Jane herself did the housekeeping when her mother was indisposed and Cassandra away, and she prided herself on her success, though she detested the necessity of great economy. Her ideas on the eternal servant question are not, we may be sure, quite faithfully expressed when she writes: "My mother looks forward with as much certainty as you can do to our keeping two maids; my father is the only one not in the secret. We plan having a steady cook and a young, giddy housemaid, with a sedate, middle-aged man, who is to undertake the double office of husband to the former, and sweetheart to the latter. No children, of course, to be allowed on either side." The simple life of the parsonage is more accurately reflected in a comparison between the house of the Austens and that of the Knights at Godmersham. "We dine now at half-past three, and have done dinner, I suppose, before you begin. We drink tea at half-past six. I am afraid you will despise us. My father reads Cowper to us in the morning, to which I listen when I can. How do you spend your evenings? I guess that Elizabeth works, that you read to her, and that Edward goes to sleep." Jane declares that she "always takes care to provide such things as please (her) own appetite," which she considers "the chief merit in housekeeping." Ragout of veal and haricot mutton seem to have been specially attractive to her.
Picnics we hear of—one in particular, of course, at Box Hill—and the Middletons were always getting them up. Cold pies and cold chickens, and no doubt cold punch, were provided in plenty on those happy occasions.
French cookery was not so much appreciated in England in those days as it had been twenty or thirty years earlier, before the Revolution. The bread of our then hostile neighbours across the Channel was, however, not infrequently copied in the bakehouse, as was the Boulanger dance in the ball-room. Mrs. Morland reproached Catherine for talking so much at breakfast about the French bread at Northanger, but the poor little girl who had been so shamefully treated by General Tilney, and sadly missed the attentions of his younger son, replied that she did not care about the bread, and it was all the same to her what she ate. Mrs. Morland could only attribute the girl's obvious unhappiness to the contrast afforded by their humble parsonage to the glories of the Tilney mansion, "There is a very clever essay in one of the books up-stairs, upon much such a subject," says this anxious mother, "about young girls that have been spoilt for home by great acquaintance—The Mirror, I think. I will look it out for you some day or other, because I am sure it will do you good." Catherine tried to be cheerful, but presently relapsed into languor and weariness; and Mrs. Morland went off to seek for the "very clever essay." As Henry Tilney arrived before she returned with it, its efficacy as a prophylactic for listlessness and discontent was never put to the test. I will take the risk of inducing the "listlessness and discontent" of the present reader by devoting a page to this moral souvenir of Jane Austen's infancy and of her own literary diversions.
The "very clever essay" is dated March 6, 1779, and is in the form of a letter from John Homespun, a "plain country gentleman, with a small fortune and a large family," two of whose daughters had been allowed—his opposition having been overcome—to spend the Christmas holidays with a "great lady" whom they had met at the house of a relation. They went with sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks, they came back with "cheeks as white as a curd, and eyes as dead as the beads in the face of a baby." Their father sees no reason to wonder at the change when he hears the girls, with new-found affectations of speech and manner, describe the habits of their new friends.
"Instead of rising at seven, breakfasting at nine, dining at three, supping at eight, and getting to bed by ten, as was their custom at home, my girls lay till twelve, breakfasted at one, dined at six, supped at eleven, and were never in bed till three in the morning. Their shapes had undergone as much alteration as their faces. From their bosoms (necks they called them), which were squeezed up to their throats, their waists tapered down to a very extraordinary smallness; they resembled the upper half of an hour-glass. At this, also, I marvelled; but it was the only shape worn at ——. Nor is their behaviour less changed than their garb. Instead of joining in the good-humoured cheerfulness we used to have among us before, my two fine young ladies check every approach to mirth, by calling it vulgar. One of them chid their brother the other day for laughing, and told him it was monstrously ill-bred.... Would you believe it, sir, my daughter Elizabeth (since her visit she is offended if we call her Betty) said it was fanatical to find fault with card-playing on Sunday; and her sister Sophia gravely asked my son-in-law, the clergyman, if he had not some doubts of the soul's immortality?"
Mr. Homespun declares that the moral plague among the worldly rich should be dealt with by Government "as much as the distemper among the horned cattle."
Happily Catherine Morland had not caught this particular disease of all—it was only the plague of love that troubled her innocent soul, and the medicine was provided without the interference of a Government inspector.
From such a deliberate departure from the straight path I come back to the subject of the economy of accessories in Jane Austen's novels. When the French bread at Northanger led me astray, I was writing about domestic economy, costumes and cookery. Why should the dresses be described or the dishes be named? We are concerned with the sayings and doings of squires and parsons and their wives and daughters, not with the achievements of cooks and milliners. This would be quite a fair criticism, but it is none the less certain that an author who tells you what people eat and drink and wear does enable you to realize more fully the contrast between the present and the period with which the novel is concerned. That is our business, however, not his. He is an artist, not an historian. There is a common practice on the stage of "furbishing up" old plays by cutting out obsolete references and introducing topical touches. The comedies of Robertson may be "freshened" considerably to meet the taste of thoughtless play-goers, by giving Captain Hawtrey a motor-car and Jack Poyntz a magazine-rifle. The "moral" of these present pages is merely this, that with a few such slight changes as making post-chaise read motor and coach read train, and retarding the dinner from three or five to eight or half-past, cutting out the occasional "elegants," and otherwise changing a word here and there in the dialogue, long scenes from any one of Jane Austen's novels could be acted without material alteration, in the costume of to-day, with no serious offence to the unities. The absence of physical detail in her narrative is no artistic defect. Mr. Collins's first evening at Longbourn, for instance, is so vividly represented that we gain the impression of having been in the room, though of its size and shape, and furniture, or of the appearance and costume of its occupants, we are told little or nothing—
"Mr. Bennet's expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd as he had hoped, and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment, maintaining at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance, and except in an occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner in his pleasure.