A Book of Sibyls Part 12

It must have been at Steventon--Jane Austen's earliest home--that Mr.

Collins first made his appearance (Lady Catherine not objecting, as we know, to his occasional absence on a Sunday, provided another clergyman was engaged to do the duty of the day), and here, conversing with Miss Jane, that he must have made many of his profoundest observations upon human nature; remarking, among other things, that resignation is never so perfect as when the blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its value in our estimation, and propounding his celebrated theory about the usual practice of elegant females. It must have been here, too, that poor Mrs. Bennet declared, with some justice, that once estates are entailed, one can never tell how they will go; here, too, that Mrs. Allen's sprigged muslin and John Thorpe's rodomontades were woven; that his gig was built, 'curricle-hung lamps, seat, trunk, sword-case, splashboard, silver moulding, all, you see, complete. The ironwork as good as new, or better. He asked fifty guineas.... I closed with him directly, threw down the money, and the carriage was mine.'

'And I am sure,' said Catherine, 'I know so little of such things, that I cannot judge whether it was cheap or dear.'

'Neither the one nor the other,' says John Thorpe.

Mrs. Palmer was also born at Steventon--that good-humoured lady in 'Sense and Sensibility,' who thinks it so ridiculous that her husband never hears her when she speaks to him. We are told that Marianne and Ellinor have been supposed to represent Ca.s.sandra and Jane Austen; but Mr. Austen Legh says that he can trace no resemblance. Jane Austen is not twenty when this book is written, and only twenty-one when 'Pride and Prejudice' is first devised.

Cousins presently come on the scene, and amongst them the romantic figure of a young, widowed Comtesse de Feuillade, flying from the Revolution to her uncle's home. She is described as a clever and accomplished woman, interested in her young cousins, teaching them French (both Jane and Ca.s.sandra knew French), helping in their various schemes, in their theatricals in the barn. She eventually marries her cousin, Henry Austen. The simple family annals are not without their romance; but there is a cruel one for poor Ca.s.sandra, whose lover dies abroad, and his death saddens the whole family-party. Jane, too, 'receives the addresses' (do such things as addresses exist nowadays?) 'of a gentleman possessed of good character and fortune, and of everything, in short, except the subtle power of touching her heart.'

One cannot help wondering whether this was a Henry Crawford or an Elton or a Mr. Elliot, or had Jane already seen the person that even Ca.s.sandra thought good enough for her sister?

Here, too, is another sorrowful story. The sisters' fate (there is a sad coincidence and similarity in it) was to be undivided; their life, their experience was the same. Some one without a name takes leave of Jane one day, promising to come back. He never comes back: long afterwards they hear of his death. The story seems even sadder than Ca.s.sandra's in its silence and uncertainty, for silence and uncertainty are death in life to some people....

There is little trace of such a tragedy in Jane Austen's books--not one morbid word is to be found, not one vain regret. Hers was not a nature to fall crushed by the overthrow of one phase of her manifold life. She seems to have had a natural genius for life, if I may so speak; too vivid and genuinely unselfish to fail her in her need. She could gather every flower, every brightness along her road. Good spirit, content, all the interests of a happy and observant nature were hers. Her gentle humour and wit and interest cannot have failed.

It is impossible to calculate the difference of the grasp by which one or another human being realises existence and the things relating to it, nor how much more vivid life seems to some than to others. Jane Austen, while her existence lasted, realised it, and made the best use of the gifts that were hers. Yet, when her life was ending, then it was given to her to understand the change that was at hand; as willingly as she had lived, she died. Some people seem scarcely to rise up to their own work, to their own ideal. Jane Austen's life, as it is told by her nephew, is beyond her work, which only contained one phase of that sweet and wise nature--the creative, observant, outward phase. For her home, for her sister, for her friends, she kept the depth and tenderness of her bright and gentle sympathy. She is described as busy with her neat and clever fingers sewing for the poor, working fanciful keepsakes for her friends. There is the cup and ball that she never failed to catch; the spillikens lie in an even ring where she had thrown them; there are her letters, straightly and neatly folded, and fitting smoothly in their creases. There is something sweet, orderly, and consistent in her character and all her tastes--in her fondness for Crabbe and Cowper, in her little joke that she ought to be a Mrs.

Crabbe. She sings of an evening old ballads to old-fashioned tunes with a low sweet voice.

Further on we have a glimpse of Jane and her sister in their mobcaps, young still, but dressed soberly beyond their years. One can imagine 'Aunt Jane,' with her brother's children round her knee, telling her delightful stories or listening to theirs, with never-failing sympathy.

