of Steventon, about seven miles from Basingstoke, in Hampshire. Here she
lived, for the first twenty-five years of her life, the quiet family
life of most young ladies of similar circumstances; two of her brothers
were in the Navy, one was a country gentleman, having inherited an
estate from a cousin, another was a clergyman. The most dearly loved by
Jane of all her family was her sister Cassandra, older than herself by
three years. The sisters were so inseparable that when Cassandra went to
school, Jane, though too young to profit much by the instruction given,
was sent also, because it would have been cruel to separate the sisters;
her mother said, “If Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane
would insist on sharing her fate.” The devotion between the sisters was
lifelong. Their characters were not much alike; Cassandra was colder,
calmer, and more reserved than her sister, whose sweet temper and
affectionate disposition specially endeared her to all her family; but
Jane throughout her life relied upon Cassandra as one who was wiser and
stronger than herself. The quiet family life at Steventon was
diversified by one or two visits to Bath, then a very fashionable
resort; a short visit to Lyme is spoken of later on; and in the early
days in the vicarage the Austen children not infrequently amused
themselves with private theatricals. Readers of _Northanger Abbey_,
_Persuasion_, and _Mansfield Park_ will find these mild amusements woven
into the web of the story; for, as Jane Austen says herself, she was
like a bird who uses the odd bits of wool or moss in the hedgerows near
to weave into the tiny fabric of its nest. The plays which the Austens
acted were frequently written by themselves. This may probably have
given to Jane her early impulse to authorship. It is not improbable that
it also smoothed the way of her career as a writer in another sense; for
at that time very great prejudice still existed in many people’s minds
against women who were writers. Lord Granville, speaking in December
1887, at the unveiling of the statue of the Queen at Holloway College,
cited a great French writer who had laid it down as an axiom that a
woman could commit no greater fault than to be learned; the same writer
had said—of course partly in joke—that it is enough knowledge for any
woman if she is acquainted with the fact that Pekin is not in Europe, or
that Alexander the Great was not the son-in-law of Louis the XIV.
Referring to events within his own knowledge and memory, Lord Granville
added, “One of the most eminent English statesmen of the century, a
brilliant man of letters himself, after reading with admiration a
beautiful piece of poetry written by his daughter, appealed to her
affection for him to prevent her ever writing again, his fear was so
great lest she should be thought a literary woman.”
If a similar prejudice were in any degree felt by the Austen family, it
is not unlikely that it was gradually dissolved by the early habit of
the children of writing plays for home acting. We read, indeed, that
Jane did nearly all her writing in the general sitting-room of the
family, and that she was careful to keep her occupation secret from all
but her own immediate relations. For this purpose she wrote on small
pieces of paper, which could easily be put away, or covered by a piece
of blotting-paper or needlework. The little mahogany desk at which she
wrote is still preserved in the family. She never put her name on a
title-page, but there is no evidence that her family would have
disapproved of her doing so. They seem to have delighted in all she did,
and to have helped her by every means in their power. She was a great
favourite with her brothers and sister, and with all the tribe of
nephews and nieces that grew up about her. She had no trace of any
assumption of superiority, and gave herself no airs of any kind. She had
too much humour and sense of fun for there to be any danger of this in
her case. She was thoroughly womanly in her habits, manners, and
occupations. Like Miss Martineau, her early training preserved her from
being a literary lady who could not sew. Her needlework was remarkably
fine and dainty, and specimens of it are still preserved which show that
her fingers had the same deftness and skill as the mind which created
Emma Woodhouse and her father, Mrs. Norris and Elizabeth Bennet. She had
taken to authorship as a duck takes to water, and had written some of
her most remarkable books before she was twenty; and she had done this
so simply and naturally that she seems to have produced in her family
the impression that writing first-rate novels was one of the easiest
things in the world. We find, for instance, that she writes in 1814 many
letters of advice to a novel-writing niece; and she advises another
little niece to cease writing till she is sixteen years old, the child
being at that time only ten or twelve. In 1816 she addresses a very
interesting letter to a nephew who is writing a novel, and has had the
misfortune to lose two chapters and a half! She makes kindly fun of the
young gentleman, and suggests that if she finds his lost treasure she
shall engraft his chapters into her own novel; but she adds: “I do not
think, however, that any theft of that sort would be really very useful
to me. What should I do with your strong, manly, vigorous sketches, full
of variety and glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit
(two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as
produces little effect after much labour?”
