THE recent cult for Miss Austen, which has resulted in no less than ten
new editions of her novels within a decade and three memoirs by
different hands within as many years, have made the facts of her life
familiar to most readers. It was a short life, and an uneventful one as
viewed from the standpoint of our modern times, when steam and
electricity have linked together the ends of the earth, and the very air
seems teeming with news, agitations, discussions. We have barely time to
recover our breath between post and post; and the morning paper with its
statements of disaster and its hints of still greater evils to be, is
scarcely out-lived, when, lo! in comes the evening issue, contradicting
the news of the morning, to be sure, but full of omens and auguries of
its own to strew our pillows with the seed of wakefulness.
To us, publications come hot and hot from the press. Telegraphic wires
like the intricate and incalculable zigzags of the lightning ramify
above our heads; and who can tell at what moment their darts may
strike? In Miss Austen's day the tranquil, drowsy, decorous English day
of a century since, all was different. News travelled then from hand to
hand, carried in creaking post-wagons, or in cases of extreme urgency by
men on horseback. When a gentleman journeying in his own "chaise" took
three days in going from Exeter to London, a distance now covered in
three hours of railroad, there was little chance of frequent surprises.
Love, sorrow, and death were in the world then as now, and worked their
will upon the sons of men; but people did not expect happenings every
day or even every year. No doubt they lived the longer for this
exemption from excitement, and kept their nerves in a state of wholesome
repair; but it goes without saying that the events of which they knew so
little did not stir them deeply.
Miss Austen's life coincided with two of the momentous epochs of
history,--the American struggle for independence, and the French
Revolution; but there is scarcely an allusion to either in her letters.
She was interested in the fleet and its victories because two of her
brothers were in the navy and had promotion and prize-money to look
forward to. In this connection she mentions Trafalgar and the Egyptian
expedition, and generously remarks that she would read Southey's "Life
of Nelson" if there was anything in it about her brother Frank! She
honors Sir John Moore by remarking after his death that his mother
would perhaps have preferred to have him less distinguished and still
alive; further than that, the making of the gooseberry jam and a good
recipe for orange wine interests her more than all the marchings and
countermarchings, the manoeuvres and diplomacies, going on the world
over. In the midst of the universal vortex of fear and hope, triumph and
defeat, while the fate of Britain and British liberty hung trembling in
the balance, she sits writing her letters, trimming her caps, and
discussing small beer with her sister in a lively and unruffled fashion
wonderful to contemplate. "The society of rural England in those days,"
as Mr. Goldwin Smith happily puts it, "enjoyed a calm of its own in the
midst of the European tempest like the windless centre of a circular
storm."
The point of view of a woman with such an environment must naturally be
circumscribed and narrow; and in this Miss Austen's charm consists.
Seeing little, she painted what she saw with absolute fidelity and a
dexterity and perfection unequalled. "On her was bestowed, though in a
humble form, the gift which had been bestowed on Homer, Shakespeare,
Cervantes, Scott, and a few others,--the gift of creative power."
Endowed with the keenest and most delicate insight and a vivid sense of
humor, she depicted with exactitude what she observed and what she
understood, giving to each fact and emotion its precise shade and
value. The things she did not see she did not attempt. Affectation was
impossible to her,--most of all, affectation of knowledge or feeling not
justly her own. "She held the mirror up to her time" with an exquisite
sincerity and fidelity; and the closeness of her study brought her
intimately near to those hidden springs which underlie all human nature.
This is the reason why, for all their skimp skirts, leg-of-mutton
sleeves, and bygone impossible bonnets, her characters do not seem to us
old-fashioned. Minds and hearts are made pretty much after the same
pattern from century to century; and given a modern dress and speech,
Emma or Elizabeth or dear Anne Eliot could enter a drawing-room to-day,
and excite no surprise except by so closely resembling the people whom
they would find there.
"Miss Austen's novels are dateless things," Mr. Augustine Birrell tells
us. "Nobody in his senses would speak of them as 'old novels.' 'John
Inglesant' is an old novel, so is 'Ginx's Baby.' But Emma is quite new,
and, like a wise woman, affords few clues to her age."
We allude with a special touch of affection to Anne Eliot. "Persuasion,"
which was written during the last two years of Miss Austen's life, when
the refining touch of Eternity was already upon her, has always seemed
to us the most perfect of her novels; and Anne, with her exquisite
breeding and unselfish straightforwardness, just touched with the tender
reserve of memory and regret, one of her best portraitures. But this is
a matter of individual taste. Doubtless Elizabeth Bennet is "better fun"
as the modern girl would say. Miss Austen herself preferred her. She had
a droll and pretty way of talking about her characters which showed how
real they were to her own mind, and made them equally real to other
people. In 1813 she had the good luck to light upon a portrait of Jane
Bennet at an exhibition.
"I was very well pleased (pray tell Fanny) with a
small portrait of Mrs. Bingley, excessively like her.
I went in hopes of seeing one of her sister, but there
was no Mrs. Darcy. Perhaps I may find her in the great
exhibition, which we shall go to if we have time. Mrs.
Bingley's is exactly like herself,--size, shaped face,
features and sweetness; there never was a greater
likeness. She is dressed in a white gown, with green
ornaments, which convinces me of what I had always
supposed, that green was a favorite color with her. I
dare say Mrs. D. will be in yellow."