Jane Austen and Her Country-house Comedy

by W. H. Helm

Balzac, describing the origins of his play La Marâtre to the manager who produced it, said: "We are not concerned with an appalling melodrama wherein the villain sets light to houses and massacres the inhabitants. No, I imagine a drawing-room comedy where all is calm, tranquil, pleasant. The men play peacefully at the whist-table, by the light of wax candles under little green shades. The women chat and laugh as they do their fancy needlework. Presently they all take tea together. In a word, everything shows the influence of regular habits and harmony. But for all that, beneath this placid surface the passions are at work, the drama progresses until the moment when it bursts out like the flame of a conflagration. That is what I want to show."

The scene described is Jane Austen's—the quiet parlour, the card-players, the women chatting, and working with their coloured silks, the tea-tray, the shaded candles, the general air of ease and tranquillity. We find it at Mansfield Park with the Bertrams, at Hartfield with the Woodhouses, and, in spite of Lydia and her "mamma," at Longbourn with the Bennets. But the dénouement to which Balzac looked for his effect has no attraction for Jane Austen. Catherine Morland, at Northanger Abbey, imagines some such tragedy smouldering into life below the surface of quiet habitude as Balzac discovers in his horrid war of step-daughter and step-mother, and Jane Austen herself laughs with Henry Tilney at this impressionable country maiden whom he mocks while he admires.

Balzac and Jane Austen both strove to depict life, to show the motives and instincts of men and women as the causes of action; in his case of an energetic and passionate type, wherein the primary instincts are freely exercised, in her case, of a simple, orderly kind, which allows but little scope for the display of violence or the elaboration of plots. There are exceptions, of course, which for fear of the precise critic must at least be illustrated. Balzac has his quiet Pierrettes and Rose Cormons, who suffer as patiently and far more poignantly than an Elinor Dashwood or a Fanny Price; Jane Austen has her dissolute Willoughbys and disturbing Henry Crawfords, and also her Maria Rushworths and Mrs. Clays, who throw their bonnets over the windmills with even less regard for their reputations than a Beatrix de Rochefide or a Natalie de Manerville. When a lapse from virtue on the part of any of her characters was, on some rare occasion, necessary to her plan, Jane Austen did not allow any prudish reserve to stand in the way, but it may be said no less unreservedly that she never introduced vice where her story could do quite as well without it, and it is never the central motive of her novels. It is, then, not alone for the narrowness of her field that her title to greatness has often been disputed. Many persons whose literary tastes are marked by understanding and catholicity refuse to acknowledge the genius of so peaceful a novelist. Because of the absence of passion and sentiment in Jane Austen's works, the author of Jane Eyre would not recognize in her the great artist that Scott and Coleridge believed her to be. "The passions," wrote Miss Brontë, "are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood. Even to the feelings she vouchsafes no more than an occasional graceful but distant recognition—too frequent converse with them would ruffle the smooth elegance of her progress." The three novelists here brought into momentary association, the creators of Eugénie Grandet, Emma, and Jane Eyre represent three distinctive forces in fiction. Charlotte Brontë, disillusioned with the world, of which she knew very little, and angry at its follies and injustices, sat alone and poured out her feelings in her books; Balzac, hungry for fame, wrote furiously all night by the light of a dip, stimulating his fiery imagination with the strong coffee which was the irresponsible author of many of his most astonishing chapters; Jane Austen, taking her meals and her rest regularly, sat at her little desk in the parlour where her mother and sister were sewing or writing letters, and placidly turned her observations and reflections into manuscript. Her hazel eyes, we may be certain, never rolled in any kind of frenzy, her brown curls were never disturbed by the spasmodic movements of nervous hands. Great artist as she was, she had no greater share of the "artistic temperament" than many a popular novelist who "turns out" two or three serial stories at a time by the simple process of shuffling the situations, changing the scenery, and re-naming the characters. If she had been touched by the strong emotion of a Charlotte Brontë, or the burning imagination of a Balzac, she might have produced work which would have set the world on fire, instead of merely infusing keen happiness into responsive minds and compelling their love and admiration. That is only to say that if she had been somebody else she would not have been herself. It is peace, not war, that she carries to us. Even her irony is not of the sardonic kind, and in her work the "master spell" is so daintily mingled that the bitter ingredients seem to have disappeared in the making.

