matter-of-fact people, who seldom aimed at wit of any kind; her father
at the utmost being contented with a pun, and her mother with a
proverb." Having given us this little _aperçu_ of Mr. and Mrs.
Morland, the author, _more suo_, adds the information: "They were not
in the habit, therefore, of telling lies to increase their importance,
or of asserting at one moment what they would contradict the next."
If we seek in our memories for scenes of particular excellence we shall
recall with renewed pleasure the rehearsals (_Mansfield Park_), the
encounters between Elizabeth and Mr. Collins and Elizabeth and Lady
Catherine (_Pride and Prejudice_), the second and last proposal of
Wentworth to Anne Elliot (_Persuasion_), the picnic at Box Hill and the
dance at the "Crown" (_Emma_). In all of these the spontaneity of the
narrative, the vitality of the talk and the vividness with which the
circumstances are realized with {187} the smallest amount of
description show the author's art in its most delightful vein.
It is often in little touches, generally satirical, that Jane Austen
reveals the characters of her people. Lady Middleton, whose "reserve
was a mere calmness of _manner_ with which _sense_ had nothing to do";
Mary Bennet, whom, when her sisters visited her, "they found, as usual,
deep in the study of thorough bass and human nature, and had some new
extracts to admire, and some new observations of threadbare morality to
listen to"; the gushing Louisa Musgrove, who declared that if she loved
a man as Mrs. Croft loved the Admiral, she "would always be with him,
nothing should ever separate" them, and that she "would rather be
overturned by him, than driven safely by anybody else"; Mr. Allen, a
country gentleman of fortune who "did not care about the garden, and
never went into it"; and General Tilney, poring over pamphlets when he
ought to be in bed, blinding his eyes "for the good of others" who
would never benefit in the least by his exertions; the heartless and
humbugging Mrs. Norris, whose plentiful talk about helping her poor,
child-burdened sister ended in her {188} "writing the letters" while
others sent substantial assistance--these, and many other entertaining
people live for us largely from such casual peeps into their natures
and sentiments.
Jane Austen rarely describes a man or woman as possessing qualities
which are not justified by the evidence she offers. Almost the only
notable exceptions are Mrs. Dashwood, of whom we are told that "a man
could not very well be in love with either of her daughters, without
extending the passion to her," but who does not herself give us any
reason to regard her as other than an affectionate, well-meaning, and
injudicious person, and Captain Wentworth, who is stated to have been
witty, but who usually manages to restrain his wit when we happen to
meet him.
The many parsons of the novels are at once too steady and too
prosperous to be in accord with either of the types of
eighteenth-century clergy most frequently conveyed by the literature of
their period. They may not have done much for their parishioners
beyond preaching to them once or twice a week, and sending them soup
occasionally, but they set them good examples by conducting themselves
decently and soberly. Of {189} their "views" we know little. Indeed,
few things are more remarkable in these novels, in the light of later
fiction, than that almost complete absence of any reference to dogmatic
religion to which attention has already been drawn. You may hunt
through them all and hardly find two definite statements that, except
to see what the vicar's bride was like, any of the characters went to
church. We know that the parsons preached, but whether there was any
one to hear their sermons we are usually left in doubt. In fact, as
Dr. Whately puts it, the author's religion is "not at all obtrusive."
His favourable view of Jane Austen's influence may be contrasted with
Robert Hall's of Maria Edgeworth's: "In point of tendency I should
class her books among the most irreligious I ever read.... She does
not attack religion nor inveigh against it, but makes it appear
unnecessary by exhibiting perfect virtue without it."
It has frequently been said that the atmosphere of Jane Austen's books
is "Church of England," and this is in a sense true. She assumes that
the squires of whom she writes are adherents of Church and State, much
as a provincial {190} clergyman wrote quite recently in his Parish
Magazine: "It is generally taken for granted that Church is the only
possible religion for an English gentleman." We meet with no Romish
priests or Methodist preachers, not so much as a member of the Society
of Friends, but, on the other hand, we meet with no one who talks
against faith. It was a period when the Church itself had become
apathetic, when pluralists abounded, and when many rectors lived
comfortably on their great tithes, far from the parishes which they
left to the care of curates who were often worse off than gamekeepers.
