Jane Austen

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Title:     Jane Austen
Author: Francis Darwin [More Titles by Darwin]

The most obvious characteristic of English country life as described by Jane Austen, is a quietness such as even the elder generation now living have not experienced. A quietness which many would call dull and some few peaceful. It is, indeed, hard to believe that life was once so placid, so stay-at-home, so domestic, so devoid, not merely of excitement, but of any change whatever.

The life of Emma Woodhouse (to take a single instance) has all the characteristics of this deep repose. At Hartfield there was certainly no changing "from the blue chamber to the green," a revolution which would have made Mr. Woodhouse seriously unwell.

Emma never seems to leave home, she had not seen the sea, nor indeed had she (before a memorable occasion) explored Box Hill, a few miles away, although her father kept a carriage and a pair of horses. Nor is there any evidence of her going to London, a distance of sixteen miles. She did not engage in good works; there were no committees or meetings except those held at the 'Crown' at which Mr. Knightly and Mrs. Elton's cara sposo were the leaders, and where no ladies were admitted.

In comparison with the hurried unsheltered life of the modern girl, Emma seems a princess shut in a tower of brass or an enchanted garden. And although in the course of the story she escapes this particular tower, it is only to fall into the castle of Mr. Knightly, who (with his squire William Larkins) plays the part of knight errant.

And Emma was not dull, but full of happy animation, and her quiet life encouraged the growth of an educated, or at least a cultivated, condition which re-appears in the other novels. This placid life is all the more striking in contrast to the great contemporary struggle of the Napoleonic wars, hardly a sound of which reaches Miss Austen's readers, although in Persuasion we do hear something of Captain Wentworth's prize money. George Eliot knew the flavour of this quietude, and reproduces it in the introduction to Felix Holt. But even in these pre-reform days the quiet is beginning to be broken; the stage-coachman is beginning to dread the railway train, and looks on Mr. Huskisson's death as a proof of God's anger against Stephenson. Again, in Middlemarch we see the country stirring in its sleep, and poor Dorothea suffering in the process of awakening. There is nothing of this in Miss Austen; it is true that the Miss Bennets sometimes experienced the blankness of female existence, but they could imagine nothing blanker than the departure of the militia from Meryton.

Jane Austen's books have something of the quiet atmosphere of Cowper's Letters. Mr. Austen Leigh in his Memoir speaks of her love for the writings of Cowper and of Crabbe (the latter indeed she proposed to herself to marry). We know that Marianne Dashwood (that type of sensibility) was very far from finding Cowper too quiet. For when Edward Ferrars failed to read him aloud with spirit, Marianne remarks, "Nay, mamma, if he is not to be animated by Cowper!"

Bagehot {63a} in his article on the Letters of Cowper unconsciously describes the life at Hartfield or Mansfield Park. Of Cowper he writes: "Detail was his forte and quietness his element. Accordingly his delicate humour plays over perhaps a million letters mostly descriptive of events which no one else would have thought worth narrating, and yet which, when narrated, show to us, and will show to persons to whom it will be yet more strange, the familiar, placid, easy, ruminating, provincial existence of our great grandfathers."

The domestic and intimate parts of life are the most lastingly happy, and thus it is that an imaginary existence, which in some moods seems to be unbearably humdrum, harmonises with the best parts of our own life. The quiet winds that blow through Miss Austen's imagined land cannot turn windmills or overset tall trees, but they can set going those tunelike chains of simple experiences written on our memories by the quiet and happy parts of life.

Imaginative writing is often compared to painting, and Miss Austen has spoken {63b} of "the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush, as produces little effect after much labour." But this gives a false impression, suggesting a niggling character from which her work is free. What strikes one is rather how much she conveys by touches which seem trifling until we realise the triumph of the result. The effect is not a miniature, as the author suspects, but something essentially broad in spite of its detail, like a picture by Jan Steen.

To discuss why Jane Austen's humour is admirable, or how she reaches such perfection in the drawing of character, seems to me as hopeless as to ask by what means Bach or Beethoven wrote such divinely beautiful tunes. Her powers are rendered even more admirable by the fact {64a} that she did not draw portraits, so that no one could say A is Mr. Collins and B is Mrs. Palmer.

