Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “Lady Catharine very resolutely, and not very politely, declined eating anything, and then, rising up, said to Elizabeth: ‘Miss Bennet, there seems to be a prettyish kind of a little wilderness on one side of your lawn. I should be glad to take a turn in it, if you will favor me with your company,’... Elizabeth obeyed, and running into her own room for her parksol, attended her noble guest down-stairs.... As soon as they reached the copse, Lady Catharine began in the following manner: ‘You cannot be at a loss, Miss Bennet, to understand the reason of my visit hither. Your own heart, your own conscience, must tell you why I came.’ Elizabeth looked with unaffected astonishment. ‘Indeed, you are mistaken, madam; I have not been at all able to account for the honor of seeing you here.’ ‘Miss Bennet,’ replied her ladyship in an angry tone, ‘you ought to know that I am not to be trifled with. But however insincere you may choose to be, you shall not find me so.... A report of a most alarming nature reached me two days ago. I was told... that you, Miss Elizabeth Bennet, would, in all likelihood, be soon afterwards united to my nephew, to my own nephew, Mr. Darcy. Though I knew it must be a scandalous falsehood, though I would not injure him so much as to suppose the truth of it possible, I instantly resolved on setting off for this place, that I might make my sentiments known to you.” If you believed it impossible to be true,’ said Elizabeth, coloring with astonishment and disdain, ‘I wonder you took the trouble of coming so far. What could your ladyship propose by it?’ ‘This is not to be borne. Miss Bennet, I insist upon being satisfied. Has he, has my nephew made you an offer of marriage?’ ‘Your ladyship has declared it to be impossible.’ ‘It must be so while he retains the use of his reason. But your allurements may, in a moment of infatuation, have made him forget what he owes to himself and to all his family. You may have drawn him in,’ ‘If I have, I shall be the last person to confess it. ‘Miss Bennet, do you know who I am? I have not been accustomed to such language as this.... This match, to which you have the presumption to aspire, can never take place....

  Because honor, decorum, precedence, nay interest forbid it. Yes, Miss Bennet, interest; for do not expect to be noticed by his family or friends.... Your affiance will be a disgrace; your name will never even be mentioned by any of us.... Let us sit down.

  You are to understand, Miss Bennet, that I came here with the determined resolution of carrying my purpose.

  ... I have not been in the habit of brooking disappointment.’ ‘That will make your ladyship’s situation at present more pitiable; but it will have no effect on me.’ ‘I will not be interrupted!... If you were sensible of your own good, you would not wish to quit the sphere in which you have been brought up.’

  ‘In marrying your nephew, I should not consider myself as quitting that sphere. He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman’s daughter; so far we are equal.’ ‘True, you are a gentleman’s daughter. But what was your mother? Who are your uncles and aunts?’...

  ‘Whatever my connections may be,’ said Elizabeth, ‘if your nephew does not object to them, they can be nothing to you.’ ‘Tell me, once for all, are you engaged to him?’ Though Elizabeth would not for the mere purpose of obliging Lady Catharine, she could not but say, after a moment’s deliberation, ‘I am not.’ Lady Catharine seemed pleased. ‘And will you promise me never to enter into such an engagement?” I will make no promise of the kind.... How far your nephew might approve of your interference in his affairs, I cannot tell; but you have certainly no right to concern yourself in mine. I must beg, therefore, to be importuned no further on the subject.... You have insulted me in every possible method. I must beg to return to the house.’ And she rose as she spoke. Lady Catharine rose also and they turned back. Her ladyship was highly incensed. ‘And this... is your final resolve! Very well, I shall know how to act. Do not imagine, Miss Bennet, that your ambition will ever be gratified. I came to try you. I hoped to find you reasonable; but depend upon it, I shall carry my point.’ In this manner Lady Catharine talked on till they were at the door of the carriage, when, turning hastily round, she added, ‘I take no leave of you, Miss Bennet. I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve no such attention. I am most seriously displeased.’ Elizabeth made no answer; and without attempting to persuade her ladyship to return into the house, walked quietly into it herself.”

