CONTEMPORARY WRITERS
The end of the eighteenth century was an age when merit in literature
was an Open Sesame to the very best society that the capital could
supply. An author who had brought out a work a little above the
average was received and fêted, not only by the literary set, who
rapidly passed her or him on from one to another, but by the persons
of the highest social rank also. London was so much smaller then, that
there was not room for all the grades and sets that now run parallel
without ever overlapping. When anyone was made welcome they were free
of all the best society at once, and the ease with which some people
slipped into the position of social lions on the strength of very
small performance is little short of wonderful. When Hannah More first
visited London, in 1774, she was plunged at once into the society of
men of letters, of wit, of learning, and of rank. Her plays, which to
our taste are intolerably stiff and dull, were accepted by Garrick,
she became his personal friend, and he introduced her to everyone
whose acquaintance was worth having. The Garricks’ house became her
second home, and she met Bishops by the half dozen, visited the Lord
Chamberlain at Apsley House, and was on familiar terms with Sheridan,
Johnson, Walpole, Reynolds, and many another whose name is still a
household word in England.
In those days the same people met again and again at each other’s
houses, more after the fashion of a country town than of that of London
at present. Indeed they seem to have spent the whole day and most of
the night running after each other. There is one custom which we must
all be thankful exists no longer, the intolerable fashion of morning
calls. Calls are bad enough now as custom decrees, but we are at least
free from the terror of people dropping in upon us before the day’s
work is begun. When staying in Northumberland Miss Mitford remarks,
“Morning calls are here made so early, that one morning three different
people called before we had done breakfast.” Hannah More looked on
a morning visit as an immorality, yet she breakfasted with a Bishop,
afterwards going to an evening party with another on the same day! She,
being of a sensible mind, soon grew tired of the ceaseless talk, though
much of it may have been good stuff and worthy of preservation, and
she rejoiced when she could get a day to herself, and deny herself to
everyone.
After Garrick’s death, when she came to stay with his brave but
heart-broken widow she lived very quietly. “My way of life is very
different from what it used to be. After breakfast I go to my own
apartment for several hours, where I read, write and work; very seldom
letting anybody in. At four we dine. We have the same elegant table
as usual, but I generally confine myself to one single dish of meat.
I have taken to drink half a glass of wine. At six we have coffee; at
eight tea, when we have sometimes, a dowager or two of quality. At ten
we have sallad and fruits.”
This was in 1779, and two years previously her play _Percy_ had been
brought out with extraordinary success; she says of it herself, “far
beyond my expectation,” and it produced more excitement than any
tragedy had done for many years. The author’s rights, sale of copy,
etc., amounted to near six hundred pounds, and “as my friend Mr.
Garrick has been so good as to lay it out for me on the best security
and at five per cent., it makes a decent little addition to my small
income. Cadell gave £150, a very handsome price, with conditional
promises. He confesses that it had had a very great sale and that he
shall get a good deal of money by it. The first impression is near four
thousand and the second is almost sold.”
It is customary to think of Hannah More as so quiet and Quakerish that
the idea of her writing plays and living a gay society life is new to
many people, but the seriousness and retirement came later.
Considering how easily the heights of celebrity were stormed at that
time, and especially by a woman, it is most remarkable that Jane
received no encouragement, and had no literary society, and not one
literary correspondent in the whole of her lifetime. Of course her
first novel was not published until 1811, and then anonymously, with
the simple inscription “By a Lady” on the title-page, yet it sold well
and became very popular, and though no effort was made to proclaim
her the authoress certainly there was no rigid attempt to hide her
personality. Before the publication of _Emma_ her identity was known,
for she was requested to dedicate this book to the Prince Regent, as
will be related in due course. And this was the only recognition of any
public sort she received. Many of her contemporaries were brought up
in a sort of hotbed of intellect, and associated with men of talent and
distinction from their cradles—what a wonderful quickening and impetus
must this have brought with it! Jane had none of these advantages, her
genius was her own entirely, and her material of the slightest; she
had no contemporaries of original talent with which to exchange ideas,
to strike out sparks or receive suggestions. She did not mingle with
people of her own calibre at all. Herein Miss Burney had an immense
advantage over her, from her babyhood she was surrounded by men and
women of distinction. Her father, himself an author and possessing
musical talent, drew to his house all sorts of persons. Macaulay
says, “It would be tedious to recount the names of all the men of
letters and artists whom Fanny Burney had an opportunity of seeing and
hearing. Hundreds of remarkable persons had passed in review before
her, English, French, German, Italian, lords and fiddlers, deans of
cathedrals and managers of theatres, travellers leading about newly
caught savages, and singing-women escorted by deputy-husbands.” She was
fêted, caressed and brought forward until she accepted the appointment
at the court which condemned her to a weary round of dull duties, and
must have made her life appear like a draught of ditch-water after the
heady champagne to which she was accustomed.