A young man went into the Church, if there was a good living to be had,
just as he went to the Bar if his uncle was a flourishing attorney, or
into the navy if his friends had influence with the Board of Admiralty.
Many parsons, if they were well-to-do and fond of society, did not even
wear any distinctive dress. One meets vicars and curates to-day, in
summer-time, wearing green ties and grey tweed suits, and even a bishop
has been known to abandon his episcopal uniform when he was away on a
holiday. But, to take an instance from the novels, Catherine Morland,
who has met Henry {191} Tilney at a dance in Bath, and meets him again
at the Pump-room or elsewhere, does not know he is a clergyman until
she is told. The Church was merely a profession for most of those who
entered it. "Did Henry's income depend solely on his living," says
General Tilney, "he would not be well provided for. Perhaps it may
seem odd, that with only two younger children, I should think any
profession necessary to him; and certainly there are moments when we
could all wish him disengaged from every tie of business." The most
conscientious clergyman in the Austen Comedy is Edmund Bertram, who
really seems to have wished to do his duty, and thereby damaged his
chance of marrying Mary Crawford.
The scanty reference to the observances of religion in the novels bears
on the worldly life of the age, as we know it from those who were of it
and saw it at its centre of activity, London society. Doctor Warner,
George Selwyn's chaplain, who attracted large congregations by his
eloquent preaching, and who was an avowed sceptic away from church, who
toadied the rich and noble, and told stories that delighted the Duke of
Queensberry, was no rare type of the {192} clergy of his time, and we
may be pretty certain that Jane Austen's Mr. Collins (who was not at
all likely to tell an improper story himself) would have found it very
difficult to believe that so exalted a personage as "Old Q." was unfit
for the society of clergymen.
Jane frankly admitted that she knew too little of literature,
philosophy, and science, to allow her adequately to draw the character
of a scholarly and serious parson. "The comic side of the character I
might be equal to, but not the good, the enthusiastic, the literary.
Such a man's conversation must at times be on subjects of science and
philosophy of which I know nothing, or at least occasionally abundant
in quotations and allusions which a woman who, like me, knows only her
own mother tongue, and has read little in that, would be totally
without the power of giving." According to her brother and her nephew,
Jane was better educated than she here makes out, knowing French, and a
good deal of Italian. Whether we believe her or not about her literary
and linguistic limitations, we can have small doubt that she knew very
little indeed about science and philosophy, in spite of being so much
{193} of a philosopher. In those days, when Cuvier was bringing his
genius in palæontology to bear on the recovery of lost types, and
preparing a way for Darwin, whose own grandfather was bravely aiding in
the clearance of paths in hitherto trackless jungles of prejudice and
obscurantism, science was scarcely regarded as a decent subject of
conversation before ladies in country drawing-rooms, and it never
obtrudes itself at Hartfield or at Mansfield Park.
If we may read through every word of Jane's novels without discovering
any expression of dogmatic belief, we may equally find no direct
evidence, unless in that one story of Elinor and Willoughby, of
acceptance of the chilly Deism which had eaten so deeply into the
intellects both of laymen and clergy. The unrest, both moral and
physical, which had spread from Paris, from Holland, and from
Switzerland over the whole of Western Europe at that time, finds little
place for its fidgeting in the families to whom we are here introduced.
People, with the rare exceptions of a Wickham or a Willoughby, are
born, live, and die, in peace with the world and in general harmony
with their environments.
