Portraits of women

by Gamaliel Bradford

But her cynicism is more nearly related to Fielding and Smollett and to the eighteenth century, that is, it does not flow from Heine’s universal dissolution of all things, but is founded on a secure basis of conventional belief. Minds of that eighteenth-century type were so confident of God that they felt entirely at liberty to abuse man; “whatever is is right” said the “one infallible Pope,” as Miss Austen styles him, therefore there could be no harm in calling it wrong.

On the other hand, what separates Miss Austen from Fielding, what brings her close to Heine, and what almost, if not quite, makes up for all her mocking, is that you feel underneath the mocking an infinite fund of tenderness, a warm, loving, hoping, earnest heart. Rarely has a woman been more misjudged by another woman than Miss Austen by Miss Brontë when she wrote,“Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and insensible woman.” Oh, no, under that demure demeanor was hidden the germ of every emotion known to woman or to man. She knew them all, she felt them all, and she restrained them all, which means quite as much character—if perhaps not quite so much “temperament”—as the volcanic flare of Charlotte Brontë. The very difficulty of tracing these things under Miss Austen’s vigilant reserve adds to their significance when found and to the convincing force of their reality.

First, as to emotion in general. The testimony of the novels is often disputed. It is disputable when it refers to particular experiences and must be used with care. But many little touches would have been absolutely impossible, if the writer had not first felt them herself. Thus, she says: “It is the misfortune of poetry to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoy it completely, and the strong feelings which alone can estimate it truly are the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.” Or again, with brief and rapid analysis, “She read with an eagerness which hardly left her the power of comprehension; and from impatience of knowing what the next sentence might bring, was incapable of attending to the sense of the one before her eyes.” Do you suppose the writer of that had never torn the heart out of a letter as madly as Jane Eyre? And was there not plenty of emotion in the woman who described the moment of release from a disagreeable partner as “ecstasy,” and who fainted dead away when told suddenly that she was to leave her old home and seek a new one?

Or in another line, how all the mockery of her own writing withers before one short sentence which shows the real author, like all other authors: “I should like to know what her estimate is, but am always half afraid of finding a clever novel too clever, and of finding my own story and my own people all forestalled.”

Then as to love. Here the problem is more obscure. Some critics have endeavored to deduce Miss Austen’s feelings from that of her heroines. Others have entirely denied the legitimacy of such deduction. No doubt, observation and divination may do much, but it seems to me that the subtle details introduced in many a critical moment must be based on experiences closely akin to those described. No man can ever understand Miss Austen’s taste in heroes, and her creations in this line are the worst of her mockeries, all the more so because unintentional. But if she was blind to the faults of the type, she may have been equally blind to them in some real Edward or Knightley. We all are. I should even like to believe, with her adoring relative, that that shadowy lover who died unnamed to posterity blighted her literary effort and accounted for the singular gap between her earlier and later work. “That her grief should have silenced her is, I think, quite consistent with the reserve of her character,” writes the said relative. I agree as to the possibility, but somewhat question the fact.

With the more common domestic and social feelings we are on surer ground. There is a universal concordance of testimony as to Miss Austen’s sweetness in such relations, her tenderness, her charm. Guarded as her letters are, these qualities appear, in all the laughter, in all the mockery. She watches over her mother, she longs for every detail about her brothers, she cries for joy at their promotion, she exchanges with her sister a thousand little intimacies, all the more sincere for their daily triviality. It is said that the family were always amiable in their daily intercourse, never argued or spoke harshly, and I can believe it. It is said that Cassandra always controlled her temper, but that Jane had no temper to control, and the latter statement I do not believe, but do believe that appearances justified it. It is said that she loved children, and many passages in her letters prove this. See in the following the deep and evident tenderness turning into her eternal mockery. “My dear itty Dordy’s remembrance of me is very pleasing to me—foolishly pleasing, because I know it will be over so soon. My attachment to him will be more durable. I shall think with tenderness and delight on his beautiful and smiling countenance and interesting manner until a few years have turned him into an ungovernable ungracious fellow.”

That she enjoyed playing the rôle of maiden aunt I see no reason to imagine. But she accepted it with sweet kindliness, and as years went on, she seems to have grown even more self-forgetful and thoughtful of those about her. I have spoken of Heine. What could be lovelier than his efforts to spare his old mother every detail of his last torturing illness, writing her the gayest of letters from his pillow of agony? Everything with Miss Austen is on a slighter scale; but how sweet is the story of the sofa. Sofas were scarce in those days. The Austen rooms contained but one, and Jane, dying, propped herself on two chairs, and left the sofa to her invalid mother, declaring that the chairs were preferable.

And if she loved others, they loved her. Her brother makes the truly astonishing statement that in regard to her neighbors “even on their vices did she never trust herself to comment with unkindness.... She always sought in the faults of others something to excuse, to forgive or forget.” And he adds, “No one could be often in her company without feeling a strong desire of obtaining her friendship and cherishing a hope of having obtained it.” The profound affection of her sister Cassandra needs no further evidence than the pathetic letters written by her after Jane’s death, and the feeling of the other members of the family seems to have been hardly less deep. Especially was her society cherished by children and young people. “Her first charm to children was great sweetness of manner,” writes her niece, “she seemed to love you, and you loved her in return.” Again, “Soon came the delight of her playful talk. She could make everything amusing to a child.” And later, when years had somewhat diminished the difference of age, “It had become a habit with me to put by things in my mind with reference to her, and to say to myself, I shall keep that for aunt Jane.”

Altogether, whatever may have been her instincts of intellectual cynicism, she was past question a woman exquisitely lovable and one who craved and appreciated love, even when she made least show of doing so. How pathetic is the tenderness of her last letter! “As to what I owe her, and the anxious affection of all my beloved family on this occasion, I can only cry over it, and pray God to bless them more and more.” And again: “If ever you are ill, may you be as tenderly nursed as I have been. May the same blessed alleviations of anxious friends be yours; and may you possess, as I dare say you will, the greatest blessing of all, in the consciousness of not being unworthy of their love. I could not feel this.” Surely those with such a longing and with such a sense of unworthiness are not the least worthy of love in this harsh, self-absorbed, and loveless world.

Nevertheless, what remains most characteristic of Miss Austen is her singular and inexhaustible delight in the observation of humanity. No one illustrates better than she the odd paradox that it is possible to love mankind as a whole, or, at any rate, to take the greatest interest in them, while finding most individual specimens unattractive and even contemptible. I think she would have understood perfectly that wonderful passage in a letter of another novelist not unlike her, Mrs. Craigie: “I live in a world and among beings of my own creation, and when I hear of tangible mortals, what they do, what they say, and what they think, I feel a stranger and a pilgrim; life frightens me; humanity terrifies me; perhaps that is why it is real suffering for me to be in a room with more than one other. I believe I am a lover of souls, but people scare me out of my wits: it is not that I am nervous. I have only a sensation of being, as it were, in ‘the wrong Paradise.’ I am not at home: I talk about things I do not believe in to people who do not believe me: I become constrained, artificial.”