But the London of 1811, when we have the first record of Jane’s
visiting it, was not what it had been thirty years before. Johnson was
dead, Walpole was dead, Garrick was dead, Reynolds was dead, Sheridan
living but sunk in debt and disease; of the brilliant band that Hannah
More had known few were left. Doctor Johnson had died fourteen years
previously, when Jane was only nine years old. Miss Burney had had not
only his friendship but his help in the revision of her works—perhaps a
doubtful privilege. To quote Lord Macaulay again: “When she wrote her
early journals, and her novel of _Evelina_, her style was not indeed
brilliant or energetic; but it was easy, clear, and free from all
offensive faults. When she wrote _Cecilia_ she aimed higher. She had
then lived much in a circle of which Johnson was the centre; and she
was herself one of his most submissive worshippers.... In an evil hour
the author of _Evelina_ took the _Rambler_ for her model. She had her
style. It was a tolerably good one; she determined to throw it away to
adopt a style in which she could attain excellence only by achieving
an almost miraculous victory over nature and over habit. In _Cecilia_
the imitation of Johnson, though not always in the best taste, is
sometimes eminently happy. There were people who whispered that Johnson
had assisted his young friend and that the novel owed all its finest
passages to his hand. This was merely the fabrication of envy.”
But after the death of Johnson, “she had to write in Johnson’s manner
without Johnson’s aid. The consequence was that in _Camilla_ every
passage which she meant to be fine is detestable; and that the book has
been saved from condemnation only by the admirable spirit and force of
those scenes in which she was content to be familiar.”
After he had read _Camilla_, Walpole says of Miss Burney: “Alas! She
had reversed experience which I have long thought reverses its own
utility by coming at the wrong end of our life when we do not want
it. This author knew the world and penetrated characters before she
had stepped over the threshold; now she has seen so much of it she has
little or no insight at all.”
It was therefore, perhaps, lucky for Jane Austen that she was not so
overshadowed by the direct personality of a mighty man as to lose her
clear, bright English style. Her admiration for Miss Burney’s work was
decided and clearly expressed, and she was among the first subscribers
to _Camilla_ in 1796.
Though Jane never came into contact with the men and women who made
literature in her day, she took a keen interest in their works, and
was a great novel reader. She says in one place, “As an inducement to
subscribe (to her library) Mrs. Martin tells me that her collection
is not to consist only of novels but of every kind of literature. She
might have spared this pretension to our family, who are great novel
readers and not ashamed of being so.”
There are frequent references to novels in her letters: “We have got
_Fitz-Albini_, my father has bought it against my private wishes, for
it does not quite satisfy my feelings that we should purchase the only
one of Egerton’s works of which his family are ashamed.”
In another place: “To set against your new novel, of which nobody ever
heard before, and perhaps never may again, we have got _Ida of Athens_
by Miss Owenson, which must be very clever because it was written the
authoress says in three months. We have only read the preface yet,
but her Irish girl does not make me expect much. If the warmth of her
language could affect the body it might be worth reading this weather.”
[January.]
There were many writers thought highly of at the time of their writing,
who have yet dropped into oblivion to all but the student; among these
is Jane Porter, born a year later than Jane Austen, who published her
first romance, _Thaddeus of Warsaw_, in 1803, this was a great success,
and immediately ran through several editions; it was followed in 1810
by her _chef d’œuvre_ _The Scottish Chiefs_. In 1809, when it had just
come out, and was anonymous, Hannah More’s _Cœlebs in Search of a Wife_
came into Cassandra’s hands.