I think it is true, but not easily explained, that the simplest people in her books give us most pleasure. Why is Admiral Croft so delightful, and why do we read again and again the speech about his wife, who suffered from sharing the exercise prescribed for her husband's gout? "She, poor soul, is tied by the leg with a blister on one of her heels as big as a three-shilling piece." Why do we delight in Mr. Woodhouse's perambulation among his guests, and his words to Jane Fairfax, "My dear, did you change your stockings?" In this respect we have advanced beyond the Quarterly reviewer of 1815, {64b} who says: "The faults of these works arise from the minute detail which the author's plan comprehends. Characters of folly or simplicity, such as those of old Woodhouse and Miss Bates, are ridiculous when first presented, but if too often brought forward, or too long dwelt on, their prosing is apt to become as tiresome in fiction as in real society." If ever a reviewer "damned himself to everlasting fame," surely this writer did so; but, indeed, we need not have quoted so much, since (in the words of Corporal Trim) "he is damned already" for leaving out the 'Mr.' before the name Woodhouse.

But six years later (1821) another Quarterly reviewer (said to be Archbishop Whately) reversed the above unfortunate judgment by singling out the drawing of Miss Austen's fools as shining examples of her skill.

Jane Austen must surely be the most re-read author of the last hundred years. Lord Holland is said to have read her books when he had the gout, and in that case he must have experienced what smaller people have suffered during less picturesque complaints, viz., from not being able to determine which of her books they have most nearly forgotten. In this frame of mind one longs for a new Miss Austen more than for a new symphony of Beethoven, or a play of Shakespeare, and much more than for the lost books of Livy, which, indeed, I, for one, do not desire at all.

The power of endlessly re-reading the novels of Miss Austen is the only advantage conferred by a bad memory. I do not imagine that Macaulay, greatly as he admired her, could have endured to read her as often as I have. Nor am I willing to allow that this is intellectual idleness, for her works like those of Nature, always yield something new to the faithful student.

And she, like Nature, has the power of creating in her devotees a minute interest which I rarely experience in other writers. It does not seem to Austenites a foolish thing to inquire what was Mr. Woodhouse's Christian name, a problem only soluble by remembering that he thought it "very pretty" of poor Isabella to call her eldest little boy Henry, and by implication proving that the child, who should have been christened John after his father, was named after his grandfather. And I am proud to remember that when the problem of Mr. Woodhouse's name was propounded to my mother, she solved it at once, and as though it were a question too simple to be asked. Nor does it seem to us trivial that the word given by Frank Churchill to Jane during the "word-game" at Hartfield was 'Pardon.' This was traditionally known in the author's family, indeed Mr. Austen Leigh {66} says that she was always ready to reveal such valuable facts as that Mrs. Norris' "considerable sum" given as a present to William in Mansfield Park was one pound; that Miss Steele never caught the Doctor, and that Mary Bennet married an unfortunate clerk of her uncle Philip's. These revelations lend an air of history to her romance, they give the exciting quality of treasure-trove to the secrets she shares with us. "And here," as children's books say, "a very pretty game may be played by each child saying" what question he would put to the ghost of Jane Austen. For myself I believe I should ask, "Would Fanny Price really have married Crawford if he had not eloped with Miss Bertram?" If in the words of Captain Price there had not been "the devil to pay" in Wimpole Street. Then, too, I should have liked some eugenic information about Elizabeth's (Mrs. Darcy's) children. Because if there was reversion to the type of Lydia it would have been serious. One can fancy Elizabeth retorting that if he said another word about the Lydia type she would pray for an infant possessing all the qualities of Lady Catherine de Burgh, a gift well within the powers of the gods who rule heredity.

I doubt whether Jane Austen consciously painted the results of heredity; rather, I suppose that her memory working instinctively, made, for instance, the Bennet family consist of types recalling the father or mother. She could hardly have known of the questionable theory that the eldest child is commonly inferior to the second, and nevertheless she makes Jane Bennet inferior in capacity to Elizabeth, although so greatly superior to the younger children of Mrs. Bennet's type.

