Jane Austen began her last book soon after she had finished
"Emma," and completed it in August, 1816. "Persuasion" is
connected with "Northanger Abbey" not only by the fact that
the two books were originally bound up in one volume and
published together two years later, and are still so issued,
but in the circumstance that in both stories the scene is laid
partly in Bath, a health resort with which Jane Austen was
well acquainted, as having been her place of residence from
the year 1801 till 1805.
_I.--The Vain Baronet of Kellynch Hall_
Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who,
for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage. There
he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed
one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect by
contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any
unwelcome sensations derived from domestic affairs changed naturally
into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of
the last century; and there, if every other leaf was powerless, he could
read his own history with an interest which never failed. This was the
page at which the favourite volume always opened:
"ELLIOT OF KELLYNCH HALL."
"Walter Elliot, born March 1, 1760, married July 15, 1784,
Elizabeth, daughter of James Stevenson, Esq., of South Park,
in the county of Gloucester; by which lady (who died 1800) he
has issue, Elizabeth, born June 1, 1785; Anne, born August 9,
1787; a still-born son, November 5, 1789; Mary, born November
20, 1791."
Precisely thus had the paragraph originally stood from the printer's
hands. But Sir Walter had improved it by adding, for the information of
himself and his family, these words, after the date of Mary's birth:
"Married, December 16, 1810, Charles, son and heir of Charles Musgrove,
Esq., of Uppercross, in the county of Somerset," and by inserting most
accurately the day of the month on which he had lost his wife.
Then followed the history and rise of the ancient and respectable family
in the usual terms; how it had been first settled in Cheshire; how
mentioned in Dugdale, serving the office of High Sheriff, representing a
borough in three successive parliaments, exertions of loyalty, and
dignity of baronet, in the first year of Charles II., with all the Marys
and Elizabeths they had married; forming altogether two handsome
duodecimo pages, and concluding with the arms and motto: "Principal
seat, Kellynch Hall, in the county of Somerset," and Sir Walter's
handwriting again in the finale: "Heir-presumptive, William Walter
Elliot, Esq., great-grandson of the second Sir Walter."
Vanity was the beginning and end of Sir Walter Elliot's
character--vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably
handsome in his youth, and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man.
Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did, nor
could the valet of any new-made lord be more delighted with the place he
held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only
to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united
these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and
devotion.
His good looks and his rank had a fair claim on his attachment, since to
them he must have owed a wife of very superior character to anything
deserved by his own. Lady Elliot had been an excellent woman, sensible
and amiable, whose judgment and conduct, if they might be pardoned the
youthful infatuation which made her Lady Elliot, had never required
indulgence afterwards. Three girls, however--the two eldest sixteen and
fourteen--were an awful legacy for a mother to bequeath, an awful charge
rather to confide, to the authority of a conceited, silly father.
Fortunately, Lady Elliot had one very intimate friend, Lady Russell, a
sensible, deserving woman, who had been brought, by strong attachment to
herself, to settle close by her in the village of Kellynch; and on her
kindness Lady Elliot mainly relied for the best help and maintenance of
the good principles and instruction which she had been anxiously giving
her daughters.
Elizabeth had succeeded at sixteen to all that was possible of her
mother's rights and consequence; and being very handsome, and very like
himself, her influence had always been great, and they had gone on
together most happily. His two other children were of very inferior
value. Mary had acquired a little artificial importance by becoming Mrs.
Charles Musgrove; but Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of
character which must have placed her high with any people of real
understanding, was nobody with either father or sister. To Lady Russell,
indeed, she was a most dear and highly valued god-daughter, favourite
and friend. Lady Russell loved them all; but it was only in Anne that
she could fancy the mother to revive again.
It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she
was ten years before; and, generally speaking, it is a time of life at
which scarcely any charm is lost. It was so with Elizabeth, still the
same handsome Miss Elliot that she had begun to be thirteen years ago;
and Sir Walter might be excused, therefore, in forgetting her age, or,
at least, be deemed only half a fool for thinking himself and Elizabeth
as blooming as ever, amid the wreck of the good looks of everybody else.
Elizabeth did not quite equal her father in personal contentment. She
had the consciousness of being nine-and-twenty to give her some regrets
and some apprehensions. Moreover, she had been disappointed by the
heir-presumptive, the very William Walter Elliot, Esq., whose rights had
been so generously supported by her father. Soon after Lady Elliot's
death, Sir Walter had sought Mr. Elliot's society, and had introduced
him to Elizabeth, who was quite ready to marry him. But despite the
assiduity of the baronet, the younger man let the acquaintance drop, and
married a rich woman of inferior birth, for whom, at the present time
(the summer of 1814), Elizabeth was wearing black ribbons.
Anne, too, had had her disappointment. Eight years ago, before she had
lost her bloom, when, in fact, she had been an extremely pretty girl,
with gentleness, modesty, taste and feeling added, she had fallen in
love with Captain Wentworth, a young naval officer who had distinguished
himself in the action off Domingo; but her father and Lady Russell had
frowned upon the match, and, persuaded chiefly by the arguments of the
latter that it would be prejudicial to the professional interests of her
lover, who had still his fortune to make, she had rather weakly
submitted to have the engagement broken off. But though he had angrily
cast her out of his heart, she still loved him, having in the meantime
rejected Charles Musgrove, who subsequently consoled himself by marrying
her sister Mary. So that when her father's embarrassed affairs compelled
him to let Kellynch Hall to Admiral Croft, an eminent seaman who had
fought at Trafalgar, and had happened to marry a sister of Captain
Wentworth, she could not help thinking, with a gentle sigh, as she
walked along her favourite grove: "A few months more, and he, perhaps,
may be walking here."
_II.--Anne Elliot and her Old Lover_
Sir Walter and Elizabeth went to Bath, and settled themselves in a good
house in Camden Place, while it was arranged that Anne should divide her
time between Uppercross Cottage--where Mr. and Mrs. Charles Musgrove
lived--and Kellynch Lodge, and come on from the latter house to Bath
when Lady Russell was prepared to take her. Sir Walter had included in
his party a Mrs. Clay, a young widow, with whom, despite the fact that
she had freckles and a projecting tooth, and was the daughter of Mr.
Shepherd, the family solicitor, Elizabeth had recently struck up a great
friendship. Anne had tried to warn her sister against this attractive
and seemingly designing young woman, but her advice had not been taken
in good part; and she had to content herself with hoping that, though
her suspicion had been resented, it might yet be remembered.