Part 8

There are no "heroes" among these honest gentlemen of a hundred years ago. Wentworth has indeed won credit and fortune at sea. Bertram and Knightley do nothing to entitle them to the name, beyond marrying the heroine. Edward Ferrars merely behaves properly in keeping faith {156} with Lucy as long as she wants him. Darcy is heroic in taking Mrs. Bennet for a mother-in-law; Henry Tilney makes fun of his chosen mate in a way that would have cost him her heart in a more conventional novel. "Il y a des héros en mal comme en bien," says Rochefoucauld, but of the evil-doing kind there are none here, unless, indeed, the effrontery with which, after jilting Marianne for a rich wife, Willoughby comes to her sister Elinor and asks for her sympathy for his sad fate, or the coolness of Wickham in the presence of the people he has wronged may be regarded as evidence of heroism.

It is to the wonderfully true presentation of the hearts and minds of girls that these novels chiefly owe their immense power of attraction even for readers who miss the greater part of the humour. Fanny Price and Elinor Dashwood are themselves but poorly endowed with humour, and Catherine Morland only possesses it in the rudimentary way of a lively school-girl. With how much of understanding, how clearly and fully are the hopes and fears, the innocent little plans of Fanny and Catherine, the more mature and reasoned ways of Elinor shown to us, without the least apparent effort.

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The trustful reader nurtured on the successful fiction of our own time, especially that of the last ten years, during which English novelists have been able to indulge themselves and their public by the introduction of incidents and types of character which up to about the commencement of that decade would have secured the ban of the circulating libraries, has been led to believe that sensual impulse plays as large a part in woman's life as in man's. That such women as Lady Bellaston in _Tom Jones_, Arabelle in _Le Lys dans la Vallée_, or the Bellona of _Richard Feverel_ exist, and in great numbers, is certain, but they are not representative of woman. Balzac, who was not: much restrained by any fear of the libraries, knew that many faithless wives (so very common in French fiction and drama, whatever they might be in life) gave themselves to men their love for whom contained much less of sensuality than of other instincts. Esther, the unhappy Jewess of _Splendeurs et Misèes de Courtisanes_, loves Lucien with an affection far more chaste than that which many a correct heroine is made to display for the man with whom she goes to the altar in the last chapter. The mistresses of famous men, as known to us from memoirs and histories, have not {158} generally been of a sensual nature. Aspasia, most distinguished of them all, was of the intellectual, not the sensual, type. Strangely indelicate as was Madame du Châtelet, her relations with Voltaire were based on affinity of literary taste and critical appreciation much more than on physical attraction. Even among the unintellectual women who have figured among the _grandes amoureuses_ of history, the passion of the woman does not in most instances appear to have been of the coarser kind. Louise de la Vallière is at least more typical of womanhood than Barbara Villiers.

Emma Woodhouse, deeply distressed at the supposed intention of Knightley to marry Harriet Smith, feels that she cares not what may happen, if he will but remain single all his life. "Could she be secure of that, indeed, of his never marrying at all, she believed she should be perfectly satisfied. Let him but continue the same Mr. Knightley to her and her father, the same Mr. Knightley to all the world; let Donwell and Hartfield lose none of their precious intercourse of friendship and confidence, and her peace would be fully secured. Marriage, in fact, would not do for her." Marriage, we know, "did for her" very {159} well, and not at all, so far as we have her story, in the idiomatic sense in which the words are commonly used. But in this healthy maiden, who could regard with equanimity a future wherein the man she liked best should never be more to her than a dear friend who dropped in for tea or supper, we have an effective illustration of the relative insignificance of passion in Jane Austen's view of life.

