Jane Austen and her works

by Sarah Tytler

I.

Emma Woodhouse, whose Christian name supplies the title to the novel in which she figures as heroine, is one of Jane Austen’s lively, warm-hearted girls; but her personality is rendered quite distinct from that of Elizabeth Bennet by a thousand light yet significant touches. Emma’s circumstances alone would have sufficed, with the moulding power which such influences have in reality, and in the hands of a true artist, to shape her—always within certain limits—those of a well-principled, well-educated, essentially feminine girl, who is also a thorough lady, to different ends.

The novel of “Emma” is largely the record of the girl-heroine’s rash blunders and errors; but to me it is instructive and comforting to find the faults, with their impressive enough lessons, not only so girlish, but always within the region, I may say, of an innocent, upright, kindly, well-bred girl, whose many failings lean to virtue’s side. Emma Woodhouse is as incapable of deliberate undutifulness, dishonourable double-dealing, heartless levity, or disgraceful imprudence, and the coarse, evil-minded rubbing shoulders with vice, as I not only earnestly hope, but fervently believe, every God-fearing, virtuous, loving girl in any rank, in any nation, is to this day, however impudently and wickedly she may be travestied in the lower literature of her country.

Emma Woodhouse, at twenty-one years of age, is at the head of her father’s comfortable, well-ordered establishment of Hartfield, in the village of Highbury, sixteen miles from London, where Emma’s elder sister Isabella, who has been married for several years, is settled.

The two sisters are the sole children of Mr. Woodhouse, who has been a widower since Emma was a child. But her dead mother’s place has been well supplied by an excellent governess, chaperon, and family friend. Miss Taylor, who marries and settles unexceptionably, with a worthy husband, in a country house at half a mile’s distance from Hartfield.

Emma is introduced to the reader on the afternoon of Miss Taylor’s wedding-day, left, for the first time in her life, to dine and spend a long evening with her father, a most amiable man, but a confirmed invalid, whose valetudinarian weaknesses and absurdities Jane Austen often makes irresistibly ridiculous—though all the time she treats him with larger-hearted, gentler consideration than is to be found in her manner of dealing with the foibles of the characters in “Pride and Prejudice,” and “Northanger Abbey;” for the very good reason that the authoress, when she wrote “Emma,” was no longer the brilliant, rather hard girl, but the mature merciful, woman. Between the writing of “Pride and Prejudice” and “Emma” she had learnt a grand lesson—the acquisition of which, though it cost the labour of a lifetime, would be well worth the time and trouble—that of tolerance: “to make allowance for us all,” which is not the mere result of a facile, careless temper, or a secret fellow-feeling with the offender in his offence, or a low moral standard, but is simply the widened sympathy and deepened comprehension, both of the better Christian and the greater genius. Thus Mr. Woodhouse is respectable and lovable, in spite of his mild egotism and foolish hypochondria; while Miss Bates—one of the gems of the book—is still more winning in her singleness of heart and inexhaustible contentment and charity, along with her shallow simplicity, thorough humdrumness, and boundless garrulity.

While her father is taking his after-dinner nap Emma contemplates, a little ruefully, the prospect of many such tête-à-tête dinners and long evenings. Yet though Jane Austen tells us plainly that the real evils to which Emma is exposed consist of her having too much of her own way, and being slightly inclined to think too well of herself, she is full of tender reverence and care for her father, in deed even more than in word. All through their history she considers his well-being as the first thing, never hesitates to make sacrifices to ensure it, and caters for his entertainment with the anxious, womanly forethought of a much older and wiser person. In the same way, though it is distinctly a disadvantage and stumbling-block to Emma Woodhouse—not only that the Woodhouses are the persons of greatest consequence in their social circle, but that the circle over which Emma reigns, far too entirely for her own good, is composed of the most commonplace narrow elements that can be found in any village or country neighbourhood—and though Emma wearies of it, becomes impatient of it, is guilty of girlish ebullitions of fretting and fuming where her engagements and acquaintances are concerned—still she never once behaves with the absolute insolence, hardly with the superciliousness, of underbred, ungenerous, self-engrossed youth, exulting in its passing advantages, spurning at what it can see of the defects and infirmities of an older, perhaps more incapable, and illiterate generation, while it is blind in its ignorance to indemnifying stores of homely wisdom and experience.

The claims of hospitality are sacred to the girl, and she is always not only a good woman, but a gentlewoman. We are sure that such vulgar, mean words as “old frumps” and “old tabbies” have never soiled Emma Woodhouse’s lips. Once she so far forgets herself as to prove guilty of being noisy and conspicuous at a picnic, and in the course of that indiscretion of publicly taking off and laughing at an old friend; but Emma does not require the sharp rebuke of the hero to be bitterly sorry for the offence, very much ashamed of it, and eagerly desirous to atone for it by all the kindness in her power.

On the evening of Miss Taylor’s wedding-day, Emma is striving to chat cheerfully with her father, who, fond of everybody he is used to, hates to part with any one of them, hates changes of every kind, and matrimony as the cause of change, and keeps speaking of the fortunate bride with uncalled-for compassion. “Poor Miss Taylor! I wish she were here again. What a pity it is that Mr. Weston ever thought of her!”

“I cannot agree with you, papa;” Emma tries to arrest his lamentations, and to put the step which has been taken in the pleasantest light, by dwelling on the excellence of Mr. Weston’s character and temper (Jane Austen is apt to bring forward temper as of cardinal importance), on Miss Taylor’s natural satisfaction in having a house of her own—for how often they will be going to see her and she will be coming to see them. They must begin, they must go and pay their wedding visit very soon.

“My dear, how am I to get so far?” objects plaintive Mr. Woodhouse. “Randall’s is such a distance, I could not walk half so far.”

