[J. Zoffnny, R.A., frinxit
JANE AUSTEN.
PERSONAL ASPECTS
OF
JANE AUSTEN
BY
MARY AUGUSTA AUSTEN-LEIGH
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
.yTr-. US-
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1920
PROPERTY OF
W
LIBRARY
TO ALL
TRUE LOVERS OF
JANE AUSTEN AND HER WORKS
THIS BOOK IS
DEDICATED
CONTENTS
CHAP - PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION !
II. POSITION I0
III. EDUCATION I ..... 21
IV. EDUCATION II 4I
V. MORALITY 63
VI. ' LADY SUSAN ' gg
VII. PARENTS AND CHILDREN . . . m
VIII. APPENDIX I33
IX. CHARADES
ILLUSTRATIONS
JANE AUSTEN (by J. Zoffany) . . Frontispiece
STEVENTON RECTORY (front) , , to face page 12
STEVENTON RECTORY (back) . . 24
AUTOGRAPHS ,, 30
CHAWTON HOUSE (Reproduced from a
sketch by A. H. Plallam Murray) . ,, 56
CHAWTON COTTAGE (Reproduced from a
sketch by A. H. Hallam Murray) . ,, 112
THE WATCH 161
THE YOUNG GIRL OF SPIRIT . . ,, 167
PERSONAL ASPECTS OF
JANE AUSTEN
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
JANE AUSTEN was born at Steventon Rectory
in Hampshire on Saturday, December 16, 1775,
and died in Mrs. David's lodgings, College
Street, Winchester, on Friday, July 18, 1817,
in her forty-second year.
Little was known by the world in general
either of herself or of her surroundings for
many years after the latter date. She had
named her brother Henry as her literary
executor, and in six months' time he published
the two novels she had left in manuscript,
' Northanger Abbey ' and ' Persuasion ' (to
which he himself gave these titles), prefixing
to the former a short sketch of their author,
called a ' Biographical Notice of Jane Austen.'
2 INTRODUCTION
The same ' Notice/ enlarged by a few addi-
tional paragraphs, appeared again in 1833,
when Mr. R. Bentley, who had acquired the
copyright of all her works, brought out a
complete edition of the novels, no other
edition being published during the first sixty-
four years that elapsed after her death. The
smallness of the print employed, ill-suited to
any but young and strong eyes, may in part
account for the slowness with which her fame
grew during that period. But though a
slow it was a sure growth, and with an
increase in the number of her readers came
an increased desire to know more details con-
cerning herself.
As curiosity on these points became
stronger, while the family remained silent,
it was not unnatural that in the absence of
definite information certain erroneous ideas
should be entertained, and some mistaken
statements made respecting herself, her home,
and her position and opportunities in life.
Reviewers were inclined to assume that her
outlook upon the world at large must have
been narrow and restricted to a small circle,
though chiefly, as it would seem, because they
themselves knew little about her beyond
' MEMOIR OF JANE AUSTEN ' 3
the facts that she had been a daughter of the
Rector of Steventon, that she had lived in
the country, had never mixed in literary
circles, and had died almost before reaching
middle age. Surprise would sometimes be
expressed as to how, under these disadvan-
tageous circumstances, it should have been
possible for her to paint the varied pictures
of human nature and give the accurate
descriptions of contemporary manners with
which her books were filled. Again, con-
jectures were made that these dealt with
one class of life only, that of the English
gentry, not from choice but from necessity,
because she had no knowledge of anything
beyond it. It was also reported that ' Jane
Austen was not fond of children' it was
left to a modern foreign critic to add that
' She was not fond of animals.'
To some degree, though not entirely, these
mistaken ideas were dispelled when, in 1.869,
the first ' Memoir of Jane Austen ' was
published by her nephew, the Rev. J. E.
Austen-Leigh. He had been the youngest
of the mourners at her funeral fifty years
earlier, and many friends, knowing how well
fitted he was to write a memoir of his aunt,
6 INTRODUCTION
monotonous life/ while one critic also gives
it as his opinion that ' the range of her
sympathies was narrow.' ' Miss Austen
lacks the breadth and depth of feeling which
distinguished her great successor, George
Eliot/ Another says, ' a neat, natty, little
artist was Jane Austen/ and yet another,
' When we compare her to George Eliot the
reader will see at once the eminence on
which we place her.'
Such were some of the judgments passed
on Jane Austen half a century ago.
But a considerable amount of additional
information concerning her earlier life and
its surroundings has now been acquired, of
which later biographers were able to avail
themselves. First in order came the ' Letters
of Jane Austen/ x published in 1884 by Lord
Brabourne. The existence of these letters
was known to the writer of the ' Memoir/
but he could not examine them, as their
owner, his cousin, was then too infirm to
undertake the labour of looking through
them and, without having done so, she did
not wish to place them in any other hands.
1 Letters by Jane Austen, edited by Lord Brabourne.
(Bentley & Son, 1884.)
LETTERS TO HER FAMILY 7
They had been written by Jane to Cassandra,
and though of high value in supplying a
biographer with many facts, are yet a
peculiarly restricted selection, which should
never be taken as a specimen of her general
correspondence, having been spared by
Cassandra only in the full belief that they
contained nothing sufficiently interesting to
induce any future generation to give them
to the world. Since the publication of these
letters by Lord Brabourne, other letters,
written by more distant branches of the
Austen family, have been recovered, which
bear upon the life at Steventon Rectory in
old days, and consequently upon that of
Jane herself.
Another book, giving some authentic
details of the same, dealing principally with
the careers of her sailor brothers, 1 was
published in 1916 by a great nephew and
niece. All the fresh knowledge thus ac-
quired has been embodied in the latest ' Life
of Jane Austen/ 2 which was published in
1 Jane Austen's Sailor Brothers, by J. H. Hubback
and Edith C. Hubback. (John Lane Co.)
2 Life and Letters of Jane Austen, by W. Austen-Leigh
and R. A. Austen-Leigh. (Smith, Elder & Co.)
8 INTRODUCTION
1913 by a great nephew and a great, great
nephew.
So much fresh information having been
given to the world respecting Jane Austen's
youthful years since the publication of the
original ' Memoir/ which dealt almost wholly
with her later life, it certainly occasions
some surprise to find critics of the present
day apparently disregarding these later
biographies and reverting to the standpoint
of those writers who knew only the earliest.
Yet so it is. In a recently published book
we again hear of her c narrow experience/
and are told that she ' lived aside from the
world/ also that ' concerning her personal
character and private interests we know
remarkably little/ and that ' her life provided
even less variety of incident than she
discovered at Longbourn or Upper cross/
while the same writer states, in spite of all
evidence to the contrary, that ' her father
was not very much better educated and
scarcely more strenuous than his neighbours
nor were there granted to her any of the
consolations of culture/
Since it is still possible for an earnest and
acute student of her works to offer, as
NEW INFORMATION 9
ascertained facts, views of Ms own concerning
their writer which contain so many mis-
apprehensions, it may be well once more to
record a few simple truths about Jane
Austen's position in life, her education, and
her choice of subjects as an author.
CHAPTER II
POSITION
THAT Jane Austen should take as her field
of work one which, though far from being
narrow, was certainly definite, the life, namely,
of the English gentry, was so natural as
hardly to require either remark or explana-
tion. It was the class to which her ancestors
had for some centuries belonged and with
which she had always associated. The
Austens of Steventon Rectory were descended
from many generations of Kentish Austens
who, arising like other county families from
the powerful clan of Clothiers, known in the
Middle Ages as the ' Gray coats of Kent/
were, in the sixteenth century, settled as
landowners in two small and picturesque
old manor houses, Grovehurst and Broad-
ford, which still form part of the Austen
property, though the heads of the family
removed long ago to larger habitations and
FAMILY HISTORY n
increased possessions in the parish of Hors-
monden, near Sevenoaks, a neighbourhood
where the name of Austen has long been
known and held in honour. They were a
purely English family. No admixture of
Scottish, Irish, or foreign blood appears in
the pedigree of the Austens of Broadford,
which runs back to the close of the sixteenth
century.
They were also a race accustomed to
prize both religion and education. On the
tomb of the wife of the first John Austen,
of Broadford (Joan Berry), in Horsmonden
Church, dated A.D. 1604, it is recorded that
she met her death ' often utteringe these
speeches, " Let neither husband nor children
nor lands nor goods separate me from my
God." ' A hundred years later another Mrs.
John Austen existed, whose name (Elizabeth
Weller) deserves to be held in perpetual
respect and esteem by her descendants. In
her portrait, taken when she was a blooming
young woman, she appears in brocade and
pearls, suitable to the wife of the heir to the
estate, and future Lady of the Manor. But
the latter position she never held, as her
husband died before his father, who, like
12 POSITION
* the old Gentleman ' in ' Sense and Sensi-
bility/ showed an exclusive care for his
eldest grandson and heir, and, soon dying
himself, left to his daughter-in-law the task
of bringing up on small means her remaining
five sons and a daughter. Without repining
at her want of fortune, she quickly set to
work to give them that which she thought
would best supply its absence, namely,
learning, and that they might receive a
sound classical education, she removed to
Sevenoaks, to send them as day-boys to its
old Grammar School, and to take some of
its masters as lodgers into her own house
as an assistance towards defraying the
expenses of her large family. She had her
reward in living to see her daughter married
and all her sons established in different
professions. This brave woman was Jane
Austen's great grandmother, as her fourth
son, William, a surgeon in Tonbridge, became
the father of George Austen he being the
first of the race to leave his native county
and make a home in Hampshire. 1
1 Cf. Chawton Manor and its Owners, by William
Austen-Leigh and Montagu George Knight, Chap. I.
(Smith, Elder & Co.)
PROPERTY OF
CARNEGIE INSTinilE OF FECKKOUJ'
LIBRARY
THE KENTISH AUSTENS 13
When he was settled at Steventon, regular
communications with the relations he had
quitted in Kent were kept up. The Kentish
Austens had, naturally, formed many con-
nections by marriage with families in their own
county, and when Jane, at the age of twelve,
had for the first time the delight of going with
her parents and her sister into Kent, she
would make acquaintance with a number of
relations hitherto unknown to her excepting
by name an epoch in life to a girl of that age,
gifted with strong family instincts and quick
power of observation. It is due to the corre-
spondence maintained between the Hampshire
and the Kentish cousins that various facts
relating to the period of Jane Austen's girl-
hood were not long ago discovered by one
of the authors of ' Life and Letters.'
None of these early letters were written
by Jane herself, but in later life it was her
custom to write many to relations at a
distance, thus acting up to a remark she
once made to a niece, ' I like cousins to be
cousins, and interested in one another.'
This hereditary interest was also felt
to the full towards the maternal side of
the house, where the young George Austens'
i 4 POSITION
descent was of an interesting and varied
character. Mrs. George Austen had been
Cassandra Leigh, one of the Leighs of Addle-
strop in Gloucestershire, an elder branch of
the Leighs of Stoneleigh in Warwickshire,
to which property they succeeded when the
junior line died out. All came from the
family of Leighs, who were settled at High-
leigh in Cheshire from the date of the Norman
Conquest. Early in the reign of Henry VIII
one of these, Thomas Leigh, came when a
lad to seek his fortune in London. In this
quest he was highly successful and was
knighted by Queen Elizabeth, being Lord
Mayor of London in the year of her accession,
1557. As such he had the honour of
receiving her and preceding her, carrying
the sceptre before her Grace when she first
entered the City to take up her residence
at the Tower. He also bore a leading part
in the ceremonies of her Coronation in the
following year. Romantic incidents and
stirring events belong to the history of Sir
Thomas Leigh's descendants, who must have
possessed much determination, strength of
character, and keen sense of humour. They
were also noted for inflexible loyalty to the
THE ' LOYAL LEIGHS ' 15
House of Stuart through every change of
fortune that befell its monarchs. When
Charles I was on his march to Nottingham,
there to set up the Royal Standard, he found
on reaching Coventry that the gates of that
city were closed against him by order of the
Mayor. On this he rode off to Stoneleigh
Abbey, where he and his escort were hospitably
received by the reigning Sir Thomas Leigh, a
grandson of the original Sir Thomas. Again,
in 1745 apartments were prepared in the
Abbey which, it was hoped, that Charles
Edward would occupy for at least one night ;
but he was not destined to enjoy such com-
fortable quarters in England, and very for-
tunate beyond a doubt was it for the Leighs
that he retreated without reaching the mid-
land counties. To Jane Austen, who was,
as will be shown further on, a most worthy
descendant of the ' loyal Leighs/ every story
or relic connected with these historic
memories of the Stuarts must have been
deeply interesting, when she spent some
time at Stoneleigh Abbey in August 1804 ;
and greatly indeed would her delight have
been increased could she have beheld a
remarkable family treasure which the house
16 POSITION
then contained, the very existence of which
was at that time unknown, and so remained
for another twenty years. It was in 1827
that Sir George Beaumont, well known as a
connoisseur in art, when examining a flower-
piece in oils at Stoneleigh Abbey, detected
what appeared to be a human eye looking
at him from amongst the flowers. On further
examination it was ascertained that these
had been thinly painted over another picture,
and when they were removed a fine portrait
of Charles I by Vandyke came to light.
This method of concealment, adopted no
doubt to save the picture from the thrust
of some Parliamentary pikestaff, had proved
so effectual that not even a tradition of the
portrait had survived. It must have lain
hidden for nearly two centuries until chance,
as in the case of ' The Bride of the Mistletoe
Bough/ revealed the long-kept secret, and
the fine painting, happier in fortune than
the ill-fated bride, emerged again in all its
pristine beauty. Stuart monarchs have been
accused of ingratitude towards their followers,
but here, on the contrary, it is a pleasant,
as well as a probable, theory that the portrait
was sent to Sir Thomas Leigh in token of
BATH 17
the gratitude felt by a King who had been
sheltered by him in a time of need.
It was through her Leigh relations that
Jane became, while still young, well ac-
quainted with Bath. Cassandra Austen's
brother, James Leigh (Perrot), himself a
man of good fortune, had married a well-
endowed lady, Miss Cholmeley, from Lincoln-
shire. They possessed a country home in
Berkshire, and had also, as a winter residence,
a house in Bath, No. i, Paragon, commanding
a lovely and extensive view. There they
lived as people of fashion and fortune jn the
later years of the eighteenth century, and parts
of beautiful old costumes worn by them
still exist to show how brilliant must have
been the scenes then presented by the gay
world of Bath. The Leigh Perrots, who
were childless, received their Steventon
relations as visitors, and the eldest of Cas-
sandra's sons was generally looked upon as
his uncle's natural heir.
Through circumstances which befel her
next brother, Edward (Knight), Jane had
again a fresh and a wide- view of English
society opened to her observation. Edward
had been adopted, while still a young boy,
T 8 POSITION
by another childless couple, Mr. and Mrs.
Thomas Knight, who were cousins on the
Austen side of the house, and possessors of
large properties both in Hampshire and in
East Kent. It was in the latter neighbour-
hood that Edward married and settled, at
first in a home of his own, whence he removed
after Mr. Knight's death to the large house
and beautiful estate of Godmersham Park,
near Canterbury, and in East Kent, Jane, as
a young woman, began to visit her brother
Edward and his family. Visits, like the
journeys that led to them, were in those
days long affairs, and hers must have afforded
ample time as well as opportunity to mix
in the society of that neighbourhood,
-where she could observe English county life
from a fresh point of view, and could compare
it with the corresponding class of society
she already knew well in Hampshire around
Steventon. The share taken in the latter
by the George Austens has been thus described
by the author of the original ' Memoir/
He says : ' Their situation had some peculiar
advantages beyond those of ordinary
rectories. Steventon was a family living.
Mr. Knight, the patron, was also proprietor
LIFE AT STEVENTON 19
of nearly the whole parish. He never resided
there and, consequently, the rector and his
children came to be regarded in the neigh-
bourhood as a kind of representatives of the
family. They shared with the principal
tenant the command of an excellent manor
and enjoyed, in this reflected way, some of
the consideration usually awarded to landed
proprietors. They were not rich, but, aided
by Mr. Austen's powers of teaching, they
had enough to afford a good education to
their sons and daughters, to mix in the best
society in the neighbourhood, and to exercise
a liberal hospitality to their own relations and
friends. A carriage and pair of horses were
kept. . . . The horses probably, like Mr.
Bennet's, were often employed in farm work.'
From the foregoing account it will be
evident that to place, as has been done by
a recent critic, Jane Austen and Charlotte
Bronte together in one sentence, as both
' living aside from the world/ is entirely
wide of the mark. Beyond the facts that
their fathers were clergymen and that both
lived in the country, no resemblance what-
ever can be discovered in their situations,
which were as unlike as were their several
20 POSITION
characters. No counterpart to the isolation
and sadness of Haworth Rectory could be
found in the happy and sociable atmosphere
of the Rectory at St event on. Her nephew,
who well knew those of whom he wrote,
says in his original ' Memoir ' : ' There can
be no doubt that the general colouring of
Jane Austen's early life was bright. She
lived with indulgent parents in a cheerful
home, which afforded an agreeable Variety
of society/ Jane, like most young girls,
thoroughly enjoyed the gaieties of the neigh-
bourhood around her, of which dancing
formed a great feature. Her brother Henry
says : ' She was fond of dancing and excelled
in it.' It may be remembered that nearly
all her heroines shared in this taste even
the timid Fanny feeling that a ball ' was
indeed delightful/ That Jane Austen was
in every way well fitted to write of the lives
and feelings of English gentle-people is not
to be questioned, nor that this would be a
determining factor in directing her imagina-
tion towards such a field of work. It is
not, however, a proof, as may be shown later,
that there was none other at her command
had she thought well to choose it.
CHAPTER III
EDUCATION I
CASSANDRA and Jane Austen, while still
children, must have had a larger acquaintance
with the world than can usually fall to the
lot of such young girls. Space was probably
needed within their own home for the
reception of George Austen's pupils, and his
little daughters, at the ages of nine and
six, were sent to be educated elsewhere, not,
as we are told, because it was supposed that
Jane at six years old required very much
education, but because it would have broken
her heart to be separated from Cassandra.
The sisters, therefore, went together to
Oxford, there to be placed under the care
of Mrs. Cawley, who was a connection of
their mother and the widow of a Principal
of Brasenose College ; a lady of whom no
record remains beyond the fact that she was
a stiff - mannered person. Mrs. Cawley
21
22 EDUCATION
removed after a time to Southampton, and
by so doing very nearly put an end to Jane's
short existence, for in that town both she
and Cassandra fell very ill of what was then
called ' putrid fever,' and Jane's life was at
one time despaired of. Mrs. Cawley would
not at first write word of this illness to
Steventon Rectory, but Jane Cooper, the
little girls' cousin, who was one of the party,
thought it right to do so, an action which'
was probably instrumental in saving the life
of Jane. Mrs. Austen at once set off for
Southampton together with her sister, Mrs.
Cooper, and they brought with them a
remedy, to the use of which Jane's recovery
was ascribed. But a heavy price had to be
paid for this blessing. Poor Mrs. Cooper
took the infection herself and died at Bath,
whither she went on quitting Southampton.
Such a tragical time must have remained
fixed in any child's memory, and in the
delirium and distress of Marianne Dashwood,
when lying dangerously ill at Cleveland,
also of a ' putrid fever,' and also awaiting
the arrival of a mother, we probably hear
an echo of poor little Jane's delirious
entreaties for her own mother, when lying
AT SCHOOL AT READING 23
equally ill in the strange world of South-
ampton.
The next experience of the sisters was of
a happier nature. They and their cousin,
Jane Cooper, spent two years in the kindly
Abbey School at Reading, with its beautiful
garden and picturesque old buildings. From
all accounts, discipline here was not of a
rigid order, for when their brother and
cousin, Edward Austen and Edward Cooper,
were passing through Reading Cassandra
and the two Janes were allowed to dine with
them at an inn in the town. A charming
fancy drawing of this happy young party
has been made, by Miss Ellen Hill. 1 When,
therefore, these early adventures in search
of education camo to an end and the sisters
returned to continue their lessons at home,
it must have been with imaginations already
enriched by some acquaintance with the
three old towns of Oxford, Southampton, and
Reading.
At Steventon they would not suffer from
any want of competent, teachers. Basing-
stokc was near enough to furnish whatever
1 Jans Austen : her Homes and her Friends, by
Constance Hill. (J. Lane,)
24 EDUCATION
occasional instructions might be needed
from masters, such as Elizabeth Bennet told
Lady Catherine could always be had at
Longbourn for those who desired them.