One can fancy Ca.s.sandra, who does not like desultory novels, more prudent and more reserved, and somewhat less of a playfellow, looking down upon the group with elder sister's eyes.

Here is an extract from a letter written at Steventon in 1800:--

'I have two messages: let me get rid of them, and then my paper will be my own. Mary fully intended writing by Mr. Charles's frank, and only happened entirely to forget it, but will write soon; and my father wishes Edward to send him a memorandum of the price of hops.

'_Sunday Evening._ 'We have had a dreadful storm of wind in the forepart of the day, which has done a great deal of mischief among our trees. I was sitting alone in the drawing-room when an odd kind of crash startled me. In a moment afterwards it was repeated. I then went to the window. I reached it just in time to see the last of our two highly valued elms descend into the sweep!!!

'The other, which had fallen, I suppose, in the first crash, and which was nearest to the pond, taking a more easterly direction, sank among our screen of chestnuts and firs, knocking down one spruce-fir, breaking off the head of another, and stripping the two corner chestnuts of several branches in its fall. This is not all: the maple bearing the weatherc.o.c.k was broken in two, and what I regret more than all the rest is, that all the three elms that grew in Hall's Meadow, and gave such ornament to it, are gone.'

A certain Mrs. Stent comes into one of these letters 'e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. some wonder about the c.o.c.ks and hens.' Mrs. Stent seems to have tried their patience, and will be known henceforward as having bored Jane Austen.

They leave Steventon when Jane is about twenty-five years of age and go to Bath, from whence a couple of pleasant letters are given us. Jane is writing to her sister. She has visited Miss A., who, like all other young ladies, is considerably genteeler than her parents. She is heartily glad that Ca.s.sandra speaks so comfortably of her health and looks: could travelling fifty miles produce such an immediate change?

'You were looking poorly when you were here, and everybody seemed sensible of it.' Is there any charm in a hack postchaise? But if there were, Mrs. Craven's carriage might have undone it all. Then Mrs. Stent appears again. 'Poor Mrs. Stent, it has been her lot to be always in the way; but we must be merciful, for perhaps in time we may come to be Mrs.

Stents ourselves, unequal to anything and unwelcome to everybody.'

Elsewhere she writes, upon Mrs. ----'s mentioning that she had sent the 'Rejected Addresses' to Mr. H., 'I began talking to her a little about them, and expressed my hope of their having amused her. Her answer was, "Oh dear, yes, very much; very droll indeed; the opening of the house and the striking up of the fiddles!" What she meant, poor woman, who shall say?'

But there is no malice in Jane Austen. Hers is the charity of all clear minds, it is only the muddled who are intolerant. All who love Emma and Mr. Knightly must remember the touching little scene in which he reproves her for her thoughtless impatience of poor Miss Bates's volubility.

'You, whom she had known from an infant, whom she had seen grow up from a period when her notice was an honour, to have you now, in thoughtless spirits and in the pride of the moment, laugh at her, humble her....

This is not pleasant to you, Emma, and it is very far from pleasant to me, but I must, I will, I will tell you truths while I am satisfied with proving myself your friend by very faithful counsel, and trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do me now.'

'While they talked they were advancing towards the carriage: it was ready, and before she could speak again he had handed her in. He had misinterpreted the feeling which kept her face averted and her tongue motionless.' Mr. Knightly's little sermon, in its old-fashioned English, is as applicable now as it was when it was spoken. We know that he was an especial favourite with Jane Austen.

IV.

Mr. Austen died at Bath, and his family removed to Southampton. In 1811, Mrs. Austen, her daughters, and her niece, settled finally at Chawton, a house belonging to Jane's brother, Mr. Knight (he was adopted by an uncle, whose name he took), and from Chawton all her literary work was given to the world. 'Sense and Sensibility,' 'Pride and Prejudice,' were already written; but in the next five years, from thirty-five to forty, she set to work seriously, and wrote 'Mansfield Park,' 'Emma,' and 'Persuasion.' Any one who has written a book will know what an amount of labour this represents.... One can picture to oneself the little family scene which Jane describes to Ca.s.sandra. 'Pride and Prejudice' just come down in a parcel from town; the unsuspicious Miss B. to dinner; and Jane and her mother setting to in the evening and reading aloud half the first volume of a new novel sent down by the brother. Unsuspicious Miss B. is delighted. Jane complains of her mother's too rapid way of getting on; 'though she perfectly understands the characters herself, she cannot speak as they ought. Upon the whole, however,' she says, 'I am quite vain enough and well-satisfied enough.' This is her own criticism of 'Pride and Prejudice':--'The work is rather too light, and bright, and sparkling. It wants shade. It wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not, of solemn specious nonsense about something unconnected with the story--an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott or the "History of Bonaparte."'

