Had the meeting of the authors of Emma and Corinne come about, one would like to have heard their conversation. The talking would have been largely on one side. Madame, who knew the "world," and enjoyed the distinction of having been called a "wicked schemer" and a "fright" by the greatest man of her time, would have tried in vain to impress the unaffected Englishwoman who cared so little for politics and Napoleon that, in those novels which Madame regarded as "vulgaire," she scarcely alluded to either. Jane would have listened attentively, and now and again, when Madame paused for breath, would have made a polite remark, the covert humour of which would have been lost on her famous companion. There is no suggestion that any hint as to Madame de Staël's reputation had reached Chawton Cottage, otherwise some might suppose that it was not only the diffident modesty Jane's brother alleges which prevented her from going to the party. It is quite likely that she who described the loves of Lydia Bennet and Maria Rushworth with such an entire absence of sermonizing would yet have felt that, though she might like to converse on a more private occasion with the author of Corinne and Delphine, she would prefer not to be matched with a lady who had put to so practical a test her theories "de l'influence des passions sur le bonheur."
Could there be a stronger contrast, physical or moral, than between the country parson's slight and good-looking daughter, whose knowledge of men and affairs was gained in the parlours of manor-houses and the assembly-rooms of watering-places, and the financier's stout and ugly daughter, whose political activities were so persistent that she had been expelled from Paris, who had travelled, mingling in the society of the governing classes, the artists, the men of letters in Italy, Germany, and other lands, and whose literary performances, historical, political, and imaginative, were read wherever educated readers existed?
If Jane had no strong desire to be brought into contact with the great, wise, and eminent of her time, neither were her tastes at all in the direction of social equality or the advocacy of the "rights of man," and while she was indifferent to the famous and influential, she was scarcely more concerned for the obscure and lowly. Admire her work as we may, and love her as many of us must, we cannot recognize that she was much in sympathy with any class but her own. It is certainly to no undue regard for social position, to no want of charitable intention, that we can attribute her general neglect of the drama, comedy and tragedy alike, of humble life. It might be said that she could, and if she would, have drawn the poor as well as she drew the "gentry." She knew her limitations, and thus such rare sketches of the "lower orders" as she gives stop short of any errors of understanding. Mrs. Reynolds, Darcy's housekeeper, whose admiration for her master and his sister is so strongly expressed, and Thomas, the servant at Barton Cottage, who comes in to describe how he has seen "Mr. and Mrs. Ferrars" in Exeter, are in no way out of drawing, though the phrase with which the author finishes off the man-servant—"Thomas and the table-cloth, now alike needless, were soon dismissed"—so aptly suggests the position accorded to the working classes in her own works that it almost seems to have a double meaning. Let any one familiar with the novels try to recall occasions when a servant is introduced even in such common cases as the answering of a bell or waiting at table, and he will find it hard to add to the examples already given any with a better part than the overworked Nanny at the Watsons', who, when Lord Osborne is paying his untimely visit, puts her head in at the door and says, "Please, ma'am, master wants to know why he be'nt to have his dinner." As for the class from which most of these servants came, it has no place at all. Emma takes Harriet to a cottage where there is a convalescent child who requires jellies or beef tea, but the incident is of no account except as leading up to the visit to Mr. Elton; and she goes to see an old servant while Harriet pays her formal call at the Abbey Mill Farm. Robert Martin is a farmer, and a letter from him is introduced, but he has no share of any consequence in the dialogue. When we remember Jane Austen's avowed partiality for Emma, and Emma's disgust at the idea of Harriet marrying a mere farmer, no matter how much her admirer Knightley might support the man's claims, we may not unreasonably suppose that Jane to some extent shared Emma's prejudice. There was, however, a notable exception to Jane's remoteness from the farming class. The joint tenant of the Manor farm at Steventon, the happily named James Digweed—who seems to have been ordained later on—was admitted to so much favour that she could not only dance and dine, and gossip with him, but could chaff her sister about his evident desire to gain Cassandra's affection.
Two or three apothecaries are admitted into the novels. One attends Jane Bennet at Netherfield, and another attends Marianne Dashwood at Cleveland. Apothecary was almost a term of contempt in those days, and one of Jane's hits at the neighbourhood of Hans Place was that there seemed to be only one person there who was "not an apothecary." She even, as we have seen, corrects her niece for supposing that a country doctor—not a mere "apothecary"—would ever be "introduced" to a peer!
The only country tradesman who figures at all prominently is Sir William Lucas, who had "risen to the honour of Knighthood by an address to the King during his mayoralty. The distinction had perhaps been felt too strongly. It had given him a disgust to his business.... By nature inoffensive, friendly, and obliging, his presentation at St. James's had made him courteous." He is not so diverting a creature as Martin Tinman of Crikswich in Mr. Meredith's delightful comedy The House on the Beach, who, when rescued from that storm-beaten home on a terrible night, was found to be wearing the Court suit in which, long before, he had presented an address to the throne! But Sir William Lucas's constant recollection of the fact that he had been received by the sovereign, while his neighbours, the "small" country-gentlemen, had not, is illustrated with admirable art. In his "emporium," with his stock-in-trade around him, his portrait would never have been drawn. Mr. Weston also made money in trade, apparently "in the wholesale line," after he had retired from the militia, and of the proud and conceited Bingley sisters we are told that "they were of a respectable family in the north of England; a circumstance more deeply impressed on their memories than that their brother's fortune and their own had been acquired by trade."
Jane has many kindly things to tell her sister about, her mother's maids, especially of a faithful and industrious "Nannie." Of the maids' relations, the agricultural class, amid whose homes she passed nearly all her life, she has, as I have said, left no account in her novels. Her letters do indeed contain many bits of news concerning the ploughmen and washerwomen of the parish, and they are significant as to the manner, proper to the age, in which she regarded her humble neighbours. Her references to the cottagers are commonly devoid of any indication of deeper feeling than the consciousness of a need to give them clothes. Of the people employed on her father's farm, she says—
"John Bond begins to find himself grow old, which John Bond ought not to do, and unequal to much hard work; a man is therefore hired to supply his place as to labour, and John himself is to have the care of the sheep. There are not more people engaged than before, I believe; only men instead of boys. I fancy so at least, but you know my stupidity as to such matters. Lizzie Bond is just apprenticed to Miss Small, so we may hope to see her able to spoil gowns in a few years."
About Christmas (1798) she writes—
"Of my charities to the poor since I came home you shall have a faithful account. I have given a pair of worsted stockings to Mary Hutchins, Dame Kew, Mary Steevens, and Dame Staples; a shift to Hannah Staples, and a shawl to Betty Dawkins, amounting in all to about half-a-guinea. But I have no reason to suppose that the Battys would accept of anything, because I have not made them the offer."
Of personal service we hear but little. There is just the old "Lady Bountiful" idea, adapted to the purse of the parson's younger daughter. Alms were what the poor chiefly wanted, and alms they received—if not in money, in warm garments. She gave them worsted stockings, and flannel to wear in the cold weather. She did not often, so far as we hear, sit and chat with Dame Staples and Dame Kew over the things that made up their life-interests, or listen to the confidences of Lizzie Bond and Hannah Staples concerning their rustic lovers.