Reynolds’s and I am disappointed, for there was nothing like Mrs. D. at
either. I can only imagine that Mr. D. prizes any picture of her too
much to like it should be exposed to the public eye. I can imagine that
he would have that sort of feeling--that mixture of love, pride and
delicacy.
JANE AUSTEN: _Letter to her sister Cassandra_, 1813, in ‘Letters of
Jane Austen.’
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Understood her limitations.]
I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit
seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than
to save my life; and if it was indispensable for me to keep it up and
never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure I
should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must keep
to my own style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed
again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.
JANE AUSTEN: _Letter to Mr. J. S. Clarke_, quoted in ‘Memoir,’ by
Austen-Leigh.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Her comparison for her work.]
By the bye, my dear E., I am quite concerned for the loss your mother
mentions in her letter. Two chapters and a half to be missing is
monstrous! It is well that _I_ have not been at Steventon lately, and
therefore cannot be suspected of purloining them; two strong twigs and
a half towards a nest of my own would have been something. 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 labor?
JANE AUSTEN: _Letter to her Nephew_, quoted in ‘Memoir,’ by
Austen-Leigh.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A “glorious novelist.”]
Read ‘Emma,’--most admirable. The little complexities of the story
are beyond my comprehension, and wonderfully beautiful.... She was a
glorious novelist.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: _Journal_, in ‘Memorials,’ by Maria Weston Chapman.
Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1877.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: ‘Persuasion.’]
I have read eleven times Miss Austen’s ‘Persuasion,’ unequalled in
interest, charm, and truth, to _my_ mind.
HARRIET MARTINEAU: _Letter_, published in her biography, by Mrs.
Fenwick Miller. (Famous Women Series.) Boston: Roberts Bros., 1885.
* * * * *
Her exquisite story of ‘Persuasion’ absolutely haunted me. Whenever it
rained (and it did rain every day that I stayed in Bath, except one),
I thought of Anne Elliott meeting Captain Wentworth, when driven by
a shower to take refuge in a shoe-shop. Whenever I got out of breath
in climbing up-hill, I thought of that same charming Anne Elliott,
and of that ascent from the lower town to the upper, during which all
her tribulations ceased. And when at last, by dint of trotting up
one street and down another, I incurred the unromantic calamity of
a blister on the heel, even that grievance became classical by the
recollection of the similar catastrophe which, in consequence of her
peregrinations with the admiral, had befallen dear Mrs. Croft. I doubt
if any one, even Scott himself, have left such perfect impressions of
character and place as Jane Austen.
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: ‘Recollections of a Literary Life.’ New York:
Harper & Bros., 1852.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: One thing lacking.]
She wants nothing but the _beau-idéal_ of the female character to be a
perfect novel writer.... By the way, how delightful is her ‘Emma’! the
best, I think, of all her charming works.
MARY RUSSELL MITFORD: _Letters_, in her ‘Life,’ by Rev. A. G.
L’Estrange.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Three weighty opinions.]
The delicate mirth, the gently hinted satire, the feminine, decorous
humor of Jane Austen, who, if not the greatest, is surely the most
faultless of female novelists.... My Uncle Southey and my father had an
equally high opinion of her merits, but Mr. Wordsworth used to say that
though he admitted that her novels were an admirable copy of life, he
could not be interested in productions of that kind; unless the truth
of nature were presented to him clarified, as it were, by the pervading
light of imagination, it had scarce any attractions in his eyes.
SARA COLERIDGE: ‘Memoir and Letters,’ edited by her daughter. New York:
Harper & Bros., 1874.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Discrimination of character.]
Shakespeare has had neither equal nor second. But among the writers
who, in the point which we have noticed, [the difficult art of
portraying characters in which no single feature is extravagantly
overcharged,] have approached nearest to the manner of the great
master, we have no hesitation in placing Jane Austen, a woman of whom
England is justly proud. She has given us a multitude of characters,
all, in a certain sense, commonplace, all such as we meet every day.
