Emma Woodhouse, whose Christian name supplies the title to the novel
in which she figures as heroine, is one of Jane Austen’s lively,
warm-hearted girls; but her personality is rendered quite distinct from
that of Elizabeth Bennet by a thousand light yet significant touches.
Emma’s circumstances alone would have sufficed, with the moulding
power which such influences have in reality, and in the hands of a
true artist, to shape her--always within certain limits--those of a
well-principled, well-educated, essentially feminine girl, who is also
a thorough lady, to different ends.
The novel of “Emma” is largely the record of the girl-heroine’s rash
blunders and errors; but to me it is instructive and comforting to find
the faults, with their impressive enough lessons, not only so girlish,
but always within the region, I may say, of an innocent, upright,
kindly, well-bred girl, whose many failings lean to virtue’s side. Emma
Woodhouse is as incapable of deliberate undutifulness, dishonourable
double-dealing, heartless levity, or disgraceful imprudence, and
the coarse, evil-minded rubbing shoulders with vice, as I not only
earnestly hope, but fervently believe, every God-fearing, virtuous,
loving girl in any rank, in any nation, is to this day, however
impudently and wickedly she may be travestied in the lower literature
of her country.
Emma Woodhouse, at twenty-one years of age, is at the head of her
father’s comfortable, well-ordered establishment of Hartfield, in the
village of Highbury, sixteen miles from London, where Emma’s elder
sister Isabella, who has been married for several years, is settled.
The two sisters are the sole children of Mr. Woodhouse, who has been a
widower since Emma was a child. But her dead mother’s place has been
well supplied by an excellent governess, chaperon, and family friend.
Miss Taylor, who marries and settles unexceptionably, with a worthy
husband, in a country house at half a mile’s distance from Hartfield.
Emma is introduced to the reader on the afternoon of Miss Taylor’s
wedding-day, left, for the first time in her life, to dine and spend
a long evening with her father, a most amiable man, but a confirmed
invalid, whose valetudinarian weaknesses and absurdities Jane Austen
often makes irresistibly ridiculous--though all the time she treats
him with larger-hearted, gentler consideration than is to be found in
her manner of dealing with the foibles of the characters in “Pride
and Prejudice,” and “Northanger Abbey;” for the very good reason that
the authoress, when she wrote “Emma,” was no longer the brilliant,
rather hard girl, but the mature merciful, woman. Between the writing
of “Pride and Prejudice” and “Emma” she had learnt a grand lesson--the
acquisition of which, though it cost the labour of a lifetime, would
be well worth the time and trouble--that of tolerance: “to make
allowance for us all,” which is not the mere result of a facile,
careless temper, or a secret fellow-feeling with the offender in his
offence, or a low moral standard, but is simply the widened sympathy
and deepened comprehension, both of the better Christian and the
greater genius. Thus Mr. Woodhouse is respectable and lovable, in spite
of his mild egotism and foolish hypochondria; while Miss Bates--one
of the gems of the book--is still more winning in her singleness of
heart and inexhaustible contentment and charity, along with her shallow
simplicity, thorough humdrumness, and boundless garrulity.
While her father is taking his after-dinner nap Emma contemplates, a
little ruefully, the prospect of many such _tête-à-tête_ dinners and
long evenings. Yet though Jane Austen tells us plainly that the real
evils to which Emma is exposed consist of her having too much of her
own way, and being slightly inclined to think too well of herself, she
is full of tender reverence and care for her father, in deed even more
than in word. All through their history she considers his well-being as
the first thing, never hesitates to make sacrifices to ensure it, and
caters for his entertainment with the anxious, womanly forethought of a
much older and wiser person. In the same way, though it is distinctly
a disadvantage and stumbling-block to Emma Woodhouse--not only that
the Woodhouses are the persons of greatest consequence in their
social circle, but that the circle over which Emma reigns, far too
entirely for her own good, is composed of the most commonplace narrow
elements that can be found in any village or country neighbourhood--and
though Emma wearies of it, becomes impatient of it, is guilty of
girlish ebullitions of fretting and fuming where her engagements and
acquaintances are concerned--still she never once behaves with the
absolute insolence, hardly with the superciliousness, of underbred,
ungenerous, self-engrossed youth, exulting in its passing advantages,
spurning at what it can see of the defects and infirmities of an older,
perhaps more incapable, and illiterate generation, while it is blind in
its ignorance to indemnifying stores of homely wisdom and experience.
The claims of hospitality are sacred to the girl, and she is always
not only a good woman, but a gentlewoman. We are sure that such vulgar,
mean words as “old frumps” and “old tabbies” have never soiled Emma
Woodhouse’s lips. Once she so far forgets herself as to prove guilty
of being noisy and conspicuous at a picnic, and in the course of that
indiscretion of publicly taking off and laughing at an old friend; but
Emma does not require the sharp rebuke of the hero to be bitterly sorry
for the offence, very much ashamed of it, and eagerly desirous to atone
for it by all the kindness in her power.
On the evening of Miss Taylor’s wedding-day, Emma is striving to chat
cheerfully with her father, who, fond of everybody he is used to,
hates to part with any one of them, hates changes of every kind, and
matrimony as the cause of change, and keeps speaking of the fortunate
bride with uncalled-for compassion. “Poor Miss Taylor! I wish she were
here again. What a pity it is that Mr. Weston ever thought of her!”
“I cannot agree with you, papa;” Emma tries to arrest his lamentations,
and to put the step which has been taken in the pleasantest light, by
dwelling on the excellence of Mr. Weston’s character and temper (Jane
Austen is apt to bring forward temper as of cardinal importance), on
Miss Taylor’s natural satisfaction in having a house of her own--for
how often they will be going to see her and she will be coming to see
them. They must begin, they must go and pay their wedding visit very
soon.
“My dear, how am I to get so far?” objects plaintive Mr. Woodhouse.
“Randall’s is such a distance, I could not walk half so far.”
“No, papa! nobody thought of your walking. We must go in the carriage,
to be sure.”