{194}
Admirable as Jane Austen's pictures of country life in house and garden
are, they are not to be accepted as literal transcripts. She was,
before all else, an artist, and the more an artist is devoted to
finicking reproduction of exact details the further is he removed from
art. Almost every author, if he writes with sincerity, must draw his
own moral portrait in his best work. In a literal sense there is no
reason to suppose that novelists often give us studies of themselves in
any degree comparable with the self-portraits of Rembrandt, Velasquez,
Madame Vigée le Brun or the moderns in the Uffizi Gallery. Sometimes,
of course, as in _Villette_ and _Delphine_, an author reports episodes
in his life almost as they happened, and it is certain, save in the
rarest cases, that something of an author's mental processes is
reproduced in all his creatures, "bad" as well as "good," though he is
more likely to show his own temperament and experience in a prominent
and sympathetic character than in any other. Very few writers follow
the example of Milton, of whom Coleridge declared "his Satan, his Adam,
his Raphael, almost all his Eve, are all John Milton." The common
mistake, a mistake so obvious that {195} we may wonder at its
continuance, is such a close identification of the author with any one
of his creations. Thus, because "Vivian Grey is Disraeli himself,"
Disraeli is to be credited with the strange experiences of that uneasy
hero among foreign politicians and card-sharpers; and because "Jane
Eyre is Charlotte Brontë," Charlotte Brontë must at least have wished
to unite herself with a wild man whose wife had gone mad. There were
no doubt readers of Goethe's _Faust_ who, ignoring the legend, thought
the author had bargained with Mephisto and, it "goes without saying"
(Marianne Dashwood is not within hearing), that "Hamlet is
Shakespeare." Such arbitrary reasoning may account for the general
confusion of Frankenstein with the creature that he made.
Among the widest traps, indeed, for those who love to see a _roman à
clef_ in every novel, is this identification of the author with one or
other of his characters. Some people have convinced themselves that
Cassandra and Jane Austen were the originals of Elinor and Marianne
Dashwood. Such an idea could only be held by those who had not seen
Jane's letters. Marianne, {196} sentimental, romantic, disagreeable in
a quite serious way, and usually inattentive "to the forms of general
civility," could not be Jane, and as certainly not Cassandra as we know
her, and while Elinor, the patient, long-suffering girl, might in some
ways represent either of the Austen sisters, she is very far from being
a portrait.
Yet if neither Elinor Dashwood nor Marianne is to be described as a
likeness of Jane, the elder sister in her philosophical submission to
what she believed to be the loss of her lover, and the younger in her
literary tastes and her impatience with people who talk without
thinking may fairly be regarded as in part reflecting the author's
personality. None of her heroines _is_ Jane, but there is much of her
also in Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse, and a good deal in Anne
Elliot, though she admitted that Anne was too nearly perfect to be
altogether after her heart. The simple little souls of Fanny Price and
Catherine Morland, so dependent on the direct assistance of others in
the formation of their feelings, are in very small degree expressions
of the author's temperament. We may, I think, regard Emma Woodhouse as
the nearest approach to a {197} portrait of the artist who painted her,
but "nearest" is a relative superlative. Many people do not care for
Emma. A strong expression of recent disapproval was quoted a few pages
back. Jane Austen anticipated objections. "I am going," she said,
when she was beginning the book, "to take a heroine whom no one but
myself will much like."
Whether or not we may see in Emma a good deal of Jane herself, we may
fairly be certain that none of her characters is an intentional copy of
any one in the circle of her friends and acquaintances. She herself
declared her opinion, which tallies with all that we know of her, that
the introduction of living people as actors in a work of imagination is
a breach of good manners, and that, propriety apart, she was too proud
of her characters to admit that they were "only Mrs. A. or Colonel B."
How far she made use of individuals in the composition of such
strongly-marked figures as Mrs. Elton, Mr. Collins and Sir Walter
Elliot, we cannot, of course, know. The point, for what it is worth,
could have been better elucidated if Miss Austen's circle had been less
far removed from the world wherein the {198} Wraxalls, the Gronows and
the Grevilles listen and watch. We know that, whatever the degree of
similitude, Disraeli's Rigby offers a recognizable likeness to Croker,
Dickens's Boythorn to Landor, Stevenson's Weir of Hermiston to
Braxfield. Accepting Jane Austen's denial of the deliberate
introduction of real persons in her novels, we cannot tell how many of
her Hampshire acquaintances served intellectually for her pictures of
country society as the maidens of Crotona served physically for the
picture of Helen by Zeuxis. We may be certain that, all unconsciously,
they gave her of their best, each according to his means.