  In all this the heroine easily gets the better of her antagonist not only in the mere article of, to which it must be owned her lively wit occasionally tends, but in the more valuable qualities of personal dignity. She is much more a lady than her ladyship, as me author means she shall be; but her superiority is not invented for the crisis; it springs from her temperament and character, cool, humorous, intelligent and just: a combination of attributes which renders Elizabeth Bennet one of the most admirable and attractive girls in the world of fiction. It is impossible, however, not to feel that her triumph over Lady de Burgh is something more than personal: it is a protest, it is an insurrection, though probably the discreet, the amiable author would have been the last to recognize or to acknowledge the fact. An indignant sense of the value of humanity as against the pretensions of rank, such as had not been felt in English fiction before, stirs throughout the story, and reveals itself in such crucial tests as dear “little Burney,” for instance, would never have imagined. For when Miss Burney introduces city people, it is to let them display their cockney vulgarity; but though Jane Austen shows the people whom the Bennets’ gentility frays off into on the mother’s side vulgar and ridiculous, they are not shown necessarily so because they are in trade or the law; and on the father’s side it is apparent that their social inferiority is not incompatible with gentle natures, cultivated minds, and pleasing manners.

  JANE AUSTEN’S ANNE ELLIOT AND CATHARINE MORLAND

  THAT protest already noted, that revolt against the arrogance of rank, which makes itself felt more or less in all the novels of Jane Austen, might have been something that she inhaled with the stormy air of the time, and respired again with the unconsciousness of breathing. But whether she knew it or not, this quiet little woman, who wrote her novels in the bosom of her clerical family; who was herself so contentedly of the established English order; who believed in inequality and its implications as of divine ordinance; who loved the delights of fine society, and rejoiced as few girls have in balls and parties, was in her way asserting the Rights of Man as unmistakably as the French revolutionists whose volcanic activity was of about the same compass of time as her literary industry. In her books the snob, not yet named or classified, is fully ascertained for the first time. Lady Catharine de Burgh in “Pride and Prejudice,” John Dashwood in “Sense and Sensibility,” Mr. Elton in “Emma,” General Tilney in “Northanger Abbey,” and above all Sir Walter Eliot in “Persuasion,” are immortal types of insolence or meanness which foreshadow the kindred shapes of Thackeray’s vaster snob-world, and fix the date when they began to be recognized and detested. But their recognition and detestation were only an incident of the larger circumstance studied in the different stories; and in “Persuasion” the snobbishness of Sir Walter has little to do with the fortunes of his daughter Anne after the first unhappy moment of her broken engagement.

  I

  People will prefer Anne Elliot to Elizabeth Bennet according as they enjoy a gentle sufferance in women more than a lively rebellion: and it would not be profitable to try converting the worshippers of the one to the cult of the other. But without offence to either following, it may be maintained that “Persuasion” is imagined with as great novelty and daring as “Pride and Prejudice,’ and that Anne is as genuinely a heroine as Elizabeth.

  In “Persuasion” Jane Austen made bold to take the case of a girl, neither weak nor ambitious, who lets the doubts and dislikes of her family and friends prevail with her, and gives up the man she loves because they think him beneath her in family and fortune. She yields because she is gentle and diffident of herself, and her indignant lover resents and despises her submission if he does not despise her. He is a young officer
of the navy, rising to prominence in the service which was then giving England the supremacy of the seas, but he is not thought the equal of a daughter of such a baronet as Sir Walter Elliot. It is quite possible that in her portrayal of the odious situation Jane Austen avenges with personal satisfaction the new order against the old, for her brothers were of the navy, and the family hope and pride of the Austens were bound up with its glories. At any rate, when Sir Walter’s debts oblige him to let Kellynch Hall, and live on a simple scale in Bath, it is a newly made admiral who becomes his tenant; and it is the brother of the admiral’s wife who is Anne’s rejected lover, and who now comes to visit his sister, full of victory and prize-money, with the avowed purpose of marrying and settling in life.

