Jane Austen and her works

by Sarah Tytler

This was a travesty of the real state of matters with a vengeance; and there had been just that degree of feeling and curiosity about her in Captain Wentworth’s manner which must give Anne extreme agitation and keep her rooted to the spot, though she heard no more.

As soon as she could she went after Mary, and it is a relief when all the party are again collected, with the addition of Charles Hayter, whom Charles Musgrove and Henrietta brought back with them as might have been conjectured. There had been a withdrawing on the gentleman’s side, a relenting on the lady’s, and they are very glad to be together again. Henrietta looks a little ashamed but very well pleased, Charles Hayter exceedingly happy, and they are devoted to each other on their way back to Uppercross.

Everything now marks out Louisa for Captain Wentworth, and they walk side by side nearly as much as the other two. The party are thus separated into three divisions, with Anne tired enough to be very glad of Charles Musgrove’s disengaged arm. “But Charles, though in very good humour with her, was out of temper with his wife. Mary had shown herself disobliging to him, and was now to reap the consequence, which consequence was his dropping her arm almost every moment to cut off the heads of some nettles in the hedge with his switch; and when Mary began to complain of it, and lament her being ill-used, according to custom, in being on the hedge-side, while Anne was never incommoded on the other, he dropped the arms of both, to hunt after a weasel which he had a momentary glimpse of, and they could hardly get him along at all.” This boyish mode of expressing a pet is exquisitely characteristic of the ordinarily easy-going young fellow.

“The long meadow bordered a lane which their footpath, at the end of it, was to cross, and when the party had all reached the gate of exit, the carriage advancing in the same direction, which had been some time heard, was just coming up, and proved to be Admiral Croft’s gig. He and his wife had taken their intended drive and were returning home. Upon hearing how long a walk the young people had engaged in, they kindly offered a seat to any lady who might be particularly tired; it would save her full a mile, and they were going through Uppercross. The invitation was general, and generally declined. The Misses Musgrove were not all tired, and Mary was either offended by not being asked before any of the others, or what Louisa called the Elliot pride could not endure to make a third in a one-horse chaise.

“The walking party had crossed the lane and were surmounting an opposite stile, and the Admiral was putting his horse into motion again, when Captain Wentworth cleared the hedge in a moment to say something to his sister. The something might be guessed by its effects.

“‘Miss Elliot, I am sure you are tired,’ cried Mrs. Croft; ‘do let us have the pleasure of taking you home?’

“Anne was still in the lane, and though instinctively beginning to decline, she was not allowed to proceed. The Admiral’s kind urgency came in support of his wife’s, and Captain Wentworth, without saying a word, turned to her, and quietly obliged her to be assisted into the carriage.

“Yes, he had done it; she was in the carriage, and felt that he had placed her there, that his will and his hands had done it, that she owed it to his perception of her fatigue and his resolution to give her rest. He could not forgive her, but he could not be unfeeling. Though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer without the desire of giving her relief.”

III.

Captain Wentworth learns that there is an old mess-mate with his family settled for the winter at Lyme. He goes to visit them, and comes back with such a glowing description of the beautiful neighbourhood that the young people at Uppercross are all eager to see it. Although it is so late in the season, a party is made up, consisting of Charles Musgrove, Mary, Anne, Henrietta, Louisa, and Captain Wentworth, to drive to Lyme, stay the night there, and come back for next day’s dinner. It is in connection with Lyme that we have Jane Austen’s most finished bit of descriptive landscape-painting. Full of appreciation as it reads, it is sober and restrained indeed, contrasted with modern word-painting of sea and shore and sky. “The remarkable situation of the town, the principal street almost hurrying into the water, the walk to the Cobbe skirting round the pleasant little bay, which in the season is animated with bathing machines and company; the Cobbe itself, its old wonders and new improvements, with the very beautiful line of cliffs stretching out to the east of the town, are what the stranger’s eye will seek; and a very strange stranger it must be who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme to make him wish to know it better. The scenes in its neighbourhood,—Charmouth, with its high grounds and extensive sweeps of country, and still more its sweet retired bay, backed by dark cliffs, where fragments of low rock among the sands make it the happiest spot for watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in unwearied contemplation; the woody varieties of the cheerful village of Up-Lyme; and, above all, Pinney, with its green chasms between romantic rocks, where the scattered forest trees and orchards of luxuriant growth declare that many a generation must have passed away since the first partial falling of the cliff prepared the ground for such a state, where a scene so wonderful and so lovely is exhibited as may more than equal any of the resembling scenes of the far-famed Isle of Wight;—these places must be visited again and again to make the worth of Lyme understood.”