Yet they are all as perfectly discriminated from each other as if they
were the most eccentric of human beings. There are, for example, four
clergymen, none of whom we should be surprised to find in any parsonage
in the kingdom, Mr. Edward Ferrars, Mr. Henry Tilney, Mr. Edmund
Bertram, and Mr. Elton. They are all specimens of the upper part of
the middle class. They have all been liberally educated. They all lie
under the restraints of the same sacred profession. They are all young.
They are all in love. Not one of them has any hobby-horse, to use the
phrase of Sterne. Not one has a ruling passion, such as we read of in
Pope. Who would not have expected them to be insipid likenesses of each
other? No such thing. Harpagon is not more unlike to Jourdain, Joseph
Surface is not more unlike to Sir Lucius O’Trigger, than every one of
Miss Austen’s young divines to all his reverend brethren. And almost
all this is done by touches so delicate, that they elude analysis, that
they defy the powers of description, and that we know them to exist
only by the general effect to which they have contributed.
LORD MACAULAY: _Essay on Madame D’Arblay, dinburgh Review_, January,
1843. ‘Critical and Historical Essays.’ New York: Albert Mason, 1875.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: “The exquisite touch.”]
Read again, and for the third time at least, Miss Austen’s very finely
written novel of ‘Pride and Prejudice.’ That young lady had 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 ordinary commonplace things and
characters interesting from the truth of the description and the
sentiment, is denied to me. What a pity such a gifted creature died so
early!
SIR WALTER SCOTT: _Diary_, March, 1826, in ‘Memoirs,’ by J. G.
Lockhart. Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1871.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Anecdote of ‘Mansfield Park.’]
A pleasant anecdote, told to us on good authority in England, is
illustrative of Miss Austen’s power over various minds. A party of
distinguished literary men met at a country-seat; among them was
Macaulay, and we believe, Hallam; at all events, they were men of high
reputation. While discussing the merits of various authors, it was
proposed that each should write down the name of that work of fiction
which had given him the greatest pleasure. Much surprise and amusement
followed; for, on opening the slips of paper, _seven_ bore the name of
‘Mansfield Park.’
MRS. R. C. WATERSTON: ‘Jane Austen,’ in the _Atlantic Monthly_,
February, 1863.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: “A prose Shakespeare.”]
We would say that Fielding and Miss Austen are the greatest
novelists in our language.... Miss Austen has been called a prose
Shakespeare,--and among others, by Macaulay. In spite of the sense
of incongruity which besets us in the words _prose_ Shakespeare, we
confess the greatness of Miss Austen, her marvellous dramatic power,
seems, more than anything in Scott, akin to Shakespeare.
G. H. LEWES: ‘Recent Novels,’ in _Fraser’s Magazine_, December, 1847.
* * * * *
[Sidenote:
Only shrewd and observant.]
Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point.
What induced you to say that you would rather have written ‘Pride and
Prejudice,’ or ‘Tom Jones,’ than any of the Waverley Novels? I had not
seen ‘Pride and Prejudice’ till I read that sentence of yours--and
then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped
portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, high-cultivated
garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a
bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue
hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and
gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.... George Sand is
sagacious and profound; Miss Austen is only shrewd and observant....
You say I must familiarize my mind with the fact that “Miss Austen is
not a poetess, has no ‘sentiment,’ no eloquence, none of the ravishing
enthusiasm of poetry,”--and then you add, I _must_ learn to acknowledge
her as _one of the greatest artists, of the greatest painters of human
character_, and one of the writers with the nicest sense of means to
an end that ever lived. The last point only will I ever acknowledge.
Can there be a great artist without poetry?
CHARLOTTE BRONTË: _Letter to G. H. Lewes_, 1848, in the former’s
‘Life,’ by E. C. Gaskell. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1858.
* * * * *
It was in this year, I think (1865), that Mrs. Cameron wrote an undated
letter in which mention is made of Tennyson:
[Sidenote: Tennyson’s opinion.]
