V.
In 1809 the Austens made their last removal. It was back to the country—of which Jane always makes her heroines fond—back to the old neighbourhood of Steventon, her birth-place. Edward Knight offered his mother a choice of two houses—the one on his estate in Kent, the other on his estate in Hampshire. She selected the house in Hampshire, Chawton Cottage, near the squire’s occasional home, Chawton House.
Chawton Cottage, in the village of the same name, was not originally a farm house, like Upper Cross Cottage, in “Persuasion;” it had been intended for an inn. Indeed, it stood so close to the high road on which the front door opened, that a very narrow enclosure “paled” in on each side had been necessary to protect the building from the danger of collision with runaway vehicles. In addition to the Gosport Road in front, the Winchester Road skirted the house on one side, so that it could not be regarded as a secluded habitation, but in those days cheerfulness was more prized than seclusion. There was a large pond close to Chawton Cottage, at the junction of the two public roads. Happily the theory which connects insalubrity with such ponds had not yet been aired, so that to the Austens, no doubt, Chawton pond was a very desirable sheet of water, tending still more to enhance the attractions of the scene. They would not much mind the duckweed and other slimy vegetation. Horses and donkeys, ducks and geese, would disport themselves there in summer. In winter village sliders would bestow animation on the ice.
The squire added to the house, and contrived some judicious planting and screening. A good-sized entrance and two sitting-rooms were managed. In the drawing-room a window which looked to the Gosport Road was blocked up and turned into a bookcase, and another window was opened out and made to command only turf and trees, for a high wooden fence and a hornbeam hedge shut out the Winchester Road. Here was a little bit of genteel privacy. A shrubbery was carried round the enclosure, which Mr. Austen Leigh tells us gave a sufficient space for “ladies’ exercise,” though we cannot help thinking the exercise-ground must have been rather limited for the middle-aged women.
However, there was a pleasant irregular mixture of hedgerow, gravel-walk, and orchard, with grass for mowing, made by two or three little enclosures having been thrown together. As it happened, walking had to be relinquished before many years by the younger sister, and Jane Austen, as well as her mother, had to resort to a donkey-carriage for exercise.
Altogether Chawton Cottage was “quite as good as the generality of parsonages, and nearly in the same style.” It was capable of receiving other members of the family as frequent visitors. In this respect it must have contrasted favourably in Jane’s mind with the cottage in which she had established Ellinor and Marianne Dashwood with their mother, in “Sense and Sensibility.” Chawton Cottage was sufficiently well furnished.[4] Altogether it formed a comfortable and “lady-like” establishment for a family of ladies whose means were not large. To Jane Austen it was her own house, among her own people, points which meant a great deal to her. Besides, she was a woman possessed at once of too much self-respect and self-resource, and of too serene a spirit and lively a temper to care much either for outward show or interior luxury.
Jane Austen was thirty-four years of age when she settled down at Chawton, her sister Cassandra was thirty-seven, their mother seventy. They were a household of old and middle-aged women, increased either then or a little later by a family connection—a Miss Lloyd—who lived with the Austens. Their prospects were as clearly defined as earthly prospects could well be, and they accepted the definition. Jane Austen was never seen without a cap, either in the morning or the evening, after she went to Chawton. The Austen sisters assumed early the caps which were then the mark of matronhood or confirmed spinsterhood. Possibly Cassandra Austen first adopted the badge as a quiet sign that she wished to have nothing more to do with love and marriage, and Jane bore her faithful company in this as in everything else. Mr. Austen Leigh mentions also—and every trifle is welcome which bears on the novelist’s character and habits—it was held that his aunts, though remarkably neat in their dress, as in all their ways, were not sufficiently attentive to the fashionable or the becoming. In short, Jane and Cassandra Austen, though they had been the young beauties of Steventon in their time, entertained no fear of being styled dowdies or frights in their middle age, whether by their young relatives or the “dressy” among their contemporaries.
The Austens dwelt in the centre of family interests, several members of the old Steventon household living near, while a younger generation was growing up, with fresh claims on the affectionate sympathies of their grandmother and aunts. In her family and among her old friends Jane Austen was unsurpassed as a tender sick-nurse, an untiring confidante, and a wise counsellor.
