Microsoft Word - Copy of Jane Austen by Elizabeth Jenkins.doc Page 6

  till then. "Tomorrow I shall be just like Camilla in Mr. Dubster's summer house; for my Lionel will have taken away the ladder by which I came here, or at least by which I intended to get away; and here I must stay till his return. My situation, however, is somewhat preferable to hers, for I am very happy here, though I should be glad to get home by the end of the month."

  While Camilla was on a visit to Tunbridge Wells, she was in the awkward position of staying with a good-natured but unperceptive hostess much richer than herself. She accompanied a party to a toy shop and selected some little objects which she thought would cost a few shillings, and when she was told their alarming price, was too nervous not to take them. When the heroine of Sanditon was standing in the village library which sold trinkets as well as hiring out books, she felt she had spent enough money for her first evening and turned away from "all the useless things in the world that could not be done without." . . . "She took up a Book; it happened to be a volume of Camilla. She had not Camilla's Youth, and had no intention of having her Distress--so she turned from the Drawer, of rings and Brooches, repressed further solicitation and paid for what she had bought."

  The exertions of Dr. Marchmont in keeping Edgar and Camilla so long apart provided the reader with many hours of entertainment, but Jane Austen, who might reasonably have been expected to approve of him on this account, was not at all magnanimous. In September of 1796, when she herself was at Rowling, she wrote to Cassandra:

  "Give my love to Mary Harrison, and tell her I wish, whenever she is attached to a young Man, some respectable Dr. Marchmont will keep them apart for five volumes"; and at the end of her edition of Camilla there is a note in her handwriting,

  - 55 -

  which has been encroached upon by the re-binding of the book.

  "Since this work went to the Press a Circumstance of some Importance to the happiness of Camilla has taken place, namely that Dr. Marchmont has at last . . ." Dr. Chapman suggests that Jane Austen had devised Dr. Marchmont's death.

  The references to Camilla in Sanditon, written in the year of her death, are a proof of Jane Austen's constant affection for the book, but the most brilliant use she makes of it is, naturally enough, a very few years after its publication. In Northanger Abbey, Isabella Thorpe's brother John has just arrived in Bath, and Catherine

  Morland, engrossed with The Mysteries of Udolpho, cannot resist talking of them even in such unpromising company. John Thorpe

  swore at once that he didn't read novels, and that if he did, they should be those of Mrs. Radcliffe; Catherine reminded him gently that Udolpho was written by Mrs. Radcliffe, whereupon he exclaimed: "'So it was. I was thinking of that other stupid book, written by that woman they make such a fuss about; she who married the French emigrant.'

  "'I suppose you mean Camilla?'"

  "'Yes, that's the book; such unnatural stuff! An old man playing at seesaw; I took up the first volume once and looked it over, but I soon found it would not do; indeed, I guessed what sort of stuff it must be before I saw it; as soon as I heard she had married an emigrant, I was sure I should never be able to get through it.'"

  "'I have never read it.'"

  "'You had no loss, I assure you; it is the horridest nonsense you can imagine; there is nothing in the world in it but an old man's playing at seesaw and learning Latin; upon my word, there is not.'"

  This critique, the justice of which was unfortunately lost

  - 56 -

  on poor Catherine, brought them to the door of Mrs. Thorpe's

  lodging, and the feelings of the discerning and unprejudiced reader of Camilla gave way to the feelings of the dutiful and affectionate son, as they met Mrs. Thorpe, who had descried them from above, in the passage. "'Ah, mother, how do you do?' said he, giving her a hearty shake of the hand; 'where did you get that quiz of a hat, it makes you look like an old witch?'"

  In reading and writing, in dancing and visiting, with friends and relations falling in love and marrying, in household occupations and country walks, the time went on with much present enjoyment and a great deal of hope.