Jane writes of it: “You have by no means raised my curiosity after
Caleb. My disinclination for it before was affected but now it is
real. I do not like the evangelicals. Of course I shall be delighted
when I read it like other people, but till I do, I dislike it.” And in
her next letter she replies to her sister, “I am not at all ashamed
about the name of the novel, having been guilty of no insult towards
your handwriting; the diphthong I always saw, but knowing how fond you
were of adding a vowel wherever you could, I attributed it to that
alone, and the knowledge of the truth does the book no service; the
only merit it could have was in the name of Caleb, which has an honest
unpretending sound, but in Cœlebs there is pedantry and affectation. Is
it written only to classical scholars?”
_Cœlebs_ itself it must be admitted is dull, unqualifiedly dull. Jane
Austen’s own books are not novels of plot, but they radiate plot in
comparison. In _Cœlebs_ a procession of persons stalks solemnly through
the pages; they never reveal themselves by action, but are described
as by a Greek chorus by the other characters in conversation or by
the author, while long dry disquisitions on religion fill half, or
more than half, of the book, and Cœlebs himself is a prig of the first
water. Yet there are certain little touches which indicate a knowledge
of human nature, such as that of the man who has married a beauty, “Who
had no one recommendation but beauty. To be admired by her whom all his
acquaintance admired gratified his _amour-propre_.”
A book called _Self Control_, which appeared in 1810, by Mary Brunton,
the wife of a Scotch minister, had a fair measure of success, and was
reprinted as lately as 1852. Jane speaks very slightingly of it: “I am
looking over _Self Control_ again, and my opinion is confirmed of its
being an excellently meant, elegantly written work, without anything of
nature or probability in it. I declare I do not know whether Laura’s
passage down the American river is not the most natural possible
every-day thing she ever does.” Miss Mitford in regard to this book
quotes the opinions of two men, one of whom said it ought to be burnt
by the common hangman and the other that it ought to be written in
letters of gold, which shows that public opinion was as various in
those days as it is in these. In 1807, Jane mentions _Clarentine_, a
novel of Sarah Burney’s, who was a younger sister of the famous Miss
Burney; though the same author brought out another novel later, it was
evidently only because she followed in her sister’s wake, and not from
any inherent ability. Jane says, “We are reading _Clarentine_ and are
surprised to find how foolish it is. I remember liking it much less
on a second reading than at the first, and it does not bear a third at
all. It is full of unnatural conduct and forced difficulties, without
striking merit of any kind.”
But these impressions of long-forgotten books are hardly worth
recording, except as specimens of the quantities of worthless novels to
be had at the libraries then.
Samuel Rogers says, “Lane made a large fortune by the immense quantity
of trashy novels which he sent forth from the Minerva press. I
perfectly well remember the splendid carriage in which he used to ride,
and his footmen with their cockades and gold-headed canes. Now-a-days
as soon as a novel has had its run, and is beginning to be forgotten,
out comes an edition of it as a standard novel.”
In Miss Mitford’s Life is given a list of the books which she had from
the circulating library in a month, and which she presumably read, when
she was a girl just back from school. It is here quoted as, with one or
two exceptions, the titles tell the style of work in vogue.
“St. Margaret’s Cave; St. Claire of the Isles; Scourge of Conscience;
Emma Corbett; Poetical Miscellany; Vincenza; A Sailor’s Friendship
and a Sailor’s Love; The Castles of Athlin and Dumbayn; Polycratia;
Travels in Africa; Novice of St. Dominick; Clarentina; Leonora; Count
de Valmont; Letters of a Hindu Rajah; Fourth Vol. of Canterbury Tales;
The Citizen’s Quarter; Amazement; Midnight Weddings; Robert and Adela;
The Three Spaniards; De Clifford.”
In his _History of Eighteenth Century Literature_ Edmund Gosse says:
“The flourishing period of the eighteenth century novel lasted exactly
twenty-five years, during which time we have to record the publication
of no less than fifteen eminent works of fiction. The fifteen are
naturally divided into three groups. The first contains _Pamela_,
_Joseph Andrews_, _David Simple_ (Sarah Fielding) and _Jonathan Wild_.
In these books the art is still somewhat crude, and the science of
fiction incompletely understood. After a silence of five years we reach
the second and greatest section of this central period, during which
there appeared in quick succession, _Clarissa_, _Roderick Random_, _Tom
Jones_, _Peregrine Pickle_, _Amelia_ and _Sir Charles Grandison_ ...
there followed another silence of five years, and then were issued each
on the heels of the other, _Tristram Shandy_, _Rasselas_, _Chrysal_,
_The Castle of Otranto_ and _The Vicar of Wakefield_—five years later
still—_Humphrey Clinker_, and then, with one or two such exceptions
as _Evelina_ and _Caleb Williams_, no great novel appeared again in
England for forty years until in 1811 the new school of fiction was
inaugurated by _Sense and Sensibility_.”