Emma Woodhouse has near relations in Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferrars, who, after the marriage of Lucy Steele to Robert Ferrars had cleared away the only barrier to their own avowals of affection, "were neither of them quite enough in love to think that three hundred and fifty pounds a year would supply them with the comforts of life." Kitty and Lydia Bennet could simultaneously adore all the officers of a militia regiment, but there was nothing of the "all for love, and the world well lost" nonsense about any of the agreeable women of Jane Austen's creation. They were not to be captured by a man's attractions of mind and person in the way that Millamant was by Mirabell's, nor even by the art of others, as Beatrice was won for {160} Benedick--and he for her. The names of Millamant and Beatrice were in the ancestral tree of Elizabeth Bennet, but her pulses beat more regularly than theirs.

In the effect of Mary Crawford's charms on Edmund Bertram we may see some pale suggestion of such an awakening as that of Robert Orange (in _The School for Saints_), who, on meeting with Brigit, "suddenly had found presented to him a mind and a nature in such complete harmony with his own that it had seemed as though he were the words and she the music, of one song." But it was only a "seeming" in Edmund's case, and while we read Jane Austen our thoughts are rarely allowed to flow into a "Romeo and Juliet" channel for more than a few moments at a time.

The re-awakening of Wentworth's dormant love for Anne Elliot would have afforded to most lady novelists an opportunity for some fine, romantic writing. Jane Austen allows herself no romance in the matter. The sea air at Lyme has heightened Anne's colour, and a passing visitor--her cousin, as it happens--is attracted by her appearance. Wentworth notices his glances of admiration and is _reminded_ that she is charming!

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"When they came to the steps leading upwards from the beach, a gentleman, at the same moment preparing to come down, politely drew back and stopped to give them way. They ascended and passed him; and as they passed, Anne's face caught his eye, and he looked at her with a degree of earnest admiration which she could not be insensible of. She was looking remarkably well; her very regular, very pretty features having the bloom and freshness of youth restored by the fine wind which had been blowing on her complexion, and by the animation of eye which it had also produced. It was evident that the gentleman (completely a gentleman in manner) admired her exceedingly. Captain Wentworth looked round at her instantly in a way which showed his noticing of it. He gave her a momentary glance--a glance of brightness which seemed to say, 'That man is struck with you'--and even I, at this moment, see something like Anne Elliot again."

This scene may be deficient in the sentiment that delights Catherine Morlands and Marianne Dashwoods, but it is a bit of true observation of a familiar phase of human folly. Archbishop Whately remarks that: "Authoresses ... can scarcely ever forget that they _are authoresses_. They seem to feel a sympathetic shudder at exposing naked a female mind. _Elles se peignent en buste_, and {162} leave the mysteries of womanhood to be described by some interloping male, like Richardson or Marivaux, who is turned out before he has seen half the rites, and is forced to spin from his own conjectures the rest. Now from this fault Miss Austin is free. Her heroines are what one knows women must be, though one never can get them to acknowledge it." It is a striking proof of the little that was known of Jane Austen by her contemporaries that, even four years after her death, neither Whately himself, nor the editor of the _Quarterly Review_ knew how to spell her name.

The criticism that the mind brought up on modern fiction would be likely to make on the girls of Jane Austen would be the reverse of Whately's. It would be that her chief defect in depicting woman's character was that she almost invariably did force the reader to spin from his own conjectures when the "mysteries of the heart" were the subject of her pages. The truth is divided, I think, between the Archbishop and the supposed modern critic. Jane's heroines are true women, admirably portrayed, but they only represent a certain proportion of their sex. It could never be suspected of Elizabeth, or Elinor, {163} or Anne, or Fanny that there was Southern blood in her veins. There might have been a few drops--no more--in Marianne's. The feelings of the author are reflected in her most attractive characters. She might have married, again and again, of that there can be small doubt; and while for herself she shared Dorothy Osborne's opinion as to the essentials of conjugal happiness, I fancy that she would also have agreed with Dorothy's brother that "all passions have more of trouble than satisfaction in them, and therefore they are happiest that have least of them." That, indeed, as we have already seen, was very much the fault that Miss Brontë found in her as a novelist.

