"When dressed for the evening the girls now-a-days,
Scarce an atom of dress on them leave;
Nor blame them, for what is an evening dress
But a dress that is suited to Eve."
Thus the mother of mankind is accused by one poet of having danced the first waltz, and held responsible by another for the airy fashions of the Récamier period.
One of the principal differences of etiquette, we may note before passing on, between the customs of the ball-room a century ago and now, was that in the days when John Lyford was eluded with so much difficulty a girl danced two successive dances with the same partner as a matter of course, so that neither an imaginary John Thorpe nor a real John Lyford could be got rid of by the promise of one dance.
The scraps from the letters, given on the last few pages, help us to realize how clearly Jane Austen's own life is at times reflected in her books.
Dr. Whately on Jane Austen—"Moral lessons" of her novels—Charge of "Indelicacy"—Marriage as a profession—A "problem" novel—"The Nostalgia of the Infinite"—The "whitewashing" of Willoughby—Lady Susan condemned by its author—The Watsons—Change in manners—No "heroes"—Woman's love—The Prince Regent—The Quarterly Review.
"The moral lessons of this lady's novels," wrote Archbishop Whately in his Quarterly article of 1821, "though clearly and impressively conveyed, are not offensively put forward, but spring incidentally from the circumstances of the story." So inoffensively, indeed, are they offered to our notice, that Dr. Whately himself seems to have been unable to discover them at all. "On the whole," writes the Archbishop, "Miss Austin's (sic) works may safely be recommended, not only as among the most unexceptionable of their class, but as combining, in an eminent degree, instruction with amusement, though without the direct effort at the former, of which we have complained, as sometimes defeating its object."
The most obvious "moral" of Jane Austen's novels is that if you are a heroine you need not trouble yourself about your future. You are certain to marry a worthy man with an income sufficient for a comfortable existence. He may be endowed with something less than a thousand a year, like Edward Ferrars, with a couple of thousand like Captain Wentworth, or with the ten thousand a year which made Darcy appear so admirable to Mrs. Bennet. In any case you will not have to eat bread-and-scrape or go without a fire in your bedroom. The Country-house Comedy of Jane Austen is full of morals if you are in need of them, but it was not written to improve you, only to amuse you—and its maker. If you must have a clear moral for each story, after the manner of tracts, you may take them thus. Pride and Prejudice conveys the useful lesson that the person you most dislike in one month may be the one you will very sensibly give your affection to in the next; Sense and Sensibility that when the bad man falls into the pit he has dug for himself, the good man comes by his own; Emma that the man whose society is most necessary to a woman's quiet contentment is the man she ought to marry; Mansfield Park that a simple, unaffected girl who gains the second place in a man's affections may win the prize through the disqualification of her more brilliant rival; Persuasion that nothing is more likely to revive an old passion than to see its object warmly admired by some other eligible party; Northanger Abbey that a tuft-hunting father may be induced to receive a daughter-in-law of no importance by the kindly influence of a son-in-law of superior rank. As for Lady Susan, the moral of that unpleasing story is that if a worldly mater pulchra is the rival in love of an ingenuous filia pulchrior she will probably lose the battle after much suffering on either side; and from The Watsons we may see that if a girl is educated above her family she will find it hard to be happy beside the domestic hearth. All these are plain workable morals. Whether the author of the novels would have endorsed them we cannot certainly know, but it is more than probable she would not.
We need not suppose that Jane Austen was ignorant of the coarseness of conversation, the hard-drinking, the wild gambling, the moral laxity of a large section of society that are so frequently exhibited in the records of the age, in spite of the improvement in manners. But we can hardly help laughing at the objection taken to her novels even by some of her contemporaries, that they were "indelicate"! The "indelicacy" was usually found in the views of marriage held and expressed by the heroines and their families. The love-affairs of these country maidens were not often, we must admit, such as to steal away their beauty sleep or spoil their appetites for breakfast. Mrs. Jennings' kindly endeavour to cure a girl's disappointment in love by a variety of sweetmeats and olives, and a good fire, was perhaps not wholly unjustified by experience. In those days, when no profession save that of governess was open to women, when nursing the sick was regarded as an occupation specially suitable for those of a low class, when no door opened from the drawing-room on to the professional stage, and when the very idea of a "female" as secretary to a man of affairs or of business would have been condemned as "improper," marriage was undoubtedly viewed by most people as the only aim of a young woman, "the pleasantest preservative from want," as Charlotte Lucas regarded it, and, moreover, the average age of brides was much lower than it is now-a-days. To avoid being a governess by attracting the admiration of a man who could afford a wife was the hope, at least, of most poorly endowed girls, and even if matrimony is not viewed with so much sentiment and reserve by Jane Austen's heroines as by the excessively squeamish Evelina, we may be inclined to prefer the "indelicacy" of Jane Austen to the elaborate, delicacy of Fanny Burney. Scott himself, by an ingenious paradox, has been accused—as a novelist—of immorality, and Quentin Durward in particular described as "one of the most immoral novels that has even been written," because its romance expresses nothing. The interest a boy takes in its romantic passages "depends on the fact that he dreams himself to be in similar circumstances; he must treat the novel subjectively, and it is the subjective use of the imagination which does all the damage. It is in reading such books as this that a bad habit of mind is begun, and Quentin Durward is more immoral for a boy of fourteen than a translation of the most shockingly indecent French novel." Well may the anonymous writer of this unexpected criticism add: "There are paradoxes to be met everywhere, and most of all in the question of morality." This particular kind of immorality has not yet, so far as I know, been charged against Jane Austen. She cannot be justly accused of writing romance which "expresses nothing," but she certainly leaves plenty of opportunity for young readers to exercise their imaginations, and thus begin a "bad habit of mind."
The view of marriage as a profession, with or without ardent affection, is not the only thing that has shocked the delicacy of many of Jane Austen's readers. Serious objection has been taken to her introduction of episodes of an "improper" nature. How is the charge supported? Lydia Bennet, a vulgar, badly brought-up girl still in her teens, infatuated with the red coats of the militia officers, insists on going away with Wickham, and lives with him as his mistress until, by the generous aid of Darcy, and the determination of the Gardiners—her uncle and aunt—"a marriage is arranged" and does "shortly take place." This episode, say the stern critics, was (1) unnecessary to the plot, and (2) if it was necessary, it is too much insisted on and developed. That it is an essential part of the little plot, worked in to exhibit the best side of Darcy's character, which before has only been seen in its least attractive light, seems to me obvious, and I agree with Professor Saintsbury's opinion that it brings about the dénouement with complete propriety. Lydia's entire indifference to the moral aspect of her conduct is and was unusual in a girl of sixteen and of her class, but her character from first to last is consistently drawn, and the contrast between the selfishness of Wickham and Lydia, who care nothing for any one's happiness except their own, and not even for each other's, and the sympathy of heart and variety of temperament which bring Elizabeth and Darcy together is admirably drawn.