“No, papa! nobody thought of your walking. We must go in the carriage, to be sure.”

“The carriage! But James will not like to put the horses to, for such a little way; and where are the poor horses to be, while we are paying our visit?”[46]

“They are to be put into Mr. Weston’s stables, papa. You know we have settled that already. We talked it all over with Mr. Weston last night. And as for James, you may be very sure he will always like going to Randalls, because of his daughter’s being housemaid there. I only doubt whether he will ever take us anywhere else. That was your doing, papa. You got Hannah that good place. Nobody thought of Hannah till you mentioned her—James is so obliged to you.”

Mr. Woodhouse’s kindness and innocent self-importance are equally gratified by being reminded of this good deed. He is enticed to expatiate on civil, pretty-spoken Hannah, for whom he has procured an advantageous place—not the least of its advantages in Mr. Woodhouse’s eyes being, that when James goes over to see his daughter, he will carry her news of the family at Hartfield.

Emma spares no exertions to encourage the happier train of thought, and by the help of backgammon is sanguine about getting her father tolerably through the evening, when a frequent visitor, another near neighbour, walks in, and renders the backgammon-table unnecessary.

“Mr. Knightley, a sensible man about seven or eight and thirty, was not only a very old and intimate friend of the family, but connected with it as the elder brother of Isabella Woodhouse’s husband.”

Did ever hero enter more unassumingly on the scene? Was ever even the merest walking gentleman more succinctly or prosaically described? And yet George Knightley is a very hero of heroes, far in advance of Darcy in “Pride and Prejudice” where the highest manliness and generosity of character are in question.

I shall only pause a moment to remark that Jane Austen, in depriving Mr. Knightley of the bloom of youth, goes in the teeth of contemporary standards of age to which she herself paid deference in “Sense and Sensibility,” when she made Marianne Dashwood regard Colonel Brandon—a contemporary of Mr. Knightley’s—as quite an old man, fitted for flannel vests and rheumatism.

To Mr. Knightley Emma starts an idea which has taken possession of her susceptible imagination, and which has a considerable influence on her later conduct.

“I made the match, you know, four years ago,” she says triumphantly, in allusion to the topic of the day. “To have it take place, and be proved in the right when so many people said Mr. Weston would never marry again, may comfort me for anything.”

Mr. Knightley shakes his head at her. He has known her from infancy, seen her grow up with all that is charming in her, only slightly spoilt. He has more than an old friend’s regard for her, but he is also one of the few persons among her friends who sees her faults, and tells her of them—a process not particularly agreeable to Emma, and still more distasteful to her doting father; so that she has to assert stoutly, as if she liked the censure, “Mr. Knightley loves to find fault with me, you know, in a joke, only in a joke. We always say what we like to each other.”

In defiance of Mr. Knightley’s shake of the head—indeed, spurred on by it—Emma insists that she arranged the match from the day Mr. Weston gallantly went and borrowed two umbrellas from Farmer Mitchell’s, and brought them to her and Miss Taylor when it began to drizzle in Broadway Lane. Emma boasts of the success of her scheme, and laughingly announces herself a future match-maker.

She does not go unchallenged by Mr. Knightley.

“I do not know what you mean by ‘success,’” he says, and observes, with brotherly bluntness and irony, that her time has been properly and delicately spent if she has been endeavouring for the last four years to bring about a marriage—a worthy employment for a young lady’s mind. Then he treats her pretensions with smiling scorn, and alleges she made a lucky guess, which is all that can be said.

Emma argues that she promoted Mr. Weston’s visits to Hartfield, and when her father begs in all sincerity that she will make no more matches, craves mischievously to be allowed one exception. “Only one more, papa, only for Mr. Elton. Poor Mr. Elton!—you like Mr. Elton, papa—I must look about for a wife for him. He has been here a whole year, and he has fitted up his house so comfortably that it would be a shame to have him single any longer; and I thought when he was joining their hands to-day, he looked so very much as if he would like to have the same kind office done for him! I think very well of Mr. Elton, and this is the only way of doing him service.”

“Invite him to dinner, Emma, and help him to the best of the fish and the chicken,” said Mr. Knightley, “but leave him to choose his own wife. Depend upon it, a man of six or seven and twenty can take care of himself.”

My readers will observe that Emma is as disengaged and disinterested in making matches for her friends as if she were a young matron. She has not a notion of the incumbency of marriage on herself, as even Jane and Elizabeth Bennet felt it, to a certain extent, to be an obligation on them. There is no worldly necessity for it in Emma’s case. She is the independent mistress of Hartfield, at the head of her indulgent father’s establishment, and amply provided for in the future. Jane Austen’s women, as a rule, are not too susceptible. Love and marriage for themselves are not the beginning, middle, and end of their dreams. They are quite willing to grant due prominence to other influences and interests. They would have blushed to have been engrossed by one passion, however lawful—even honourable. It is only because Catherine Morland is very young and simple that she is so entranced by Henry Tilney’s attentions. As it is, had the couple been finally separated, she would have submitted to the inevitable, and been content in time without him. Fanny Price’s devotion to her cousin Edmund is the habit of many years, and is largely made up of gratitude for constant protection and kindness. When Edmund Bertram’s marriage to Mary Crawford appears certain, and when Henry Crawford is wooing Fanny with manly ardour and tender consideration for her difficulties, she is in a fair way—Jane Austen does not conceal it—for transferring her gentle affections from Edmund to Henry. The author’s older women are fine, sensible creatures, capable of being useful and happy in all the relations of life. They can love, with what unselfish fidelity after hope is gone, Anne Elliot shows; but they are always mistresses of themselves, never love-sick—the poor puppets and slaves of passion.

