III
CONTACT WITH LIFE
Origins of characters—Matchmaking—Second marriages—Negative qualities of the novels—Close knowledge of one class—Dislike of "lionizing"—Madame de Staël—The "lower orders"—Tradesmen—Social position—Quality of Jane's letters—Balls and parties.
In her letters, as in her books, the satiric touch was on almost everything that Jane Austen wrote. Her habit of making pithy little notes on the doings of her acquaintances was, in writing to her sister, irrepressible. The pith was not bitter. It was just the comment of a highly intelligent woman to whom the gods had given the gift of humour, and who, at an age when most girls of her day were as ingenuous as Evelina or as Catherine Morland, had learnt how much insincerity and affectation coloured the conduct even of kind and well-meaning people.
In her references to the foibles of real men and women we gain many glimpses of the origins—if not the originals—of some of her character studies. At an Ashford ball in 1798 one of the Royal Dukes was present, and among those who supped in his company were Cassandra and a Mrs. Cage, with whom the Austens were well acquainted. This lady was uneasy in the presence of Royalty, and her mistakes were described in a letter from Cassandra. Jane's mention of the incident in her reply is a fair sample of the way in which, in her more serious mood, this young woman of twenty-three regarded the weakness of her less cool and reasonable friends: "I can perfectly comprehend Mrs. Cage's distress and perplexity. She has all those kind of foolish and incomprehensible feelings which would make her fancy herself uncomfortable in such a party. I love her, however, in spite of all her nonsense."
One can see a hint of Mrs. Allen and Mrs. Bennet in the silly woman who flustered herself and fidgeted her companions in her attempts to assume what she supposed to be the right behaviour on such an occasion. Jane, who had never seen a prince, so far as we know, would have had no "distress and perplexity." She would have curtsied in the prettiest way, the Duke would have been charmed by her graceful figure, her clear complexion, and her soft brown eyes, and she would next day have written to her sister "all the minute particulars, which only woman's language can make interesting."
Her reflections on the gossip of the hour are not always quite so kindly. When Charles Powlett (of whose rejected offer of a kiss we have already heard) brings home a wife, Jane tells her sister that this bride "is discovered to be everything that the neighbourhood could wish her, silly and cross as well as extravagant." Once, when a story has reached her in the way that "Russian Scandal" is played, by the muddling up of half-understood particulars in the process of transmission from mouth to ear, she has to correct a previous statement about some of the Austen circle—
"On inquiring of Mrs. Clerk, I find that Mrs. Heathcote made a great blunder in her news of the Crooks and Morleys. It is young Mr. Crook who is to marry the second Miss Morley, and it is the Miss Morleys instead of the second Miss Crook who were the beauties at the music meeting. This seems a more likely tale, a better devised imposture."
The sting is where stings usually are.