It would seem as if the writer were really intent on describing perfection.
And yet, we are convinced personally that Miss Austen had a peculiar charm of her own. Undoubtedly she lived among persons as empty-headed as those she has immortalised; probably she had met Mrs. Norris, Mr. Elton, and Mr. Collins: apparently she was happy. No doubt her devotion to Cassandra (suggesting her partiality for sister-heroines) counted for much; and all her family were agreeable. They had a good deal of “sense.” Her life provided even less variety of incident than she discovered at Longbourn or Uppercross; and, if she was fond of reading, she knew nothing about literature. Her letters do not suggest the uneasiness attached to the possession of a soul—as we moderns understand it.
Yet one point merits attention and may partially reveal. There can be no question that the very breath of her art is satire, and she is at times even cynical. Yet the one thing we know positively of her private life is that she was a favourite aunt, a devoted sister, a sympathetic daughter. Now the child-lover, beloved of children, must possess certain qualities, which prove that her cynicism was not ingrained, misanthropic, or pessimistic; that her pleasure in fun was neither ill-natured nor unsympathetic. There must have been strength of character in two directions not often united. Her life was, in a measure, isolated—from superiority. She gave more than she received. Nor can we believe her entirely unaware of what life might have yielded her in more equal companionship; entirely without bitterness—for example—in the invention of Mrs. Norris. There can be no question, we think, that life never awakened the real Jane Austen. She lived absolutely in, and for, her art, of which the delight to her was supreme. Yet family tradition declares, with obvious truth, that her genius never tempted her to arrogance, affectation, or selfishness. She worked in the family sitting-room, writing on slips of paper that could immediately, without bustle or parade, be slipped inside her desk at the call of friendship or courtesy. At any moment she suffered interruption without protest. The absolute self-command so obvious in the work governed her life.
But we have always believed that one passage in Pride and Prejudice does give us a suggestive glimpse—again only by implication—of very real autobiography:
“‘You are a great deal too apt,’ says Eliza to Jane Bennet, ‘to like people in general. You never see a fault in anybody. All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a human being in my life.’
“‘I would not wish to be hasty in censuring anyone,’ answers Jane, ‘but I always speak what I think.’
“‘I know you do, and it is that which makes the wonder. With your good sense, to be so honestly blind to the follies and nonsense of others. Affectation of candour is common enough—one meets it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design—to take the good of everybody’s character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad—belongs to you alone.’”
This is, we like to fancy, a portrait of her own sister, Cassandra. Jane Austen herself was not “a great deal too apt to like people in general,” though she too could be marvellously tender with Marianne Dashwood, most “silly” of heroines, and her still more ridiculous mother. It is certain, indeed, that she never neglected even the most tiresome “neighbours,” but she did not love them. There is evidence enough in Persuasion that she could sympathise with deep feelings, which were necessarily suppressed in such surroundings as she gives all her heroines, and had experienced herself.
Her reverend father, “the handsome proctor,” like most clergymen of his generation, was essentially a country gentleman, not very much better educated, and scarcely more strenuous, than his neighbours. His wife took a simple and honest pride in the management of her household; and his sons followed their father’s footsteps, entered the navy, or pursued whatever other profession they could most conveniently enter. The whole atmosphere of the vicarage was complacently material and old-fashioned, where the ideas of progress filtered slowly and discontent was far from being considered divine. The personal aloofness from characters delineated, so conspicuous in her art, was borrowed from life. Everywhere, and always, the real Jane stood aside.
Nor were there granted her any of the consolations of culture. We have no doubt that she received no more education than might be acquired at Mrs. Goddard’s: