In a letter in which she thanks her correspondent for his praise of her novels, and expresses her anxiety that her fourth work might not disgrace what was good in the others, remarking she was haunted by the idea that the readers who have preferred “Pride and Prejudice” will think “Emma” inferior in wit; and those who have preferred “Mansfield Park” will consider the present novel deficient in sense, she demurely puts aside Mr. Clarke’s hint for her next story, on the plea that, though she might be equal to the comic part of it, the learned side of the clergyman would demand a classic education and an amount of acquaintance with ancient and modern literature that was far beyond her. Perhaps in self-defence from similar assaults, she concludes by boasting herself, “with all possible vanity, the most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress.”
But the irrepressible Mr. Clarke was not to be deterred from his purpose of advising the novelist as to the direction of her talents. His second piece of advice was more startling and incongruous than his first. Prince Leopold was then on the eve of his marriage with Princess Charlotte. Mr. Clarke had had the good fortune to be appointed Chaplain and private English Secretary to the Prince. The clergyman might have had a generous desire that another clergyman’s daughter should have the chance of sharing his good luck and assurance of preferment. Or he might have had a wish to procure a compliment for his last princely patron, and might have believed it was specially due from Jane Austen as a small return for the notice which the Prince Regent had condescended to take of her and her work. Mr. Clarke proposed that Miss Austen should write an historical novel illustrative of the august house of Cobourg,[7] which would just then be very interesting, and might very properly be dedicated to Prince Leopold. The date of the proposal brings vividly before us the deliberation with which public events were discussed in those days. For a public event to be dealt with now-a-days so as to take the tide of public interest at its height, an author would require to be as much in advance of the historical circumstance as publishers show themselves in their anticipation of Christmas. It would be necessary, in order that a novel founded on a royal marriage should command readers, that the author should be taken into what Mr. Clarke would have called the august confidence of the principals at the very first step of the negotiations, so that he might be able to bring out his work within twelve hours of the ceremony.
Jane Austen was not so profoundly honoured by the recommendation as Jane Porter felt when she set herself to comply with a royal wish that she should commemorate the first beginnings of the House of Brunswick.
After all, so-called historical novels were in Miss Porter’s way and not in Miss Austen’s. Mr. Austen Leigh speaks of the grave civility with which Jane Austen refused to make such an attempt. It seems to me that while she respectfully acknowledges the courtesies of Carlton House, and readily responds with answering friendliness to the friendly tone of Mr. Clarke’s communication, there is considerable impatience and scorn in her merry but most decided dismissal of his ridiculous project. Even to her congratulations on his recent appointment she adds a sentence which has a suspicion of irony in it. “In my opinion,” she writes, “the service of a court can hardly be too well paid, for immense must be the sacrifice of time and feeling required by it.” She goes on to say, “You are very kind in your hints as to the sort of composition which might recommend me at present, and I am fully sensible that an historical romance, founded on the House of Saxe-Cobourg, might be much more to the purpose of profit or popularity than such pictures of domestic life in country villages as I deal in. But I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up, and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No; I must keep to my own style, and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.”
There is an anecdote of Jane Austen which coincides with her character, and has been widely circulated, though it is not mentioned by Mr. Austen Leigh. If it had a foundation in fact, it must have occurred either during this visit to London or in the course of that paid not long before. It is said that Miss Austen received an invitation to a rout given by an aristocratic couple with whom she was not previously acquainted. The reason assigned for the invitation was, that the author of “Pride and Prejudice” might be introduced to the author of “Corinne.” Tradition has it that the English novelist refused the invitation, saying, that to no house where she was not asked as Jane Austen would she go as the author of “Pride and Prejudice.”
The anecdote is often quoted with marks of admiration for the author’s independence. But even the most honest and honourable independence has its becoming limits. That of Jane Austen, ultra self-sufficing, fastidious, tinged with haughtiness, is just a trifle repellant out of that small circle in which she was always at home.
Whether or not Madame de Staël was consulted about the proposed meeting, she was not an admirer of her sister author. The somewhat grandiloquent Frenchwoman characterised the productions of that English genius—which were the essence of common-sense—as “vulgaires,” precisely what they were not.
Apparently, Jane Austen was not one whit more accessible to English women of letters. There were many of deserved repute in or near London at the dates of these later visits. Not to speak of Mrs. Inchbald,[8] whom her correspondent, warm-hearted Maria Edgeworth, rejoiced to come to England and meet personally, there were the two Porters, Joanna Baillie—at the representation of whose fine play, The Family Legend, Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron had lately “assisted”—and the veteran writer, Madame d’Arblay, whose creations were the object of Jane Austen’s early and late admiration. But we do not hear of a single overture towards acquaintance between Miss Austen and these ladies, though her work must have left as lively an impression on some of their minds as theirs had done on hers. Men of letters were no better known to her.
Jane Austen was destined to add only one more tale—and that a short, if charming story—to the list of her novels. In the course of 1816, she wrote “Persuasion,” which is not merely very good, in her own style, but possesses distinguishing excellences wanting in the others.[9]
Between February, 1811, and August, 1816, rather more than five years, Jane Austen wrote her three later novels, “Mansfield Park,” “Emma,” and “Persuasion”—pendants, as it were, to her three earlier works, “Pride and Prejudice,” “Sense and Sensibility,” and “Northanger Abbey,” belonging to 1796, ’97, and ’98—twenty years before. The author’s second period of composition was as productive as her first, if we take into consideration that “Sense and Sensibility” was simply an adaptation from a more juvenile story still.