read her as often as I have. Nor am I willing to allow that this is intellectual idleness, for her works like those of Nature, always yield something new to the faithful student.
And she, like Nature, has the power of creating in her devotees a minute interest which I rarely experience in other writers. It does not seem to Austenites a foolish thing to inquire what was Mr. Woodhouse’s Christian name, a problem only soluble by remembering that he thought it “very pretty” of poor Isabella to call her eldest little boy Henry, and by implication proving that the child, who should have been christened John after his father, was named after his grandfather. And I am proud to remember that when the problem of Mr. Woodhouse’s name was propounded to my mother, she solved it at once, and as though it were a question too simple to be asked. Nor does it seem to us trivial that the word given by Frank Churchill to Jane during the “word-game” at Hartfield was ‘Pardon.’ This was traditionally known in the author’s family, indeed Mr. Austen Leigh [66] says that she was always ready to reveal such valuable facts as that Mrs. Norris’ “considerable sum” given as a present to William in Mansfield Park was one pound; that Miss Steele never caught the Doctor, and that Mary Bennet married an unfortunate clerk of her uncle Philip’s. These revelations lend an air of history to her romance, they give the exciting quality of treasure-trove to the secrets she shares with us. “And
here,” as children’s books say, “a very pretty game may be played by each child saying” what question he would put to the ghost of Jane Austen. For myself I believe I should ask, “Would Fanny Price really have married Crawford if he had not eloped with Miss Bertram?” If in the words of Captain Price there had not been “the devil to pay” in Wimpole Street. Then, too, I should have liked some eugenic information about Elizabeth’s (Mrs. Darcy’s) children. Because if there was reversion to the type of Lydia it would have been serious. One can fancy Elizabeth retorting that if he said another word about the Lydia type she would pray for an infant possessing all the qualities of Lady Catherine de Burgh, a gift well within the powers of the gods who rule heredity.
I doubt whether Jane Austen consciously painted the results of heredity; rather, I suppose that her memory working instinctively, made, for instance, the Bennet family consist of types recalling the father or mother. She could hardly have known of the questionable theory that the eldest child is commonly inferior to the second, and nevertheless she makes Jane Bennet inferior in capacity to Elizabeth, although so greatly superior to the younger children of Mrs. Bennet’s type.
There are other cases of heredity among her characters; for instance, in Persuasion, the snobbery and selfishness of Miss Elliott clearly reproduces her father, while Anne, as we know from Lady Russell, was a true child of her mother. I like to fancy that the querulousness and weakness of Mary (Mrs. Charles) was a perverted gentleness coming from
her mother, while her vulgarity came from Sir Walter. Then again, Emma had none of Mr. Woodhouse’s qualities, and we must suppose her to be a repetition of her mother. Unless, indeed, her general kindliness came from her father, and possibly also the stupidity which wrecked her matrimonial agency. We must, I think, believe that Mrs. Woodhouse had been a managing woman, who probably insisted on Mr. Woodhouse marrying her; thus her instinct for matrimonial scheming was confined (we may fancy) to her own interests. It is too fanciful to suggest that Mrs. Woodhouse had a tinge of hardness in her which came out in Emma’s celebrated rudeness to Miss Bates. At any rate, it is certain that it was not a heritage from her father. I knew a lady who could never forgive this slip of poor Emma. And the vividness of this feeling was not a symptom of that want of literary sense which makes the gallery hiss the villain on the stage, but must be taken as a proof of the vitality of the character. Isabella Woodhouse is obviously of her father’s type, with hardly a mental feature to remind us of Emma.
In the Bertram family the inheritance is not very clear; the Miss Bertrams seem to show the hard narrowness of Mrs. Norris, and none of the sheep-like good nature and futility of Lady Bertram. I suspect that in Mrs. Norris, hardness and business tendency were an inheritance from her uncle, the Huntingdon solicitor, for we know that he made the harsh and commercial statement that his niece was at least £3000 short of any equitable claim to the hand of Sir Thomas. We do not know
anything of the parents of Lady Bertram, but we may suspect that her Ladyship inherited from her mother the soft and cushiony character of which she is a great example. Mrs. Price, with her small income and large family, was unfortunately of the same easy and futile temper. Edward Bertram is obviously his father the Baronet over again, with all his kindness and extreme respectability, while what will ultimately grow into Sir Thomas’ pomposity is like the delicate tissues of the sucking pig in Charles Lamb’s essay, not to be described by the gross terms applicable to the adult, “Oh, call it not fat! but an indefinable sweetness growing up to it,” etc. The elder brother, Tom, who began life as a cheerful, irresponsible person, falls under the family curse in consequence of a mysterious fever, so that he doubtless inherited the fatal tendency from Sir Thomas, together with a certain insouciance and want of heart, which one can imagine to be forms of Lady Bertram’s emptiness and Mrs. Norris’s hardness.
This is a subject on which a Mendelian inquirer might endlessly speculate, but the characters in fiction being even less susceptible to experiment than our living friends and acquaintance, the interest of the matter is soon exhausted.
It is to be regretted that Miss Austen did not allow the characters of one novel to appear in the next. It is true that this would have upset plots in an absurd way, but I should like to know what would have happened if, when Henry Tilney had made up his mind that he was in love with Catherine, Elizabeth Bennet had appeared? He would