Then we are asked to be shocked at the illustration of the bad character and selfish cruelty of Willoughby given to Elinor Dashwood by the very worthy and very dull Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility. It is a painful story. Willoughby, the faithless lover of Marianne Dashwood, had seduced an impressionable girl whom Brandon, out of affection for the memory of her mother, herself ruined by a scoundrel, had practically adopted, and whom such scandal-mongers as Mrs. Jennings declared to be the Colonel's own child. "Why drag in this nasty story?" ask the objectors, and above all, "why allow the Colonel to pour it into the ears of a young girl like Elinor?" That it comes unfortunately from Brandon, who is a rival—hopeless as it had seemed—of Willoughby for Marianne's affection, and that in the middle-class society of to-day a well-bred man would not tell such a tale to a girl if he could find any other means of achieving an imperative object is undeniable.
What was Brandon to do? He knew that Marianne was pining for love of a man at least as unworthy of her as, in his worst days, was Tom Jones of Sophia, and he believed, with or without reason, that the knowledge of Willoughby's character would be a bitter but efficacious medicine for her heart-sickness. Elinor, the sensible, prudent, devoted sister, seemed the only person to whom he could tell the story with any hope that it would be discreetly used. "He had spent many hours in convincing himself that he was right," and when Elinor said, "I understand you, you have something to tell me of Mr. Willoughby that will open his character farther. Your telling it will be the greatest act of friendship that can be shown to Marianne. My gratitude will be ensured immediately by any information tending to that end, and hers must be gained by it in time. Pray, pray let me hear it," there is little reason for wonder that "upon this hint he spake," and told the story of the moral ruin of the mother and the cruel desertion of the daughter which the reader of Sense and Sensibility will recall, Elinor lost little time in retailing it to her sister, with the immediate and apparently unexpected effect of increasing the girl's unhappiness. "She felt the loss of Willoughby's character yet more heavily than she had felt the loss of his heart," though we know that she soon afterwards became as fond a wife of Colonel Brandon as she ever could have been of Willoughby.
Far more remarkable, I think, than Brandon's telling Elinor the miserable story of his sister-in-law and her daughter is the manner in which Elinor herself receives Willoughby's attempt to excuse his conduct. He admits his treatment of Miss Williams, but asks how Elinor could think Colonel Brandon an impartial reporter of the affair, and proceeds to offer his own excuse in the words that follow—
"I do not mean to justify myself, but at the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing to urge,—that because she was injured, she was irreproachable,—and because I was a libertine, she must be a saint. If the violence of her passion, the weakness of her understanding—I do not mean, however, to defend myself. Her affection for me deserved better treatment, and I often, with great self-reproach, recall the tenderness which, for a very short time, had the power of creating any return. I wish—I heartily wish it had never been. But I have injured more than herself; and I have injured one whose affection for me (may I say it?) was scarcely less warm than hers, and whose mind—oh! how infinitely superior."
In other words, the inexperienced child was of weak understanding, and loved him passionately, and therefore he was not so much to blame as if she had been less warm in her affection and stronger in her intelligence. Surely the reasoning should have been reversed. Yet after this fine oration Elinor "pities" him, and, when he goes on to disparage his wife, whom he has married for her fortune, and to express his continued love for Marianne, all that Elinor says is, "You are very wrong, Mr. Willoughby, very blamable, you ought not to speak in this way, either of Mrs. Willoughby or my sister," and in saying this "her voice, in spite of herself, betrayed her compassionate emotion." When he left her, Elinor assured him that she thought better of him than she had done, "that she forgave, pitied him, wished him well—was even interested in his happiness—and added some gentle counsel as to the behaviour most likely to promote it;" counsel which he showed little disposition to take.
This tolerance by Elinor for a man who, on his own admission, had "taken advantage" of a simple young girl, ignorant in the world's ways, this readiness to allow extenuating circumstances to a mercenary breaker of reputations and hearts, is a far more serious fact than the mere introduction of a story which does fit quite easily into the plan of the novel. Elinor's reflections when Willoughby had ended his apologies sufficiently show that the point of view suggested in the duologue between the sinner and the sister was deliberately set up by the author—
"She made no answer. Her thoughts were silently fixed on the irreparable injury which too early an independence and its consequent habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind, the character, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person and talents, united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a feeling, affectionate temper. The world had made him extravagant and vain; extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each faulty propensity, in leading him to evil, had led him likewise to punishment. The attachment from which, against honour, against feeling, against every better interest he had outwardly torn himself, now, when no longer allowable, governed every thought; and the connection, for the sake of which he had, with little scruple, left her sister to misery, was likely to prove a source of unhappiness to himself of a far more incurable nature."
The chapter describing this interview between Willoughby and Elinor is the only one in all the novels of Jane Austen wherein a "problem," after the kind dear to the dramatist of to-day and the novelists of yesterday, is fully presented and considered, the heroines, with this exception, answering to Mr. Andrew Lang's description, being "ignorant of evil, as it seems, and unacquainted with vain yearnings and interesting doubts." Elinor only, as we find her on this occasion, is a pioneer of that school of sociology which whitewashes the individual at the expense of his early environment and education. Her defence of this wretched man is, in principle, that which an Old Bailey advocate offers when he cites the theories of Lombroso in favour of a beetle-browed criminal who has stuck his knife into the breast of some confiding woman. It was "the world" that had made him what he was, he was to be pitied, not condemned.
Though we have not to consider here whether Elinor and the advocate are right or wrong, it is hard to avoid the thought that, when she wrote this remarkable chapter, Jane Austen was influenced in a degree quite unusual in that age with people of her class by the sense of futility which, not long before her day, had been the motive of Candide. Voltaire's irony is bitter, in spite of the optimism which his book preaches, and of the essential kindness of his nature, while Jane Austen's is as sweet as irony can ever be. That she was intentionally ironical in this case of Elinor's tolerance is scarcely possible. Only a cynic would treat a pure-minded maiden's apology for a heartless seducer as a subject for covert satire, and Jane was not a cynic.
Writing of Maria Edgeworth in his Notes for a Diary, Sir M. E. Grant Duff says: "In her, as in Miss Austen, there is something wanting. Is it what has been called the nostalgie de l'Infini?" That intellectual ailment is more common now-a-days than it was in the eighteenth century, and there was little of it in the grey matter of any country brains when Jane was born. Certainly it cannot be diagnosed from her work generally. Only in the particular case of Elinor and Willoughby does that idea of the helplessness of man in the maelstrom of Infinity which has paralyzed the wills of so many unhappy victims, and induced the devastating literature of determinism, seem to have entered into her plan of work—for only thus can I account for the moral whitewashing of Willoughby, not by a "man-of-the-world," with his "after all," and his "human nature" arguments, but by a country ingénue. The more I read Jane Austen's writings the stronger grows my conviction that she was one of those fortunate beings whose optimism is differentiated from pessimism by the good offices of an excellent digestion and an even pulse.