Mr. Weston, Miss Taylor’s husband, has been a widower like Mr. Woodhouse, and his son by the first wife is destined to play a prominent part in the story. Frank Churchill has been early adopted by a wealthy, childless uncle and aunt—his mother’s relations—who give him their name, and are to make him their heir. He has been seldom seen in Highbury, but his praises have gone before him, and it does not diminish his popularity that he writes “a very handsome letter” to his stepmother, though he is not able to pay her a visit.

Within the round of Hartfield visiting—abridged, as it is, by Mr. Woodhouse’s delicate health and invalid habits—are Donwell Abbey,[47] Mr. Knightley’s seat; the vicarage occupied by the young bachelor clergyman, Mr. Elton; the houses in the village which belong respectively to Mr. and Mrs. Perry, the country doctor and his wife; Mrs. Bates, the widow of the late vicar, and her daughter; and Mrs. Goddard, who was the mistress of a school—not a seminary.

Jane Austen gives her view of the education of the period, which was in a transition state, in her definition of a school as distinguished from a seminary—not “an establishment, or anything which professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirements with elegant morality, upon new principles and new systems, and where young ladies, for enormous pay, might be screwed out of health and into vanity—but a real, honest, old-fashioned boarding-school, where a reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price, and where girls might be sent to be out of the way, and scramble themselves into a little education, without any danger of coming back prodigies.” These views were regarded as eminently sensible, moderate, and practical in their day; and no doubt there was, and is, some truth in them. At the same time, the general notion of education is narrow and prejudiced, to be held by so able a woman.

Mr. Woodhouse’s habits make him go abroad rarely, but he is fond of company in a quiet way at home, and Emma finds such company is best secured in the form of “tea visits” from such accommodating old neighbours as the Bateses and Mrs. Goddard. She is delighted to see her father look comfortable, and very much pleased with herself for contriving things so well; but the prosings of the elderly and homely guests do not prove very congenial entertainment for the bright, clever young girl. Therefore she welcomes Mrs. Goddard’s respectful request to be allowed to bring a parlour boarder,[48] Miss Smith, with her.

Harriet Smith is a plump, blooming, blue-eyed, sweet-tempered girl, whose beauty delights Emma’s eye, while her innocent deference and gratitude, together with her unqualified admiration for everything at Hartfield—including its young mistress—touch Emma’s heart and flatter her vanity. She determines, in modern parlance, to “cultivate” Harriet Smith, who is to a great extent friendless, to improve her, to raise her into better society, and to make a companion of her.

Emma does not scruple to propose detaching the girl from the only friends she has—a farmer’s family named Martin. Some of the daughters had been school-fellows of Harriet’s at Mrs. Goddard’s, and they and their mother and brother had been kind to her. These Martins are tenants of Mr. Knightley at the Abbey Mill Farm, and Emma knows that he thinks highly of them; but in her youthful aristocratic fashion she leaps to the conclusion that, from their rank in life, they must be coarse and unpolished. She will be doing a good deed to separate Harriet from her former allies, to whom the girl is so superior. It will be a delightful and praise-worthy task to improve and introduce into Emma’s world this very pretty, modest young creature, who is, of course, to look up to her benefactress and attach herself closely to her.

There is a comical, often-quoted contretemps constantly occurring at these parties of Emma’s. They usually end with suppers,[49] in which such little delicacies as minced chicken and scalloped oysters, carefully provided by the young hostess, are peculiarly acceptable to the guests, whose narrow incomes for the most part necessitate frugal living. But though poor Mr. Woodhouse would have made his guests welcome to anything and everything, his care for their health, in an egotistical reflection of his own experience, causes him to grieve that they will eat. “He loved to have the cloth laid, because it had been the fashion of his youth, but his conviction of suppers being very unwholesome made him rather sorry to see anything put upon it. Such another small basin of thin gruel as his own was all that he could with thorough self-approbation recommend, though he might constrain himself, while the ladies were comfortably clearing away the nicer things, to say—

“‘Mrs. Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs? An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome. Serle understands boiling an egg better than anybody; I would not recommend an egg boiled by anybody else. But you need not be afraid; they are very small, you see; one of our small eggs will not hurt you. Miss Bates, let Emma help you to a little bit of tart—a very little bit. Ours are all apple-tarts. You need not be afraid of unwholesome preserves here. I do not advise the custard. Mrs. Goddard, what say you to half a glass of wine?—a small half-glass put into a tumbler of water? I do not think it could disagree with you.’”

Imagine the dilemma of the poor, baulked ladies, with their healthy appetites and the little treats laid before them, while the guests could hardly refuse the well-meant advice of the host.

But Emma comes to the rescue, allows her father to talk, but supplies the wants of her company in a much more satisfactory style. She is never indifferent to doing the honours of her father’s house “well and attentively.” Well-bred girls of Emma Woodhouse’s era would in her position have felt ashamed to be found “mooning” and self-absorbed, destitute of any sense of responsibility and thought for others. Nobody then described selfishness with enthusiasm, as an irresistible charm and crowning merit.

Harriet Smith’s intimacy at Hartfield is soon a settled thing. Emma does nothing by halves. As for the simple, docile girl whom Emma has taken up, Harriet is only too proud and pleased to be thus distinguished by the beautiful, “elegant” Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield.