Respect and admiration and sympathy in a high degree have been given by millions of minds, not always emotional, to many authors, but Jane Austen is loved as few have been. The love is inspired by her works, and she shares it with Elizabeth Bennet, Emma Woodhouse, and Anne Elliot. Milton, in a line which is as clear in meaning as it is foggy in construction, speaks of Eve as "the fairest of her daughters." Jane Austen is regarded by the generality of her lovers as the most delightful of her own heroines, and not merely as the woman who brought them into existence.

Could we have loved her so much if we had lived with her at Steventon Rectory or at Chawton Cottage? What she was at home I think we know much better from her own letters than from her brother Henry's panegyric, which, in spite of its obvious sincerity of intention, too nearly resembles the memorial inscriptions of his own period to be regarded with quite as much confidence as respect. "Faultless herself," he wrote, "as nearly as human nature can be, she always sought, in the faults of others, something to excuse, to forgive, or forget." "Always" is a word which—as Captain Corcoran discovered of its reverse—can hardly ever be used without considerable reservations. We know, from her own pen, that Jane—we call one unwedded queen "Elizabeth," why should we not call another "Jane"?—did not "always" show so much tenderness for the faults of others, and when we remember the endless variety of human nature we cannot but regard this ascription of "faultlessness" by an affectionate brother as of little more evidential value than Mrs. Dashwood's opinion (in Sense and Sensibility) of the "faultlessness" of Marianne's lovers. It is no disparagement to Henry Austen to say that his little memoir is more convincing as a record of his own character than of his sister's. Their nephew, Mr. Austen Leigh, who wrote the fullest and most admirable account of Jane Austen, was still in his teens when she died. Apart from these sparse reminiscences we know practically nothing about her except from her own novels and letters, but from them we may learn almost as much of the mind of this delightful woman as any loving relation could have told us. It may be possible for an author to write an artificial novel without betraying his own nature to any positive extent, but such novels as Jane Austen's cannot so be produced; it is possible to write letters which, apart from the penmanship, offer no evidences of character; but a pair of devoted sisters, however different their ability or their philosophy of life, could not correspond during twenty years without displaying much of the workings of their minds.

Some of Jane's literary admirers think that she was lively and talkative, others that she was prone to silence in company. Probably both views are correct. It depended on the company. Among those who could appreciate her fun and her wit, her harmless quips and quizzing, she was full of vivacity; among those who raised their eyebrows at her impromptu verses and missed the points of her piquant remarks on persons and incidents she was speedily content, within the bounds of good manners, to observe rather than to join in the comedy of conversation. We need not unreservedly believe her brother's assurance that "she never uttered either a hasty, a silly, or a severe expression," but we may, from all we know of her, be fairly confident that she had a control over her tongue which few such gifted humourists have possessed. As for her temper, it was said in her family that "Cassandra had the merit of having her temper always under command, but that Jane had the happiness of a temper that never required to be commanded."

That her nature was not, in any marked degree, what is commonly called "sympathetic" we may see from many passages in her letters, and her novels afford ample corroboration. There was no avoidable hypocrisy about her. In this at least she is the counterpart of Elizabeth or Anne. "Do not be afraid of my encroaching on your privilege of universal goodwill. You need not. There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense." In a letter from Jane Austen to Cassandra there would have been nothing to surprise us in this passage, which is actually taken from the remarks of Elizabeth Bennet to her sister on the subject of Bingley's long silence after the Netherfield ball.

If Jane Austen did not cry over misfortunes which did not affect her, neither did she pretend to ignore the affectations and weaknesses even of her nearest relations. Can it be supposed, for instance, that she was in the least degree blinded to the shortcomings of a beloved mother of whom she could, on various occasions, write such news as that she "continues hearty, her appetite and nights are very good, but she sometimes complains of an asthma, a dropsy, water in her chest, and a liver disorder"?

A daughter and sister and friend whose attention was so closely devoted, however unobtrusively, to the study of character in a narrow circle, would in most cases be "a little trying," but when the observer was endowed with a keen sense of the absurd, and an irony which, however weak in caustic, was strong in veracity, it might be supposed that she would be an enfant terrible of that mature kind which in our own days is commoner than the nursery variety. In her case, the supposition would be ill-founded. She was at once too well-bred, and too kind-hearted, to let her special powers of wounding take exercise on gentle hearts. But falsehood of any sort was abhorrent to her, and as a consequence she was inclined, in communing with her sister, to show herself a little intolerant even of those amiable pretences of sorrow for common ailments and small troubles which are so soothing to weak humanity. She rejected, for example, the idea of commiserating with any one on account of a cold or a headache, unless there were feverish symptoms!