But the most valuable and solid part of their
mental training they must have received in
their own home, where they would find
excellent opportunities for studying English
literature and language under their father,
who ceased by degrees to take private pupils
into his house, and would, therefore, have
sufficient leisure for teaching his own
children. The recent critic who spoke of
him as being probably ' not very much
better educated, and scarcely more strenuous
than his neighbours ' makes an entire
mistake. George Austen had won an open
scholarship and fellowship at St. John's
College, Oxford, and had been for a time a
master at his own former school, Tonbridge,
before returning again to reside at St. John's
as an Oxford Don. In later life he prepared
two of his sons for matriculation at the same
College, and one of these has thus written_of
him, with especial reference to the , education
he gave to Jane. ' Being not only a profound
Scholar, but possessing an exquisite taste in
every species of Literature, it is not wonderful
) U
.
GEORGE AUSTEN 25
that his daughter Jane should at a very early
age have become sensible of the charms of
style and enthusiastic in the cultivation of
her own language.' We may, perhaps, allow
for a little filial exaggeration here, but we
should also remember that it is first-hand
evidence, coming from one of George Austen's
own pupils. That he would be a kind and
welcome instructor is certain from the way
in which Jane afterwards recalls his strong
affection for his family, his ' indescribable
tenderness as a father,' and ' the sweet,
benevolent smile which always distinguished
him.' To learn of such a teacher must have
been a constant pleasure, and she had
another assistant at hand in her eldest
brother James, himself a classical scholar
and a cultivated man, of whom his son, the
author of the original ' Memoir,' thus writes :
' He was well read in English literature, had
a correct taste, and wrote readily and happily
both in prose and verse. He was more than
ten years older than Jane and had, I believe,
a large share in directing her reading and
forming her taste.' He was also a good
French scholar, spending some months in
France to perfect himself in the language.
26 EDUCATION
Perhaps Jane remembered this, brother's
assistance when sh'e made Edmund Bertram
perform the same kind offices for his little
cousin, Fanny Price.
One glimpse of Jane at her lessons has
been spared to us by time and may be found
in her own handwriting in an old copy of
Oliver Goldsmith's ' History of England.'
From internal evidence, she must have been
reading it for the first time, with an excited
interest that .would recall Marianne Dash-
wood's enthusiastic soul rather than Catherine
Morland's indifference to history, where she
found ' the men all so bad, and hardly any
women at all.' Jane's age can only be
guessed at, but from the nature of the remarks
she inscribes on the margin of this work,
twelve or thirteen years seems a probable
time of life for her to have then reached. It
was the History of the Rebellion that stirred
her loyal soul to its depths. At first she
contents herself with these short interjections
on the behaviour of Cromwell's party
'Oh! Oh! The Wretches /'
but she grows eloquent when Goldsmith
delivers his verdict against the whole family
of Stuart, and cries out in answer
JANE AUSTEN AS A CRITIC 27
' A family who were always ill-used, BE-
TRAYED OR NEGLECTED, whose virtues
are seldom allowed, while their errors are never
forgotten.'
It is perhaps fortunate in case some
destructive critic should arise in the future
to declare the improbability of Jane Austen
having written any such words-^that a
postscript has been added to this note by a
sympathetic young nephew, into whose pos-
session the book afterwards passed : ' Bravo,
Aunt Jane ! Just my opinion of the case.'
At the conclusion of Walpole's speech her
remark is slightly ironical
' Nobly said ! Spoken like a Tory I '
And, again, when Goldsmith refers to the King
as a Master unworthy of faithful followers,
come these words
' Unworthy, because he was a Stuart, I
suppose unhappy family / '
Lord Balmerino's execution in 1745 is thus
lamented
' Dear Balmerino ! I cannot express what
I feel for you ! '
On the subsequent change in the dress of
the Highlanders she writes
'I do not like this. Every ancient custom
If
28
EDUCATION
ought to be Sacred, unless it is prejudicial to
Happiness.'
Next comes a very sapient announcement.
Goldsmith having condemned those who were
' Stunning mankind with a cry of Freedom/
Jane thus addresses him
' My Dear Mr. G , I have lived long enough
in the world to know that it is always so.'
Here she was probably thinking of the
French Revolution, in which all at Steventon
had a special reason for taking very deep
interest.
She did not approve of Anne leaving her
father's cause to side with her brother-in-law,
and, being unwilling to blame any Stuart, finds
her own way out of the dilemma
' Anne should not have done so, indeed I
do not believe she did.'
In writing of James II's obstinate adhe-
rence to his own policy, Goldsmith refers it to
this King's conviction that ' nothing could in-
jure schemes calculated to promote the cause
of heaven/ on which Jane observes
' Since he acted upon such motives he ought
not to be blamed.'
It must be left to those critics who have
described Jane Austen's disposition as ' calm',
MUSIC AND ART 29
as ' unemotional/ ' unsentimental/ ' passion-
less/ to reconcile such, epithets with these
eager outpourings, which are given here for
the benefit of all who may care to form some
truer conception of the real Jane than tjie
tame and colourless personality, devoid of
all enthusiasm and ardour, which has at times
been set before the public as hers, though
something better than this might, one would
think, have been divined from the characters
of her favourite heroines, Emma Woodhouse
and Elizabeth Bennet, neither of whom can
well be decried as wanting in high spirit or
liveliness of nature.
Of Jane's accomplishments in music and
drawing we know little more than can be
found in her brother's notice. He says :
' She had not only an excellent taste for
drawing, but in her earlier days evinced
great power of hand in the management of
the pencil. She was a warm and judicious
admirer of landscape, both in nature and
on canvas. At a very early age she was
enamoured of Gilpin on the Picturesque,
and she seldom changed her opinion either
on books or men/ None of her efforts
in drawing have survived, though a few of
30 EDUCATION
Cassandra's slight water-colour portraits still
exist, and also some pencil sketches taken
by others of the family, showing that a
general love of drawing existed amongst them,
in which Jane very probably shared. Her
delight in beautiful scenery was so great
that she thought it must hereafter form one
of the joys of heaven. As regards music,
her brother says she 'held her own musical
attainments extremely cheap/ They were,
of course, not remarkable, but she was the
most musical of an unmusical family, and
a niece, when writing of her, says she had a
natural taste for music. A manuscript music
book of hers is still preserved at Chawton,
containing, in exquisitely fine writing, some
of the songs she used to sing.
How large a share Mrs. Austen may
have taken in the intellectual part of her
daughters' education we do not know, but she
may no doubt be credited with the charge
of two important departments writing and
needlework. She herself wrote an admirable
hand, both powerful and interesting, rivalling,
though not much resembling, that of her
daughter Jane, the beauty of whose writing
many of her readers know. Jane herself
. / 7
i #* / .* ' \
x** " -<*^* -
^S,'L*ssxj ~f"*/S *.
M
(/ .
**-
30] FRONr THE STEVUNTON RHGISTF.K.
1. Written out by Jane Austen and signed by her Father, 1800.
2. Written out and signed by her Father, 1776.
WRITING AND NEEDLEWORK 31
looked upon good handwriting as an art to
be carefully cultivated. She alludes to it
more than once in her notes to a little niece,
Caroline Austen, and of her nephew Edward
Austen's writing she says : ' I am quite happy
to see how his hand is improving. I am
convinced that it will end in a very gentle-
manlike hand, much above Par. ' Good writing
was general in Jane's home, and those who
study caligraphy as a key to character might
be interested by finding signs of imagination,
grace of mind, and other pleasant qualities
repeated in the various scripts.
Good needlework was in their time an
accomplishment of great importance in every
household, and this their mother would
certainly teach them, for she was herself
a proficient in it even to the close of a
very long life, and her daughters were
her imitators. The only time Jane ever
bestows serious praise upon a performance
of her own is when she writes word from
Rowling, her brother Edward's first home
in Kent, that they are ' all very busy making
shirts, and I am proud to say that I am the
neatest worker of the party.' No one who
has seen the specimens of her needlework
32 EDUCATION
which still exist can doubt that the praise
was well deserved. One of these, which
looks as if it were fashioned by fairy fingers,
is a tiny housewife containing needles an
inch in length, made for a friend by Jane
at the age of seventeen. Another, belonging
to later years, is a scarf of Indian muslin,
two and a half yards long, embroidered
throughout in white satin stitch, its delicate
beauty being unmarred by a single fault. 1
Equally industrious was she in humbler
tasks. Her niece Anna has written of her
aunts as constantly sitting together, making
clothes for the poor, and varying their occu-
pation by here and there teaching a boy or
girl to read, Jane very probably instructing
a god-daughter of her own, whose father was
coachman to her brother James Austen. 2
Let those who have done the same declare
whether this shows any interest in their
poorer neighbours or not! Yet a foreign
1 The pattern of this scarf has been produced on the
covers of Miss Hill's book, and also been carved on
the oaken margin surrounding the tablet which was
erected through their exertions on the wall of Chawton
Cottage, in 1917, to commemorate the Centenary of
Jane Austen's death.
2 See Miss Hill's book, Chap. I.
SYMPATHY WITH THE POOR 33 V
admirer of her works has not hesitated to f,
charge her with indifference to the needs f.
of the poor, with visiting them as seldom !
as possible, and with never doubting that if
they had been created in order that they [
might serve and respect ' their betters/ {
adding ' Grief and poverty shock her, as f
offensive to her taste, things which she '"
forgets as quickly as possible/ and ' she ;
always turns away from suffering, sadness,
and ugliness/ Of such a character could >
it ever have been said that ' to know her t
was to love her ? ' The only train of thought ,
in this critic's mind appears to be, ' She did
not write of the poor, and therefore she did | i
not care for them/ Jane has, however, left
an unconscious contradiction of such imputa-
tions on the margin of her Goldsmith, who
in one place has described the extreme
destitution of the poorer classes after the
Revolution, in consequence of which a man
and his wife committed suicide. On this
her comment is ready
' How much are the poor to be pitied, and
the Rich to be Blamed ! '
The baseless accusation that she always
turned away from whatever was sad,
34 EDUCATION
unpleasant, or painful, cannot be allowed
pass unnoticed. One simple instance to the cc
trary (among many) is described in a fam:
letter. During their residence at Chawt
Cottage a general outbreak of measles to
place among the Frank Austens, who we
at the time inhabiting the Great House. .
some relief to the overworked nurses
the House, Miss Gibson, a sister of M
Frank Austen, who was one of the parl
was invited over to the Cottage to ha
Her attack of measles there, and Mrs. Auste
in a letter to her grand-daughter Anna, th
sums up the result : ' She wanted a gre
deal of good nursing, and a great deal
good nursing she had/ the nurses bei:
Cassandra, Jane, and their friend Mart:
Lloyd. Anna, when recording this incide
merely adds : ' It was their quiet way
doing great kindnesses/ Jane's powers
a nurse were more severely tried some yea
later when for many weeks she attended <
her brother Henry in an illness in Lond<
of which he nearly died.
In returning to the question of eai
education, it must be pointed out that
the acquisition of foreign languages t.
FOREIGN LANGUAGES 35
daughters of Steventon Rectory were un-
usually fortunate, often having an excellent
teacher of the same resident for long periods
together under its hospitable roof. This
was their own first cousin on the paternal
side, the Comtesse de Feuillide, Elizabeth
Hancock by birth, who in later life became
their sister-in-law. She was greatly attached
to the family at Steventon, especially to
her Uncle George, and she with her mother
spent much time at the Rectory before she
was taken by the latter to finish her educa-
tion in Paris, where in 1781 she married a
French nobleman, Jean Capotte Comte de
Feuillide. She was a lovely and accom-
plished young woman, who went out much
into gay and high society both in Paris and
in London. Her husband's estates were
situated in the south of France, and thither
she at one time travelled, making in the
course of the summer an expedition across
the Pyrenees to take part in the gaieties of
the beautiful watering place, Bagneres de
Bigorre, on their further side. The affec-
tionate and regular correspondence she main-
tained with her English relations does not
seem to have been diminished by these
I f t 36 EDUCATION
i *| foreign experiences, and when political
& j thunderclouds gathered over France the
f ] Comte dispatched her, with her infant son,
i ' to England, to find a safe refuge in Steventon
| Rectory, where she frequently resided in
I ! , the dark days that were to follow, both
y \ before and after the unfortunate Comte
[* I perished on the scaffold in February, 1794.
i It was probably in part to Elizabeth that
I i her younger cousins owed their easy
| | familiarity with the French language, and
1 ,/ also some knowledge of Italian ; as much,
* ; we may suppose, as Anne Elliot owns to in
' Persuasion/ Whatever the amount may
i have been, Jane was tolerably certain, like
I Anne, to have decried, as far as possible,
I ' her own personal share in it. But when
I she describes herself, long afterwards, to
| 4 t Mr. Clarke, the Regent's Librarian, as one
! w j who ' knows only her mother tongue and
I - I has read little in that,' and as 'the most
I ^ i unlearned and uninformed female who ever
dared to be an authoress,' she is indulging
I <- * in a flight of fancy and self-depreciation
I t unusual even for her. It may have formed
1 '" I the foundation for a strange statement made
by a modern critic that ' if she was fond of
KNOWLEDGE OF LITERATURE 37
reading, she knew nothing about literature.
Her letters do not suggest the uneasiness
attached to the possession of a soul as we
moderns understand it.' The connection of
these sentences is not very easy to follow, as
a large . number of persons who certainly
know nothing of literature still believe them-
selves to possess ' a soul/ as that word is
usually understood. But the ' modern soul '
appears to belong to some distinct order of
its own, and thankful may we be that Jane
Austen did not possess its ' uneasiness/
for had she done so, we could never have
possessed works such as those she has left
to the world. Once more, respecting her
knowledge of literature, neither here, nor
on any similar occasion, is she to be taken
at her own valuation. Not only was this
honestly a low one, but it suited her playful
turn of mind to describe her attainments
(excepting in needlework) as even lower
than she believed them to be. Thus, when
assuring Mr. Clarke of her inability to produce
a romance on the whole House of Coburg,
the spirit of nonsense evidently rose up
within her at the idea, making her add that
if, on pain of death, she were forbidden to
38 EDUCATION
laugh at herself or other people, she would
certainly be hung before she had finished the
first chapter. Mr."' Clarke may or may not
have been capable of a smile here it must
remain doubtful for there have evidently
been other persons of a later date quite
unable to perceive when the writer is in-
dulging in the welcome luxury of a pleasant
little jest against herself. Her brother's
account is altogether different. He says:
' Her reading was very extensive in history
and belles-lettres, and her memory extremely
tenacious. Her favourite moral writers were
Johnson in prose, and Cowper in verse. It
is difficult to say at what age she was not
intimately acquainted with the merits and
defects of the best essays and novels in
the English language/
The predominance given to Crabbe
amongst Jane Austen's favourite writers
by various annotators is rather singular. It
has been due to her joke against herself,
preserved by family tradition, and mentioned
in the original ' Memoir/ that ' she thought
she could fancy marrying Mr. Crabbe/ and
on the certain knowledge that she enjoyed
his works. But this was no exclusive enjoy-
THE HOME CIRCLE 39
ment, and he has no place among the poets,
passages from whose works appear in con-
nection with her own heroines. Of these
there are a considerable number. Cowper
was read by Marianne Dashwood and Fanny
Price, the former declaring that his ' beauti-
ful lines have frequently driven me almost
mad.' Anne Elliot studied and discussed
Scott and Byron, and in the laughing choice
of passages from the poets supposed to have
assisted in developing Catherine Morland's
mind, Pope, Gray, Thomson, and Shakespeare
have a place. 'Hamlet' was read aloud in
Mrs. Dashwood's drawing-room, and Henry
Crawford assumes that a knowledge of
Shakespeare is instinctively imbibed from
the atmosphere of every educated household.
A fairly wide acquaintance with English
poets is thus incidentally shown by her
writings, but of Crabbe we only hear that
his ' Tales ' lay among the books on Fanny
Price's table.
A pleasant picture of the home circle
to which Jane belonged while still a child,
as it appeared to a visitor in the house,
exists in a family manuscript, written by a
Mrs. Thomas Leigh, who speaks of her cousin
4 EDUCATION
Cassandra as being the wife of ' the truly
respectable Mr. Austen/ and says: 'With
his sons (all promising to make figures in
life) Mr. Austen educates a few youths of
chosen friends and acquaintances. When
among this Liberal Society, the simplicity,
hospitality, and taste which commonly prevail
in different families among the delightful
valleys of Switzerland ever occurs to my
memory.' x
l An Old, Family History, by the Hon. Agnes Leigh,
National Review, April, 1907.
CHAPTER IV
EDUCATION II
THE general love of literature that prevailed
in Steventon Rectory is a sufficient security
that Jane could not suffer from any in-
tellectual poverty in her home. In the
broader aspects of the word ' education/ she
was also fortunately placed. The thoughts
of her family were bounded by no narrow
horizon. They had private as well as public
reasons for taking a deep interest in im-
portant matters then agitating the nation
at large. While Jane was still quite young
the elders of the family could not, if they
would, have refrained from following with
close attention the great political drama
being played out at that time in another
hemisphere. The then very far off land of
India was brought near to them, and they
were familiarised with many details of Indian
life through the marriage of George Austen's
41
42 EDUCATION
only surviving sister, Philadelphia, to Saul
Tysoe Hancock. Mr. Hancock had been
a companion and early friend of Warren
Hastings before his own marriage took place
at Calcutta, and after that event he and
Philadelphia lived on terms of close intimacy
with Hastings, who became god-father to
their only child, Elizabeth. His own only
child had been placed with the George
Austens, and to their great grief had died
as a young boy when still under their care.
Intercourse between St event on and Calcutta
remained, nevertheless, unbroken ; the trial
of Warren Hastings was followed with the
deepest interest at the Rectory, and when
the impeachment of the latter (begun in
1788) was concluded by an acquittal in 1795,
great were the joy and exultation felt by
his friends in Hampshire.
Of the letters that must have passed
on the occasion only one is extant, coming
from the fluent pen of young Henry Austen,
who addresses Hastings with respectful
devotion and celebrates the great event in
many magnificent phrases. Jane, who was
twenty years old in December, 1795, would
have heard much of Warren Hastings all
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 43
her life, and cannot have failed to take a
part in the excitement and enthusiasm felt
by the whole family. Neither was India
the only foreign land with which the George
Austens were personally concerned. The
troubles already arising in distracted France
must have claimed an even greater share
of their anxious attention, since they so
closely affected their own nearest relations.
Many must have been the stories, both gay
and grievous, told by the young Comtesse
and her mother on their return to St event on,
of life in the French capital at that thrilling
crisis, mixed with descriptions of French
chateau life in the south, and accounts of
the gaieties of the fashionable world of
Paris at the court of Louis XVI. Another
view of foreign society would also reach
the George Austens through their son,
Edward, who, having been when a young
man entirely adopted by the Thomas Knights,
was sent by them, not to a University, but
to make the then fashionable ' Grand Tour
of Europe.' In his case this included a year
spent in Dresden, where he was kindly
received at the Saxon court. Many years
afterwards, when his two eldest sons had
44 EDUCATION
spent some time in that city and had, like
their father, received marks of attention from
the Royal Family, there was a pleasant ex-
change of letters and presents between Prince
Maximilian of Saxony and 'Edward Knight,
ci-devant Austen.' The educational tour
of the latter was afterwards extended to
Rome. 1 Its date was probably 1786-88,
and it comprehended a view of that old
Europe soon to be changed by the con-
vulsion of wars and revolutions. Edward,
on his return home, would have much to
relate of deep interest at Godmersham and
Steventon ; Jane being at this period twelve
or thirteen years old.
Nor should it be forgotten that while
every intelligent and patriotic Englishman
must have been following the events in the
British fleet with unbroken interest, the
Steventon party had a double reason for so
doing, since two of George Austen's sons were
beginning their careers and hazarding their
lives in those naval actions upon the success of
which the safety of the whole nation depended.
We see, then, that at Steventon Rectory
an ample supply of food .for the mind, the
1 Cf. Chawton Manor and its Owners, Chap. VII, p. 158.
LOVE .OF ENGLAND 45
heart, and the imagination was furnished
both by public events and by private
interests, and some expressions used by
Jane in later years show that the girl of
twelve or thirteen, whose comments on the
course of English history, occurring a century
or more before her own birth, we have been
reading, remained to the end of her life
a firm patriot and a strong believer in the
superiority in the ways and the merits of
her native country over those of other lands.
In a letter written to an old friend a few
months before her death, she says : ' I hope
your letters from abroad are satisfactory.