  Seven years have passed since Frederick Wentworth angrily parted with Anne Elliot. They have never really ceased to love each other; but the effect has been very different with the active, successful man, and the quiet, dispirited girl. No longer in her first youth, she devotes herself to a little round of duties, principally in the family of her foolish, peevish younger sister; and finds her chief consolation in the friendship of the woman who so conscientiously urged her to her great mistake. The lovers meet in the Musgrove family into which Anne’s sister has married, and Wentworth’s fancy seems taken with one of the pretty daughters. Divers transparent devices are then employed rather to pique the reader’s interest than to persuade him that the end is going to be other than what it must be. Nothing can be quite said to determine it among the things that happen; Wentworth and Anne simply live back into the mutual recognition of their love. He learns to know better her lovely and unselfish nature, and so far from having formally to forgive her, he prizes her the more for the very qualities which made their unhappiness possible. For her part, she has merely to own again the affection which has been a dull ache in her heart for seven years. Her father’s pride is reconciled to her marriage, which is now with a somebody instead of the nobody Captain Wentworth once was. Sir Walter “was much struck with his personal claims, and felt that his superiority of appearance might not be unfairly balanced against her superiority of rank....

  He was now esteemed quite worthy to address the daughter of a foolish, spendthrift baronet who had not principle or sense enough to maintain himself in the situation in which Providence had placed him.” As for Anne’s mischievous, well-meaning friend who had urged her to break with Wentworth before, “there was nothing less for Lady Russell to do than to admit that she had been completely wrong, and to take up a new set of opinions and hopes.”

  II

  This outline of the story gives no just sense of its quality, which resides mainly in its constancy to nature; and it gives no sufficient notion of the variety of character involved in the uneventful, quiet action. Anne’s arrogant and selfish father, her cold-hearted, selfish elder sister, and her mean, silly, empty-headed younger sister, with the simple, kindly Musgrove family, form rather the witnesses than the persons of the drama, which transacts itself with the connivance rather than the participation of Sir Walter’s heir-at-law, the clever, depraved and unscrupulous cousin, William Walter Eliot; Lady Russell, the ill-advised adviser of the broken engagement; the low-born, manoeuvring Mrs. Clay, who all but captures the unwary Sir Walter; the frank, warm-hearted Admiral Crofts and his wife, and the whole sympathetic naval contingent at Lyme Regis. They brighten the reality of the picture, and form its atmosphere; they could not be spared, and yet, with the exception of Louisa Musgrove, who jumps from the sea-wall at Regis, and by her happy accident brings about the final understanding of the lovers, none of them actively contributes to the event, which for the most part accomplishes itself subjectively through the nature of Anne and Wentworth.

  Of the two Anne is by far the more interesting and important personage; her story is distinctly the story of a heroine; yet never was there a heroine so little self-assertive, so far from forth-putting. When the book opens we find her neglected and contemned by her father and elder sister, and sunken passively if not willingly into mere aunthood to her younger sister’s children, with no friend who feels her value but that Lady Russell who has helped her to spoil her life. She goes to pay a long visit to her sister as soon as Kellynch Hall is taken by the Croftses, and it is in a characteristic moment of her usefulness there that Wentworth happens upon her, after their first cold and distant meeting before others.

  The mother, as usual, had left a sick child to Anne’s care, when “Captain Wentworth walked into the drawing-room at the Cottage, where were only herself and the little invalid Charles, who was lying on the sofa....

  He started, and could only say, ‘I thought the Miss Musgroves had been here; Mrs. Musgrove told me I should find them here,’ before he walked to the window to recollect himself, and feel how he ought to behave. ‘They are up-stairs with my sister; they will be down in a few minutes, I dare say,’ had been Anne’s reply in all the confusion that was natural; and if the child had not called to her to come and do something for him, she would have been out of the room the next moment, and released Captain Wentworth as well as herself. He continued at the window, and after calmly and politely saying, ‘I hope the little boy is better,’ was silent. She was obliged to kneel by the sofa, and remain there to satisfy her patient, and thus they continued a few minutes, when, to her very great satisfaction, she heard some other person crossing the vestibule. It proved to be Charles Hayter,” who supposes Wentworth to be his rival for one of the Miss Musgroves. He seats himself, and takes up a newspaper, ignoring Wentworth’s willingness to talk. “Another minute brought another addition. The younger boy, a remarkably stout, forward child of two years old, having got the door opened, made his determined appearance among them, and went straight to the sofa to see what was going on, and put in his claim to anything good that might be given away. There being nothing to eat, he could only have some play, and as his aunt would not let him tease his sick brother, he began to fasten himself upon her, as she knelt, in a way that, busy as she was about Charles, she could not shake him off. She spoke to him, ordered, insisted, and entreated in vain. Once she did contrive to push him away, but the boy had the greater pleasure in getting upon her back again directly. ‘Walter,’ said she, ‘get down this moment. You are extremely troublesome. I am very angry with you,’ ‘Walter,’ cried Charles Hayter, ‘why do you not do as you are bid?... Come to me, Walter,’ But not a bit did Walter stir. In another moment she found herself in the state of being released from him; some one was taking him from her, though he had bent down her head so much that his sturdy little hands were unfastened from around her neck and he was resolutely borne away, before she knew that Captain Wentworth had done it.... She could not even thank him. She could only hang over little Charles with most disordered feelings... with the conviction soon forced upon her by the noise he was studiously making with the child, that he meant to avoid hearing her thanks... till enabled by the entrance of Mary and the Miss Musgroves to make over her patient to their care and leave the room. She could not stay.... She was ashamed of herself, quite ashamed of being so nervous, and of being overcome by such a trifle; but so it was, and it required a long application of solitude and reflection to recover her.”