“Alfred talked very pleasantly that evening to Annie Thackeray and
L---- S----. He spoke of Jane Austen, as James Spedding does, as next
to Shakespeare! I can never imagine what they mean when they say such
things.... He said he believed every crime and every vice in the
world were connected with the passion for autographs and anecdotes
and records--that the desiring anecdotes and acquaintance with the
lives of great men was treating them like pigs to be ripped open for
the public; that he knew he himself should be ripped open like a pig;
that he thanked God Almighty with his whole heart and soul that he
knew nothing, and that the world knew nothing, of Shakespeare but
his writings; and that he thanked God Almighty that he knew nothing
of Jane Austen, and that there were no letters preserved either of
Shakespeare’s or of Jane Austen’s.”[8]
HENRY TAYLOR: ‘Autobiography.’ London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1885.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] This was several years before the publication of the “Austen-Leigh
Memoir.”
JOANNA BAILLIE.
1762-1851.
JOANNA BAILLIE.
Joanna Baillie, the daughter of a Scotch clergyman, was born at
Bothwell, in Lanarkshire, in 1762. When she was about six years old,
her father exchanged the Bothwell Kirk for that of Hamilton. At ten
she was sent to boarding-school in Glasgow; and, her father having
been appointed to a professorship in Glasgow University, when Joanna
was fifteen the family removed to that city. Two years later her
father died, and the Baillies left Glasgow for Long Calderwood, in the
Middle Ward of Lanarkshire. In 1784, Joanna’s brother, Dr. Matthew
Baillie, took his mother and sisters to live in London. In 1790, Joanna
published anonymously a volume of miscellaneous poems; and in 1798,
also anonymously, the first volume of _Plays on the Passions_. In 1802,
a second, and in 1812, a third volume appeared. Meanwhile Miss Baillie
had published, in 1804, a volume of _Miscellaneous Dramas_; and in
1810 a tragedy, _The Family Legend_, was brought out at the Edinburgh
Theatre. It was played fourteen nights; and in 1814 was again acted in
London. In 1826 appeared _The Martyr_, a tragedy, and in 1836 three
more volumes of plays. In 1831 Miss Baillie published _A View of the
General Tenor of the New Testament regarding the Nature and Dignity of
Jesus Christ_. She was also the author of _Metrical Legends of Exalted
Characters_.
In 1801, Joanna, her mother, and her sister, Agnes, had established
themselves at Hampstead, where Mrs. Baillie had died in 1806. The
sisters more than once revisited Scotland. Joanna “passed away without
suffering” on the 23rd of February, 1851.
Her firm adherence to a mistaken theory of dramatic writing--the
subordination of all else to the development of a master passion--has
prevented her plays from holding the stage. Her finely humorous
Scotch songs are perfection in their way. Many of them were suggested
by earlier songs, and written to the old airs; and the manner in
which she has dealt with this rude material is an indication of
those characteristics which led Lucy Aikin to speak of the “innocent
and maiden grace” which “still hovered over her to the end.”
Every contemporary mentions Joanna Baillie with respect, and with
affectionate admiration of her graceful old age.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Parentage.]
Both father and mother were rarely high-principled; and, in spite of
his warm affections and her latent faculties of humor and pathos, they
were alike strongly tinged with the strict, somewhat stern, reserve of
the old Scotch character. Agnes Baillie (Joanna’s sister) told Lucy
Aikin that, though her father had sucked the poison from a bite which
she had received from a dog believed to be mad, he had never kissed her
in his life. Joanna herself spoke to the same friend of her unsatisfied
yearning for caresses when a child, and of her mother’s simply chiding
her when she ventured to clasp that mother’s knee; “but,” Joanna
added, with perfect comprehension, “I know she liked it.”
[Sidenote: Native place.]
The village of Bothwell, where Dr. James Baillie’s kirk and manse
were situated, possessed many advantages. It was where “Clyde’s banks
are bonnie,” in the fruit lands of the Middle Ward of Lanarkshire,
and where there is a strath of waving verdure at all seasons. In May
and June it is one great white and pink flush of orchard blossoms. In
August and September boughs bend richly under purple plums, scarlet
streaked apples, and mottled olive and russet pears. Close by are
the fragments of the great castle-keep of the Douglasses, one of
the most stately ruins of Scotland.... Other legends, besides those
of well-authenticated history, lurked in each drearier spot of that
country. Vague tales of the foul fiend himself started up in the
desolation of a peat bog, or the horror of a gruesome cavern. There
were legends of gray “bogles” and sheeted ghosts.... These were the
common chronicles and fireside lore of the country people of the day.
