Nevertheless the idea that the Austen people are cold-blooded is warmly opposed in an appreciative little essay published in America a few years ago by Mr. W. L. Phelps. "Let no one believe," he writes, "that Jane Austen's men and women are deficient in passion because they behave with decency: to those who have the power to see and interpret, there is a depth of passion in her characters that far surpasses the emotional power displayed in many novels where the lovers seem to forget the meaning of such words as honour, virtue, and fidelity." It may be that, like Richard Feverel on a certain occasion, the Henrys and Edwards, the Emmas and Annes are "too British to expose their emotions." But Lucy Feverel, one of the purest and truest women in fiction, shows passion so that no special "power to see and interpret" is requisite on the reader's part, and the same note is true of many of the charming heroines drawn by the masters of imagination.
At any rate Jane allowed her heroines as much passion and sentiment as—so far as we can discover—she experienced herself. The one known man who seems to have come near to being regarded as her accepted lover was Thomas Lefroy, who lived to be Chief Justice of Ireland.
"You scold me so much," she writes, in her twenty-first year, to Cassandra, "in the nice long letter which I have this moment received from you, that I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together. I can expose myself, however, only once more, because he leaves the country soon after next Friday, on which day we are to have a dance at Ashe after all. He is a very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man, I assure you. But as to our having ever met, except at the three last balls, I cannot say much; for he is so excessively laughed at about me at Ashe, that he is ashamed of coming to Steventon, and ran away when we called on Mrs. Lefroy a few days ago."
No coquettish "reigning beauty" was ever more easy as to the fate of her lovers, or less likely to suffer at their hands, than this Hampshire maiden, whose fine complexion, hazel eyes, and well-proportioned figure attracted so much admiration, and whose sweet voice and lively conversation completed the conquest of those whom she cared to entertain.
"Tell Mary," she writes to her sister (also in 1796), "that I make over Mr. Heartley and all his estate to her for her sole use and benefit in future, and not only him, but all my other admirers into the bargain wherever she can find them, even the kiss which C. Powlett wanted to give me, as I mean to confine myself in future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for whom I don't care six-pence."
This agreeable Irishman, to whom, in later years, we find references in the records of the Edgeworth family, was speedily to pass out of Jane's young life. Very soon she has to write: "At length the day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, and when you receive this it will be over. My tears flow as I write at the melancholy idea. William Chute called here yesterday. I wonder what he means by being so civil."
We need not picture her as stopping her writing while she wiped the tears from her streaming eyes. "We went by Bifrons," she says on another occasion, "and I contemplated with a melancholy pleasure the abode of him on whom I once fondly doted." She never did "dote" on any man, so far as can be discovered or reasonably surmised, to any greater extent than her favourite Emma may be said to have "doted" on Frank Churchill. Emma's feelings about the man who was secretly engaged to Jane Fairfax at the time, are thus analyzed by Jane Austen—
"Emma continued to entertain no doubt of her being in love. Her ideas only varied as to the how much. At first she thought it was a good deal; and afterwards but little. She had great pleasure in hearing Frank Churchill talked of; and, for his sake, greater pleasure than ever in seeing Mr. and Mrs. Weston; she was very often thinking of him, and quite impatient for a letter, that she might know how he was, how were his spirits, how was his aunt, and what was the chance of his coming to Randalls again this spring. But, on the other hand, she could not admit herself to be unhappy, nor, after the first morning, to be less disposed for employment than usual.... 'I do not find myself making any use of the word sacrifice,' said she. 'In not one of all my clever replies, my delicate negatives, is there any allusion to making a sacrifice. I do suspect that he is not really necessary to my happiness. So much the better. I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be more.'"
Save for Willoughby's burst of misplaced enthusiasm over Marianne, Frank Churchill's description of Jane Fairfax to Emma is the warmest bit of love-painting in the Austen comedy—