“The carriage! But James will not like to put the horses to, for such
a little way; and where are the poor horses to be, while we are paying
our visit?”[46]
“They are to be put into Mr. Weston’s stables, papa. You know we have
settled that already. We talked it all over with Mr. Weston last night.
And as for James, you may be very sure he will always like going to
Randalls, because of his daughter’s being housemaid there. I only doubt
whether he will ever take us anywhere else. That was your doing, papa.
You got Hannah that good place. Nobody thought of Hannah till you
mentioned her--James is so obliged to you.”
Mr. Woodhouse’s kindness and innocent self-importance are equally
gratified by being reminded of this good deed. He is enticed to
expatiate on civil, pretty-spoken Hannah, for whom he has procured an
advantageous place--not the least of its advantages in Mr. Woodhouse’s
eyes being, that when James goes over to see his daughter, he will
carry her news of the family at Hartfield.
Emma spares no exertions to encourage the happier train of thought,
and by the help of backgammon is sanguine about getting her father
tolerably through the evening, when a frequent visitor, another near
neighbour, walks in, and renders the backgammon-table unnecessary.
“Mr. Knightley, a sensible man about seven or eight and thirty, was not
only a very old and intimate friend of the family, but connected with
it as the elder brother of Isabella Woodhouse’s husband.”
Did ever hero enter more unassumingly on the scene? Was ever even the
merest walking gentleman more succinctly or prosaically described? And
yet George Knightley is a very hero of heroes, far in advance of Darcy
in “Pride and Prejudice” where the highest manliness and generosity of
character are in question.
I shall only pause a moment to remark that Jane Austen, in depriving
Mr. Knightley of the bloom of youth, goes in the teeth of contemporary
standards of age to which she herself paid deference in “Sense and
Sensibility,” when she made Marianne Dashwood regard Colonel Brandon--a
contemporary of Mr. Knightley’s--as quite an old man, fitted for
flannel vests and rheumatism.
To Mr. Knightley Emma starts an idea which has taken possession of her
susceptible imagination, and which has a considerable influence on her
later conduct.
“I made the match, you know, four years ago,” she says triumphantly, in
allusion to the topic of the day. “To have it take place, and be proved
in the right when so many people said Mr. Weston would never marry
again, may comfort me for anything.”
Mr. Knightley shakes his head at her. He has known her from infancy,
seen her grow up with all that is charming in her, only slightly
spoilt. He has more than an old friend’s regard for her, but he is
also one of the few persons among her friends who sees her faults, and
tells her of them--a process not particularly agreeable to Emma, and
still more distasteful to her doting father; so that she has to assert
stoutly, as if she liked the censure, “Mr. Knightley loves to find
fault with me, you know, in a joke, only in a joke. We always say what
we like to each other.”
In defiance of Mr. Knightley’s shake of the head--indeed, spurred on by
it--Emma insists that she arranged the match from the day Mr. Weston
gallantly went and borrowed two umbrellas from Farmer Mitchell’s,
and brought them to her and Miss Taylor when it began to drizzle in
Broadway Lane. Emma boasts of the success of her scheme, and laughingly
announces herself a future match-maker.
She does not go unchallenged by Mr. Knightley.
“I do not know what you mean by ‘success,’” he says, and observes, with
brotherly bluntness and irony, that her time has been properly and
delicately spent if she has been endeavouring for the last four years
to bring about a marriage--a worthy employment for a young lady’s mind.
Then he treats her pretensions with smiling scorn, and alleges she
made a lucky guess, which is all that can be said.
Emma argues that she promoted Mr. Weston’s visits to Hartfield, and
when her father begs in all sincerity that she will make no more
matches, craves mischievously to be allowed one exception. “Only one
more, papa, only for Mr. Elton. Poor Mr. Elton!--you like Mr. Elton,
papa--I must look about for a wife for him. He has been here a whole
year, and he has fitted up his house so comfortably that it would be a
shame to have him single any longer; and I thought when he was joining
their hands to-day, he looked so very much as if he would like to have
the same kind office done for him! I think very well of Mr. Elton, and
this is the only way of doing him service.”
“Invite him to dinner, Emma, and help him to the best of the fish and
the chicken,” said Mr. Knightley, “but leave him to choose his own
wife. Depend upon it, a man of six or seven and twenty can take care of
himself.”
My readers will observe that Emma is as disengaged and disinterested
in making matches for her friends as if she were a young matron. She
has not a notion of the incumbency of marriage on herself, as even
Jane and Elizabeth Bennet felt it, to a certain extent, to be an
obligation on them. There is no worldly necessity for it in Emma’s
case. She is the independent mistress of Hartfield, at the head of
her indulgent father’s establishment, and amply provided for in the
future. Jane Austen’s women, as a rule, are not too susceptible. Love
and marriage for themselves are not the beginning, middle, and end
of their dreams. They are quite willing to grant due prominence to
other influences and interests. They would have blushed to have been
engrossed by one passion, however lawful--even honourable. It is only
because Catherine Morland is very young and simple that she is so
entranced by Henry Tilney’s attentions. As it is, had the couple been
finally separated, she would have submitted to the inevitable, and
been content in time without him. Fanny Price’s devotion to her cousin
Edmund is the habit of many years, and is largely made up of gratitude
for constant protection and kindness. When Edmund Bertram’s marriage to
Mary Crawford appears certain, and when Henry Crawford is wooing Fanny
with manly ardour and tender consideration for her difficulties, she is
in a fair way--Jane Austen does not conceal it--for transferring her
gentle affections from Edmund to Henry. The author’s older women are
fine, sensible creatures, capable of being useful and happy in all the
relations of life. They can love, with what unselfish fidelity after
hope is gone, Anne Elliot shows; but they are always mistresses of
themselves, never love-sick--the poor puppets and slaves of passion.
Mr. Weston, Miss Taylor’s husband, has been a widower like Mr.