They would not be satisfactory to me I
confess, unless they breathed a strong spirit
of regret for not being in England.' Yet
critics have arisen, ready to accuse her of
possessing only narrow sympathies and little
patriotism, on the sole ground that no dis-
cussions on public affairs, or on the war
with France, appear in her private, intimate
correspondence with her sister Cassandra.
Here we have once more the old cry ' She
did not write of them, therefore she did not
care for them/ The falseness of such an
argument, when it attacks a belief in the
f H - 46 EDUCATION
kindness of Jane Austen's heart has, it is
hoped, been already shown but the second
charge, if somewhat less offensive, stands
on no securer foundation than the first.
Why should she write of public affairs unless
their sailor brothers' personal histories were
[ k * | at the moment affected by them ? Then
t;< f J
M* indeed her pen is always active; but on
public issues let us judge her by ourselves.
Our war of five years' duration is just over ;
how many sisters, when a lapse of two or
three years had familiarised them with the
thought of its existence would have dis-
cussed it, in its public bearings, in letters
to each other devoted to home details ?
Yet might they not justly resent an imputa-
IV * . tion that the absence of such discussions
\i,l $ proved any want of ardent patriotism on
; 1 their own parts ? But to Jane Austen, war,
'.iff far from being a new and unheard of horror,
was an almost normal state of things. Her
>lfil England had during a large portion of her
5fc| short life been constantly at war. The
<i * *
^ Y gravity of the situation could never be for-
gotten, but the recent excitement of our
own country, fed as it has been by telegrams
and journalists, did not exist a hundred years
! '
V
THE NAPOLEONIC WARS 47
earlier, when intelligence of great battles was
often long in reaching England. Such news
might take weeks on its journey, and private
information was still longer on the passage
home. Francis Austen was made a post
captain in consequence of gallantry shewn in
a naval action in the Mediterranean, but he did
not hear of his promotion until six months
after the action had been fought, the necessary
details having taken three months to travel
home to England, while another period of
three months was required to bring news
of such promotion back to himself.
Nor is it accurate to say that Jane makes
no mention of the war to Cassandra; it is
referred to more than once, even in the few
fragments of her letters that we possess.
One passage may be cited, and also inter-
preted, to exculpate the writer from any ap-
parent want of feeling on account of the words
she employs : ' May 21, 1811. How horrible
to have so many people killed ! And what
a blessing that one cares for none of them ! '
The action here alluded to is no doubt
Albuera a very bloody battle, and among
the regiments which suffered most was that
of the ' Buffs ' from East Kent. It is prob-
48 EDUCATION
l able that this contained some Godmersham
friends and that the object of her remark
$ti was to express satisfaction that none of
? them were among the dead.
Considerations such as these may, perhaps,
have some weight in causing critics to hesitate
before accusing Jane Austen, on negative
evidence only, of narrow sympathies, or any
other deficiency. There is also a further reflec-
tion which might have checked any writer in
' drawing conclusions from such of her letters
as have been published, but it is one from
which the bulk of her commentators turn
w
j away, being apparently reluctant to accept
\ the plain account given by a member of
her own family, to whom all the attendant
circumstances of the occurrence he relates
were perfectly well known. Once more
let a most important fact, already referred
to in a previous chapter, be stated ; this
j being, not merely that the great mass of
Jane's letters were destroyed by Cassandra,
but that she kept only those which she con-
sidered so totally devoid of general interest
' t that it was impossible anyone should, at
;, any time, contemplate their publication.
These she bequeathed to her niece, Lady
JANE AUSTEN'S FATHER 49
Knatchbull, whose attachment to her Aunt
Jane had, she knew, been so intense that
letters however trifling would be loved by
her even for the sake of the handwriting
alone. Not only, therefore, in quantity, but
which is far more important in quality,
these letters are entirely unworthy specimens
of her correspondence in general. They are
but ' a gleaning of grapes when the vintage
is done ' when all that was precious had
been safely gathered up, and garnered in
Cassandra's faithful memory, and nothing
had been left behind excepting that which
even she deemed to be altogether negligible,
How vain, then, must be any attempt to
extract from this unvalued remainder that
wine of the spirit with which all the spon-
taneous and uncensored works of 'Jane
Austen's imaginative soul are richly filled !
The mistake already referred to made
by a recent writer, relating rather to her
family than herself, must be once more
noticed, as it concerns the subject of her
education. Being, as it would seem, unaware
of the considerable amount of learning
possessed by Jane's father, and passed on by
him to his children, he pities her for a want
50 EDUCATION
of ' culture ' in her own home, together
H i with the lack of opportunities by which
1 she might have ' sought for its consolations '
in some larger sphere. He asserts without
/ .
ft ' v hesitation that her life must have been ' in
- '"** a measure isolated, from superiority. She
L'J, gave more than she received. Nor can we
believe her entirely unconscious of what life
might have yielded her in more equal com-
panionship.' That ' the highest mounted
minds ' are compelled to fulfil their separate
missions in noble solitude, is no doubt true.
Eminent pioneers of abstract intellectual
effort must necessarily be in advance of other
minds
' Voyaging through strange seas of thought
Alone for ever.'
So is it also 'in the world of imagination.
Every possessor of true creative genius,
having received his separate inspiration, must
as an artist dwell alone with his work, in
which no other human being can claim a
share. But this is a totally distinct thing
from the isolation here declared to have been
experienced by Jane Austen in daily life,
because she had an unavoidable sense of
JANE'S MODEST ASPIRATIONS 51
mental superiority to all her companions.
Nothing can be more opposed to every family
record and all inherited knowledge than
such a conjecture as this. Far from deeming
herself to be the intellectual superior of those
around her, she sincerely believed to the
end of her days that her sister was much
wiser and better informed than herself. Her
brother Henry writes : ' She had ah in-
vincible distrust of her own judgment.' ' She
shrank from notoriety/ ' No accumulation of
fame would have induced her had she lived
to affix her name to any productions of her
pen/ To imagine Jane Austen appearing
as an authoress in any literary circle, in
1 search of the consolations of culture ' is
indeed a strange idea, as unimaginable to
later generations of her family as it would
have been to her own. To live quietly at
home and remain unknown as a writer of
fiction, was her great wish, and the secret
was carefully kept by all her relations until
it was at length^ revealed by the irrepressible
Henry himself. Her thoughts and words
on this occurrence are already recorded,
and they are like herself. 1 So also are the
1 Life and Letters, Chap. XVI, p. 281.
tt
I.
52 EDUCATION
only regrets she ever expressed regarding
shortcomings in education to be found in
her home, these being directed entirely
against herself, and not at all against other
people. She ' wished she had written less
and read more before the age of sixteen.'
Her father's library must have contained
books amply sufficient for the purpose, as,
when quitting Steventon, he left five hundred
volumes to be sold, in addition to those he
may have taken away with him. Jane also
had to dispose of her own modest collection
of books, which was sold for eleven pounds.
In respect to her own characteristic self-
criticism, we may remember that book-
learning does not form the whole of educa-
tion, and that the facility for writing clear
English, which by a constant use of the pen
she acquired very early in life, together with
the formation of a humorous style, were to
prove in her case invaluable attainments.
All the family could write light, amusing
trifles in verse, 1 some of which had consider-
able merit, and Jane's childish absurdities
with their solemn dedications to one or other
of the party would, no doubt, be well received
1 Cf. Appendix, ' Charades.'
AUNT CASSANDRA
53
as the kind of productions naturally to be
expected from a droll and merry little
sister. When the character of her writings
changed with advancing years, and they
became secrets not lightly to be revealed
to critics downstairs, she was equally for-
tunate in the possession of one favourite
and favoured listener. A genial atmo-
sphere of warm and encouraging sympathy
is much needed to foster the developing
shoots of romantic authorship, and of this
she was secure in the companionship of
Cassandra, who, while able to form and main-
tain opinions of her own, felt the strongest
possible admiration and enthusiasm for her
sister's works. One of their nieces, writing
in 1856, speaks of having met ' a most ardent
and enthusiastic lover of Aunt Jane's novels/
and adds : ' Aunt Cassandra herself would be
satisfied at her appreciation of them ; nothing
ever like them, before or since.' This niece's
brother, the first Lord Brabourne, who was
sixteen when Cassandra Austen died in 1845,
has thus written of her : ' From my recol-
lections of " Great Aunt Cassandra," in her
lalltT days, she must have been a very
sensible, charming, and agreeable person.'
54 EDUCATION
Had she been less than this she could hardly
have filled Jane's sisterly heart with such
absolute satisfaction, respect, and admira-
tion as we know to have been the case, and
if further testimony to the strength and
beauty of Cassandra's character is needed,
it may be found in the letters written by
Cassandra herself, immediately after Jane's
death, to their niece, Fanny Knight. 1
No sense of isolation or unfulfilled long-
ings can have troubled Jane's soul when she
had Cassandra beside her, and another and
an older friend for whom she felt intense
love and reverence was also constantly at
hand. This was Mrs. Lefroy, of Ashe Rectory,
always known in Ashe parish, which bordered
on that of St event on and Deane, as ' Madam
Lefroy.' The author of the original ' Memoir '
thus describes her : ' She was a remarkable
person. Her rare endowments of goodness,
talents, graceful person, and engaging manners
were sufficient to secure her a prominent
place in any society into which she was
thrown ; while her enthusiastic eagerness
of disposition rendered her especially attrac-
tive to a clever and lively girl.' The notice
1 Life and Letters, Chap XXI.
MRS. LEFROY 55
and encouragement which Mrs. Lefroy
bestowed upon Jane from her childhood
shows her to have possessed quick powers
of discernment, and great was Jane's grief
when this beloved friend died suddenly, in
consequence of a fall from her horse, in
1804. With so perfect an example of good
breeding always before her eyes, and living , } .
continually in the midst of a family whose j,'
manners and bearing towards each other
always struck the next generation as parti-
cularly pleasant and harmonious, with the
addition moreover of any information the
Comtesse might occasionally impart concern-
ing what Sir William Lucas would have
termed ' the manners of the great/ Taiie
v-J ' \J
could have no difficulty in learning how to
observe and appreciate in the world at large
those various shades of good breeding, or of
its opposite, which appear again and again in
characters scattered throughout her books.
In one of the most sympathetic and correct
of the shorter works dealing with Jane
Austen that have been published in recent
years, the author has inserted all the corre-
spondence that passed between Mrs. Thomas
Knight and young Edward Austen who was
56 EDUCATION
to succeed her late husband at Godmersham
Park. A portion of this appears in, ' Life
and Letters/ Chap. VI, while the whole of it
is of so charming a character that every letter
would repay perusal. 1
On these letters Mr. Pollock makes the
following remarks : ' Comment has often
been made, and most justly made, on the
perfect breeding and manners of those people
in Miss Austen's novels who are supposed
and intended to be well bred. The object
in quoting these letters is to show in what
a perfect atmosphere of dignity and good
feeling Miss Austen passed her life. There
is surely something singularly touching in
the sincere affection and the delightful
courtesy of this correspondence, and it is
certainly most characteristic of the race to
which Miss Austen belonged/ The writer,
as a resident at Chawton, had enjoyed the
friendship of the late owner of Chawton
House, Montagu George Knight, Squire of
Chawton Manor, and no one who was so happy
as to know him can ever have doubted that
in courtesy, in charm of personality and
1 Jane Austen : Her Contemporaries and Herself, by
Walter Henries Pollock. (Longmans & Green.)
o
LOVE OF SPORT 57
manner, combined with an unfailing kind-
ness of heart, he might welt have served as
a model for the highest ideals of his great
aunt, Jane Austen.
In returning to the subject of Jane's edu-
cation, and taking that word in an extended
sense, one characteristic of the family life
around her ought not to be overlooked,
namely, the strong hereditary love of sport
to be found among its members. George
Austen must have received it from his
Kentish ancestors, for he certainly trans-
mitted it to his descendants, even of a third
and fourth generation. All his own boys
hunted at an early age on anything they
could get hold of, and Jane when five or six
must often have gazed with admiring, if
not envious, eyes at her next oldest brother,
Frank, setting off for the hunting field at
the ripe age of seven, on his bright chestnut
pony Squirrel (bought by himself for x xzs.),
dressed in the suit of scarlet cloth made for
him from a riding habit which had formed
part of his mother's wedding outfit. Such
early remembrances would be of real advant-
age to a future novelist, and in the cursory
references to sport occurring in her books we
58 EDUCATION
feel that she is perfectly at home in all branches
of the subject, and could readily enter into
the feelings of Sir John Middleton and Charles
Musgrove towards the precious fox or the
pernicious rat. Nor is it impossible that she
was indulging in a secret smile, born of
remembrance, when Mrs. Jennings exclaims,
' Tis a sad thing for sportsmen to lose a day's
pleasure, poor souls ! I always pity them
when they do they seem to take it so much
to heart.'
When the foregoing statements as to
Jane Austen's home, education, and inter-
course with society are considered, they will,
it is hoped, put an end to any surprise that
she was so well able to paint the lives of
the English gentry, as well as to every surmise
that she took this class for her subject because
she had no knowledge of anything beyond
it. So far as varied reading, first-hand
evidence, and strong personal interest can
teach us, she was probably better acquainted
with other interesting phases of life than
many young English women of the same
period, age, and station. That any surprise
at her choice, of this, for her, most natural
field of work should be felt, is itself the
HER IDEAL IN FICTION 59
surprising thing. No one wonders that Miss
Edgeworth wrote of Ireland, or Sir Walter
Scott of Scotland. Jane Austen was in-
tensely English, by birth and by sympathies.
England she loved and of England she
wrote ; finding her happiness and interest
in the lives of those around her. She might,
no doubt, have indulged in romantic flights
of fancy with India or France for a back-
ground, and filled them with fictitious delights
such as were to be found in the fairy tales
with which she enchanted her little nieces
during their happy visits to Chawton Cottage,
but this would have been play work and
her books were to be solid pieces of real
work, carefully designed and constructed,
polished also with the utmost skill and
patience before they could reach the high
standard of original invention joined to
entire accuracy in minute particulars, which
she appears always to have set before herself.
In no foreign field of work could she have
exhibited that intimate acquaintance with
every aspect and detail which her own
scrupulous judgment demanded. Vagueness
of method, or inaccuracy in particulars, her
taste would have condemned as destructive
60 EDUCATION
of the true object to be aimed at in fiction.
Never having left England herself, she never
attempts to convey her characters across the
sea, and in one of her letters she warns a
young niece who was beginning to compose
stones against committing this mistake.
Her standard as to the right method by
which to captivate the reader's attention
and transport him to another world, at
once imaginary and real, remains firmly
fixed, and the manner in which she attained
it affords, as has been well said in another
connection, ' an instance of that patient
elaboration to which the highest effects in
art are due/ Such results can only be
obtained where a complete knowledge of
the actual goes hand-in-hand with a clear
vision of the ideal. Nothing less than first-
hand, personal knowledge could satisfy the
thoroughness of Jane Austen's nature, or
enable her to fulfil, to the utmost of her
ability, the imperative requirements of her
creative art.
Another highly valuable, and only too
rare gift, which she possessed must not be
left unmentioned, as it was one in which
education bore a share, for ' Nature and
READING ALOUD
61
Art both joined ' to make her a delightful
and accomplished reader aloud. Her brother
Henry writes : ' Her voice was extremely
sweet. She read aloud with very great
taste and 'effect. Her own works were
probably never heard to so much advantage
as from her own mouth, for she partook
largely in all the best gifts, of the comic
muse/ It may be remembered that when
her mother began to read ' Pride and
Prejudice ' aloud on its first arrival from
London, Jane could not repress a secret
regret that she read it too fast, and did not
always make the characters ' speak as they
should do.' But her own aspirations were
high, for as regarded the stage itself she
owns, ' Acting seldom satisfies me. I think I
want something more than can be/
Her nephew and first biographer often
formed part of the family party to whom
she would read her novels aloud, and as he
also was endowed with a charming voice
and excellent taste, the few survivors among
the many of those who in former years
listened to his reading can still believe that
they have, through him, heard the tones and
the manner in which Jane Austen was
6 2 EDUCATION
accustomed to make her characters ' speak
as they should do/ Nor did she read from
her own writings alone. One of her hearers
wrote, as an old man in 1870 : ' She was a
very sweet reader. I last heard her when
she was on a visit to St event on. She had
finished the first canto of ' Marmion ' and
had begun the second, when a visitor was
announced. It was like the interruption of
some pleasing dream, the illusions of which
suddenly vanished/
Nothing has hitherto been said concerning
the most important part of the education
Jane Austen received in her home her
moral and religious training. It will be
found that this is dealt with in the course
of the following chapter.
CHAPTER V !
MORALITY
WAS Jane Austen a Moralist ? ' No ! many
of her fervent admirers will exclaim
'Thank Heaven that she was not!' Her
mission was to amuse, to delight, to
refresh us but neither to reprove nor to
condemn us ! Those who want ' Moral Tales '
must seek them elsewhere ; they are not to be
found among Jane Austen's writings ! They
are not, indeed, if to be moral is to be dull,
and if no one can instruct without growing
tedious. Far, far away from such odious
reproaches must those pages for ever shine
to which we turn again and again, as beguilers
of trouble and companions in mirth, equally
welcome in society or solitude, in sickness
or health, in early life or in advancing years.
They even seem to grow with our growth and
strengthen with our strength, for old though
1 Reprinted by permission from the Quarterly Review
for October, 1919.
63
64 MORALITY
we may be, and wise as we may think our-
selves, we never outgrow their freshness or
their wisdom. Such is the creed of Jane
Austen's earnest adherents. Nor is this all.
In addition to the unflagging interest taken
in her books by successive generations of
readers, a separate interest has grown up in
the hearts of many. For them to know her
books in some cases almost by heart is
much, but it is not enough. They desire to
know herself also, they seek after a more
intimate acquaintance with their unseen
lifelong friend, Jane Austen, who, more than
one hundred years ago, was laid to rest, early
on a summer morning, within the walls of
Winchester Cathedral.
The existence of. such a feeling came to
light as soon as the original ' Memoir of Jane
Austen/ already mentioned, was published
in 1869 by her nephew, the Rev. J. E. Austen-
Leigh. 1 When this book appeared, a sin-
gular change took place. It not only brought
into being a large number of articles, notices,
and reviews concerning its subject and hex-
works, but it also brought to himself a variety
of interesting letters from unknown corre-
1 See Chapter I, p. 3.
TRIBUTES FROM STRANGERS 65
spondents, both English and American, de-
scribing the effect that its perusal had produced
upon the writers' minds. These letters afforded
him much pleasure and not a little sur-
prise. Until that period he had not realised
to how large a number of readers, and
in what a high degree, the Aunt to whom
he as a boy and young man had been so
warmly attached, had also become a living,
though an unseen, friend.
An extract from one of the letters may be
given to serve as a specimen of many others :
' Your Memoir has but one drawbackit
leaves us with a sad craving for more . . .
much as we loved and honoured her before,
we love and honour her the more for what
you have told us of her, and in the name of
my Grandfather, Father, Uncles and Aunts,
Cousins and Children, I thank you for your
book/
Words such as these showed that it was
not only as an author but as a woman that
Jane Austen had made her way into the
affections of many readers. Entreaties also
arrived that any stories, or fragments of
stories, left by her in manuscript might be
published, one correspondent urging that
66 MORALITY
' Every line from the pen of Jane Austen is
precious.' In response to these warmhearted
applications, the writer of the ' Memoir ' could
do little beyond attending to the last-men-
tioned request. Having obtained the neces-
sary permission from those members of his
family to whom the original manuscripts had
been bequeathed by Jane's sister, Cassandra,
he included in the second edition of his
'Memoir' 'Lady Susan/ 'The Watsons/ the
alternative ending of ' Persuasion/ and some
of her childish writings. The reasons why it
was impossible for him at the time to do
more than this have been already stated and
mention has been made of books subsequently
put forth by other members of Jane Austen's
family, containing fresh information regarding
the external aspects of her history which may
in some degree have fulfilled the wishes of
the eagerly enquiring readers of the original
'Memoir/
But though gratified, they may not be
wholly satisfied. They may still desire a
more intimate acquaintance with her inner
self, with those hidden recesses of feeling
concerning which a delicate reserve impelled
her to keep a very sacred silence. They
long
A NEW PATH 67
for a sight of the vanished
not from idle curiosity, but that,
words already recorded, ' Much as
loved and honoured her before, they
learn to love and honour her still more/
lettural but a vain wish I - The letters
long ago sacrificed by Cassandra
offering of love and reverence to the
of a sister unspeakably clear to
*Tet though in this way we can learn
ling, there is another path, hitherto, w<;
ive, untrodden, by the help of which.
rtxay attain a point of view affording us
e; fresh knowledge respecting those inner
Dictions Jane Austen was always slow
evealing to the public gaze, and which
stt the same time offer a reason for the.