Emma amuses herself by encouraging Harriet’s prattle, which, when it forsakes school-life, runs persistently on the two months’ holiday she had spent with the Martins at Abbey Mill Farm. At first Harriet is in blissful ignorance of the social inferiority of the Farm, and talks with exultation of the two parlours—one of them quite as large as Mrs. Goddard’s drawing-room; the upper maid, who had lived five-and-twenty years with Mrs. Martin; the eight cows—one of them a little Welsh cow, a very pretty little Welsh cow, of which Harriet had been so fond Mrs. Martin had said it should be called her cow; and the handsome summer-house in the garden, in which, some day next year, they are all to drink tea. And Harriet, after a little encouragement, shows no dislike to talk of the young farmer who is the master of the house. He has shared in the moonlight walks and merry games of his sisters and their friend. “He had gone three miles round one day in order to bring her some walnuts because she had said how fond she was of them, and in everything else he was so very obliging. He had his shepherd’s son into the parlour one night on purpose to sing to her. She was very fond of singing. He could sing a little himself. She believed he was very clever, and understood everything. He had a very fine flock, and while she was with them he had been bid more for his wool than anybody in the county. She believed everybody spoke well of him. His mother and sisters were very fond of him. Mrs. Martin had told her one day (there was a blush as she said it) that it was impossible for anybody to be a better son, and therefore she was sure whenever he married, he would make a good husband. Not that she wanted him to marry. She was in no hurry at all.”

“Well done, Mrs. Martin,” thought Emma; “you know what you are about.”

“And when she had come away Mrs. Martin was so very kind as to send Mrs. Goddard a beautiful goose—the finest goose Mrs. Goddard had ever seen. Mrs. Goddard had dressed it on a Sunday, and asked all the three teachers—Miss Nash, and Miss Prince, and Miss Richardson—to sup with her.”

“Mr. Martin, I suppose, is not a man of information beyond the line of his own business. He does not read?”

“Oh, yes—that is, no—I do not know, but I believe he has read a good deal, but not what you would think anything of. He reads the agricultural reports, and some other books that lie in one of the window-seats, but he reads all them to himself. But sometimes of an evening, before we went to cards, he would read something aloud out of ‘Elegant Extracts,’ very entertaining. And I know he has read the ‘Vicar of Wakefield.’ He never read the ‘Romance of the Forest,’ nor ‘The Children of the Abbey.’ He had never heard of such books before I mentioned them, but he is determined to get them now, as soon as ever he can.”

Emma sets herself to change all these cordial relations with the Martins, above all the appreciation of young Martin, in which she sees special danger for her protégée.

Emma begins by gently “setting down” Harriet as to the position of yeomen, and the improbability of her—Emma Woodhouse—having noticed one of them, since Harriet supposes Miss Woodhouse must have seen and known Robert Martin when he rode to market. On the occasion of an accidental encounter between the young farmer and the two girls, Emma takes care to let Harriet perceive that she thinks the young man very plain and clownish in his air. Emma makes Harriet contrast his lack of “gentility”—which, by the way, was not so odious a word last century—with the well-bred manners of Mr. Elton, among others of their acquaintance.

In fact, it is for the young vicar that Emma destines her friend; and in order to bring about an attachment and marriage, which she considers will be advantageous to both, Emma encourages Mr. Elton to spend many of his disengaged evenings at Hartfield, where she has always Harriet Smith with her. The young mistress of the house is altogether oblivious of the fact that the gentleman who, though well enough disposed, is by no means without self-love, and a head which is liable to be turned, may altogether mistake her graciousness.

Mr. Knightley does not approve of the great intimacy between Emma and Harriet Smith. There is no use in Mrs. Weston, Emma’s attached old friend, urging that it may induce Emma to read more; as she wishes to see Harriet better informed, the girls will read together.

“Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. 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 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 a course of steady reading from Emma.”

Mr. Knightley adds his estimate of the pretty, popular girl. “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.”

He inveighs against the unsuitable friendship between Emma and Harriet Smith, as sure to be injurious to both. Harriet is an unconscious flatterer. Her ignorance is in itself hourly flattery. On the other hand, Hartfield will put Harriet out of conceit with her natural sphere. She will only grow refined enough to be uncomfortable among the people with whom her lot is cast.

In the middle of their argument, the two friends break off the dispute to agree in their affectionate admiration of Emma’s person. Here is a graphic and charming picture of the heroine, which removes her attractions far out of the category of what is sickly and fantastic:—“Such an eye! the true hazel eye—and so brilliant! regular features, open countenance, with a complexion—oh, what a bloom of full health! and such a pretty height and size! such a firm and upright figure! There is health not merely in her bloom, but in her air, her head, her glance. One hears something of a child’s being ‘the picture of health;’ now, Emma always gives me the idea of being the complete picture of grown-up health.”

Yes, indeed, that is what every girl—plain or handsome, should desire to be, for her own good and that of all connected with her. In a summary of the bountiful gifts bestowed on the late Catherine Tait, wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury, what were reckoned as not the least were the health and strength, beyond those of ordinary women, which fitted her for the worthy performance of her many and arduous duties. Will girls never lay the lesson to heart in time, before they so often fritter and fling away, by culpable neglect and recklessness, one of God’s greatest boons?

Mr. Knightley returns to the charge of the mischievous association of the girls, until he stirs up Mrs. Weston to protest, with regard to Emma: “Where shall we see a better daughter, a kinder sister, a truer friend?”

“Very well,” he answers, “I will not plague you any more. Emma shall be an angel, and I will keep my spleen to myself till Christmas brings John and Isabella. John loves Emma with a reasonable and therefore not a blind affection; and Isabella always thinks as he does, except when he is not quite frightened enough about the children. I am sure of having their opinions with me.”

“I have a very sincere interest in Emma,” Mr. Knightley repeats. “Isabella does not seem more my sister; has never excited a greater interest; perhaps, hardly so great. There is an anxiety, a curiosity in what one feels for Emma. I wonder what will become of her?”

“So do I,” said Mrs. Weston gently, “very much.”

“She always declares she will never marry, which, of course, means just nothing at all. But I have no idea that she has yet ever seen a man she cared for. It would not be a bad thing for her to be very much in love, with a proper object. I should like to see Emma in love, and in some doubt of a return; it would do her good. But there is nobody hereabouts to attract her; and she goes so seldom from home.”