Woodhouse, and his son by the first wife is destined to play a
prominent part in the story. Frank Churchill has been early adopted by
a wealthy, childless uncle and aunt--his mother’s relations--who give
him their name, and are to make him their heir. He has been seldom seen
in Highbury, but his praises have gone before him, and it does not
diminish his popularity that he writes “a very handsome letter” to his
stepmother, though he is not able to pay her a visit.
Within the round of Hartfield visiting--abridged, as it is, by
Mr. Woodhouse’s delicate health and invalid habits--are Donwell
Abbey,[47] Mr. Knightley’s seat; the vicarage occupied by the young
bachelor clergyman, Mr. Elton; the houses in the village which belong
respectively to Mr. and Mrs. Perry, the country doctor and his wife;
Mrs. Bates, the widow of the late vicar, and her daughter; and Mrs.
Goddard, who was the mistress of a school--not a seminary.
Jane Austen gives her view of the education of the period, which was
in a transition state, in her definition of a school as distinguished
from a seminary--not “an establishment, or anything which professed,
in long sentences of refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirements
with elegant morality, upon new principles and new systems, and where
young ladies, for enormous pay, might be screwed out of health and
into vanity--but a real, honest, old-fashioned boarding-school, where
a reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold at a reasonable
price, and where girls might be sent to be out of the way, and scramble
themselves into a little education, without any danger of coming back
prodigies.” These views were regarded as eminently sensible, moderate,
and practical in their day; and no doubt there was, and is, some truth
in them. At the same time, the general notion of education is narrow
and prejudiced, to be held by so able a woman.
Mr. Woodhouse’s habits make him go abroad rarely, but he is fond
of company in a quiet way at home, and Emma finds such company is
best secured in the form of “tea visits” from such accommodating old
neighbours as the Bateses and Mrs. Goddard. She is delighted to see
her father look comfortable, and very much pleased with herself for
contriving things so well; but the prosings of the elderly and homely
guests do not prove very congenial entertainment for the bright, clever
young girl. Therefore she welcomes Mrs. Goddard’s respectful request to
be allowed to bring a parlour boarder,[48] Miss Smith, with her.
Harriet Smith is a plump, blooming, blue-eyed, sweet-tempered girl,
whose beauty delights Emma’s eye, while her innocent deference and
gratitude, together with her unqualified admiration for everything at
Hartfield--including its young mistress--touch Emma’s heart and flatter
her vanity. She determines, in modern parlance, to “cultivate” Harriet
Smith, who is to a great extent friendless, to improve her, to raise
her into better society, and to make a companion of her.
Emma does not scruple to propose detaching the girl from the only
friends she has--a farmer’s family named Martin. Some of the daughters
had been school-fellows of Harriet’s at Mrs. Goddard’s, and they and
their mother and brother had been kind to her. These Martins are
tenants of Mr. Knightley at the Abbey Mill Farm, and Emma knows that
he thinks highly of them; but in her youthful aristocratic fashion
she leaps to the conclusion that, from their rank in life, they must
be coarse and unpolished. She will be doing a good deed to separate
Harriet from her former allies, to whom the girl is so superior. It
will be a delightful and praise-worthy task to improve and introduce
into Emma’s world this very pretty, modest young creature, who is, of
course, to look up to her benefactress and attach herself closely to
her.
There is a comical, often-quoted _contretemps_ constantly occurring
at these parties of Emma’s. They usually end with suppers,[49] in
which such little delicacies as minced chicken and scalloped oysters,
carefully provided by the young hostess, are peculiarly acceptable to
the guests, whose narrow incomes for the most part necessitate frugal
living. But though poor Mr. Woodhouse would have made his guests
welcome to anything and everything, his care for their health, in an
egotistical reflection of his own experience, causes him to grieve that
they will eat. “He loved to have the cloth laid, because it had been
the fashion of his youth, but his conviction of suppers being very
unwholesome made him rather sorry to see anything put upon it. Such
another small basin of thin gruel as his own was all that he could with
thorough self-approbation recommend, though he might constrain himself,
while the ladies were comfortably clearing away the nicer things, to
say--
“‘Mrs. Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs? An
egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome. Serle understands boiling
an egg better than anybody; I would not recommend an egg boiled by
anybody else. But you need not be afraid; they are very small, you
see; one of our small eggs will not hurt you. Miss Bates, let Emma
help you to a _little_ bit of tart--a _very_ little bit. Ours are all
apple-tarts. You need not be afraid of unwholesome preserves here. I do
not advise the custard. Mrs. Goddard, what say you to _half_ a glass of
wine?--a small half-glass put into a tumbler of water? I do not think
it could disagree with you.’”
Imagine the dilemma of the poor, baulked ladies, with their healthy
appetites and the little treats laid before them, while the guests
could hardly refuse the well-meant advice of the host.
But Emma comes to the rescue, allows her father to talk, but supplies
the wants of her company in a much more satisfactory style. She is
never indifferent to doing the honours of her father’s house “well and
attentively.” Well-bred girls of Emma Woodhouse’s era would in her
position have felt ashamed to be found “mooning” and self-absorbed,
destitute of any sense of responsibility and thought for others. Nobody
then described selfishness with enthusiasm, as an irresistible charm
and crowning merit.
Harriet Smith’s intimacy at Hartfield is soon a settled thing. Emma
does nothing by halves. As for the simple, docile girl whom Emma
has taken up, Harriet is only too proud and pleased to be thus
distinguished by the beautiful, “elegant” Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield.
Emma amuses herself by encouraging Harriet’s prattle, which, when it
forsakes school-life, runs persistently on the two months’ holiday she
had spent with the Martins at Abbey Mill Farm. At first Harriet is in
blissful ignorance of the social inferiority of the Farm, and talks
with exultation of the two parlours--one of them quite as large as Mrs.
Goddard’s drawing-room; the upper maid, who had lived five-and-twenty
years with Mrs. Martin; the eight cows--one of them a little Welsh
cow, a very pretty little Welsh cow, of which Harriet had been so fond
Mrs. Martin had said it should be called _her_ cow; and the handsome
summer-house in the garden, in which, some day next year, they are
all to drink tea. And Harriet, after a little encouragement, shows no
dislike to talk of the young farmer who is the master of the house.