Btion at the beginning of this chapter.
accomplish such an object we must turn
ter books and reverse our usual attitude
rtind towards them by considering <>a,oh
y, not as a separate creation, hut as
: of a general whole. From an artistic
.dpoint there is nothing that can tempt
-o act in this manner. Every novel is
.plete in itself, possessing its own plot,
68 MORALITY
characters, and distinctive atmosphere in
a remarkable degree. We find scarcely any
repetition of ideas among the six, and
this may induce the belief that while com-
parison is easy, combination is impossible,
as they possess no similarity among them-
selves apart from the creative, dramatic,
humorous qualities common to all. This
is our first, and not unnatural, conclusion.
Nevertheless it will be seen on reflection
that there is one feature which declares their
family likeness. There is one line of thought,
one grace, or quality, or necessity, which-
ever title we like to know it by, apparent
in all her works. Its name is Repentance.
It will be found on examination that this
incident recurs in all her novels, neither
being dragged in as a moral nor dwelt upon
as a duty, but quietly taking its place as a
natural and indispensable part of the plot
as an inevitable incident in the formation
and development of each successive child
of her imagination. Every one, gayer or
graver as the case may be, has its own testi-
mony to give on this question, while all
display the skill with which the author
knew how to handle the subject according
CATHERINE MORLAND'S REPENTANCE 69
to the varying needs of place, character,
and surroundings. We shall find that it could
not be dispensed with, even in her very early
and most lighthearted story, ' Northanger
Abbey/ Here the young heroine, under the
excitement of wild and captivating romances,
allows herself to believe that the man in , .
whose house she is a guest had, not long *'*
before, desired, perhaps connived at, the
death of his own excellent and charming
wife, or, at the very least, is keeping her
immured in some dungeon on the premises.
Such delusions could not be suffered to go
unpunished. Nor were they, but having
arisen from nothing worse than wonderful
folly, the penalty inflicted is mercifully j
abridged. Still, the offender has to undergo
a period of sharp anguish, brought upon
her by a not unreasonable remonstrance
on the part of the hero, a son of the
supposed villain. Its effect was immediate.
' Catherine/ we read, ' was completely
awakened. Most grievously was she humbled.
Most bitterly did she cry. She hated her-
self more than she could express/ But
Jane Austen, we are very sure, would never
break a butterfly upon the wheel, conse-
70 MORALITY
quently we learn with no surprise that, after
forming a resolution of ' always judging
and acting in the future with the greatest
good sense/ and being assisted by Henry
Tilney's ' astonishing generosity and noble-
ness of character in never alluding to what
had passed/ Catherine is ready to be con-
soled by ' the lenient hand of time/ which
' did much for her by insensible gradations
in the course of another day/ and that she
has nothing to do but to ' forgive herself and
be happier than ever/ Nevertheless, so
effectually has the work of penitence been
performed that when General Tilney, not
long afterwards, turns her out of his house
at a few hours' notice, she magnanimously
abstains from reverting to her previous sus-
picions that he has at an earlier period either
poisoned or shut up his wife.
Passing from these playful pages to those
of her latest and most pathetic work,
' Persuasion/ we find the same chord struck,
but in a minor key and with a softer tone.
Nothing glaringly wrong could become a
character of whom her own creator wrote
beforehand to a niece ' You may perhaps
like the heroine, as she is almost too good
ANNE ELLIOT'S REPENTANCE 7 i
for me.' Anne Elliot's error was want of
judgment, of too meek a submission to the
direction of an older friend, an error that
' leaned to virtue's side/ and which was
embraced by her unselfish spirit the more
readily because, though destructive of her
own happiness, she was persuaded to believe
that it would promote the future good of a
man whom she devotedly loved. Want of
mental balance and some youthful weak-
ness of character are the worst charges
that can be brought against this almost
perfect being, yet for these she has to suffer
long and to learn, through suffering, the
nature of the mistake she had made.
Repentance, in the form of deep regret,
overtook her as years passed on. ' She
felt/ we are told, ' that were any young
person in similar circumstances to apply to
her for counsel they would never receive
any of such certain immediate wretchedness
such uncertain future good/ Captain
Wentworth had on his side a worse fault
to repent of. 'I was proud/ he cried, ' too
proud to understand or to do you justice
too proud to ask you again. This is a
recollection which ought to make me forgive
72 MORALITY
everyone sooner than myself/ Readers can
only agree with both speakers and rejoice
in the sequel that closes these confessions.
Much graver instances of misconduct and
its subsequent results will be found in the
four remaining novels. Even in the story
written when Jane Austen was quite a
young girl, called first ' Elinor and Marianne/
and afterwards 'Sense and Sensibility/ the
plot is made to hinge upon the evils inflicted
by the heroine upon herself and her family
through too violent indulgence in a romantic
passion. This renders her indifferent to the
needs and the claims of other people, and
blind to the sorrow of her sister, who is also
suffering in silence from an unfortunate
attachment. It is not until Marianne is
herself in the depths of disappointed affection
that her eyes are opened to the truths around
her. Then ' Oh 1 Elinor/ she cries, ' you
have made me hate myself for ever. How
barbarous have I been to you ! you, who
have been my only comfort, who have borne
with me in all my misery, who have seemed
to be only suffering for me ! ' Such is her
first burst of penitence, to be strengthened
by time and a severe illness, after which
MARIANNE DASHWOOD'S REPENTANCE 73
she speaks once more : ' I considered the
past. ... I saw in my own behaviour
nothing but a series of imprudence towards
myself and want of kindness to others. I
saw that my own feelings had prepared my
sufferings, and that my want of fortitude
under them had almost led me to the grave.
. . . Had I died, it would have been self-
destruction/ The enthusiasm of her self-
reproving spirit flows on to be checked
only by resolutions of future amendment,
for though as yet unable to believe that
her remembrance of Willoughby will ever
be weakened by time, she can still add, ' But
it shall be regulated, it shall be checked by
religion, by reason, by constant employment '
a resolution sincerely made and faithfully
kept.
Repentance in a double form comes
before us in the next novel. Nowhere in
any of her other writings does it play so
conspicuous a part as in ' Pride and Prejudice/
The whole scheme of the book depends
upon its being felt, in a very high degree,
by the two principal characters, upon its
influencing their actions during the last half
of the book and leading steadily up to its
74 MORALITY
closing scenes. The late Professor W.
Courthope has left a striking analysis of the
manner in which this feeling affected the hero
of the book and the consequent changes it
wrought within him. 1 For this, as for the
whole work, he expresses the warmest pos-
sible admiration, comparing it, on account
of the manner in which ' under a common-
place surface a great artist has revealed a
most dramatic conflict of universal human
emotions,' to the structure of some grand
Greek play. By no other writer can Jane
Austen's genius have been dwelt upon with
more eloquence or more sympathetic recog-
nition ; but even this appreciation is incom-
plete, for it contains no reference to the
corresponding work of repentance effected
in the heroine by the words and actions of
the hero. Yet had this been lacking, the
perfectly proportioned plot, to which he
accords unqualified praise, could never have
been constructed and developed. Elizabeth's
self-reproach, so soon as she recognises the
truth, is not less severe than Darcy's. ' She
grew absolutely ashamed of herself . . .
1 ' Life in Poetry, Law in Taste.' Lectures delivered in
Oxford by Professor W. J. Courthope, 1895-1900. Vol. V.
ELIZABETH BENNET'S REPENTANCE 75
of neither Darcy nor Wickham could she
think without feeling that she had been
blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.' ' How
despicably have I acted/ she cried, ' I who
have valued myself on my abilities . . . how
humiliating is this discovery ! . . . Yet how
just a humiliation ! I have courted pre-
possession and ignorance and have driven
reason away, where either were concerned.
Till this moment I never knew myself.'
Again, in a confession to her sister she admits
' I was very uncomfortable, I may say,
unhappy, and with no one to speak to of
what I felt, no Jane to comfort me and say
I had not been so very weak and vain and
nonsensical as I knew I had ! Oh ! how I
wanted you ! ' Time, by disclosing more
of Darcy's real character, could only deepen
such regrets and make her grieve over
' every ungracious sensation she had ever
encouraged, every saucy speech she had ever
directed towards him. For herself she was
humbled, but she was proud of him. Proud
that in a cause of compassion and honour
he had been able to get the better of himself.
Darcy's self-condemnation was equally strong.
' My behaviour towards you/ he assures
76 MORALITY
her, ' merited the severest reproof. It was
unpardonable. I cannot think of it without
abhorrence. . . . The recollection of what
I said, of my conduct, my manners, my
expressions, is now, and has been for many
months, inexpressibly painful to me. ... I
have been a selfish being all my life . . .
what do I not owe you ! You taught me a
lesson hard indeed at first, but most advan-
tageous. By you I was properly humbled.'
Such reciprocal repentance and confession
could not fail to bring reciprocal forgive-
ness, and the title of the book ceases to be
appropriate before the last page is turned.
Reciprocity in error and penitence were
not destined to console the remaining heroine,
who falls, entirely through her own fault,
into deep distress. Emma Woodhouse,
having erred alone, has to endure her burden
of remorse in solitude. Every reader will
admit that Emma went through vanity
further astray than Elizabeth Bennet through
prejudice, a verdict foreseen by the author,
who, while declaring that how she would be
able to ' tolerate those who do not like
Elizabeth she does not know/ frankly admits
that in Emma she is going to take a heroine
EMMA WOODHOUSE'S REPENTANCE 77
' whom no one will like but herself/ She
did take her, however, to endow her with
that ' nature and spirit ' which were dear
to her own heart, and drawing a being, full
of faults, and yet, as Emma's lover believes
at the end, ' faultless in spite of them.'
But justice could not allow this conclusion
to be reached until great vicissitudes of
feeling had been endured. Emma's faults
had . inflicted much pain and distress upon
other persons, consequently, at the proper
moment, they had to bring corresponding
wretchedness upon herself. ' Her feelings/
we are told, after Mr. Knightley's expostula-
tion on Box Hill, ' were combined of anger
against herself, mortification, and deep con-
cern. . . . The truth of his representation
there was no denying. She felt it at her
heart. How could she have been so brutal,
so cruel to Miss Bates ! ' Far heavier retribu-
tion, however, is still awaiting her when she,
with horror, finds herself obliged to listen to
Harriet Smith's outpourings of hopes and
expectations respecting Mr. Knightley. Then
she saw her own conduct with a clearness
which had never blessed her before. . . .
' What blindness, what madness, had led her
i :!&&
78 MORALITY
on ! It struck her with dreadful force, and
she was ready to give it every bad name in
the world. . . . With insufferable vanity had
she believed herself to be in the secret of
everybody's feelings ; with unpardonable
arrogance proposed to arrange everybody's
destiny. She was proved to have been
universally mistaken ; and she had not quite
done nothing for she had done mischief.'
' What/ in conclusion, ' could be increasing
Emma's wretchedness but the reflection,
never far distant from her mind, that it
had been all her own work ? The only
source whence anything like consolation or
composure could be drawn was in the resolu-
tion of her own better conduct and in the
hope that every future winter of her life
would find her more rational, more acquainted
with herself, and leave her less to regret
when it were gone.' Satisfied with such
genuine repentance, the author can now
permit herself to make this favourite heroine
once more happy.
Can we avoid perceiving that these five
pictures of life resemble each other in so
far that every one of them gives a description,
closely interwoven with the structure of
JANE AUSTEN'S BENT OF MIND 79
the story and concerned with its principal
characters, of error committed, conviction
following, and improvement effected, all of
which may be summed up in the word ' Re-
pentance ' ? If so, do we not also through
this perception gain more knowledge as
to the habitual bent of that mind in which
these successive creations arose ? Does not
Jane Austen's outlook upon life grow clearer
to us when we learn that it was not merely
by the ' follies and nonsense, whims and
inconsistencies ' (as she makes Elizabeth
Bennet call them) ever visible on the surface
of society, that her quick eyes were caught,
but that her penetrating gaze went down to
the hidden springs of action, prompting her
to reflect upon the race that all human
beings have to run in this world, upon the
various courses they pursue, and upon the
necessity of powerful influences being
exercised over them, in order to bring about
that improvement of character which is
the final purpose of it all ? Can we fail to
see how, in dealing with these heroines, she
desired to leave them, not only happier, but
better, than she found them ; wiser, stronger,
humbler, and more charitable, richer in
80 MORALITY
self-control, and in that self-knowledge on
which she always places a high value ? If
we have seen all this, we have seen also
something of her hidden self.
There is still another book, standing in
some respects apart from the rest, through
which we acquire even more information
on this subject. ' Mansfield Park ' is the
gravest novel Jane Austen ever wrote. It
was composed after a long interval of silence,
and may be called a ' Second First/ It
was the result of a wider experience of man-
kind, together with that of various personal
trials which she had to undergo during
eight years passed in large towns after
quitting Steventon in 1801. She herself
when writing this book declared ' it was
not half so entertaining as " Pride and
Prejudice/' ' an opinion with which her
readers may or may not agree. In its
pages humour, insight into character, creative
genius, and power of description shine as
brightly as ever, but in addition, to these
we are aware of a deeper seriousness and a
more searching enquiry into the ultimate
issues of conduct than had as yet appeared
in- her works. The author of the original
TEN YEARS OF SILENCE 81
' Memoir ' was informed that a number of well-
known literary men who happened to meet
at a country house agreed to write down
the title of their favourite novel. The only
name which appeared more than once was
'Mansfield Park/ and this had been chosen
by three or four of the company, while all
united in admiring the book. Such a power
of attracting powerful minds may be due
to the union of brilliant writing with serious
reflection which its pages contain, and it is
interesting to recall the circumstances under
which this novel, the first important original
work taken in hand by. her for ten years, was
written.
The lapse of ten years, beginning in early
womanhood, can hardly pass over any head
without producing sensible differences. To
Jane Austen they had brought many changes,
as enumerated in ' Life and Letters.' 1
Sorrow had touched her closely. She had
lost through sudden death, and almost
simultaneously, her father and her much-
loved friend, Mrs. Lefroy of Ashe. The same
cause had brought to an end her own personal
romance, inflicting a wound which was, as
x Life and Letters, Chap. XIV.
82 MORALITY
we know, not the less but the more likely
to have been deeply felt, on account of the
silence preserved by Cassandra on this subject
for many years after her sister's death, and
the guarded manner in which she at length
alluded to it. Other trials and troubles
had come upon the Austen family in recent
years, one being of a most unusual nature,
threatening to overwhelm some of them in
irretrievable disaster, and to bring lasting
distress upon their whole circle. 1 That such
practical acquaintance with some of life's
heaviest afflictions should for a time stop
all flow of fancy on Jane Austen's part is
not surprising, nor that the only new work
she began during this period should have
been broken off at the end of the twelfth
chapter, apparently because the author
ceased to feel any interest in its contents.
One more loss this time neither sudden nor
unusual must be added to those already
mentioned. She had lost her youth. At
the age of twenty-five, while still a young
woman, she had left her native place, her
earliest friends, and every well-loved scene
associated with the first overflowings of her
1 Life and Letters, Chap. IX.
RETURN TO AUTHORSHIP 83
happy girlish fancies. It was the birthplace,
not of herself alone, but of many creations,
born to a far longer existence than hers
was destined to be upon earth all those
characters that live and move for us through-
out the pages of her first three novels. Eight
years were to pass before a return to Hamp-
shire would take place, and her own words
have described how much such a period can
include. ' Eight years . . . what might not
eight years do ? Events of every description,
changes, alienations, removals, all, all- must
be comprised in it/ 1 The varied events
which this passage of time had held for
herself can hardly have been absent from
her thoughts when she placed such a reflection
in the mind of Anne Elliot, rejoicing no doubt
that it was in her power to restore to that
heroine a happiness which her own heart
might never now know. It is certain that
on beginning a country life at Chawton she
and Cassandra were satisfied to assume to
themselves, too readily as some of their
relations considered, the position of middle-
aged women. It is impossible, however, not
to rejoice at any decision that ensured to
1 Persuasion, Chap. VII.
i
84 MORALITY
her a larger amount of quiet leisure for
composition, and now it was, after the
revision of two earlier works had renewed
the habit of writing, that ' Mansfield Park '
was begun in February, 1811, to be finished
in June, 1813.
Here we find the theme, never absent from
her works, displayed again, and in an acuter
form, for in this book we meet with the chief
and saddest example of repentance that her
pen ever drew the saddest because, in a
sense, the most unavailing. There can be no
comparison between any of the cases already
mentioned and that of an unhappy father
whose ' anguish arising from the conviction
of his own errors in the education of his
daughters was never to be entirely done
away.' Such are Sir Thomas Bertram's feel-
ings as he contemplates a domestic tragedy
for which he believes these errors to have been
the primary cause. It is not with folly and
thoughtlessness that ' Mansfield Park ' deals,
but with vice and sin, with misery and degra-
dation ; subjects the writer herself describes
as ' odious/ which she touches as distantly
and dismisses as rapidly as possible. Thai
she forced herself to write of them at all tends
JANE AUSTEN'S CONVICTIONS 85
to show that some of the phases of the
fashionable life she had been observing around
her had impressed themselves so deeply on
her soul that her spirit could not rest until she
had entered a protest, through the medium of
her own dramatic art, against these forms
of evil. A record remains which shows that
in her opinion this was the only proper
method for a writer of fiction to employ.
Soon after the publication of the original
' Memoir ' its writer received a letter from a
well-known clergyman, who stated that he
had been intimately acquainted with a lady
who had known Jane Austen well, and from
whom he had heard much about her. He
spoke of ' the tribute of my old friend to the
real and true spring of a religion which was
always present though never obtruded.' ' Miss
Austen/ she used to say, ' had on all the
subjects of enduring religious feeling the
deepest and strongest convictions, but a
contact with loud and noisy exponents of
the then popular religious phase made her
reticent almost to a fault/ She had some-
thing to suffer in the way of reproach from
those who believed she might have used her
genius to greater effect, ' but ' (her old friend
86 MORALITY
^ used to say) ' I think I see her now, defending
:* x what she thought was the real province of a
delineator of life and manners and declaring
her belief that example, and not " direct
preaching," was all that a novelist could
afford properly to exhibit.' 1
Means such as these when employed by
herself are so powerful and speak so plainly
that it is difficult to see how to any author
the title of ' Moralist ' can be more justly
given. Those who object to it in her case, as
necessarily implying a double point of view
in a writer's mind, destructive of that sim-
plicity of aim which ought to be the inspiring
motive of any true work of art, should con-
sider whether there is in ' Mansfield Park '
* any evidence that the design of the artist has
been cramped by the mind of the moralist.
There are, again, others who would dis-
approve of the terms ' Morality/ ' Moral
Precepts/ as falling short of the highest ideals,
and implying something that may be only
cold and formal, based upon a theory that
correct conduct should be maintained because
1 This lady used to add, ' Anne Elliot was ^herself,
her enthusiasm for the Navy and her perfect unselfishness
reflect her completely.
SIR T. BERTRAM'S REPENTANCE 87
it is in the long run the most likely method of
obtaining success and comfort in this world.
If so, then ' Mansfield Park ' may again be
quoted to refute, in its author's opinion,
any such theory, for it contains a strong
protest against worldliness and the ideals
that worldliness upholds, whether in educa-
tion, marriage, or general society. In this
book she plainly declares her belief that
moral conduct must spring from a deeper
source and cherish a higher aim than this.
She had seen, and would describe, how
little dependence can be placed upon well-
bred decorum and outward propriety unless
they are inspired by religious principles.