Anne Elliot comes nearer than any of her fellow-heroines to Dorothy Osborne's ideal of the changelessness of affection, the true union of hearts, but, save for her involuntary tears at the Musgroves', she kept her feelings under the most perfect control, and never, we may be sure, tried to beat her convictions into the heads of her silly family, or even of her faithful friend Lady Russell.

There were, we may fairly believe, not a few who would like to have been Jane's chosen mate. {164} One such unhappy being seems, as we read, to be the actor in the little bit of serious comedy related, with lively exaggeration, in a letter written when she was twenty-five years old. "Your unfortunate sister was betrayed last Thursday into a situation of the utmost cruelty. I arrived at Ashe Park before the party from Deane, and was shut up in the drawing-room with Mr. Holder alone for ten minutes. I had some thoughts of insisting on the housekeeper or Mary Corbett being sent for, and nothing could prevail on me to move two steps from the door, on the lock of which I kept one hand constantly fixed."

Elizabeth Bennet was not more uncomfortable when her mother took Kitty up-stairs after breakfast in order that Mr. Collins might have what he called "The honour of a private audience" with the elder girl. "Dear ma'am," Elizabeth cried, "do not go. I beg you will not go. Mr. Collins must excuse me. He can have nothing to say to me that anybody need not hear. I am going away myself." But her mother's, "Lizzy, I _insist_ upon your staying and hearing Mr. Collins," compelled her to remain, with results for which we must ever be grateful to {165} Mrs. Bennet. It is not clear, however, that Mr. Holder was a suitor for Jane. We are left in doubt both as to his hopes and his demerits.

There is a little matter connected with the _Quarterly's_ two articles in praise of Jane which is perhaps worth noting here. Gifford, who was editor when both appeared, was so warm a supporter of the Prince Regent that Hazlitt--one of Gifford's "beasts"--wrote in an open letter to him: "When you damn an author, one knows that he is not a favourite at Carlton House." Now the Prince is said to have been so fond of Jane Austen's novels that he kept a set in each of his residences, and it is unquestionable that, in consequence of a suggestion that was "equivalent to a command," she dedicated Emma to him. "You will be pleased to hear," she wrote on April 1, 1816, to John Murray the First, who published the book, "that I have received the Prince's thanks for the _handsome_ copy I sent him of 'Emma.' Whatever he may think of _my_ share of the work, yours seems to have been quite right."

In the same letter she expresses her disappointment at the "total omission of 'Mansfield Park'" {166} in the _Quarterly's_ review of her work in the preceding autumn. As to that review, it is a curious fact that until Lockhart's "Life of Scott" appeared, Whately, who wrote the 1821 article, was credited with the authorship of the earlier review, and it is still to be found against his name in the British Museum catalogue, not from the ignorance of the cataloguers, but because he appears as author on the title-page of a reprint of the article issued at Ahmedabad in 1889.

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V

THE IMPARTIAL SATIRIST

What has woman done?--"Nature's Salic law"--Women deficient in satire--Some types in the novels--The female snob--The valetudinarian--The fop--The too agreeable man--"Personal size and mental sorrow"--Knightley's opinion of Emma--Ashamed of relations--Mrs. Bennet--The clergy and their opinions--Worldly life--Absence of dogma--Authors confused with their creations.

It is a commonplace of those who refuse to recognize the claims of woman to equal treatment in spheres of activity where man has long held a monopoly, to ask what great thing has woman done in any walk of life? One may talk in reply of Sappho, of Joan of Arc, of George Sand, of George Eliot, of Florence Nightingale, and two or three others, and the retort, if the greatness of these be admitted, is that they are the exceptions that "prove" the rule. It is difficult, impossible perhaps, to upset the man who denies that anything of "the greatest" in art, or literature, or science has been achieved by a woman. The list {170} of women who have left an abiding fame as poets, or novelists, or painters is soon exhausted, and there is not a name that can, without reserve, be placed among the Rembrandts and Turners, the Goethes and Miltons, the Newtons and Darwins of mankind. Maybe this deficiency is largely due to lack of opportunity. Since the gates were partly opened to woman, within the lifetime of those who are still not old, she has done enough to change the opinions of many who held that rocking the cradle was a sufficiently active share in the ruling of the world for the sex that produced the Maid of Orleans and the Lady with the Lamp. Such justly conspicuous success as Madame Curie has attained in chemistry, or Mrs. Garrett Anderson in medicine, or Mrs. Scharlieb in surgery, has compelled the admission that even if woman were by nature unfitted to reach the highest levels of intellectual achievement, she at least could not be excluded from the learned professions on the ground of inadequate mental equipment.

