[41] A period of time which would now suffice to take a traveller from London to Brussels with ease.
[42] The Morlands were “gentlefolks,” but that did not prevent all the fine stitching required by the family being done as a matter of course by the ladies.
[43] Concerning this gentleman, Jane Austen says, with one of her merry gibes, “I have only to add (aware that the rules of composition forbid the introduction of a character not connected with my fable) that this was the very gentleman whose negligent servant left behind him that collection of washing bills, resulting from a long visit to Northanger, by which my heroine was involved in one of her most alarming adventures.”
[44] But “Northanger Abbey” has another moral—a warning against romance run mad.
EMMA.[45]
I.
Emma Woodhouse, whose Christian name supplies the title to the novel in which she figures as heroine, is one of Jane Austen’s lively, warm-hearted girls; but her personality is rendered quite distinct from that of Elizabeth Bennet by a thousand light yet significant touches. Emma’s circumstances alone would have sufficed, with the moulding power which such influences have in reality, and in the hands of a true artist, to shape her—always within certain limits—those of a well-principled, well-educated, essentially feminine girl, who is also a thorough lady, to different ends.
The novel of “Emma” is largely the record of the girl-heroine’s rash blunders and errors; but to me it is instructive and comforting to find the faults, with their impressive enough lessons, not only so girlish, but always within the region, I may say, of an innocent, upright, kindly, well-bred girl, whose many failings lean to virtue’s side. Emma Woodhouse is as incapable of deliberate undutifulness, dishonourable double-dealing, heartless levity, or disgraceful imprudence, and the coarse, evil-minded rubbing shoulders with vice, as I not only earnestly hope, but fervently believe, every God-fearing, virtuous, loving girl in any rank, in any nation, is to this day, however impudently and wickedly she may be travestied in the lower literature of her country.