As a stirring, inquisitive child, Joanna Baillie had a good source from
which she could derive such knowledge, and form a familiar acquaintance
betimes with many-sided humanity. The kitchen of the country manse
was then the free resort and resting-place of privileged beggars, old
soldiers and sailors, and humble travellers of every description. The
settle in the chimney, and the “bink” in the “hallan,” were rarely
empty, as backwards and forwards trotted the little maid herself,
making believe to dispense the doles of bannocks and cheese, and
the cogs of brose and kale. All the while she was gathering scraps
of racy conversation into wide-open little pitchers of ears, and
photographing still more accurately with clear fresh mirrors of eyes
the quaintly-expressive faces and figures.
[Sidenote: “Miss Jack.”]
She was not more than six years old when her father exchanged the
kirk of Bothwell for that of Hamilton, likewise in the fruit lands.
But Hamilton was a town of six thousand inhabitants, clustering round
the ducal palace and park of the Hamiltons. Here Joanna found herself
one of a community which numbered scores of young people of her own
age and degree. So well did she like it, that she was the leader in
every romping game and frolic--an adept at out-of-door sports, whether
swinging, skipping or climbing. She was celebrated for the fearlessness
with which she ran along the parapets of bridges and on the tops of
walls, and scampered heedlessly on any pony she could find. She had the
misfortune to cause the fracture of her brother’s arm by inducing him
to ride double with her. The horse, not approving of a pair of riders,
threw the one who had the worse seat. “Look at Miss Jack!” a farmer
once commented, ... “she sits her horse as if it was a bit of herself.”
In advanced life she loved to dwell on her early unchecked rambles
over heaths compared to which Hampstead was a common; on her endless
“paidling” in innumerable burns, tributaries of the Clyde. She was
wont to regret wistfully that she could no longer “pad” barefooted on
the grass or “plowter” in the water. And she would eagerly recommend
to dainty and horrified English matrons the entire wholesomeness and
happiness of letting their petted children run bare-footed in summer.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Education.]
Whatever more valuable acquisitions Joanna made in these young days
she was singularly deficient in learning, as the term is generally
understood. “At nine I could not read plainly,” Joanna Baillie told
Lucy Aikin. “At nine, Joanna?” her sister Agnes called her back. “You
could not read well at eleven.”... The worthy minister took the stout
little ignoramus in hand along with his breakfast. She spoilt the
flavor of his trout and cake and black pudding by crying throughout
each lesson. It was thought that a change was called for in order to
conquer Joanna’s repugnance to sedentary studies, and her passion
for open-air pursuits and boyish pranks. At ten years of age she was
accordingly sent, along with her elder sister, to Miss Macdonald’s
boarding-school, in the heart of the city of Glasgow.... Joanna learned
to read perfectly at the Glasgow boarding-school, as doubtless she also
learned more or less serviceable writing and arithmetic, and correct or
incorrect notions in geography and history. If she did not learn much
else beyond singing a little to the guitar, and making a few promising
attempts at drawing and dancing, still the school did its part. The
study for which she showed a particular inclination was mathematics--a
fact which is characteristic of the clear-headed girl. Of her own free
will and entirely unassisted, she mastered a considerable portion of
Euclid.
[Sidenote: Private theatricals.]
Pricked on by the demands of a large girl-audience at school, Joanna’s
hereditary gift of story-telling, by which she could excite laughter
or tears, grew and grew until at length she found herself the chief
figure in something like private theatricals. In connection with
these chamber-dramas, Joanna was play-writer, playwright, player,
stage-dresser, and scene-shifter in one. In this foreshadowing of
her future career, she is said to have strongly displayed an eye for
effect, which failed her in her great efforts of later life.... Let
us conjure up, if we can, the old Glasgow boarding-school, with its
small rooms and dim tallow candles. There stand the host of eager girls
in their short-waisted, short-sleeved gowns and mittens, absorbed
in the common levy of buckles, brooches, necklaces, plaids, scarfs,
breast-knots, and Highland bonnets. The acknowledged mistress of
the ceremonies and games, and the “first lady” of the troop, is the
undersized girl with marked features and gray eyes.... Down on the
scene Miss Macdonald and her governess look for a moment, from the
elevation of their huge toupees and barricades of ruffles. They dismiss
authoritatively the excited rabble, and retire to their cosy supper
where they admit in confidence to each other the mother-wit of Miss
Jack Baillie, who has yet got a bad memory for facts of consequence
outside of her “fule” stories, and her “droll swatches” of this man and
that woman.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Joanna at 21.]