The veil of habitual reticence employed by
her on these subjects is here drawn further
back, and the language used is more explicit
than in any of her other books. Sir Thomas
Bertram's self-reproach is addressed to this
very point. He came to feel, we are told,
that ' Something must have been wanting
within.' He feared that principle, active prin-
ciple had been wanting ; that his daughters
had never been taught to govern their in-
clinations and tempers properly by that
sense of duty which alone can suffice. They
88 MORALITY
1. ad been instructed theoretically in their
religion, but never required to bring it into
daily practice. To be distinguished for ele-
gance and accomplishments, the authorised
object of their youth, could have had no
useful influence that way, no moral effect on
' the mind ... of the necessity of self-denial
and humility he feared they had never heard
from any lips that could profit them.' Again,
the term ' Sin ' is given to express flagrant
evil. Edmund employs it in his last inter-
view with Mary Crawford, and of her brother
we are told that ' though too little accus-
tomed to serious reflection to know good
principles by their proper name, yet in his
highest praises of Fanny he expressed what
was inspired by the knowledge of her being
well principled and religious/
We learn here more of Jane Austen's deep
feelings on moral questions than she has
expressed elsewhere, but every allusion to
them in her other works is in complete
harmony with the teachings set forth in the
latter chapters of ' Mansfield Park.' When,
therefore, we find in the sister volumes the
not infrequent words ' principles ' and ' duty '
we should remember how much they imply,
JANE AUSTEN'S HUMILITY 89
and that we have, as already stated, evi-
dence proving her general reticence on these
important points to be intentional and not
accidental. ' Still waters run deep/ and the
uniform though restrained teaching in these
books assures us of the steadfastness of con-
viction respecting the highest subjects on the
part of her to whom we owe their existence.
The virtues she loves to cultivate in her
characters she would certainly seek after for
herself ; the ' self-knowledge ' she prizes so
highly as a means of improvement she would
personally desire for the same reason, nor
was there in her that want of humility which
prevents some souls from ever acquiring it.
All her life she looked up to Cassandra as her
superior in wisdom and goodness, and to its
very close she esteemed others as better than
herself, for on her deathbed she wrote to a
nephew, ' God bless you, my dear Edward.
If ever you are ill, may you be as tenderly
nursed as I have been. May the same blessed
alleviations of anxious sympathising friends
be yours ; and may you possess, as I daresay
you will, the greatest blessing of all in the
consciousness of not being unworthy of their
love. I could not feel this/
go MORALITY
That she had reflected silently on solemn
questions some expressions in her letters
show us, and one of her elder nieces has
written : ' When Aunt Jane was grave she was
very grave, graver I think even than Aunt
Cassandra.' Such thoughts on her part, and
such an attitude of mind will not appear
improbable when we recall her ancestry
and education. Her father on one side,
her grandfather on the other, had been
excellent and active parish priests. By
precept and by example she had received
both from her stricter mother and her gentler
father the firm religious principles which
governed her throughout life. Mrs. George
Austen writes, on returning from a visit to
London, that in it ' everyone seems in a
hurry/ adding ' Tis a sad place, I would
not live in it on any account, one has not
time to do one's duty either to God or Man '
a verdict that may provoke a smile, but
which serves to show the speaker's conviction
as regards the great object of human life.
George Austen's instructions to his sons
express, as might be expected, the same
belief. In a long letter of advice, written
to the elder of his two sailor sons, Francis,
PARENTAL TRAINING 91
when the latter first went to sea, ' attention
to religious duties ' is given the primary
place, and never were they forgotten by
him or by his brothers to the close of their
long and honourable careers. Round these
twin poles, therefore, ' Duty to God and duty
to Man/ had Jane Austen been taught that
life should revolve, and this it is that she
always presupposes would be accepted in
a like manner by the heroes and heroine 3
in all her books. Not that she considers
them to be ' already perfect. 5 ' Pictures
of perfection/ she owns, ' make me sick and
wicked/ No wonder ! She knew human
nature too well for it to be possible that she
should accept them as faithful portraits,
but this is what she wishes to make her own
favourite creations aspire towards throughout
the course of their several histories.
To some, perhaps to many, it may appear
hardly necessary to insist upon all this. ' We
have long known/ they would say, ' the
moral tendency of her books, and have
believed in the firmly religious convictions
of the mind that produced them. Why,
then, spend so much time on gilding gold or
painting the lily white ? ' Two reasons may
92 MORALITY
be given in answer to this question, the first
and obvious one being that what is evident
to certain minds is not therefore so to all,
and that among the latter class there may be
those who sincerely desire a closer intimacy
with Jane Austen's inner self, and who may,
by taking the novels as a whole, find that
they can come nearer to comprehending
something fresh and fundamental respect-
ing the nature and soul of their author.
But there is a second reason, and not a slight
one. Jane Austen has now more than one
public. Her novels are read, appreciated,
and reviewed in other countries besides
our own. In France they have recently
been again brought forward in a work of
great ability, by a writer who describes
her as ' une romanciere que 1'Angleterre
compte parmi ses plus parfaits artistes de
lettres et que roriginalite aussi bien que
le merite de son ceuvre font qualifier d'incom-
parable.' l Mile. Villard gave further proof
of her admiration for Jane Austen's novels
by choosing them as the subject of her
1 Jane Austen : sa vie et son cewuve, par Leonie
Villard, Agr6g6e de rUni.versi.t6, Docteur es lettres (1915),
preface.
MLLE. VILLARD'S ' LA VIE ' 93
thesis when standing for the Doctorial degree
lately bestowed upon her by the Sorbonne.
Her knowledge and enthusiasm could hardly
be surpassed, while the insight and talent
with which her long and important book is
rilled can scarcely be overpraised. But
though the merit of the book is great, this
makes it only the more regrettable that the
view taken by its writer of Jane Austen's
character is so mistaken as to be in some
respects exactly the reverse of the truth.
This is especially the case when dealing
with its religious aspect. Mile. Villard first
asserts that the Church of England was in
the eighteenth century destitute of all religious
fervour, which, in her own words, ' a disparu
pour faire place a rindifference,' * and then
passes from the general to the particular
by assuming that the same must therefore
be true of Jane Austen's writings, and that,
for the characters she depicts, religion is
merely ' une fait de meme ordre que celui
d' observer les regies de la biense"ance mon-
daine.' In proof of this statement a remark
of Archbishop Seeker, divorced from its
context, is given, no reference being made
1 Page 235.
94 MORALITY
to any evidence leaning the other way
, furnished by English divines, or, above all,
\' by those who employed the natural voice
fc ' of strong emotion, poetry though of these
there were a considerable number, including
such as belonged to the school of religious
' mystics. Of one of these latter Norris
Sir F. Palgrave writes that in 1730 his poems
i had passed through ten editions, ' one prooi
out of many/ he adds, ' how exaggerated is
t that criticism which describes that period
as devoid of inner life and spiritual aspira-
tion.' * It is thus spoken of in ' La Vie/
where it is called cold, formal, concerned
with externals only, and destitute of any
' elan vers un au-dela.' Having passed this
\4 , ' r judgment upon the Church to which Jane
Austen belonged, similar conclusions are come
to regarding herself. Sermons, it is said,
were wearisome to her ; but a love of sermons,
as St. Louis told our Henry III. long ago, is
not an indispensable element in the religious
life. Moreover, Jane Austen herself says :
' I am very fond of Sherlock's Sermons, and
prefer them to almost any.' It is also asserted
that she took no interest in anything outside
1 The Treasury of Sacred Song, Note CXL1X.
MISTAKES IN ' LA VIE ' 95
' a series of traditional rites/ as the services of
her Church are called, and that she as a writer
' eloigne de son observation la souffrance,
la tristesse et la laideur/ proving that, as
a woman, she cared nothing for the sorrows
and wants of the poor. Other entire mis-
apprehensions of her nature are also evident,
but being concerned with points of com-
paratively minor importance these need not
be entered upon here. The sum total,
however, represents a narrow nature, with
a heart cold towards God and unsympathetic
towards man, somewhat contemptuous of
the needy and ignorant and caring little for
any fellow creatures beyond those of her
immediate family circle. Easy indeed is it
to prove the contrary, both from her own
letters and from the writings of her relations,
and to show how completely such a conclusion
misrepresents her attitude of mind towards
the highest questions. But all serious
students of her biography may be left to
discover this for themselves. They can weigh
the assertions made in ' La Vie ' against the
testimony given by those who knew her
intimately as to her faith, unselfishness,
humility, and the ' piety which ruled her in
96 MORALITY
life and supported her in death/ Above
all, they will examine the records of that
closing scene, when face to face with a
comparatively early death, f neither her love
of God nor her fellow creatures flagged for
a moment/ and will consider whether such
faith, courage, and entire submission to the
Divine will could have been felt by one to
whom religion was ' merely a matter of
externals/
Mile. Villard's book is, as a literary
criticism, so exhaustive and valuable that
it will probably be accepted in France as a
standard work on Jane Austen and her novels.
It may have already served to increase the
number of readers in that country, and this
number is likely to become larger, for at the
present time, when a strong desire is felt that
the bonds between our nearest Ally and our-
selves should be drawn closer, those formed
by a mutual study of each other's literature
can hardly be neglected. As it must be
desirable that correct ideas of the writer of
any English classic should be offered to the
French nation, those who are the most nearly
concerned in seeing that justice is done to
the personal character of Jane Austen, and
ARCHBISHOP WHATELY'S WORDS 97
who are best able to speak of it from authentic
and unimpeachable testimony, could hardly
be excused if they failed to offer a protest
against the estimate regarding it put forth
in 'La Vie/ as being utterly unworthy of her
and entirely misleading in respect of a vital
part of her nature. It is well to recall that
this was comprehended and rightly described
by a juster and more discriminating judge
nearly one hundred years ago, when Arch-
bishop Whately, in the Quarterly Review, thus
summed up his estimate of herself and her
works l :
' Miss Austen introduces very little of
what is technically called religion into her
books, yet that must be a blinded soul which
does not recognise the vital essence, every-
where present in her pages, of a deep and
enlightened piety/
1 Quarterly Reviczv, No. XXIV, January, 1821.
NOTE. The present writer is happy to state that she
has received an assurance from Mile. Villard that the mis-
apprehensions relating to Jane Austen's character objected
to in this chapter shall bo revised and amended in any
future edition of ' La Vie.'
CHAPTER VI
* LADY SUSAN '
WHEN ' Lady Susan ' first appeared in print,
this title being prefixed to the second
edition of Mr. Austen Leigh's original
'Memoir/ it was remarked by more than
one critic that so short a story should
hardly have been allowed to give a name
to a whole volume. With this observation
the editor entirely agreed. He knew it had
been arranged that the tale itself should be
placed after the ' Memoir/ together with other
unpublished writings of the author, and, there-
fore, when the second edition of his work
appeared, bearing the title of t Lady Susan/
he felt both surprise and regret. He foresaw
the disappointment of its readers when they
should discover the nature and brevity of
the story, and still more did he feel that to
put forward, as though on a par with her
other works, a character sketch which she
98
DATE OF ' LADY SUSAN ' 99
never intended to give to the world, would
not appear on his own part to be showing
due respect to the memory and judgment
of his aunt. So scrupulous was he on this
point that even in writing the short notice
prepared for it, when he had no expectation
that the title would be affixed to the whole
volume, he said, ' If it should be judged
unworthy of the publicity now given to it,
the censure must fall on him who has put
it forth and not on her who kept it locked
up in her desk.'
The exact date of its composition is
uncertain, but there are several reasons for
preferring an early one. It was written in
letters, the form used in some of the novels
known to Jane Austen almost from child-
hood and employed by her when she was
very young in (a) an unpublished fragment,
(b) the first version of ' Sense and Sensibility,
called ' Elinor and Marianne/ and again
(c) in ' Lady Susan/ which seems to place the
latter in the category of early compositions.
This, it is true, would not be a sufficient
proof if taken alone. The author may have
thought that the most forcible way of dealing
with Lady Susan would be by leaving her
zoo 'LADY SUSAN'
to speak for herself, and might therefore have
chosen to narrate the history in the form of
letters. Critics have observed, not unnatu-
rally, that this remarkable analysis of a
vicious woman's nature seems a strange
subject for a young girl either to have at-
tempted or to have succeeded in, and such
a conviction has made it the more difficult for
them to imagine what date should be assigned
to the work. There is, we believe, but one
solution to this puzzle, one that was discerned
by a correspondent of the present writer,
whose position had enabled him to observe
human nature closely, and who," though
knowing Jane Austen's six novels well, had
recently read ' Lady Susan ' for the first
time. He says in his letter concerning the
book, I find it very clever. It is, of course,
more bitter and worldly than her other
works, but it shows a- tremendous insight
into shams. I feel quite sure the character
is drawn from life/ How far the last remark
is justified by facts may be decided after the
reader has perused the following true history
taken from a family MS.
' About two hundred years ago, Mr. and
Mrs. , well-connected people, were
A FAMILY MS.
101
living on their property in the Midlands,
with a family of one son and five daughters.
The daughters had but a rough life. Their
mother, a beautiful woman and most cour-
teous and fascinating in society, was of a
stern, tyrannical temper. They were brought
up in ear, not in love. They were sometimes
not allowed proper food, but were required
to eat what was loathsome to them, and were
often relieved from hunger by the maids
privately bringing them up bread and cheese
after they were in bed. Perhaps some of
the traditions of their mother's personal
cruelty to her children as endangering their
lives went beyond the truth, but there could
be no doubt that she was a very unkind and
severe mother. When making long visits
from home it was her custom to take one
daughter with her to act, it was said, as her
maid. On one occasion, all her daughters
being then young women, and one of them
being married, she did so taking one daughter
with her, and leaving three at home. Her
absence lasted for several months. Their
father, so far as is known, was likewise
absent. Two of the three daughters took
this opportunity of marrying, but not in
102 'LADY SUSAN'
their own condition of life. One married the
son of a neighbouring yeoman, and the other,
a friend of her new brother-in-law, a horse-
dealer. The first marriage turned out not
so very bad, but the second was deplorable.
The remaining sister, knowing how much her
mother would resent these mis-alliances, and
foreseeing nothing but increased severity in
the house, could not resolve to face her anger.
She also left her home before Mrs.
could get back to it. All the sisters had
500 a-piece, left to them by an uncle and
on the interest of this little sum she resolved
to try and live.' The further history of the
last daughter was brighter. Friends and
relations assisted her, and she finally made a
suitable marriage in her own rank in life.
Mrs. , when afterwards left a widow,
married a gentleman of good property, with
whom she had long been well acquainted.
The descendants of the last-named daughter
always spoke of her as ' the cruel Mrs. .'
Among these, Jane, as a young girl, had
intimate friends, and the whole tale would
naturally become known to her. That it was
so is also shown by a passage in one of her
letters, perfectly comprehensible to those who
ORIGIN OF ' LADY SUSAN ' 103
are acquainted with the names and details
belonging to the foregoing history.
This being certain, and it being also certain
that she wrote ' Lady Susan/ there is no
room for doubt that the two facts are closely
related to each other, and that she could not
have depicted an inhuman, repulsive mother,
carrying on her barbarities beneath a mask
of charm and beauty, without having . con-
stantly before her thoughts the prototype of
this exceptional character, of whose actual
existence she was well aware. Why this
knowledge caused her to write such a sketch
not for publication may claim a moment's
thought. To strongly imaginative and sen-
sitive souls, ' wax to receive, and marble to
retain/ revelations of beauty and glory, or
of darkness and horror, come with a force
beyond that which others can know, leaving
an impression, amounting to a possession of
the soul, not to be flung off until relief has
been found through some outward and
concrete act. When Byron died, and all the
Tennyson family mourned him, it was Alfred
who, as a boy, rushed out and endeavoured
to express his sense of England's unspeakable
loss by carving on a rock of sandstone, ' Byron
104 'LADY SUSAN'
is dead.' He may have felt that in this way
he and nature could mourn together, and
that he had at least done something to record
the despair of his heart in the face of this
great calamity. A similar intensity of feeling,
though this time of horrified indignation, may
have seized upon Jane Austen's soul when
the story of an unnatural and brutal mother
was made known to her, overpowering her
fancy to so great a degree that she was at
last impelled to seek relief in gibbeting this
repulsive being by setting down her character
in writing, thus to express the depth of her
disgust through the medium of her own
peculiar Art.
So far as we know, it is the only ' Study
from Life ' that she ever made, nor was it
now accomplished in order that it might
appear again in any of her longer works.
She once said that ' it was her desire to create,
not to reproduce,' and there is nothing in the
novels which calls ' Lady Susan ; to mind,
unless some hint of her unblushing worldli-
ness can be found in Mary Crawford's letter
to Fanny or of her maternal harshness in
Mrs. Ferrars' behaviour to her eldest son.
We are, therefore, compelled to believe that
' LADY SUSAN ' A FIGURE-PIECE 105
the horror which oppressed her imagination,
when reflecting on this picture of outward
beauty and secret barbarity, could not be
relieved without giving expression to her
sense of its enormity by placing it upon paper.
Had she never heard the tale, her youth
might have saved her from conceiving the
possibility of so evil a being, but having heard
it, that same youth would intensify the
repulsion and disgust it must create within
her. That the sketch was not meant to meet
the public eye is clear, partly because, in
1803, she attempted to publish a novel in
two volumes, then called ' Susan/ later
' Catherine/ and finally ' Northanger Abbey/
and she would not have wished to give the
same name to two published works, and yet
more so because the strong resemblance
between the character of ' Lady Susan ' and
that of her friends' .ancestress would render
such a thought impossible to her scrupulous
sense of honour. The structure of the story
itself confirms this view. Incident and plot
are neglected throughout its course, in which
there is little attempt to elaborate any
character in such a way as to arouse the
interest of the reader. The book is a figure-
io6 'LADY SUSAN'
piece, with a cruel, heartless woman for its
single subj ect . In comparison with this central
object, the rest of the dramatis persona are
but shadowy beings. Of one of these the
author writes at the close that 'it must
already have been evident that Mr. Vernon
existed only to do whatever might be required
of him, ' and the same remark may be applied
with a slight expansion in its meaning to the
whole of the company, who exist merely to
bring out the various vices united in one
woman, a creature entirely devoid of con-
science, and without a single redeeming
quality.
That such unnatural mothers can be
found is unhappily certain, a fact proved by
the existence of a modern society for 'Pre-
vention of Cruelty to Children ' generally
from the cruelty of their own parents but
that they are on the whole rare is also
happily true, and so great a monster is not
to be met with anywhere in the six published
novels. In this the author shows her usual
wisdom. An artist, speaking of landscape
painting, has observed that ' Nature employs
only small spots of deep dark/ and the same
may be said of that field of Nature in which
AVOIDANCE OF EVIL 107
Jane Austen painted human nature. She
did not commit the mistake of taking excep-
tions for rules, nor of thinking the world
must be villainous as a whole because some
villains can be found in it. She avoids the
use of ' deep darks/ and employs but seldom
the lighter shades of evil, coarseness, and
vulgarity, being, as it would seem, unwilling
to blacken her canvas more than might be
found necessary in order to provide some
contrast to the brighter and purer tints of
her picture. That she had either kind at
command, should she choose to make use of
them, is proved by the introduction, in their
proper places, of Mr. Price and Nancy Steele,
and, above all, by the more lately revealed
character, ' Lady Susan,' who is drawn with
an unsparing hand, showing that ' tremendous
insight into shams ' already mentioned. This
inborn gift must have been greatly quickened
by hearing the history of Mrs. , It
would teach her to look below the surface,
even in the case of parents and children, and
would serve to assure her, whenever in the
future she was describing parental harshness
or tyranny, that she was still keeping well
within the mark.
io8
LADY SUSAN'
Although ' Lady Susan ' must be placed
in a totally different category from the
other novels, it should not be neglected by
anyone who wishes to form a just estimate
of Jane Austen's varied powers as a writer,
or of herself as a woman. That she drew
such a portrait once enlarges our conception
of her genius ; that she never drew such
another increases our value for her as a
woman. She chose wholesome, sane, cheerful
subjects, ' things of good report/ for her
own imagination and that of her readers to
dwell upon, describing evil as little as possible
and never with a needless detail. This con-
sideration will, it is thought, give additional
force to what has been already said respecting
the silent strength of her moral character.
We can thus learn how to appreciate the self-
control with which she resists any tempta-
tion to the use of extravagant language in
describing emotions and situations, such as
has earned for later writers the title of ' intense/
deeming it to be beneath the dignity both of
true art and of that which is highest and
best in human nature.
The words of an American writer, Mr.
W. L. Phelps, well deserve to be quoted here :
SELF-RESPECT 109
'Let no one believe,' he says, 'that Jane
Austen's men and women are deficient in
passion because they behave with decency;
to those who have the power to see and
interpret there is a depth of passion in her
characters that far surpasses the emotional
power ' displayed in many novels where the
lovers seem to forget the meaning of such
words as honour, virtue, and fidelity/ These
: words Jane Austen certainly never forgot,
either as an author or a woman. Several
passages in her personal history show her to
have been possessed of keen sensibility and
deep attachments, but we know that her own
| sensations never made her indifferent to the
j claims of those with whom she lived, nor
I caused her to forget the call of ' Self -reverence,
\ self -honour, self-control.' Tennyson's words
5 she could not know, but the spirit that
i inspired them was akin to her own. Neither
is there any evidence that she was acquainted
with Wordsworth's poems, though the earliest
of these were published twenty-four years
before her own death. She probably never
L saw ' Laodamia/ written three years prior to
that event, but if Wordsworth knew her
writings and had wished to give a voice to
no 'LADY SUSAN 5
her consistent utterances concerning the
strongest of all human emotions, he could
not have done so more fittingly than in
Protesilaus' well-known lines :
'Be taught, faithful Consort, to control
Rebellious passion : for the Gods approve
The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul ;
A fervent, not ungovernable, love/
CHAPTER VII
PARENTS AND CHILDREN
MENTION has already been made of various
mistaken rumours spread abroad concerning
Jane Austen during the first half-century
that followed her death, one of these being
that ' she did not like children.' No suppo-
sition could have been further from the truth.