There are other cases of heredity among her characters; for instance, in Persuasion, the snobbery and selfishness of Miss Elliott clearly reproduces her father, while Anne, as we know from Lady Russell, was a true child of her mother. I like to fancy that the querulousness and weakness of Mary (Mrs. Charles) was a perverted gentleness coming from her mother, while her vulgarity came from Sir Walter. Then again, Emma had none of Mr. Woodhouse's qualities, and we must suppose her to be a repetition of her mother. Unless, indeed, her general kindliness came from her father, and possibly also the stupidity which wrecked her matrimonial agency. We must, I think, believe that Mrs. Woodhouse had been a managing woman, who probably insisted on Mr. Woodhouse marrying her; thus her instinct for matrimonial scheming was confined (we may fancy) to her own interests. It is too fanciful to suggest that Mrs. Woodhouse had a tinge of hardness in her which came out in Emma's celebrated rudeness to Miss Bates. At any rate, it is certain that it was not a heritage from her father. I knew a lady who could never forgive this slip of poor Emma. And the vividness of this feeling was not a symptom of that want of literary sense which makes the gallery hiss the villain on the stage, but must be taken as a proof of the vitality of the character. Isabella Woodhouse is obviously of her father's type, with hardly a mental feature to remind us of Emma.

In the Bertram family the inheritance is not very clear; the Miss Bertrams seem to show the hard narrowness of Mrs. Norris, and none of the sheep-like good nature and futility of Lady Bertram. I suspect that in Mrs. Norris, hardness and business tendency were an inheritance from her uncle, the Huntingdon solicitor, for we know that he made the harsh and commercial statement that his niece was at least £3000 short of any equitable claim to the hand of Sir Thomas. We do not know anything of the parents of Lady Bertram, but we may suspect that her Ladyship inherited from her mother the soft and cushiony character of which she is a great example. Mrs. Price, with her small income and large family, was unfortunately of the same easy and futile temper. Edward Bertram is obviously his father the Baronet over again, with all his kindness and extreme respectability, while what will ultimately grow into Sir Thomas' pomposity is like the delicate tissues of the sucking pig in Charles Lamb's essay, not to be described by the gross terms applicable to the adult, "Oh, call it not fat! but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it," etc. The elder brother, Tom, who began life as a cheerful, irresponsible person, falls under the family curse in consequence of a mysterious fever, so that he doubtless inherited the fatal tendency from Sir Thomas, together with a certain insouciance and want of heart, which one can imagine to be forms of Lady Bertram's emptiness and Mrs. Norris's hardness.

This is a subject on which a Mendelian inquirer might endlessly speculate, but the characters in fiction being even less susceptible to experiment than our living friends and acquaintance, the interest of the matter is soon exhausted.

It is to be regretted that Miss Austen did not allow the characters of one novel to appear in the next. It is true that this would have upset plots in an absurd way, but I should like to know what would have happened if, when Henry Tilney had made up his mind that he was in love with Catherine, Elizabeth Bennet had appeared? He would surely have repented of his entanglement with Catherine. There is, however, this to be said, that I strongly suspect Elizabeth of being his first cousin. She is so like him that she might have failed to please him, or he may have known her from a little girl and looked on her as a sister. Or the marriages of cousins may have been as impossible among the Tilneys as in the Royal Family of Crim Tartary, where Bulbo's beautiful Circassian cousin simply had to be allowed to die of love for him.

There are many possibilities in the combination of characters now separated by inexorable paper and ink. One can imagine a meeting at Bath between General Tilney and Sir Walter Elliott; they would clearly sympathise, and unless the General has injured his complexion by incautious zeal on active service, which seems unlikely, Sir Walter would have had "no objection to being seen with him anywhere"; he might even have walked arm-in-arm with him as he did with Colonel Wallis, who "was a fine military figure, though sandy haired." Again, Mr. Collins would have been charmed with Mr. Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility, for although the two characters are not quite similarly compounded of snobbery and folly, yet there is a common substratum of meanness that must have served as a bond.

