JANE AUSTEN.
"T DO not think it worth while to wait for enjoyment
1 until there is some real opportunity for it." Jane Austen said this in one of her letters, and it is the key to her life and her genius. A new book about her has just been published in the "English Men of Letters" Series, by Mr. Warre Cornish. (Macmillan and Co., 2s. net.) It is so charming as to be worthy of its subject. Its author is indeed to be congratulated. There is not a dull page from beginning to end. Naturally it consists very largely of quota- tion, but the appreciation is almost as delightful as the matter appreciated. Jane Austen lived all her life in the quiet country society which she loved to depict. She knew Bath well and London a little. She never went abroad. She did not need varied experience. She had, as Lady Ritchie somewhere says of her, "a natural genius for life." Country life has changed in certain particulars since her day, though,
as her books show us, it is essentially the same. Daily life in Steventon Rectory was not so different from daily life in such a place now. But it began differently. Children were
put out to nurse. Jane Austen herself passed her first two years among village people in a cottage. This horrible custom argues a want of natural feeling among a particular class of the community which is hardly imaginable to-day. Jane Austen's novels and her letters both lead us to think that feeling in the cultivated class a hundred years ago was less acute than it is now. Her heroines show "a certain gentle self-respect and humour and hardness of heart." These things we also trace in their gifted and fascinating creator. She said of Elizabeth Bennet that "her business was to be satisfied."
Satisfaction was one of the recognized duties of the day, and in some ways it was a pleasanter day than ours. We mean,
of course, for the upper middle class. In the country society of to-day means of locomotion have destroyed leisure. From the (very small) point of view of the happiness of country society this is not altogether regrettable. Yet it is difficult as we read not to envy those days. "The depth of Steventon leisure is indicated by the fact that Mr. Austen used to read Cowper aloud to his family in the morning." There were not many books to read. Miss Austen's description of dull conversation is a true picture of what dull conversation is now, but "distractions" have changed a little for the better perhaps.
"Distractions from small-talk were books of engravings. cabinets of coins and medals, drawers of shells and fossils; backgammon, cribbage, speculation, and other games of cards; charades, acrostics, and bouts-news for the clever ladies ; for the numerous dull, filigree-work, netting and knitting, miles of fringe and acres of carpet-work. The men were little more occupied than the women ; they did not even smoke ; a little shooting, hunting, riding, and driving is mentioned, but little reading. They were never too busy to walk and talk at any hour of the day, to go shopping with the young ladies, or escort them on long journeys in post-chaises."
In Miss Austen's day there were almost as many men as women in a country neighbourhood. This was very bad for the men, no doubt, who were apt to take to drink, but it made society amusing. Again, throughout Miss Austen's novels and throughout her letters there is an atmosphere of content, a sort of firelight atmosphere which we miss to-day. Old Mr. Woodhouse could be a stupendous bore, and Miss Bates too, but what pleasant evenines passed in his parlour when the supper-table "is set out and moved for- wards to the fire!" Even when Emma is out it is very pleasant. When the John Knightleys are staying in the house and Isabella's needlework is continually interrupted because Mr. Woodhouse will hold her hand, and Emma and Mr. George Knightley are flirting, it is an interior to dream of.
If a certain hardness was characteristic of the time and the circle, a certain benevolence was scarcely less so. Mr. Cornish says that Jane Austen was as benevolent as she was satirical, and that is perfectly true. What other satirist would have made Mr. Woodhouse likable, have adorned his valetudinarian character with the grace of humility, or vouchsafed to him the genuine love of two daughters ? Think how a French author would have persecuted the poor man ! Miss Bates too is allowed to gain our affection—even Mrs. Allen rouses a kindly feeling, and we, like Catherine, "are very little incom- moded " by her "remarks and ejaculations." The description of her is both kind and scathing. Miss Austen alone has the art to bring together these two methods of characterization. Mrs. Allen had "the air of a gentlewoman, a great deal of quiet. inactive good temper, and a trifling turn of mind." We should all rather like to have known her. And Miss Austen never made her bores outnumber her entertaining people.
The Bennet family pretty well represent the proportion of the witty and the wise and the good to the silly, the selfish, and the contemptible to be found in the world as she depicted it. Who would not put up with an hour of Mrs. Bennet and her younger daughter if he could have three-quarters in the society of Elizabeth and her father ? But though outside elements were never permitted by Miss Austen to intrude upon the "small piece of ivory" upon which she tells us that she worked, outside elements did intrude into her life. The first husband of her sister-in-law was a French aristocrat. He was executed at the time of the Revolution on his return to France just after he had been staying at Steventon with the Austens. Never to have alluded to this incident, of which she must have known every detail, never to have neide use of her knowledge in any way, shows a literary self-control which was surely never possessed by any other writer of fiction. She knew exactly what size of event would suit her "ivory." This was too big, and she cast it aside.