He has shared in the moonlight walks and merry games of his sisters
and their friend. “He had gone three miles round one day in order to
bring her some walnuts because she had said how fond she was of them,
and in everything else he was so very obliging. He had his shepherd’s
son into the parlour one night on purpose to sing to her. She was very
fond of singing. He could sing a little himself. She believed he was
very clever, and understood everything. He had a very fine flock, and
while she was with them he had been bid more for his wool than anybody
in the county. She believed everybody spoke well of him. His mother and
sisters were very fond of him. Mrs. Martin had told her one day (there
was a blush as she said it) that it was impossible for anybody to be a
better son, and therefore she was sure whenever he married, he would
make a good husband. Not that she _wanted_ him to marry. She was in no
hurry at all.”
“Well done, Mrs. Martin,” thought Emma; “you know what you are about.”
“And when she had come away Mrs. Martin was so very kind as to send
Mrs. Goddard a beautiful goose--the finest goose Mrs. Goddard had ever
seen. Mrs. Goddard had dressed it on a Sunday, and asked all the three
teachers--Miss Nash, and Miss Prince, and Miss Richardson--to sup with
her.”
“Mr. Martin, I suppose, is not a man of information beyond the line of
his own business. He does not read?”
“Oh, yes--that is, no--I do not know, but I believe he has read a
good deal, but not what you would think anything of. He reads the
agricultural reports, and some other books that lie in one of the
window-seats, but he reads all _them_ to himself. But sometimes of an
evening, before we went to cards, he would read something aloud out
of ‘Elegant Extracts,’ very entertaining. And I know he has read the
‘Vicar of Wakefield.’ He never read the ‘Romance of the Forest,’ nor
‘The Children of the Abbey.’ He had never heard of such books before I
mentioned them, but he is determined to get them now, as soon as ever
he can.”
Emma sets herself to change all these cordial relations with the
Martins, above all the appreciation of young Martin, in which she sees
special danger for her _protégée_.
Emma begins by gently “setting down” Harriet as to the position of
yeomen, and the improbability of her--Emma Woodhouse--having noticed
one of them, since Harriet supposes Miss Woodhouse must have seen
and known Robert Martin when he rode to market. On the occasion of
an accidental encounter between the young farmer and the two girls,
Emma takes care to let Harriet perceive that she thinks the young man
very plain and clownish in his air. Emma makes Harriet contrast his
lack of “gentility”--which, by the way, was not so odious a word last
century--with the well-bred manners of Mr. Elton, among others of their
acquaintance.
In fact, it is for the young vicar that Emma destines her friend; and
in order to bring about an attachment and marriage, which she considers
will be advantageous to both, Emma encourages Mr. Elton to spend many
of his disengaged evenings at Hartfield, where she has always Harriet
Smith with her. The young mistress of the house is altogether oblivious
of the fact that the gentleman who, though well enough disposed, is by
no means without self-love, and a head which is liable to be turned,
may altogether mistake her graciousness.
Mr. Knightley does not approve of the great intimacy between Emma and
Harriet Smith. There is no use in Mrs. Weston, Emma’s attached old
friend, urging that it may induce Emma to read more; as she wishes to
see Harriet better informed, the girls will read together.
“Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years
old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing up, at various
times, of books that she meant to read regularly through--and very
good lists they were, very well chosen, and neatly arranged--sometimes
alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up
when only fourteen, I remember thinking it did her judgment so much
credit, that I preserved it some time, and I dare say she may have made
out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting a course of
steady reading from Emma.”
Mr. Knightley adds his estimate of the pretty, popular girl. “Emma is
spoiled by being the cleverest of her family. At ten years’ old she
had the misfortune of being able to answer questions which puzzled her
sister at seventeen. She was always quick and assured, Isabella slow
and diffident. And ever since she was twelve, Emma has been mistress of
the house, and of you all.”
He inveighs against the unsuitable friendship between Emma and Harriet
Smith, as sure to be injurious to both. Harriet is an unconscious
flatterer. Her ignorance is in itself hourly flattery. On the other
hand, Hartfield will put Harriet out of conceit with her natural
sphere. She will only grow refined enough to be uncomfortable among the
people with whom her lot is cast.
In the middle of their argument, the two friends break off the
dispute to agree in their affectionate admiration of Emma’s person.
Here is a graphic and charming picture of the heroine, which removes
her attractions far out of the category of what is sickly and
fantastic:--“Such an eye! the true hazel eye--and so brilliant! regular
features, open countenance, with a complexion--oh, what a bloom of full
health! and such a pretty height and size! such a firm and upright
figure! There is health not merely in her bloom, but in her air, her
head, her glance. One hears something of a child’s being ‘the picture
of health;’ now, Emma always gives me the idea of being the complete
picture of grown-up health.”
Yes, indeed, that is what every girl--plain or handsome, should desire
to be, for her own good and that of all connected with her. In a
summary of the bountiful gifts bestowed on the late Catherine Tait,
wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury, what were reckoned as not the
least were the health and strength, beyond those of ordinary women,
which fitted her for the worthy performance of her many and arduous
duties. Will girls never lay the lesson to heart in time, before they
so often fritter and fling away, by culpable neglect and recklessness,
one of God’s greatest boons?
Mr. Knightley returns to the charge of the mischievous association of
the girls, until he stirs up Mrs. Weston to protest, with regard to
Emma: “Where shall we see a better daughter, a kinder sister, a truer
friend?”
“Very well,” he answers, “I will not plague you any more. Emma shall
be an angel, and I will keep my spleen to myself till Christmas brings
John and Isabella. John loves Emma with a reasonable and therefore not
a blind affection; and Isabella always thinks as he does, except when
he is not quite frightened enough about the children. I am sure of
having their opinions with me.”
“I have a very sincere interest in Emma,” Mr. Knightley repeats.
“Isabella does not seem more my sister; has never excited a greater
interest; perhaps, hardly so great. There is an anxiety, a curiosity in
what one feels for Emma. I wonder what will become of her?”
