Jane Austen and Her Times

by G. E. Mitton

After Garrick’s death, when she came to stay with his brave but heart-broken widow she lived very quietly. “My way of life is very different from what it used to be. After breakfast I go to my own apartment for several hours, where I read, write and work; very seldom letting anybody in. At four we dine. We have the same elegant table as usual, but I generally confine myself to one single dish of meat. I have taken to drink half a glass of wine. At six we have coffee; at eight tea, when we have sometimes, a dowager or two of quality. At ten we have sallad and fruits.”

This was in 1779, and two years previously her play Percy had been brought out with extraordinary success; she says of it herself, “far beyond my expectation,” and it produced more excitement than any tragedy had done for many years. The author’s rights, sale of copy, etc., amounted to near six hundred pounds, and “as my friend Mr. Garrick has been so good as to lay it out for me on the best security and at five per cent., it makes a decent little addition to my small income. Cadell gave £150, a very handsome price, with conditional promises. He confesses that it had had a very great sale and that he shall get a good deal of money by it. The first impression is near four thousand and the second is almost sold.”

It is customary to think of Hannah More as so quiet and Quakerish that the idea of her writing plays and living a gay society life is new to many people, but the seriousness and retirement came later.

Considering how easily the heights of celebrity were stormed at that time, and especially by a woman, it is most remarkable that Jane received no encouragement, and had no literary society, and not one literary correspondent in the whole of her lifetime. Of course her first novel was not published until 1811, and then anonymously, with the simple inscription “By a Lady” on the title-page, yet it sold well and became very popular, and though no effort was made to proclaim her the authoress certainly there was no rigid attempt to hide her personality. Before the publication of Emma her identity was known, for she was requested to dedicate this book to the Prince Regent, as will be related in due course. And this was the only recognition of any public sort she received. Many of her contemporaries were brought up in a sort of hotbed of intellect, and associated with men of talent and distinction from their cradles—what a wonderful quickening and impetus must this have brought with it! Jane had none of these advantages, her genius was her own entirely, and her material of the slightest; she had no contemporaries of original talent with which to exchange ideas, to strike out sparks or receive suggestions. She did not mingle with people of her own calibre at all. Herein Miss Burney had an immense advantage over her, from her babyhood she was surrounded by men and women of distinction. Her father, himself an author and possessing musical talent, drew to his house all sorts of persons. Macaulay says, “It would be tedious to recount the names of all the men of letters and artists whom Fanny Burney had an opportunity of seeing and hearing. Hundreds of remarkable persons had passed in review before her, English, French, German, Italian, lords and fiddlers, deans of cathedrals and managers of theatres, travellers leading about newly caught savages, and singing-women escorted by deputy-husbands.” She was fêted, caressed and brought forward until she accepted the appointment at the court which condemned her to a weary round of dull duties, and must have made her life appear like a draught of ditch-water after the heady champagne to which she was accustomed.

But the London of 1811, when we have the first record of Jane’s visiting it, was not what it had been thirty years before. Johnson was dead, Walpole was dead, Garrick was dead, Reynolds was dead, Sheridan living but sunk in debt and disease; of the brilliant band that Hannah More had known few were left. Doctor Johnson had died fourteen years previously, when Jane was only nine years old. Miss Burney had had not only his friendship but his help in the revision of her works—perhaps a doubtful privilege. To quote Lord Macaulay again: “When she wrote her early journals, and her novel of Evelina, her style was not indeed brilliant or energetic; but it was easy, clear, and free from all offensive faults. When she wrote Cecilia she aimed higher. She had then lived much in a circle of which Johnson was the centre; and she was herself one of his most submissive worshippers.... In an evil hour the author of Evelina took the Rambler for her model. She had her style. It was a tolerably good one; she determined to throw it away to adopt a style in which she could attain excellence only by achieving an almost miraculous victory over nature and over habit. In Cecilia the imitation of Johnson, though not always in the best taste, is sometimes eminently happy. There were people who whispered that Johnson had assisted his young friend and that the novel owed all its finest passages to his hand. This was merely the fabrication of envy.”

But after the death of Johnson, “she had to write in Johnson’s manner without Johnson’s aid. The consequence was that in Camilla every passage which she meant to be fine is detestable; and that the book has been saved from condemnation only by the admirable spirit and force of those scenes in which she was content to be familiar.”

After he had read Camilla, Walpole says of Miss Burney: “Alas! She had reversed experience which I have long thought reverses its own utility by coming at the wrong end of our life when we do not want it. This author knew the world and penetrated characters before she had stepped over the threshold; now she has seen so much of it she has little or no insight at all.”

It was therefore, perhaps, lucky for Jane Austen that she was not so overshadowed by the direct personality of a mighty man as to lose her clear, bright English style. Her admiration for Miss Burney’s work was decided and clearly expressed, and she was among the first subscribers to Camilla in 1796.

Though Jane never came into contact with the men and women who made literature in her day, she took a keen interest in their works, and was a great novel reader. She says in one place, “As an inducement to subscribe (to her library) Mrs. Martin tells me that her collection is not to consist only of novels but of every kind of literature. She might have spared this pretension to our family, who are great novel readers and not ashamed of being so.”

There are frequent references to novels in her letters: “We have got Fitz-Albini, my father has bought it against my private wishes, for it does not quite satisfy my feelings that we should purchase the only one of Egerton’s works of which his family are ashamed.”