{201}
VI
PERSONAL AND TOPOGRAPHICAL
The novelist and her characters--Her sense of their
reality--Accessories rarely described--Her ideas on dress--Her own
millinery and gowns--Thin clothes and consumption--Domestic
economy--Jane as housekeeper--"A very clever essay"--Mr. Collins at
Longbourn--The gipsies at Highbury--Topography of Jane
Austen--Hampshire--Lyme Regis--Godmersham--Bath--London.
On an earlier page a contrast between Balzac and Jane Austen has been
suggested. One characteristic they had in common was the sense of the
reality of their own creations. Madame de Surville, the sister of
Balzac, has recorded how, when the affairs of the family were being
discussed, he would say, "Ah, yes, but do you know to whom Felix de
Vandenesse is engaged? One of the Grandville girls. It is an
excellent marriage for him." Further than this an author's sense of
the actuality of his own imaginings could hardly go, unless, indeed,
like one modern author--if the {202} story is true, as it probably is
not--he were to invite the figments of his brain to lunch!
Jane Austen was not quite so much obsessed by her inventions, though
she spoke of the very novels themselves as personal entities. _Pride
and Prejudice_ was "my own darling child," and of _Sense and
Sensibility_ she writes, when it is passing through the press: "No,
indeed, I am never too busy to think of _S. and S_. I can no more
forget it than a mother can forget her sucking child; and I am much
obliged to you for your inquiries." As for the characters, she loved
to talk of them as living people, and was so fond of Elizabeth Bennet,
for instance, that, as she wrote to Cassandra, she did not know how she
should be "able to tolerate" those who did not like her.
She used to tell her nieces what happened to her imaginary people after
the novels were ended, how Mary Bennet married her uncle's clerk, or
her sister Kitty a clergyman, and how Mrs. Robert Ferrars's sister
"never caught the doctor." One of the most delightful of her letters,
as evidence of her happiness in her work, and of her half-serious
consciousness of the reality of her creations, was written after a
round of London picture {203} galleries. The portraits she looked for
were not those of Knights, or Austens, or Leighs, but of beautiful
women out of her own novels. They might be labelled Lady this or Mrs.
that, but she should recognize them if they were portraits of her
darling Elizabeth or her dearest Anne. She was disappointed. It is
true that at the Gallery in Spring Gardens she found "a small portrait
of Mrs. Bingley, excessively like her," and, moreover, "she is dressed
in a white gown, with green ornaments, which convinces me of what I had
always supposed, that green was a favourite colour with her. I dare
say Mrs. D. will be in yellow." For it was "Mrs. D."--the beloved
Elizabeth Darcy (_née_ Bennet), whose face her creator and devoted
admirer looked forward to seeing on some fashionable portrait-painter's
canvas. Alas! at none of the shows was the desired picture to be
found. "I can only imagine," writes the disappointed "friend,"
soothing her regrets with a reflection natural to her mind, "that Mr.
D. prizes any picture of her too much to like it should be exposed to
the public eye. I can imagine he would have that sort of feeling--that
mixture of love, pride, and delicacy."
{204}
Thus we can see that Jane knew exactly what her heroines were like,
even if in their case, as in that of nearly all her characters, the
reader is left to fill in details of colour and feature very much as he
chooses. She was far more particular in describing the personal
appearance of real people, and in her letters the handsome and the ugly
are as clearly differentiated as the lively and the dull. "I never saw
so plain a family"--she declares after calling on some people named
Fagg--"five sisters so very plain! They are as plain as the Foresters,
or the Franfraddops, or the Seagraves, or the Rivers, excluding Sophy.
Miss Sally Fagg has a pretty figure, and that comprises all the good
looks of the family." Sometimes she attributed the blame for ill-looks
to a definite part of the genealogical tree. "I wish she was not so
very Palmery," she says of one of her nieces, "but it seems stronger
than ever, I never knew a wife's family features have such undue
influence." The Mrs. Palmer of _Sense and Sensibility_ was not of that
family. She was as pretty as she was foolish.