And so Jane Austen lives quietly working at her labour of love, interested in her 'own darling children's' success; 'the light of the home,' one of the real living children says afterwards, speaking in the days when she was no longer there. She goes to London once or twice.

Once she lives for some months in Hans Place, nursing a brother through an illness. Here it was that she received some little compliments and messages from the Prince Regent, to whom she dedicated 'Emma.' He thanks her and acknowledges the handsome volumes, and she laughs and tells her publisher that at all events his share of the offering is appreciated, whatever hers may be! We are also favoured with some valuable suggestions from Mr. Clarke, the Royal librarian, respecting a very remarkable clergyman. He is anxious that Miss Austen should delineate one who 'should pa.s.s his time between the metropolis and the country, something like Beattie's minstrel, entirely engaged in literature, and no man's enemy but his own.' Failing to impress this character upon the auth.o.r.ess, he makes a fresh suggestion, and proposes that she should write a romance ill.u.s.trative of the august house of Coburg. 'It would be interesting,' he says, 'and very properly dedicated to Prince Leopold.'

To which the auth.o.r.ess replies: 'I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not seriously sit down to write a romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up, and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before the first chapter.'

There is a delightful collection of friends' suggestions which she has put together, but which is too long to be quoted here. She calls it, 'Plan of a Novel, as suggested by various Friends.'

All this time, while her fame is slowly growing, life pa.s.ses in the same way as in the old cottage at Chawton. Aunt Jane, with her young face and her mob-cap, makes play-houses for the children, helps them to dress up, invents imaginary conversations for them, supposing that they are all grown up, the day after a ball. One can imagine how delightful a game that must have seemed to the little girls. She built her nest, did this good woman, happily weaving it out of shreds, and ends, and sc.r.a.ps of daily duty, patiently put together; and it was from this nest that she sang the song, bright and brilliant, with quaint thrills and unexpected cadences, that reaches us even here through near a century. The lesson her life seems to teach us is this: Don't let us despise our nests--life is as much made of minutes as of years; let us complete the daily duties; let us patiently gather the twigs and the little sc.r.a.ps of moss, of dried gra.s.s together, and see the result!--a whole, completed and coherent, beautiful even without the song.

We come too soon to the story of her death. And yet did it come too soon? A sweet life is not the sweeter for being long. Jane Austen lived years enough to fulfil her mission. She lived long enough to write six books that were masterpieces in their way--to make a world the happier for her industry.

One cannot read the story of her latter days, of her patience, her sweetness, and grat.i.tude, without emotion. There is family trouble, we are not told of what nature. She falls ill. Her nieces find her in her dressing-gown, like an invalid, in an arm-chair in her bedroom; but she gets up and greets them, and, pointing to seats which had been arranged for them by the fire, says: 'There is a chair for the married lady, and a little stool for you, Caroline.' But she is too weak to talk, and Ca.s.sandra takes them away.

At last they persuade her to go to Winchester, to a well-known doctor there.

'It distressed me,' she says, in one of her last, dying letters, 'to see Uncle Henry and William Knight, who kindly attended us, riding in the rain almost the whole way. We expect a visit from them to-morrow, and hope they will stay the night; and on Thursday, which is a confirmation and a holiday, we hope to get Charles out to breakfast. We have had but one visit from _him_, poor fellow, as he is in the sick room.... G.o.d bless you, dear E.; if ever you are ill, may you be as tenderly nursed as I have been....'

But nursing does not cure her, nor can the doctor save her to them all, and she sinks from day to day. To the end she is full of concern for others.

'As for my dearest sister, my tender, watchful, indefatigable nurse has not been made ill by her exertions,' she writes. 'As to what I owe her, and the anxious affection of all my beloved family on this occasion, I can only cry over it, and pray G.o.d to bless them more and more.'

One can hardly read this last sentence with dry eyes. It is her parting blessing and farewell to those she had blessed all her life by her presence and her love--that love which is beyond death; and of which the benediction remains, not only spoken in words, but by the ever-present signs and the tokens of those lifetimes which do not end for us as long as we ourselves exist.

They asked her when she was near her end if there was anything she wanted.

'Nothing but death,' she said. Those were her last words. She died on the 18th of July, 1817, and was buried in Winchester Cathedral, where she lies not unremembered.