“There does, indeed, seem as little to tempt her to break her resolution at present,” says Mrs. Weston, “as can well be.”

The truth is, Mrs. Weston and her husband have a pet plan for their favourite Emma, which is not to be disclosed prematurely.

Emma paints Harriet’s miniature, and Mr. Elton lends all the help of his advice, while complimenting Miss Woodhouse on her talent for drawing, which she regards as his gratitude on Harriet’s account.

Emma takes care to fix upon Mr. Elton as the person with whom she can entrust her little picture to be conveyed to London and framed; while he shows a sufficient sense of her confidence. “He will suit Harriet exactly,” reflects Emma, complacently; “but he does sigh, and languish, and study for compliments, rather more than I could endure as a principal.”

In the meantime, Harriet receives a direct proposal of marriage from young Martin, couched in manly, unaffected terms.

Poor little Harriet, who is really as guileless and kind-hearted as she is simple and silly, is at first much and favourably impressed.

But Emma’s influence, though she does not mean to exercise it unduly, causes Harriet, not without lingering regret, to resolve to decline the offer.

“I could not have visited Mrs. Robert Martin, of Abbey Mill Farm,” says Emma, and Harriet is fixed in her resolve.

“That would have been too dreadful, dear Miss Woodhouse. I would not give up the pleasure and honour of being acquainted with you, for anything in the world.”

Mr. Knightley comes in a happy mood to Hartfield, to tell Emma something that will please her about her little friend, Harriet Smith. Though he has condemned the friendship, he can appreciate Harriet’s girlish good qualities; he is even magnanimous enough to compliment Emma on having cured her companion of her school-girl giggle. Robert Martin has confided his attachment to his friend and landlord, who is eager to inform Emma that Harriet Smith will soon have an offer of marriage from a most unexceptionable quarter—Robert Martin is the man. Her visit to Abbey Mill in the summer has done his business, and he means to marry her.

“He is very obliging,” said the well-informed Emma; “but is he sure that Harriet means to marry him?”

“Well, well—means to make her an offer, then; will that do?” Mr. Knightley, “who had nothing of ceremony about him,” conceives that Emma is speaking from some scruple of womanly dignity as to his mode of expressing himself. He enlarges on the advantages of the marriage, and his satisfaction with it. He ends with the laughing supposition that Martin may be detaining Harriet in Highbury at that very moment, and she may not be thinking him one of those “tiresome wretches”—as Emma has just styled the Highbury gossips.

“Pray, Mr. Knightley,” said Emma, who has been smiling to herself, “how do you know that Mr. Martin did not speak yesterday?”

Certainly he did not absolutely know, but he had understood Harriet Smith was with her all that day.

“Come,” said she, “I will tell you something in return for what you have told me. He did speak yesterday; that is, he wrote, and was refused.”

Mr. Knightley is incredulous and indignant. At last he accuses Emma, with reason, as the moving spirit in the step Harriet has taken. “You have been no friend to Harriet Smith, Emma,” he said; and with equal sense and sincerity he contrasts Harriet with Robert Martin, to the advantage of the latter, and remarks how happy the girl had been among the Martins, till Emma’s injudicious interference.

In the hot argument which ensues, Mr. Knightley takes occasion to tell Emma that if she intends to make a match between Elton and Harriet, her labour will be in vain.

Emma laughs and disclaims.

But Mr. Knightley’s penetration is not to be baffled, and he goes on to assure her Elton will not do. He is a good sort of young man, and a respectable vicar of Highbury, but not at all likely to make an imprudent marriage.

It is Emma’s turn to be incredulous, though she will not admit her intentions.

The two part in mutual vexation, which causes a coolness between them for weeks.

Emma’s pride is now piqued to accomplish her design; her head gets so full of it, that she is ill-judged enough to let Harriet see what she wishes and expects, and actually talks the foolish girl—who is, at least, perfectly unassuming—into a persuasion that she has inspired Mr. Elton with a passion for her, the belief in which is more than sufficient to create an answering passion in Harriet’s soft, childish heart.

We have next an example of an old favourite employment with girls. Instead of the reading, which never went beyond a few chapters, the only literary pursuit which engages Harriet, and in which Emma, too, takes an interest, the only mental provision she is making for the evening of life,[50] is the collecting and transcribing all the riddles of every sort she can come across.

These were days when, in gatherings of young people even a little above Harriet in rank and education, the company in cropped hair and white frocks, in Brutuses and high-necked, short-waisted coats, played at such ingenious games as “The Traveller,” and circulated riddles for the general entertainment. A new riddle was quite a precious possession to a girl, nearly as good as a new song.

Miss Nash, Mrs. Goddard’s head teacher, had written out as many as three hundred riddles, and Harriet hopes to have more.

Mr. Woodhouse is almost as much interested in the work as the girls, and tries in vain to revive old recollections of the excellent riddles of his youth, which always end in

“Kitty, a fair but frozen maid.”

Mr. Elton, who is constantly with the girls, is induced to furnish a riddle of his own composition—though, with the bashfulness of incipient authorship, he passes it off as a charade which a friend of his has addressed to a young lady, the object of his admiration—and he is gone the next moment. The charade is as follows:—

“My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings,

Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease;

Another view of man my second brings,

Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!

“But, ah! united what reverse we have,

Man’s boasted power and freedom all are flown;

Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave,

And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.

“Thy ready wit the word will soon supply,

May its approval beam in that soft eye!”

Emma reads, ponders, catches the meaning “courtship,” and happily confident that Mr. Elton, is coming to the point, hands the paper to Harriet.