We need not suppose that she had thought much about the philosophical sanction of conduct as opposed to the purely religious, or that she had studied the French Encyclopædia. She was born and brought up in an atmosphere wherein convention, in regard to the things that matter, was almost omnipotent, and she was not of the type whereof iconoclasts are made. She attacked no system, social or religious; but she had no fondness for "isms," and thus it is that dogmatism is quite as hard to discover in her writings as scepticism.
It has been said already that Jane Austen was not a cynic. Yet it would be easy, by making Lady Susan one's text, and ignoring the rest of her writings, to show that she was as cynical as a Swift or an Anatole France. Of course I do not mean that her apparent cynicism in this case was exercised on the kind of subjects which is ridiculed in The Tale of a Tub or in L'Ile des Pingouins. But I know nothing, in its way, more cold-blooded in the presentation of "love" than the conclusion of that novel of Jane's springtime, which she herself, her own wise critic, withheld from publication. The rivalry of mother and daughter for the affections of the same man must always be an unpleasant subject, and the story of the conflict between Lady Susan Vernon and her daughter for the matrimonial prize represented by Reginald de Courcy, as told in letters among the characters concerned, is on a low plane. The morals of the "heroine" may not be suspect, but her tone is below suspicion.
What is the dénouement of Lady Susan? The mother's schemes to marry the man of the daughter's choice have ended in her own marriage to the wealthy noodle whom she had tried to force upon the daughter. "Frederica," says the author,—dropping the "correspondence" plan in order to wind up the book more readily—"was therefore fixed in the family of her uncle and aunt till such time as Reginald de Courcy could be talked, flattered and finessed into an affection for her which, allowing leisure for the conquest of his attachment to her mother, for his abjuring all future attachments, and detesting the sex, might be reasonably looked for in the course of a twelve-month. Three months might have done it in general, but Reginald's feelings were no less lasting than lively. Whether Lady Susan was or was not happy in her second choice, I do not see how it can ever be ascertained...."
It is certain that to some considerable extent Lady Susan was a satire on several lady novelists of the period. All Jane Austen's novels are more or less satirical, from Northanger Abbey, which is full of burlesque passages, to Persuasion, in which they are so rare that it needs a hunt to discover any. Whether or not Lady Susan was intended to be taken more seriously than in jest, it is a dull performance. The whole plan and treatment of the book are artificial. It was not Jane's natural instinct or her finer art which was at work in its making. So foreign is it to herself that if the MS. had been found in some cupboard of a manor-house no occupants of which had been of known relationship to the Austens, I doubt if it would have been attributed to her by any one who had not made a meticulous comparison of its phraseology with her acknowledged works.
There is, I think, no surer evidence of Jane's fine taste, alike in character and in literature, than that, having brought this novel to completion, she deliberately suppressed it. Had she sold it to a publisher, and allowed it to run its chance of popularity like the rest of her finished novels, we should have had to revise our views on her nature and judgment to a considerable extent. As it is, the fact that having written a poor novel of disagreeable tendency she recognized the unsatisfactory thing that she had done in time to cancel it is much in her favour, and justifies the opinion that whatever defects of subject or of treatment we may find in Lady Susan were condemned by its author. It is for this reason that we need not regret the decision of her nephew and niece to publish, many years after their aunt's death, the book which she herself had withheld. Only, let us never forget as we read it that it was cancelled by the author.
The Watsons was produced, as far as can be ascertained, in that middle period of Jane's life when, after her father's resignation of the Steventon living he was spending his few remaining years at Bath with his wife and daughters. Having written three of her six novels in the nineties of the eighteenth century—the six novels by which she chose to be judged—at Steventon, she produced nothing more of her best until at Chawton, in the early years of the nineteenth century, she completed her life's work.
All her books that live by their own merits were written in the heart of the country. The book that comes nearest to the commonest fiction of her period was chiefly written in a town which, however staid and irreproachable in its tone at the present date, was in her time a centre of worldliness and frivolity.
The Rivals was first acted in the year of Jane Austen's birth, but the picture it offers of Bath society is almost as true of 1802 as of 1775. Dress had changed much in the intervening years, but in all else there seems to have been little change between the Bath of Sheridan the lover of Elizabeth Linley, and the Bath of Sheridan the friend of the Prince Regent. It was among Lydia Languishes and Captain Absolutes that Jane Austen walked in Milsom Street and danced at the Assembly-rooms in 1802-5, and it was in an atmosphere of social affectation and busy idleness that she found her powers unequal to any nobler performance than the account of the husband-hunting and silly young women who angle for Lord Osborne and his friends. The futilities of The Watsons form a remarkable interlude between Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park.
The rural society into which Jane Austen takes us in all her novels marks a rapid development from the manners of the preceding age. If we regard the Squire Western of Fielding as representative of a considerable class of the country gentlemen of his time, we may wonder how it is that no such rude disturber of the peace bursts in among the Woodhouses and the Dashwoods. His nearest relation in Jane's novels is Sir John Middleton, and he, with all his noise and ignorance, is a quiet, well-bred person in comparison with the rude father of the delicious Sophia. Even the less rubicund and animal squire of the Hardcastle species is here unknown, and Squire Allworthy himself would have been strange in the drawing-rooms of Mansfield Park and Pemberley, or the parlours of Longbourn and Hartfield. There is less change to be seen in the "manners and tone" of the women, especially the younger women, than of the men. Sophia and Amelia would have used a few expressions, perhaps, that might have made Emma stare and cry "Good God!" or the fine colour deepen on Elizabeth's cheeks, and Marianne Dashwood would have confided to Elinor her astonishment that such otherwise attractive girls should be so ignorant of the poets, and of the proper arrangement of natural scenery. Had the girls become confidential on further acquaintance, Sophia might have wondered why Elizabeth said so little about the appearance of her lover, and so much about his intelligence. But Tom Jones and Booth would never have got on intimate terms with Knightley, or Darcy, or Edward Ferrars, until these Austen young men had drunk more port than anybody in Jane's novels—with the exception of John Thorpe as described by himself—could carry without disaster.
There are no "heroes" among these honest gentlemen of a hundred years ago. Wentworth has indeed won credit and fortune at sea. Bertram and Knightley do nothing to entitle them to the name, beyond marrying the heroine. Edward Ferrars merely behaves properly in keeping faith with Lucy as long as she wants him. Darcy is heroic in taking Mrs. Bennet for a mother-in-law; Henry Tilney makes fun of his chosen mate in a way that would have cost him her heart in a more conventional novel. "Il y a des héros en mal comme en bien," says Rochefoucauld, but of the evil-doing kind there are none here, unless, indeed, the effrontery with which, after jilting Marianne for a rich wife, Willoughby comes to her sister Elinor and asks for her sympathy for his sad fate, or the coolness of Wickham in the presence of the people he has wronged may be regarded as evidence of heroism.