  Jane was twenty-one in December 1796. In January of that year Tom Lefroy was with his uncle and aunt at Ashe, and was invited with the rest of the neighborhood to the ball given by Mr. Bigge for his daughters at Manydown Park. Cassandra was on a visit to a member of the Fowle family, and had perhaps thought that Jane was getting too lively on the subject of Mr. Lefroy, seeing that the affair was not expected to end in a marriage. Jane wrote to her, saying: "You scold me so much in the nice long letter which I have this moment

  received from you, that I am almost ashamed to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together. I can expose myself, however, only once more, because he leaves the country soon after next Friday, on which day we are to have a dance at Ashe, after all."

  Their profligacy began to attract general attention, and Tom Lefroy seemed to feel that he had gone far enough. Jane said, in trying to make Cassandra think lightly of the matter, that they really had not met except at the balls. "He is so excessively laughed at about me at Ashe that he is

  - 57 -

  ashamed of coming to Steventon, and ran away when we called on Mrs. Lefroy a few days ago." The day before Mrs. Lefroy's ball she wrote: "I look forward with great impatience to it, as I rather expect to receive an offer from my friend in the course of the evening. I shall refuse him, however, unless he promises to give away his white coat." Cassandra was to have bought some silk stockings for her, but as she had said nothing about them in her last letter, Jane hoped they had not been bought after all, because she had spent all her money now on white gloves and some pink figured silk.

  Invitations for balls and evening parties in the country, at a time when roads between towns and villages lay silent and unlighted between meadows and woods, were always issued for the moonlight nights of the month, and Bottom's cry: "Look in the almanac; find out moonshine, find out moonshine," was echoed by every intending hostess. In the Rectory at Ashe they made room for dancing by

  opening the folding doors between the drawing room and the

  morning room; the windows of the latter looked out onto the lawn, on one side of which was a great yew hedge. The yews, black under the brilliant moon of winter, and the gravel that crackled and glistened under carriage wheels, were exchanged as the guests

  jumped out of their carriages and ran into the house, for the warmth of high-piled fires, the magic radiance of candlelight, the tuning up of violins and the welcoming, gracious gaiety of Mrs. Lefroy. Jane in her rosecolored silk dress had a reason besides her love of dancing for being excited; whether Tom Lefroy saw her first on the stairs or in the hall or in one of the halves of the ballroom; how soon they danced together, how much Mrs. Lefroy, in the midst of her cares as hostess, had leisure to keep an eye on them, can never now be

  known. Tom Lefroy lived to

  - 58 -

  be Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, and as an exceedingly old man he said that he had once been in love with the great Jane Austen; "but it was a boy's love," he added.

  It has sometimes been noticed that the most disconsolate widowers make the speediest remarriages, and James Austen's was a case in point. His second choice was Mary Lloyd. Eliza de Feuillide did not hesitate to point out for the benefit of her correspondents that Mary was neither handsome nor rich, but she admitted her to be sensible and goodhumored, and added: "Jane seems much pleased with the match, and it is natural she should, having long known and liked the lady." Mrs. Austen's pleasure was great; she wrote to Mary in the warmest terms. "Had the selection been mine, you, my dear Mary, are the person I should have chosen for James' wife, Anna's mother and my daughter, being as certain as I can be of anything in this uncertain world, that you will greatly increase and promote the happiness of each of the three. . . . I look forward to you as a real comfort to me in my old age when Cassandra is gone into Shropsh
ire and Jane the Lord knows where."

  The Shropshire living for Thomas Fowle was looked upon almost as a certainty, but it was not yet vacant, and in the meantime, Lord Craven, anxious to do something for his cousin, took him as chaplain to his own regiment, which had been ordered to the West Indies. The parting between Thomas Fowle and Cassandra was in one sense not so painful as it would be today, despite the fact that sea voyages then were so lengthy and posts uncertain; for lovers unless very much favored by circumstances were frequently as much cut off from each other within the confines of England as they would feel today if they were in separate countries. Long absences, still longer engagements, might be avoided, but they had often to be borne; but such a nature as Cassandra's

  - 59 -

  looked forward to the future and, however irksome she found the present, she would not let her friends feel depressed on her account.

