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JANE AUSTEN AND HER TIMES;
(by Geraldine Edith Mitton), (1905).
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Very well written.
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"Of Jane Austen's life there is little to tell, and that little has been told more than once by writers whose relationship to her made them competent to do so. It is impossible to make even microscopic additions to the sum-total of the facts already known of that simple biography, and if by chance a few more original letters were discovered they could hardly alter the case, for in truth of her it may be said, "Story there is none to tell, sir." To the very pertinent question which naturally follows, reply may thus be given. Jane Austen stands absolutely alone, unapproached, in a quality in which women are usually supposed to be deficient, a humorous and brilliant insight into the foibles of human nature, and a strong sense of the ludicrous. As a writer in The Times (November 25, 1904) neatly puts it, "Of its kind the comedy of Jane Austen is incomparable. It is utterly merciless. Prancing victims of their illusions, her men and women are utterly bare to our understanding, and their gyrations are irresistibly comic. "Therefore as a personality, as a central figure, too much cannot be written about her, and however much is said or written the mystery of her genius will still always baffle conjecture, always lure men on to fresh attempts to analyse and understand her.
"The data of Jane Austen's life have been repeated several times, as has been said, but beyond a few trifling allusions to her times no writer has thought it necessary to show up the background against which her figure may be seen, or to sketch from contemporary records the environment amid which she developed. Yet surely she is even more wonderful as a product of her times than considered as an isolated figure; therefore the object of this book is to show her among the scenes wherein she moved, to sketch the men and women to whom she was accustomed, the habits and manners of her class, and the England with which she was familiar. Her life was not long, lasting only from 1775 to 1817, but it covered notable times, and with such an epoch for presentation, with such a central figure to link together the sequence of events, we have a theme as inspiring as could well be found."
"It is an endless puzzle why, when her books so faithfully represent the society and manners of a time so unlike our own, they seem so natural to us. If you tell any half-dozen people, who have not made a special study of the subject, at what date these novels were written, you will find that they are all surprised to hear how many generations ago Jane Austen lived, and that they have always vaguely imagined her to be very little earlier than, if not contemporary with, Charlotte Brontë or George Eliot. So far as I am aware, no writer on Jane Austen has ever touched on this problem before. Her stories are as fresh and real as the day they were written, her characters might be introduced to us in the flesh any time, and, with the exception of a certain quaintness of eighteenth-century flavouring, there is nothing to bring before us the striking difference between their environment and our own. It is true that the long coach journeys stand out as an exception to this, but they are the only marked exception. ... The knee-breeches of the men, their slippers and cravats, the neat, close-fitting clerical garb, these things we owe to the artists, —they are taken for granted in the text. It would have seemed as ridiculous to Jane Austen to describe them, as for a present-day novelist to mention that a London man made a call in a frock-coat and top-hat.
"Yet her word-pictures are living and detailed, filled in with innumerable little touches. How can we reconcile the seeming inconsistency? The explanation probably is, that without acting consciously, she, with the unerring touch of real genius, chose that which was lasting, and of interest for all time, from that which was ephemeral. In her sketches of human nature, in the strokes with which she describes character, no line is too fine or too delicate for her attention; but in the case of manners and customs she gives just the broad outlines that serve as a setting. Her novels are novels of character. But the problem is not confined to the books; in her letters to her sister, though there is abundant comment on dress, food, and minor details which should mark the epoch, yet the letters might have been written yesterday. Austin Dobson in one of his admirable prefaces to the novels says: "Going over her pages, pencil in hand, the antiquarian annotator is struck by their excessive modernity, and after a prolonged examination discovers, in this century-old record, nothing more fitted for the exercise of his ingenuity that such an obsolete game at cards as 'Casino' or 'quadrille.'
"And this is true also of her letters. More remarkable still is the entire absence of comment on the great events which thrilled the world; with the exception of an allusion to the death of Sir John Moore, we hear no whisper of the wars and upheavals which happened during her life. It is true that the Revolution in France, which shook monarchs on their thrones, occurred before the first date of the published letters, yet her correspondence covers a time when battles at sea were chronicled almost continuously, when an invasion by France was an ever-present terror; Trafalgar and Waterloo were not history, but contemporary events; but though Jane must have heard and discussed these matters, no echo finds its way into her lively and amusing budgets of chit-chat to her sister. Of course women were not supposed to read the papers in those days, but with to sailor brothers the news must have often been personal and intimate, and she was, according to the notions of her time, well educated; yet we search in vain for any allusion to such contemporary matters. It may be objected that the letters of a modern girl to a sister would hardly touch on questions which agitate the public, but there are several replies to this: in the first place, few such exciting events have occurred in recent times as happened during Jane Austen's life; our war in Africa was a mere trifle in comparison with the bloody field of Waterloo, where Blucher and Wellington lost 30,000 men, or the thrilling naval victory of Trafalgar; and stupendous as have been the recent battles between Russia and Japan, they affect us only indirectly —England is not herself involved in them, nor are her sons being slain daily. ... Thirdly, letters in Jane Austen's time were one great means of news, for newspapers were not so easy to get, and were much more costly than now, so that we expect to find more of contemporary events in letters than at a time like the present, when telegrams and columns of print save us the trouble of recording such matters in private."
"The epoch was one of change and enlargement in other than geographical directions. In the thirty years before Jane Austen's birth an immense improvement had taken place in the position of women. Mrs. Montagu, in 1750, had made bold strokes for the freedom and recognition of her sex. The epithet "blue-stocking," which has survived with such extraordinary tenacity, was at first given, not to the clever women who attended Mrs. Montagu's informal receptions, but to her men friends, who were allowed to come in the grey or blue worsted stockings of daily life, instead of the black silk considered de rigueur for parties. Up to this time, personal appearance and cards had been the sole resources for a leisured dame of the upper classes, and the language of gallantry was the only one considered fitting for her to hear. By Mrs. Montagu's efforts it was gradually recognised that a woman might not only have sense herself, but might prefer it should be spoken to her; and that because the minds of women had long been left uncultivated they were not on that account unworthy of cultivation. ... "
"As we have said, matters of history are not mentioned or noticed in Jane Austen's correspondence, which is taken up with her own environment, her neighbours, their habits and manners, and illumined throughout by a bright insight at times rather too biting to be altogether pleasant. Of her immediate surroundings we have a very clear idea.
"Of all the writers of fiction, Jane Austen is most thoroughly English. She never went abroad, and though her native good sense and shrewd gift of observation saved her from becoming insular, yet she cannot be conceived as writing of any but the sweet villages and the provincial towns of her native country. Even the Brontës, deeply secluded as their lives were, crossed the German Ocean, and saw something of continental life from their school at Brussels. Nothing of this kind fell to Jane Austen's share. Yet people did travel in those days, travelled amazingly considering the difficulties they had to encounter, among which were the horrors of a sailing-boat with its uncertain hours. Fielding, in going to Lisbon, was kept waiting a month for favourable winds! There was also the terrible embarking and landing from a small boat before such conveniences as landing-stages were built."
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"During a great part of Jane Austen's life, much of the continent was closed to English people because of the perpetual state of war between us and either Spain or France, but in any case such an expedition would seem to have lain quite outside her limited daily round, and was never even mooted.
"Steventon Rectory, where she was born on December 16, 1775, has long ago vanished, and a new rectory, more in accordance with modern luxurious notions, has been built. Of the old house, Lord Brabourne, great-nephew to Jane Austen, writes: “The house standing in the valley was somewhat better than the ordinary parsonage houses of the day; the old-fashioned hedgerows were beautiful, and the country around sufficiently picturesque for those who have the good taste to admire country scenery."
"The country and the writer suited each other so wonderfully, that one pauses for a moment wondering whether, after all, environment may not have that magic influence claimed for it by some who hold it to be more powerful than inherited qualities. Influence of course it has, and one wonders what could possibly have been the result if two such natures as those of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë had changed places; if Jane had been brought up amid the wild, bleak Yorkshire moors, and Charlotte amid the pleasant fields of Hampshire. As it is, the surroundings of each intensified and developed their own peculiar genius."
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"In the time of Jane's childhood the old days of rigid severity toward children were past, no longer were mere babies taken to see executions and whipped on their return to enforce the example they had beheld. ... "
"Her own attitude toward children is peculiar. Though on indisputable testimony she was the most popular and best loved of aunts, the fact remains that she had no great insight into child nature, nor does she seem to have had any general love of children beyond those who were specially connected with her by close ties. She loved her nieces, but much more as they grew older than as children."
"The truth probably is that her innate kindness of heart and unselfishness compelled her to be as amusing as possible when thrown with little people, but perhaps because she took so much trouble to entertain them she found children more tiresome than other people who accept their company more placidly. However this may be, it is undeniable that the attitude she takes toward children in her books is almost always that of their being tiresome, there never appears any genuine love for them or realisation of pleasure in their society; and she continually satirises the foolish weakness of their doting parents. It is recorded as a great feature in the character of Mrs. John Knightley "that in spite of her maternal solicitude for the immediate enjoyment of her little ones, and for their having instantly all the liberty and attendance, all the eating and drinking, and sleeping and playing, which they could possibly wish for, without the smallest delay, the children were never allowed to be long a disturbance to him [their grandfather] either in themselves or in any restless attendance on them.""
Author gives examples from her works.
""'I have a notion,' said Lucy [to Elinor] 'you think the little Middletons are too much indulged. Perhaps they may be the outside of enough, but it is so natural in Lady Middleton, and for my part I love to see children full of life and spirits; I cannot bear them if they are tame and quiet.'
""'I confess,' replied Elinor, 'that while I am at Barton Park I never think of tame and quiet children with any abhorrence!'""
"The other instance is a sample of a very nervous, shy child, perhaps drawn from the recollections of Jane Austen's own feelings in childhood, this is Fanny Price, whose loneliness on her first coming to Mansfield Park is carefully depicted, but Fanny herself is unchildlike and exceptional. Her younger brothers rank among the gallery of bad children, for by "the superior noise of Sam, Tom, and Charles chasing each other up and down stairs, and tumbling about and hallooing, Fanny was almost stunned. Sam, loud and overbearing as he was…..was clever and intelligent... Tom and Charles being at least as many years as they were his juniors distant from that age of feeling and reason which might suggest the expediency of making friends, and of endeavouring to be less disagreeable. ... "
"Jane Austen was a clergyman's daughter. At the present time there are undoubtedly wide differences in the social standing of the clergy according to their own birth and breeding, but yet it may be taken for granted that a clergyman is considered a fit guest for any man's table. It was not always so. There was a time when a clergyman was a kind of servant, ranking with the butler, whose hospitality he enjoyed; we have plenty of pictures of this state of affairs in The Vicar of Wakefield to go no further. But before Jane was born, matters had changed. The pendulum had not yet swung to the opposite extreme of our own day, when the fact of a man's being ordained is supposed to give him new birth in a social sense, and a tailor's son passes through the meagrest of the Universities in order that he may thus be transformed into a gentleman without ever considering whether he has the smallest vocation for the ministry. In the Austens' time the status of a clergyman depended a very great deal on himself, and as the patronage of the Church was chiefly in the hands of the well-to-do lay-patrons, who bestowed the livings on their younger sons or brothers, there was very frequently a tie of relationship between the vicarage and the great house, which was sufficient to ensure probably at its best, obviating any inducement to servility; but there was a very evil side to what may be called local patronage, which was much more in evidence than it is in our time. Archbishop Seeker, in his charges to the clergy of the diocese of Oxford, when he was their bishop in 1737, throws a very clear light on this side of the question. He expressly enjoins incumbents to make no promise to their patrons to quit the benefice when desired before entering into office. "The true meaning therefore is to commonly enslave the incumbent to the will and pleasure of the patron.” The motive for demanding such a promise was generally that the living might be held until such time as some raw young lad, a nephew or younger son of the lord of the manor, was ready to take it. The evils of such a system are but too apparent. We can imagine a nervous clergyman who would never dare to express an opinion contrary to the will of the benefactor who had the power to turn him out into the world penniless; we can imagine the time-server courting his patron with honeyed words. This debased type is inimitably sketched in the character of Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice. ... "
How can anyone forget Collins! Or his Lady of the Manor!
"Cowper's satire on the way in which preferment is secured ... "
""The parson knows enough who knows a duke.""
"The duties of clergymen were therefore almost as light as they chose to make them. One service on Sunday, and the Holy Communion three times yearly, at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, was considered enough."
"Baptisms, marriages, and funerals were looked on as nuisances; the clergyman ran them together as much as possible, and often arrived at the last minute, flinging himself off his smoking horse to gabble through the service with the greatest possible speed; children were frequently buried without any service at all.