In these congenial circumstances it seemed as if a fresh spring of courage and hopefulness, and with them renewed inspiration in her art, came to the author. She began the very year of her arrival at Chawton to revise and prepare her old MSS. for publication. She had found a publisher in a Mr. Egerton, and she brought out in succession two novels—the first, “Sense and Sensibility,” when she was thirty-six years of age, in 1811, fourteen or fifteen years after it was re-written at Steventon. She got for it, though after how short or long an interval, or by what arrangement, we are not told, a hundred and fifty pounds. In her gay way she exclaimed at so large a reward for what had cost her nothing—nothing save genius, ungrudging trouble, and long patience. “Pride and Prejudice” was published two years later, in 1813.
In the meantime Jane Austen began fresh work, for “Mansfield Park” was commenced the year before. She had no separate study; she worked in the family sitting-room, undisturbed by the conversation, or the various occupations going on around her, and subjected to all kinds of interruptions. She wrote at a little mahogany writing-desk, on small pieces of paper, which could be easily put aside, or covered with blotting-paper at the sight of visitors. But it would be a great mistake to suppose that she did not take the greatest pains with her work. She wrote and re-wrote, filed and polished; her own comparison for the process was painting on a few inches of ivory by repeated touches.
“Pride and Prejudice” attracted attention before long.[5] When the secret of the authorship became known, in spite of the author’s name being omitted on the title-page, Jane Austen’s experience was that of a prophet who has no honour in his own country. Mr. Austen Leigh says that any praise which reached the author and her family from their neighbours and acquaintances was of the mildest description, and that those excellent people would have considered Miss Jane’s relatives mad if it had been suspected that they put her, in their own minds, on a level with Madame d’Arblay or even with far inferior writers. A letter is given in which the novelist describes to her sister Cassandra in the liveliest terms her feelings on seeing “Pride and Prejudice” in print. She had got her own darling child from London. The advertisement of it had appeared in their paper that day for the first time. Eighteen shillings! She should ask a guinea for her two next, and twenty-eight shillings for her stupidest of all.
A friend who was not in the secret had dined at Chawton Cottage on the very day of the book’s coming, and in the evening the family had fairly set to it and read half the first volume to her without her having any suspicion. “She was amused, poor soul!” observes the author, and then adds, with admirable naïveté, “That she could not help, you know, with two such characters to lead the way, but she really does seem to admire Elizabeth. I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know.”
In another letter Jane Austen refers to the second reading, which had not come off quite so well, and had even caused her some fits of disgust. She attributed the comparative failure to the rapid way in which her mother, who seemed to have been the reader, got on, and to her not being able to speak as the characters ought, though she understood them perfectly. When we recollect that the old lady was already seventy-four years of age, we are rather astonished that she found voice and breath for such a labour of love as reading aloud her daughter’s novel, than that she was not able to give the dialogue with sufficient point. Upon the whole, the daughter winds up, she was quite vain enough and well satisfied enough, and the only fault which she found with her story was that it was rather too light, and bright, and sparkling; it wanted to be stretched here and there with a long chapter of sense, if it could be had, if not of solemn specious nonsense. Unquestionably the novelist was not plagued with diffidence, any more than with mock-modesty.
In the same letter she refers to an out-of-the-way book for a woman to read, with which she was then engaged; it was an “Essay on the Military Police, and Institutions of the British Empire, by Captain Pasley, of the Engineers.” She declared it was delightfully written, and highly entertaining, and that the author was the first soldier she had ever sighed for. The last assertion reminds one of Jane Austen’s strong preference for the sister service, which may be best explained by the circumstance that she had two brothers in the navy, and none in the army. Her heroes are squires, clergymen, and sailors, just as the male Austens were. She uses their Christian names, James, Henry, Frank, Edward, as well as her own. Her sister’s name was too singular and conspicuous to be thus employed.
Another letter a year later, in 1814, supplies an account of a journey which Jane Austen made “post” to London, in company with her brother Henry, who read the MS. of “Mansfield Park” by the way. It sounds as if the brother and sister were themselves the bearers of the new work to the publisher, who brought it out the same year.
