No one probably will maintain that Miss Austen treats love very seriously. Its common youthful ardors, “what is so often described as arising on a first interview with its object, and even before two words have been exchanged,” she makes matter for derision or dismisses with indifference. Isabella utters a platitude on the subject. “This charming sentiment, recommended as much by sense as novelty, gave Catherine a most pleasing remembrance of all the heroines of her acquaintance.” With the author’s own serious heroines love is an emotion of such reverend profundity that the ladies themselves require years to discover it, and even then it has to be forced upon their notice.
Religion and the deeper concerns of life generally, where they are mentioned at all, fare no better. They are touched with an irony of somewhat dubious effect on the profane, as at the end of Northanger Abbey, where those it may concern are left to wonder “Whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.” There is no doubt, however, that Miss Austen sincerely honored sacred things. She would have said with her own Elizabeth, “I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good.” She appeared to think she would attain this end by keeping matters of the soul mainly out of her work. But she miscalculated a little. I do not know how one could more discredit religion than by exhibiting it in such representatives as Dr. Grant, Mr. Elton, and Mr. Collins: a glutton, a ninny, and an imbecile. If any reader holds that the prosy sermonizing of Edward Bertram helps the divine end of the matter, I disagree totally.
And as she mocked all things in human life, so she had a peculiar fancy for mocking the departure out of it. We know much mockable is there; but it seems odd matter for a young girl to deal with. “It was felt as such things must be felt. Everybody had a degree of gravity and sorrow; tenderness toward the departed, solicitude for the surviving friends; and, in a reasonable time, curiosity to know where she would be buried. Goldsmith tells us that when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill-fame.”
Obviously Miss Austen’s mocking was not all sweet, sunny, natural gaiety. It had too much ill-nature in it. This shows, I think, in her fundamental conception of character. Read over her list of dramatis personæ and see how many are attractive or agreeable. It is not that she presents set types of evil or folly. Far from it. Her people are all human, vividly human, walking figures of flesh and blood humanity. But like all true human beings, they have good and evil both, and her vision usually turns towards the evil, the mildly evil, the foolish and ridiculous. This perversion is slight, but constant, and its very slightness makes it more true—and more depressing. What doubles the hideousness of the hideous scene between Mr. and Mrs. Dashwood (“Sense and Sensibility,” chapter II) is its perfect humanity and the possibility that it might have been you and I.
She will brand a whole company with a touch: they “almost all labored under one or other of these disqualifications for being agreeable—want of sense, either natural or improved—want of elegance—want of spirits—or want of temper.” As any company might, to be sure—if you took it so. She will brand a whole sex. Mr. Palmer had “no traits at all unusual in his sex and time of life. He was nice in his eating, uncertain in his hours; fond of his child, though affecting to slight it; and idled away the morning at billiards, which ought to have been devoted to business.”
Above all, she is severe upon women past middle life. Few indeed has she drawn that are even tolerable. Yet I have known some who were charming. With what infinite, subtle, loving art are Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Norris made odious! And the best illustration of all for Miss Austen’s methods is Miss Bates. Her creatress starts with a heroic determination to be amiable for once. God has given this poor old specimen excellent qualities. For heaven’s sake, let us dwell upon them and leave the defects in shadow. “She was a happy woman, and a woman whom no one named without good will. It was her own universal good will and contented temper which worked such wonders. She loved everybody, was interested in everybody’s happiness, quick-sighted to everybody’s merits.” Yet the turning of a page makes Miss Bates ridiculous, and the turning of more makes her almost as tedious to us as the author evidently found her. In the end she drives even Emma to open insult, which Emma speedily regrets, and would probably as speedily renew.
But, it will be urged, I am making the old mistake of interpreting an author from her writings, of transferring to her the sentiments of her characters, or, at any rate, her merely formal literary expression.
Very well, let us turn to Miss Austen’s letters, and see what we find there. To begin with, they are charming letters, full of life, spirit, and vivacity, quite as charming as her novels. Her editors and biographers seem to feel it necessary to apologize for them. Why? It is true, they contain no reference to topics of the day. She might never have heard of Napoleon, or known that America was discovered. But, as letters, they are none the worse for that. Also, they are not formally literary, have no set pieces, or elaborate disquisitions. There is hardly a general thought in the whole of them. Who cares? They are literary as being the work of one of the most exquisite masters of expression. Indeed, an occasional odd glimpse of her constant literary preoccupation slips out. “Benjamin Portal is here. How charming that is! I do not know exactly why, but the phrase followed so naturally that I could not help putting it down.” And again: “Your letter is come. It came, indeed, twelve lines ago, but I could not stop to acknowledge it before, and I am glad it did not arrive till I had completed my first sentence, because the sentence had been made ever since yesterday, and I think forms a very good beginning.” But, in general, they are merely the swiftest, lightest chronicle of little daily happenings, made eternal by a sense of fun as keen as Lamb’s. Is there in Lamb any bit of happier nonsense than the sketch of Mr. Haden? “You seem to be under a mistake as to Mr. H. You call him an apothecary. He is no apothecary; he has never been an apothecary; there is not an apothecary in this neighbourhood.... He is a Haden, nothing but a Haden, a sort of wonderful nondescript creature on two legs, something between a man and an angel, but without the least spice of an apothecary. He is, perhaps, the only person not an apothecary hereabouts. He has never sung to us. He will not sing without a pianoforte accompaniment.”
Yet, minute as they are, and natural as they are, Miss Austen’s letters tell us little about herself, that is, the inmost self that we wish to get at. Those we have were almost all written to her nearest and dearest sister, Cassandra. To Cassandra, if to any one, she must have opened her soul. But, if so, she did it by lip and not by letter. It is rare indeed that she goes so far as to say, “I am sick of myself and my bad pens.” To be sure, such concealment of personal feeling and emotion is a most significant trait of character. The gleam and glitter of those sparkling pages with all their implication and suggestion recalls the charming speech of Birnheim to Fanny Lear, “Ce qui fait le charme de votre conversation, ce n’est pas seulement ce que vous dites; c’est encore et surtout ce que vous ne dites pas.” But when we try to get any definite picture of the writer, she eludes us like a kind of elfin spirit, in perpetual glimmering, mazy dance, refusing to stand still.
At any rate, mockery is the prominent feature in the letters, as in the novels; and in letters as in novels, the mockery, though sometimes sunny and sweet, is too often unkindly and leaves a sting. Miss Austen herself once at least recognizes this. She describes a certain person as “the sort of woman who gives me the idea of being determined never to be well and who likes her spasms and nervousness, and the consequence they give her, better than anything else. This is an ill-natured statement to send all over the Baltic.” Doubtless, her modesty prevented her from thinking of the ill-natured statements she was to send for ages all over the world.