Genius, of course, would not be stifled; and, in the end, she completed her work within the year, gaily accepting the payment of £20 down for the copyright, to which the publisher added £10 when its success was assured by a sale of 2300 copies during 1778.
Frances Burney became immediately the pet of Society. The diaries of this period are crowded with records of flattery which may seem extravagant, if not ludicrous, to modern reticence; and she has been criticised for repeating them. Yet for us it is fortunate that there were “two or three persons,” for whom her diaries were written, “to whom her fame gave the purest and most exquisite delight.” They have become history, and, as Macaulay remarks, “nothing can be more unjust than to confound these outpourings of a kind heart, sure of perfect sympathy, with the egotism of a blue-stocking who prates to all who come near her about her own novel or her own volume of sonnets.”
The fact is that, by a comparison with the Early Diaries, we may feel confident that Miss Burney was never spoilt by popularity. Inevitably she came out of the shade, talked more as she was more often singled out for compliments or conversation; but there is no appearance of conceit, and little increase in self-confidence. The youthful simplicity of her work remains her prevailing characteristic; and the slight maturity of Cecilia, not always an advantage, is obviously no more than a desire to please. It is not her own sense of dignity in authorship, but the pride of Crisp and the affection of Dr. Johnson which stimulates the effort. Always “instinct with the proprieties and the delicacies implanted by careful guardians,”[16] it was her business to “describe the world as it seems to a woman utterly preoccupied with the thought of how she seems to the world,” to picture man “simply and solely as a member of a family.” One recognises the limit and single-mindedness of her aim, in her reason for abandoning drama. She found she could not “preserve spirit and salt, and yet keep up delicacy.”
We are all familiar enough to-day with the cruelty of the reward by which foolish persons thought to acknowledge her prowess. The five years’ imprisonment at Court, though it could not ultimately tame her spirit, brought about temporary physical wreck, and seems to have lulled for ever the desire for literary fame. We have endeavoured to show, in an earlier chapter, that Camilla is not entirely without significance; but there can be no question that after her marriage she wrote only for money, and, if not without individuality, yet, as it were, to order and by rule.
We are concerned here only with her earlier years, when she was the replica of her own heroines.
The real character of Miss Austen almost defies analysis. Contemporary evidence, of any discrimination, is practically non-existent; her life presents no outstanding adventure; and it is very dangerous to assume identity between any expression in the novels and her experience or opinion. As a matter of fact, she never even states a truth, exhibits an emotion, or judges a case except by implication. Even the apparent generalisations or author’s comments on life are really attuned to the atmosphere of the particular novel in which they appear.
“It is a truth universally acknowledged,” we read, “that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Miss Austen knows better. She is perfectly aware of the perverseness often exhibited by wealthy bachelors. The sentence is no more than a most ingenious stroke of art. It plunges us at once into the atmosphere of Meryton and the subject of the tale. It betrays Mrs. Bennet and, in a lesser degree, Lady Lucas. It prepares us for her vulgarity, at once distressing, and elevating by contrast, the refinement of Jane and Elizabeth. Never surely did a novel open with a paragraph so suggestive. Again, the first page of Mansfield Park contains a phrase of similar significance. The author remarks: “There certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.” Again, she is not speaking in her own person. Lady Bertram felt this—so far as she ever formed an opinion for herself. Mrs. Norris and Mrs. Price had personal experience of its truth. The subtle irony reveals their point of view, not Miss Austen’s.
It requires, of course, no particular subtlety to trace from her novels the type of character she approves and loves best, her general standard of manners and conduct, and her scorn for hypocrisy. We have even hazarded to affirm evidence for her opinions on one or two questions of more importance. But they do not reveal her personality in detail; and to say, with her nephew, that she possessed all the charms of all her heroines, would be to make her inhuman.
There is, in fact, an undiscriminating conventionality about such descriptions as we possess which gives us no real information. We are told, for example, that
“her carriage and deportment were quiet, yet graceful. Her features were separately good. Their assemblage produced an unrivalled expression of that cheerfulness, sensibility, and benevolence which were her real characteristics. Her complexion was of the finest texture. It might with truth be said that her eloquent blood spoke through her modest cheek. Her voice was extremely sweet. She delivered herself with fluency and precision. Indeed, she was formed for elegant and rational society, excelling in conversation as much as in composition. In the present age it is hazardous to mention accomplishments. Our authoress would, probably, have been inferior to few in such acquirements had she not been so superior to most in higher things.”