  Mrs. Austen had no idea of what Jane's destination was to be, and Jane at present had a preoccupation quite other than marriage. First Impressions was finished in 1797, her twenty-second year. Before its actual publication sixteen years later she renamed it Pride and Prejudice, and she rewrote it to such an extent that it is impossible to say how little or how much of the final story was found in the original. But now that it was finished in its first form she did what she had always done with her writings, and showed it to her father.

  Whatever it was that met the Reverend George Austen's eye in the three volumes of exquisitely regular and legible handwriting, he thought very well of it. He was prepared to be pleased, naturally; she had afforded him too much amusement from childhood for him not to have a high expectation of it now; but he was not the sort of man to be blinded by fatherly partiality, and he would have been very chary of anything's being published, even anonymously, that was not likely to do her justice. As it was, he had no hesitation in thinking that it should be offered to a publisher; he wrote to Cadell, saying: "I have in my possession a manuscript novel, comprising 3 vols., about the length of Miss Burney's Evelina." His letter indicated that if Messrs. Cadell thought well of the novel, it could be published at the author's own expense (in other words, at his), and he ended by saying: "Should you give any encouragement, I will send you the work."

  Messrs. Cadell declined to inspect the work, by return of post.

  Though they acted stupidly and carelessly, and, for themselves, most unfortunately, they acted altogether in the interests of English literature. However good First Impressions

  - 60 -

  may have been, and however readily they themselves might have

  offered to publish it had they taken the trouble of reading it, it cannot be supposed to have been more than a sketch or foretaste of the brilliant perfection of Pride and Prejudice, which had behind it sixteen maturing years in the mind of an unequalled artist, and came forth at last not only with the solid excellence it had acquired in the process, but with as much shining in it of the morn and liquid dew of youth as if it had been the author's earliest work.

  But at the moment of receiving a disappointment one cannot comfort oneself with feeling that sixteen years hence it may turn out to have been all for the best. It is impossible that she should not have been disappointed, though it is characteristic of her and of her family that there is no record of her saying so. What is most striking in the affair is the influence she allowed it to have over her. After all, her novel had not been condemned; it had never been looked at. The only

  person who had read it and was competent to criticize it was the Rev.

  George Austen, and he had thought it good. No one whose first

  object in life was to attract the public notice would have been satisfied with such a rebuff as that; even a timid author might have persevered at least until he found a publisher who would go so far as to tell him that his work was useless. Such was not Jane Austen's way; when, after her death, Henry tried to give some account of his famous sister's manner of work, he said that "though in composition she was equally rapid and correct" she had "an invincible distrust of her own judgment." It is as if when she had the pen in her hand she reigned undisputed; but when daily life returned upon her she was no more bold and unerring, but modest, reflective, attentive to anything that might be said. But had she merely

  - 61 -

  accepted in silence Cadell's refusal to read her novel, however unusual, it would not have been of particular significance; the latter, it is true, prevented her doing anything further with First Impressions, but to herself it made no difference at all. The novel had been refused in November of 1797; before the year was out she was deeply engrossed in a second one. She called it Sense and Sensibility.

  The year 1797 had brought disappointment to both sisters, but had Jane's been severer than it was, she would have despised herself if it had caused her more than a passing pang, when Cassandra's was so heavy. In the preceding February, Thomas Fowle had caught the

  yellow fever in San Domingo, and was dead.

  Eliza said: "This is a very severe stroke to the whole family, and particularly to poor Cassandra, for whom I feel more than I can express. . . . Jane says that her sister behaves with a degree of resolution and propriety which no common mind could evince in so trying a situation." This is not Jane's language, but one can recognize beneath it the warmth of sympathy and distress, and the loving admiration, increased tenfold, of the strength of mind that was controlled in grief and not morose but silent.