"Nature's old Salic law," said Huxley, "will not be repealed, and no change of dynasty will be effected." Jane Austen, at any rate, did not {171} desire to repeal it. She was among the most feminine of the women writers who have left an enduring reputation. It is something of a paradox, therefore, that the quality on which her fame chiefly rests is one which is rare among women, and in which most of those women who have attained success in literature have been conspicuously lacking--satirical humour. Apart from physical disabilities, want of humour is woman's heaviest handicap in the conflict of life. Humour is the principal ingredient of the philosophic temperament. Woman has courage in adversity, she can suffer intensely without complaint, but she rarely possesses the power of laughing at her own misfortunes.

It has been said, and the saying might not easily be gainsaid, that none of the great jokes of the world was made by a woman. There are perhaps fifty great jokes--spoken jokes, of course, are meant, not those generally humourless things known as "practical jokes"--and the good stories that are told and received as novelties are, save in the rarest instances, merely new editions of some wheeze which was already ancient when it was told to a circle of mead-drinkers round a fire {172} the smoke whereof--or some of it--escaped through the roof. It is, there is reason to believe, no mere figure of speech that originally most of the basic jokes were told round the galley fire of the Ark during the long dark evenings after the animals had been fed, the decks swept down, and the women had retired to their quarters. Thus may we account for the otherwise inexplicably large proportion of sea-faring and animal tales among the mirth-provoking yarns of man. A woman might never make a joke, and yet have a keen sense of humour, while, on the other hand, she might make many jokes, and have no sense of humour at all. Most of the jokes that have any element of freshness are alive with fun, and not with humour. Who is more humourless than the notoriously funny man?

Jane Austen is not often funny and seldom makes jokes in her novels. Her humour is of the essential kind, which is so nearly akin to wit that it is often almost identical with it. Wit and humour, after all definitions, are brothers who might be taken for one another by those who do not notice that the one has colder hands than the other.

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If you want to laugh heartily you must not trust to Jane's novels for a stimulant. Her characters laugh but little among themselves, and are the cause of intellectual joy rather than of physical contractions in those who read about them.

When, after a re-reading of the novels, we sit and think over their delights, many are the admirable bits of character-drawing that come to mind. After we have thought of the heroines, the "good" people, in the common meaning of the word, do not come back to us so readily as those who, if not "bad," are decidedly faulty. The Westons, the Gardiners, the Harvilles, the Crofts, Lady Russell, the John Knightleys, we recall when we jog our memories. After Elizabeth, and Emma, and Anne, it is the appallingly tactless Mrs. Bennet, the odiously snobbish Mrs. Elton, the race-proud Lady Catherine, the entirely selfish Mr. Collins, the lazy and thoughtless Lady Bertram, the mean and tyrannical Mrs. Norris, the fatuous Sir Walter Elliot, these and their like, who throng into view. No writer--not even Thackeray--has realized the female snob more knowingly than Jane Austen in Mrs. Elton, whose {174} constant reference of all matters of taste to the standard presented by "Maple Grove" and the "barouche-landau" renders her as diverting to us as she was insufferable to Emma Woodhouse. A woman like this, who is never betrayed into an unselfish action or a noble aspiration, is happily not a common object in real life, but there are enough of Mrs. Elton's great-granddaughters about the world to exculpate Jane from the charge of undue exaggeration. Emma herself has been called a snob, and only the other day was described as "perpetually acting with bad taste." But Emma's disdain for Robert Martin, and her opinion of the degradation of marrying a governess, were due to prejudices of convention, which thought--under Knightley's influence--dispelled. Mrs. Elton was a snob at heart, who revelled in her own vulgarity of instinct.

