There is little trace of such a tragedy in Jane Austen's books—not one morbid word is to be found, not one vain regret. Hers was not a nature to fall crushed by the overthrow of one phase of her manifold life. She seems to have had a natural genius for life, if I may so speak; too vivid and genuinely unselfish to fail her in her need. She could gather every flower, every brightness along her road. Good spirit, content, all the interests of a happy and observant nature were hers. Her gentle humour and wit and interest cannot have failed.
It is impossible to calculate the difference of the grasp by which one or another human being realises existence and the things relating to it, nor how much more vivid life seems to some than to others. Jane Austen, while her existence lasted, realised it, and made the best use of the gifts that were hers. Yet, when her life was ending, then it was given to her to understand the change that was at hand; as willingly as she had lived, she died. Some people seem scarcely to rise up to their own work, to their own ideal. Jane Austen's life, as it is told by her nephew, is beyond her work, which only contained one phase of that sweet and wise nature—the creative, observant, outward phase. For her home, for her sister, for her friends, she kept the depth and tenderness of her bright and gentle sympathy. She is described as busy with her neat and clever fingers sewing for the poor, working fanciful keepsakes for her friends. There is the cup and ball that she never failed to catch; the spillikens lie in an even ring where she had thrown them; there are her letters, straightly and neatly folded, and fitting smoothly in their creases. There is something sweet, orderly, and consistent in her character and all her tastes—in her fondness for Crabbe and Cowper, in her little joke that she ought to be a Mrs. Crabbe. She sings of an evening old ballads to old-fashioned tunes with a low sweet voice.
Further on we have a glimpse of Jane and her sister in their mobcaps, young still, but dressed soberly beyond their years. One can imagine 'Aunt Jane,' with her brother's children round her knee, telling her delightful stories or listening to theirs, with never-failing sympathy. One can fancy Cassandra, who does not like desultory novels, more prudent and more reserved, and somewhat less of a playfellow, looking down upon the group with elder sister's eyes.
Here is an extract from a letter written at Steventon in 1800:—
'I have two messages: let me get rid of them, and then my paper will be my own. Mary fully intended writing by Mr. Charles's frank, and only happened entirely to forget it, but will write soon; and my father wishes Edward to send him a memorandum of the price of hops.
Sunday Evening.
'We have had a dreadful storm of wind in the forepart of the day, which has done a great deal of mischief among our trees. I was sitting alone in the drawing-room when an odd kind of crash startled me. In a moment afterwards it was repeated. I then went to the window. I reached it just in time to see the last of our two highly valued elms descend into the sweep!!!
'The other, which had fallen, I suppose, in the first crash, and which was nearest to the pond, taking a more easterly direction, sank among our screen of chestnuts and firs, knocking down one spruce-fir, breaking off the head of another, and stripping the two corner chestnuts of several branches in its fall. This is not all: the maple bearing the weathercock was broken in two, and what I regret more than all the rest is, that all the three elms that grew in Hall's Meadow, and gave such ornament to it, are gone.'
A certain Mrs. Stent comes into one of these letters 'ejaculating some wonder about the cocks and hens.' Mrs. Stent seems to have tried their patience, and will be known henceforward as having bored Jane Austen.
They leave Steventon when Jane is about twenty-five years of age and go to Bath, from whence a couple of pleasant letters are given us. Jane is writing to her sister. She has visited Miss A., who, like all other young ladies, is considerably genteeler than her parents. She is heartily glad that Cassandra speaks so comfortably of her health and looks: could travelling fifty miles produce such an immediate change? 'You were looking poorly when you were here, and everybody seemed sensible of it.' Is there any charm in a hack postchaise? But if there were, Mrs. Craven's carriage might have undone it all. Then Mrs. Stent appears again. 'Poor Mrs. Stent, it has been her lot to be always in the way; but we must be merciful, for perhaps in time we may come to be Mrs. Stents ourselves, unequal to anything and unwelcome to everybody.' Elsewhere she writes, upon Mrs. ——'s mentioning that she had sent the 'Rejected Addresses' to Mr. H., 'I began talking to her a little about them, and expressed my hope of their having amused her. Her answer was, "Oh dear, yes, very much; very droll indeed; the opening of the house and the striking up of the fiddles!" What she meant, poor woman, who shall say?'