"The churches were for the most part damp and mouldy; there were, of course, none of the present conveniences for heating and lighting. Heavy galleries cut off the little light that struggled through the cobwebby windows. There were mouse-eaten hassocks, curtains on rods thick with dust, a general smell of mouldiness and disuse, and a cold, but ill-ventilated, atmosphere.
"In some old country churches there still survive the family pews, which were like small rooms, and in which the occupants could read or sleep without being seen by anyone; in one or two cases there are fire-grates in these; and in one strange example at Langley, in Bucks, the pew is not only roofed in, but it has a lattice in front, with painted panels which can be opened and shut at the occupants' pleasure, and there is a room in connection with it in which is a library of books, so that it would be quite possible for anyone to retire for a little interlude without the rest of the congregation's being aware of it!
"The church, only opened as a rule once a week, was left for the rest of the time to the bats and birds. Compare this with one of the neat, warm, clean churches to be found almost everywhere at present; churches with polished wood pews, shining brass fittings, tessellated floor in place of uneven bricks, a communion table covered by a cloth worked by the vicar's wife, and bearing white flowers placed by loving hands. A pulpit of carved oak, alabaster, or marble, instead of a dilapidated old three-decker in which the parish clerk sat below and gave out the tunes in a droning voice."
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"But though the clergy frequently left all the work to their curates, they always took care to receive the tithes themselves. ... "
"Hannah More gives us an account of the usual state of things in regard to non-residence—
""The vicarage of Cheddar is in the gift of the Dean of Wells; the value nearly fifty pounds per annum. The incumbent is a Mr. K., who has something to do, but I cannot find out what, in the University of Oxford, where he resides. The curate lives at Wells, twelve miles distant. They have only service once a week, and there is scarcely an instance of a poor person being visited or prayed with. The living of Axbridge annual value is about fifty pounds. The incumbent about sixty years of age. Mr. G. is intoxicated about six times a week, and very frequently is prevented from preaching by two black eyes, honestly earned by fighting."
""We have in this neighbourhood thirteen adjoining parishes without so much as even a resident curate."
""No clergyman had resided in the parish for forty years. One rode over three miles from Wells to preach once on a Sunday, but no weekly duty was done or sick persons visited; and children were often buried without any funeral service. Eight people in the morning, and twenty in the afternoon, was a good congregation."
"She evidently means that the service was sometimes held in the morning, and sometimes in the afternoon, as she says there were not two services.
"She also speaks of it as an exceptionally disinterested action of Dr. Kennicott that he had resigned a valuable living because his learned work would not allow him to reside in the parish."
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"By far the best account of what was expected from a contemporary clergyman is to be gathered from Jane Austen's own books. It is one of her strong points that she wrote only of what she knew, and as her own father and two of her brothers were clergymen, we cannot suppose that she was otherwise than favourably inclined to the class. Her sketch of Mr. Collins is no doubt something of a caricature, but it serves to illustrate very forcibly one great error in the system then in vogue —that of local patronage.
"By far the best account of what was expected from a contemporary clergyman is to be gathered from Jane Austen's own books. It is one of her strong points that she wrote only of what she knew, and as her own father and two of her brothers were clergymen, we cannot suppose that she was otherwise than favourably inclined to the class. Her sketch of Mr. Collins is no doubt something of a caricature, but it serves to illustrate very forcibly one great error in the system then in vogue —that of local patronage.
"The other clergymen in her books are numerous: we have Mr. Elton in Emma, Edmund Bertram and Dr. Grant in Mansfield Park, Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey, and Edward Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility.
" It is impossible to deny that Edmund Bertram is a prig, or perhaps, to put it more mildly, is inclined to be sententious, so sometimes one almost sympathises with the gay Miss Crawford, whose ideas so shocked him and Fanny; yet though those ideas only reflected the current opinion of the times, they were reprehensible enough. ... "
" ... she says: "It is indolence, Mr. Bertram, indeed —indolence and love of ease —a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but to be slovenly and selfish, read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work, and the business of his own life is to dine.'"
"This type is exemplified in the same book by Dr. Grant, who is not drawn vindictively, but is described by his own sister-in-law, Miss Crawford, as "'an indolent, selfish bon vivant, who must have his palate consulted in everything; who will not stir a finger for the convenience of anyone; and who, moreover, if the cook makes a blunder, is out of humour with his excellent wife. To own the truth, Henry and I were driven out this very evening by a disappointment about a green goose, which he could not get the better of. My poor sister was forced to stay and bear it.'"
"And when Edmund is about to enter on the living, Henry Crawford gaily observes, "I apprehend he will not have less than seven hundred a year. Seven hundred a year is a fine thing for a younger brother; and as, of course, he will still live at home, it will be all for his menus plaisirs, and a sermon at Christmas and Easter, I suppose, will be the sum total of sacrifice.'""
"After all this, it is pleasant to know that some upright and serious men, even in those days, thought differently of the life and duties of a clergyman, for Jane makes Sir Thomas Bertram reply—
""'A parish has wants and claims which can be known only by a clergyman constantly resident, and which no proxy can be capable of satisfying to the same extent. Edmund might, in the common phrase, do the duty of Thornton, that is, he might read prayers and preach without giving up Mansfield Park; he might ride over every Sunday to a house nominally inhabited, and go through divine service; he might be the clergyman of Thornton Lacey every seventh day, for three or four hours, if that would content him. But it will not. He knows that human nature needs more lessons than a weekly sermon can convey; and that if he does not live among his parishioners, and prove himself by constant attention to be their well-wisher and friend, he does very little either for their good or his own.'"
"It is also striking to see how very much the taking of Orders depended upon some living to be obtained; there seems to have been no special idea of suitability, and still less of preparation, only the merest and most perfunctory examination was demanded of the candidate for Orders. There is a story of this date of one examination for ordination where only two questions were asked, one of which was, "What is the Hebrew for a skull?"
"In an entertaining book on Jane Austen by Miss Constance Hill, published in 1902, there is a quotation from a letter anent the ordination examination of Mr. Lefroy, who married Anna, Jane's niece. "The Bishop only asked him two questions, first if he was the son of Mrs. Lefroy of Ashe, and secondly if he had married a Miss Austen."
"It is said also that Brownlow North, Bishop of Winchester, examined his candidates for ordination in a cricket-field during a match. One candidate is described by Bosweil as having read no books of divinity, not even the Greek Testament. There were, of course, serious and learned bishops enough; Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, who lived from 1643 to 1715, was horrified at the ignorance of candidates, who apparently had never read the Old Testament and hardly knew what was in the New. "They cry, and think it a sad disgrace to be denied Orders, though the ignorance of some is such that in a well-regulated state of things they would appear not to know enough to be admitted to the Holy Sacrament."
"It is probable that the Bishops judged a great deal more, on the whole, by the appearance and manners of the man before them, and the prospects he had of holding a living, than by his own knowledge, and in the case of a well-born, serious-minded man like Edmund Bertram there would be no difficulty whatever about his lack of divinity. Of Henry Tilney's duties in Northanger Abbey, very little can be said or gathered, he never appears like a clergyman at all. We are told that the parsonage was a "new built, substantial stone house." We know that he had to go there, much to Catherine Morland's distress, when she was a guest at his father's house, Northanger Abbey, because the engagements of his curate at Woodston obliged him to leave on Saturday for a couple of nights. But at all events he does seem to have spent most of his time at the parsonage, though he still kept on his room at home.
"Of Edward Ferrars' clerical avocations we also hear so very little that he might almost as well have been of any other profession."
"Emma thinks he will do admirably for her somewhat ambiguously placed friend Harriet Smith, while Mr. Elton himself fixes his eyes on the heiress Emma. A nice little illustration of the social status of the cleric, who would not have been thought entirely out of the question for the heiress, though doubtless a little beneath her. Mr. Elton is represented as a handsome, ingratiating, debonair young man, who spends his time playing the gallant, reading aloud, making charades with the young ladies, and preaching sermons that please everybody. However, he meets his match in the dashing and vulgar Mrs. Elton, whom he picks up, soon after his rejection by Emma, at a watering place, and thereafter they spend their time in a blissful state of mutual admiration."
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And yet, as per the fraud perpetrated forever according to Macaulay policy of lies and hypocrisy practised so as to break the spirit of India, it's not only pushed under the rug that West - England, Europe, every society outside India - not only had a caste system, but thst caste system was just as hidebound to birth as that of india has been accused of; only, the caste system of West, including that of England, is based on property and wealth, aristocratic titles and racem and yes, gender; while that in india was always about classification of vocation, or profession, into categories; wealth was - and is - not only irrelevant to castes, but quite the opposite; and unlike West, including England, where caste is an almost totally insurmountable barrier to higher rungs in every profession,
India has only one slight barrier to the choice of the higuest vocation, spiritual, for anyone of any caste - namely, someone married cannot choose a spiritual life - and leave family - without permission of his wife, if he's married. Needless to say, such a choice does not involve a "living", quite contrary; it promises every possible difficulty one can think of, including that of possible starvation, living out of doors, and most likely living in cold of Himaalayan heights, where its supposed one seeking spiritual life must sojourn. Or one could traipse, but certainly no comfortable houses promised.
And yet the fraud perpetrated forever according to Macaulay policy of breaking India has West not only deny their own caste systems, but equate the very word caste with India! While it's understood all the while, that an Emma would be outraged at the presumption of an Elton, that a Mrs Elton is naturally lower, that a cousin Willy disdain Battenburg cousins because of a morganatic marriage to which his grandmother Queen Victoria objects only on grounds of her attitude of being the empress and demanding he - and others - follow her example, and if she accepts Battenburg relatives, they must honour them too. She didn't deny caste system of England, of Europe, or of West.
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"For the first five-and-twenty years of her life, from 1775 spring of 1801, Jane lived at Steventon, in her father's rectory, as peaceful and quiet a home as even she could have wished. But though her own circumstances were peaceful and happy, the great world without was full of flux and reflux.
"Wars and rumours of wars, revolutions and upheavals, which changed the whole face of Europe, were going on year by year, but of these things, as I have said, hardly an echo reaches us in her writing; not even in the correspondence with her sister, which begins in 1796 when the turmoil was at its height, which is the more surprising when we consider that her own sailor brothers were taking an active part in affairs; and her cousin, the Countess de Feuillade, had fled to the Austens for shelter when her husband suffered death by the guillotine. What depths these things stirred in Jane, or whether she lacked the imagination to bring home to her their enormous importance relative to the small details of immediate surroundings, we shall never know. Her minute observation, her unrivalled faculty for using that which lay under her hand, the stores of little human characteristics which, by her transmuting touch, she invested with such intense interest, lead one to suppose that such a clear, nearsighted mental vision carried with it defective mental long sight. There are a number of persons who, deeply and warmly interested in that which immediately appeals to them, cannot throw their sympathy far out over unseen events and persons. We are all prone to this, there is not one of us who is not more affected by a single tragic death in the neighbourhood than by the loss of a hundred lives in America; life in this world would be intolerable were it not so, this is one of the provisions of a merciful providence for making it endurable. But there are some more nearsighted in this respect than others, and from internal evidence in the letters we may judge that Jane belonged to them; it is only conjecture, but it is often the case in life, that virtues carry corresponding faults, that extreme cleverness induces a little want of perception in another of balance and compensation is so omnipresent, that Jane's intensely clear vision in regard to near objects may have been paid for by absorption in them, somewhat to the exclusion of larger interests.
"In 1789, while she was yet but fourteen years old, there began that Revolution which, taking it altogether, is the most tremendous fact in the history of Europe. France was seething, but as yet the ferment had not affected other nations. In the July of that year the tricolour was adopted as the national flag, excess reigned supreme, and the nobles began to emigrate. It was not until 1792 that France began to grasp the lands of others, and reached forth the first of those tentacles, which, like those of an octopus, were to spread all over Europe. In the beginning Austria and Prussia opposed her, but after the murder of the French King, in January 1793, England was forced to join in to protect Holland, and to uphold the general status of nations. Treaties were signed between almost all the civilised nations of Europe, for the crushing of a common enemy; Switzerland alone, of those affected by France's movements, remaining perfectly neutral.
"The echoes of the Reign of Terror that followed must have reached even to the remotest recesses of England, and it is impossible to believe that the Austens were not deeply affected."
" ... The news of the death of the French King was known, by rumour at least, with extraordinary quickness, about two days after it happened, and was received with execration. Detailed accounts did not come in until some days after. ... "
"In August of the same year, the death of Marie Antoinette was daily expected. "The queen was dressed in white lawn and wore a black girdle... Her cell is only eight feet long, and eight feet wide. Her couch consists of a hard straw bed and very thin coverings; her diet, soup and boiled meat."