[Sidenote: Appearance.]
[Sidenote: Character.]
Joanna appeared to her companions a capable young woman with much
decision of character, like her mother. She was shy amongst strangers,
but sufficiently frank to her friends; and in the midst of her
seriousness she was the merriest soul when the fit took her. She had
quietly written some clever Scotch songs, most of them adaptations from
old ditties. These were already sung with glee around many a rustic
hearth and at many a homely supper table.... Joanna was not handsome.
She was below the middle height, and had the large, statuesque features
which suit better with a stately figure. Years lent these features
dignity rather than robbed them of grace. There is no word of her
youthful bloom. She wore her hair for many years simply divided and
braided across her forehead; but the hair must have grown low on it
from the first, and, whether in a crop, or in braids, must have nearly
concealed the expansive brow, which thus lent no relief to the dark
gauntness of the face. The brows were firmly arched. Her mouth was
wide, and expressed benevolence. Her chin was clearly moulded, and
slightly projecting. She was the most sensible of wilful geniuses;
the most retiring of “wise” women; the most maidenly of experienced
elderly ladies; the most tenderly attached of daughters and sisters;
one of the meekest and most modest of Christians. Joanna Baillie’s
was a noble soul. She had a great man’s grand guilelessness, rather
than a woman’s minute and subtle powers of sympathy; a man’s shy but
unstinted kindness and forbearance, rather than a woman’s eager but
measured cordiality and softness; a man’s modesty in full combination
with a woman’s delicacy; and, as if to prove her sex beyond mistake,
she had after all more than the usual share of a woman’s pugnacity and
headstrongness, when the fit was upon her.
SARAH TYTLER and J. L. WATSON: ‘Songstresses of Scotland.’ London:
Strahan & Co., 1871.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: An innocent face.]
Mrs. Barbauld mentions Miss Baillie in her letter to Mrs. Kenrick, and
tells her how much amazed she was at finding the author [of ‘Plays on
the Passions’] was not one of the already celebrated writers to whom it
had been attributed, but “a young lady of Hampstead whom she visited,
and who came to Mr. Barbauld’s meeting all the while with as innocent a
face as if she had never written a line.”
GRACE A. ELLIS (OLIVER): ‘Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld.’ Boston: J. R.
Osgood & Co., 1874.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A Sunday morning in 1801.]
I was taken by Dr. and Mrs. Baillie to Hampstead to see the gifted
Joanna. I found her on a Sunday morning reading the Bible to her
mother, a very aged lady, who was quite blind. Joanna’s manners and
accent were very Scottish, very kind, simple, and unaffected, but less
frank than those of her elder sister. She seemed almost studious to
avoid literary conversation, but spoke with much interest of old Scotch
friends, and of her early days in Scotland.
MRS. FLETCHER: ‘Autobiography.’ Boston: Roberts Bros., 1876.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The ‘Family Legend’ in Edinburgh.]
The first new play produced by Henry Siddons [at the Edinburgh Theatre]
was the ‘Family Legend’ of Joanna Baillie. This was, I believe, the
first of her dramas that ever underwent the test of representation
in her native kingdom; and Scott appears to have exerted himself most
indefatigably in its behalf. He was consulted about all the _minutiæ_
of costume, attended every rehearsal, and supplied the prologue. The
play was better received than any other which the gifted authoress has
since subjected to the same experiment; and how ardently Scott enjoyed
its success will appear from a few specimens of the many letters which
he addressed to his friend on the occasion.
The first of these letters is dated Edinburgh, October 27, 1809: