During the night the "pitch-mannikin" dug a grave on the spot where Irma had loved to lie in the sun. She was buried there early next morning. Hanseï and Peter and Dr. Gunther carried the corpse, and Walpurga with her child formed the procession.
[JANE AUSTEN]
[Sense and Sensibility]
Jane Austen, daughter of the rector of Steventon, in North Hampshire, England, was born there on December 16, 1775, and received her education from her father, a former Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford. Her life was spent in the country or in country towns, chiefly at the village of Chawton, near Winchester. She died, unmarried, at Winchester on July 18, 1817, and was buried in the cathedral. The novels of Jane Austen may be divided into two groups. The first three--"Sense and Sensibility," "Pride and Prejudice," and "Northanger Abbey"--were all written, in first draft, at any rate, between 1792 and 1798. These are the novels composed during the author's residence at Steventon, which she left in 1801. There succeeded an interval of practically fourteen years (1798-1812), during which time the novelist let her mind lie absolutely fallow. As a natural consequence of the comparatively secluded life which Jane Austen led, the society with which she deals in her novels is a rather restricted one. It is the world of the country gentleman and of the upper professional class. From a very early age Jane Austen had a taste for writing tales, and the first draft of "Sense and Sensibility "--then called "Elinor and Marianne"--was composed as early as 1792. The book was recast under its present title between 1797 and 1798, and again revised prior to its publication in 1811. In addition to the six novels on which her fame is based--all of which were issued anonymously--Jane Austen has to her credit some agreeable "Letters," a fragment of a story called "The Watsons," and a sort of novelette which bears the name of "Lady Susan."
I.--The Dashwoods of Norland Park
Mr. Henry Dashwood, of Norland Park, Sussex, died leaving his widow and his three daughters, Elinor, Marianne and Margaret, to the generosity of Mr. John Dashwood, his son by his first wife and the heir to his estate. Mr. John, who, apart from the family inheritance, had received one fortune from his mother and another with his wife, was at first disposed to increase the portions of his sisters by giving them a thousand pounds apiece; but under the persuasion of his wife he finally resolved that it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for his father's widow and children than such kind of neighbourly acts as looking out for a comfortable small house for them, helping them to remove their things, and sending them presents of fish and game whenever they were in season.
Taking account of this resolve, as expressed in Mr. John Dashwood's frequent talk of the increasing expenses of housekeeping, and of the perpetual demands made upon his purse, and exasperated, too, by the manifest disapprobation with which Mrs. John Dashwood looked upon the growing attachment between her own brother, Edward Ferrars, and Elinor, Mrs. Henry Dashwood and her daughters left their old home with some abruptness and went to live in Devonshire, where their old friend, Sir John Middleton, of Barton Park, had provided them with a cottage close to his own place.
Elinor, the eldest of the daughters, possessed a strength of understanding and coolness of judgment which qualified her, though only nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother, and enabled her frequently to counteract, to the advantage of them all, that eagerness of mind in Mrs. Dashwood which must generally have led to imprudence. She had an excellent heart. Her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them. It was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn, and which one of her sisters had resolved never to be taught. Marianne's abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Elinor's. She was sensible and clever, but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting; she was everything but prudent. The resemblance between her and her mother was strikingly great, and her excess of sensibility, which Elinor saw with concern, was by Mrs. Dashwood valued and cherished.
Margaret, the other sister, was good-humoured; but she had already imbibed a good deal of Marianne's romance, without having much of her sense, and, at thirteen, she did not bid fair to equal her sisters at a more advanced period of life.