"But in an anguish of mind which must have made her indifferent to the horrors of material surroundings, the poor queen was kept alive until October, when finally news came of her execution. "As soon as the ci-devant queen left the conciergerie to ascend the scaffold, the multitude cried out brava in the midst of plaudits. Marie Antoinette had on a white loose dress, her hands were tied behind her back. She looked firmly round her on all sides, and on the scaffold preserved her natural dignity of mind."
"This is the kind of reading of contemporary events that would greet Jane when the household received its bi-weekly or tri-weekly paper.
"All through 1794 war continued, while the French slowly bored their way into the continent. Of the splendid naval victories of these years we speak in the chapter on the Navy; these surely must have affected Jane, and made her heart beat high at the thought of what her brothers might be called upon to undergo any day. Toward the end of 1795, Austria and Britain alone were left to uphold the right of nations against the all-devouring French. In England food was at famine prices, and there was actually a party who wished the enemy to win in order that the war might end. London was in a state of great agitation, so that public meetings were suppressed in the interests of public safety. In 1796, Spain declared war against Great Britain, having previously patched up peace with her dangerous neighbour. In this year Napoleon Buonaparte first began to be heard of outside his own country, by his successes in his Italian campaign.
"England, in sore straits, attempted to make peace, but the arrogance of France left her no other course compatible with honour than to continue the war, and the opening of 1797 found her in great difficulties. On all sides invasion by France was dreaded; in fact, in the previous December an attempt at such an invasion by landing on the coast of Ireland, which was in a state of bitter rebellion, was made. In February the victory of St. Vincent put a little heart into the English people, and did away for a time with the possibility of another attempt at invasion by Hoche, whose fleet was scattered by a storm. In May of 1797 a dangerous mutiny broke out among the sailors, followed by another at the Nore, but these were firmly quelled.
"In 1798, Napoleon's Egyptian campaign must have been followed with tense interest, though news would be slow in coming, and it would probably be many days before the news of Lord Nelson's glorious victory at the Rattle of the Nile, which had smashed up the French fleet and left Napoleon stranded, was received in England. This victory gave renewed spirit to the Allies in Europe. A whole string of affiliated Republics had now been established by France, made out of her conquests —including Switzerland, whose strict neutrality had not preserved her from invasion. Yet Austria carried on her share of the war bravely, and in the autumn of 1799 the English made a desperate attempt to retrieve the integrity of Holland, but after a short campaign were compelled to evacuate the country. In October 1799, Napoleon, finding his dreams of establishing a great Eastern kingdom impracticable, returned to France, and in the December of the same year was acclaimed First Consul."
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"Long before Jane's death, the mighty Empire of India had passed almost completely under British control. But if her lifetime saw the foundation of one Empire it witnessed also the loss of another country. The United States were declared independent in the first year of her life, and before she was of an age to take any practical note of politics they had been recognised by France as an independent nation. She lived, indeed, in an epoch when history was made, and she lived on into a new era of things, when Buonaparte was finally subdued, France settled, the continent at peace. At present we have only briefly outlined the extraordinary series of events which filled the five-and-twenty years during which she, living in her sheltered nook at Steventon, heard only echoes. There is something peculiarly suitable in picturing her in this tranquil backwater."
"Yet though bright and clever, and animated by indisputable genius, she was not intellectual; the world of ideas held no place in her mind. We can see very well from her books that the great fundamental laws so important to a wide, deep mind were entirely ignored by her. She was of the mental calibre of her own Elizabeth Bennet, a bright intelligent companion, without depth or brain force. We cannot imagine her grasping abstractions or wrestling with theories; her mind was formed for practicalities and facts."
That's cèrtainly hit nail on head, more than any other so far. It's not only reflected in her limiting her writing to normal, everyday concerns of middle class of a quet little English village, without any mention of the tremendous global events of history which were then of immediate concern, especially in England; but it also is mirrored in her complete disdain of a character of her own creation, Mary Bennet, for her always being absorbed in reading, and her lonely aspirations to an intellectual conversation; in fact, the existence of this character serves no other purpose than the author showering her contempt on such a person, preferring Elizabeth who, while she reads or plays music, does not make much of either.
This, in eyes of Jane Austen, was virtue. Any absorption in intellectual matters, of higher spheres of mind, was to be ridiculed, seen with contempt. So much so, she not only has a ridiculous and ridiculed Collins prefer someone else over Mary Bennet, she privately had the unpublished futures if the characters sketched out, where Kitty Bennet finds a match in a clergyman st Pemberley, but Mary "not doing so well even as to find a clergyman, and settling with a clerk in Meryton - and this was clear by the last chapter of the book, since Elizabeth took Kitty with her, author expressing her verdict about Kitty being likely to benefit from company, while Mary being beyond such possibility of hope, and remaining with her mother as her solace.
And in the comparison between the two matches, Jane Austen certainly made her own firm base of casteism, a la caste system of England in particular and West in general, clear - clergy is lower than landed class property owners, and clerks are lower. This was not touched by a shred of a thought for personal qualities of any kind in case of either.
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"The Austens had special advantages in their position in the fact that they were relatives of Mr. Knight, to whom the whole parish belonged. Mr. Austen seems to have been referred to, in the absence of Mr. Knight, as a kind of squire. He lived simply, but had apparently enough money to allow his daughters the privileges of gentlewomen, and they went to all the dances and balls in the neighbourhood, and paid frequent visits to their brothers' houses for weeks at a time. Mr. Austen kept a carriage and pair, though that meant less than it would do now, as private means of conveyance was much more necessary and there was no carriage tax to add to the expense.
"Mrs. Austen seems to have been constantly ailing, which threw the housekeeping a good deal into the hands of her daughters. It is possible that her ailments were more imaginary than real, as she lived to a great age, and in her old age employed herself about the garden and poultry, and is spoken of as being brisk and bright. Perhaps she grew more energetic as she grew older, a not uncommon process. Jane's allusions to her mother's health are frequent, and sometimes seem to point to the fact that she did not altogether believe in them ... "
Perhaps it's that Mrs Austen was taxed by the marital life beyond her capacity, having given birth to at least seven children, and her being unwell had to do with matters then not mentioned by women, nor made a cause of a medical check up or assistance, unless and until ir was a life and death matter. And too, perhaps, Jane was aware of the status difference between Mrs Austen on one hand and the daughters on the other, in eyes of the males of the family - Mrs Austen had a marital life, whatever it's effect on her health; the daughters remained unmarried, and neither the father nor the brothers made any efforts to change that. Perhaps Jane's disdain for her mother, reflected in her portrayals of mothers of grown up daughters in her work, stemmed from this.
"In the family memoirs, Mrs. George Austen is always spoken of as a person of wit and imagination, in whom might be found the germs of her daughter's genius; such opinion based on recollections must be deferred to, but such is not the picture we gather from the letters. There, Mrs. Austen seems to have exercised none but the slightest influence on her daughters' lives, and when they do mention her, it is only to remark on her health, or the care of her in a journey, or that she will not have anything to do with choosing the furniture for the new home in Bath.
"It is a curious circumstance, taken in conjunction with this, that all the mothers of Jane's heroines, when living, are described as fools or worse. It is not intended to hint that she drew such characters from the home circle or from her mother's friends, but it is plainly to be seen that she did not look for, or expect from women of this standing, the wit and sense she found elsewhere. ... "
Author quotes an example, the mist memorable one, from Pride and Prejudice, where Mrs Bennet urges Mr Bennet to make Elizabeth accept Collins. But neither thus author nor Jane Austen herself quite got the desperation of heart and mind of a mother with five beautiful grown up daughters whose father is as little concerned about their future as Mr Bennet seems to have been, always closed in his study, making no efforts to take them out into society; his one folly, of marrying someone beautiful without much brains, and his subsequent repentance had only had this effect of closeting himself: it neither stopped him from having five daughters, nor from giving up efforts to commune with them to have them benefit from his mind. One can only pity Mrs Bennet who wasn't at fault for having beauty and heart, nor for lacking a mind, or a husband who had a mind but wouldn't help her improve, and merely disdained her openly.
"The middle-aged women without daughters, such as Lady Russell and Mrs. Croft, in the same book, are allowed to be sensible, but a mother with grown-up daughters seems always to be mercilessly delineated by Jane."
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"When she went to stay at Godmersham, which she frequently did, she mingled with county people and noted their manners and ways; but she was entirely free from snobbishness, and her quiet satire of those who imitated all the superficial details in the life of a higher class than their own is seen in her account of Tom Musgrave in The Watsons, who condescends to stay and play cards with the Watsons until nine, when "the carriage was ordered to the door, and no entreaties for his staying longer could now avail; for he well knew that if he stayed he would have to sit down to supper in less than ten minutes, which, to a man whose heart had long been fixed on calling his next meal a dinner, was quite insupportable.""
Author discusses various details of breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner, supper, as differing between working classes vs gentry, and her time vs past. Most of her observations make sense, until
"It is to be wished that two-pronged forks still survived in the public restaurants of today, as the use of the present forks in such places is one of the minor trials of daily life."
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Interesting detail -
"Mrs. Papendick's account of the plate and services acquired at her marriage gives us an idea of what was then thought necessary in this respect. She says, "Two of our rooms were furnished by Her Majesty, and a case of plate was also sent by her, which contained cruets, saltcellars, candle-sticks, and spoons of different sizes, silver forks not being then used. From the queen came also six large and six small knives and forks, to which mamma added six more of each, and a carving knife and fork. Our tea and coffee set were of common Indian china, our dinner service of earthenware, to which, for our rank, there was nothing superior, Chelsea porcelain and fine India china being only for the wealthy. Pewter and Delft ware could also be had, but were inferior." Though Mr. Papendick was attached to the court, he was anything but wealthy."
Does anyone now recall that English thought India produced superior china, superior to England, deft, and China? For if they could import from India, they could from China, just as well! It couldn't have been free after all, or did they just loot it?
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"Turning to the novels, we find food frequently mentioned in Emma, when the little suppers of minced chicken and scalloped oysters, so necessary after an early dinner, were always provided at the Woodhouses. Poor Mr. Woodhouse's feelings on these occasions are mixed. "He loved to have the cloth laid because it had been the fashion of his youth; but his conviction of suppers being very unwholesome, made him rather sorry to see anything put upon it; and while his hospitality would have welcomed his visitors to everything, his care for their health made him grieve that they would eat. Such another small basin of thin gruel as his own was all that he could, with thorough self-approbation, recommend; though he might constrain himself, while the ladies were comfortably clearing the nicer things, to say—
""'Mrs. Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs. An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome. Serle understands boiling an egg better than anybody. I would not recommend an egg boiled by anyone else, but you need not be afraid, they are very small you see —one of our small eggs will not hurt you. Miss Bates, let Emma help you to a little bit of tart —a very little bit. Ours are all apple tarts. You need not be afraid of unwholesome preserves here. I do not advise the custard. Mrs. Goddard, what say you to half a glass of wine? A small half glass put into a tumbler of water? I do not think it could disagree with you.'""
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"Though there would possibly be rather more active superintendence of the domestics than at present, ladies of comfortable means did not then, any more than now, spend all their mornings in the kitchen, as is sometimes erroneously supposed. Jane would doubtless fill up her time with a little practising, a little singing, the retrimming of a hat, correspondence, and the other small items that go to make up a country girl's life. In the usual avocations of a genteel young lady, "the pianoforté, when they were weary of the harp, copying some indifferent drawings, gilding a set of flower pots, and netting white gloves and veils," we see a tedious inanition quite foreign to our conception of Jane."
On the contrary! Isn't all that precisely how her heroines, from Elizabeth Bennet to Emma Woodhouse, occupy their time, apart from supervision of household and ordering of necessities? Letters of Jane Austen are filled with details of clothing and prices, apart from descriptions of balls, or tea visits etc.
"Though gardening was not then a hobby, as it is now, there would be general superintendence of the gardener, and many a lingering walk by the borders and flower-beds on sunny mornings. Jane evidently loved flowers, as she often refers to them in her letters.
""Hacker has been here today, putting in the fruit trees. A new plan has been suggested concerning the plantation of the new enclosures on the right-hand side of the elm walk; the doubt is whether it would be better to make a little orchard of it by planting apples, pears, and cherries, or whether larch, mountain ash, and acacia."