It is to the wonderfully true presentation of the hearts and minds of girls that these novels chiefly owe their immense power of attraction even for readers who miss the greater part of the humour. Fanny Price and Elinor Dashwood are themselves but poorly endowed with humour, and Catherine Morland only possesses it in the rudimentary way of a lively school-girl. With how much of understanding, how clearly and fully are the hopes and fears, the innocent little plans of Fanny and Catherine, the more mature and reasoned ways of Elinor shown to us, without the least apparent effort.
The trustful reader nurtured on the successful fiction of our own time, especially that of the last ten years, during which English novelists have been able to indulge themselves and their public by the introduction of incidents and types of character which up to about the commencement of that decade would have secured the ban of the circulating libraries, has been led to believe that sensual impulse plays as large a part in woman's life as in man's. That such women as Lady Bellaston in Tom Jones, Arabelle in Le Lys dans la Vallée, or the Bellona of Richard Feverel exist, and in great numbers, is certain, but they are not representative of woman. Balzac, who was not: much restrained by any fear of the libraries, knew that many faithless wives (so very common in French fiction and drama, whatever they might be in life) gave themselves to men their love for whom contained much less of sensuality than of other instincts. Esther, the unhappy Jewess of Splendeurs et Misèes de Courtisanes, loves Lucien with an affection far more chaste than that which many a correct heroine is made to display for the man with whom she goes to the altar in the last chapter. The mistresses of famous men, as known to us from memoirs and histories, have not generally been of a sensual nature. Aspasia, most distinguished of them all, was of the intellectual, not the sensual, type. Strangely indelicate as was Madame du Châtelet, her relations with Voltaire were based on affinity of literary taste and critical appreciation much more than on physical attraction. Even among the unintellectual women who have figured among the grandes amoureuses of history, the passion of the woman does not in most instances appear to have been of the coarser kind. Louise de la Vallière is at least more typical of womanhood than Barbara Villiers.
Emma Woodhouse, deeply distressed at the supposed intention of Knightley to marry Harriet Smith, feels that she cares not what may happen, if he will but remain single all his life. "Could she be secure of that, indeed, of his never marrying at all, she believed she should be perfectly satisfied. Let him but continue the same Mr. Knightley to her and her father, the same Mr. Knightley to all the world; let Donwell and Hartfield lose none of their precious intercourse of friendship and confidence, and her peace would be fully secured. Marriage, in fact, would not do for her." Marriage, we know, "did for her" very well, and not at all, so far as we have her story, in the idiomatic sense in which the words are commonly used. But in this healthy maiden, who could regard with equanimity a future wherein the man she liked best should never be more to her than a dear friend who dropped in for tea or supper, we have an effective illustration of the relative insignificance of passion in Jane Austen's view of life.
Emma Woodhouse has near relations in Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars, who, after the marriage of Lucy Steele to Robert Ferrars had cleared away the only barrier to their own avowals of affection, "were neither of them quite enough in love to think that three hundred and fifty pounds a year would supply them with the comforts of life." Kitty and Lydia Bennet could simultaneously adore all the officers of a militia regiment, but there was nothing of the "all for love, and the world well lost" nonsense about any of the agreeable women of Jane Austen's creation. They were not to be captured by a man's attractions of mind and person in the way that Millamant was by Mirabell's, nor even by the art of others, as Beatrice was won for Benedick—and he for her. The names of Millamant and Beatrice were in the ancestral tree of Elizabeth Bennet, but her pulses beat more regularly than theirs.
In the effect of Mary Crawford's charms on Edmund Bertram we may see some pale suggestion of such an awakening as that of Robert Orange (in The School for Saints), who, on meeting with Brigit, "suddenly had found presented to him a mind and a nature in such complete harmony with his own that it had seemed as though he were the words and she the music, of one song." But it was only a "seeming" in Edmund's case, and while we read Jane Austen our thoughts are rarely allowed to flow into a "Romeo and Juliet" channel for more than a few moments at a time.
The re-awakening of Wentworth's dormant love for Anne Elliot would have afforded to most lady novelists an opportunity for some fine, romantic writing. Jane Austen allows herself no romance in the matter. The sea air at Lyme has heightened Anne's colour, and a passing visitor—her cousin, as it happens—is attracted by her appearance. Wentworth notices his glances of admiration and is reminded that she is charming!
"When they came to the steps leading upwards from the beach, a gentleman, at the same moment preparing to come down, politely drew back and stopped to give them way. They ascended and passed him; and as they passed, Anne's face caught his eye, and he looked at her with a degree of earnest admiration which she could not be insensible of. She was looking remarkably well; her very regular, very pretty features having the bloom and freshness of youth restored by the fine wind which had been blowing on her complexion, and by the animation of eye which it had also produced. It was evident that the gentleman (completely a gentleman in manner) admired her exceedingly. Captain Wentworth looked round at her instantly in a way which showed his noticing of it. He gave her a momentary glance—a glance of brightness which seemed to say, 'That man is struck with you'—and even I, at this moment, see something like Anne Elliot again."
This scene may be deficient in the sentiment that delights Catherine Morlands and Marianne Dashwoods, but it is a bit of true observation of a familiar phase of human folly. Archbishop Whately remarks that: "Authoresses ... can scarcely ever forget that they are authoresses. They seem to feel a sympathetic shudder at exposing naked a female mind. Elles se peignent en buste, and leave the mysteries of womanhood to be described by some interloping male, like Richardson or Marivaux, who is turned out before he has seen half the rites, and is forced to spin from his own conjectures the rest. Now from this fault Miss Austin is free. Her heroines are what one knows women must be, though one never can get them to acknowledge it." It is a striking proof of the little that was known of Jane Austen by her contemporaries that, even four years after her death, neither Whately himself, nor the editor of the Quarterly Review knew how to spell her name.
The criticism that the mind brought up on modern fiction would be likely to make on the girls of Jane Austen would be the reverse of Whately's. It would be that her chief defect in depicting woman's character was that she almost invariably did force the reader to spin from his own conjectures when the "mysteries of the heart" were the subject of her pages. The truth is divided, I think, between the Archbishop and the supposed modern critic. Jane's heroines are true women, admirably portrayed, but they only represent a certain proportion of their sex. It could never be suspected of Elizabeth, or Elinor, or Anne, or Fanny that there was Southern blood in her veins. There might have been a few drops—no more—in Marianne's. The feelings of the author are reflected in her most attractive characters. She might have married, again and again, of that there can be small doubt; and while for herself she shared Dorothy Osborne's opinion as to the essentials of conjugal happiness, I fancy that she would also have agreed with Dorothy's brother that "all passions have more of trouble than satisfaction in them, and therefore they are happiest that have least of them." That, indeed, as we have already seen, was very much the fault that Miss Brontë found in her as a novelist.
Anne Elliot comes nearer than any of her fellow-heroines to Dorothy Osborne's ideal of the changelessness of affection, the true union of hearts, but, save for her involuntary tears at the Musgroves', she kept her feelings under the most perfect control, and never, we may be sure, tried to beat her convictions into the heads of her silly family, or even of her faithful friend Lady Russell.
