the dowager Lady Bridges to Grandmama Austen.

Mansfield Park
was advertised on 19 May in the
Star
, at eighteen shillings, ‘by the author of
Sense and Sensibility
and
Pride and Prejudice’
. Amazingly, there seem to have been no reviews but the book was a commercial success and Jane made a profit of £350. Jane collected opinions from family and friends. Frank did not think it on the whole as good as
Pride and Prejudice
but Fanny Price delighted him and so did Aunt Norris. He admired the dialogue. ‘Mrs’ Augusta Bramston of Oakley Hall had thought
Sense and Sensibility
and
Pride and Prejudice
downright nonsense and hoped to like
Mansfield Park
better. Having struggled through the first volume Mrs Bramston congratulated herself on having ‘got through the worst’.

Cassandra thought it quite as clever, though not as brilliant, as
Pride and Prejudice
. Louisa Knight, Edward’s fourth daughter and Jane’s godchild, remembered that Cassandra had tried to persuade Jane Austen to let Mr Crawford marry Fanny Price but the author stood firm. A Mrs Carrick wrote shrewdly, ‘All who think deeply and feel much will give the preference to
Mansfield Park.’
Mrs Grant of Laggan, a writer herself, wrote to a friend that its picture of manners was accurate and the moral was ‘rather insinuated than obtruded’. Lady Anne Romilly recognized it as true to life, with ‘a good strong vein of principle running through the whole’. The Earl of Dudley preferred Austen to Edgeworth because her plots were better constructed, she had more feeling, and he was relieved that Jane never plagued the reader with ‘chemistry, mechanics or political economy, which are all excellent things in their way, but vile cold-hearted trash in a novel’.

Fanny Knight was delighted with her namesake, Fanny Price, but wanted ‘more love’ between her and Edmund. She thought Edmund’s attraction to an unprincipled woman like Mary Crawford improbable, and was not convinced that Edmund could countenance a marriage between Fanny Price and Henry Crawford. The Cookes at Bookham praised
Mansfield Park
.

Bookham was near Leatherhead, and it is believed that Jane used the little town as her model for Highbury in
Emma
. Jane went to stay with the Cookes and maybe collected local colour.

There was a brief peace in the war with France, a lull which became the setting for
Persuasion
. Napoleon had been exiled to Elba. Frank was on shore as a half-pay captain. Charles was still on the
Namur
at the Nore but his relatives hoped he and his family would soon be settled on land.

King Louis XVIII had been restored to the French throne on 2 May 1814 by England, Prussia and Russia, after France had been twenty years a republic. There was to be a grand Allied thanksgiving service in St Paul’s Cathedral followed by public celebrations. Henry had collected Cassandra and she was staying with him in London. Jane wrote to her sister from Chawton on 13 June telling her to take care and not get trampled to death. In the event the Russian Emperor was so popular that crowds pressed forward to kiss his horse. The warning was no idle one: seven years previously seventeen people had been trampled to death at a public hanging. To celebrate the peace there were fireworks in Green Park where a Chinese pagoda and bridge unfortunately burst into flames and toppled into the canal. Henry the socialite was invited to a ball attended by the Czar, the King and the Prince Regent on 21 June. It cost £10,000 and was held at Burlington House. Jane was impressed: ‘Oh what a Henry!’

Meanwhile Jane was kindly encouraging her niece Anna, now twenty-one, to write. Some time in the summer of 1814, Jane told Anna that one of the manuscripts Anna had sent had entertained the whole family: Jane had read it aloud to Mrs Austen (‘your GM’) and ‘Aunt C’ and they had all enjoyed it. Anna’s Sir Thomas, Lady Helena and St Julian were 'very well done’, and Cecilia continued to be ‘interesting in spite of her being so amiable’. A few verbal corrections were all that Jane was tempted to make, she wrote, and then corrected Anna on a point of etiquette. ‘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 offered a correction of Anna’s style: ‘And I do not like a lover’s speaking in the third person … it is not natural.’ However if Anna thought differently it did not matter. ‘I am impatient for more, and only wait for a safe conveyance to return this book.’

Jane’s eyes were giving out and she was in the middle of writing
Emma
. Fiction writing, when all the materials have to be self-generated, is a drain on the energies and demands intense concentration. Yet she found time to read and constructively criticize the amateur composition of her young niece. This generosity of time and effort cannot have come cheap.

A month or so later she wrote again to Anna approving of her title,
Which Is the Heroine?
, but expressing a preference for the original one,
Enthusiasm
. However, Anna may have changed the name because there was already a book called
Les Voeux Téméraires; ou, L'Enthousiasme (Daring Desires; or, Enthusiasm)
by Madame de Genlis. Jane responded to Anna’s detailed queries with fresh encouragement. Once again she put Anna right on a question of social etiquette. ‘I have … scratched out the introduction between Lord P and his brother and Mr Griffin. A country surgeon (don’t tell Mr C Lyford) would not be introduced to men of their rank. And when Mr Portman is first brought in, he would not be introduced as “the Honourable”. That distinction is never mentioned at such times; at least I believe not… And 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. You will be in danger of giving false representations. Stick to Bath … There you will be quite at home.’ She adds that she thinks a serious conversation ‘about the madness of otherwise sensible women on the subject of their daughters coming out is worth its weight in gold’. In a postscript she writes, ‘Twice you have put Dorsetshire for Devonshire. I have altered it. Mr Griffin must have lived in Devonshire; Dawlish is halfway down the county.’

Anna’s novels apparently were in the same mould as her aunt’s. In her maturity she decided they were worthless and destroyed them. In Jane’s critiques we see her usual concern for probability and social accuracy. In a letter to Cassandra written on 24 January 1813 she mentions a mistake that had crept into
Mansfield Park
. ‘I learn from Sir Carr that there is no Government House at Gibraltar. I must alter it to the Commissioner’s.’ She was referring to Sir John Carr’s book
Descriptive Travels in the Southern and Eastern Parts of Spain
, published 1811.