"There was at this time a reaction against the stiff and formal gardening which had been in fashion since introduced by William III. "It is from wild and uncultivated woods, that is from pure nature, that the present (1772) English have borrowed their models in gardening.....daisies and violets irregularly scattered form the borders of them. These flowers are succeeded by dwarf trees, such as rose buds, myrtle, Spanish broom, etc." (Grosley.)"
" ... But country lane walking was not greatly in favour then, women's gowns, with long clinging skirts, were not adapted for such promenades, and it is amusing to think how surprised either Jane or Cassandra would have been could they have met a modern tailor-made girl, with gaiters, and comfortable, trim short skirt well clearing the ground. Though visiting the poor was not a regular duty, it is evident from many indications that the girls took pleasure in knowing the parishioners, and they must have been to see them occasionally. The life of labourers was at that time extremely dull, and it is little to be wondered at that they were rough boors when they were left entirely without reasonable means of recreation, and without any mental nourishment. The public-house was often the working- man's sole chance of relaxation. Very few could read or write; in the long winter evenings there was nothing for them to do but to sit in a draughty cottage over a small wood-fire, without any of the luxuries that are now considered necessaries in every labourer's cottage. The interiors resembled a Highland crofter's hut, with beaten earth flooring, often damp; rough uncovered walls, no gay prints, or polished furniture. ... "
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"At that time the state of the roads cut off the dweller in a small village from any neighbouring town. At present the three or four miles of good solid road in and out of a provincial town are nothing to a young man who starts off after his work on Saturday evenings, and in many cases he has a bicycle with which to run over them more easily still. At that time the ruts, even main roads, were in a filthy state; the Act of 1775, by making turnpike roads compulsory, did much to improve them, but previously they were often mere quagmires with deep ruts, similar to the roads running by the side of a field where carting has been going on. Many and many a record is there of the coaches being stuck or overturned in the heavy mud.
"The days of village merry-making and sociability seemed to have passed away in Puritan times never to revive, and had not been replaced by the personal pleasures of the present time. A labourer of Jane Austen's days had the bad luck to live in a sort of intermediate time. Not for him the reading-room with its bright light and warm fire, the concert, the club, and the penny readings, the smooth-running bicycle or the piano."
Did working class ever have access to facilities such as a piano? Reading room and bright lights and books, perhaps, since public libraries became norm; but even if they exist in a village, they are small, in terms of collection; and do the working classes have any time or energy left, after hours of manual labour? One can hardly imagine a waitress in U.S., after eight hours of standing and serving in high heels and skin-tight skirts that are de rigour for most working women in U.S., to have so much time and strength, even if such inclinstions haven't been killed by society bringing them up to think that such activities would make them "unpopukar", and money, if left over from food, must be spent on latest fashion clothes, accessories and expensive cosmetics. Most, besides, must rush home and do housekeeping and childcare, too. Men - if they haven't left - are most likely only couch potatoes, ordering around if not beating up, the women. Their inclinations run at best to sport, if not satisfied with watching it on television, after work.
Author mentions tea, then, being expensive, and quotes Walpole's disapproval of working classes wasting their money and time twice a day on tea drinking.
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"Besides other occupations, such as have been slightly indicated, there was one in Jane's life about which she seldom spoke to anyone; from her earliest childhood the instinct to write had been in her, and she had scribbled probably in secret. Such a thing would not be encouraged in a child of her time. ... Jane wrote because she had to write, it was there and it must come out, but she probably looked on her writing as something to be ashamed of, a waste of time, and only read her compositions to her brothers and sisters under compulsion when no adults were present. ... "
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"This book, at all events, is intended only for those who know the novels at first hand, and there shall be no explaining, no pandering to that laziness that prefers hash to joints. Taking it for granted that everyone knows the six complete novels, we enter here on a discussion of the excellencies common to all, leaving them to be discussed singly as they occur chronologically in the life of their author. The first question that occurs to anyone in this connection is, how is it that these books, without plot, without adventures, without double entendre, have managed to entrance generations of readers, and to be as much alive today as when they were written? The answer is simple and comprehensive, —they are of human nature all compact. This is the first and greatest quality. We have in them no heroes and heroines, no villains, but only men and women; and while the world lasts stories of real live flesh-and-blood characters will hold their own. The second characteristic, which is the salt of fiction, is the keen sense of humour that runs throughout. Jane Austen's observation of the foibles of her fellow-creatures was unusually sharp, her remarks in her letters are not always kind, but in the novels this sharp and keen relish of what is absurd is softened down so as to be nowhere offensive. Like her own Elizabeth, she might say, "I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.""
" ... The art of selection is that which distinguishes real dramatic talent from photographic realism. To be able to put down on paper exactly what average people say is certainly a gift, for few can do it, but a far higher gift is to select and combine just those speeches and actions which give the desired effect without leaving any sense of omission or incompleteness. Jane Austen had the power also of giving a flash of insight into a state of mind or a personal feeling in a few words more than any writer before or since. It is one of her strongest points. Take for example that scene when Henry Tilney instructing Catherine "talked of foregrounds, distances, and second distances; side screens and perspectives; lights and shades; and Catherine was so hopeful a scholar, that when they gained the top of Beechen Cliff, she voluntarily rejected the whole city of Bath as unworthy to make part of the landscape"; or the opening sentences of Mansfield Park. "Miss Maria Ward of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences of a handsome house and large income. All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the match; and her uncle, the lawyer, himself, allowed her to be at least three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it."
"It is by touches such as these that the characters are made to live before us, Jane never condescends to the device of tricks which Dickens allowed himself to use with such wearisome iteration; we have none of "the moustache went up and the nose came down" style. It is by a perfect perspective, by light touches given with admirable effect, that we know the difference ... Henry Tilney and Edmund Crawford were both young clergymen of a priggish type, but Henry's didactic reflections are not in the least the same as those which Edmund would have uttered."
Surely the author meant Edmund Bertram?
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"It was a transition age from the conventional to the natural; as in the admiration of landscape, the love for natural gardens, the gradual disappearance of the formal and empty compliment to which women had hitherto been treated, we find taste changing, so in literature the conventional was giving way to the natural. Fielding and Smollett had broken down the barriers in this respect, they had depicted life as it was, not as convention had decreed it should be, hence their gigantic success; but the life they saw and rendered was the life of a man of the world, with all its roughness and brutality. Jane Austen was the first to draw exactly what she saw around her in a humdrum country life, and to discard all incident, all adventure, all grotesque types, for perfect simplicity. She little understood what she was doing, but herein lies her wonderful power, she was a pioneer. Jane's writing had nothing in common with Mrs. Radcliffe, whose style is mimicked in Northanger Abbey. It had absolutely no adventures. The fall of Louisa on the Cobb is perhaps the most thrilling episode in all the books, yet by virtue of its entire simplicity, its naturalness, its gaiety, her writing never fails to interest. Perhaps the most remarkable tribute to her genius lies in the fact that, though her books are simplicity itself, dealing with the love-stories of artless girls, they are read and admired not only by girls and women, but more especially by men of exceptional mental calibre. It has been said that the appreciation of them is a test of intellect.
"Though her novels are novels of sentiment, they never drift into sickly sentiment, they are wholesome and healthy throughout. With tragedy she had nothing to do; her work is comedy, pure comedy from beginning to end. And as comedies well done are the most recreative of all forms of reading, it is no wonder that, slight as are her plots, hardly to be considered, minute as are the incidents, the attention of readers should ever be kept alive. In all her books marriage is the supreme end; the meeting, the obstacles, the gradual surmounting of these, and the happy ending occur with the regularity of clockwork. And yet each one differs from all the others, and she is never monotonous. Every single book ends well, and it is a striking fact that there is not a death in one of them. ..."
"The Christian names of that date were plain, and, for women, strictly limited in number; it detracts something from a heroine to be called Fanny Price or Anne Elliot; and Emma Woodhouse and Elizabeth Bennet are little better; Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are the most fancy names applied by Jane to any of her heroines.
"Another point which may be noticed in the novels is that the outward forms of religion, beyond the fact of a man’s being a clergyman, are never mentioned, and that on all religious matters Jane is silent; ... though actual religion does not appear in her pages, the lessons that the books teach are none the less enforced; had she been taking for her sole text the merit of unselfishness, she could not have done more, or indeed half so much, to further the spread of that virtue. To read the books straight through one after the other is to feel the petty meanness of self-striving, and the small gain that lies therein. The talk of the mammas, such as Mrs. Bennet, who are perfectly incapable of seeing their neighbours' interest should it clash with their own; the picture of the egregious Mrs. Norris with her grasping at the aspect of generosity and self-sacrifice, without any intention of putting herself to any inconvenience thereby; the weakness of such characters as Willoughby in Sense and Sensibility, who allow themselves to drift along the lines of least resistance without a thought of the after misery they may cause: each and all of these are more potent than a volume of sermons."
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" ... We of this present generation hardly realise how vice was countenanced in the days of the Georges; well indeed was it for England that males of that line died out, so that the heir to the throne was a girl-child, for during her long reign the example which the court set, and which the inferiors were quick to copy, was altered altogether. George the Third himself, who occupied the throne during the whole of Jane Austen's life, was a happy exception among the Hanoverian sovereigns, but the excesses of his sons were notorious."
" ... And her clear, unaffected view of middle-class life in small towns and villages was true and not idealised, for these people were then, as they still are, the salt of the world, neither aping the fantastic vices of the upper, nor the abandoned coarseness of the lower classes. They were respectable and sometimes humdrum. They suffered from monotony, not dissipation. That anyone should have been able to extract so much pure fun from such slight materials is ever matter for wonder. She did it by her marvellously close observation and power of selection, qualities which are a gift. She was far more true to human nature than the superficial reader knows, perhaps than she herself knew, for it is a trait of genius to do by the light of nature what other people must set about laboriously and ever fall short of attaining. When we notice Mr. Bennet's caustic humour reappearing in more genial form in his second daughter, there is one of those little touches that binds the characters together —the touch of heredity."
"Jane Austen seems to have been also as far ahead of her time in the use of simple direct English as she was in construction and effect. She is at least a generation in advance of average contemporary letters and journals, in which the phrasing is often ponderous; the sonorous roll of heavily-weighted sentences in the Johnsonian style, then so much admired, does not ever seem to have occurred to her."
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" ... As the order of writing is everything, and the order of publication a mere accident, we will take them as they were written. This was in two groups of three each. Pride and Prejudice was begun in October 1796 and finished the following August; Sense and Sensibility was begun in 1797 and finished in 1798, in which year Northanger Abbey was also written. Then there was a long gap, in which she produced only a fragment to be noted hereafter, and not until 1812 was Mansfield Park written; four years later, in 1816, came Emma, quickly followed by Persuasion. Of all these the first to be published was Sense and Sensibility in 1811, and the dates of publication will thereafter be noted in chronological order in the book as it progresses.
"Besides these two distinct groups of three novels each, there is another of the unfinished fragments, which never became real stories. These consist of Lady Susan, a comedy in the form of letters, which is ended up hastily with a few paragraphs of explanation; and The Watsons, an unfinished tale, of which the end was told by Cassandra Austen from remarks that her sister had made. Both of these are included, as has been said, in Mr. Austen-Leigh's Memoir, and it seems a pity that they should not form a volume in one of the neat series of Jane Austen's novels now published, as to a real Austenite they contain much that is valuable, and are full of characteristic touches. Of the complete novels Pride and Prejudice is admittedly the best; there are several candidates for the second place, but the superiority of Pride and Prejudice is unquestioned. It was the earliest of the books written, under the title First Impressions, and as such it is referred to in Jane's correspondence: "I do not wonder at your wanting to read First Impressions again, so seldom as you have gone through it, and that so long ago;" this was to her sister in 1799, and later on she adds, with the playfulness never long wanting, "I would not let Martha read First Impressions again upon any account, and am very glad I did not leave it in your power. She is very cunning, but I saw through her design, she means to publish it from memory, and one more perusal must enable her to do it."
"Jane Austen is one of the three greatest among English women novelists; the other two being, of course, George Eliot and Charlotte Brontë, whose lives overlapped at a much later date. ... "
Indeed so they were known in their time; but even then, one of the greatest known authors, who respected and honoured Charlotte Bronte, had told the publisher, that Emily Bronte will rise in esteem for her genius as time goes by, even though her one novel then didn't make waves as much as works of Charlotte Bronte; and so it has proved. So perhaps this author and this work was not too soon after the time of publication of the works of Bronte sisters. She does not even name Emily Bronte, much less discuss her, and perhaps the third sister became known more as time went.