There were, we may fairly believe, not a few who would like to have been Jane's chosen mate. One such unhappy being seems, as we read, to be the actor in the little bit of serious comedy related, with lively exaggeration, in a letter written when she was twenty-five years old. "Your unfortunate sister was betrayed last Thursday into a situation of the utmost cruelty. I arrived at Ashe Park before the party from Deane, and was shut up in the drawing-room with Mr. Holder alone for ten minutes. I had some thoughts of insisting on the housekeeper or Mary Corbett being sent for, and nothing could prevail on me to move two steps from the door, on the lock of which I kept one hand constantly fixed."
Elizabeth Bennet was not more uncomfortable when her mother took Kitty up-stairs after breakfast in order that Mr. Collins might have what he called "The honour of a private audience" with the elder girl. "Dear ma'am," Elizabeth cried, "do not go. I beg you will not go. Mr. Collins must excuse me. He can have nothing to say to me that anybody need not hear. I am going away myself." But her mother's, "Lizzy, I insist upon your staying and hearing Mr. Collins," compelled her to remain, with results for which we must ever be grateful to Mrs. Bennet. It is not clear, however, that Mr. Holder was a suitor for Jane. We are left in doubt both as to his hopes and his demerits.
There is a little matter connected with the Quarterly's two articles in praise of Jane which is perhaps worth noting here. Gifford, who was editor when both appeared, was so warm a supporter of the Prince Regent that Hazlitt—one of Gifford's "beasts"—wrote in an open letter to him: "When you damn an author, one knows that he is not a favourite at Carlton House." Now the Prince is said to have been so fond of Jane Austen's novels that he kept a set in each of his residences, and it is unquestionable that, in consequence of a suggestion that was "equivalent to a command," she dedicated Emma to him. "You will be pleased to hear," she wrote on April 1, 1816, to John Murray the First, who published the book, "that I have received the Prince's thanks for the handsome copy I sent him of 'Emma.' Whatever he may think of my share of the work, yours seems to have been quite right."
In the same letter she expresses her disappointment at the "total omission of 'Mansfield Park'" in the Quarterly's review of her work in the preceding autumn. As to that review, it is a curious fact that until Lockhart's "Life of Scott" appeared, Whately, who wrote the 1821 article, was credited with the authorship of the earlier review, and it is still to be found against his name in the British Museum catalogue, not from the ignorance of the cataloguers, but because he appears as author on the title-page of a reprint of the article issued at Ahmedabad in 1889.
What has woman done?—"Nature's Salic law"—Women deficient in satire—Some types in the novels—The female snob—The valetudinarian—The fop—The too agreeable man—"Personal size and mental sorrow"—Knightley's opinion of Emma—Ashamed of relations—Mrs. Bennet—The clergy and their opinions—Worldly life—Absence of dogma—Authors confused with their creations.
It is a commonplace of those who refuse to recognize the claims of woman to equal treatment in spheres of activity where man has long held a monopoly, to ask what great thing has woman done in any walk of life? One may talk in reply of Sappho, of Joan of Arc, of George Sand, of George Eliot, of Florence Nightingale, and two or three others, and the retort, if the greatness of these be admitted, is that they are the exceptions that "prove" the rule. It is difficult, impossible perhaps, to upset the man who denies that anything of "the greatest" in art, or literature, or science has been achieved by a woman. The list of women who have left an abiding fame as poets, or novelists, or painters is soon exhausted, and there is not a name that can, without reserve, be placed among the Rembrandts and Turners, the Goethes and Miltons, the Newtons and Darwins of mankind. Maybe this deficiency is largely due to lack of opportunity. Since the gates were partly opened to woman, within the lifetime of those who are still not old, she has done enough to change the opinions of many who held that rocking the cradle was a sufficiently active share in the ruling of the world for the sex that produced the Maid of Orleans and the Lady with the Lamp. Such justly conspicuous success as Madame Curie has attained in chemistry, or Mrs. Garrett Anderson in medicine, or Mrs. Scharlieb in surgery, has compelled the admission that even if woman were by nature unfitted to reach the highest levels of intellectual achievement, she at least could not be excluded from the learned professions on the ground of inadequate mental equipment.
"Nature's old Salic law," said Huxley, "will not be repealed, and no change of dynasty will be effected." Jane Austen, at any rate, did not desire to repeal it. She was among the most feminine of the women writers who have left an enduring reputation. It is something of a paradox, therefore, that the quality on which her fame chiefly rests is one which is rare among women, and in which most of those women who have attained success in literature have been conspicuously lacking—satirical humour. Apart from physical disabilities, want of humour is woman's heaviest handicap in the conflict of life. Humour is the principal ingredient of the philosophic temperament. Woman has courage in adversity, she can suffer intensely without complaint, but she rarely possesses the power of laughing at her own misfortunes.
It has been said, and the saying might not easily be gainsaid, that none of the great jokes of the world was made by a woman. There are perhaps fifty great jokes—spoken jokes, of course, are meant, not those generally humourless things known as "practical jokes"—and the good stories that are told and received as novelties are, save in the rarest instances, merely new editions of some wheeze which was already ancient when it was told to a circle of mead-drinkers round a fire the smoke whereof—or some of it—escaped through the roof. It is, there is reason to believe, no mere figure of speech that originally most of the basic jokes were told round the galley fire of the Ark during the long dark evenings after the animals had been fed, the decks swept down, and the women had retired to their quarters. Thus may we account for the otherwise inexplicably large proportion of sea-faring and animal tales among the mirth-provoking yarns of man. A woman might never make a joke, and yet have a keen sense of humour, while, on the other hand, she might make many jokes, and have no sense of humour at all. Most of the jokes that have any element of freshness are alive with fun, and not with humour. Who is more humourless than the notoriously funny man?
Jane Austen is not often funny and seldom makes jokes in her novels. Her humour is of the essential kind, which is so nearly akin to wit that it is often almost identical with it. Wit and humour, after all definitions, are brothers who might be taken for one another by those who do not notice that the one has colder hands than the other.
If you want to laugh heartily you must not trust to Jane's novels for a stimulant. Her characters laugh but little among themselves, and are the cause of intellectual joy rather than of physical contractions in those who read about them.