We have said that Jane Austen had few books. She said of herself, "I think I may boast myself to be, with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress." But this was not quite true. She could read French. Her sister-in-law, with whom she was much thrown, was a "highly accomplished woman after the French rather than the English mode," who bad known the court of Marie Antoinette. She had thus good opportunities of knowing something of French life and language. She knew Shakespeare well and Richardson well, and she had read Fielding. Such schooling as bad fallen to her lot was not perhaps of great value to her. The school at which she passed several years seems to have been much like the one described in Emma. But she seems to have learned there to be a superexcellent needlewoms.n and a good player of the then existing games of skill. Dancing she loved and practised up to what was then a late age. At thirty-three she writes of herself, "It was the same room in which we danced fifteen years ago. I thought it all over, and in spite of the shame of being so much older, felt with thankfulness that I was quite as happy now as then." What an inimitable touch is in that word " shame "! Only Jane Austen could have said it.
Did this charming woman ever have a love affair P Mr. Cornish thinks it is "pretty certain" that she did. He fails, however, to prove his point in connexion with any individual. The letters contain the barest suggestions on this score. Still, we may take it as certain that no charming woman ever reached thirty without a love affair at all. The experience, however, has not left much trace in her writing. Mr. Cornish thinks he finds it in Persuasion. Perhaps some- thing of disappointment may tinge the pages of what is certainly the most serious of her books, but surely no grand passion ever troubled her clear and htnnerons view of life. Neither, we imagine, did any great sorrow. Her friendship with her sister Cassandra was deep and perfect, but Cassandra outlived her, and, alas! alas! burnt all the best of her letters!. The world really does ewe Cassandra Austen a grudge. Had she any strong religions feeling P One of her ablest' critics, Professor Bradley, thinks she had; but there seems to be even less evidence for this conclusion than for Mr. Cornish's conclusion about the love affair. "Good principle" was what. she believed in, so far as appears from her books and letters; but she certainly took it for granted that good principle rested on religion. It is the fashion to say that all her clergymen are fools, but surely they are not. Anyhow, she did not think them so, and she was a very good judge. Plainly she loved both Edmund and Henry Tilney. "1 do not like evangelicals,' she says in one of her letters; but in another she adds, "I am by no means convinced that we ought not all to be evangelicals." Mr. Cornish sums up the matter very well. "At that time foundations were taken for granted; there was consequently less rebellion against and less fervour for the faith than at the present time." Cassandra does not represent Jane Austen's only family affection. While her affection for her parents would seem not to have been very warm, though her relations with them were always pleasant, she. was devoted to her brothers. The relation of brother an& sister is frequently described in her novels with remarkable tenderness. Had it not been for this display of sisterly feeling we should feel that her disposition as a whole was " too moderate, rational, and critical." This sisterly love, upon which Mr. Cornish dwells at length, almost saves the situation from the point of view of character. What would Jane Austen have been like bad she been married ? We are inclined to think she would have been perfection; but then perhaps the novels would never have been written. Not very much sympathy was shown with children in her novels. Yet her nephews and nieces adored her. May we recall to our readers' minds a very charming incident in the fragment which exists of her unpublished novel, The Watsons, which goes far to reconcile the characters. of the authoress and the aunt?— " At the conclusion of the two dances Emma found, herself, she knew not how, sealed amongst the Osbornes' set ; and she was immediately struck with the fine countenance and animated gestures of the little boy [Charles Blake, ten years old and 'uncommonly fond of dancing'] as he was standing before his mother, considering when they should begin. You will not be surprised at Charles's impatience,' said Mrs. Blake, a lively, pleasant-looking little woman of five or six and thirty, to a lady who was standing near her, when you know what a partner he is to have. Miss Osborne has been so very kind as to promise to dance the two first dances with him.' '0 yes ! we have been engaged this week,' cried the boy, 'and we are to dance down every couple.' On the other side of Emma Miss Osborne, Miss Carr, and a party of young men were standing engaged in very lively consultation; and soon afterwards she saw the smartest officer of the set walking off to the orchestra to order the dance, while Miss Osborne, passing before her to her little expecting partner, hastily said, 'Charles, I beg your pardon for not keeping my engagement, but I am going to dance these two dances with Colonel Beresford. I know you will excuse me, and I will certainly dance with you after tea ' ; and without staying for an answer, she turned again to Miss Carr, and in another minute was led by Colonel Beresford to begin the set. If the little boy's face had in, its happiness been interesting to Emma, it was infinitely more so under this sudden reverse; he stood the picture of disappointment, with crimsoned cheeks, quivering lips, and eyes bent on the floor. His mother, stifling her own mortification, tried to soothe his with the pro- spect of Miss Osborne's second promise ; but though he contrived to utter with an effort of boyish bravery, 'Oh, I do not mind it!' it was very evident by the increasing agitation of his features that he minded it as much as ever. Emma did not think or reflect ; she felt and acted. 'I shall be very happy to dance. with you, Sir, if you like it,' said she, holding out her hand with the most unaffected good-humour. The boy, in one momenta returned to all his first delight, looked joyfully at his mother, and stepping forward with an honest, simple 'Thank you, ma'am,' was instantly ready to attend his new acquaintance. . . It was a partnership which could not be noticed without surprise. It gained her a broad stare from Miss Osborne and Miss Carr as they passed her in the dance. 'Upon my word, Charles, you are in luck,' said the former, as she turned to him. Yon have got a better partner than me '; to which the happy Charles answered, There is something in this passage which is unlike Miss Austen's (completed) books, but students of her life will admit that there is nothing in it which is unlike Miss Austen.
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