personally to make sure that the Prince Regent's copy had been dispatched. Her relations with Mr. Murray, despite their financial dealings, became very much more cordial. It was impossible to
withstand the charm of Mr. Murray's courtesy. He lent Henry a copy of Scott's Field of Waterloo and Miss Williams' Narrative of the events which have lately taken place in France; and when he
apologized to Jane for a delay in transmitting the proof sheets, which, he said, was the printer's fault, not his, Jane said: "He is so very polite indeed that it is quite overcoming." She made a mistake when she asked him to see that the title page bore the dedication to H.R.H. the Prince Regent. Mr. Murray, in some surprise, wrote to ask if she really meant the title page? Of course she did not; her having said so was owing to her ignorance only, and to her never having noticed the proper place for a dedication. She thanked him for putting her right; as she said: "Any deviation from what is usually done in such cases is the last thing I should wish for. I feel happy in having a friend to save me from the ill-effect of my own blunder." When she was about to leave town, she returned the books Mr. Murray had lent her, saying: "I am very sensible, I assure you, of the attention you have paid to my convenience and amusement."
In the meantime Mr. Clarke did not despair of persuading Jane
Austen to write such a biographical romance as he wished to see. He became wider and wider of the mark. "Make all your friends send sketches to help you--and
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Memoirs pour servir--as the French term it." As for the clergyman:
"Do let us have an English clergyman after your fancy--much novelty may be introduced--show, dear Madam, what good would be done if tithes were taken away entirely, and describe him burying his own mother--as I did --because the High Priest of the parish in which she died did not pay her remains the respect he ought to do. . . .
Carry your clergyman to sea as the friend of some distinguished character about a court." He had asked Mr. Murray to send to Jane Austen two little works of his: "Sermons I wrote and preached on the ocean." It is difficult to see where Jane Austen's own fancy was to have come in.
Mr. Clarke's next letter was written in an official capacity, and from the Pavilion at Brighton.
"DEAR MISS AUSTEN,
I have to return you the thanks of his Royal Highness the Prince Regent for the handsome copy you sent him of your last excellent novel. Pray, dear Madam, soon write again and again. Lord St. Helen and many of the nobility who have been staying here, paid you the just tribute of their praise."
The marriage of the Princess Charlotte to Prince Leopold of Coburg was about to be celebrated, and the Regent had just appointed Mr.
Clarke Private English Secretary to the bridegroom. Mr. Clarke was to remain at the Pavilion "with His Serene Highness and a select party" until the marriage, and this turn in his fortunes had given him a new idea to suggest to Jane Austen. "Perhaps when you again appear in print," he said, "you may choose to dedicate your volumes to Prince Leopold: any historical romance, illustrative of
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the history of the august house of Coburg, would just now be very interesting."
Mr. Clarke was naive in his foolishness, but he was very kind, and Jane Austen was sincerely grateful to him. Of his advancement, she said: "You have my best wishes. Your recent appointments are I hope a step to something still better. In my opinion, the service of a court can hardly be too well paid, for immense must be the sacrifice of time and feeling required by it." She showed her genuine appreciation of Mr. Clarke's kindness and admiration by the serious manner in which she dealt with his suggestion of an historical romance. "I am fully sensible that an historical romance founded on the House of Saxe-Coburg, might be much more to the purpose of profit or popularity than such pictures of domestic life in country villages as I deal in." But she went on to say--and here was the pearl produced by the foreign body of Mr. Clarke's preposterousness: "I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or at other people, I am sure, I should be hung before I have finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way; and though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other." She signed herself: "Your very much obliged and sincere friend, J. Austen."
The pleasure of the Prince Regent's notice must have been very great; but such a tribute to success did not make her any more absorbed in herself, or one degree less interested in the daily life going on around her. Indeed, by the accounts she was now sending to Cassandra at Chawton, she
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gave evidence of that wonderful power to shut away concerns of self and participate with single-minded eager sympathy in the interests of other people, which is one of her most revealing attributes. For Cassandra had been replaced in Henry's house by Fanny, the only person who could be regarded as Cassandra's substitute. Henry was much better and able to sit up to dinner, and Mr. Haden was not only in professional attendance but he came to dine as well. He was immediately attracted by the very pretty Miss Knight, and Miss Knight, who had now ceased to speak of Mr. Plumtree, was
immediately attracted by the lively, intelligent, delightfully mannered Mr. Haden. "Tomorrow," wrote Jane, "Mr. Haden is to dine with us. There's happiness!--We really grow so fond of Mr.
Haden that I do not know what to expect." They had a very pleasant little evening circle; Fanny played and Mr. Haden sat and listened and suggested improvements; and he did not appear less attractive in the eyes of the company because when the footman came in to tell him that "the Doctor was waiting for him at Captain Blake's," he jumped up and rushed away with all imaginable speed. Jane said:
"He never does appear in the least above his profession or out of humor with it." But though Mr. Haden left the piano at the call of professional duty, he was so extremely fond of music that he quite shocked Jane by what he said about it. After one of his visits to Henry, she wrote: "I have been listening to dreadful insanity,--it is Mr. Haden's firm belief that a person not musical is fit for every sort of wickedness." She said: "I ventured to assert a little on the other side, but wished the cause in abler hands." It was bad enough when people rhapsodized about music; it was too much to bear when those who could not take an ecstatic delight in it were supposed thereby to exhibit a criminal tendency.