" ... The genius of these three women is so entirely different in kind that the relative value of their gifts can never be put into like terms; so long as men and women read and discuss fiction, so long will each of the three styles have its partisans who will argue it to be the supreme one of the trio. Yet in spite of this, in spite also of a momentary fashion to decry the wonderful gifts of George Eliot, it is quite certain that in depth and breadth of feeling, and ability in its portrayal, she was unequalled by either her predecessor or contemporary. Her range far surpasses theirs. They each dealt with one phase of life or feeling: Jane Austen with English village life, Charlotte Brontë with the element of passion in man and woman, while George Eliot's works embrace many varieties of human nature and action. If her detractors are questioned, it will commonly be found that they do not deny her ability or her brain power, but her genius, which is of course a totally distinct thing. On further probing of the matter, it is usually discovered that the contention is based on the later works, such as Middlemarch or Daniel Deronda. To be quite fair, there are some appearances in these volumes to justify such an estimate, but the mistake is that the opinion is superficial and based on appearance only. In her later days George Eliot's tremendous ability, tremendous soul, and tremendous is the only English word that can be fitly applied to it, made her see so far round and over her own work, as well as allowing her such a wide survey as to the causes and nature of things, that even the productions of her genius were analysed, curbed, and held in channels. She could not let herself go; her subtle insight, her complete knowledge of her characters, made her qualify and account for their actions, perhaps more for her own satisfaction than for that of readers. She might safely have left this to her innate perception without fear, her genius would never have let her go wrong, but she could not, she must analyse even her own creations. No one in the world was more free from this tendency than Jane Austen, she was perfectly unconscious of her own mastery of her subject, as unconscious as the bee when it rejects all other shapes in its cells for the hexagonal. The marvellous precision with which she selected and rejected and grouped her puppets was almost a matter of instinct. She put in the little touches which revealed what was in the mind of her men and women without premeditation or any striving. It is the perfection of this gift which allows her books to be read again and again, for once the story is known, all the slight indications of its ultimate ending, which may have been overlooked while the reader is not in the secret, stand out vividly. We grant to George Eliot's detractors that in her later works her eyes were opened, and she analysed the work of her genius instead of writing spontaneously, but to her true admirers the genius is still there, though curbed and trammelled."
"Jane cannot dispute precedence with George Eliot, but must yield the palm; her characters, true and admirable as they are, lack that living depth which George Eliot had the power to impart. But the two are so totally different that it is difficult to find any simile that will bring them into relation with one another. Perhaps the most expressive is that of instrumental music: Jane Austen's clear notes are like those which a skilful performer extracts from a good harp, sweet and ringing, always pleasant to listen to, and restful, but not soul stirring; while George Eliot's tones are like the deep notes of a violoncello, stirring up the heart to its core, and leaving behind them feeling even after the sound has ceased. The novels of Jane Austen were novels of character and manners, those of George Eliot of feeling. There is no intention in this comparison to minimise in any way the work of the earlier writer, she chose her style, and of its kind it is perfect; her subtle touches could only have been the result of the intuition which is genius, but the profounder emotions, the slow development of character by friction with those around, she did not attempt to depict."
" ... The only simile that occurs as suitable to use in the comparison between Charlotte and Jane is that the soul of the one was like the turbulent rush of her own brown Yorkshire streams over the wild moorlands —streams which pour in cataracts and shatter themselves on great grey stones in a tumultuous frenzy, while that of the other resembled the calm limpid waters of her own Hampshire river, the Itchen, wending its way placidly between luscious green meadows."
And going further, Emily Bronte is Irish coast battered by Atlantic storms - her Cathy an Iceland, with icy field hiding volcanoes that erupt fuming into stratospheric, straddling a mid-Atlantic ridge expanding inexorably, tearing Cathy apart.
But characters of Jane Austen or writing of George Eliot are not faultless perfection.
Elizabeth Bennet is fine, as are her parents, or Claudia, and Miss Bingley. But Jane Bennet is an elusive reflection of starlight in a lake surrounded by tall trees spreading leafy branches wide, hardly seen enough without observations as close as that of Elizabeth or keen as that by Darcy when he brings Bingley back. Austen fails to sympathise with Mrs Bennet, with her very real problems, which include a husband who would rather vanish in his study than take charge. And that's about her best book.
George Eliot goes overboard in moral fervour and brings tragedies from jaws of possible happy endings, as for example when Dorothea gives up the husband's estate to let it go to a stranger, which brings total tragedy to the doctor she'd promised to support in his quest for medical research, dooming him to second rate practice and early death just to keep his faulty wife in luxuries she can't do without. Yes, she coukdnt keep the late husband's estate if she married, but she could have formed the trust and handed the estate over before marrying, keeping only an honorary headship so the doctor would be taken care of. Morality isn't about flagallating the good to death so sinners can flourish!
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About Jane Austen's letters, published by Lord Brabourne -
" The first of the published letters is dated the beginning of 1796, when Jane was twenty-one. As the letters contain many comments on dress, food, daily occurrences of all sorts, the best method seems to be to use them as a thread on which to hang notes of the everyday life of the period, collating what the writer herself says with what is otherwise known, and in this way to gain a background against which her own figure will stand out.
"One great characteristic of her correspondence is its extreme liveliness and humour. This is the more remarkable because in her age and time letters were, with a few brilliant exceptions, ponderous and laboured, written in the grand style, as was perhaps natural when the sending of a letter was a serious consideration."
She gives an example -
" ... We received a visit from Mr. Tom Lefroy and his cousin George. The latter is really very well behaved now, and as for the other he has but one fault, which time will, I trust, entirely remove, it is that his morning coat is a great deal too light.""
"It was an age of letter writing, periodicals were expensive, and, in remote districts, difficult to get; even when obtained, the news was what we should deem at the present time scanty in the extreme. The Times, for instance, consisted of only a single folded sheet, of which the front page was occupied with advertisements. The foreign news was always some days old, as it was obtained by special packet-boats, which brought across the French papers. These boats being dependent on the wind and currents, were subject to many delays. The newspaper taxes were heavy and burdensome, and though even the poorest sheet of news must be considered wonderful in view of the difficulty and expense attendant on the procuring of news in pre-telegraph days, the fact remains that much was left out which could only be supplied by private correspondence. Horace Walpole, of course, stands out as the prince of letter-writers of his time; his published letters now amount to over two thousand, and deal with all the current questions of the day. Of course these letters are on an altogether different plane from the little batch of about two hundred, which are all we have of Jane's. Walpole's letters are read, not only for their style and manner, but for the light they throw on society and politics. Jane's can be of interest to none but those who are interested in her. And at the time they were published there were many voices raised in protest against the publication of such very "small beer," but in so far as they throw light on her own daily life they are certainly worth having.
"Considered merely as private productions, it is wonderful, considering the expense of letter carriage and the delay of correspondence, that she wrote so much as she did.
"Letters in those days consisted only of a single sheet without an envelope, which was formed by the last page of the sheet itself being folded over and fastened by a wafer. This did not leave much room for writing.
"Jane wrote very small, and her lines are neat and straight, so that she got the largest amount possible into the available space. At that time a single sheet of paper, not exceeding an ounce in weight, varied in price from 4d. to 1s. 6d., according to the distance it was carried; if it exceeded an ounce, it was charged fourfold; any additional bit of paper made it into a double letter, which was charged accordingly. But the thing which would seem to us most intolerable of all, was that the recipient and not the sender paid for the missive, whereby many modest souls must have been prevented from ever writing to their friends lest the letter should not be considered worth the charge. Not until long after Jane had been in her grave did adhesive stamps come into use.
"It is a commonly received idea that the post office as an institution dates from the establishment of universal penny post in the British Isles by Rowland Hill in 1840. But this is far from being the case; there was a postmaster in 1533, if not before. In 1680 a parcels post at a penny a pound was established in London by William Dockwra, who also suggested passing letters in London at the same rate."
" ... Stamps were also used to mark the hour when the letters were sent out to be delivered, an item only recently reintroduced into our postal service. Much wailing was heard at Dockwra's reforms from the porters of London, who had made a fine living by carrying correspondence, their outcries were much the same as those of the watermen, who afterwards wailed at the introduction of hackney coaches.
"Dockwra was not long allowed to enjoy his idea, for his scheme was incorporated into the general post office, though he afterwards received a pension of £500 a year, and was made comptroller of the London post office.
"For anything outside of London, distance still counted in the cost, though we read in The Times of 1793 a penny post had been established in Manchester. It was Rowland Hill who introduced the universal penny post in Great Britain, thus extending the Dockwra idea. In 1710 the postal system was reformed and improved, three rates were put in force, namely: threepence if under eighty miles; fourpence if above; and sixpence to Edinburgh or Dublin. This explains the custom of carrying letters for some distance and then posting them; Jane Austen says, "I put Mary's letter into the post office with my own hand at Andover," this was on the way to Bath. In 1720 cross-posts were introduced by the suggestion of Ralph Alien, a Bath postmaster; before that time every letter had to go round by London to be cleared, even supposing it to be intended for a town not far off from the sender. Alien offered to organise the whole thing, paying a fixed rent, and taking the profits. His plan succeeded so well that he cleared £10,000 a year. At his death in 1764 the government took over the contract.
"Up to 1784, letters were carried on horseback by post-boys, who were underpaid and undisciplined; if a boy got drunk, or entered into conversation with strangers who turned out to be well-mannered footpads, the bags never reached their destination. In 1783, John Palmer, manager of the Bath and Bristol Theatre, suggested the employment of regular coaches, which might at the same time carry passengers, hence the inauguration of mail-coaches, the first two of which started between London and Bristol in August 1784 The drivers and guards were armed, and if this did not altogether ensure the safety of the mails —as the weapons were often a mere farce, and the men themselves either chicken-hearted or in collusion with the robbers —it proved, at all events, productive of greater regularity in the delivery of letters."
"The system of franking is one of those things that make us realise the difference between the ideas of our own time and those of the eighteenth century more than anything else; that such an abuse can have been permitted is incredible, monstrous. ... "
""The franking of letters as an institution commenced as early as the year 1660, when it was resolved that members' letters should come and go free, during the sitting of the House. When the Bill was sent up to the Lords, it was thrown out because the privilege was not extended to them. When, however, the omission was supplied, the Bill passed. The privilege in course of time was grossly abused. Members signed large packets of envelopes at once, and either sold them, or gave them to their friends. It was worth the while of a house of business, when letters cost sixpence apiece, to buy a thousand franks at fourpence apiece; sometimes servants got them from their masters and sold them. In the year 1715, franked letters representing £24,000 a year passed through the post. In 1763 the amount was actually £170,000. Supposing that each letter would have brought in sixpence to the post office, this means nearly 7,000,000 letters, so that every member of the two Houses would have signed an average of 7000 letters a year. It was then enacted that no letter should pass free unless the address, as well as the signature, was in the member's handwriting. Lastly, it was ordered that all franks should be sealed and that they should be put into the post on the day of the date. Even with these precautions the amount of franks represented £84,000 a year. The privilege was finally abolished with the great reforms of 1841. It is needless to add that a system of wholesale forgery had sprung up long before. "Members of Parliament sold their privileges of franking sometimes for £300 a year."
"(Sir Walter Besant, London in the Eighteenth Century.)"
As per credible accounts of pre-WWII era in U.S. when Nazi propaganda was carried on by various people, cranking privileges of congressional members were abused wholesale for the purpose of the propaganda.
"The abuse of franking was called in question at various dates, and reforms advised. In reply to questions asked in Parliament, it was stated that various clerks in government offices used to frank to any amount —not only their own correspondence but that of others; probably receiving large sums of money for doing so. In fact it was known that some persons whose salaries were £300 or £400 a year had been making incomes of £1000 and £1200 by this means! The celebrated bookseller Lackington had friends in one of the offices, and sent his catalogues free all over the country. A majority of twelve decided for the Question in the House."
"Of course there were no postmen to deliver letters as they do now. It was considered a great convenience to have a post-office at all, from which letters could be fetched. In 1787, Horace Walpole says there was no posthouse at Twickenham. ... "
"When we realise that every one of the letters preserved for us in Lord Brabourne's book must have cost on an average a shilling, we feel more strongly than before the tie between Jane and Cassandra, which demanded such constant communication, and the retailing of every minute affair.
