Memoir of Jane Austen by James Edward Austen-Leigh (best books to read for success txt) 📕

‘Sept. 9.

‘You are now collecting your people delightfully, getting them exactly into such a spot as is the delight of my life.  Three or four families in a country village is the very thing to work on; and I hope you will write a great deal more, and make full use of them while they are so very favourably arranged.’

‘Sept. 28.

‘Devereux Forrester being ruined by his vanity is very good: but I wish you would not let him plunge into a “vortex of dissipation.”  I do not object to the thing, but I cannot bear the expression: it is such thorough novel slang; and so old that I dare say Adam met with it in the first novel that he opened.’

‘Hans Place (Nov. 1814).

‘I have been very far from finding your book an evil, I assure you.  I read it immediately, and with great pleasure.  Indeed, I do think you get on very fast.  I wish other people of my acquaintance could compose as rapidly.  Julian’s history was quite a surprise to me.  You had not very long known it yourself, I suspect; but I have no objection to make to the circumstance; it is very well told, and his having been in love with the aunt gives Cecilia an additional interest with him.  I like the idea; a very proper compliment to an aunt!  I rather imagine, indeed, that nieces are seldom chosen but in compliment to some aunt or other.  I dare say your husband was in love with me once, and would never have thought of you if he had not supposed me dead of a scarlet fever.’

Jane Austen was successful in everything that she attempted with her fingers.  None of us could throw spilikins in so perfect a circle, or take them off with so steady a hand.  Her performances with cup and ball were marvellous.  The one used at Chawton was an easy one, and she has been known to catch it on the point above an hundred times in succession, till her hand was weary.  She sometimes found a resource in that simple game, when unable, from weakness in her eyes, to read or write long together.  A specimen of her clear strong handwriting is here given.  Happy would the compositors for the press be if they had always so legible a manuscript to work from.  But the writing was not the only part of her letters which showed superior handiwork.  In those days there was an art in folding and sealing.  No adhesive envelopes made all easy.  Some people’s letters always looked loose and untidy; but her paper was sure to take the right folds, and her sealing-wax to drop into the right place.  Her needlework both plain and ornamental was excellent, and might almost have put a sewing machine to shame.  She was considered especially great in satin stitch.  She spent much time in these occupations, and some of her merriest talk was over clothes which she and her companions were making, sometimes for themselves, and sometimes for the poor.  There still remains a curious specimen of her needlework made for a sister-in-law, my mother.  In a very small bag is deposited a little rolled up housewife, furnished with minikin needles and fine thread.  In the housewife is a tiny pocket, and in the pocket is enclosed a slip of paper, on which, written as with a crow quill, are these lines:—

This little bag, I hope, will prove
   To be not vainly made;
For should you thread and needles want,
   It will afford you aid.

And, as we are about to part,
   ‘T will serve another end:
For, when you look upon this bag,
   You’ll recollect your friend.

It is the kind of article that some benevolent fairy might be supposed to give as a reward to a diligent little girl.  The whole is of flowered silk, and having been never used and carefully preserved, it is as fresh and bright as when it was first made seventy years ago; and shows that the same hand which painted so exquisitely with the pen could work as delicately with the needle.

I have collected some of the bright qualities which shone, as it were, on the surface of Jane Austen’s character, and attracted most notice; but underneath them there lay the strong foundations of sound sense and judgment, rectitude of principle, and delicacy of feeling, qualifying her equally to advise, assist, or amuse.  She was, in fact, as ready to comfort the unhappy, or to nurse the sick, as she was to laugh and jest with the lighthearted.  Two of her nieces were grown up, and one of them was married, before she was taken away from them.  As their minds became more matured, they were admitted into closer intimacy with her, and learned more of her graver thoughts; they know what a sympathising friend and judicious adviser they found her to be in many little difficulties and doubts of early womanhood.

I do not venture to speak of her religious principles: that is a subject on which she herself was more inclined to think and act than to talk, and I shall imitate her reserve; satisfied to have shown how much of Christian love and humility abounded in her heart, without presuming to lay bare the roots whence those graces grew.  Some little insight, however, into these deeper recesses of the heart must be given, when we come to speak of her death.

Habits of Composition resumed after a long interval—First publication—The interest taken by the Author in the success of her Works.