On no point is the family testimony more
unanimous than on the unfailing love and
kindness she bestowed upon them, together
with the warm love they felt for her in return.
She was quickly provided with such objects
of affection, as four of her five brothers had
families, and two nieces were born before
she was herself grown up, both of whom lived
to become, as young women, her close and
intimate friends. Another younger niece has
written : ' My visits to Chawton were frequent.
I cannot tell when they began. They were
very pleasant to me and Aunt Jane was the
'V. H2 PARENTS AND CHILDREN
' t \tf- ' great charm. As a very little girl I was
11 always creeping up to her and following hei
] I !_. p whenever I could, in the house and out oJ
" 1 it. Her charm to children was great sweetness
f * -
% * : t of manner ; she seemed to love you, and yot
,*< ; .;' ' loved her naturally in return. This was whai
* V I felt in my earliest days, before I was old
!j t i enough to be amused by her cleverness. Bu1
J ; * ? soon came the delight of her playful talk.
V 1 Everything she could make amusing to a child,
' * ' * Then, as I got older and cousins came to share
* . the entertainment, she would tell us the most
^ ^ delightful stories, chiefly of Fairyland, and
frj her Fairies had all characters of their own,
i The tale was invented, I am sure, on the spui
[ ' of the moment, and was sometimes continued
&
*}*'- f r two or three days if occasion served,
** ". I believe we were, all of us, according tc
\* "i our different ages and natures very fond oJ
^ , our Aunt Jane, and that we ever retain a
"j -*/./ strong impression of the pleasantness oJ
Chawton life. One of my cousins, after he
was grown up, used occasionally to go and
see Aunt Cassandra, then left the sole inmate
of the old house, and he told me that his
visits were always a disappointment to him,
for that he could not help expecting to feel
^mmmm 1 -,'f^m
-*'^V!^,SViS/V /;!' W: fi'HY
PROPERTY OF
CARNEGIE INSTITUTE OF TECHKOLOSY
LIBRARY
KINDNESS TO CHILDREN
113
particularly happy at Chawton, and never,
till he got there, could he realise to himself
how all its peculiar pleasures were gone/
Similar testimony on these points has been
given by another niece the little Anna who,
when three years old, was placed by her
widowed father, James Austen, at Steventon
Rectory, to be ' mothered ' by his two sisters.
Anna composed stories of her own long
before she was old enough to write them
down, and had always a vivid recollection of
the way in which her kind Aunt Jane per-
formed that office for her. On reaching the
age of seven she dictated to her aunt a
drama founded on ' Sir Charles Grandison,'
which still exists in Jane Austen's hand-
writing. Anna's half brother and sister,
Edward and Caroline, had the same love of
inventing stories, and all brought their com-
positions to be read and reviewed by their
Aunt Jane Anna continuing the practice as
a young woman when she had embarked
on what was intended to be a serious novel.
For an author to be ready at any time to
put aside her own writings and such writings
in order to interest herself in these
very young performances shows that entire
ii 4 PARENTS AND CHILDREN
unselfishness of nature and ready sympa
with the wants of childhood which
always ascribed to Jane Austen by those ^
truly knew her.
Her pen was often at their service w]
they were apart, for she wrote them charm
notes, with many playful turns, contain
now and then a little good advice as w
Her niece Caroline has truly said that
addressing a child she was perfect/
lived indeed in a circle of childhood, and wl
we look at her books we see how steady a
consistent a place children take in then
without uttering a word ! The old-fashion
maxim that, when in company, childi
should always be seen and not heard, v^
no doubt one on which Jane had herself be
brought up, and she observes the same n
as regards the children of her fancy ; t
reader is not troubled with any of th<
remarks. Even the elder among them a
not allowed to say much. The auth
advised her niece Anna to remember thz
in novel writing, ' girls are not interests
until they are grown up/ consequently of t]
speeches of little Fanny Price and her cousii
only enough are given to show in few won
CHILDHOOD IN THE NOVELS 115
their relative conditions and characters, to
bring out the kindness of Edmund and the
negligence of his sisters. Margaret Dashwood,
as a half -grown girl, utters a few remarks
equally malapropos in themselves, and apropos
to the conduct of the story. But the younger
ones are all silent, yet not the less valuable
on that account. They provide motives for
action and conversation on the part of their
elders, and are even allowed on one occasion
to take a small share in carrying on the drama
of the plot. No fewer than twenty children,
known to us by number or by name, and
generally by the latter, appear in the course
of the six novels, without counting the vaguer
groups of little Harvilles at Lyme, and happily
occupied little Perrys at Highbury. However
slight the sketch may be, we can always
recognise in it the sure touch of one who
herself moved about childhood's realm as a
constant visitor and a ready sympathiser.
If we try to imagine Jane Austen's novels
deprived of their children, we shall see that
in some cases they could hardly be carried on
at all, while in every instance that sense of
simple truthfulness, of warmth, and of life
which they now possess would be greatly
n6 PARENTS AND CHILDREN
lessened or altogether wanting. Just as in
the figure-pieces of early Italian masters the
charm is enhanced and the general effect is
completed by those miniature hills, rivers,
and houses in the background, which provide
a fitting setting for the central objects upon
which they are never suffered unduly to
intrude, so do Jane Austen's little people
fill up, furnish, and decorate in a suitable
manner the more distant portions of her
scenes. Though at no time allowed to put
themselves forward, they are, in their proper
places and angles, highly useful by imparting
a constant feeling of reality and by supply-
ing a due sense of perspective, atmosphere,
colouring, and space.
What is there, then, to be found in these
books that could have led anyone to suppose
their author did not like children ? The idea
must have rested on the fact that she did not
like spoilt children, or, rather, that she strongly
objected to the spoiling of children a subject
on which it is evident she bestowed a good
deal of thought. But that this showed no
want of interest in the children themselves
may be- read in a letter, written towards the
close of her life to a niece, after she had been
' A SCHOOL FOR PARENTS ' 117
spending some days in a house filled with
younger cousins of the latter. She says :
1 Though the children are sometimes very
noisy and not under such order as they ought
and easily might [be], I cannot help liking
them or even loving them, which I hope
may be not wholly inexcusable in their,
and your, affectionate Aunt Jane Austen/
Here we see at once, not only a natural
quickness of vision towards children, but also
the even balance of her judgment when
reviewing the whole case, ' the children
might, and should [have been] kept in better
order.'
It was towards the middle of the last
century that a striking tale appeared, named
' A School for Fathers,' in which a charming
young hero is forced into a duel, against
his own inclination, by parental- pride, and
falls in consequence fatally wounded. Jane
Austen's novels may be not unjustly entitled
' A School for Parents/ and this not merely
with reference to the young children to be
found in them, who are over-indulged by
mothers until they become an annoyance to
everyone. Her outlook goes much further
than this. Our language, unfortunately,
n8 PARENTS AND CHILDREN
contains no word expressive of the connection
between parents and their sons and daughters,
after the latter have ceased to be ( children '
properly speaking and are becoming, or have
become, men and women. But it is in these
later stages of life that we find Jane Austen
exhibiting to us the results of early training
or of its absence. We do not learn this only
in the case of such spoilt children as the
little Middletons and Betsy Price, for older
examples are as plainly dealt with, and their
parents' faults are indicated with equal clear-
ness. Mr. Allen, who is ' a sensible man/
soon discovers that ' Mrs. Thorpe is, without
doubt, too indulgent to her daughters/ and
we have Isabella in consequence. Mrs. Dash-
wood tells Marianne to ascribe her misfortunes
to ' her mother's imprudence/ a remark
with which the reader will easily agree
while of Mrs. Bennet it is enough to say
that she was exactly fitted to be the mother
of Lydia. Irreproachable parents mothers
especially are indeed greatly in the way of
any novelist, who has to get them out of
the way as handsomely as may be. This
truth was discerned very early in her own
literary career by Jane Austen, one of her
PARENTS IN THE NOVELS
119
girlish fragments, called ' Kitty, or The Bower/
beginning with these words : ' Kitty ' (after-
wards changed to Catherine) ' had the mis-
fortune, as many heroines have had before her,
of losing both her parents while she was still
quite young.' But even when the maternal
parent has been disposed of by death or by
distance, the daughter must, none the less,
be brought up or brought out by someone,
who may contrive to go as far wrong in the
process as any mother herself could do. Mrs.
Weston, charming and sensible though she
was, had been ruled for many years by her
own charge, Emma ; Edmund and Fanny
agree in ascribing Mary Crawford's want of
principle to deficiencies in the education she
had received from her aunt, together with
the bad example set by her uncle ; and the
one error into which Anne Elliot falls is
spoken of as having been due to the mistaken
advice of an older friend, who has over her
almost the influence of a mother. Nor are
the fathers spared. Mrs. Ferrars is the only
instance of unfeeling harshness among the
mothers, while both General Tilney and Sir
Walter Elliot are absolutely unpardonable
fathers, and there is also a good deal requiring
120 PARENTS AND CHILDREN
forgiveness in Mr. Woodhouse, Sir Thomas
Bertram, and not least in Mr. Bennet, one
of the author's most surprising creations. She
had, as we have seen, gained a knowledge when
still quite young, through a history belonging
to past days, of the depths to which parental
cruelty can descend, and we have also seen
how this knowledge very probably quickened
her insight respecting lighter shades of the
same evil visible around her, the evil, it may
be, ' that is wrought from want of thought,
and not from want of heart/ Shortcomings
on the side of parents are not shown to us
merely by Jane Austen herself, speaking from
her position as author, since she frequently
points out that they were clearly apprehended
by a daughter of their own. Some time later,
a school of fiction arose, intended to a great
extent for the young, in which it would have
been held highly disrespectful for daughters
to comment adversely, even to themselves,
upon any action on the part of their parents,
while to utter a remonstrance to either father
or mother on their neglect of a parent's
duties, would have been looked upon as an
unpardonable liberty. Jane Austen, however,
takes a different view, and never blames her
MR. BENNET AS A PARENT 121
heroines for possessing some acquaintance
with the characters of those by whom they
had been brought up, being, as it would seem,
of opinion that they could not become rational
and thinking beings without acquiring such
a perception, which she has no hesitation in
attributing to some of the best among them.
Poor Eleanor Tilney, when compelled to turn
Catherine Morland out of the house, can only
exclaim, ' Alas ! for my feelings as a daughter.
He is certainly greatly, very greatly, discom-
posed. I have seldom seen him more so/
Anne Elliot, who ' often wished her know-
ledge of her father's character were less/
could not but be aware of the weak vanity
that laid him open to Mrs. Clay's insidious
designs, while the most striking example of
filial insight and resolution in character in
all the novels is to be found in Elizabeth
Bennet's remonstrance with her father on his
neglect of responsibility as a parent. It must
have been a hard task, but when it was over
she ' felt confident of having performed her
duty/ a reflection that can only do her
honour in the mind of the reader, and,
coupled with Mr. Bennet's most characteristic
reference to it after Lydia's elopement had
r toiiiici on the side of the children, even
>ver-indulged and, consequently, trouble
For these she was unwilling to abandon
and here Mr. Knightley Is deputed to
her mind. When Emma looks for-
to Mrs. West on's educating her Infant
ter In a perfect manner, since she had
le advantage of practising first upon
'. ' That Is/ replied Mr. Knightley,
vill indulge her even more than she
on, and. believe that she does not
c her at all. It will be the only
nee/
oor child ! ' cried Emma, ' at that rate
mil become of her ? ;
othing very bad the fate of thousands,
/ill be disagreeable In Infancy and
t herself as she grows older. I am
all my bitterness against spoilt children,
axest Emma. I, who am owing all my
less to you, would it not be horrible
.tudo in me to be severe on them ? 5
ic Austen could also admit the exist-
>f ot'Jior Influences likely to affect the
,i:e fate of children. She could take
122 PARENTS AND CHILDREN
taken place, shows that it had don
honour in his judgment also, Thougl
trust of a parent's wisdom was the cornp
cause of the action taken both by Eliz
and by Anne, there was no lack of filial re
in their manner of performing it. This
no time wanting on the part of her her
even towards those for whom, it was ii
sible that love should be felt. Where
did exist, parental shortcomings were
suffered to check it. Marianne Basil
ardently loved her mother, imprudent tl
she had shown herself to be, and I
Woodhouse, when engaged to the man <
heart, at once formed, a solemn resol
never to quit her father, and. ' even
over the idea of it, as a sin of though
We must, then, come to the cond
that Jane Austen's quick intuition had d
impressed upon, her the extreme impor
of parental duties being well performec
of the evils sure to follow if these
neglected. Dogmatic she never was,
her own light and delicate touches, join
the working out of various incidents ii
,~J ^ 4~ ^ ~ , -, A ^* ,", 4- 1 T T -I ,-. A I ~ ^ 4- ,- 4- TTI f
V M [ f f ? -n I 1 ^c; j
i Hi < M 1 s ' ' < \ < I 10 {< hs 1 IlOr
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>, s
*j ' 1 M !'! ^,1 i' I OH vVil y IH1 a{ S,
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I V j( ' ! '/ MI j ,
H ! i*l !>s I' i
IP ! i < 1' > I ' *!M ] ill ! ii ( 1^ in! I ( \ I , Oil
i ' ' i! 1 ! *Mi of h HI slxxiK 1
^ M ] l ' J i y ' ! i ( ', > v f frMi
i ^ii J ," 'i i i OM
i f t / 1 M i J ' U J I ' ( 1 H 1 ! Dili
'H si i 4 iS < I II ! i t r >'(! IM< 1 ' * ;l i v < t ^ r l t
Pi< li>I< il 1 if I u! ll, { < A, H (111 !tH fil
! it( . 10 ^ ii *lin! ! if i v M ! ii (an t IK
* I'i ! 'M if ") M { '' Ml ll > f l ((1
n J i' i 1 i H t < >'M 'ii ! M J < M i i u i
and the power of surrounding* circumst
The young Prices, not through parental
training, but in spite of its absence, pros
when aided by Sir Thomas Bertrar
account of ' The advantages of early lian
and. discipline/ and "The consciousm
being born to struggle and endure/ S
consciousness, meeting with a like su
their efforts being in this instance encon
by their own parents, Jane may have
rejoiced over when reflecting upon
careers of her two sailor brothers.
' Persuasion ? supplies us with a
different type of sailor, whose ill-doi
ascribed to his own perverse characte
not to any neglect on the part of his pa
Many readers have objected to the ter
which the unlucky Dick M/usgrove's li
and his mothers lameiita.tio.ns over liii
described ; they have been thongl.it
and unworthy of jane Austen's kind
and delicate taste. One reply alone C;
made to this charge. Though, she wrot
passage, she did not pt.ibH.sli it. On I
13, 1817, four months bctore her own c
* n ty i i i r, i b< cu
' ' i i- j i P(] LL(l i
s t I' lai li ! * l\i, fain, 1 1 i'( i
/nh ! l * i I. il Vi > ! i tr^ u! , and i do
ou 1!' ii lit u ill i \ i i i oiiir out. J lad
t In !>' Ul\ It i<l<l s il>( i J'>| i 1 \v
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01 < i ill ,l oi I iljosis 1 i ,( 1 hose \\ iio
\ IM niid/irH k iln y jic iicjdiif in ilsc
(4 l^ 1 VM IcMi-l , i Un |>< ^ and Tunrv 1 -
S J n t s t n ii - > u c j] fun <l si in
i h t , tii H <^\v n< s . IM 1 ii] i ! i * t! to
i. ,t M IL I ' < 1 i M! J! Ik u i-
\\ ii<n j u ! tu< it i i > j t I Hiioti 3 iu'
! i (l ( { J IK All d I/ i)t ink ha\ i V oil
I ii < I i u , i! * Imuhl I t irm< mix u cl
( siilihi l i lie si f PO v < 1 jHli loi I h l\
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paf,e 1 _ 4 Uci vuilet 4i^s IK 1 Mt
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it wab not to b, sliD^n a pi'S
\\ay if \\as i(ilaiiil\ nidi
recci\(d 10 luiio^ \fjtui b c
the f aiiiii\ !( nu l (.'^ f Kiutat
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d /LCK'^ d( al dis iiSN(d hil
lici^Lif, and tltdJ ai!inii s M \iiai pc
titles tlie I^JH 111 it s^t iiiiJ jij )d Lktly
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c\ii v a- Jina 1 ^ sU'l^l ii(l Ildis^v A'
to \< 1 os\ i ill it hui bun ]H(JIH I <
^loiifjtt il out liiuKftln najih ul 'PiTsuc
le-Diniiii^ iit tin same 1inif k lin ^ tl< r
lell in 1US. \vJiHi slu lud < illed 4 (\i(h<
hilt \\liuli ih {/llhll ->L1I ,r 'Mollii
\hley ' fiion^h it is possihlc lc> oirji
fjOlli f lilts, IS <jA rm< i_;lit!lii> (itiltl
I)V IC^Oi JIl^ lo G'K IKiClMll 01 OIK ill\
rtihe iihdi to tin culur \\oil ciii
c ,^ , ' c^^rif.cc <>' the i\L^cn
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and . \ jij ath\ c.iHi i ^ it- iin ^il ^ (^ li 1
to h iu 4 ^^ 01 \viLiic^s.d mil' li i(:
liai | iHt ,s h n ilh 'jci iall >* - ioi !
(iai or iiii^ i M i j( ^ht ],, div 7 c vi r
in I' i b(,oV- i' ^ (t^iKj)li(ui o! a ii i{)|:
i.ill' t UOilJiC 1 Mill ' J),'ft w . A
OfdliM \' tlu u r , tOf ! ( U ! ' I"! j
ciKfiun li>u r f cr it-* ,H\iii[(i
studied ciiijHT ii 4i i books or her
I)H! li aitsoli^r !or^H Mi hc
in 1 a ( htv i ihi'ir ^liel at paifio
flC L ( iLH f '!!->> J Of ft ICUiUOf 1 ? C)
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Hill h'HV \ Ol iSOJlIl fo iHiit n Ji ^ (.
Kt.l/n C) 1 idikt'illH 1 MoiLlLi 1 lo I 1 ' l
\\iiin, in i |au ol her v u . as a IN
hlu n ? a i v\i](oinpil \ulli smli atJ\ ( i
(.a'Miii s did "ill Idle (HiLiai.e o! rai
LvTSiJJ c OriliCJ, bUlYOUldv J i.i L v. i
lapjA ' ? Or > Lu 'v''~oi 1 s icvu ^ti-fle J.
j~l oi tiie \t r ^Nii- the H^rvlU^s 12
j ii \\ Li ->o iioa-L * An ^ tii i t^ r .t she
;ic\tt liaopiiHib *ye ! Jiii L'T * the
net, and Lie 'line f t iriil - } i^' f ' ^1
and ^i f is, l\lr. ^Its^iOve \\ilii ^liiLktn
ui In^ OIL hi^ krecs and Xi". l\!t's^n,\ ,
.M U i* 4 ' il -i'L 1 act ,;oiK Hi. <'t { ^'i ii(/I.i I'l^"
i hL 1" to do iii t n oui' as a huh ffui I
a i
tis u* au (x|iial ! v h (1 to hcJM \e tnat u
s k v Lci.cr inaii faia .^ULLva h'llii l\
a.i )Si aiM i^ptn IM* (hi ri. a."ii'> ul
31 d licaij 4 in ii lu IK si a (I ! o i Sii^n 1 .