“‘That soft eye’ can only refer to Harriet,” thinks Emma. “‘Thy ready wit.’ Humph! Harriet’s ready wit! All the better. A man must be very much in love to describe her so.”

Harriet’s ready wit exhibits itself in not having an idea of the answer. Can it be “Woman,” or “Neptune,” or “Trident?”

Emma is slightly exasperated; but she takes pains to explain the riddle in detail, and to draw the strongest inferences from its subject, while Harriet beams and blushes with joy and confusion.

Emma now becomes as assiduous as ever Mrs. Bennet, of Longbourn House, showed herself with regard to her daughter, Jane, and her lover Bingley, in making opportunities for Mr. Elton to propose to Harriet Smith.

But lovers are perverse, and will not always avail themselves of the best-planned assistance.

In the course of a walk which Emma and Harriet chance to take past the vicarage, in which the girls are overtaken by the vicar, Emma, having discovered that Harriet had never been inside the house, perpetrates a ruse to enable her friend to see her future home. Emma contrives to break her boot-lace, then announces the accident, and asks Mr. Elton to allow her to go into the vicarage and get a bit of riband or string from his housekeeper to keep the boot on.

Mr. Elton looks all happiness, and is as alert in conducting the ladies to his house as can be wished. But though Emma retires with the housekeeper, and stays as long away as she can manage, she finds on her return that the two standing together at one of the windows, however friendly, are not yet an engaged couple.

Christmas brings Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley and their children to enliven Hartfield.

Mrs. John Knightley is a pretty, elegant little woman, gentle and quiet, wrapt up in her family—a devoted wife, a doting mother, and so tenderly attached to her father and sister, that but for those higher ties, a warmer love might have seemed impossible. She has inherited her father’s delicate constitution, is over-careful of her children, has many fears and nerves, and is as fond of her own doctor in town as her father can be of his Mr. Perry.

Mr. John Knightley is tall, gentlemanlike, very clever, a rising barrister. He is domestic and estimable in private life. But he has a cold, dry manner, and he is capable of being sometimes out of humour. He has all the mental clearness and quickness his wife lacks, and he can on occasions act an ungracious, or say a severe thing. He is not a great favourite with his sister-in-law. She is quick in feeling the little injuries to Isabella which Isabella never feels for herself. Perhaps Emma might have passed over more, had his manners been more flattering to Isabella’s sister; but they are only those of a calmly kind brother and friend. However, his chief offence is, now and then, a want of forbearance with Mr. Woodhouse’s peculiarities and fidgetiness. Mr. John Knightley has really a great regard for his father-in-law, but sometimes the younger man cannot resist delivering a rational remonstrance, or a sharp retort equally ill-bestowed. It does not often happen, but it occurs too frequently for Emma’s charity.

Though such collisions do not usually take place early in the Knightleys’ visits, one is brought about on the very evening of John Knightley and his wife’s arrival.

Mr. Woodhouse and Isabella are very happy, expatiating on the merits of a basin of nice, smooth gruel—thin, but not too thin—and exchanging their little valetudinarian confidences, when, unfortunately, a reference is made to Mrs. Knightley’s last sea-bathing experience at Southend, seeing that the two great medical authorities of the father and daughter—Perry and Wingfield—differ on the respective recommendations of Southend and Cromer.

“Southend is an unhealthy place,” Mr. Woodhouse harps. “Perry was surprised to hear you had fixed on Southend.”

“We had all our health perfectly well there,” Isabella defends her side of the question. “Mr. Wingfield says it is entirely a mistake to suppose the place unhealthy. I am sure he may be depended upon, for he thoroughly understands the nature of the air. His own brother and family have been there repeatedly.”

“You should have gone to Cromer, my dear,” insists Mr. Woodhouse. “Perry was a week at Cromer once, and he holds it to be the best of all the sea-bathing places. Better not move at all, better stay in London altogether, than travel forty miles to get into a worse air. That is just what Perry said. It seemed to him a very ill-judged measure.”

John Knightley is able to stand this no longer. “Mr. Perry,” he said, “would do well to keep his opinion till it is asked for. I may be allowed, I hope, the use of my judgment as well as Mr. Perry. I want his directions no more than his drugs.” Then, more coolly, “If Mr. Perry can tell me how to convey a wife and five children a distance of a hundred and thirty miles, with no greater expense and inconvenience than a distance of forty, I should be as willing to prefer Cromer to Southend, as he could be himself.”

“True, true,” said George Knightley, hastily changing the subject, and warding off further danger, as Emma is accustomed to do. Still, Mr. Woodhouse is rather agitated by such harsh reflections on his friend Perry—to whom he has, in fact, though unconsciously, been attributing many of his own feelings and expressions, Jane Austen adds with a masterly touch—so that it requires all the soothing attentions of his daughters to set him at ease again.

Mr. Knightley of Donwell Abbey had joined the family at dinner. Emma had recognised his right to do so, and she had hoped that they might be friends again, for it was time their disagreement should end. She trusted their nephews and nieces would serve as a bond of union, and help in the peace-making. Accordingly, when he found her with the youngest, a child of eight months, in her arms, though he looked grave, and spoke shortly to begin with, he soon took the child out of her arms, with the unceremoniousness of restored amity.

The conviction gave Emma first satisfaction, and then a temptation to sauciness. It was a comfort they thought alike on their nephews and nieces, she said.

He was not unwilling to renew the old discussions half-banteringly, acquiescing in the mock humility of her assertion that, in their differences, she must always be in the wrong. Yes, and reason good, he said; he was sixteen years old when she was born, and he had the advantage of not being a pretty woman and a spoilt child. But “tell your aunt, little Emma, that she ought to set you a better example than to be renewing old grievances.”

“I only want to know,” said Emma, “that Mr. Martin is not very, very bitterly disappointed.”

“A man cannot be more so,” was his short, full answer.