When, after a re-reading of the novels, we sit and think over their delights, many are the admirable bits of character-drawing that come to mind. After we have thought of the heroines, the "good" people, in the common meaning of the word, do not come back to us so readily as those who, if not "bad," are decidedly faulty. The Westons, the Gardiners, the Harvilles, the Crofts, Lady Russell, the John Knightleys, we recall when we jog our memories. After Elizabeth, and Emma, and Anne, it is the appallingly tactless Mrs. Bennet, the odiously snobbish Mrs. Elton, the race-proud Lady Catherine, the entirely selfish Mr. Collins, the lazy and thoughtless Lady Bertram, the mean and tyrannical Mrs. Norris, the fatuous Sir Walter Elliot, these and their like, who throng into view. No writer—not even Thackeray—has realized the female snob more knowingly than Jane Austen in Mrs. Elton, whose constant reference of all matters of taste to the standard presented by "Maple Grove" and the "barouche-landau" renders her as diverting to us as she was insufferable to Emma Woodhouse. A woman like this, who is never betrayed into an unselfish action or a noble aspiration, is happily not a common object in real life, but there are enough of Mrs. Elton's great-granddaughters about the world to exculpate Jane from the charge of undue exaggeration. Emma herself has been called a snob, and only the other day was described as "perpetually acting with bad taste." But Emma's disdain for Robert Martin, and her opinion of the degradation of marrying a governess, were due to prejudices of convention, which thought—under Knightley's influence—dispelled. Mrs. Elton was a snob at heart, who revelled in her own vulgarity of instinct.
If the snob is portrayed to perfection in Mrs. Elton, the valetudinarian is no less happily presented in Mr. Woodhouse—"My dear Emma, suppose we all have a little gruel"—and for a picture of an empty-headed, frivolous wife married to a rational and bearish husband, the Palmers, in Sense and Sensibility, have few equals. As for Miss Bates, she is without a serious rival as an inconsequential babbler, and though we may be, and ought to be, as angry with Emma for her rudeness at the Box Hill picnic as was Mr. Knightley himself, we must admit that years of Miss Bates's disjoined garrulity were some set-off against that gross breach of charity and good manners. Lady Catherine de Bourgh has been placed by some critical readers among Jane Austen's obvious caricatures. Is she not an entirely credible, if happily rare, type? She is seen in a strong light in her attempt to bully Elizabeth into a promise not to marry Darcy—
"'With regard to the resentment of his family,' says Elizabeth at last, 'or the indignation of the world, if the former were excited by his marrying me, it would not give me one moment's concern—and the world in general would have too much sense to join in the scorn.'
"'And this is your real opinion!' replies Lady Catherine. 'This is your final resolve! Very well. I shall now know how to act. Do not imagine, Miss Bennet, that your ambition will ever be gratified. I came to try you. I hoped to find you reasonable; but, depend upon it, I will carry my point.'
"In this manner Lady Catherine talked on till they were at the door of the carriage, when, turning hastily round, she added—
"'I take no leave of you, Miss Bennet. I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve no such attention. I am most seriously displeased.'
"Elizabeth made no answer, and without attempting to persuade her ladyship to return into the house, walked quietly into it herself."
Thus ends one of the great scenes of Jane Austen, a bit of duologue which gives us the natures and capacities of two remarkable people, a charming, clear-headed, self-reliant girl, and a blustering, stupidly proud old woman.
Sir Walter Elliot is the companion figure, more highly-coloured, of Lady Catherine. This man, a vain fop who has not sense enough to govern his own affairs, regards professional men as contemptible, if necessary, adjuncts of society, and, at a time when only the splendid services of our sailors had saved England from disaster he thus babbles about the navy—
"Yes; it is in two points offensive to me, I have two strong grounds of objection to it. First, as being the means of bringing persons of obscure birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honours which their fathers and grandfathers never dreamt of; and, secondly, as it cuts up a man's youth and vigour most horribly; a sailor grows old sooner than any other man. I have observed it all my life. A man is in greater danger in the navy of being insulted by the rise of one whose father his father might have disdained to speak to, and of becoming prematurely an object of disgust himself, than in any other line. One day last spring, in town, I was in company with two men, striking instances of what I am talking of,—Lord St. Ives, whose father we all know to have been a country curate, without bread to eat: I was to give place to Lord St. Ives,—and a certain Admiral Baldwin, the most deplorable-looking personage you can imagine; his face the colour of mahogany, rough and rugged to the last degree; all lines and wrinkles, nine grey hairs of a side, and nothing but a dab of powder at top. 'In the name of heaven, who is that old fellow?' said I to a friend of mine who was standing near (Sir Basil Morley). 'Old fellow!' cried Sir Basil, 'it is Admiral Baldwin. What do you take his age to be?' 'Sixty,' said I, 'or perhaps sixty-two.' 'Forty,' replied Sir Basil, 'forty, and no more.' Picture to yourselves my amazement: I shall not easily forget Admiral Baldwin. I never saw quite so wretched an example of what a sea-faring life can do; but to a degree, I know it is the same with them all: they are all knocked about, and exposed to every climate, and every weather, till they are not fit to be seen. It is a pity they are not knocked on the head at once, before they reach Admiral Baldwin's age."
There have been such fools as Sir Walter Elliot, but as a type he is overdrawn. Jane loved the navy so much that her anger with those who disparaged it gave her pen speed and added colour to the ink.
Anne's cousin William Elliot, whose attentions to her help to revive Wentworth's affection, is more closely studied by the author than any of her "heroes."
"Everything united in him; good understanding, correct opinions, knowledge of the world, and a warm heart. He had strong feelings of family attachment and family honour, without pride or weakness; he lived with the liberality of a man of fortune, without display; he judged for himself in everything essential, without defying public opinion in any point of worldly decorum. He was steady, observant, moderate, candid; never run away with by spirits or by selfishness, which fancied itself strong feeling; and yet, with a sensibility to what was amiable and lovely, and a value for all the felicities of domestic life, which characters of fancied enthusiasm and violent agitation seldom really possess."
Anne, however, was not long in discovering grave defects in this outwardly model person. She saw that while he was
"rational, discreet, polished, he was not open. There never was any burst of feeling, any warmth of indignation or delight, at the evil or good of others. This, to Anne, was a decided imperfection. Her early impressions were incurable. She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others. Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still. She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped.
"Mr. Elliot was too generally agreeable. Various as were the tempers in her father's house, he pleased them all. He endured too well, stood too well with everybody."
Those who accuse Jane Austen of hardness have sometimes relied on her treatment of Mrs. Musgrove's sorrow over her ne'er-do-well son, long after his death, to support this charge. Anne and Wentworth, whose mutual liking was just beginning to bloom again, were "actually on the same sofa, for Mrs. Musgrove had most readily made room for him; they were divided only by Mrs. Musgrove. It was no insignificant barrier, indeed. Mrs. Musgrove was of a comfortable, substantial size, infinitely more fitted by nature to express good cheer and good humour than tenderness and sentiment; and while the agitations of Anne's slender form, and pensive face, may be considered as very completely screened, Captain Wentworth should be allowed some credit for the self-command with which he attended to her large fat sighings over the destiny of a son, whom alive nobody had cared for." And then the author stops in her narrative to observe that "Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions. A large, bulky figure has as good a right to be in deep affliction as the most graceful set of limbs in the world. But, fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will patronize in vain—which taste cannot tolerate—which ridicule will seize."