  Thomas Fowle had left his betrothed a thousand pounds. Lord

  Craven was greatly distressed, and said had he known that Fowle was an engaged man, he would never have taken him abroad; a

  tragic consequence of discretion.

  - 62 -

  6

  THE METHOD in which Jane Austen first three novels were

  produced makes it a matter of uncertainty to decide the order in which they should be considered. The schoolgirl's sketch, Elinor and Marianne, was followed by the youthful but mature First Impressions; First Impressions by Elinor and Marianne rewritten as Sense and Sensibility; Sense and Sensibility by Northanger Abbey; then, after an interval of eight years, Sense and Sensibility was

  "prepared for the press," and immediately after that First Impressions was arranged for publication and renamed Pride and Prejudice.

  Our ignorance as to how much rewriting was involved in this

  preparation for the press, must make any method of arranging the first three novels on a chronological plan a question of personal opinion. A good case could be made out for placing Northanger Abbey at the head of the list, as the earliest example of a completed work; for though, with Persuasion, it was actually published the last of all the finished works, we know that it had not been retouched to any extent because the preface apologizes to readers of 1817 for anything that may seem out of date in a story written in 1803. Of the other two, one cannot but feel that, whatever

  - 63 -

  its origins, Pride and Prejudice is the product of the time at which the author published it; spontaneous, topical, inspired no less by present enthusiasm than by earnest craftsmanship, and that it is Sense and Sensibility that, even more than Northanger Abbey, represents the early work. It was obviously prepared for the press when Jane Austen's powers were approaching their zenith, and there is one indication at least of later workmanship. In La Belle

  Assemblêe for March 1810, on the page headed Remarkable

  Occurrences, Deaths and Marriages, the following announcements occur under "Hampshire": "At Ringwood, William Dyke Esquire of Vernham to Miss Elizabeth Steele of Ashmondsworth. At Cheriton, the Rev. John Courtney to Miss Ferrers, only daughter of the Rev.

  Edmond Ferrers." But in spite of this indication of the source of two of the names in it, it seems possible to suggest that not the book's failings only, but, more important, its background and its

  atmosphere, relate it to the earliest period of her novel-writing.

  Henry said that his sister had been, from a very early age
, familiar with Gilpin on the Picturesque. The term "picturesque beauty" has been defined as beauty capable of being formed into pictures, and the cult of the picturesque in England reached its most ardent phase in the latter part of the eighteenth century. It was natural that the Rule of Taste should extend itself to landscape no less than to architecture. Those artists whose works were deemed models of the picturesque belonged in fact to a previous era; they were, notably, Salvator Rosa, Poussin and Claude Lorraine, and the savage

  abruptness of effect in the first, and the beautifully arranged landscapes of the last, with their indigo distances and bold masses of foliage, so frequently touched with the gilded bronze of approaching autumn, provide an

  - 64 -

  immediate illustration of the general conception of the term. When Thomson poem, The Seasons, with its detailed descriptions of landscape in the varied changes of the year, became known to the public, he was hailed as the Claude of poets; the enthusiasm

  extended itself from admiring a picturesque rendering of landscape to looking at an actual scene and deciding on its capacity for being formed into a picture, and the connoisseur had to assist him a

  "Claude glass," a little appliance, something like the viewfinder of a camera, which reflected the scenery in a manner that brought out the picturesque values.

  Much will the mirror teach, or evening grey

  When o'er her ample span some twilight ray

  Obscurely gleams; here Art shall best perceive

  On distant parts what fainter lines to give.

  This appreciation of picturesque beauty, celebrated in poetry and paint, greatly influenced landscape gardening. The formal laying out of gardens on a grand scale, such as one may see at the Palace of Versailles, yielded, among the fashionable landowners of the mid-eighteenth century, to a series of systems, each practiced by the improvers of the day, of which the common feature was an ordered wildness, and in each of which landscape was disposed with the aim of achieving an emotional effect in the spectator. Of one of the earliest improvers it was said: "When the united plumage of an ancient wood extended wide its undulating canopy, and stood