It would be interesting to treat the whole of Miss Austen's characters as the flora of a given land is dealt with, to divide them into genera and species, and to provide an analytical key. Take, for instance, the young men: these would correspond to a Natural Order, say the Ranunculaceae, and may be divided, as the following table shows, into two groups, Attractive and Unattractive, and these are subdivided again into four groups which correspond to genera. No. 1, which we should call Brandonia, possesses the three species Brandonia brandoni, ferrarsi, and bertrami, and so on with the rest.

[Picture: Table of characters]

Brandon, Dashwood, Ferrars, R. Ferrars, Willoughby are in Sense and Sensibility; E. Bertram, Crawford, Rushworth in Mansfield Park; Mr. Collins, Darcy, Wickham in Pride and Prejudice; Tilney and Thorpe in Northanger Abbey; Mr. Elton, F. Churchill and Knightley in Emma; Wentworth and Mr. Elliot in Persuasion.

Then of course we should need descriptions to distinguish the species, thus in genus (ii) Darcy would be known by pride, Knightley by calm sense, Tilney by light-hearted cheerfulness, while Wentworth would be easily recognised by his sub-dull character. Naturalists would dispute whether Mr. Elton should be in the same genus as Wickham, or in the quite distinct genus (iv); or again, whether F. Churchill should not be placed with Darcy and Knightley. In the same way Captain Wentworth might perhaps be placed in the dull group with Brandon, Edward Ferrars and Edward Bertram.

I have not attempted to include in the system all the young men who occur in the novels. I leave the completion to those who can devote a life-time to the subject, and who are possessed of the necessary discrimination and patience to marshall and arrange the whole flora of Miss Austen's world.

In connexion with this subject I have found it interesting to read for the first time quite recently Miss Austen's unfinished novels, Lady Susan and The Watsons. It is easy to classify some of the characters—thus Mrs. Robert Watson is obviously Mrs. Elton, as, indeed, Mr. Austen Leigh points out in his Memoir.

In the following scene the character addressed as Jane is Mrs. Robert Watson, who has come to stay at the house of Mr. Watson, her father-in-law. Elizabeth is the eldest of the Watson girls, and keeps house for her father. "I hope you will find things tolerably comfortable, Jane," said Elizabeth, as she opened the door of the spare bed-chamber. {73}

"My good creature," replied Jane, "use no ceremony with me, I entreat you. I am one of those who always take things as they find them. I hope I can put up with a small apartment for two or three nights without making a piece of work. I always wish to be treated quite en famille when I come to see you. And now I do hope you have not been getting a great dinner for us. Remember we never eat suppers." And then: "Mrs. Robert, exactly as smart as she had been at her own party, came in with apologies for her dress. 'I would not make you wait,' said she, 'so I put on the first thing I met with. I am afraid I am a sad figure. My dear Mr. W. (addressing her husband) you have not put any fresh powder in your hair.'"

This is certainly Mrs. Elton's double, and the resemblance extends to calling her husband Mr. W. It gives one a certain shock of surprise to find an old friend masquerading as a new acquaintance, nor is she the only example in the book. I think the following speech of Mr. Tom Musgrave will recall a well-known character.

"Oh, me," said Tom, "whatever you decide on will be a favourite with me. I have had some pleasant hours at 'speculation' in my time, but I have not been in the way of it for a long while. 'Vingt-un' is the game at Osborne Castle. {74a} I have played nothing but 'Vingt-un' of late. You would be astonished to hear the noise we make there—the fine old lofty drawing-room rings again. Lady Osborne sometimes declares she cannot hear herself speak. Lord Osborne enjoys it famously, and he makes the best dealer without exception that I ever beheld—such quickness and spirit, he lets nobody dream over their cards. I wish you could see him over-draw himself on both his own cards. It is worth anything in the world!"

We may surely recognise the folly and underbred parade of Mr. John Thorpe in Mr. Tom Musgrave's speech. Again, Tom Musgrave plagues Emma just as Thorpe persecuted Catherine by an ill-timed invitation to a tête-a-tête curricle drive.