^k ss is i!u i Ci^ijc'ctun' [nLiniuiK'd abu\ i
vv may lather say tlie condition^ of life*
found in h^i* Ltthcr's hciUbi \ujuld
it HIT \H i rc( piiun of ilic 4 ro'il'ast a (folded
MI by ^oiiic othc-i laimiic^, (Jirou^h uti
(.' o! |>ean* <iiid Ji<HPiO ! i^ iu ibc latui
,11 patents and children, i'Toth'-rs and
To as^vame thai t f iL K i i utie lacki^^
iventon Rectory Is a most unwarrant-
I30 PARENTS AND CHILDREN
opposed to the truth. Evidence or
point is, happily, equally abundam
convincing. Mrs. George Austen, v
in 1796 to Mary Lloyd, soon to becon
daughter-in-law, speaks of her owr
her husband's heartfelt satisfaction i
prospect of ( adding you to the niiiii
our very good children/ In a letter v
more than twenty years later she e^
to her sister-in-law, Mrs. Leigh Perrc
particulars of her income, and dwells
the eagerness all her sons had shown,
she had been left a widow in 1805, to
it a comfortable one. Of her two
she says : ' Mr. Knight (the seconc
has a most active mind, a clear liea
a sound judgment ; lie Is quite n
of business. That my dear James wi
Classical knowledge, literary taste, ai
power of elegant composition he po:
in the highest degree. To these Mr.
makes no pretensions. Both equally
amiable, and sweet-tempered.'
The feelings and the conduct of
sons on the death of their father are
in letters written to the one then
loss of ' the best of Fathers and of Men/
adding ' Language Is so inadequate to what
we all feel on such a subject that you will
know why I prefer silence to Imperfect
praise. The survivors are now what we
must all think of/ The letters that then
passed between the brothers on the question
of making a comfortable provision for their
mother are equally remarkable for the
generosity they display towards herself and
for the courtesy and affection they exhibit
towards each other. When the result was
finally made known to Mrs, Austen she
exclaimed that ( Never were children so
good as hers/ at the same time declining
to accept the whole of the Income which
they off -red hu .
flu* aiuJioi oi the orL.;iunl ' ftleruoij
has indicated that If there were a family
fault, it lay in exactly the opposite direction
from that suggested by this critic, lie says :
' There was so much that was tu.Treabii mi his
family party that iis mmileis may be ex-
cused if they v\ere inr lined iolne tomevxliaL
too exclusively v\itlmi it 'Jh<y mi^Jit sec
in each other much to \o\r and c^Uem
and something to admire/ To this may be
L >> I 'WI'UIS ANfi
p^i" j x*u w is ihi i OH 3 chiefly cons*
t'i< ia ^ 1} tuicuncy and most a
t* < ddl <f j-iLvi^liny against it.
molhu ti iv ^iiuo'i s y may be added tha -
Kt-H'iivd miter's slsiei, Caroline
\\iio, is a child ami youn^ girl, \\<j
al ( L t \ ioi 1 ^uiia^e both bcfoi
^ii k i In \uiit Janets death ; no:
iu\ HOM* iltiii^ wunls be Undid 11)
\\nis V'hicli io close these* *J
\^{>c(ts UL Jaiir lustui/ d In the
UK ehil Hi* (hi, it u r a c a clieciful hoi
! Hh 1< -, usu 01 another, Ircqiunlly
! H d lew da\^ and Incy were all ]3le;
Ih'ii >n n lainihci , I have though
aiui ^H'iiii' inoieol oilier households,
/>///v ^o Flu 1 f:imil\ talk liad nine
and vi\aci!\ and it was IK ver trou
dis.r: 'ctMJi^iil, as it was not their 1
,M^ti \\ilh < ih anotner. riicu w t i c
I <!*!< i l<nijM^ii\ ani'Ui^sl the hrotl]
istus, \vi1h linn iainilj/ uiuon, never
hill h\ deaiJi, and over my (iiandi
dooi nii}, j li( h*uc been mscnbcd ihe l<
* !U hold how good and joyful a thin
SoMF additional infoitiL f ou i< J'(\(JM" |aa <
Au^lcn md (he iand\ r \\\^ n.ni' p d' !\
sin * oun<iin t tt Id <ni>> ix k ,n < t >i ilh i i,ia f
mild dl'Jr ni lar irJc! > \\ho air V!'hi)' l f
lx\!i with a hllK irfHiitioi! o! i i Is i, n^\> i
((* gliMii, lio'll oiljisial doc UMK n!^ i it'
p irl H ul a is no I \ ( i I ally known lo J f ini{ 1 1
isj(>M'('i lea'! 1 ! 1 - (hit (I i loiinu i)\ ^ h.^l
and icii Ji )/ <i ' oh* it d
I lir M lyjlhll * KI<'l))<>li ? In ! !\ 1" i !i
<r( ouisl ul li<'i luncial, < IUM . \\fih ih
\\ 01 <!- c fit f hi ol IH is \u ni IKU ! v>n o\\ m ! I .
i lid i M \ t i a! home I !ir\ \\ it \ M \ 1< 41 i
and \ t s \ pi pn<i o! ! j .n/i K ii i' \ '
a !(" 4 i \\ MI ih I n ia IK v i i ' < snhl n ' *n ^SH-
i>u\ .(id H'; ( ! if < l ni IH MS Ji i i h k d*
Sh i< 1 ) ' IH', \v'K > i< J )< ! H < ! t < |H ll I lit \ \ 1
is \ ? C! ( \('t f ul (o ,( ( Ol ( III ,< fill M
eldest daughter ; Anna Austen, her bro
James's eldest daughter, who, prior to
Aunt Jane's death, had married Ben] a
Lefroy of Ashe (son of Madam Lei
Jane Austen's beloved friend) ; and An
half-sister Caroline Austen. It was of
latter that their father wrote in April, ii
' Caroline has that playfulness of mind, 1111
with an affectionate heart, which so peculi
marked our lamented Jane." Fatherly
tiality did not mislead him in his high estir
of tills daughter. Like her Aunt Jane,
had gifts both of humour and pathos, wl
combined with a similar originality
independence of mind, made her In ]
years a delightful companion and a charr
converser. Like her, also, she, in her t
became a perfect aunt to whom, nephews
nieces are indebted for many kindne:
one of these being the manner in which
related,, both by word of mouth and in wrii
family history and personal reminiscer
One of these gives an account of her c
ANNA AUSTEN'S \\FDDIXG 1^5
3 wedding. 1 This e\ent T AU Q deeply
sting to her grandmother, J r r-. Austd\
3 her aunts, Cassanurn and. jo no, the
anied sending good visuc s to UK bude,
in prose and verse IMC vxiiheij -s, dlJ
stayed quietly at home, nuiAiiit,' no
pt to attend the re'viiiony, tliou^ii
iton and Chawton are bul sixteen mile s
It is true that ^ixtitp milks of ii -
nt road then foinvd ,\ cui-''i( i n L>U
: in wintry wealing !i^ f udi'" svuo
sed no carriage and lioi^e-,, \ \\{ liu'i
:e from the wedding i^ ,4 [i\^li ],u ui
customary simplic i i \ 01 i>un( v dui\ ;u
occasions, such as we meet \ ifli is
field Park 1 and in ' ^.niiur* ' \
ly characterised /Inna Ai- 1 k n'^
! ay
'nliiK 4 Austru wnic "Oh tlit
"iiei 181 |, m\ ->is(( r \\ 5 nuinJ<
nut i efmy ! rt q 1 1^ 1 h \ i nul
01 (In- alt lion; h of U < 'n'' e^ s
t ( s ai \ \\ 1 1 1' h i > \v ' t iis< i t j i jh\
t he i M I i h ii oi si ir i \
iiir h .,/! /linO. ,,,u.r Li ,, ,. I M. ,,.
136 APPENDIX
universally condemned as showing the bad
taste of former generations. But it revived
again, and no protest is now ever heard
against it. My Sister's wedding was cer-
tainly in the extreme of quietness ; yet
not so as to be in any way remarked upon,
or censured, and this was the order of the
day : The Bridegroom came from Ashe
Rectory, where he had hitherto lived with
his Brother; and Mr. and Mrs. Lefroy (his
Brother arid Sister-in-law) came with him,
as well as another brother, Mr. Edward
Lefroy. Anne Lefroy, the eldest little girl,
was one of the Bridemaids and I was the
other. My Brother came from Winchester
that morning, but was to stay only a few
hours. We in the house had a slight early
breakfast upstairs ; and between nine and
ten the Bride, my Mother, Mrs. Lefroy, Anne
and myself, were taken to Church in our
carriage; all the gentlemen walked. The
weather was dull and cloudy but it did not
actually ram. The season of the year, the
unfrequented road of half a mile to the lonely
nlrl Ornrrli tin- PTPV li.o-1 (- within nf a
7 air to our "Wedding., Mr. Lefroy
i.e service. My father gave his daughter
The Clerk, of course, was there,,, though
lot particularly remember him, but 1
ite sure there was no one else in the
i. Nor was anyone asked to the
:ast, to which we sat down as soon as
: back. 1 do not think this idea of
s struck me at the time. The bustle
house and all the preparations had
i me, and it seemed to me a festivity
)egimiing to end,
le Breakfast was such as best Breakfasts
r crc. Some variety of bread, hot rolls,
2<1 toast, tongue or ham, and eggs.
Idition of Chocolate at one end of the
aid the Wedding Cake in the middle
1 the speciality of the day. I and
Lelroy, nine and six years oh I, \\ore
frocks and had white ribband on our
bonnets, which I suppose were new
2 occasion. Soon after breakfast the
and Bridegroom departed. They had
day's journey before them to Hendon.
138 APPENDIX
The other Lef roys went home, and in tin
noon my Mother and I went to Chaw
stay at the Great House, then occup
my Uncle Captain (Francis) Austen a
large f amity. My Father stayed belli
a few days and then joined us. The st
had cake and wine In the evening;, ai
DIgweed walked down to keep my
company. Such were the Wedding fesi
of Steventon in 1814 ! '
The dress of the bride has been re>
by one of her own daughters. f She
a dress oi (Lie \\lule iuu^lm and o\<
soft silk shawl, \vidlc shul \\illi jui
with embossed white satin ilou<rs unc
handsome hinge, and on IUT lioad a
cap to mat ch trimmed \\Itli larr, ai
delicate 3 T ello\v tints must Jia\c !n v i 11
becoming io lui hii^hi broun liaii
eyes, and himny, clrii
bride wa^ then i\u'j*tv ^IH% *md \\\t-
sidered to be ilio pirdk^l ^iil in (lie
bourhood the ino-J slrikin h li
face beinc; 0\c \\Kl<]y-oi>rnc(!
whirl i rohiinrfl Ihi-ir ifti
her biotliti HXT\V s ^ r use in London
day a LiuT, aid iia*! IKn the satis-
a of drum i, oat if Ha j Jon to visit
ece ab a Lode. 1 Amo. and her husband
/'aids returned from Hampstead to
i a house called ( Wyards/ within a
of Chawton Village, and frequent corn-
ation with her relations in that place
thus be easily maintained.
INE AUSTEN ON THE LIFE AT CHAWTON
COTTAGE
Written -in 1867
hiiu* b( j ii lold Hie ! )uitt had i\ nin.il\ r
n liiji ai i it \^J-> \v< M piact tl iru su<liJ
^ jiiL-i \\h<u tli< jo.tdhxiiii uulusbr
julo ilk k London ami f^osptnt roaci
oiil dooi O))( 4 ncd on tin 4 load :i \ci\
\ ciK^lo^L 1 !^ on t'ufi i idc jjiotcrU*!
>ns< i /]]] po^ hir -horu oi an\ r rin-
i It mi i rjlt diiii \ jii d 1 t ^ n , i tmin
i ilu 1 k'i!;dh ul Ilk" hoi * * til snfj ndrd
lOjv 1o look un Ike rcud, but (be hi^i
CL Lifv and Lt'lleys, Cliap, XIX, p. 361.
drawing-room window was blocked uj
turned into a bookcase when Mrs. A
took possession, and another was oper
the side which gave to view only tui
trees, A high wooden fence shut 01
road (to Winchester) all the length
little domain, and trees were planted
to form a shrubbery walk which, c
round the enclosure, gave a very sul
space for exercise. Yon did not feel en
for room, and there was a pleasant in
mixture of hedgerow and grass and
walk, and long grass for mowing
Orchard, which I imagine arose froi
or three little enclosures having been 1
together and arranged as best might
ladies' occupation. There was, besides,
kitchen garden ; large and many out bui
not much occupied. All this afilue
space was very delightful to children
1 ) a vo 1 1 o dc ml )t added considerably
pleasure of a visit. Everything, :
and out, was well kept, the house w
furnished, and it was altogether a coin!
and ladylike establishment, though I
the means which supported it were bir
TRAFFIC THROUGH CHAWTON 141
of Parsonage Houses then were, and much
in the same old style, the ceilings low and
roughly finished, some bedrooms very small,
none very large, but In number sufficient
to accommodate the inmates and several
guests. The dining-room could not be made
to look anywhere but on the road, and there
my Grandmother often sat for an hour or
two in the morning, with her work or her
wntin;,, tin i led I)} L 1 s sunn.} aspect mil by
lli, MiUilij4 S^iiit I 1 ail i vd i t)fll(\, iliv,
tioM k vKiiul^ (I UK od i *\a^ IK a )t* ai
ev/il to lies Hutu i< was io lia ^raTHkbikirai
(ollxei's dailv road \uth ^ koines \vas a
sidit i) s< 4 ( f -and mosi lUI^tiliui n r as it
Lo a ciukl to liavc til ' iLNvhil blillii^^ o r ni^hl
th biola n bv ilit LOI^ ul JXI^SUT
b, \\lllCJi breilJCi.! bCHiJi'lllIK^ (\il! to
shake (be bed. 1 lu village ot ( h^v^lon Iia
oi course, long since been tianqui'h ed , it
is no more a great thoroughfare. . . . As
to my Aunt Jane's personal, appearance, hers
was the first face that I can remember
thinking pretty, not that 1 used that word
i/l TTVO'QAlf Kllf T VllAW T 1 A A!" A/1 fl f Hi AT* I,1.7l1~ll
s i 1, i s C!K \ L a
ai
d 1 ' >} Li r l a , i (K'ivisii bro'
' . ' '*i " u^ I c.n 1 ii/und liei
a P s L ^ \\ r i i -u ' J. SLr aiv
aj; 1 MU i c [he intc in vv
( \\ii* not jiiui ^ <iia;: at I
l H* !; si ^ i i v j l i\, i i r v\i
"i , ui . \ ^ i li ul i 5 !/ *u ti ;
io iir l\ r u i\ ID ;h\u *li^ < i -tc(
PI < i tt u il i 'a ua Ii anisic, J<
fii s d 1' h* h t j naLiu if t ibli k , ,i
jii if uu lkyii\!i ! L luui JK nn.:
tl \,as IK \ < i Hi kK( d (*>s 1 IK:
pia\ ; in ' 'up * ? i\ au f i < 411' of
? t ! j i ih ! J f * ' ^ 1 ^i | >| H^i 1 1 ihit
t f i ai s ) ! i i llv n> ^fn C 1H>S( S lirj
H hi 1 !* i* l>i < <tLI J st ^\ h u s!< (
t < in to h ?^ II. S!M pi u i i^iM
< i\ MIOI uiiM* ( In pl< n t ! \ <'i y pi'
ihon 'lit an ! I hia H to >l nid !:
t i f ) to hri \ITMI 1 liat si , j>la^ i 1
i 4 f v t p > 1 \ iiu^tJ (Ail by h
DAILY LIFE 143
At 9 o'clock she made breakfast that was
her part of the household work. The tea
and sugar stores were under her charge
and. the wine. Aunt Cassandra did all the
rest, for my Grandmother had suffered herself
to be superseded by her daughters before I
can remember, and soon after she ceased even
to sit at the head of the table,
' I don't believe Aunt Jane observed any
particular method In parcelling out her day,
but 1 think she generally sat In the drawing-
room till luncheon, when visitors were there,
chiefly at work. She was fond of work, and
was a great adept at overcast and satin-stitch
the peculiar delight of that da}/. She was
wonderfully successful with cup and ball, and
found a resource sometimes In that simple
game when she wa.s suffering from, weak eyes
and could not work or read for long together.
After luncheon my Aunts generally walked
out ; sometimes they went to Alton for
shopping, often, one or the other of them to
the " Great House/" as It was then called, in
order, when a brother was inhabiting it, to
Tii'i'L'A a inc,ii ' nr i'i tlif- 1 TirvriQP 'wr^rp- Qt'inrlni o-
nut ( \K nd ha. Tjteu \ i i\ a It 1
In H]O ni the \II3*v i but uo i/eat
uas k' j j)t ut) with ai>v c I than * IMC
tjitndlv, I % Li! .ud h</r di >umt, hams
\\ 1 I ai'i Mile m\ Aiuit Jai c liar
lot li< i iiv i Jihuuis, aM (ill a Laid
ill UK ii JHOI eciiiis^s Silo I'KLC! J
U) IUMT all abou I them Tlioy :
Mfvid loi hi r aiiiU'-i liKiii, IJJL n
()\\L "I* ulSi'i 11 - 1 * hat 4'^ r t /c":-t U) 1
She Ih vv'l ImiHvl ///t'f// liilu litlKMlU*
as iai <i- pu-vMblt irom IKIII^ tin
sjl t' K <il sh( IK \ ci ahusi d tlh'in 01 '
the ui. riial \\cis the \\urd ot the
u^i\ oiii k no\s c>l)^()1<l( v - uj'l ih' 1 HO^
\v!ih 1) it i)( !C puia 1 i- ha j ^ , j)K'v<
iiutlri an v n mi k Ui u> i! \\ is t
l<i'i_ii c h<- { i c i^iuhallv 7 ia^ H! was f/v
toi h i ! u ];^hi><Miis ]iiM)<^^il)lo<N)iilinj
i rLi t ih^ i i |)so c i' or \ use SOIIH^ in 11 in
(olvHIHil !<) llC! (>\\11 hlU< V, Ui 111
liist<ny oi \\hal tlit 4 \ had said 01 <
coiiM d((<'ivt k iK^bud) M\ Aunt i
Si K lit lli't( ll tlllK 1 111 \\ iillll^ flcT
FAMILY CORRESPONDENCE 145
ia \o a\\M^ io< ' i p oi^a 5a\ * v *\
L't'C's on li, cti'd i DO'* i ^"u \v 1 ou u l
\ I i i ^ : " * o v i i j I ' t c * n \ _ . 1 1 1 * v L l 1
liu" Kui'iiA olid Ijhey \v^ [LI < ii , Lit
1 iH v'i ^a\ ill' 1 iidii Cl t >' o[ L 'V < -ill i "
[u^ii-^ (^ai'HUi i i\ i/ \I\L! 1 t\i.iL/ii,
so vuiJiorL liio* 'ii^ jf <L-. ! i \ia^>iiii AID Is
iubit tcj u in, th in un rc>k j> iptr tin lit LL< i
lo !x abli to r< \ cr ilir^p v\n!> [)io-ir; ]/ap( *
i f a visHoi i\eic ^hov i in) ' v^l >A \nuv- \t'i
lall} lo ! ii.r brotlj'i> H!K, tit / H t^c a^ '-i 1 ^
, Pii slio i iine-n in JccH J i ^^jiv utl ti ol rlk*
Larnily Fit A i^ tiolliir^ in lius^ icit^^
\\likli / IhcA I SOD 1 licit \VOii! 1 bi* cl< t v.fUlI)l<
lo iLc [ ubiic Thi) v\ r ^sc\ci\ \^ H t \pit^scd
and UK^V iiiiM 1ia\i bieii v^i\ mki* iioi lo
tliOSi \\1KI l( l (l k lx(sl tllfJI !)U. iLv ^ (ktll< l<
rJned)/ In. UK and LMJ ilv v vt nl i i * in siidoiu
commitUd lursiJi (\rn to am opinion, >o
that lo shan^ns ilu n roukl !>i i n< tsjii-< i r
of her DiJiid t (hoy v\oiiid not ICH! ili.M tin y
Jknew hi 1 ! iiiv tin 1 Ivitri fn la\iHL Jotd ( 'n-ni
Th<N r \\(u tailui f )\ i iv amu us joi < ^unin v
1 1( i k v tt( k is to \iih< i a s.iiidi,! VM 1 1 i t i< ^ i\
opi i* diid < Hiddciiti J l\l\ \ini! lool i dt IK iti
u\ci and biiiiil tlu i^itMlc i j> iM as she j^<l
t f hct\ i* r,i i^i sc wrai
(JJK ' *'id bourne left
f ' * { c ]\~i <!i' ir^ Lin c \\ritc r 's Hfe-ii
! i t\ii ts i Lawioti ii my two con
. \ f i * "I < a- \ /Lu^li A, v\eie there
< . ' t ' urn t i i i 1 us i 1 ! Avk^cli my r
\\ f >j>lul Siu 1 \\ 7 as the one to w
^ u\\ > luui * <! ior he IM ^lic \\oulcl fui
\^l'i uli't \\. \^niii.l iroiii her ward
il -<l< aulll 1 olu n IK thv i utcTtaiillllg Vl:
in u i ( p l ~i(hi\- ^ oiisv . She amuse<
j' \ n < i, \ s s >i i c 1 reinciober in gi
v ' 11 ni) i-, hrUvi ( a in\ sell diid iny
ML MI MI{ !>>,< I |U ]M' ^UAVli lip thi
i <' Lih "- h x i-> c uii^iflru i il to rrad a
, t-i h ! I l\ \\ 1 11 I dhl no! ofti'U luvir
as Uiitf ! <iic\v h< i tiike up a voluni
i H c ! i , iti j I* n pa :^-> ol c< Mr :v
i ' . n 1 H n au 1 I thought it
s f ! 1 M i -, I 'M (jMlHiui! o( Ik F foil
. it M 3 , i, 11 "i i lid not //'( // thin
, ; i i< i >u 'i t \ n ] H at if ol>M
i { tu<i< h i \ IK \ c r !K I * n loi^o'
< i s ill I In n 1 \ v n fio\\ atu! 1 LnuH'
,1! ( ml uiii 1 lain v\as a
JA\E " x ! ^ i V c - NNPK l
aiitrtiOiicite bister to ah ner iui lh< i " O !3f )
them 1.1 parUiulai (',<iir\') \\< IK' { p u 1*
pride jiid <j< J\JH bill o* j I I.M ',inii'\ lu ,
neatx >t diid cU di ^1 ihui^hun '^ i u'n<< Isle
Was Iiti ' nl\ sifter, tassctndi \ Mint ( J v
sandiri A as tlie flcici h t > ihn 01 loui )^ti
ant I the habu oi looking up to iiu, h * iin N!