Early in 1801 the home at Steventon was broken up. Mr. Austen resigned
his living in consequence of failing health, and the family removed to
Bath. Mr. Austen died in 1805, and Mrs. Austen and her daughters lived
for a time at Southampton. They had no really homelike home, however,
between leaving Steventon in 1801 and settling at Chawton, in Hampshire,
in 1809; and it is very characteristic of Jane Austen’s home-loving
nature that this homeless period was also a period of literary
inactivity. She wrote _Sense and Sensibility_, _Northanger Abbey_, and
_Pride and Prejudice_ before she left Steventon, though none of them
were published till after she came to live at Chawton. Here in her
second home she wrote _Mansfield Park_, _Emma_, and _Persuasion_. In
consequence of having three novels finished before one was printed, when
she once began to publish, her works appeared in rapid succession.
_Sense and Sensibility_ was the first to appear, in 1811, and the others
followed quickly after one another, for her work was at once appreciated
by the public, and the great leaders of the literary world, such as Sir
Walter Scott, Southey, and Coleridge, welcomed her with cordial and
generous praise. One curious little adventure should be mentioned. In
1803, during her residence at Bath, she had sold the manuscript of
_Northanger Abbey_ to a Bath publisher for £10. This good man, on
reconsideration, evidently thought he had made a bad bargain, and
resolved to lose his ten pounds rather than risk a larger sum in
printing and publishing the book. The manuscript therefore lay on his
shelves for many years quite forgotten. But the time came when _Sense
and Sensibility_, _Pride and Prejudice_, and _Mansfield Park_ had placed
their author in the first rank of English writers, and it occurred to
Miss Austen and her family that it might be well to rescue _Northanger
Abbey_ from its unappreciative possessor. One of her brothers called on
the Bath publisher and negotiated with him the re-purchase of the
manuscript, giving for it the same sum which had been paid to the author
about ten years earlier. The publisher was delighted to get back his
£10, which he had never expected to see again, and Jane Austen’s brother
was delighted to get back the manuscript. Both parties to the bargain
were fully satisfied; but the poor publisher’s feelings would have been
very different if he had known that the neglected manuscript, with which
he had so joyfully parted, was by the author of the most successful
novels of the day.
There is a quiet vein of fun and humorous observation running through
all Miss Austen’s writings. It is as visible in her private letters to
her friends as in her works intended for publication. The little turns
of expression are not reproduced, but the humour of the one is very
similar to that of the other. Thus, for instance, in one of her letters
she describes a visit to a young lady at school in London. Jane Austen
had left her a raw schoolgirl, and found her, on this visit, developed
into a fashionable young lady. “Her hair,” writes Jane to Cassandra, “is
done up with an elegance to do credit to any education.” Who can read
this without thinking of Fanny Price in _Mansfield Park_, and the
inevitable contempt she inspired in her fashionable cousins because she
did not know French and had but one sash?
Reference has already been made to the high appreciation of Miss
Austen’s genius which has been expressed by the highest literary
authorities in her own time and in ours. Sir Walter Scott wrote in his
journal: “I have read again, and for the third time, Miss Austen’s very
finely-written novel of _Pride and Prejudice_. That young lady has a
talent for describing the involvements and feelings and characters of
ordinary life, which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with. The
big Bow-Wow strain I can do myself like any now going, but the exquisite
touch which renders commonplace things and characters interesting from
the truth of the descriptive and the sentiment is denied to me.” Lord
Macaulay, the great historian, wrote in his diary: “Read Dickens’s _Hard
Times_, and another book of Pliny’s _Letters_. Read _Northanger Abbey_,
worth all Dickens and Pliny put together. Yet it was the work of a girl.
She was certainly not more than twenty-six. Wonderful creature!” Guizot,
the French historian, was a great novel reader, and he delighted in
English novels, especially those written by women. Referring to the
women writers of the beginning of this century, of whom Miss Austen was
the chief, he said that their works “form a school which, in the
excellence and profusion of its productions, resembles the cloud of
dramatic authors of the great Athenian age.” The late Mr. G. H. Lewes
said he would rather have written _Pride and Prejudice_ than any of the
Waverley novels. George Eliot calls Jane Austen the greatest artist that
has ever written, “using the term ‘artist’ to signify the most perfect
master over the means to her end.” It is perhaps only fair to state that
some good judges do not entertain so high an opinion of her work. Madame
de Staël pronounced against her, using the singularly inappropriate word
“vulgar,” in condemnation of her work. If there is a writer in the world
free from vulgarity in its ordinary sense, it is Jane Austen; it must be
supposed that Madame de Staël used the word in its French sense, _i.e._
“commonplace” or “ordinary,” such a meaning of the word as is retained
in our English expression “the vulgar tongue.” Charlotte Brontë felt in
Miss Austen a deficiency in poetic imagination, in the high tone of
sentiment which elevates the prose of everyday life into poetry. She
found her “shrewd and observant rather than sagacious and profound.”