Though we may not agree entirely with Mr. Gosse’s classification, this
paragraph is suggestive.
As we have seen in her brother’s record, Jane’s favourites in prose and
poetry respectively were Johnson and Cowper. These two are mentioned in
one sentence of hers: “We have got Boswell’s _Tour to the Hebrides_,
and are to have his _Life of Johnson_; and as some money will yet
remain in Burdon’s hands, it is to be laid out in the purchase of
Cowper’s works.”
She warmly admired Cowper, which is hardly wonderful, for, with some
manifest differences, Cowper was trying to do in poetry what she did
in prose. He was utterly lacking, of course, in her light vivacity of
touch and sense of humour, but he did genuinely try to describe what
he saw, not what he merely knew by hearing. The green fields and full
rivers of the Olney country are depicted with fidelity to detail and
clearness of line. Cowper was born in 1731, but his first volume of
verse was not published until 1782, and it was not until _The Task_
appeared a year or two later, with _John Gilpin_ in the same volume,
that he really came to his own.
In 1798, Jane writes: “My father reads Cowper to us in the morning to
which I listen when I can.” This implies no disparagement of the poet,
but merely that her numerous household duties did not always allow her
time to listen. In Morland’s picture, “Domestic Happiness,” we have a
scene which helps us to realise the family group at these readings.
The mother and daughter in their caps, with elbow-sleeves and white
kerchiefs, are dressed as Jane and her mother must have been, and the
plain simplicity of the part of the room shown is quite in accordance
with the rectory environment.
[Illustration: DOMESTIC HAPPINESS]
Another of Jane’s favourite poets was Crabbe. Crabbe and Cowper are
both rather heavy reading, and of both it may be said that their poetry
is not poetical, but they are honestly seeking after truth and thus
they attracted Jane Austen. They were amongst the earliest of the
natural school which used the method of realism. Crabbe had a bitter
struggle to obtain a hearing, but his struggle was over before 1796.
Burke had taken him up, and in those days much depended on a patron. In
1781 he had published _The Library_, two years after _The Village_, and
two years later again came _The Newspaper_, and then he did not bring
out anything more until 1807.
It is, of course, very difficult to give any picture of contemporary
literature in Jane Austen’s time without degenerating into mere strings
of names. The fact that she herself came in contact with no one of
the first rank in literature prevents any of the characters from being
woven into her life. The books she mentions as having read are a mere
drop in the ocean compared with the books which came out in her time,
and which she probably, in some cases almost certainly, read. It
was a brilliant age as regards writing. Perhaps the best way to give
some general idea of those writers not already mentioned will be to
divide the time into three sections; and, without any attempt at being
exhaustive, to mention generally the leading names among the writers
who lived on into her epoch, but whose best work had been published
before her time; those who actually were contemporary in the sense
that their books, by which their names are known, were published in
her lifetime; and those whose names had not begun to be known when she
died, though the owners were born in her epoch.
First, then, those whose work was done; foremost among these was
Johnson, who has already been mentioned.
Walpole was considerably past middle-age at her birth, and died in
1797; Wesley’s collected _Works_ came out in 1771, and he died in 1791;
Adam Smith preceded him by a year.
The seventies in the eighteenth century produced numerous brilliant
men and women whose names still live; besides Jane Austen herself,
we have Sir Walter Scott, Hazlitt, Sydney Smith, Lamb, Sir Humphry
Davy, Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, Hogg, Thomas Moore, and Thomas
Campbell, who were all born in this decade, though, as the development
of a writer differs enormously in growth, some of them were much later
in making their appearance in print than others. Among the better
known names of women novelists not already mentioned we have Miss
Edgeworth, Jane Austen’s senior by eight years, whose first novel,
_Castle Rackrent_, was published anonymously in 1800. That Jane knew
and admired her work is obvious from the fact that she sent her a copy
of _Emma_ for a present on its publication. Mrs. Inchbald, born in
1753, was at first known as an actress, her _Simple Story_, by which
she is best remembered, was published in 1791. Mrs. Radcliffe, whose
romances induced Jane Austen to write _Northanger Abbey_ in mockery,
was very busy between 1789 and 1797, during which time she published
five novels, including her famous _Mysteries of Udolpho_ in 1794.