“Emma,” the heroine of which proved almost as great a favourite as Elizabeth Bennet with their author, was written and published two years later, in 1816. It was in connection with this, the last book of hers which Jane Austen lived to see come out, that she received what her nephew calls the only mark of distinction ever bestowed upon her. She was in London during the previous autumn of 1815, the year of Waterloo, nursing her brother Henry through a dangerous illness, in his house in Hans Place. Henry Austen was attended by one of the Prince Regent’s physicians. To this gentleman it became known that his patient’s nurse was the author of “Pride and Prejudice.” The court physician told the lady that the Prince was a great admirer of her novels; that he read them often, and kept a set in every one of his residences; that he himself had thought it right to inform his royal highness that Miss Austen was staying in London, and that the Prince had desired Mr. Clarke, the librarian at Carlton House, to wait upon her.
The next day Mr. Clarke made his appearance and invited Jane Austen to Carlton House, saying that he had the Prince’s instructions to show her the library,[6] and other apartments, and to pay her every possible attention. The invitation was of course accepted, and in the course of the visit to Carlton House Mr. Clarke declared himself commissioned to say that if Miss Austen had any other novel forthcoming, she was at liberty to dedicate it to the Prince. Accordingly, such a dedication was immediately prefixed to “Emma,” which was at that time in John Murray’s hands.
The first part of the civility, the invitation to Carlton House, was a gracious enough mark of attention from the first gentleman in Europe to the first lady novelist in his kingdom; but at this distance of time, in the full light enjoyed by posterity, it seems passing strange that two such women as Jane Austen and Jane Porter—equal in moral worth, though standing on very different intellectual heights—should have eagerly availed themselves of the permission to dedicate books to George IV., though he had been ten times the Prince Regent, and the future king. And what is if possible stranger, is that the Prince Regent should have been, even professedly, an admiring, assiduous reader of the novels—altogether apart in literary merit, but alike in good tone and taste—of these two upright and blameless women. The fact is enough to tempt people to a disheartening doubt of the moral influence of books.
As a qualification to the pleasure derived from the princely compliment, Jane Austen had to suffer the annoyance of receiving and declining to comply with two rather preposterous suggestions offered to her by Mr. Clarke. The one was for her to pourtray the habits of life, character, and enthusiasm of a clergyman who should pass his time between London and the country, and who should bear some resemblance to Beattie’s Minstrel.
In a letter in which she thanks her correspondent for his praise of her novels, and expresses her anxiety that her fourth work might not disgrace what was good in the others, remarking she was haunted by the idea that the readers who have preferred “Pride and Prejudice” will think “Emma” inferior in wit; and those who have preferred “Mansfield Park” will consider the present novel deficient in sense, she demurely puts aside Mr. Clarke’s hint for her next story, on the plea that, though she might be equal to the comic part of it, the learned side of the clergyman would demand a classic education and an amount of acquaintance with ancient and modern literature that was far beyond her. Perhaps in self-defence from similar assaults, she concludes by boasting herself, “with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.”
But the irrepressible Mr. Clarke was not to be deterred from his purpose of advising the novelist as to the direction of her talents. His second piece of advice was more startling and incongruous than his first. Prince Leopold was then on the eve of his marriage with Princess Charlotte. Mr. Clarke had had the good fortune to be appointed Chaplain and private English Secretary to the Prince. The clergyman might have had a generous desire that another clergyman’s daughter should have the chance of sharing his good luck and assurance of preferment. Or he might have had a wish to procure a compliment for his last princely patron, and might have believed it was specially due from Jane Austen as a small return for the notice which the Prince Regent had condescended to take of her and her work. Mr. Clarke proposed that Miss Austen should write an historical novel illustrative of the august house of Cobourg,[7] which would just then be very interesting, and might very properly be dedicated to Prince Leopold. The date of the proposal brings vividly before us the deliberation with which public events were discussed in those days. For a public event to be dealt with now-a-days so as to take the tide of public interest at its height, an author would require to be as much in advance of the historical circumstance as publishers show themselves in their anticipation of Christmas. It would be necessary, in order that a novel founded on a royal marriage should command readers, that the author should be taken into what Mr. Clarke would have called the august confidence of the principals at the very first step of the negotiations, so that he might be able to bring out his work within twelve hours of the ceremony.
Jane Austen was not so profoundly honoured by the recommendation as Jane Porter felt when she set herself to comply with a royal wish that she should commemorate the first beginnings of the House of Brunswick.