The heroine, Emma Watson, has no resemblance to Emma Woodhouse. In situation she may be compared to Fanny Price, for she has been brought up by a refined aunt, and is suddenly plunged into the very different manners and surroundings of her pushing jealous sisters; but in character she seems to me to have none of the charm which has given Fanny Price such various admirers as the Rev. Sydney Smith and Mr. F. W. H. Myers. {74b} It is perhaps characteristic of her creator's truth, that her heroine who is made known to us just as she arrives at her new home in uncomfortable surroundings and among unknown sisters, should be reserved and a little prim, and that we should be made to feel that this was not her complete character. Possibly she would have developed into a Fanny Price with a strong touch of Eleanor Dashwood, but this is a barren speculation.

Another unfinished novel was begun in January, 1817, and twelve chapters were written by the middle of March. Miss Austen died on July 18 of that same year. This unnamed novel, to judge by extracts published in the Memoir (p. 181), promised to contain at least one admirable character in the person of Lady Denham, who seems an ill-natured and grasping Mrs. Jennings (if that is not a contradiction in terms), with a strong flavour of Lady Catherine de Burgh.

Miss Austen's works are not only to be studied from the point of view of genetics, nor merely by a naturalist whose desire is to classify without inquiry as to the origin of his species; they also supply material for the geographer. I do not know who first identified the Highbury of Emma with Cobham, as being seven miles from Boxhill and 18 from London ("sixteen miles, nay 18, it must be full 18 to Manchester Street"). The identification is confirmed by a slip on the part of the authoress, who, in a single passage, printed Cobham in place of Highbury. By this method of mensuration my friend the Master of Downing has shown Kellynch Hall in Persuasion to be near Buckland St. Mary, and Mansfield Park to coincide roughly with Easton, near Huntingdon.

The geography of Lyme Regis is of interest.

The party from Upper Cross drove in a leisurely way to Lyme, and the afternoon was well advanced as they descended the steep hill into the village. The hill is doubtless much as it was, and nearly at the bottom are the two hotels mentioned; it is, honestly speaking, impossible to say at which of the two the Musgroves put up. I am inclined to believe it was that on the west side, but my reasons, if indeed they exist, are not worth giving.

The house in which Miss Austen is known to have stayed is probably Captain Harville's. It is near the Cobb, and presents that air of not having much room inside, which we gather from the description in Mansfield Park.

But these points are of trifling interest in comparison with the really important question—where did Louisa's accident occur? There are three separate flights of steps on the Cobb, and the local photographer, in the interests of trade, had to fix on one of them as the scene of the jump. I cannot believe that he is right. These steps are too high and too threatening for a girl of that period to choose with such a purpose, even for Louisa, whose determination of character we know to have been one of her charms. Then, again, this particular flight is not (so far as I could make out) in the New Cobb, which is where the accident is described as occurring. It is true that at first sight it hardly looks dangerous enough to bring about the sight which delighted the fishermen of Lyme, namely, a "dead young lady," or rather two, for the sensitive Mary contributed to the situation by fainting. I am, however, confirmed in my belief by what happened to myself, when I went to view the classic spot. I quite suddenly and inexplicably fell down. The same thing happened to a friend on the same spot, and we concluded that in the surprisingly slippery character of the surface lies the explanation of the accident. It had never seemed comprehensible that an active and capable man should miss so easy a catch as that provided by Louisa. But if Captain Wentworth slipped and fell as she jumped, she would come down with him.

I am told that when Tennyson visited Lyme he repelled the proposals of his friends, who wished him to see something of the beauties of the place, and insisted on going straight to the flight of steps. This is an attractive trait in Tennyson's character, but it may not have been pleasing to his hosts.

 

NOTES:

{63a} Literary Studies, Vol. 1., p. 303.

{63b} Memoir, p. 155.

{64a} Memoir, p. 147.

{64b} Ibid., p. 132.

{66} Memoir, p. 148.

{73} Memoir, p. 348.

{74a} Not the Royal residence of that name.

{74b} Mr. Austen Leigh, Memoir, p. 140, quotes from Sir Denis Le Marchant that Fanny Price was a "prime favourite" of Sydney Smith. Mr. F. Myers I remember speaking to me of his especial admiration for Mansfield Park and Fanny.

[The end]
Francis Darwin's essay: Jane Austen

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