Among the widest traps, indeed, for those who love to see a roman à clef in every novel, is this identification of the author with one or other of his characters. Some people have convinced themselves that Cassandra and Jane Austen were the originals of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood. Such an idea could only be held by those who had not seen Jane's letters. Marianne, sentimental, romantic, disagreeable in a quite serious way, and usually inattentive "to the forms of general civility," could not be Jane, and as certainly not Cassandra as we know her, and while Elinor, the patient, long-suffering girl, might in some ways represent either of the Austen sisters, she is very far from being a portrait.
Yet if neither Elinor Dashwood nor Marianne is to be described as a likeness of Jane, the elder sister in her philosophical submission to what she believed to be the loss of her lover, and the younger in her literary tastes and her impatience with people who talk without thinking may fairly be regarded as in part reflecting the author's personality. None of her heroines is Jane, but there is much of her also in Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse, and a good deal in Anne Elliot, though she admitted that Anne was too nearly perfect to be altogether after her heart. The simple little souls of Fanny Price and Catherine Morland, so dependent on the direct assistance of others in the formation of their feelings, are in very small degree expressions of the author's temperament. We may, I think, regard Emma Woodhouse as the nearest approach to a portrait of the artist who painted her, but "nearest" is a relative superlative. Many people do not care for Emma. A strong expression of recent disapproval was quoted a few pages back. Jane Austen anticipated objections. "I am going," she said, when she was beginning the book, "to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like."
Whether or not we may see in Emma a good deal of Jane herself, we may fairly be certain that none of her characters is an intentional copy of any one in the circle of her friends and acquaintances. She herself declared her opinion, which tallies with all that we know of her, that the introduction of living people as actors in a work of imagination is a breach of good manners, and that, propriety apart, she was too proud of her characters to admit that they were "only Mrs. A. or Colonel B." How far she made use of individuals in the composition of such strongly-marked figures as Mrs. Elton, Mr. Collins and Sir Walter Elliot, we cannot, of course, know. The point, for what it is worth, could have been better elucidated if Miss Austen's circle had been less far removed from the world wherein the Wraxalls, the Gronows and the Grevilles listen and watch. We know that, whatever the degree of similitude, Disraeli's Rigby offers a recognizable likeness to Croker, Dickens's Boythorn to Landor, Stevenson's Weir of Hermiston to Braxfield. Accepting Jane Austen's denial of the deliberate introduction of real persons in her novels, we cannot tell how many of her Hampshire acquaintances served intellectually for her pictures of country society as the maidens of Crotona served physically for the picture of Helen by Zeuxis. We may be certain that, all unconsciously, they gave her of their best, each according to his means.
VI
PERSONAL AND TOPOGRAPHICAL
The novelist and her characters—Her sense of their reality—Accessories rarely described—Her ideas on dress—Her own millinery and gowns—Thin clothes and consumption—Domestic economy—Jane as housekeeper—"A very clever essay"—Mr. Collins at Longbourn—The gipsies at Highbury—Topography of Jane Austen—Hampshire—Lyme Regis—Godmersham—Bath—London.
On an earlier page a contrast between Balzac and Jane Austen has been suggested. One characteristic they had in common was the sense of the reality of their own creations. Madame de Surville, the sister of Balzac, has recorded how, when the affairs of the family were being discussed, he would say, "Ah, yes, but do you know to whom Felix de Vandenesse is engaged? One of the Grandville girls. It is an excellent marriage for him." Further than this an author's sense of the actuality of his own imaginings could hardly go, unless, indeed, like one modern author—if the story is true, as it probably is not—he were to invite the figments of his brain to lunch!
Jane Austen was not quite so much obsessed by her inventions, though she spoke of the very novels themselves as personal entities. Pride and Prejudice was "my own darling child," and of Sense and Sensibility she writes, when it is passing through the press: "No, indeed, I am never too busy to think of S. and S. I can no more forget it than a mother can forget her sucking child; and I am much obliged to you for your inquiries." As for the characters, she loved to talk of them as living people, and was so fond of Elizabeth Bennet, for instance, that, as she wrote to Cassandra, she did not know how she should be "able to tolerate" those who did not like her.
She used to tell her nieces what happened to her imaginary people after the novels were ended, how Mary Bennet married her uncle's clerk, or her sister Kitty a clergyman, and how Mrs. Robert Ferrars's sister "never caught the doctor." One of the most delightful of her letters, as evidence of her happiness in her work, and of her half-serious consciousness of the reality of her creations, was written after a round of London picture galleries. The portraits she looked for were not those of Knights, or Austens, or Leighs, but of beautiful women out of her own novels. They might be labelled Lady this or Mrs. that, but she should recognize them if they were portraits of her darling Elizabeth or her dearest Anne. She was disappointed. It is true that at the Gallery in Spring Gardens she found "a small portrait of Mrs. Bingley, excessively like her," and, moreover, "she is dressed in a white gown, with green ornaments, which convinces me of what I had always supposed, that green was a favourite colour with her. I dare say Mrs. D. will be in yellow." For it was "Mrs. D."—the beloved Elizabeth Darcy (née Bennet), whose face her creator and devoted admirer looked forward to seeing on some fashionable portrait-painter's canvas. Alas! at none of the shows was the desired picture to be found. "I can only imagine," writes the disappointed "friend," soothing her regrets with a reflection natural to her mind, "that Mr. D. prizes any picture of her too much to like it should be exposed to the public eye. I can imagine he would have that sort of feeling—that mixture of love, pride, and delicacy."