[4] Also in the Quarterly, 1821.
[5] It is scarcely necessary, perhaps, to remark that the word “realism” is used, here and elsewhere, without any reference to the limited significance it has recently acquired. Realism, of course, really means truthfulness to life, including imagination, faith, poetry, and the ideal; and not a photographic reproduction of certain unpleasant, more or less abnormal, phases of human nature.
A “MOST ACCOMPLISHED COQUETTE”
In spite of the almost universal inclination to pass over Jane Austen’s “minor” works without serious comment, we are ourselves strongly disposed to consider Lady Susan of considerable importance.
The early compositions, if sprightly, are not precocious: the cancelled chapter of Persuasion—replaced only eleven months before her death by chaps. x. and xi.—remains an interesting record of what would have fully satisfied a less careful artist; and the description—with extracts—which Mr. Austen-Leigh has given us of the novel begun on 27th January 1817 and continued until the 17th of March,[6] does not contain body enough for confident anticipation: i.e. of detail. There is, however, no reason for dreading any decline in artistic power.
Water-marks of 1803 and 1804 on the original manuscript prove The Watsons to have been written between her two periods of productive activity; and it is not likely that definite evidence will now transpire in explanation of its having been left unfinished: unless we accept Mr. Austen-Leigh’s somewhat fastidious conclusion—
“that the author became aware of the evil of having placed her heroine too low, in such a position of poverty and obscurity as, though not necessarily connected with vulgarity, has a sad tendency to degenerate into it; and therefore, like a singer who has begun on too low a note, she discontinued the strain. It was an error of which she was likely to become more sensible, as she grew older, and saw more of society: certainly she never repeated it by placing the heroine of any subsequent work under circumstances likely to be unfavourable to the refinement of a lady.”[7]
Her nephew further remarks that “it could not have been broken up for the purpose of using the materials in another fabric”; although, in his opinion, a resemblance between Mr. Robert Watson and Mr. Elton is “very discernible.” We might also observe that Mr. Watson appears to have taken his “basin of gruel” as regularly as Mr. Woodhouse; while, on the other hand, Lord Osborne’s affected superiority to dancing recalls Darcy. Miss Watson’s theories on life and marriage are particularly characteristic:
“I would rather do anything than be a teacher at a school. I have been at school, Emma, and know what a life they lead; you never have. I should not like marrying a disagreeable man any more than yourself; but I do not think there are many very disagreeable men; I think I could like any good-humoured man with a comfortable income. I suppose my aunt brought you up to be rather refined.”
Emma Watson, in fact, like all Jane Austen’s heroines, shines by comparison with the rest of her family.