Jane Austen wrote stories, in addition to all manner of quips and
cranks, impromptu verses, and mocking stanzas, from her childhood
upwards. In admitting the childish practice, after she was a
middle-aged woman, she called it an innocent amusement, but a waste
of time which, as she had found to her regret, might have been more
profitably employed. She had accumulated numerous copies, full of such
stories--for the most part burlesques of the melodramatic extravagances
of other writers--by the time she was sixteen. The published story
which is nearest to this style is “Northanger Abbey.” She seems to
have completed two stories, which were not parodies, between the age
of sixteen and twenty. Both of these were in the old-fashioned form
of letters. One of them she re-wrote, in another shape, and it was
ultimately published under the title of “Sense and Sensibility.” The
other, “Lady Susan,” was only published along with the little memoir of
the author, nine years ago.
Two among her masterpieces were written between her twenty-first and
twenty-third years. “Pride and Prejudice,” named originally “First
Impressions,” was written in ten months, between 1796 and 1797; “Sense
and Sensibility,” the reproduction from the earlier story, in letters,
called “Ellinor and Marianne,” occupied the author between 1797 and
1798; but “Northanger Abbey,” which holds a place beside “Pride and
Prejudice,” was written also in 1798.
Jane Austen wrote with the knowledge and approval of her father and
mother and the rest of her family. There is still in existence a letter
written by Mr. Austen and addressed to Mr. Cadell, in November, 1797,
immediately after the completion of “Pride and Prejudice.” The father
simply states that he has in his possession a MS. novel in three
volumes, about the length of Miss Burney’s “Evelina.” He asks whether
Mr. Cadell would choose to be concerned in bringing it out, what would
be the expense of publishing if at the author’s risk, and what the
publisher would venture to advance for the copyright if, on perusal, it
was approved of.
The proposal was declined by return of post, more from excess of
caution than from erring criticism, since the MS. was never in the
publisher’s hands. It is almost needless to say that the rejected novel
has been considered the best, as it is unquestionably among the best,
of English novels.
“Pride and Prejudice” was not published till sixteen years after it
had been composed; “Sense and Sensibility,” the first published of
Jane Austen’s novels, not for thirteen years after the first time it
was re-written. “Northanger Abbey” was the first sold of these earlier
novels, but it cannot be considered more lucky than its predecessors.
Its fate was, if possible, still more mortifying. It was disposed of to
a publisher in Bath for the modest sum of ten pounds, five years after
it was written, and two years before the death of Jane Austen’s father.
It lay ignominiously in a drawer in the shop of its purchaser for many
years. At last it was bought back for the sum originally given, by
one of the author’s brothers, who, when the transaction was finished,
triumphantly informed the dilatory publisher that he had just re-sold
a work by the well-known author of “Pride and Prejudice.” “Northanger
Abbey,” on which Lord Macaulay set such store, was not brought out till
1818, after Jane Austen’s death, when it appeared together with her
last story, “Persuasion,” just twenty years from the date at which the
former novel was written. Surely, few young authors have had to suffer
greater and more prolonged disappointment in finding a publisher and
a public. The experience may serve as a consolation to all struggling
literary aspirants. On the other hand we may seek generation after
generation of authors doomed to obscurity, temporary or permanent,
before we find another Jane Austen. Of a nephew and a niece of the
author’s who took to youthful novel-writing in their aunt’s lifetime,
and received all indulgence and encouragement from their kinswoman, it
is recorded that neither of their novels ever saw the light; yet we
might have said of them that they had novel-writing in the blood. One
of them wrote with the inspiring association of dwelling in Steventon
Parsonage, the other received invaluable hints and suggestions from a
mistress of her art; but it was all of no avail.
It is said that Jane Austen bore her early literary disappointments
very philosophically. She did not write for money; her father was in
easy circumstances. She might not then anticipate fame--though she
was far from undervaluing her powers--and she did not over-rate the
worth of a literary reputation; still I can scarcely comprehend the
equanimity of a very young woman remaining entirely unshaken by the
unbroken train of undeserved failures and rebuffs. There is one thing
that I feel sure Jane Austen must have grieved for:--her father, who
had superintended her education, and taken a fatherly interest in her
first attempts at authorship, did not live to see the faint dawn of
the success which, though it came late, has proved ample.