Even if it be true that Jane Austen only painted the life which she
found immediately around her, {205} and that she would almost as soon
have attempted to depict the interior of a Thibetan lamassary as of an
English country-house of the kind Disraeli loved to paint, yet do her
characters "typify nothing?" If Mrs. Elton, and Sir John Middleton,
and Mary Musgrove are not types, then I do not see why Sir Charles
Grandison, or Mrs. Proudie, or Mr. Tulliver should be regarded as
types. Perhaps they should not, but then, what are types? Most of
Jane Austen's people may be common; there may be, in the flesh, a
hundred Lady Russells for one Lady Camper, and five hundred John
Willoughbys for one Willoughby Patterne. That is only to say that
humanity is richer in one type than in another.
Jane was a realist, though Realism, in the sense in which we apply the
term in the criticism of living writers, has little place in her
novels. She assumes that her readers--the men and women of her own
age--are neither blind nor unaccustomed to the ordinary resources of
contemporary civilization. When her characters dine, they may usually,
for all we hear to the contrary, eat out of a common dish with the aid
of their unassisted fingers, after the manner of the nomads of the
Asiatic Steppes; {206} they may drink out of gourds like the Bushmen,
while, after the custom of the Romans, they recline on raised couches
in the attitude of Madame Récamier. We know that they sat round solid
mahogany or oaken tables, covered with damask cloths during the meat
and pudding service, that the silver was polished, and the glass
bright, even though the supply of plates was perhaps not always equal
to the number of courses; we have little doubt as to the kind of chairs
whereon the diners sat, and we may wish we had more of them in our own
dining-rooms.
As to the costumes of the men and women who sat on the chairs, we are
usually left to dress them as we like, and there is little doubt that
many a modern reader has mentally pictured Darcy wearing a tweed suit
and a bowler hat, Charles Musgrove in a golfing-cap and loose
knickerbockers, and Mr. Collins or Mr. Elton in a stiff "round-about"
collar of the kind usually worn by the Anglican clergy of to-day. For
the ladies, the whirligig of time has brought back the modes of a
century ago. In spite of the cry for the equality of the sexes, there
are, as the Lord Chancellor and other eminent authorities have laid
down, marked {207} distinctions between the ways of women and of men.
One of such distinctions may be found in the fact that the fashions of
feminine dress move in a (very irregular and therefore theoretically
impossible) circle, while those of masculine dress rarely cross the
same point twice. Thus while, during the last few years, we have seen
our sisters and aunts affecting "modes" that were in vogue in the
periods of the Renaissance, the Directory, and the Empire, we have
never seen our brothers and uncles abroad in the streets attired like
the courtiers either of François _premier_ or of the First Consul. A
woman need not despair of wearing, without being followed by a crowd,
almost any costume of any period of woman's history. A man need not
look for the day when he may walk in the parks in the garb of Raleigh
or of Burke without attracting more attention than will be agreeable to
the modesty of any one but an actor-manager or the European agent of
some American world-industry. The Misses Bertram, of Mansfield Park,
might go shopping in Regent Street to-day without any one remarking
that their dress, or their coiffure, was seriously out of date. But we
only know how they dressed because we know the date {208} of their
birth, not because the author of a bit of their life-history has told
us.
Who that has ever read _Weir of Hermiston_ can forget the description
of the heroine as she first appeared to Archie in the kirk? It was in
the very year (1814) in which Fanny Price's story was related, and of
Mary Crawford, if not of Fanny, a tale of town finery as bright as that
of Kirstie might have been told. We know how alluring Kirstie looked
to Archie in her "frock of straw-coloured jaconet muslin, cut low at
the bosom and short at the ankle," and "drawn up so as to mould the
contour of both breasts, and in the nook between ... surely in a very
enviable position, trembled the nosegay of primroses." Of some such
charming pictures we get at least the preliminary sketches in Jane
Austen's letters, but the finished works are never shown in the novels,
and we may dress the pretty heroines to our own fancy so long as we
keep to the style of their period, or, if our imaginations are feeble
and our knowledge of Regency costume deficient, Mr. Brock will do the
work for us in the more delightful of his coloured drawings, or Mr.
Hugh Thomson in his lively illustrations in pen and ink.
{209}