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But even this did not seriously detract from Mr. Haden's charms. He came to another evening party. Henry had invited two ladies, Mrs.
Latouche and Miss East. After dinner Henry and Jane sat with the two ladies on the sofa, "making the best of it," while opposite to them sat Fanny and Mr. Haden in two chairs ("I believe at least they had two chairs"), talking together uninterruptedly. "Fancy the scene!
And what is to be fancied next? Why, that Mr. H. dines here again tomorrow." Mr. H. was reading Mansfield Park for the first time and
"preferred it to P. and P." Henry continued to improve. Jane said:
"He is so well, I cannot think why he is not perfectly well."
"Perhaps," she added, "when Fanny is gone, he will be allowed to recover faster." Jane said that Fanny had heard everything she had written about her to Cassandra; the latter, said Jane, seemed to be under a mistake about Mr. Haden. "You call him an apothecary; he is no apothecary . . . he is a Haden, nothing but a Haden, a sort of wonderful nondescript creature on two legs, something between a man and an angel."
Henry was now able to get about; "he sets off this morning by the Chelsea Coach to sign bonds and visit Henrietta Street." Meantime Jane and Fanny did not want visitors; they liked the house to
themselves. Jane had caught a slight cold and they made that do yeoman service. Mr. Tilson called and so of course did Mr. Haden; but they saw nobody but Mr. Tilson and "our Precious."
By the end of December, Jane was at home again, and Emma w
as published. Jane had felt, owing to a connection with Lady Morley and some very warm appreciation of her previous novels expressed by her ladyship, that it would be suitable to send Lady Morley a copy of Emma. Lady Morley in acknowledgment said she had been anxiously waiting for an introduction to Emma, and was "infinitely obliged" for
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Jane Austen's "kind recollection" of her, "which will procure me the pleasure of her acquaintance some days sooner than I should
otherwise have had it." Her ladyship had begun the book
immediately. "I am already become intimate in the Woodhouse family, and feel that they will not amuse and interest me less than the Bennets, Bertrams, Norrises, and all their admirable predecessors--I can give them no higher praise."
Jane was pleased with Lady Morley's note. While the reception of the book was still uncertain she said such praise was the more acceptable; and by it, she said: "I am encouraged to believe that I have not yet--as almost every writer of fancy does sooner or later, overwritten myself."
Beside the presentation copy to Lady Morley, one more was sent out from Chawton.
"MY DEAR ANNA,
As I wish very much to see your Jemima, I am sure you will like to see my Emma, and have therefore great pleasure in sending it for your perusal. Keep it as long as you choose. It has been read by all here."
The host of press cuttings received by a modern author makes him so conscious of the impression, whether good, bad or indifferent, that his work has made upon the public, that it would occur to few
writers of today to put down a list of the opinions of their
acquaintance, but with Jane Austen the reverse was the case. The few professional reviews of her work which have transpired are of exceptional interest, but novels upon the whole attracted much less attention in literary publications than histories and essays and books of travel, or even poetry; the outside comments upon her work were so few and far between that they did nothing to take off
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the keen edge of interest and pleasure she received from hearing the views of private people.
After the publication of Emma she made out a list of the comments that had come round to her. Captain Frank Austen "liked it extremely; observing that though there might be more wit in P. and P., and an higher morality in M.P., yet altogether, on account of its peculiar air of Nature throughout, he preferred it to either." The air of nature Captain Frank Austen had admired struck other people also, but in various manners. "Mrs. Guiton thought it too natural to be interesting," while Mrs. Cage wrote this to Fanny: ". . . I like it better than any . . . I am at Highbury all day, and I can't help feeling I have just got into a new set of acquaintance. No one," added Mrs.
Cage, "wrote such good sense; and so very comfortable." Cassandra liked it--"Better than P. and P. but not so well as M.P.," and we know so little from first-hand information of Cassandra, that it is very interesting to hear that she preferred the serious work to the brilliant one. Fanny Knight--"not so well as either P. and P. or M.P.
Could not bear Emma herself. Mr. Knightley delightful. Should like J.F. if she knew more of her." Fanny's father approved of the portrait of Mr. Knightley. "Mr. K. liked by everybody." Mrs. Austen herself
"thought it more entertaining than M.P. but not so interesting as P.
and P. No characters equal to Lady Catherine or Mr. Collins." The opinion ascribed to Mr. and Mrs. Leigh Perrot is one of the
pleasantest things we know about them. They "saw many beauties in it, but could not think it equal to P. and P. Darcy and Elizabeth had spoilt them for anything else." "Mr. Haden--quite delighted with it.
Admired the character of Emma." Miss Isabella Herries was one of a well-known order of novel readers: "Convinced that I had meant Mrs. and Miss Bates for some acquaintance of theirs. People whom I
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had never heard of before." So was Mrs. Dixon, who "liked it the less for there being a Mr. and Mrs. Dixon in it." Anna Lefroy
"thought that if there had been more incident, it would be equal to any of the others. . . . Did not like the heroine so well as any of the others. Miss Bates excellent, but rather too much of her. Mr. and Mrs. Elton admirable, and John Knightley a sensible man." "Mr.