Joanna Baillie published a volume of verse in 1790, and her first
volume of plays in 1798; though almost forgotten now, she was taken
very seriously in her time, and her play _De Montfort_ was produced
at Drury Lane in 1800 by Mrs. Siddons and Kemble. Anna Seward, who
was born in 1747, lived to 1809; she, like Hannah More, was far more
praised and valued than any of her poor little productions warranted.
Sheridan brought out his famous play _The Rivals_ in the year of Jane’s
birth; it was at first a dead failure, but, nothing daunted, he cut
it about and altered it, and when reproduced two years subsequently it
attained success at once. The same year saw _The School for Scandal_,
and the following one _The Critic_. In this year also the first volume
of Gibbon’s great History appeared.
Burns, who had written some of his best work while Jane was still a
child, died in 1796, and the brilliant Burke the succeeding year.
Just to give some general idea of the wonderful fruitfulness of this
epoch it may also be mentioned that Samuel Rogers’ _Pleasures of
Memory_ came out in 1792; _Lyrical Ballads_, including Coleridge’s
_Ancient Mariner_ and some of Wordsworth’s poems, in 1798; Campbell’s
_Pleasures of Hope_ in 1799.
Byron was thirteen years younger than Jane, yet his precocity was so
great that his first book, _Hours of Idleness_, was produced in 1807.
The first two cantos of _Childe Harold_ followed in 1812, but the
whole poem was not completed until Jane was in her grave; the _Giaour_,
_Corsair_, etc., she must have known as new books a year or two before
her death.
Southey’s _Thalaba_ came out in the first year of the new century, and
Thomas Moore published the first of his _Irish Melodies_ in 1807.
Scott’s literary career began with the publication of a translation
of Burger’s “Lenore” in 1799, between that date and 1814 his poems
appeared at intervals, and in 1814 his first great novel _Waverley_.
Though it was anonymous, Jane seems to have discovered the secret of
the authorship, for she writes: “Walter Scott has no business to write
novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit
enough as a poet and ought not to be taking the bread out of other
people’s mouths. I do not mean to like _Waverley_ if I can help it, but
I fear I must.” But she was not the only one to make such a conjecture,
for Miss Mitford having read _Waverley_ also imputes it unhesitatingly
to him, she says, “If there be any belief in internal evidence it
must be his.” Judging by these two specimens, the secret of Scott’s
anonymity was not the great mystery it is generally imagined to have
been.
The third period, that of the great men who were actually contemporary
with Jane Austen, though she was unconscious of their existence, as
they did not win their laurels until after her death, is of course much
less interesting, and may be quickly dismissed, such names as those
of Lingard and Hallam among historians; Mill, Hazlitt, and De Quincey
belong by right of birth to an earlier epoch, though their works place
them in this.
Miss Ferrier and Miss Mitford, too, were not much younger than Jane
Austen, but neither had brought out anything noticeable before her
death. Miss Ferrier’s first novel, _Marriage_, made its appearance
in 1818; and though Miss Mitford had written poems, her _Our Village_
first appeared in the _Lady’s Magazine_ only in 1819. As we have seen,
Miss Mitford was a scholar at the same school as Jane Austen, though
many years later. She was also a native of Jane’s county, Hants.
In the last decade of the eighteenth century were born among poets:
Shelley, Keats, Hood, Keble, and Mrs. Hemans; among historians, Grote,
Alison, Napier, Carlyle, and Thirlwall; among men of science, Faraday
and Lyell; and among novelists, Marryat.
In the beginning of the nineteenth century we have a string of great
names; a trio of poets: Tennyson, Longfellow, and Browning; men of
science such as Darwin; historians such as Macaulay; novelists in
numbers, such as Dickens, Thackeray, Charles Reade, Harrison Ainsworth,
Bulwer Lytton, and Trollope; statesmen such as Gladstone and Disraeli.
Perhaps no forty years that could have been chosen at any period of
English history would have covered such a variety of talent, and that
of such a high order, as was given to the world during Jane Austen’s
brief life. And if she did not know personally the men whose names have
lived with her own, at all events she drew from their works inspiration
and knowledge, and she herself was not by any means the least among so
mighty a company.