If the snob is portrayed to perfection in Mrs. Elton, the valetudinarian is no less happily presented in Mr. Woodhouse--"My dear Emma, suppose we all have a little gruel"--and for a picture of an empty-headed, frivolous wife married to a rational and bearish husband, the Palmers, in _Sense and Sensibility_, have few equals. As for {175} Miss Bates, she is without a serious rival as an inconsequential babbler, and though we may be, and ought to be, as angry with Emma for her rudeness at the Box Hill picnic as was Mr. Knightley himself, we must admit that years of Miss Bates's disjoined garrulity were some set-off against that gross breach of charity and good manners. Lady Catherine de Bourgh has been placed by some critical readers among Jane Austen's obvious caricatures. Is she not an entirely credible, if happily rare, type? She is seen in a strong light in her attempt to bully Elizabeth into a promise not to marry Darcy--

"'With regard to the resentment of his family,' says Elizabeth at last, 'or the indignation of the world, if the former _were_ excited by his marrying me, it would not give me one moment's concern--and the world in general would have too much sense to join in the scorn.'

"'And this is your real opinion!' replies Lady Catherine. 'This is your final resolve! Very well. I shall now 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 will carry my point.'

"In this manner Lady Catherine talked on till {176} 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."

Thus ends one of the great scenes of Jane Austen, a bit of duologue which gives us the natures and capacities of two remarkable people, a charming, clear-headed, self-reliant girl, and a blustering, stupidly proud old woman.

Sir Walter Elliot is the companion figure, more highly-coloured, of Lady Catherine. This man, a vain fop who has not sense enough to govern his own affairs, regards professional men as contemptible, if necessary, adjuncts of society, and, at a time when only the splendid services of our sailors had saved England from disaster he thus babbles about the navy--

"Yes; it is in two points offensive to me, I have two strong grounds of objection to it. First, as being the means of bringing persons of obscure {177} birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honours which their fathers and grandfathers never dreamt of; and, secondly, as it cuts up a man's youth and vigour most horribly; a sailor grows old sooner than any other man. I have observed it all my life. A man is in greater danger in the navy of being insulted by the rise of one whose father his father might have disdained to speak to, and of becoming prematurely an object of disgust himself, than in any other line. One day last spring, in town, I was in company with two men, striking instances of what I am talking of,--Lord St. Ives, whose father we all know to have been a country curate, without bread to eat: I was to give place to Lord St. Ives,--and a certain Admiral Baldwin, the most deplorable-looking personage you can imagine; his face the colour of mahogany, rough and rugged to the last degree; all lines and wrinkles, nine grey hairs of a side, and nothing but a dab of powder at top. 'In the name of heaven, who is that old fellow?' said I to a friend of mine who was standing near (Sir Basil Morley). 'Old fellow!' cried Sir Basil, 'it is Admiral Baldwin. What do you take his age to be?' 'Sixty,' said I, 'or perhaps sixty-two.' 'Forty,' replied Sir Basil, 'forty, and no more.' Picture to yourselves my amazement: I shall not easily forget Admiral Baldwin. I never saw quite so wretched an example of what a sea-faring life can do; but to a degree, I know it is the same with them all: they are all knocked about, and {178} exposed to every climate, and every weather, till they are not fit to be seen. It is a pity they are not knocked on the head at once, before they reach Admiral Baldwin's age."

There have been such fools as Sir Walter Elliot, but as a type he is overdrawn. Jane loved the navy so much that her anger with those who disparaged it gave her pen speed and added colour to the ink.

Anne's cousin William Elliot, whose attentions to her help to revive Wentworth's affection, is more closely studied by the author than any of her "heroes."