She thus bluntly expresses what almost every satirist merely implies, but she underrates her own powers. The ordinary writer might or might not be able to describe the grief of "a large, bulky figure" without offence to the ordinary "taste." Genius could assuredly do this thing. Shakespeare, with whom Whately, Macaulay and Tennyson compared Jane Austen, made one of his greatest characters "fat and scant of breath," but when Hamlet says to his friend, "Thou woulds't not think how ill all's here about my heart," we do not find it "ridiculous" that this "too, too solid flesh" should be joined with a mind weighted with such poignant sorrow. In any case, whether she mistrusted her own powers, or wanted Mrs. Musgrove to be slightly ridiculous, which seems more likely, Jane did not here strive to achieve what she pointedly tells us it would be beyond reason to expect.
The character of Emma is described with unusual fulness, but the description is placed in the mouth of George Knightley, her candid admirer, who was perhaps not guiltless of the fault which Fainall attributed to Mirabell, of being "too discerning in the failings of his mistress." Mrs. Weston ("Miss Taylor that was") has said that Emma means to read with Harriet Smith—
"'Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old,' replies Mr. Knightley. 'I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up, at various times, of books that she meant to read regularly through—and very good lists they were, very well chosen, and very neatly arranged—sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen—I remember thinking it did her judgment so much credit, that I preserved it some time, and I dare say she may have made out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to anything requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding. Where Miss Taylor failed to stimulate, I may safely affirm that Harriet Smith will do nothing. You never could persuade her to read half so much as you wished. You know you could not.'
"'I dare say,' replied Mrs. Weston, smiling, 'that I thought so then; but since we have parted, I can never remember Emma's omitting to do anything I wished.'
"'There is hardly any desiring to refresh such a memory as that,' said Mr. Knightley, feelingly; and for a moment or two he had done. 'But I,' he soon added, 'who have had no such charm thrown over my senses, must still see, hear, and remember. Emma is spoiled by being the cleverest of her family. At ten years old she had the misfortune of being able to answer questions which puzzled her sister at seventeen. She was always quick and assured; Isabella slow and diffident. And ever since she was twelve, Emma has been mistress of the house and of you all. In her mother she lost the only person able to cope with her.'"
An unhappy condition of most of Jane's heroines is that they are of necessity ashamed of their nearest relations. Anne Elliot felt this trouble keenly, when at length she and Wentworth decided to take the happiness which she had refused years before—
"Anne, satisfied at a very early period of Lady Russell's meaning to love Captain Wentworth as she ought, had no other alloy to the happiness of her prospects than what arose from the consciousness of having no relations to bestow on him which a man of sense could value. There she felt her own inferiority keenly. The disproportion in their fortune was nothing; it did not give her a moment's regret; but to have no family to receive and estimate him properly, nothing of respectability, of harmony, of good will, to offer in return for all the worth and all the prompt welcome which met her in his brothers and sisters, was a source of as lively pain as her mind could well be sensible of under circumstances of otherwise strong felicity."
One can readily understand her regret. Her father was a fool, her elder sister Elizabeth a slave of convention, with few rational ideas of her own, and her younger sister a neurotic egotist, who grudged to others the simplest pleasures if she did not feel able or disposed to share them.
Fanny Price was ashamed of the slovenly home at Portsmouth to which Henry Crawford so inopportunely penetrated. Elizabeth Bennet's mother was, of course, more nearly "impossible" even than Lady Catherine had so pointedly suggested, for her defects were far worse than those of obscure birth. This terrible woman, who kept her elder daughters constantly on the rack by her fatuous chatter, who always said the wrong thing, who had no desire for her children's welfare but to marry them to anybody, with money if possible, or without it rather than not at all, made one of her usual quick changes when she heard the surprising news of Elizabeth's engagement to Darcy—
"She began at length to recover, to fidget about in her chair, get up, sit down again, wonder, and bless herself.
"'Good gracious! Lord bless me! only think! dear me! Mr. Darcy! Who would have thought it! And it is really true? Oh, my sweetest Lizzy! how rich and how great you will be! What pin-money, what jewels, what carriages you will have! Jane's is nothing to it—nothing at all. I am so pleased—so happy! Such a charming man!—so handsome! so tall—Oh, my dear Lizzy! pray apologize for my having disliked him so much before. I hope he will overlook it. Dear, dear Lizzy! A house in town! Everything that is charming! Three daughters married! Ten thousand a-year! Oh, Lord! what will become of me? I shall go distracted.'
"This was enough to prove that her approbation need not be doubted; and Elizabeth, rejoicing that such an effusion was heard only by herself, soon went away. But before she had been three minutes in her own room, her mother followed her.
"'My dearest child,' she cried, 'I can think of nothing else! Ten thousand a-year, and very likely more! 'Tis as good as a lord! And a special license. You must and shall be married by a special license. But, my dearest love, tell me what dish Mr. Darcy is particularly fond of, that I may have it to-morrow.'
"This was a sad omen of what her mother's behaviour to the gentleman himself might be; and Elizabeth found that, though in the certain possession of his warmest affection, and secure of her relations' consent, there was still something to be wished for."
Of Catherine Morland we are told that "her whole family were plain matter-of-fact people, who seldom aimed at wit of any kind; her father at the utmost being contented with a pun, and her mother with a proverb." Having given us this little aperçu of Mr. and Mrs. Morland, the author, more suo, adds the information: "They were not in the habit, therefore, of telling lies to increase their importance, or of asserting at one moment what they would contradict the next."
If we seek in our memories for scenes of particular excellence we shall recall with renewed pleasure the rehearsals (Mansfield Park), the encounters between Elizabeth and Mr. Collins and Elizabeth and Lady Catherine (Pride and Prejudice), the second and last proposal of Wentworth to Anne Elliot (Persuasion), the picnic at Box Hill and the dance at the "Crown" (Emma). In all of these the spontaneity of the narrative, the vitality of the talk and the vividness with which the circumstances are realized with the smallest amount of description show the author's art in its most delightful vein.
It is often in little touches, generally satirical, that Jane Austen reveals the characters of her people. Lady Middleton, whose "reserve was a mere calmness of manner with which sense had nothing to do"; Mary Bennet, whom, when her sisters visited her, "they found, as usual, deep in the study of thorough bass and human nature, and had some new extracts to admire, and some new observations of threadbare morality to listen to"; the gushing Louisa Musgrove, who declared that if she loved a man as Mrs. Croft loved the Admiral, she "would always be with him, nothing should ever separate" them, and that she "would rather be overturned by him, than driven safely by anybody else"; Mr. Allen, a country gentleman of fortune who "did not care about the garden, and never went into it"; and General Tilney, poring over pamphlets when he ought to be in bed, blinding his eyes "for the good of others" who would never benefit in the least by his exertions; the heartless and humbugging Mrs. Norris, whose plentiful talk about helping her poor, child-burdened sister ended in her "writing the letters" while others sent substantial assistance—these, and many other entertaining people live for us largely from such casual peeps into their natures and sentiments.