Miss Austen’s writings were so essentially different from the highly
imaginative work of her sister author, that it is not surprising that
the younger failed somewhat in appreciation of the elder writer.
Jane Austen’s failing health in 1816 caused much anxiety to her family.
It is characteristic of her gentle thoughtfulness for all about her that
she never could be induced to use the one sofa with which the family
sitting-room was provided. Her mother, who was more than seventy years
old, often used the sofa, and Jane would never occupy it, even in her
mother’s absence, preferring to contrive for herself a sort of couch
formed with two or three chairs. A little niece, puzzled that “Aunt
Jane” preferred this arrangement, drew from her the explanation that if
she used the sofa in her mother’s absence, Mrs. Austen would probably
abstain from using it as much as was good for her. Her last book,
_Persuasion_, was finished while she was suffering very much from what
proved to be her dying illness. Weak health did not in any way diminish
her industry, and she exacted from herself the utmost perfection that
she felt she was capable of giving to her work. The last chapters of
_Persuasion_ were cancelled and re-written because her first conclusion
of the story did not satisfy her. In May 1817 she and her sister removed
to Winchester in order that Jane might have skilled medical advice. Here
she died on 18th July and was buried opposite Wykeham’s Chantry, in the
cathedral. Her sweetness of temper and her gentle gaiety never failed
her throughout a long and trying illness. When the end was near, one of
those with her asked if there was anything she wanted; her reply was,
“_Nothing but death_.”
Footnote 4:
A very interesting memoir of Miss Austen has been written by her
nephew, Mr. Austen Leigh. All who love her works should read it, and
thereby come to know and love the woman.
XVI
MARIA EDGEWORTH
IT will be impossible, in the short limits of these pages, to give
anything like a full account of the long life of Maria Edgeworth. She
lived for nearly eighty-three years, from 1st January 1767 to 22d May
1849; and through her own and her father’s friends she was brought into
touch with nearly all the leading men and women connected with the
stirring political and literary events of that period. What this implies
will be best realised if we consider that her lifetime comprised the
whole period of the French Revolution, the War of Independence in the
United States, the long wars of England with Napoleon, the landing of
the French in Ireland (her native country), the passing of the Act of
Union between England and Ireland, Catholic Emancipation, the Abolition
of Slavery in the British Dominions, the passing of the first Reform
Bill, the Irish Famine of 1847, and the outbreak of revolutionary
socialism on the Continent in 1848. These are some of the most burning
of the political events of which she was a witness; the literary and
social history of the same period is hardly less remarkable. She lived
in the centre of a world made brilliant by Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Shelley, Byron, Burns, Keats, Scott, and Jane Austen. She knew Mrs. Fry,
Wilberforce, and Sydney Smith, as representing some of the most
important of the social movements of her time; among her friends in the
scientific world were Ricardo, the political economist, Darwin, the
naturalist, whose fame has been overshadowed by that of his grandson,
the great Charles Darwin of our own times, Sir Humphry Davy, the
Herschels, Mrs. Somerville, and James Mill. She knew Mrs. Siddons, and
heard her recite in her own house the part of Queen Katherine in the
play of _Henry the Eighth_. She was the intimate friend, and connection
by marriage, of “Kitty Pakenham,” the first Duchess of Wellington, wife
of “the Great Duke.” She lived to see the old stage coaches supplanted
by our modern railways; she was the interested eye-witness of the
gradual introduction of the steam-engine into all departments of
industry, a change which Sir Walter Scott said he looked on “half proud,
half sad, half angry, and half pleased.” She might well feel, as old age
approached, that she had “warmed both hands at the fire of life.” No
life could have been fuller than hers of every sort of interest and
activity. She said in a letter to a friend, written after a dangerous
illness: “When I felt it was more than probable that I should not
recover, with a pulse above 120, and at the entrance of my seventy-sixth
year, I was not alarmed. I felt ready to rise tranquil from the banquet
of life, where I had been a happy guest. I confidently relied on the
goodness of my Creator” (_Study of Maria Edgeworth_, by Grace A. Oliver,
p. 521).