Before quitting the subject of the novelist’s youth at Steventon, I
should like to say a word on the influences already referred to, which
I believe affected her as a woman and an author. During her whole
life she remained to a great extent engrossed by the interests of her
family and their limited circle of old and intimate friends. This was
as it should be--so far, but there may be too much of a good thing. The
tendency of strictly restricted family parties and sets--when their
members are above small bickerings and squabblings--when they are
really superior people in every sense, is to form “mutual admiration”
societies, and neither does this more respectable and amiable weakness
act beneficially upon its victims. In the incessant intercourse between
the Great House and Upper Cross Cottage in “Persuasion,” we have an
example, under Jane Austen’s own hand, of the evils of such constant
communication among people of inferior understanding and intelligence.
If we look nearer home, we may have a glimpse of disadvantages of a
different sort, attendant on what Scotch people call “clannishness” in
a higher region. Good as Jane Austen was, there is a certain spirit
of exclusiveness, intolerance, condescension, and what may be classed
as refined family selfishness, in the attitude which she, the happy
member of a large and united family, distinguished by many estimable
qualities, assumed to the world without. She was independent of it to a
large extent for social intercourse; and so she told it candidly, and
just a little haughtily--forgetting, for the most part, the wants of
less favoured individuals--that she needed nothing from it.
Fondly loved and remembered as Jane Austen has been, with much reason,
among her own people, in their considerable ramifications, I cannot
imagine her as greatly liked, or even regarded with anything save some
amount of prejudice, out of the immediate circle of her friends, and
in general society. I hope I may not be misunderstood. I do not mean
that the novelist was other than an excellent woman, pre-eminently
a gentlewoman. What I mean is, that she allowed her interests and
sympathies to become narrow, even for her day, and that her tender
charity not only began, but ended, in a large measure, at home. No
doubt I am alluding to the characteristics of a generation and class,
which showed themselves, in a marked manner, in the repugnance with
which other intellectual gentlewomen shrank from acknowledging the
profession of authorship, with its obligations, no less than its
privileges, as if it involved a degradation--something distinctly
injurious to them, both as women and gentlewomen. Fanny Burney, on the
other hand, was brought up among artists of every description, which,
perhaps, accounts for the transparent literary vanity which forms so
broad a contrast to the shyness--often equally self-conscious--of her
sister-authors. But the whole bent of Jane Austen’s disposition and
rearing seem to point in the contrary direction.
Jane Austen was the clear-sighted girl with the sharp pen, if not the
sharp tongue, who found in the Steventon visiting-list materials for
the _dramatis personæ_ of “Pride and Prejudice.” It would have been
little short of a miracle if she could have conducted herself with such
meekness, in her remote rural world, or during the visits she paid to
the great English watering-place--while she was all the time laughing
in her sleeve--so as not to provoke any suspicion of her satire, or any
resentment at what might easily be held her presumption.
We may grant fully that Jane Austen was far too good an artist to
make absolute copies from real persons to figure in the pages of
her books, and too good a woman not to regard such a practice as a
breach of social honour and propriety. But we all know how human
beings--especially the duller among us, distrust and dislike being
turned into ridicule. “A chiel amang us takin’ notes” is not half so
offensive as an audacious boy or girl convicted of taking us off,
whether behind our backs or to our faces. I do not mean to infer that
Miss Austen at any age was guilty of the mean and disloyal practice
called “drawing out people” until they expose their weakness, and then
making game of the weaknesses, whether in the victim’s company or
out of it. I have it on excellent authority that, however thoroughly
she was able to sympathise with the witty repartees of two of her
favourite heroines, in general company she herself was shy and silent;
even in more familiar circles she was innocent of speaking sharp
words, and was rather distinguished for her tolerant indulgence to her
fellow-creatures, than for her hard judgments on them. The tolerance
belonged, by right, to her breadth of comprehension, and to the humour
which still more than wit characterised her genius. The suggestion
I make is that, seeing her neighbours’ foibles, as she certainly
did see them, she could not, however generously she might use her
superior knowledge, conceal it altogether from her neighbours, and
this was less likely to be the case when she was a young girl with
some share, presumably, of the thoughtlessness and rashness of other
girls, than when she was a mature woman, with the wisdom and gentleness
of experience. I have pointed out the softened as well as the more
serious tone of her later novels, the difference, for instance, between
“Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion.” But who is to guess that the boy
or the girl is to turn out a great novelist and humourist, whose genius
is a fire in the bones, and an excuse for a hundred liberties?