  III

  As any practised reader of fiction could easily demonstrate, this is not the sort of rescue to bring about a reconciliation between lovers in a true novel. There it must be something more formidable than a naughty little boy that the heroine is saved from: it must be a deadly miscreant, or a mad bull, or a frightened horse, or an express train, or a sinking ship. Still it cannot be denied that this simple, this homely scene, is very pretty, and is very like things that happen in life, where there is reason to think love is oftener shown in quality than quantity, and does its effect as perfectly in the little as in the great events. Even the most tremendous incident of the book, the famous passage which made Tennyson, when he visited Lyme Regis, wish to see first of all the place where Louisa Musgrove fell from the Cobb, has hardly heroic prop
ortions, though it is of greater intensity in its lifelikeness, and it reverses the relations of Anne and Wentworth in the characters of helper and helped.

  “There was too much wind to make the high part of the new Cobb pleasant for the ladies, and they agreed to get down the steps to the lower, and all were contented to pass quietly and safely down the steep steps excepting Louisa; she must be jumped down them by Captain Wentworth.... She was safely down, and instantly to shew her enjoyment, ran up the steps to be jumped down again. He advised her against it, thought the jar too great; but no, he reasoned and talked in vain, she smiled and said, ‘I am determined I will ‘: he put out his hands; she was too precipitate by half a second; she fell on the pavement on the Lower Cobb, and was taken up lifeless! There was no wound, no visible bruise; but her eyes were closed, she breathed not, her face was like death.... Captain Wentworth, who had caught her up, knelt with her in his arms, looking on her with a face as pallid as her own in an agony of silence. ‘She is dead!’ screamed Mary, catching hold of her husband, and contributing with her own horror to make him immovable; and in the same moment, Henrietta, sinking under the conviction, lost her senses, too, and would have fallen on the steps, but for Captain Benwick and Anne, who supported her between them. ‘Is there no one to help me?’ were the first words that burst from Captain Wentworth. ‘Go to him; go to him,’ cried Anne; ‘for Heaven’s sake, go to him. Leave me and go to him. Rub her hands, rub her temples; here are salts; take them, take them. ‘Louisa was raised up and supported between them. Everything was done that Anne had prompted, but in vain; while Captain Wentworth, staggering against the wall for his support, exclaimed in the bitterest agony, ‘Oh, God! Her father and mother!’ ‘A surgeon!’ said Anne. He caught at the word; it seemed to route him at once; and saying only, ‘True, true; a surgeon this instant.’... Anne, attending with all the strength and zeal and thought, which instinct supplied, to Henrietta, still tried, at intervals, to suggest comfort to the others, tried to quiet Mary, to animate Charles, to assuage the feelings of Captain Wentworth. Both seemed to look to her for direction. ‘Anne, Anne,’ cried Charles, ‘what in Heaven’s name is to be done next?’ Captain Wentworth’s eyes were also turned towards her. ‘Had she not better be carried to the inn? Yes, I am sure; carry her to the inn.’ ‘Yes, yes, to the inn,’ repeated Wentworth.... ‘I will carry her myself.’”