Maria Edgeworth’s family was one of English origin, which had settled in
Ireland in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The Edgeworths intermarried
into Irish, Welsh, and English families, but always maintained strong
Irish sympathies.
There were many remarkable men and women in the Edgeworth family before
the birth of our heroine, but space forbids the mention of more than
one, her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, whose name and fame are
intimately associated with those of his daughter. Mr. Edgeworth was a
most extraordinary man; at one moment one admires him, at another one
laughs at him, but one must always be astonished by him. “To put a
girdle round about the earth in forty minutes” would have been a
congenial task to him. He made clocks, built bridges, raised spires,
invented telegraphs, manufactured balloons, ink, and soap, constructed
locks on his bedroom doors of such a complicated nature, that his guests
were afraid to shut their doors lest they never should be able to open
them again.
When on a journey in France about 1770, he stayed at Lyons, and carried
out a plan for diverting the Rhone from its course, thereby saving a
large tract of country that had previously been inaccessible; for this
service the city of Lyons rewarded him by a grant of land; this
property, however, was confiscated a few years later during the
Revolution.
He raised a corps of volunteer infantry in Ireland, to which Roman
Catholics as well as Protestants were admitted, although at that time
the sentiment of religious equality was regarded as akin to infidelity
and disloyalty. He was born in England, and educated partly here and
partly in Ireland; like most of the Edgeworths, he came of a mixed race,
his mother being a Welsh woman of considerable literary acquirements and
faculties; his first remarkable performance was a runaway marriage,
which he contracted at the age of nineteen, with a Miss Elers, a lady of
German origin, whom he appears rather to have disliked than otherwise. A
runaway marriage with a girl whom he really loved would have been too
commonplace a proceeding in those days for this eccentric young
gentleman. Speaking of this lady, Mr. Edgeworth wrote: “My wife was
prudent, domestic, and affectionate, but she was not of a cheerful
temper. She lamented about trifles; and the lamenting of a female, with
whom we live, does not render home delightful.” It is not recorded if
Mrs. Edgeworth found the lamenting of the male with whom she lived any
more delightful, nor indeed is it evident that her husband devoted much
of his overflowing energy to lamentation. As he did not find his home
delightful, he spent very little time in it, and was not long before he
found pleasant society elsewhere.
One can never think of Mr. Edgeworth apart from his extraordinary
domestic history. He had four wives, one after another, in rapid
succession, and twenty-two children. There were four children, of whom
Maria was one, by the first marriage with the “lamenting female.” The
eldest of these, born when his father was under twenty, was brought up
on the principles advocated by Rousseau, which may perhaps be summarised
as never forcing a child to do anything that he does not wish to do. One
experiment of this kind appears to have sufficed for the family; the
other twenty-one children, or such of them as survived infancy, were
treated according to other theories. Indeed, it seems to have been part
of Maria’s education that she was to undertake, for a part of every day,
some study or occupation that was uncongenial to her. Mr. Edgeworth’s
theories of education seem to have been almost as numerous as his
family; a story is told in the book already quoted, of the visit of a
gentleman to Edgeworthstown House in Ireland; on rejoining the ladies
after dinner, the guest was imprudent enough to exclaim on the beauty of
the golden hair of one of the younger girls. Mr. Edgeworth instantly
took his daughter by the hand, walked across the room, opened a drawer,
held her head over it, and with a large pair of scissors cut off all her
hair close to her head. “As the golden ringlets fell into the drawer,
this extraordinary father said, ‘Charlotte, what do you say?’ She
answered, ‘Thank you, father.’ Turning to his guests, he remarked, ‘I
will not allow a daughter of mine to be vain.’”
Among the friendships that had a powerful influence on Mr. Edgeworth’s
character must be mentioned that with Mr. Day, the author of a book
which is still well known, _Sandford and Merton_. Mr. Day was an even
more extraordinary man than Mr. Edgeworth. He entirely set at naught all
the usual habits of society; we are told that he “seldom combed his
raven locks.” He professed to think love had been the greatest curse to
mankind, and announced in season and out of season his determination
never to marry. It appears that the assistance of a great many ladies
was needed to help him for a time to keep his word. He made offers of
marriage to Margaret Edgeworth, his friend’s sister, to Honora and
Elizabeth Sneyd (who became later the second and third wives of Mr.