“So do I,” said Mrs. Weston gently, “very much.”
“She always declares she will never marry, which, of course, means
just nothing at all. But I have no idea that she has yet ever seen a
man she cared for. It would not be a bad thing for her to be very much
in love, with a proper object. I should like to see Emma in love, and
in some doubt of a return; it would do her good. But there is nobody
hereabouts to attract her; and she goes so seldom from home.”
“There does, indeed, seem as little to tempt her to break her
resolution at present,” says Mrs. Weston, “as can well be.”
The truth is, Mrs. Weston and her husband have a pet plan for their
favourite Emma, which is not to be disclosed prematurely.
Emma paints Harriet’s miniature, and Mr. Elton lends all the help
of his advice, while complimenting Miss Woodhouse on her talent for
drawing, which she regards as his gratitude on Harriet’s account.
Emma takes care to fix upon Mr. Elton as the person with whom she
can entrust her little picture to be conveyed to London and framed;
while he shows a sufficient sense of her confidence. “He will suit
Harriet exactly,” reflects Emma, complacently; “but he does sigh, and
languish, and study for compliments, rather more than I could endure as
a principal.”
In the meantime, Harriet receives a direct proposal of marriage from
young Martin, couched in manly, unaffected terms.
Poor little Harriet, who is really as guileless and kind-hearted as she
is simple and silly, is at first much and favourably impressed.
But Emma’s influence, though she does not mean to exercise it unduly,
causes Harriet, not without lingering regret, to resolve to decline the
offer.
“I could not have visited Mrs. Robert Martin, of Abbey Mill Farm,” says
Emma, and Harriet is fixed in her resolve.
“That would have been too dreadful, dear Miss Woodhouse. I would not
give up the pleasure and honour of being acquainted with you, for
anything in the world.”
Mr. Knightley comes in a happy mood to Hartfield, to tell Emma
something that will please her about her little friend, Harriet Smith.
Though he has condemned the friendship, he can appreciate Harriet’s
girlish good qualities; he is even magnanimous enough to compliment
Emma on having cured her companion of her school-girl giggle. Robert
Martin has confided his attachment to his friend and landlord, who is
eager to inform Emma that Harriet Smith will soon have an offer of
marriage from a most unexceptionable quarter--Robert Martin is the man.
Her visit to Abbey Mill in the summer has done his business, and he
means to marry her.
“He is very obliging,” said the well-informed Emma; “but is he sure
that Harriet means to marry him?”
“Well, well--means to make her an offer, then; will that do?” Mr.
Knightley, “who had nothing of ceremony about him,” conceives that Emma
is speaking from some scruple of womanly dignity as to his mode of
expressing himself. He enlarges on the advantages of the marriage, and
his satisfaction with it. He ends with the laughing supposition that
Martin may be detaining Harriet in Highbury at that very moment, and
she may not be thinking him one of those “tiresome wretches”--as Emma
has just styled the Highbury gossips.
“Pray, Mr. Knightley,” said Emma, who has been smiling to herself, “how
do you know that Mr. Martin did not speak yesterday?”
Certainly he did not absolutely know, but he had understood Harriet
Smith was with her all that day.
“Come,” said she, “I will tell you something in return for what you
have told me. He did speak yesterday; that is, he wrote, and was
refused.”
Mr. Knightley is incredulous and indignant. At last he accuses Emma,
with reason, as the moving spirit in the step Harriet has taken. “You
have been no friend to Harriet Smith, Emma,” he said; and with equal
sense and sincerity he contrasts Harriet with Robert Martin, to the
advantage of the latter, and remarks how happy the girl had been among
the Martins, till Emma’s injudicious interference.
In the hot argument which ensues, Mr. Knightley takes occasion to tell
Emma that if she intends to make a match between Elton and Harriet, her
labour will be in vain.
Emma laughs and disclaims.
But Mr. Knightley’s penetration is not to be baffled, and he goes on
to assure her Elton will not do. He is a good sort of young man, and
a respectable vicar of Highbury, but not at all likely to make an
imprudent marriage.
It is Emma’s turn to be incredulous, though she will not admit her
intentions.
The two part in mutual vexation, which causes a coolness between them
for weeks.
Emma’s pride is now piqued to accomplish her design; her head gets so
full of it, that she is ill-judged enough to let Harriet see what she
wishes and expects, and actually talks the foolish girl--who is, at
least, perfectly unassuming--into a persuasion that she has inspired
Mr. Elton with a passion for her, the belief in which is more than
sufficient to create an answering passion in Harriet’s soft, childish
heart.
We have next an example of an old favourite employment with girls.
Instead of the reading, which never went beyond a few chapters, the
only literary pursuit which engages Harriet, and in which Emma, too,
takes an interest, the only mental provision she is making for the
evening of life,[50] is the collecting and transcribing all the riddles
of every sort she can come across.
These were days when, in gatherings of young people even a little above
Harriet in rank and education, the company in cropped hair and white
frocks, in Brutuses and high-necked, short-waisted coats, played at
such ingenious games as “The Traveller,” and circulated riddles for
the general entertainment. A new riddle was quite a precious possession
to a girl, nearly as good as a new song.
Miss Nash, Mrs. Goddard’s head teacher, had written out as many as
three hundred riddles, and Harriet hopes to have more.
Mr. Woodhouse is almost as much interested in the work as the girls,
and tries in vain to revive old recollections of the excellent riddles
of his youth, which always end in
“Kitty, a fair but frozen maid.”
Mr. Elton, who is constantly with the girls, is induced to furnish
a riddle of his own composition--though, with the bashfulness of
incipient authorship, he passes it off as a charade which a friend of
his has addressed to a young lady, the object of his admiration--and he
is gone the next moment. The charade is as follows:--
“My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings,
Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease;
Another view of man my second brings,
Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!
“But, ah! united what reverse we have,
Man’s boasted power and freedom all are flown;
Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave,
And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.
“Thy ready wit the word will soon supply,
May its approval beam in that soft eye!”