Jane Austen rarely describes a man or woman as possessing qualities which are not justified by the evidence she offers. Almost the only notable exceptions are Mrs. Dashwood, of whom we are told that "a man could not very well be in love with either of her daughters, without extending the passion to her," but who does not herself give us any reason to regard her as other than an affectionate, well-meaning, and injudicious person, and Captain Wentworth, who is stated to have been witty, but who usually manages to restrain his wit when we happen to meet him.
The many parsons of the novels are at once too steady and too prosperous to be in accord with either of the types of eighteenth-century clergy most frequently conveyed by the literature of their period. They may not have done much for their parishioners beyond preaching to them once or twice a week, and sending them soup occasionally, but they set them good examples by conducting themselves decently and soberly. Of their "views" we know little. Indeed, few things are more remarkable in these novels, in the light of later fiction, than that almost complete absence of any reference to dogmatic religion to which attention has already been drawn. You may hunt through them all and hardly find two definite statements that, except to see what the vicar's bride was like, any of the characters went to church. We know that the parsons preached, but whether there was any one to hear their sermons we are usually left in doubt. In fact, as Dr. Whately puts it, the author's religion is "not at all obtrusive." His favourable view of Jane Austen's influence may be contrasted with Robert Hall's of Maria Edgeworth's: "In point of tendency I should class her books among the most irreligious I ever read.... She does not attack religion nor inveigh against it, but makes it appear unnecessary by exhibiting perfect virtue without it."
It has frequently been said that the atmosphere of Jane Austen's books is "Church of England," and this is in a sense true. She assumes that the squires of whom she writes are adherents of Church and State, much as a provincial clergyman wrote quite recently in his Parish Magazine: "It is generally taken for granted that Church is the only possible religion for an English gentleman." We meet with no Romish priests or Methodist preachers, not so much as a member of the Society of Friends, but, on the other hand, we meet with no one who talks against faith. It was a period when the Church itself had become apathetic, when pluralists abounded, and when many rectors lived comfortably on their great tithes, far from the parishes which they left to the care of curates who were often worse off than gamekeepers. A young man went into the Church, if there was a good living to be had, just as he went to the Bar if his uncle was a flourishing attorney, or into the navy if his friends had influence with the Board of Admiralty. Many parsons, if they were well-to-do and fond of society, did not even wear any distinctive dress. One meets vicars and curates to-day, in summer-time, wearing green ties and grey tweed suits, and even a bishop has been known to abandon his episcopal uniform when he was away on a holiday. But, to take an instance from the novels, Catherine Morland, who has met Henry Tilney at a dance in Bath, and meets him again at the Pump-room or elsewhere, does not know he is a clergyman until she is told. The Church was merely a profession for most of those who entered it. "Did Henry's income depend solely on his living," says General Tilney, "he would not be well provided for. Perhaps it may seem odd, that with only two younger children, I should think any profession necessary to him; and certainly there are moments when we could all wish him disengaged from every tie of business." The most conscientious clergyman in the Austen Comedy is Edmund Bertram, who really seems to have wished to do his duty, and thereby damaged his chance of marrying Mary Crawford.
The scanty reference to the observances of religion in the novels bears on the worldly life of the age, as we know it from those who were of it and saw it at its centre of activity, London society. Doctor Warner, George Selwyn's chaplain, who attracted large congregations by his eloquent preaching, and who was an avowed sceptic away from church, who toadied the rich and noble, and told stories that delighted the Duke of Queensberry, was no rare type of the clergy of his time, and we may be pretty certain that Jane Austen's Mr. Collins (who was not at all likely to tell an improper story himself) would have found it very difficult to believe that so exalted a personage as "Old Q." was unfit for the society of clergymen.
Jane frankly admitted that she knew too little of literature, philosophy, and science, to allow her adequately to draw the character of a scholarly and serious parson. "The comic side of the character I might be equal to, but not the good, the enthusiastic, the literary. Such a man's conversation must at times be on subjects of science and philosophy of which I know nothing, or at least occasionally abundant in quotations and allusions which a woman who, like me, knows only her own mother tongue, and has read little in that, would be totally without the power of giving." According to her brother and her nephew, Jane was better educated than she here makes out, knowing French, and a good deal of Italian. Whether we believe her or not about her literary and linguistic limitations, we can have small doubt that she knew very little indeed about science and philosophy, in spite of being so much of a philosopher. In those days, when Cuvier was bringing his genius in palæontology to bear on the recovery of lost types, and preparing a way for Darwin, whose own grandfather was bravely aiding in the clearance of paths in hitherto trackless jungles of prejudice and obscurantism, science was scarcely regarded as a decent subject of conversation before ladies in country drawing-rooms, and it never obtrudes itself at Hartfield or at Mansfield Park.
If we may read through every word of Jane's novels without discovering any expression of dogmatic belief, we may equally find no direct evidence, unless in that one story of Elinor and Willoughby, of acceptance of the chilly Deism which had eaten so deeply into the intellects both of laymen and clergy. The unrest, both moral and physical, which had spread from Paris, from Holland, and from Switzerland over the whole of Western Europe at that time, finds little place for its fidgeting in the families to whom we are here introduced. People, with the rare exceptions of a Wickham or a Willoughby, are born, live, and die, in peace with the world and in general harmony with their environments.
Admirable as Jane Austen's pictures of country life in house and garden are, they are not to be accepted as literal transcripts. She was, before all else, an artist, and the more an artist is devoted to finicking reproduction of exact details the further is he removed from art. Almost every author, if he writes with sincerity, must draw his own moral portrait in his best work. In a literal sense there is no reason to suppose that novelists often give us studies of themselves in any degree comparable with the self-portraits of Rembrandt, Velasquez, Madame Vigée le Brun or the moderns in the Uffizi Gallery. Sometimes, of course, as in Villette and Delphine, an author reports episodes in his life almost as they happened, and it is certain, save in the rarest cases, that something of an author's mental processes is reproduced in all his creatures, "bad" as well as "good," though he is more likely to show his own temperament and experience in a prominent and sympathetic character than in any other. Very few writers follow the example of Milton, of whom Coleridge declared "his Satan, his Adam, his Raphael, almost all his Eve, are all John Milton." The common mistake, a mistake so obvious that we may wonder at its continuance, is such a close identification of the author with any one of his creations. Thus, because "Vivian Grey is Disraeli himself," Disraeli is to be credited with the strange experiences of that uneasy hero among foreign politicians and card-sharpers; and because "Jane Eyre is Charlotte Brontë," Charlotte Brontë must at least have wished to unite herself with a wild man whose wife had gone mad. There were no doubt readers of Goethe's Faust who, ignoring the legend, thought the author had bargained with Mephisto and, it "goes without saying" (Marianne Dashwood is not within hearing), that "Hamlet is Shakespeare." Such arbitrary reasoning may account for the general confusion of Frankenstein with the creature that he made.