As an author, in the few letters that have been preserved in which
we have Jane Austen’s private feelings on the subject of her novels
frankly written to her family and friends, she gives one the impression
of having always found herself the queen of her company: never in an
arrogant, vulgar way; on the contrary, with a sweet playfulness and
gracious kindness to those who were closely allied to her by kindred,
blood, and the ties of friendship; but all the same she reigned queen.
She might come down from her throne and defer to her elder sister
Cassandra, or to any other relative, but her sceptre was still in
her hand. I do not draw inferences merely from Jane Austen’s hearty,
undissembled appreciation of her own work, and her distinct perception,
freely announced, of its superior claims; doubtless that was inevitable
to such a woman as she was, in the circumstances in which she found
herself. It is in the whole assured tone of the half-jesting criticism;
the half-pretended impatience that any new great novelist should enter
the lists; the total absence--as in the case of Mrs. Radcliffe--of any
natural desire to know and be known by her fellow-writers, to measure
herself in familiar intercourse with them, above all, to give and
receive sympathy.
Of course these peculiarities in the individual woman were not enough
to hinder her from admiring at a distance, and occasionally generously
proclaiming the admiration for, some of her contemporaries. I am bound
also, in fairness, to add to my own impressions that it remained
the firm persuasion of Jane Austen’s biographer that she was as far
as possible from being censorious and satirical. With regard to the
censoriousness, I agree perfectly with this witness; but as to the
satire, I must bring forward the opposite and impartial testimony of
her own writings. Jane Austen was on the whole more humorous than
satirical, yet in the earlier novels the satire is prominent. I can
give far more unqualified credence to the statement that, while her
unusually quick sense of the ridiculous led her to play with all
the common-places of every-day life--whether as regarded persons or
things--she never played with its serious duties or responsibilities.
With all her neighbours in the village--her humbler neighbours, I
suppose--Mr. Austen Leigh says she was on friendly though not on
intimate terms, “She took a kindly interest in all their proceedings,
and liked to hear about them. They often served for her amusement, but
it was her own nonsense that gave zest to the gossip.” The last is a
nice distinction, hardly likely to be understood by the neighbours over
whose affairs she laughed.
That Jane Austen, with her singular Shakespeare-like sympathy in
little, her power of putting herself in another’s place, could not
help feeling both interested and entertained by the proceedings of the
fellow-creatures around her, I can easily believe. What I doubt is that
she who turned those simple souls, and the incidents of their lives,
inside out, for her mingled instruction and diversion, could altogether
conceal the process, or render it palatable to the subjects of the
operation.
It was the conviction of the Austen family that Jane’s occupation as a
novel writer continued long unsuspected by her ordinary acquaintances
and neighbours. That may have been, but we cannot imagine that her
close study of the characters around her, with her shrewd, humorous
conclusions--so extraordinary at the age at which she began to make
them--could have been either quite unperceived or wholly approved of by
her associates.
There are one or two of Jane Austen’s letters from Steventon published
in her memoir. They are bright, chatty letters, not far removed from
those which any merry-hearted, clever girl might have written. They
deal entirely with domestic and local details. The arrival of a set
of tables, with which everybody, for a wonder, was pleased; a great
November storm, that made havoc among the Parsonage trees; an accident
to a neighbour’s son; an anticipated ball; the fact that Jane was then
reading Hume’s “History of England,” form the topics. As there is no
continuity, either in the letters or the narrative, of which such
incidents might supply a part, they fall vaguely and flatly on the
reader. The most interesting paragraphs are those which refer to the
absent sailor brothers, and the eagerness of the mother and sisters to
hear stray news of them, or to forward letters to them, and procure
answering letters by the chances of coming and going ships. There is
one passage which tallies with the details of a gift made in “Mansfield
Park”:--“Charles has received thirty pounds for his share of the
privateer, and expects ten pounds more; but of what avail is it to
take prizes if he lays out the produce in presents to his sisters? He
has been buying gold chains and topaz crosses for us. He must be well
scolded.... I shall write again by this post to thank and reproach him.
We shall be unbearably fine.”