Emma reads, ponders, catches the meaning “courtship,” and happily
confident that Mr. Elton, is coming to the point, hands the paper to
Harriet.
“‘That soft eye’ can only refer to Harriet,” thinks Emma. “‘Thy ready
wit.’ Humph! Harriet’s ready wit! All the better. A man must be very
much in love to describe her so.”
Harriet’s ready wit exhibits itself in not having an idea of the
answer. Can it be “Woman,” or “Neptune,” or “Trident?”
Emma is slightly exasperated; but she takes pains to explain the riddle
in detail, and to draw the strongest inferences from its subject, while
Harriet beams and blushes with joy and confusion.
Emma now becomes as assiduous as ever Mrs. Bennet, of Longbourn House,
showed herself with regard to her daughter, Jane, and her lover
Bingley, in making opportunities for Mr. Elton to propose to Harriet
Smith.
But lovers are perverse, and will not always avail themselves of the
best-planned assistance.
In the course of a walk which Emma and Harriet chance to take past the
vicarage, in which the girls are overtaken by the vicar, Emma, having
discovered that Harriet had never been inside the house, perpetrates a
_ruse_ to enable her friend to see her future home. Emma contrives to
break her boot-lace, then announces the accident, and asks Mr. Elton
to allow her to go into the vicarage and get a bit of riband or string
from his housekeeper to keep the boot on.
Mr. Elton looks all happiness, and is as alert in conducting the
ladies to his house as can be wished. But though Emma retires with the
housekeeper, and stays as long away as she can manage, she finds on her
return that the two standing together at one of the windows, however
friendly, are not yet an engaged couple.
Christmas brings Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley and their children to
enliven Hartfield.
Mrs. John Knightley is a pretty, elegant little woman, gentle and
quiet, wrapt up in her family--a devoted wife, a doting mother, and so
tenderly attached to her father and sister, that but for those higher
ties, a warmer love might have seemed impossible. She has inherited her
father’s delicate constitution, is over-careful of her children, has
many fears and nerves, and is as fond of her own doctor in town as her
father can be of his Mr. Perry.
Mr. John Knightley is tall, gentlemanlike, very clever, a rising
barrister. He is domestic and estimable in private life. But he has a
cold, dry manner, and he is capable of being sometimes out of humour.
He has all the mental clearness and quickness his wife lacks, and he
can on occasions act an ungracious, or say a severe thing. He is not
a great favourite with his sister-in-law. She is quick in feeling the
little injuries to Isabella which Isabella never feels for herself.
Perhaps Emma might have passed over more, had his manners been more
flattering to Isabella’s sister; but they are only those of a calmly
kind brother and friend. However, his chief offence is, now and then, a
want of forbearance with Mr. Woodhouse’s peculiarities and fidgetiness.
Mr. John Knightley has really a great regard for his father-in-law,
but sometimes the younger man cannot resist delivering a rational
remonstrance, or a sharp retort equally ill-bestowed. It does not often
happen, but it occurs too frequently for Emma’s charity.
Though such collisions do not usually take place early in the
Knightleys’ visits, one is brought about on the very evening of John
Knightley and his wife’s arrival.
Mr. Woodhouse and Isabella are very happy, expatiating on the merits of
a basin of nice, smooth gruel--thin, but not too thin--and exchanging
their little valetudinarian confidences, when, unfortunately, a
reference is made to Mrs. Knightley’s last sea-bathing experience
at Southend, seeing that the two great medical authorities of the
father and daughter--Perry and Wingfield--differ on the respective
recommendations of Southend and Cromer.
“Southend is an unhealthy place,” Mr. Woodhouse harps. “Perry was
surprised to hear you had fixed on Southend.”
“We had all our health perfectly well there,” Isabella defends her
side of the question. “Mr. Wingfield says it is entirely a mistake to
suppose the place unhealthy. I am sure he may be depended upon, for
he thoroughly understands the nature of the air. His own brother and
family have been there repeatedly.”
“You should have gone to Cromer, my dear,” insists Mr. Woodhouse.
“Perry was a week at Cromer once, and he holds it to be the best of all
the sea-bathing places. Better not move at all, better stay in London
altogether, than travel forty miles to get into a worse air. That is
just what Perry said. It seemed to him a very ill-judged measure.”
John Knightley is able to stand this no longer. “Mr. Perry,” he said,
“would do well to keep his opinion till it is asked for. I may be
allowed, I hope, the use of my judgment as well as Mr. Perry. I want
his directions no more than his drugs.” Then, more coolly, “If Mr.
Perry can tell me how to convey a wife and five children a distance of
a hundred and thirty miles, with no greater expense and inconvenience
than a distance of forty, I should be as willing to prefer Cromer to
Southend, as he could be himself.”
“True, true,” said George Knightley, hastily changing the subject, and
warding off further danger, as Emma is accustomed to do. Still, Mr.
Woodhouse is rather agitated by such harsh reflections on his friend
Perry--to whom he has, in fact, though unconsciously, been attributing
many of his own feelings and expressions, Jane Austen adds with a
masterly touch--so that it requires all the soothing attentions of his
daughters to set him at ease again.
Mr. Knightley of Donwell Abbey had joined the family at dinner. Emma
had recognised his right to do so, and she had hoped that they might
be friends again, for it was time their disagreement should end. She
trusted their nephews and nieces would serve as a bond of union, and
help in the peace-making. Accordingly, when he found her with the
youngest, a child of eight months, in her arms, though he looked grave,
and spoke shortly to begin with, he soon took the child out of her
arms, with the unceremoniousness of restored amity.
The conviction gave Emma first satisfaction, and then a temptation to
sauciness. It was a comfort they thought alike on their nephews and
nieces, she said.
He was not unwilling to renew the old discussions half-banteringly,
acquiescing in the mock humility of her assertion that, in their
differences, she must always be in the wrong. Yes, and reason good,
he said; he was sixteen years old when she was born, and he had the
advantage of not being a pretty woman and a spoilt child. But “tell
your aunt, little Emma, that she ought to set you a better example than
to be renewing old grievances.”