“Ah! indeed, I am very sorry,” Emma made the penitent acknowledgment; “come, shake hands with me.”

This ceremony had just taken place with great cordiality, when John Knightley made his appearance, and “How d’ye do, George?” and “John, how are you?” succeeded in the true English style (which has not warmed much in the course of nearly another century), burying under a calmness that seemed all but indifference the real attachment which would have led either of them, if requisite, to do everything for the good of the other.

There could not be a happier creature than Mrs. John Knightley in her visit to Hartfield, going about every morning among her old acquaintances, with her five children, and talking every evening over what she had done with her father and sister.

The animation of the Knightleys’ visit nerves Mr. Woodhouse to the exertion of dining out with them at Randalls; where Mr. and Mrs. Weston consult his comfort in every respect, by fixing an early dinner-hour, and limiting their invited guests to his family and particular set, including the elder Mr. Knightley, Mr. Elton, and Harriet Smith.

The incidents in connection with this dinner-party furnish a strange and unwelcome revelation to Emma’s mind. In the first place, Harriet is attacked by a feverish sore-throat, and cannot form one of the party. Emma considers that Mr. Elton ought to make an excuse to be absent also—in fact, she is so obliging as to furnish him with one. She complains of the coldness of the weather,—wonders how any one would dine out who could help it. She and her father cannot disappoint the Westons, but there is no such obligation on Mr. Elton. She detects some hoarseness in his voice already. With the duties of next day—Sunday—before him, she thinks it would be no more than common prudence in him to stay at home and take care of himself.

Mr. Elton looks as if he did not know what to answer. He is not accustomed to contradict a lady, especially when her anxiety for his welfare is of the most gratifying description. But the next moment, a little to her disgust, Emma hears him accept with alacrity an offer from John Knightley, to secure him from any exposure to the weather by giving him a seat in their carriage.

The second shock to Emma is John Knightley’s hinting that Mr. Elton’s exaggerated efforts to please ladies, culminate in his desire to oblige Emma.

She laughs the idea to scorn; still, as coming from a man of her brother-in-law’s judgment and penetration, it annoys her.

There is additional discomposure in her drive in company with John Knightley and Mr. Elton, while her father and Isabella occupy the other carriage, to Randalls. Mr. Elton is in exasperatingly good spirits, in spite of the tidings which Emma takes care to convey to him, that there is no abatement in Harriet’s indisposition. He outdoes himself in blandness. John Knightley, on the contrary, indulges in a fit of ill-humour at being dragged from the hearth-rug at Hartfield and his children’s company at dessert, and growls in the most approved fashion over the folly of dining out, the whole way between Hartfield and Randalls—Emma being unable to afford him the sedative of “Very true, my love!” which, no doubt, is administered by his usual travelling companion.

Mr. Elton’s happy countenance and solicitous attentions haunt Emma all the evening, spoiling her pleasure, frightening her with the remembrance of John Knightley’s view of the case, which she herself defines as “absurd and insufferable.” In the drawing-room she is still farther offended by Mr. Elton’s asking her to promise him not to expose herself to infection in visiting Harriet Smith, and calling upon Mrs. Weston to support him in his entreaty. “So scrupulous for others, so careless of herself. She wanted me to nurse my cold by staying at home to-day, and yet will not promise to avoid the danger of catching an ulcerated sore-throat herself? Is that fair, Mrs. Weston? Judge between us.” Well might Mrs. Weston look surprised, and Emma feel too much provoked to be able to answer him.

John Knightley comes into the room with a cool report that it is snowing hard, and a caustic congratulation of poor Mr. Woodhouse’s spirit in venturing out with his carriage and horses in such weather.

Jolly Mr. Weston wishes that the roads may become impassable, to keep them all at Randalls.

Mr. Woodhouse and his elder daughter are in consternation. How can the chronic invalid face being overturned on the common, or the fond mother consent to be blocked up, for days and nights, from her children? (The country roads of last century were less trustworthy than those of to-day.)

Helpful George Knightley comes back from walking down the sweep and along Highbury Road, with the comforting assurance that matters are not nearly so bad as his brother and Mr. Weston have supposed. In some cases the ground is hardly white, and both of the coachmen agree there is no real difficulty.

Everybody is in a hurry to get off, and by John Knightley’s forgetfulness in following his wife into her father’s carriage, Emma finds herself, to her dismay, in the Knightleys’ carriage, alone with Mr. Elton. She believes that he has drunk too much of the Westons’ good wine,[51] and will want to talk nonsense. To restrain him, she prepares to speak with exquisite calmness of the weather; but scarcely has she begun, scarcely have they passed the gate, when she finds Mr. Elton actually and unmistakably making violent love to her.

Emma clings to the refuge of thinking her companion half intoxicated; disgraceful as the excuse is—above all in a clergyman—it was not altogether unwarranted by the lax practices of the time.

But Mr. Elton has only drunk wine enough to elevate his spirits, not at all to confuse his intellect. Emma, in her trepidation and vexation, strives to parry his addresses and to recall him to his senses, by an attempt at playful reproach. “I am very much astonished, Mr. Elton. This to me! You take me for my friend. Any message to Miss Smith I shall be happy to deliver.”

But Mr. Elton repeats, with undaunted assurance and a great show of amazement, “Message to Miss Smith!” what can she possibly mean?

“Mr. Elton, this is the most extraordinary conduct,” cries the distressed Emma. “You are not yourself; say no more, and I will endeavour to forget it.”

Far from it, Mr. Elton resumes the subject of his passion, and presses for a favourable answer.

As Emma’s notion of his inebriety yields to a conviction of his inconsistency and presumption, she speaks with fewer struggles for politeness; but her indignation is principally directed against what she declares is the contrast between his behaviour to Miss Smith during the last month—what she has herself witnessed, of his daily attentions,—and his present most unwarrantable profession of love to herself, which is far, indeed, from affording her gratification.