After all, so-called historical novels were in Miss Porter’s way and not in Miss Austen’s. Mr. Austen Leigh speaks of the grave civility with which Jane Austen refused to make such an attempt. It seems to me that while she respectfully acknowledges the courtesies of Carlton House, and readily responds with answering friendliness to the friendly tone of Mr. Clarke’s communication, there is considerable impatience and scorn in her merry but most decided dismissal of his ridiculous project. Even to her congratulations on his recent appointment she adds a sentence which has a suspicion of irony in it. “In my opinion,” she writes, “the service of a court can hardly be too well paid, for immense must be the sacrifice of time and feeling required by it.” She goes on to say, “You are very kind in your hints as to the sort of composition which might recommend me at present, and I am fully sensible that an historical romance, founded on the House of Saxe-Cobourg, might be much more to the purpose of profit or popularity than such pictures of domestic life in country villages as I deal in. But I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious 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 I had finished the first chapter. No; I must keep to my own style, and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.”
There is an anecdote of Jane Austen which coincides with her character, and has been widely circulated, though it is not mentioned by Mr. Austen Leigh. If it had a foundation in fact, it must have occurred either during this visit to London or in the course of that paid not long before. It is said that Miss Austen received an invitation to a rout given by an aristocratic couple with whom she was not previously acquainted. The reason assigned for the invitation was, that the author of “Pride and Prejudice” might be introduced to the author of “Corinne.” Tradition has it that the English novelist refused the invitation, saying, that to no house where she was not asked as Jane Austen would she go as the author of “Pride and Prejudice.”
The anecdote is often quoted with marks of admiration for the author’s independence. But even the most honest and honourable independence has its becoming limits. That of Jane Austen, ultra self-sufficing, fastidious, tinged with haughtiness, is just a trifle repellant out of that small circle in which she was always at home.
Whether or not Madame de Staël was consulted about the proposed meeting, she was not an admirer of her sister author. The somewhat grandiloquent Frenchwoman characterised the productions of that English genius—which were the essence of common-sense—as “vulgaires,” precisely what they were not.
Apparently, Jane Austen was not one whit more accessible to English women of letters. There were many of deserved repute in or near London at the dates of these later visits. Not to speak of Mrs. Inchbald,[8] whom her correspondent, warm-hearted Maria Edgeworth, rejoiced to come to England and meet personally, there were the two Porters, Joanna Baillie—at the representation of whose fine play, The Family Legend, Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron had lately “assisted”—and the veteran writer, Madame d’Arblay, whose creations were the object of Jane Austen’s early and late admiration. But we do not hear of a single overture towards acquaintance between Miss Austen and these ladies, though her work must have left as lively an impression on some of their minds as theirs had done on hers. Men of letters were no better known to her.
Jane Austen was destined to add only one more tale—and that a short, if charming story—to the list of her novels. In the course of 1816, she wrote “Persuasion,” which is not merely very good, in her own style, but possesses distinguishing excellences wanting in the others.[9]
Between February, 1811, and August, 1816, rather more than five years, Jane Austen wrote her three later novels, “Mansfield Park,” “Emma,” and “Persuasion”—pendants, as it were, to her three earlier works, “Pride and Prejudice,” “Sense and Sensibility,” and “Northanger Abbey,” belonging to 1796, ’97, and ’98—twenty years before. The author’s second period of composition was as productive as her first, if we take into consideration that “Sense and Sensibility” was simply an adaptation from a more juvenile story still.
Making allowance for the novelist’s strong individuality, there is an undoubted change in the tone. There are greater tolerance and tenderness especially noticeable in “Persuasion”—more thoughtfulness and earnestness in “Mansfield Park”—a perfection of composition which belongs peculiarly to “Emma.” All the three novels are distinguished by greater polish of the simple, vigorous diction, and a still more determined adherence to probability. The later novels may lack some amount of what Jane Austen herself defined as the sparkle of “Pride and Prejudice”—a sparkle which was often hard as well as bright; but the notion of any falling-off in power in the author would be absurd. There was an ample equivalent for anything she might have lost in fresh spontaneousness by what she had gained in reflection and feeling, and in delicacy of execution.