Edgeworth); and failing to induce any of these ladies to accept him, he
adopted two orphan girls from the Foundling with the object of educating
one of them to such a pitch of perfection that she should be fit to be
his wife. In order to foster the quality of “fortitude in females,” he
used to drop hot sealing-wax on their bare arms, and fire off pistols,
charged with powder only, at their petticoats. One of the two little
girls could never entirely overcome the tendency to make use of some
vehement expression of pain or alarm under these circumstances. This Mr.
Day considered a fatal disqualification for ever promoting her to be his
wife. The other, to whom the romantic name of Sabrina Sydney had been
given, was more promising, and at one time it seemed as if the perilous
honour of being Mrs. Day would be hers. However, she was saved by her
disobedience to his injunctions against wearing a particular kind of
sleeve and handkerchief which were then in fashion. Upon this piece of
self-will, we are told that “he at once and decidedly gave her up.”
Mr. Day’s proposals to Honora and Elizabeth Sneyd, two beautiful sisters
with whom he and Mr. Edgeworth were brought much in contact at
Lichfield, have been already mentioned. Mr. Day pretended to despise
beauty and to condemn love; but Honora’s beauty so far overcame his
prejudices that he at least professed love for her. His offer of
marriage, however, was more like an ultimatum of war than an expression
of affection. He sent her a huge packet, in which he detailed all the
conditions he should expect her to fulfil if she married him. One of
these was entire seclusion from all society but his own. She replied
that she “would not admit the unqualified control of a husband over all
her actions: she did not feel that seclusion from society was
indispensably necessary to preserve female virtue, or to secure domestic
happiness. And she declined leaving her mode of life for any ‘dark and
untried system.’” Mr. Day was deeply wounded, but it was his vanity that
suffered rather than his heart; for in three weeks he made a similar
overture to Honora’s sister, Elizabeth. Now, however, the tables were
turned. Whether the sisters conspired together to punish him is not
known; but Elizabeth imposed conditions on her lover before she would
consent to receive his attentions; she declared she could never marry a
man who could neither fence, dance, nor ride, and had none of the
accomplishments of a gentleman. These were the very qualities Mr. Day
had chiefly exercised his philosophy in deriding and denouncing. “How
could he,” cried Miss Elizabeth, with cruel logic, “with propriety abuse
and ridicule talents in which he appeared deficient?” Mr. Day therefore
repaired to France with Mr. Edgeworth in order to acquire those polite
accomplishments of which it had been the pride of his heart to know
nothing. Poor Mr. Day!
How many a month I strove to suit
These stubborn fingers to the lute!
To-day I venture all I know.
She will not hear my music? So!
Break the string; fold music’s wing:
Suppose Pauline had bade me sing.
When he came back from France, cruel Elizabeth laughed in his face, and
said she had liked him best as he was before. Notwithstanding all these
unsuccessful attempts, Mr. Day found a wife at length. She was a lady of
large fortune, which, of course, he “despised” and appropriated. She
conformed to all her husband’s whims, and honestly believed him to be
the best and most distinguished of men. “That’s what a man wants in a
wife mostly,” as Mrs. Poyser says; “one who’d pretend she didn’t know
which end she stood uppermost till her husband told her.” Mr. Day fell a
victim at last to one of his numerous theories. He disapproved of the
professional method of breaking in colts, and undertook to train one
upon an improved plan of his own. The animal plunged violently and threw
him; he had concussion of the brain, and died a few minutes after his
fall. Poor Mrs. Day was so inconsolable that she took to her bed, and
died two years later. She must have been a woman of the type of Milton’s
Eve: “Herself, though fairest, unsupported flower.” When her prop was
gone, she drooped and died.
During Mr. Edgeworth’s residence at Lyons his first wife, Maria’s
mother, died, and in a few months he married the beautiful Honora Sneyd.
The social circle at Lichfield, in which Honora had lived before her
marriage, contained many distinguished persons, among them Dr. Darwin,
and Miss Anna Seward, the poetess. Honora herself had been engaged, or
partly engaged, to Major André, the unfortunate officer whose execution
as a spy by the Americans, during the War of Independence, caused such
deep indignation in England. Her marriage to Mr. Edgeworth in 1773, and
her death in 1780, took place before the melancholy end of Major André’s
life. The association of Honora’s name with that of Major André is
mentioned here as an illustration of the way in which the Edgeworth
family were connected, in some form or another, with many of the most
interesting events of the times in which they lived. Another such
incident is to be found in the fact that the Abbé Edgeworth, a relative
who had become a Roman Catholic priest, and had lived many years in
France, attended Louis XVI upon the scaffold, and received his last
words.