"We have nothing to tell us how letters came to Steventon, but can form some sort of conjecture for ourselves. There was of course no post-office in such a minute place; the letters would arrive at Winchester, and from thence be forwarded by the Basingstoke coach, and dropped at the inn which stands at Popham Lane End, about two miles away. It would be almost certainly impossible for Jane to walk, except in the driest weather, through lanes of which we are told they were impassable for carriages at certain seasons, and could only be traversed on horseback. The man-servant would therefore probably be detailed to go for the post-bag, possibly riding on one of the carriage horses; and Jane would wait in the damp mist of an autumn afternoon by the front door, dressed in a costume most unsuitable for the climate, according to our ideas, ... "
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" ... it was the season of balls at Steventon; quiet as the rectory was there were many large houses of the country gentry around in various directions, and entertainments of all sorts were then perhaps even more in fashion than now; to all of these the rectory party received invitations. ... "
"People in the country were then more dependent on each other for entertainment, there was no looking upon the London season as a necessity, and people could not rush about from one end of England to another for a night or two as they now do. During the long winter months, when the bitter cold and the cumbersome methods of travelling made any journey out of the question for most, to say nothing of the expense, balls for those in the neighbourhood of Steventon were frequently given, and Jane and Cassandra Austen had their full share, and seem to have most heartily enjoyed it. Jane herself evidently loved dancing, balls are frequently mentioned in her novels, and the actual dancing itself, even without its enjoyable concomitant of flirtation, seems to have attracted her."
"Customs, however, then differed very much from those that now reign in ballrooms. In one way everything was more formal, in another more simple. The music, the wines, and the floor were less considered; young people got up an impromptu dance in a drawing room very easily; and the champagne, without which no one would dare to ask their friends to a dance now, was then not considered necessary. On the other hand, the actual performance was more formal; there were no romps at lancers, no round dances such as waltzes at all; waltzes did not begin to be danced generally until 1814, and the polka not until 1844. ... In Jane's time, minuets, cotillions, etc., were the staple of the programme, and toward the end of the evening country dances, no doubt danced with much precision and elegance. Deportment was then a necessary part of the curriculum at every girls' boarding-school; and the ways of getting in and out of a carriage, and much more of bowing and entering a reception room, were all taught as if the performer were to go upon the stage; every motion was regulated. ... "
" ... At the dances at Basingstoke or in the neighbourhood, she probably knew almost everyone in the room on familiar terms; and she frequently had a brother with her to counterbalance the brothers of her girlfriends. She danced well, with vivacity and grace; we can imagine her appearance without difficulty; her hair encircled by some neat bandeau or coquettish bow, her high-waisted simple frock of soft white muslin, her curls escaping in little ringlets on forehead and shoulders, her hazel eyes dancing as she parried the conversational thrusts of some too bold admirer, even as her own Elizabeth Bennet might have done. She certainly must have been popular; a girl who can talk wittily, dance well, and who is bright and sweet-tempered must always be in demand. And all the time her mind, half unconsciously, was storing up the little words and gestures of the persons around. Everything that was significant, everything that was amusing was noted, and from this storehouse she was to draw many a scene to delight unnumbered people yet unborn.
"In her time, the acceptance of a dance still carried with it two dances, or the twice going up and down in the minuet."
"With the soft light of wax candles —even nowadays sometimes preferred to modern brilliancy —shining on the long, clinging muslin dresses, the arch head-dresses and nodding plumes, the swords and the fans, a ballroom must have presented a most animated spectacle; added to which the dress of the gentlemen was certainly far more picturesque and becoming than that of the present day. The gay satin coats and ruffles, the knee-breeches and silk stockings, must greatly have enlivened the scene. ... "
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"But balls were not the only recreations Jane and Cassandra had; people were very sociable in those days; the sketch of Sir John Middleton's horror of being alone, and his delight at gathering together in his house all the acquaintances whom he could persuade to come, is only slightly exaggerated from the prevailing spirit of his times. People were always running over to see each other, always spending long days at each other's houses; hospitality was taken for granted, and was too common to be reckoned a virtue. Jane and Cassandra in this way were continually in touch with their nearest neighbours at Deane and Ashe."
"Jane must have been admired, her vivacity, her wit, her gaiety of heart, her pleasant person, and her keen enjoyment of life must have attracted attention; we know definitely she had at least two eligible offers, and probably others, as she was the very last person to boast of such things openly. It has sometimes happened that those most worth having have lived and died single, for they are too fastidious, too difficult to please, to mate readily, while a commonplace girl is made happy by the addresses of any ordinary man, and gladly persuades herself to be in love. Jane, who had a peculiar and deep knowledge of character, could not be easily blinded, she would have required much in a man, and men no doubt instinctively knew it. Her tongue, we know, was sharp, she had a knack of saying sharp things, and those who did not know her well may have been uneasy under her penetrating insight. Those who did know her may have gathered from her perfectly spontaneous manner and absence of any affectation that she was entirely heart whole, and been thus discouraged from trying their fate. The extract naming her Irish friend has already been quoted, this referred to the late Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, at that time only Tom Lefroy, whose uncle was Rector of Ashe, adjoining Deane, and with whom Jane seems to have carried on a lively flirtation.
"After telling Cassandra how much she had danced with him, she adds, "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 After I had written the above we received a visit from Mr. Tom Lefroy and his cousin George."
""I mean to confine myself in future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for whom I don't care sixpence."…
"Friday - "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." At this time she was twenty-one, and he twenty-three, but they do not seem to have been of such susceptible dispositions as many young men and women of their age."
" ... A temperament like Jane Austen's, where the whole nature was extremely sensitive, and the mind extremely clear-sighted, would have required qualities of the heart and mind in a man to be loved that are not to be found every day. In addition, it would have been quite impossible for her to marry any man from respect only or simple friendship. Nothing but love could have carried her fastidious nature over the bound of matrimony. Such natures as Jane's are not facile: not for them the willing self-deception which imagines love in any man who is an admirer; not for them the blindness which attributes qualities where they are not, nor the vanity which credits a man with every virtue merely because he has the taste to prefer them. Many marriages are made on these lines, and a proportion turn out well; but the higher natures, standing out here and there, require a sounder basis."
" ... Many and many a man takes a rash step into marriage, solely on the ground of external attraction, to gratify a youthful impulse, and having himself fitted the harness to his shoulders, spends the rest of his life in accommodating himself to it, without making the process of accommodation too patent to the eyes of the world. If he be a man at all, he realises that it was his own doing entirely, and he must bear the responsibility. ... "
As exemplified in Mr Bennet of Pride and Prejudice.
" ... In one place Jane shows how fully she realised the difference between the true and the false by a little saying, "Three and twenty —a period when, if a man chooses a wife, he generally chooses ill.""
"And John Dashwood's idea of the barter of women for so much, according to their attractions, though it differed not in essentials from that of a Circassian slave-dealer, was quite an ordinary one. The unblushing eagerness with which any heiress was literally pursued, the desperate devices to get portionless daughters married, doubtless have their counterparts now, but they are not so prominent; portionless daughters of wit and talent can make lives for themselves, independent of matrimony, and heiress hunters have at least the decency to pretend they are in love. In view of the ideas of her times, Jane's ideal of marriage stands out conspicuously. She wanted all her heroines to have every probability of happiness in the marriage state, and though perhaps she did not consciously set to work to consider what would make them so in so many words, it is remarkable that certain points which, from her own observations of the human race, were the best foundations for married happiness, are to be found in every one of the marriages of her principal characters. ... "
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Author delves into travels and visits, by Jane Austen in particular, and people in general, in her times.
" ... In the August of 1796 she went to stay with her brother Edward, at Rowling, a little place in Kent, near Goodnestone. ... "
"Jane did not expect to be able to return to Steventon until about the middle of October, but it was necessary to lay plans long before so as to arrange if possible for the escort of one of her brothers, as it was not thought at all the proper thing for a young lady to go by herself on a journey, and considering the changes at inn-yards and many stoppages, this is not to be wondered at. Just at this time Frank Austen received a naval appointment, and had to be up in town the next day, September 21, so Jane seized the opportunity to go with him. "As to the mode of our travelling to town, I want to go in a stage coach, but rank will not let me." This means of course that they would have to travel post, a much more expensive performance. The whole subject of travelling is one of the things that bring more vividly before us than any other the difference of the then and the now.
"In 1755 an Act was passed compelling districts all over the country to make turnpike roads and charge toll accordingly; before this date the state of the roads had been too terrible for description, and even after it road-making progressed but slowly, for it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that Macadam's improvements were adopted."
" ... the method of road mending previous to Macadam was nothing more than setting down enormous stones to be crushed in by passing wheels, but as they were not set close, the wheels went bumping into the mud between, and the force of the jolt instead of setting the stones pushed them out of position ever worse and worse."
"As for the means of conveyance over these vile highways, before the making of turnpike-roads waggons had been the usual method, and flying coaches, as they were at first called, were considered a great improvement; however, coach fares were high, and even after the introduction of coaches many people who were unable to afford them still travelled by the slow-going waggon."
" ... The heat was now so great that all the windows were opened, and with the fresh air entered clouds of dust, for the body of the machine is but a few inches from the surface of the road.""
"The accidents attendant on coach journeys were many and various, and the badness of the roads was the principal cause. ... "
"The Austen women do not seem at any time to have travelled by coach, but always post, a much more comfortable method, ensuring privacy, though it also had its disadvantages, as when one arrived at an inn requiring change of horses only to find the Marquess of Carabbas had passed on before with a whole retinue of attendants, taking every horse in the stable, and the second comers were therefore compelled to wait until the return of the jaded steeds, and to use them again when the poor beasts had only had half the rest they deserved. The keeping of horses was a necessary branch of the business of every inn-keeper on the high-road, a branch which is now seldom called for, so that it is only at very large establishments, or those in the most out-of-the-way districts where trains come not, that "posting in all its branches" forms part of the landlord's boast."
" ... The wonder is not that highwaymen were so numerous, but that, with the cumbersome methods of capturing and dealing with them, any of them were ever caught at all."
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"The end of the eighteenth century was an age when merit in literature was an Open Sesame to the very best society that the capital could supply. An author who had brought out a work a little above the average was received and fêted, not only by the literary set, who rapidly passed her or him on from one to another, but by the persons of the highest social rank also. London was so much smaller then, that there was not room for all the grades and sets that now run parallel without ever overlapping. When anyone was made welcome they were free of all the best society at once, and the ease with which some people slipped into the position of social lions on the strength of very small performance is little short of wonderful. ... "
"In those days the same people met again and again at each other's houses, more after the fashion of a country town than of that of London at present. Indeed they seem to have spent the whole day and most of the night running after each other. There is one custom which we must all be thankful exists no longer, the intolerable fashion of morning calls. ... "
"Considering how easily the heights of celebrity were stormed at that time, and especially by a woman, it is most remarkable that Jane received no encouragement, and had no literary society, and not one literary correspondent in the whole of her lifetime. Of course her first novel was not published until 1811, and then anonymously, with the simple inscription "By a Lady" on the title-page, yet it sold well and became very popular, and though no effort was made to proclaim her the authoress certainly there was no rigid attempt to hide her personality. Before the publication of Emma her identity was known, for she was requested to dedicate this book to the Prince Regent ... this was the only recognition of any public sort she received. Many of her contemporaries were brought up in a sort of hotbed of intellect, and associated with men of talent and distinction from their cradles —what a wonderful quickening and impetus must this have brought with it! Jane had none of these advantages, her genius was her own entirely, and her material of the slightest; she had no contemporaries of original talent with which to exchange ideas, to strike out sparks or receive suggestions. She did not mingle with people of her own calibre at all. ... "
"But the London of 1811, when we have the first record of Jane's visiting it, was not what it had been thirty years before. ... "
"A book called Self Control, which appeared in 1810, by Mary Brunton, the wife of a Scotch minister, had a fair measure of success, and was reprinted as lately as 1852. Jane speaks very slightingly of it: "I am looking over Self Control again, and my opinion is confirmed of its being an excellently meant, elegantly written work, without anything of nature or probability in it. I declare I do not know whether Laura's passage down the American river is not the most natural possible every-day thing she ever does." ... "
"It is, of course, very difficult to give any picture of contemporary literature in Jane Austen's time without degenerating into mere strings of names. The fact that she herself came in contact with no one of the first rank in literature prevents any of the characters from being woven into her life. The books she mentions as having read are a mere drop in the ocean compared with the books which came out in her time, and which she probably, in some cases almost certainly, read. ... "
"The seventies in the eighteenth century produced numerous brilliant men and women whose names still live; besides Jane Austen herself, we have Sir Walter Scott, Hazlitt, Sydney Smith, Lamb, Sir Humphry Davy, Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, Hogg, Thomas Moore, and Thomas Campbell, who were all born in this decade, though, as the development of a writer differs enormously in growth, some of them were much later in making their appearance in print than others. Among the better known names of women novelists not already mentioned we have Miss Edgeworth, Jane Austen's senior by eight years, whose first novel, Castle Rackrent, was published anonymously in 1800. That Jane knew and admired her work is obvious from the fact that she sent her a copy of Emma for a present on its publication. Mrs. Inchbald, born in 1753, was at first known as an actress, her Simple Story, by which she is best remembered, was published in 1791. Mrs. Radcliffe, whose romances induced Jane Austen to write Northanger Abbey in mockery, was very busy between 1789 and 1797, during which time she published five novels, including her famous Mysteries of Udolpho in 1794. Joanna Baillie published a volume of verse in 1790, and her first volume of plays in 1798; though almost forgotten now, she was taken very seriously in her time, and her play De Montfort was produced at Drury Lane in 1800 by Mrs. Siddons and Kemble. Anna Seward, who was born in 1747, lived to 1809; she, like Hannah More, was far more praised and valued than any of her poor little productions warranted.