diiidlioud ; SLM nied alw i\s lo continm \\ IK i
I \\ T as a little girl, \unt J UK \\oii) ! IK <|u< n ^
say to me, If opj oittiuii \ oihi d il I ^ id
Cassandra could h al (^ ; i.i\ ilmi f uiu h lv (* i
tliaii c lu cuald VHP! ( \issai di a ! ji v aio s
Aunt Cassandra could i< 11 UK h ( (< i \\ 'i \ < i
I wjntul to kiic>\\ alJ i! vlu'li I ru'ivfd
in JCbpcclliii SiiiiKv ^^iljap^- JH I Loin i i
my inn* 1 \vant< da I \ ^ MI ihai dii < i ( n IMM
I tnil) L(lir\i Lhdi slu did tl\, \ * Ih
think <)[ in i Jbiii as iiu SIIJJIIHI lu L i ,()(
1 he most perl* c 1 c onhd^ih < and alh v ! s t
c\ci snbsistcMi lK't\\iii) (linn, and , M<| ^m 1
lasting \\a c the sonou ol Iht sm\r >i \\\n i
tli< ijihil ^ epai titioii \\ a^ iuidi
fhr t<^*ntio!i\ ui\ui b\ t no! n< * < hit f
sisi( i r An-ia is uiuit h, to ilsi % n *li(M
f A mi I ( .is^.rsitih A -> In .K i .1 lu i jvi / i \\ ^ < a
existence -even In this world/ She
have had an equally keen sense of
;ude to her eldest brother James and
vife (another Mary) for the strictly
arable silence they had preserved on
abject, in spite of what must have been
)iig temptation to act otherwise. Their
Edward, then a boy at Winchester,
read both these books with great
it, but had never been told that his
Jane had written them. Now, how-
further silence was needless, and he has
L record of his feelings, on hearing the
news, in the following lines. Though
sn by a boy not yet quite fifteen years
.hey are worth reading, if only to show
lappy and. intimate terms on which
id his Aunt Jane stood towards each
To Miss J. AUSTEN
words can express, my dear Aunt, my
urprise
nake you conceive how 1 opened my
Like a pig Butcher Pile has just struck with
his knife,
When I heard for the very "first time in my
{'f L
] \i .: I iij 1 l!\c tiv;i.x?t; L o liavi 1 u relation
VviK'-c 1 \\or\s \v'' v? dispersed through the
;L 1 hi-' iUUio'1.
i( iun\r\ei\ I'm torribly glad ;
ju-'f lo Mmik (and the thought
dn \ r i^ iiu lUcui)
i)jt Ut'Hf l\fr^. ennins'r ood-natured
V\ i- "rnlly ih', piodnee of your witty brain,
IIM. y^'ti MhjH- ihr HliJdlcLons, Dashwoods,
a.nd all,
And that you (not young Ferrars) found out
that a ball
May be given in cottages, never so small.
And though Mr. Collins, so grateful for all,
Will 'Lady de Bonrgh his dear Patroness
call,
'Tis to your ingenuity readily he owed
II is living, l:iis wife, and his humble abode.
Now it yon will take your poor nephew's
advice,
Your 1 works to Sir William pray send in a
A NEW TALE 151
ill undertake to some grandees to show
/hose means at last the Prince Regent
light know it,
Fm sure If he did, In reward for your
ale,
. make you a countess at least, without
ul,
indeed if tlie Princess should lose her
ear lile
might have a good chance of becoming
is wile. 1
)h ! Journal. Oh I Journal,
hou torment diurnal,
JTKdia /o hojH'lt^s jo siav !
demolish one he-ad
cfon going to bed,
L another starts up the nevi day!
MS.
.ese lines, composed about ninety "years
ecurred involuntarily to the mind of
resent writer before this book was
>fl Onp rpn^rm frvr iTnrlprtfilrirK? thf k
it,i i jc iv Austen aiid litr
I i iO U Oi llU CAVil
* - ' ! 1*1 ui~ Juiivv.ijoxx that they
' <- . vi i / i u K\ but only in
'ti< 'i i * tua- a^he lo support
* ' i ] i J I ^n , it \\as hoped,
t i a ,L M L, llu L MI a connected
1 ! chi- M ct I LI red through-
-'^1 - l>io i'n lius, all serious
IH 's ul hoi horie, her lamily,
eaiii 4 \votiLl Sie a\oiiled in
in u uh . !>i J ML( suddenly a now and
(i l.J svHvCLii M % iiir has stjrUd up.
!i ip > , -> i a n>t< ( i IL( book 1 recently
a.! 1 tu if ^i'l,, u iPiv be \vi(L< ly load such
< i M r * <n i !H I f i itiiiH tic od Miss
i ih t SpMth [If eul'iju ,, \vlio had a
J j,i l jvloi i e i( 1 JH. Siii^lh, Master
i ^ i j u< , < ,n >! . ] -a\ > M\ father
s < (< Mil 11 / ! ' ''I k -lul\ r dhoLlt llLS
in i esl j < f \r leu \\ IHI \\ eie c Ios( ki.en.ds.
I( ip >< i.| it Ihc UlUluSe^, \\islinig to
f a his it 1 1 o|/niiMti i UK 1 ttj IK i novels,
I lit MM i 'ii'ix M pump luin, concealing
l i 11 e 4 uiv\ ml' i * itjid a < in tain. The
v<:rdi.ei was luckily all that could be desired
till the Professor remarked he was not quite
certain as to her orthodoxy, having detected
slight U'licarian leanings in her later works,
upon which Jane Austen burst forth from
her hiding place, indignantly crying : "That's
not true! " One may question whether any
degree of intimacy condones such a stratagem,
but no doubt she knew her man/ Miss
Smyth describes this as s a curious sidelight
on an elusive personality/
Foi more than one reason tills story
cannot Ix ma pled as accurate. That Dr.
Sui) II) should. discoV' r in eiLhrr oi her ' later
woiks/ Maiisiield Park" ami Jirniiia/
Umiaiidii Jiaiilngb, may burpn-e us, but It
would l>e JUM mote Map! tsmg could \\e believe
thai Jam* Austen \\illi JUT hi^h sense of
Lonoiu, had iJioseji to uriiak M)j)ieul her own
least v\oi(h) diiiracUM-s, the* two MibS Steeles,
by coiuealiu^ lirrscli In oukr to overhear
anything < OJH mmi^ ^ci^ll \\lilch she
1)t']ir\(d the sjXMktr wc^iikl have desired
she -.iiouid nt)t hcaj, iiiiuor Dashwood's
dis[>Jcasur( k \\hcii slu Inids Lhat JNancy Steele
has been behaving in (hi-. u r a) T cannot be
forgotten by the readers of ' Sense and
vvelJ acquainted \vill' Jan* Ara^-ii, t
as ills P a 11 1 c- Ti o \' o r a f p r 1 1 s > n an y
ielLtri?, it must bu luuiTLjii \\hcll
could have IK^OI ' n. crse fru nd * of 01
aid not easily m^L buch frirnd^, By
e\ei \\cll sl^" ir.a}* ii'v^v kno-vn him, r
w</i'lJ in her L\ i b "h ivt i \< u c iM >iuli<t'
nor Aviil UK ! i, M\ a^L'oa and Lj^^uaf.
Irnputid <o her c^)A^r, lo iii f ) vdi-
stud'cd iici hooks and I'd < haut t< s i
an\ ii ^t iJibiaiK f to SKI our fLc
also otlioi reason- loi <LM Innn^ lo
the stoi \ a- il o^\i dands liunna
pdblislu it in DiCiinbci iHi^, an ! jn (li
niotilL ]aai liHuai Ktii'ncI lioin I
to lita lu^nu at (Is.- vtun alu li sin
Mav 2^ 1817. iii iiiic i \ i inn\ rv
nijidlis b'oiisjil ^ k v< 4 n liial and i
i II ij /^ ^ \ , . -4 , x II
LO d-ll 11 r fucai^t ^IhH'll ll<jl!
dt(Luid a hankiupt us \\l\n li } iSj(>
a fliici in..Pth> iliiit ss, in MM com u ol'
Ills h (r lit'i' bv i i] d l ^jKilh (1 o> Jai
nuiscd him all llu tnnr, <J Hu (\IH.
i i'';IUBj F
aad 4ie < ^n-Miiii. <
but * > in in< i[ K il ii , u was depend-
in^ iiio L, and iiiu L
b<jR(i\ Lit li.i iiOjiNi after this
icliiiii bid ^iic oiiu pa (1 a visit to old
Crunch ii" BriAsliiri (w f iu noticed with con-
* v. i n lliaL a ciidii^c. lcd Lakt n place in. her
health and bearing) and ^he once .tnt to
' lh Ik iiihini hi llu \aiii lioui oi thriving
IKIU lil ituii) ib wiUis Chtlt^iil an is the
Oji!\ place \\JHTC she 4 might f idvL lailen in
\\ith J)i. hitiyth cilier ' Emina * T ,a^ pub-
li hid bill il hiith a inuain^ uccuu^d her
s(<tt( ol vVpiersion and Hc\iKnc^b luakes it
<loubi\ iniiih* ly "-he 1 \\utill la\ i tiap for a
liktid ^IH h as slie had d<nuii'>cxd many
\(di L bolun in oiv of htr LUIILSL books.
\\c i an (/nly coiidodt that uliotra may
!ia\o aiti'i!ipt( k d to dttuve Dr. bni\th in
MII^ wav it could not at any hint, and
l<a-t oi cdi ai that linu Jia\t Ix-jii jane
Audi 1 !!, who n vn liad aintlriiL in conirnon
156 APPENDIX
ing the opinions of those who read
novels was a great entertainment to
and there Is a long list of such ver
both good and bad, on ' Emma J giv<
her biography. 1 In this list Dr. Sir
name does not appear, it is, hov
possible that an attempt to obtain his op:
in the manner described above, was
by some common friend, so intirr
acquainted with Dr. Smyth as to mak
artilice appear permissible, since it i
relate to a third person only.
At the close of the original ' Me]
its author; after correcting a complete mi
made by Miss Mitford respecting Jane A
which she had given on her mo
authority, adds these words which
very well be quoted here : ' All pc
who undertake to narrate from hearsay 1
which are supposed to have taken
before they were born, are liable to
and are apt to call in imagination to ti
of memory : and hence it arises that
a fancy piece has been substituted for ge
CHARADES
WRITTEN A HUNDRED YEARS AGO BY JANE
AUSTEN AND HER FAMILY
IT is 'hoped that these old-fashioned charades and
conundrums possess a degree of merit sufficient to
afford entertainment to any persons inclined to take
pleasure in this kind of amusement, and,, more
especially, that they may interest that inner circle
of readers who love the name of Jane Austen.
It is not as a celebrated writer that she appears
in these pages, but as one of a family group gathered
round the fireside at Steventon Rectory, Chawton
Manor House, or Godmersham Park,, to enliven the
long evenings of a hundred years ago by merry
verses and happy, careless inventions of the moment,
such as flowed without difficulty from the lively minds
and ready pens of those amongst whom she lived.
Three of these charades are by Jane herself, and
even if her name did not appear beneath them their
authorship might possibly have been apparent to
those already acquainted with the playful exaggera-
tions and sparkling nonsense in. which she some-
times loved to indulge when writing with perfect
158 CHARADES
t^c j t ^Si c ( i i" M if c cKna(*o \t ! u lu:
H t o J - l^ i'L L "iiJbJ ! id ti uiM.nl:
! 4J u J '^ I'MI i, -ii jii to <! lua pit i ^ I
.H ni (i 4 |ji i [ v i- <IK'V ic, ' lioi only ]
1 - )> li I I < 1 i c C ML
Jhc ^ i it oi ritit^ i " u ! is C LUJIS ic
btufijit' In M L ^ is ' Mil H Onb one
Ldhf i -, u \ i >i ^, i i n J ( UL ~o <J il b\ lit r U'
' c - - u i! ^ i i M ') v lift \\h \v u dig died 1
I o use n i" ' !u i n n ^i ' L it Cis^j
1 i >tJii J iiPi -> I v } 1 \ 1 10 i PHI i ( (l 1lt ( sj
N< i tli L'l^l^ ia (^io[ ^hiic tM> i Liu, Peuot
civLlod il ui j t'lU'oli o\ Ji ( s a ^ iiolrd in Llip
tts u M Ki oi j( oc l Hi t i i(Tc ^ an<l loui oi li:
If" \v i^ n tii !ii t H* < t IK< I ma 1 he v nui\
! t."n t MI ]M) i (i ! \ jiui in In > t i ui; ili\ ~ at
n niiK ! ^ ci^ . ii i ' i-hional 1 i .oil 1-t uul li.
\v\i* lit 11 ID 1 t 1 ! i i^ o at lii-D loiiiitiy
!r ( till - iii ^Mil>'ifH V\!MK tt 1 - t u (jlciur ir
iu s I PIUS,, c s las iiiin
AM i Is* i ilit i 1* u i l< < m in nn (Le p
liij ( h i ill' n > < 1 An -.U n and air n;
i r (i j i c, i IK M ; ( I i * \, i : I { * Nc \t n
10 lit HI i M t i > Jill' f > t tin ^ i ulilt' 111
IK i i it * ( ' >t o f ^i> i ] iin \\ ho ' >i In > I i } h( i 's
M t t 1 1< i 1 lit L n l\ I ih <>' SK \ i 'iton I
1 ! M \ii< h 1 ' M H ' f f 1 J N > hi ilil illi \ r
nx n'' ' i <>! It f k J\ j) M * Mh in \1 i^l
i * f hi i (! * H i i 4 ii 1, i in<! ih( MK (
< n . , i , ! i , i u i i ! ,i ( i. . i , t J i i i i c \v . ^.i i L ii hi <
CHARADES 159
aged ninety-two. Jane's own. charades follow next
in order. Two of her brothers are not represented
here, Edward Austen, afterwards Edward Knight,
and Charles, the youngest of the family. The last
two charades are by a nephew, who, being nearly
nineteen at the time of her death in July, 1817, and
well able to use his pen before that time, can claim
a place among the Steven/ton writers, even though
his charades may possibly date from the com-
paratively modern period of only seventy or eighty
years ago.
The key to No. 5, the only one of her father's
we possess, was long lost, and many accomplished
charade-guessers tried in vain to recover the mean-
ing, which he had hidden with much graceful
sub tilt y. It was at last discovered not very long
ago by his great-great-grandson, the late William
Chambers Lefroy, Esq., of Goldings, Basingstoke.
The accompanying portraits are taken, from
family miniatures. That of Jane Austen and the
engraving of her home at Steventon Rectory are
reproduced, by the kind permission of Mr. Richard
Bentley, from her Memoir published by his father
in 1870. Most sincere thanks are due to Miss Ellen
G. Hill, of Inverleith House, Hampstead, to whose
talent and kindness we owe the illustrations she has
> n >i L f v LSI
I- u I
tuilgUt;b clppticli,
With them we never speak a word, withon
less are.
In. blood and wounds we deal, yet good i.r
are proved ;
We are from passion always free, yet c
moved.
We tra;\ r el much, yet prisoners are, and c\<
to boot,
Can. with die swiftest horse keep pace, ye
on foot.
JAMES LEIGH
A in- AJ> ,mtl 'iK.ulh 1 1- i\ " but that's t!
14\ r IitM'l ,(i\([ iiiuiiL air \ c 1 ! v i,u a-iiin
III tit tll\ r 11 h ni ill (M< 1 1 c| 4 ;v \\lia! 1 H'< 1
\VilLoti! riiit'l i. - , ] M!, j" iin F J v r
I H \ r c k s I ha\r none, \ ' nr\ ri inj^^ m\
i lid\t l fiu Ir 1 ^ 1 , \ c! <jM' !J\ Min <!\\a\.
\\'iih nn Iiinl hM>jr < i jioii ( "li \vill ',i!l< 1 i
I ahvi^s liaxt'l, ,d\\ i\s k<*rp \\\y l>rd
JAMES LEIGH:
Ill
v * , . ! ii x n I ^c la t \ < ' iC J I da
V L t , r Ll>L U , S ! l " \* \ 1
r u JTV , "'Giif 1 x^iA i* i *a_, i i^ (
^iiJ no on^'i 4 ,-i ^v.v i j ,i t 1,1 ^ i^'
s in. t tf ju* \ , ^ ,u' lu v r ii l ' ! 1 i, * AV
Y< { u '* c ^ Iklil 4 ^llv ^'kLl\U tv,i ^ i.\CM {
fc 'JL ii h j i tuiijo* 1 I; one laiui J o v \
A \ s'loi c^ , u * M .1 ^ ^ < 1 L< t "v i
'. Lave neither mouth, eye, nor ear,
Yet I always keep time as 1 sing,
Change of season 1 never need fear,
Though my being depends on the spring.
/Vould 37 on wish, if these hints are too few,
One glimpse of my figure to catch ?
'..ook round ! I shall soon be in view
If you have but your eyes on the watch.
JAMES LEIGH PERROT
IV
THOUGH low is my station,
The Chief in the Nation
On me for support oft: depend ;
Young and old, strong and weak,
My assistance all. seek,
Yet all turn their backs on their friend.
.uisr
But when joined with any other,
Though It be a veiy brother,
All our glory's banished quite,
We are then kept out of sight.
Modest ladles scarce will name us,
Though we made one lad.} 7 ' famous,
Yet guess for once our name aright,
And when you find us, keep us tight.
105
XI
XIII
h 1 \\i i o (,!J\ r i( J ( ^( i hv Tui i 11
M\' I. vi, if Stt Ji'^ ChOlll^l I. it
\\iil t 1\* I\T fi^ne < -Id a; j ^' s m I
hid t. t '.i II I urul 1 31 ,m iivilj^
(' ! . ^Lli :-U)U r l ill \v'K'i' ik) o
TAMES AUSTEN.
A
. u speed,
1 * i;
My second no w nia f , i
My wlioie takes a i 1 i^ e . ^ > <>
Hot and cold, -\ t,. ^ c
What am I, lu'if K ,
XVIII
v ' ii i / i ^1 JS I i I i ) a ^ ) r o 1 1 oj i i
\n 1 u\ * v <i] 1 r nf ^ i i o ju i t th ' T" *
T^ f ui 3C IK i u i j l ' < i i 1 - S H L P M
Jl M ki "* , M/ , f 1* 'u i( I* v f
TANE AUSTEN.
XIX
DIVIDED, I'm a gentleman
In public deeds and powers ;
United, Fru a monster, who
That gentleman devours.
TANE AUSTEN.
XLTM x.
f " est i 1 ! i h' U> u i v f
/ Jl Ox*Lu.r \ !i x a )J^ ^ 4
, V\ T ." ..
f.IGH).
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v. iou ' * i
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