A reviewer in The Quarterly of the autumn 1815 includes Emma with other works of the same writer. It has been supposed, therefore, that the proof sheets must have been in the hands of the Quarterly reviewer before the work was actually issued. Mr. Austin-Dobson, by application to Mr. Murray, cleared up the difficulty, for he ascertained that, owing to exceptional delays, the number of the Review bearing date October 1815 did not in reality come out until March 1816, and that therefore Emma had actually appeared before its production.
The reviewer was Sir Walter Scott, as is stated by Lockhart in a note to the Life, who adds that Emma and Northanger Abbey were in particular great favourites of Scott’s. In his summary at the end of the article, Sir Walter Scott says—
“The author’s knowledge of the world and the peculiar tact with which she presents characters that the reader cannot fail to recognise, reminds us something of the merits of the Flemish school of painting. The subjects are not often elegant and certainly never grand; but they are finished up to nature, and with a precision which delights the reader.” “The faults on the contrary arise from the minute detail which the author’s plan comprehends. Characters of folly or simplicity such as those of old Woodhouse and Miss Bates, are ridiculous when first presented, but if too often brought forward, or too long dwelt upon, their prosing is apt to become as tiresome in fiction as in real society.”
In this we cannot agree, to accuse Jane of it is to accuse her of lacking the very gift in which she was pre-eminent—selection. The merit of her bores is that they never bore, but are only amusing. She never proses, and her few paragraphs of quotation from the sayings of Miss Bates set that lady before us as clearly or more clearly than if fifty pages from the actual life had been given by the phonograph.
From what Jane says she apparently saw this article in March 1816 when she was back at Chawton; for she writes: “The authoress of Emma has no reason, I think, to complain of her treatment in it, except in the total omission of Mansfield Park; I cannot but be sorry that so clever a man as the reviewer of Emma should consider it as unworthy of being noticed.”
That Jane was satisfied with her treatment by Mr. Murray may be seen by her handing over to him the conduct of the second edition of Mansfield Park. She writes in one place, “I had a most civil note in reply from Mr. Murray. He is so very polite indeed that it is quite over-coming.”
At this time she must have begun the last and shortest of her books, Persuasion, which she finished in August of the same year. And with this we enter on the last phase, the gradual decline and sinking of the bright spirit, which had added so greatly to the happiness of thousands it had never known.
CHAPTER XIX LAST DAYS
The evening of Jane’s life had set in, but yet it had not occurred even to those who loved her best that they must inevitably lose her. She was in her forty-first year; recognition from the public had just begun to be accorded to her; in the novels she had lately written no sign of decay could be detected. It is true that in both Emma and Persuasion there is a particular maturity of rendering, and a kindlier tone that marks perhaps a difference, but not degeneracy. If the word seriousness can ever be used of such clear-cut, brilliant work as hers, we might say that a certain sweet seriousness pervaded these two, which are more alike in tone than any of the other novels. Persuasion has been called the “most beautiful of all the novels”; it has many excellencies, not the least among which is the character of the heroine, whose girlish weakness develops into a loyal steadfastness. She has also that endearingness that perhaps certain others of the heroines lack. In fact, of all the principal female characters that of Anne Elliot has most of that nameless and indefinable charm, which comes from a combination of qualities such as firmness, gentleness, unselfishness, sympathy and sweetness, a charm which is more lovable than any number of stereotyped graces. Though Anne was at one time weak, we feel that she outgrows it, that it was the weakness of immaturity, not of character, and that her loyalty fully redeems it.
Jane herself says of Anne Elliot, “You may perhaps like the heroine as she is almost too good for me,” yet the too-good note seems less obtrusive with Anne than with Fanny Price, whose exceeding surface meekness does sometimes produce a little exasperation. Anne and Fanny have the most in common among the heroines of the novels, yet what a difference is there! Fanny has many virtues, but her intense nervous sensitiveness makes one feel her self-consciousness, and underlying all her shrinking there was a quality of obstinacy that is felt without being insisted upon. It is just the subtle difference that Jane knew so well how to make, the feeling perhaps is that Fanny is not quite a gentlewoman, that she would be difficult to get on with, however meek and self-effacing on the surface, while Anne could never be anything but a delightful companion.