"Sheridan brought out his famous play The Rivals in the year of Jane's birth; it was at first a dead failure, but, nothing daunted, he cut it about and altered it, and when reproduced two years subsequently it attained success at once. The same year saw The School for Scandal, and the following one The Critic. In this year also the first volume of Gibbon's great History appeared."
"Burns, who had written some of his best work while Jane was still a child, died in 1796, and the brilliant Burke the succeeding year."
" ... Samuel Rogers' Pleasures of Memory came out in 1792; Lyrical Ballads, including Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and some of Wordsworth's poems, in 1798; Campbell's Pleasures of Hope in 1799.
"Byron was thirteen years younger than Jane, yet his precocity was so great that his first book, Hours of Idleness, was produced in 1807. The first two cantos of Childe Harold followed in 1812 but the whole poem was not completed until Jane was in her grave; the Giaour, Corsair, etc., she must have known as new books a year or two before her death."
"Scott's literary career began with the publication of a translation of Burger's "Lenore" in 1799, between that date and 1814 his poems appeared at intervals, and in 1814 his first great novel Waverley. Though it was anonymous, Jane seems to have discovered the secret of the authorship, for she writes: "Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet and ought not to be taking the bread out of other people's mouths. I do not mean to like Waverley if I can help it, but I fear I must." ... "
"In the last decade of the eighteenth century were born among poets: Shelley, Keats, Hood, Keble, and Mrs. Hemans; among historians, Grote, Alison, Napier, Carlyle, and Thirlwall; among men of science, Faraday and Lyell; and among novelists, Marryat.
"In the beginning of the nineteenth century we have a string of great names; a trio of poets: Tennyson, Longfellow, and Browning; men of science such as Darwin; historians such as Macaulay; novelists in numbers, such as Dickens, Thackeray, Charles Reade, Harrison Ainsworth, Bulwer Lytton, and Trollope; statesmen such as Gladstone and Disraeli."
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"Pride and Prejudice was apparently written solely to gratify the instincts of the writer, without any thought of publication. But after it was completed, a year later, November 1797, Jane's father wrote for her to the well-known publisher Cadell as follows: —
""SIR, —I have in my possession a manuscript novel comprising 3 vols. about the length of Miss Burney's Evelina. As I am well aware of what consequence it is that a work of this sort should make its first appearance under a respectable name, I apply to you. I shall be much obliged therefore if you will inform me whether you choose to be concerned in it, what will be the expense of publishing it at the author's risk, and what you will venture to advance for the property of it, if on perusal it is approved of. Should you give any encouragement I will send you the work."
"This proposal, modest as it is, was rejected by return of post. One would have thought that the success of Miss Burney's books would have made a leading publisher anxious to look at a work on similar lines, but no —Pride and Prejudice was destined not to be published until 1813, sixteen years later!"
"Indeed, Darcy's whole character is so averse from anything usually associated with the word gentleman, that one wonders where Miss Austen found her prototype. Possibly he was one of the few characters for which she drew entirely on her imagination. ... "
Quite on the contrary - he's a boor to begin with, and readers sympathetic with Elizabeth Bennet if not adoring her, flow with her dislike, and are just as indignant when he proposes, and laud her response. It's thereafter with his letter that - again, flowing with Elizabeth and her thinking and feelings - one is perplexed, giving quarter in fsirness; and it's a surprise when he's civil, going out of the way, at his estate, but one still isn't kneeling over until his role in marriage of the youngest sister is revealed, and Lady Catherine puts up Elizabeth's hackles. We only know that she loves him when he confronts her, stating flatly that his hopes were only revived with Lady Catherine's report about her refusing to promise her against marrying him. But when an author paints the suitor of her most beloved heroine, in her most universally loved work, in such negative hues to begin with, it can only be because she knew, met, such a person; and perhaps it was the subsequent humanisation of Darcy that was the author's dream. But remain in shade he does, even till end inscrutable, and only humanized into being revealed a gentleman, albeit one whose servants and others of village vouch for his sterling qualities. If he's seen as romantic hero at all, it's the successful retaining of the mystery while removing the cloak of negativity that does it.
"Sir Walter Scott in the Quarterly Review of 1815 makes the base insinuation that Elizabeth having refused Darcy "does not perceive that she has done a foolish thing, until she accidentally visits a very handsome seat and grounds belonging to her admirer."
"We are sure from what we know of Lizzie, that this is quite unfounded. Had she been liable to any undue influence of that sort, she would have accepted Darcy at the first, for she knew very well all about his position and estates from the beginning. That she had the courage and good sense to snub him speaks much more forcibly for her character than a like action on the part of any girl similarly circumstanced would do now. For then a position gained by marriage was the only one a woman could hope for, and such chances were few and far between when, as we have seen, men were desperately prudent in their matrimonial affairs, and looked on marriage more as a well considered and suitable monetary alliance than as a love match, though perhaps the actual person of the woman was not always such a matter of perfect indifference to them as it seems to have been ... "
"The fact that Jane felt the extreme brilliancy and lightness of her own work shows that the critical faculty was active in her, but as for wishing to do away with it in order to bring the book more into conformity with the heavily padded novels of the time, that of course is pure nonsense."
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"After only the lapse of a month or two from the completion of First Impressions, Jane began on Sense and Sensibility, which she at first called Elinor and Marianne, and which, in the form of letters, had been written long before; probably, if the truth were known, this might be called her first long story, and it was in any case the first published. The story in letters has been wittily described as the "most natural but the most improbable" form; and certainly, though this style of novel had a brief renewal of popularity a year or two ago, it is one that is aggravating to most readers, and requires many clumsy expedients to fill in gaps in order to make the story hang together connectedly. ... In any case Jane was well advised to abandon this form. The novel was finished in 1798 but not published until 1811."
"Sense and Sensibility, though it has never been placed first in position among Jane Austen's novels, has been accounted second by many people. ... "
" ... There is no rational explanation of the obliging conduct of Robert Ferrars, Edward's brother; to make a man so vain and selfish marry a woman who could bring him nothing, and whose charms were not great, is a poor means of escaping from an undesirable deadlock."
To expect everything rational is, surely, not rational! As for Lucy Price, she'd done it once before, and she did it again, getting the guy she set her cap at, that's all. What could be surprising in another brother falling for her, after all, if the more sensible one did in a moment of loneliness? And perhaps he felt victorious by snatching away his brother's prize, since he wasn't engaged? Most important, it was Lucy Price who managed it.
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"On the whole, though interesting enough, Sense and Sensibility does not take very high rank among the novels. ... "
That changed since this book was published. Glamourous films aren't made based on less popular works, and while there are several Pride and Prejudice films, and at least one good Emma if not more, the most glamourous film based on a Jane Austen work remains the Emma Thompson - Hugh Grant version of Sense and Sensibility, with a perfect Mariane too, in Kate Winslet.
" ... Northanger Abbey was begun in 1795, soon after the completion of Sense and Sensibility, and, unlike its predecessors, it does not seem to have been based on existing MSS., but to have been written as we now have it, though the writing was spread over a long period. It is the one of all Miss Austen's novels about which opinions differ most. ... "
Northanger Abbey is Jane Austen's Hamlet, the horror story that isn't called so. People usually do love horror stories.
"The scene of Northanger Abbey is laid in Bath, and it is easy to see how very well acquainted not only with the topography, but with the manners of Bath, Jane was. The chattering and running to and fro from Pump rooms to Upper or Lower Assembly rooms, the continual meetings, and the saunterings in the streets, with all the affected or real gaiety, and the magnifying of trifles, are cleverly sketched in the earlier part of the book. The sincere but foolish little heroine, with her contrast to and intense admiration for her silly and selfish friend, Isabella Thorpe, is a life-like figure. Her mother is one of the very few elderly ladies who are allowed to be sensible in Jane's books, and she comes in so little as to be a very minor figure."
"The writing, though begun in 1798, spread over a long period, for the book was not finished until 1803, by which time Jane herself was settled in Bath. It was then offered to a Bath bookseller, the equivalent of a publisher in our day. He gave ten pounds for it, probably because of the local colour, but evidently after reading it he found it lacked that melodramatic flavour to which he was accustomed; and it is also highly probable that he did not at all comprehend the delightful flavour of irony. The book remained with him, luckily in safety, until thirteen years had passed, when it was bought back by Henry Austen on his sister's account for the same sum that had been given for it. When the transaction had been completed he told the bookseller that it was by the author of Sense and Sensibility, which had attracted much attention, whereat the man must have experienced the regret he deserved to feel, as he had missed the honour of introducing Jane to the public, a, honour that would have linked genius.
"The book did not appear until 1818, when the author was in her grave, and it was the first to bear her name on the title-page. It was published in one volume with the last of her writings, Persuasion. In a preface written before her death, she says of Northanger Abbey —Thirteen years have made it "comparatively obsolete, places, manners, books, and opinions have undergone considerable changes." It is evident, therefore, she did not attempt to bring it up to date. This preface is prefixed to the first edition, as is also the biographical Memoir by her brother which has already been referred to."
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"The few closing years of the eighteenth century, the last spent at Steventon, while these three works were in hand, must have been bright ones to Jane; she had found an outlet for all the vivacious humour that was in her, and must have lived in the world of fancy with her characters, which were all very real to her, quite as much as in the material world."
"The last few years of the century which passed so quietly at Steventon were times of continual change and stir in the larger world, a world in which both Francis and Charles Austen were taking an active part. But except for the personal matters that affected them, Jane does not refer to these events. It is true that from September 1796 to October 1798 we have no letters of hers, which may be due to the fact that she and her sister were not much parted then. This is one of the disadvantages of a correspondence carried on with such a near relation. But subsequently to this break the allusions to her brothers' promotions and prospects are fairly frequent."
" ... Charles Austen had seen active service when only a lad of fifteen, and both brothers frequently took part in the small actions which were continually occurring on the seas."
"The most amazing part of this splendid series of victories, all of which contained much boarding and hand-to-hand fighting, demanding personal pluck and endurance, is, that the sailors, as a mass, were either unwilling men pressed into a service which they disliked, or the very off-scourings of the country. On board there was bad food, bad water, wretched accommodation, and often rank brutality. There was the discipline of terror not of respect, and insubordination was only held down by fear.
"The officers fared a little better than the men in regard to comfort, but it speaks well for young Charles Austen that he followed in his brother's steps when he must have known by word of mouth of all the discomforts, to speak of nothing worse, which must be his lot on board ship."
"The wonder is that such boys as went to sea picked up enough seamanship to pass any but the most practical examination. Navigation was in those days even more difficult than at present, owing to the dependence on the wind and the necessity for understanding the exact management of sails. There were no engineers who could make the vessel go in any direction the captain thought best at a moment's notice; and the man on the bridge had a heavy responsibility."
"The between decks, where the men slept, had not been ventilated at all up to the middle of the eighteenth century, when a hand-pump was invented to expel the foul air, the fresh air being left to find its own way in. The noisome smells, the cramped space, the continual darkness and disorder, must have bred sickness and debility in many, which all the open-air life on deck could not counteract."
"As for the state of the hospitals in India and elsewhere, the following story tells a tale. "Soon after the last action with the French fleet, I observed a wounded seaman, who had lost part of his hand by a shot, climbing up the side with one hand, and holding his bread bag in his teeth. I asked why he had left the hospital. He answered they were so much in want of provisions that he had come on board to beg some biscuit (which was full of maggots) for his messmates. At that time I understood government was charged a rupee a day for every man in the hospital (about 1000 or 1500) but I believe seven or eight pence was all it cost the contractor for their provisions, and it was reported that he was obliged to share the profits with the admiral and his secretary, said to amount to about £70 a day."
