Mr. Austen died at Bath, and his family removed to Southampton. In 1811,
Mrs. Austen, her daughters, and her niece, settled finally at Chawton,
a house belonging to Jane's brother, Mr. Knight (he was adopted by an
uncle, whose name he took), and from Chawton all her literary work was
given to the world. 'Sense and Sensibility,' 'Pride and Prejudice,' were
already written; but in the next five years, from thirty-five to forty,
she set to work seriously, and wrote 'Mansfield Park,' 'Emma,' and
'Persuasion.' Any one who has written a book will know what an amount of
labour this represents.... One can picture to oneself the little family
scene which Jane describes to Cassandra. 'Pride and Prejudice' just come
down in a parcel from town; the unsuspicious Miss B. to dinner; and Jane
and her mother setting to in the evening and reading aloud half the
first volume of a new novel sent down by the brother. Unsuspicious Miss
B. is delighted. Jane complains of her mother's too rapid way of getting
on; 'though she perfectly understands the characters herself, she cannot
speak as they ought. Upon the whole, however,' she says, 'I am quite
vain enough and well-satisfied enough.' This is her own criticism of
'Pride and Prejudice':--'The work is rather too light, and bright, and
sparkling. It wants shade. It wants to be stretched out here and there
with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn
specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story--an essay
on writing, a critique on Walter Scott or the "History of Bonaparte."'
And so Jane Austen lives quietly working at her labour of love,
interested in her 'own darling children's' success; 'the light of the
home,' one of the real living children says afterwards, speaking in the
days when she was no longer there. She goes to London once or twice.
Once she lives for some months in Hans Place, nursing a brother through
an illness. Here it was that she received some little compliments and
messages from the Prince Regent, to whom she dedicated 'Emma.' He thanks
her and acknowledges the handsome volumes, and she laughs and tells her
publisher that at all events his share of the offering is appreciated,
whatever hers may be! We are also favoured with some valuable suggestions
from Mr. Clarke, the Royal librarian, respecting a very remarkable
clergyman. He is anxious that Miss Austen should delineate one who
'should pass his time between the metropolis and the country, something
like Beattie's minstrel, entirely engaged in literature, and no man's
enemy but his own.' Failing to impress this character upon the authoress,
he makes a fresh suggestion, and proposes that she should write a
romance illustrative of the august house of Coburg. 'It would be
interesting,' he says, 'and very properly dedicated to Prince Leopold.'
To which the authoress replies: 'I could no more write a romance than an
epic poem. I could not seriously sit down to write a romance under any
other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me
to keep it up, and never relax into laughing at myself or other people,
I am sure I should be hung before the first chapter.'
There is a delightful collection of friends' suggestions which she has
put together, but which is too long to be quoted here. She calls it,
'Plan of a Novel, as suggested by various Friends.'
All this time, while her fame is slowly growing, life passes in the same
way as in the old cottage at Chawton. Aunt Jane, with her young face and
her mob-cap, makes play-houses for the children, helps them to dress up,
invents imaginary conversations for them, supposing that they are all
grown up, the day after a ball. One can imagine how delightful a game
that must have seemed to the little girls. She built her nest, did this
good woman, happily weaving it out of shreds, and ends, and scraps of
daily duty, patiently put together; and it was from this nest that she
sang the song, bright and brilliant, with quaint thrills and unexpected
cadences, that reaches us even here through near a century. The lesson
her life seems to teach us is this: Don't let us despise our nests--life
is as much made of minutes as of years; let us complete the daily
duties; let us patiently gather the twigs and the little scraps of moss,
of dried grass together, and see the result!--a whole, completed and
coherent, beautiful even without the song.
We come too soon to the story of her death. And yet did it come too
soon? A sweet life is not the sweeter for being long. Jane Austen lived
years enough to fulfil her mission. She lived long enough to write six
books that were masterpieces in their way--to make a world the happier
for her industry.
One cannot read the story of her latter days, of her patience, her
sweetness, and gratitude, without emotion. There is family trouble, we
are not told of what nature. She falls ill. Her nieces find her in her
dressing-gown, like an invalid, in an arm-chair in her bedroom; but she
gets up and greets them, and, pointing to seats which had been arranged
for them by the fire, says: 'There is a chair for the married lady, and
a little stool for you, Caroline.' But she is too weak to talk, and
Cassandra takes them away.
At last they persuade her to go to Winchester, to a well-known doctor
there.
'It distressed me,' she says, in one of her last, dying letters, 'to see
Uncle Henry and William Knight, who kindly attended us, riding in the
rain almost the whole way. We expect a visit from them to-morrow, and
hope they will stay the night; and on Thursday, which is a confirmation
and a holiday, we hope to get Charles out to breakfast. We have had but
one visit from _him_, poor fellow, as he is in the sick room.... God
bless you, dear E.; if ever you are ill, may you be as tenderly nursed
as I have been....'
But nursing does not cure her, nor can the doctor save her to them all,
and she sinks from day to day. To the end she is full of concern for
others.
'As for my dearest sister, my tender, watchful, indefatigable nurse has
not been made ill by her exertions,' she writes. 'As to what I owe her,
and the anxious affection of all my beloved family on this occasion, I
can only cry over it, and pray God to bless them more and more.'
One can hardly read this last sentence with dry eyes. It is her parting
blessing and farewell to those she had blessed all her life by her
presence and her love--that love which is beyond death; and of which the
benediction remains, not only spoken in words, but by the ever-present
signs and the tokens of those lifetimes which do not end for us as long
as we ourselves exist.
They asked her when she was near her end if there was anything she
wanted.
'Nothing but death,' she said. Those were her last words. She died on
the 18th of July, 1817, and was buried in Winchester Cathedral, where
she lies not unremembered.
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