“I only want to know,” said Emma, “that Mr. Martin is not very, very
bitterly disappointed.”
“A man cannot be more so,” was his short, full answer.
“Ah! indeed, I am very sorry,” Emma made the penitent acknowledgment;
“come, shake hands with me.”
This ceremony had just taken place with great cordiality, when John
Knightley made his appearance, and “How d’ye do, George?” and “John,
how are you?” succeeded in the true English style (which has not warmed
much in the course of nearly another century), burying under a calmness
that seemed all but indifference the real attachment which would have
led either of them, if requisite, to do everything for the good of the
other.
There could not be a happier creature than Mrs. John Knightley in
her visit to Hartfield, going about every morning among her old
acquaintances, with her five children, and talking every evening over
what she had done with her father and sister.
The animation of the Knightleys’ visit nerves Mr. Woodhouse to the
exertion of dining out with them at Randalls; where Mr. and Mrs. Weston
consult his comfort in every respect, by fixing an early dinner-hour,
and limiting their invited guests to his family and particular set,
including the elder Mr. Knightley, Mr. Elton, and Harriet Smith.
The incidents in connection with this dinner-party furnish a strange
and unwelcome revelation to Emma’s mind. In the first place, Harriet
is attacked by a feverish sore-throat, and cannot form one of the
party. Emma considers that Mr. Elton ought to make an excuse to be
absent also--in fact, she is so obliging as to furnish him with one.
She complains of the coldness of the weather,--wonders how any one
would dine out who could help it. She and her father cannot disappoint
the Westons, but there is no such obligation on Mr. Elton. She
detects some hoarseness in his voice already. With the duties of next
day--Sunday--before him, she thinks it would be no more than common
prudence in him to stay at home and take care of himself.
Mr. Elton looks as if he did not know what to answer. He is not
accustomed to contradict a lady, especially when her anxiety for his
welfare is of the most gratifying description. But the next moment, a
little to her disgust, Emma hears him accept with alacrity an offer
from John Knightley, to secure him from any exposure to the weather by
giving him a seat in their carriage.
The second shock to Emma is John Knightley’s hinting that Mr. Elton’s
exaggerated efforts to please ladies, culminate in his desire to oblige
Emma.
She laughs the idea to scorn; still, as coming from a man of her
brother-in-law’s judgment and penetration, it annoys her.
There is additional discomposure in her drive in company with John
Knightley and Mr. Elton, while her father and Isabella occupy the other
carriage, to Randalls. Mr. Elton is in exasperatingly good spirits,
in spite of the tidings which Emma takes care to convey to him, that
there is no abatement in Harriet’s indisposition. He outdoes himself
in blandness. John Knightley, on the contrary, indulges in a fit of
ill-humour at being dragged from the hearth-rug at Hartfield and his
children’s company at dessert, and growls in the most approved fashion
over the folly of dining out, the whole way between Hartfield and
Randalls--Emma being unable to afford him the sedative of “Very true,
my love!” which, no doubt, is administered by his usual travelling
companion.
Mr. Elton’s happy countenance and solicitous attentions haunt Emma
all the evening, spoiling her pleasure, frightening her with the
remembrance of John Knightley’s view of the case, which she herself
defines as “absurd and insufferable.” In the drawing-room she is still
farther offended by Mr. Elton’s asking her to _promise him_ not to
expose herself to infection in visiting Harriet Smith, and calling upon
Mrs. Weston to support him in his entreaty. “So scrupulous for others,
so careless of herself. She wanted me to nurse my cold by staying at
home to-day, and yet will not promise to avoid the danger of catching
an ulcerated sore-throat herself? Is that fair, Mrs. Weston? Judge
between us.” Well might Mrs. Weston look surprised, and Emma feel too
much provoked to be able to answer him.
John Knightley comes into the room with a cool report that it is
snowing hard, and a caustic congratulation of poor Mr. Woodhouse’s
spirit in venturing out with his carriage and horses in such weather.
Jolly Mr. Weston wishes that the roads may become impassable, to keep
them all at Randalls.
Mr. Woodhouse and his elder daughter are in consternation. How can the
chronic invalid face being overturned on the common, or the fond mother
consent to be blocked up, for days and nights, from her children? (The
country roads of last century were less trustworthy than those of
to-day.)
Helpful George Knightley comes back from walking down the sweep and
along Highbury Road, with the comforting assurance that matters are
not nearly so bad as his brother and Mr. Weston have supposed. In some
cases the ground is hardly white, and both of the coachmen agree there
is no real difficulty.
Everybody is in a hurry to get off, and by John Knightley’s
forgetfulness in following his wife into her father’s carriage, Emma
finds herself, to her dismay, in the Knightleys’ carriage, alone with
Mr. Elton. She believes that he has drunk too much of the Westons’ good
wine,[51] and will want to talk nonsense. To restrain him, she prepares
to speak with exquisite calmness of the weather; but scarcely has she
begun, scarcely have they passed the gate, when she finds Mr. Elton
actually and unmistakably making violent love to her.
Emma clings to the refuge of thinking her companion half intoxicated;
disgraceful as the excuse is--above all in a clergyman--it was not
altogether unwarranted by the lax practices of the time.
But Mr. Elton has only drunk wine enough to elevate his spirits, not at
all to confuse his intellect. Emma, in her trepidation and vexation,
strives to parry his addresses and to recall him to his senses, by an
attempt at playful reproach. “I am very much astonished, Mr. Elton.
This to _me_! You take me for my friend. Any message to Miss Smith I
shall be happy to deliver.”
But Mr. Elton repeats, with undaunted assurance and a great show of
amazement, “Message to Miss Smith!” what can she possibly mean?
“Mr. Elton, this is the most extraordinary conduct,” cries the
distressed Emma. “You are not yourself; say no more, and I will
endeavour to forget it.”
Far from it, Mr. Elton resumes the subject of his passion, and presses
for a favourable answer.