Jeffreys of the Edinburgh Review was kept up by it three nights."
While "Mr. Fowle read only the first and last chapters, because he had heard it was not interesting." Captain Charles Austen, who was on board and had had a set of the volumes sent to him, wrote:
" Emma arrived in time to a moment. I am delighted with her, more so, I think, than even with my favorite, Pride and Prejudice, and have read it three times in the passage."
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18
IN 1815 Jane Austen had begun her sixth novel, but it did not
proceed very fast in that year; not only was the proofcorrecting of Emma on her mind, and the distracting circumstances of its publication, but she had had the severe strain of Henry's illness to bear. It would scarcely be too much to say that he recovered from it, but she did not.
Jane was not robust, but she had always given the impression of being healthy; her clear complexion and brilliant eyes, her slender, graceful, light-moving figure, her cheerfulness and serenity all suggested vitality and health; but she had within her the seeds of a weakness which it required only a general degree of ill health and prolonged nervous strain to develop into dangerous activity. The symptoms of which she gave her own account in letters, and the course the illness took, suggest a malignant affection of one of the internal organs. The doctor, who was consulted at Winchester, knew that she was dying the moment he looked at her. The ravages of the disease might have been indefinitely delayed if nothing had
happened to create the general weakness which it immediately
attacked; but Jane Austen had not only suffered acutely from distress and fatigue in nursing Henry; for the past three years her mind had been
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continually on the stretch; to what extent is revealed if we consider the energy and conviction, as well as the meticulous care with which her work was performed, and remember that Pride and Prejudice had been revised, and Mansfield Park and Emma actually written, since the year 1812.
At the beginning of 1816 she was forty years of age; whatever
strength she now had, physical or intellectual, she had not the resilience of youth; she took things to heart more than she had done, could throw them off less easily, and there were family troubles which all played their part in disquieting the atmosphere. Two years after he had received the legacy and adopted the name of Knight, Edward became involved in a lawsuit. The estate of Godmersham
carried an annual income of £5000, but that of Chawton was nearly twice as valuable, and the Chawton property was now claimed by a member of the Knight family. There had been a technical error in the instrument that made over the property to Edward Knight, and it now looked as if he might be obliged to relinquish it altogether. If he were to do so, he would not, while he possessed the Godmersham estate, be reduced to beggary, but to a man with eleven children, seven of whom were sons to be put out into the world, the loss of two-thirds even of a large income was an alarming prospect. But there was worse than this. The beloved Henry, whose fortune was so much smaller and therefore more vulnerable, met with a sudden tide of ill luck; the bank at Alton which had been backed by the house of Austen, Maunde and Tilson, failed, and involved the latter in its own destruction. In March 1816 Henry was declared a bankrupt.
He was not only professionally ruined; besides losing other people's money he had lost a good deal belonging to his own family. Mr.
Leigh Perrot lost £10,000; Edward Knight lost a considerable sum, though Jane Austen herself
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came off comparatively lightly with the loss of £13 which had been some of the profits of Mansfield Park; but there is reason to believe that poor Madame Bigeon's savings had been swallowed up.
No personal blame attac
hed to Henry Austen, nor was there the least coldness between him and the relations who had been the victims of his misfortune; at the same time, many men would have been
crushed by such a reverse, and for a time at least, not known what to turn to. But the buoyancy of Henry's disposition stood him in good stead. With perfect cheerfulness, with perfect sincerity, with perfect conviction, he decided upon the Church, and set about getting
himself ordained immediately; he began to revise his knowledge of the Greek testament, and by the time he was ordained he surprised the bishop with his erudition.
But however he was able to surmount these vicissitudes, they did not do Jane any good; sometimes she felt languid and ill at ease, and sometimes positively ill; but her natural cheerfulness and her standard of what was due by the people she lived with, though it was in a cottage and they her nearest relations, disguised from most people the fact that she was not quite well. She wrote, though it was sometimes an effort, as it had never been before; yet her style, so far from showing signs of ill health, was more silvery and soft, more harmoniously simple than it had ever been, her creation of character as magical as before, and the whole work a structure on an
underlying plan, less complicated but more subtle than in any of its predecessors.
Persuasion is a very short novel; as the reader is surprised on turning again to Pride and Prejudice, to realize in how few words the personalities of the novel have been created: so he returns to those spheres of Kellynch, Uppercross, Lyme Regis and Bath, present to his mind with a fullness of
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reality which it must, he feels, require a novel on the scale of War and Peace to have built up; only to find that the work which contains them all is little longer than a longshort story. The rapidity and sureness with which Jane Austen evolves the scene are centered of course in her creation of character; the opening chapters of
Persuasion do not differ markedly in this respect from those of any of its predecessors; in each the materials for her characters are quickly assembled, she breathes the breath of life between their lips, and there they stand for ever. The technical process is in each case the same, at once visible but incommunicable.
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