“Good Heavens!” cries Mr. Elton, “what can be the meaning of this? Miss Smith—I never thought of Miss Smith in the whole course of my existence; never paid her any attentions but as your friend; never cared whether she were dead or alive but as your friend.”

This is plain speaking from the compliment-paying Mr. Elton; but worse is to come.

“Miss Smith, indeed! Oh! Miss Woodhouse, who can think of Miss Smith when Miss Woodhouse is near? No!” in accents meant to be insinuating, “I am sure you have seen and understood me.”

It has all been a miserable mistake, in the course of which Emma has not only grossly misled poor, foolish little Harriet, Emma has also fed with false hopes the conceit and interested motives—rather than the honest regard—of a vain, ambitious man, who has been seeking wealth and worldly position as the first recommendations in a wife.

Emma is struck dumb, and when she says nothing her silence is still farther misinterpreted.

“Charming Miss Woodhouse, allow me to interpret this interesting silence. It confesses that you have long understood me.”

Then Emma finds her voice: “No, sir, it confesses no such thing.”

She tells him again in no measured terms how completely she has misunderstood him. Shaken and staggered as she is by his behaviour, she still goes back to her persuasion of his attachment to Miss Smith. Does he mean to say he has never thought seriously of her?

“Never,” cries Elton, affronted in his turn. “I think seriously of Miss Smith! Miss Smith is a very good sort of girl, and I should be happy to see her respectably settled. I wish her extremely well, and, no doubt, there are men who would not object to——Everybody has their own level; but as for myself, I am not, I think, quite so much at a loss, I need not so totally despair of an equal alliance, as to be addressing myself to Miss Smith.”

The smallness of Mr. Elton’s nature is betrayed in his manner of speaking of Harriet at this time, as well as in many of his subsequent actions. He is not a fool—at least, not where men are concerned, like Mr. Collins in “Pride and Prejudice.” Mr. Elton is altogether a better-bred man. But in this last specimen of a clergyman who is at once a coxcomb and a fortune-hunter, Jane Austen deals another blow at parsonolatry. One must think of Henry Tilney, Edward Ferrars, and Edmund Bertram, to understand how heartily she respected her father’s cloth when it was worthily worn.

Mr. Elton is almost as obstinate as Emma, and hardly more flattering in reminding her of the encouragement he has received.

“Encouragement!” cries Emma, insulted by the word. “I gave you no encouragement, sir; you have been entirely mistaken in supposing it. I have seen you only as the admirer of my friend. In no other light could you have been more to me than a common acquaintance.”

“He was too angry to say another word, her manner too decided to invite supplication, and in this state of swelling resentment and mutually deep mortification they had to continue together a few minutes longer, for the fears of Mr. Woodhouse had confined them to a foot pace. If there had not been so much anger there would have been desperate awkwardness; but their straightforward emotions left no room for the little zigzags of embarrassment. Without knowing when the carriage turned into Vicarage Lane or when it stopped, they found themselves, all at once, at the door of his house; and he was out before another syllable passed. Emma then felt it indispensable to wish him a good night. The compliment was just returned, coldly and proudly; and under indescribable irritation of spirits she was then conveyed to Hartfield.”

It is a wretched business, Emma decides when she has retired for the night, and her maid has curled her hair—in those days of curls—and she is left alone with full opportunity for the unpleasant operation of thinking. Such a blow for Harriet! That is the worst of all. Emma’s conscience and heart are in the right place, though her wilfulness and self-confidence may carry her away; so her first thought is, “If I had not persuaded Harriet into liking the man, I could have borne anything. He might have doubled his presumption to me—but poor Harriet!”

Emma cannot spare any pity for Mr. Elton’s disappointment. She has never been personally vain, as George Knightley noted, and she is shrewd enough to comprehend the kind of attraction of Miss Woodhouse of Hartfield, and her thirty thousand pounds, to Mr. Elton, the vicar of Highbury, without any connections to speak of, with only a moderate income, and nothing but his situation and civility to recommend him. She feels inclined at first to accuse him of double dealing in his manner towards Harriet and herself; and it is hard for her to be dislodged from the most sincere conviction that she has lent his forward advances to intimacy with herself, and his delusion as to her partiality to him, no encouragement.

But Emma’s honesty is too great for her and her present peace. On looking back, she cannot help seeing how many incidents in connection with the miniature, his charade, &c., might have had a double significance. How far her own fancy had coloured looks and words; how much the wish had been father to the thought! Then, when she passes in review before her, her own constant invitations to Mr. Elton—the complaisance with which she treated all he said and did—her furbished-up apology for entering the vicarage, she blushes with shame at the misconstruction he might have put on such behaviour, and the sufficient though mistaken warrant she had afforded for such misconstruction. She heartily repents what she has done, wishes she had submitted to be warned by Mr. Knightley—almost wishes she had consented to Harriet’s marriage with Robert Martin.

It is a great relief to Emma when, by the time the snow-storm has ended, and Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley have returned to London, a ceremonious note comes from Mr. Elton to Mr. Woodhouse, announcing that he is about to comply with the pressing entreaties of some friends to pass a few weeks in Bath. His absence could not be better timed, and the unpleasant task of breaking to Harriet Smith his defection—or, rather, the worse explanation that he has never been her suitor—will be got over before he comes back. Emma is fain to trust that Harriet has not a retentive nature, and will soon forget her imaginary lover. But the match-maker is punished by Harriet’s very meekness and uncomplainingness under the double injury—though it is some time before Emma recognises in her friend the weak tenacity of a nature which is feeble in its gentleness and guilelessness.