Jane Austen had something of a parental affection for her books. She wrote to a friend, whose little daughter had been lately born, “I trust you will be as glad to see my ‘Emma’ as I shall be to see your Jemima.” She did not dismiss from her mind the creatures of her fancy with the narrative in which they had figured. She seemed to like to follow them in imagination in the careers into which she had launched them. They were real men and women[69] to her. She would, when asked, supply further particulars of the history of some of these brain-children. Her friends learned in this way that Anne Steele found a husband in the doctor; that Kitty Bennet was satisfactorily married to a clergyman near Pemberley, while Mary obtained nothing higher than one of her Uncle Philip’s clerks, and was content to be considered a star in Meryton; that the considerable sum given by Mrs. Norris to William Price was one pound; that the letters placed by Frank Churchill before Jane Fairfax, which she swept away unread, contained the one word “pardon!” and that Mr. Woodhouse survived his daughter’s marriage, and kept her and Mr. Knightley from Donwell about two years.
FOOTNOTES:
[67] Jane Austen must have had a partiality for alliteration.
[68] In “Mansfield Park” it would seem as if Jane Austen impartially afforded a glimpse in Admiral Crawford and Lieutenant Price—though, to be sure, the last was only a lieutenant of marines—of the dark side of the members of the naval profession, whose bright side she illustrated, con amore, in William Price and in the naval officers in “Persuasion.”
[69] Children and animals are as much in the background in Jane Austen’s novels as they were in the society of her day.
“PERSUASION.”[70]
I.
At eighteen Anne Elliot, a pretty, gentle, motherless girl, one of the three daughters of a poor and proud baronet, had met a gallant young naval officer, a Lieutenant Wentworth, who had paid ample homage to her attractions. The couple had fallen very genuinely and deeply in love. Their marriage was impossible till the gentleman should rise in his profession, or come home with prize-money. But Sir Walter Elliot, more from indifference than indulgence to Anne, would have permitted the engagement—entered into for a brief space of mingled happiness and misery—to continue. It was Lady Russell—Anne’s mother’s friend—who interfered, and by her urgent representations of the trials of a long engagement, and the sacrifice of the man’s prospects, still more than those of the woman, in a poor marriage, induced Anne to consent to the engagement being broken off.