“Of Jane herself I know no definite love-tale to relate,” says her nephew and biographer, Mr. Austen Leigh; and this seems about the conclusion of the matter. “No man’s life could be more entirely free from sentiment,” admits, very reluctantly, one of her cleverest critics. “If love be a woman’s chief business, here is a very sweet woman who had no share in it. It is a want, but we have no right to complain, seeing that she did not shape her course to please us.”
This is a generous reflection on the critic’s part; but is the want so painfully apparent as he thinks, or may we not be well content with Jane Austen as we have her, the central figure of a little loving family group, the dearest of daughters and sisters, the gayest and brightest of aunts, the most charming and incomparable of old maids?
THE CHARM OF THE FAMILIAR
Those persons are happiest in this restless and mutable world who are in love with change, who delight in what is new simply because it differs from what is old; who rejoice in every innovation, and find a strange alert pleasure in all that is, and that has never been before. With little things as with big ones, this sentiment is the sentiment of our day. “Unrest,” says Schopenhauer, “is the mark of existence,” and the many trifling details of ordinary life evince on every side the same keen relish for novelty, the same careless disregard of the familiar. Especially is this the case with women, who feel less wistfully than men the subtle charm of association, and who have less sympathy than men for the dear, faulty, unlovely, well-loved things of their youth. No woman could have written those pathetic lines of Mr. Lang’s on St. Andrews:
“A little city, worn and gray,”
the memory of whose rainwashed, desolate streets blots out from his mind all the beauty and the splendor of Oxford. And—to descend from serious to frivolous subjects—no woman can wholly appreciate that pleasant sketch of Mr. Barrie’s, called “My Tobacco Pouch,” which reveals a mental condition absolutely inexplicable to the most astute feminine apprehension. It is the instinctive desire of our sex for modernism that keeps rolling the great ball of trade. Manufacturers and shopkeepers would starve in common if they catered only to men, who not infrequently have a marked preference for the archaic. But women, to use the words of Sir Thomas Browne, are “complexionally propense to innovation.” With wonderful pliancy and adaptability they fit easily into new surroundings, make homes out of new houses, fill their rooms with new objects, and grasp a fair share of happiness in the enjoyment of novelty in every form, whether of fashion, art, literature, religion or philanthropy.
But what of the unfortunate few who, through some strange moral twist, are “complexionally propense” to sameness; who feel a passionate regret for what has been lost, and a passionate reluctance to part with what is fast slipping away; and who, as the great world rolls relentlessly on its appointed course, find themselves “forever broken on the wheel of time”? The journal of that stout old Tory, Sir Francis Doyle, betrays a strong dislike, not only for political upheavals, which are very uncomfortable and disturbing things, but for innovations of any kind. “Nothing can be so good as what is old,” says Mr. Lang; and Mr. Peacock tranquilly declares that all the really valuable opinions have been uttered a thousand years ago. Amid the noisy blare with which the trumpets of progress herald every move, comes thrilling now and then a note of protest from some malcontent who does not part so easily with the past, and for whom familiarity lends to every detail of life a merit and beauty of its own. It almost seems as if two-thirds of mankind were hard at work improving away the happiness of the remaining third, and bidding them at intervals to stop grumbling and appreciate the change.
When it chances that these familiar details are associated in the mind with pleasures, early pleasures especially, the memory of which lingers with the sweetness of honey, then the pain of parting with them is utterly disproportioned to their worth. I have never been able to understand how people can rebind an old book, or reframe an old picture, if the book or the picture have been in any way dear to them for years. How strange and unfriendly these objects look in their new dress! How remote they seem from the recollections hitherto aroused by their presence! One of the minor grievances of my life is the gradual disappearance from the theatres of all the old drop-curtains I can remember since my childish days. Perhaps the new curtains are better than the old ones—I hear persons say as much occasionally—but to me they are simply hideous, because their native ugliness is unsoftened by any gracious memory of those far-off nights when, feverish with delight, I sat staring at the stretch of painted canvas, and anticipating all the joys that lay behind. There was no moment of transport equal to that which saw the slow ascent of the mystic veil, revealing inch by inch the enchanted scenes beyond; and I still believe that if I could behold once more those dear, familiar landscapes, some portion of the old, lost pleasure would return. Three curtains are indelibly associated with these hours of supreme happiness; and I recall them all three now as the most beautiful pictures in the world. One—and this, I think, was the first I ever saw—represented an Italian view, with a lively volcano in the background, and, in front, a long-legged shepherd lad reclining on the marble steps of a fountain, while his flock loitered lazily around. Another displayed four stout and dropsical nymphs preparing for, or resting from, a hunt; this fact being adroitly intimated by the presence of some very long bows, and some very lean greyhounds. The third was a seaport town, with vessels lying in harbor, and a little terrace running to the water’s edge, on which terrace I have taken many a stroll in spirit, waiting for the wonders to come. Not that the waits were ever long in those vanished days. On the contrary, the whole evening flew by on wings of fire, and the only thought that marred my perfect felicity was the haunting consciousness that it would too soon be over. And the theatres were never hot, or stuffy, or draughty, when I was a child; and the lights were never glaring, but shone with a gentle radiance; and the chairs were softer than down; and the music was noble and inspiring; and the actors were men of genius; and the actresses were ravishingly beautiful; and the scenery was sublime; and the plays were wondrously witty; and the paste jewels were dazzling; and ennui was unknown; and I never, never, never, wished I had stayed at home. What new drop-curtain hides from me now the rapturous illusions of my youth?