It may seem extraordinary that Jane Austen should have written so little during the years that elapsed between leaving Steventon and settling at Chawton; especially when this cessation from work is contrasted with her literary activity both before and after that period.  It might rather have been expected that fresh scenes and new acquaintance would have called forth her powers; while the quiet life which the family led both at Bath and Southampton must have afforded abundant leisure for composition; but so it was that nothing which I know of, certainly nothing which the public have seen, was completed in either of those places.  I can only state the fact, without assigning any cause for it; but as soon as she was fixed in her second home, she resumed the habits of composition which had been formed in her first, and continued them to the end of her life.  The first year of her residence at Chawton seems to have been devoted to revising and preparing for the press ‘Sense and Sensibility,’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice’; but between February 1811 and August 1816, she began and completed ‘Mansfield Park,’ ‘Emma,’ and ‘Persuasion,’ so that the last five years of her life produced the same number of novels with those which had been written in her early youth.  How she was able to effect all this is surprising, for she had no separate study to retire to, and most of the work must have been done in the general sitting-room, subject to all kinds of casual interruptions.  She was careful that her occupation should not be suspected by servants, or visitors, or any persons beyond her own family party.  She wrote upon small sheets of paper which could easily be put away, or covered with a piece of blotting paper.  There was, between the front door and the offices, a swing door which creaked when it was opened; but she objected to having this little inconvenience remedied, because it gave her notice when anyone was coming.  She was not, however, troubled with companions like her own Mrs. Allen in ‘Northanger Abbey,’ whose ‘vacancy of mind and incapacity for thinking were such that, as she never talked a great deal, so she could never be entirely silent; and therefore, while she sat at work, if she lost her needle, or broke her thread, or saw a speck of dirt on her gown, she must observe it, whether there were any one at leisure to answer her or not.’  In that well occupied female party there must have been many precious hours of silence during which the pen was busy at the little mahogany writing-desk, {102} while Fanny Price, or Emma Woodhouse, or Anne Elliott was growing into beauty and interest.  I have no doubt that I, and my sisters and cousins, in our visits to Chawton, frequently disturbed this mystic process, without having any idea of the mischief that we were doing; certainly we never should have guessed it by any signs of impatience or irritability in the writer.

As so much had been previously prepared, when once she began to publish, her works came out in quick succession.  ‘Sense and Sensibility’ was published in 1811, ‘Pride and Prejudice’ at the beginning of 1813, ‘Mansfield Park’ in 1814, ‘Emma’ early in 1816; ‘Northanger Abbey’ and ‘Persuasion’ did not appear till after her death, in 1818.  It will be shown farther on why ‘Northanger Abbey,’ though amongst the first written, was one of the last published.  Her first three novels were published by Egerton, her last three by Murray.  The profits of the four which had been printed before her death had not at that time amounted to seven hundred pounds.

I have no record of the publication of ‘Sense and Sensibility,’ nor of the author’s feelings at this her first appearance before the public; but the following extracts from three letters to her sister give a lively picture of the interest with which she watched the reception of ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ and show the carefulness with which she corrected her compositions, and rejected much that had been written:—

Chawton, Friday, January 29 (1813).

‘I hope you received my little parcel by J. Bond on Wednesday evening, my dear Cassandra, and that you will be ready to hear from me again on Sunday, for I feel that I must write to you to-day.  I want to tell you that I have got my own darling child from London.  On Wednesday I received one copy sent down by Falkener, with three lines from Henry to say that he had given another to Charles and sent a third by the coach to Godmersham . . . .  The advertisement is in our paper to-day for the first time: 18s.  He shall ask 1l. 1s. for my two next, and 1l. 8s. for my stupidest of all.  Miss B. dined with us on the very day of the book’s coming, and in the evening we fairly set at it, and read half the first vol. to her, prefacing that, having intelligence from Henry that such a work would soon appear, we had desired him to send it whenever it came out, and I believe it passed with her unsuspected.  She was amused, poor soul!  That she could not help, you know, with two such people to lead the way, but she really does seem to admire Elizabeth.  I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least I do not know.  There are a few typical errors; and a “said he,” or a “said she,” would sometimes make the dialogue more immediately clear; but “I do not write for such dull elves” as have not a great deal of ingenuity themselves.  The second volume