As Emma’s notion of his inebriety yields to a conviction of his
inconsistency and presumption, she speaks with fewer struggles for
politeness; but her indignation is principally directed against what
she declares is the contrast between his behaviour to Miss Smith
during the last month--what she has herself witnessed, of his daily
attentions,--and his present most unwarrantable profession of love to
herself, which is far, indeed, from affording her gratification.
“Good Heavens!” cries Mr. Elton, “what can be the meaning of this?
Miss Smith--I never thought of Miss Smith in the whole course of my
existence; never paid her any attentions but as your friend; never
cared whether she were dead or alive but as your friend.”
This is plain speaking from the compliment-paying Mr. Elton; but worse
is to come.
“Miss Smith, indeed! Oh! Miss Woodhouse, who can think of Miss Smith
when Miss Woodhouse is near? No!” in accents meant to be insinuating,
“I am sure you have seen and understood me.”
It has all been a miserable mistake, in the course of which Emma has
not only grossly misled poor, foolish little Harriet, Emma has also fed
with false hopes the conceit and interested motives--rather than the
honest regard--of a vain, ambitious man, who has been seeking wealth
and worldly position as the first recommendations in a wife.
Emma is struck dumb, and when she says nothing her silence is still
farther misinterpreted.
“Charming Miss Woodhouse, allow me to interpret this interesting
silence. It confesses that you have long understood me.”
Then Emma finds her voice: “No, sir, it confesses no such thing.”
She tells him again in no measured terms how completely she has
misunderstood him. Shaken and staggered as she is by his behaviour, she
still goes back to her persuasion of his attachment to Miss Smith. Does
he mean to say he has never thought seriously of her?
“Never,” cries Elton, affronted in his turn. “I think seriously of Miss
Smith! Miss Smith is a very good sort of girl, and I should be happy
to see her respectably settled. I wish her extremely well, and, no
doubt, there are men who would not object to----Everybody has their own
level; but as for myself, I am not, I think, quite so much at a loss, I
need not so totally despair of an equal alliance, as to be addressing
myself to Miss Smith.”
The smallness of Mr. Elton’s nature is betrayed in his manner of
speaking of Harriet at this time, as well as in many of his subsequent
actions. He is not a fool--at least, not where men are concerned,
like Mr. Collins in “Pride and Prejudice.” Mr. Elton is altogether a
better-bred man. But in this last specimen of a clergyman who is at
once a coxcomb and a fortune-hunter, Jane Austen deals another blow
at parsonolatry. One must think of Henry Tilney, Edward Ferrars, and
Edmund Bertram, to understand how heartily she respected her father’s
cloth when it was worthily worn.
Mr. Elton is almost as obstinate as Emma, and hardly more flattering in
reminding her of the encouragement he has received.
“Encouragement!” cries Emma, insulted by the word. “I gave you no
encouragement, sir; you have been entirely mistaken in supposing it. I
have seen you only as the admirer of my friend. In no other light could
you have been more to me than a common acquaintance.”
“He was too angry to say another word, her manner too decided to invite
supplication, and in this state of swelling resentment and mutually
deep mortification they had to continue together a few minutes longer,
for the fears of Mr. Woodhouse had confined them to a foot pace. If
there had not been so much anger there would have been desperate
awkwardness; but their straightforward emotions left no room for the
little zigzags of embarrassment. Without knowing when the carriage
turned into Vicarage Lane or when it stopped, they found themselves,
all at once, at the door of his house; and he was out before another
syllable passed. Emma then felt it indispensable to wish him a good
night. The compliment was just returned, coldly and proudly; and under
indescribable irritation of spirits she was then conveyed to Hartfield.”
It is a wretched business, Emma decides when she has retired for the
night, and her maid has curled her hair--in those days of curls--and
she is left alone with full opportunity for the unpleasant operation
of thinking. Such a blow for Harriet! That is the worst of all. Emma’s
conscience and heart are in the right place, though her wilfulness and
self-confidence may carry her away; so her first thought is, “If I had
not persuaded Harriet into liking the man, I could have borne anything.
He might have doubled his presumption to me--but poor Harriet!”
Emma cannot spare any pity for Mr. Elton’s disappointment. She has
never been personally vain, as George Knightley noted, and she is
shrewd enough to comprehend the kind of attraction of Miss Woodhouse
of Hartfield, and her thirty thousand pounds, to Mr. Elton, the vicar
of Highbury, without any connections to speak of, with only a moderate
income, and nothing but his situation and civility to recommend him.
She feels inclined at first to accuse him of double dealing in his
manner towards Harriet and herself; and it is hard for her to be
dislodged from the most sincere conviction that she has lent his
forward advances to intimacy with herself, and his delusion as to her
partiality to him, no encouragement.
But Emma’s honesty is too great for her and her present peace.
On looking back, she cannot help seeing how many incidents in
connection with the miniature, his charade, &c., might have had a
double significance. How far her own fancy had coloured looks and
words; how much the wish had been father to the thought! Then, when
she passes in review before her, her own constant invitations to
Mr. Elton--the complaisance with which she treated all he said and
did--her furbished-up apology for entering the vicarage, she blushes
with shame at the misconstruction he might have put on such behaviour,
and the sufficient though mistaken warrant she had afforded for such
misconstruction. She heartily repents what she has done, wishes she
had submitted to be warned by Mr. Knightley--almost wishes she had
consented to Harriet’s marriage with Robert Martin.
It is a great relief to Emma when, by the time the snow-storm has
ended, and Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley have returned to London, a
ceremonious note comes from Mr. Elton to Mr. Woodhouse, announcing that
he is about to comply with the pressing entreaties of some friends to
pass a few weeks in Bath. His absence could not be better timed, and
the unpleasant task of breaking to Harriet Smith his defection--or,
rather, the worse explanation that he has never been her suitor--will
be got over before he comes back. Emma is fain to trust that Harriet
has not a retentive nature, and will soon forget her imaginary lover.
But the match-maker is punished by Harriet’s very meekness and
uncomplainingness under the double injury--though it is some time
before Emma recognises in her friend the weak tenacity of a nature
which is feeble in its gentleness and guilelessness.