"We have had some revelations of official corruption recently, but there is nothing to compare with the openly recognised stealing of the eighteenth century, when, so late as 1783, a minister could say in earnest to a purser who had been a commissary and complained of poverty, "You had your hand in the bag, sir, why did you not help yourself?" And help themselves everyone apparently did, from the highest to the lowest. ... "
"The difference between an ordinary press and a "hot press" was that in the latter all protection was disregarded, and men of every sort, even apprentices usually protected by law, were seized and carried off to serve, utterly regardless of mercy. The odd part of it is that, when it was found to be inevitable, the men who had been taken against their will plucked up spirit and performed their duties well."
"To counterbalance all the manifold disadvantages of service in the navy, for the officers at least, there were some attractions; that of prize-money was very great, for a man might literally make his fortune at sea in a few years by lucky captures, and the spirit of gambling and adventure to which this gave rise must have had a very strong effect in attracting young officers.
"The account of the sums received in prize-money is perfectly amazing; the best haul of all was perhaps the Hermione, a Spanish ship taken long before the Austens' day, in 1762. The treasure was conveyed to London in twenty waggons with the British colours flying over those of Spain, a sight that would confound those of our own time, who seem to think the true way to celebrate a victory is to give compensation to those who have provoked war, and brought defeat upon themselves! The share of one ship alone, the Active, amounted to over £250,000; and the proportion given to the ships of the same squadron not actually present amounted to nearly £67,000. The value of the St. Jago, taken in 1793, as adjudged to the captors was £935,000, of which about £100,000 went to Admiral Gell. (The Times, February 4, 1795.) Each captain got nearly £14,000.
"In 1801, Jane tells us that "Charles has received £30 for his share of the privateer and expects ten pounds more, but of what avail is it to take prizes if he lays out the produce in presents to his sisters? He has been buying gold chains and topaz crosses for us. He must be well scolded."
"After this it does not seem so strange to read in Persuasion that in only seven years Anne's lover, Wentworth, "had distinguished himself, and early gained the other step in rank, and must now, by successive captures, have made a handsome fortune," which otherwise strikes oddly on our ears."
"A peculiar feature of the end of the eighteenth and beginning of nineteenth centuries was the tendency to mutiny, induced doubtless by the terrible hardships and injustices undergone by the men on board. And the wonder is, not that the men did mutiny, but that they endured so long and fought so splendidly without doing so."
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"Jane's letters for the last few years before leaving Steventon show some of the decadence due to trivial surroundings, and her remarks are apt to be spiced with unkindness. Evidently her sister-in-law, James's wife, was not a favourite; she objected to her husband's being so much at Steventon, though Jane notes that he persevered in coming "in spite of Mary's reproaches." But Jane's sharpness is also extended to her remarks on her acquaintances. "The Debaries persist in being afflicted at the death of their uncle, of whom they now say they saw a great deal in London.""
"The income which the family would have is indicated in the following remark of Jane's made about this time: "My father is doing all in his power to increase his income, by raising his tithes, etc., and I do not despair of getting very nearly six hundred a year.""
" ... Nash's name is associated even more with the assembly rooms than the pump room. The assembly Rooms are some distance from the pump rooms and the Baths, being situated not far from the famous crescent. In Jane's time there were two sets of assembly rooms, upper and lower, governed by two different masters of the ceremonies, positions which were much coveted. In 1820 the lower rooms were burnt down and not rebuilt, but the upper are still used, and the names over the doors of the rooms, card-room, tea-room, etc., recall many a scene in Jane Austen's novels.
"Bath really began to be fashionable in the early part of Queen Anne's reign, but it was Nash who consolidated its attractions, and brought it up to its highest pitch of popularity.
"Nash came in 1705. He was the man of all others to organise fashionable entertainments. Under his severe, yet fatherly rule, the place sprang quickly into popularity. Houses were built, streets repaved, balls and entertainments followed each other in quick succession. An assembly room was built, and good music engaged; but it was not until 1769, eight years after Nash's death, that the present building was erected. Nash's code of rules continued in force for long after his death, before which he had sunk from the position of esteem which he had once enjoyed. ... "
" ... The rules for balls were probably very much the same when Jane Austen attended them as when Nash was living. Everything was to be performed in proper order. Each ball was to open with a minuet danced by two persons of the highest distinction present. When the minuet concluded the lady was to return to her seat, and Mr. Nash was to bring the gentleman a new partner. The minuets generally continued two hours. At eight the country dances began, ladies of quality according to their rank standing up first. About nine o'clock a short interval was allowed for rest, and for the gentlemen to help their partners to tea, the ball having begun, it must be remembered, about six. The company pursued their amusements until the clock struck eleven, when the music ceased instantly; and Nash never allowed this rule to be broken, even when the Princess Amelia herself pleaded for one dance more.
"Among other rules was one mentioned by Mr. Austen-Leigh, that ladies who intended to dance minuets were requested to wear lappets to distinguish them. Also, in order that every lady may have an opportunity of dancing, gentlemen should change their partners every two dances. We see in this last rule how the transition from one partner for the whole evening to the continual change of partners came to pass."
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"There is little reason to doubt that Jane would thoroughly enjoy the change afforded by such constant opportunity for diversion, such delightful mingling with a crowd in which her bright humour must have found frequent opportunities for indulgence.
"As we have seen, she had written her first Bath book, Northanger Abbey, many years before, and while a she sat in the pump room, awaited a partner in the assembly rooms, or shopped in Milsom Street, she must have recalled her own creations, Catherine Morland and Isabella Thorpe, Henry Tilney and Mrs. Allen, quite as vividly as if they were real persons of her acquaintance.
"The second Bath book, Persuasion, was not written until many years after, yet these two, chronologically so far apart, topographically so near each other, have always been, owing to conditions of length, bound together."
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" ... the vision of all the boys in a school going to bed in night-caps is a funny one."
Funny, this was written in an era in U.K. where fireplaces couldn't have kept even the wealthy very warm, else why was the householder always with his back or his feet to the fire, as the one with privileges? As it is, central heating came in U.K. much later than it did in U.S. - and hot showers still dont always function well in houses. In Jane Austen's time, and even until WWII era, transatlantic visitors always complained of cold and draughty English homes. Surely children, including boys, were better off with heads not exposed when they were in bed at schools?!!!
"Head-dresses reached their climax of absurdity at the end of the eighteenth century, but the styles varied so much that almost everyone could please themselves. At a famous trial only a few ladies were dressed in the French taste. "All the rest, decked in the finest manner with brocades, diamonds, and lace, had no other head-dress, but a ribband tied to their hair, over which they wore a flat hat, adorned with a variety of ornaments. It requires much observation to be able to give full account of the great effect produced by this hat; it affords the ladies who wear it that arch and roguish air, which the winged hat gives to Mercury." And Sir Waiter Besant says: "The women wore hoods, small caps, enormous hats, tiny milkmaid's straw hats; hair in curls and flat to the head; 'pompoms,' or huge structures two or three feet high, with all kinds of decorations-ribbons, birds' nests, ships, carriages and waggons in gold and silver lace —in the erection.""
"But in 1787 a great change occurred in the mode of hair-dressing, the huge cushions disappeared and the main part of the hair was gathered together at the back in a chignon from which one or two loose curls were allowed to escape. The long feathers, which have already been commented on, varied in number from three to one, and continued to be worn well on into the nineteenth century. These feathers appeared in turbans, bonnets, and head- dresses of all kinds, and hardly a picture of the period representing ladies at a card-table does not show one or more of these ludicrous quivering monstrosities."
"In the last ten years of the century, poke bonnets and dunstable hats were much in evidence, and with flowing curls, and flowing ribbons tied in a large bow under the chin, were sometimes not unbecoming to a pretty face."
"In regard to the rest of the costume of ladies, the most noticeable points of the mode were the high waists and long flowing skirts clinging tightly to the figure. This, if not carried to excess, was certainly becoming, but fashion cannot be content with mediocrity, it must be extravagant. Consequently, "With very low bodices and very high waists, came very scanty clothing, with an absence of petticoat, a fashion which left very little of the form to the imagination. I do not say that our English belles went to the extent of some of their French sisters, of having their muslin dresses put on damp —and holding them tight to their figures till they dried —so as absolutely to mould them to their form but their clothes were of the scantiest, and as year succeeded year, this fashion developed, if one can call diminution of clothing development." (John Ashton, Old Times.)"
"Coquelicot, that is poppy colour, was very fashionable, Jane as we have seen adopted it; at one time no lady's dress was considered complete without a dash of coquelicot in sash or trimmings.
"Jane frequently mentions her cloak; this would not be what ladies call a cloak now, but more what would be described as a fichu or tippet, covering the shoulders and having long ends which fell like a stole in front, some of the modern fur stoles are in fact made very much on the same pattern; no lady's wardrobe seems to have been complete without at least one black silk cloak of this sort. Dresses were cut low in front, either in v-shape or curved, and even in winter this custom was followed; a silk handkerchief was sometimes folded crosswise over the opening, but very generally, though warmly dressed in other respects, a lady had her neck quite uncovered. The short sleeves which went with low necks necessitated the use of long gloves, which reached above the elbow and were tied there with ribbon. The high waists made the bodice of the dress so small that it was of very little consequence, and sometimes was formed merely by a folded bit of material like a fichu. This was covered by that fashionable and characteristic garment, the pelisse. It was not considered proper for very young girls to wear pelisses, they wore cloaks, but the pelisse did not really differ very greatly from the cloak, for it was like a long open coat, fitting closely to the arm, but falling straight in long ends from the armholes, thus leaving the front of the dress exposed in a panel; later, pelisses became more voluminous and completely covered the dress, fastening in front."
"Huge muffs were very common, and this is one of the features of the dress of that date which is generally remembered because of its singularity.
"The small girls were dressed in long skirts plainly made, and their robes must have precluded any possibility of romping; the short skirts and long stockinged legs of our present mode would have made them stare indeed.
"As for the materials for dresses, they were of course much less varied than the inventions of printing and machinery allow women to use nowadays. Plain muslins, or muslins embroidered at the edge, were most common, though there were other materials such as taffeta, sarsenet, and bombazine. We must realise also that any lace used in trimming must have been real lace, there was no machine-made stuff at 2 3/4 d. a yard as in our own time the distorted sleeves or ever-changing with which every servant girl could deck herself as she does now. India muslins were extremely popular, and seemed to have been worn quite regardless of the climate, which according to accounts, our grandmothers notwithstanding, does not seem to have changed remarkably."
And these famous muslins from India, so popular even with U.K. population, especially women, for very good reasons, we're killed deliberately by British rulers in India, by chopping off hands of weavers, so the inferior British products could be substituted, not only in Britain but forced on India as well.
"When Lady Newdigate was at Brighton in 1797 she writes to her husband: "Do ask of your female croneys if they have any wants in the muslin way. Nothing else is worn in gowns by any rank of people, but I don't know that I can get them cheaper here, but great choice there is, very beautiful and real India.""
"Hoops were worn in court dress, long after they were abandoned elsewhere, someone describes them as the "excrescences and balconies with which modern hoydens overwhelm and barricade their persons." Apart from this survival at court, dress was generally long and clinging."
"Men's dress of the same period was most magnificent, and perhaps the feature of it that would strike one most in contrast with modern fashions, would be its variety of colour; coats and waistcoats were always coloured, black was only donned for mourning. Gold and silver lace and figured brocades, with lace cuffs and ruffles, were essential to a beau. Horace Walpole notes at the wedding of a nephew that, except for himself, there wasn't a bit of gold lace anywhere in the dress of the men, and he considered it altogether as a very poor affair."
"The following is the wardrobe of a fashionable man of the time. "My wardrobe consisted of five fashionable coats full mounted, two of which were plain, one of cut velvet, one trimmed with gold, and another with silver lace; two frocks, one of which was drab with large plate buttons, the other of blue with gold binding; one waistcoat of gold brocade, one of blue satin, embroidered with silver, one of green silk trimmed with broad figured gold lace; one of black silk with fringes; one of white satin, one of black cloth and one of scarlet ; six pairs of cloth breeches, one pair of crimson, and another of black velvet; twelve pair of white silk stockings, as many of black silk, and the same number of fine cotton; one hat laced with gold point d' Espagne; another with silver lace scalloped, a third gold binding, and a fourth plain; three dozen of fine ruffled shirts, as many neckcloths; one dozen of cambric handkerchiefs, and the like number of silk. A gold watch with a chased case (it was the fashion to wear two watches at one time during the century), two valuable diamond rings, two morning swords, one with a silver handle, and a fourth cut steel inlaid with gold; a diamond stock buckle and a set of stone buckles for the knees and shoes; a pair of silver mounted pistols with rich housings; a gold headed cane, and a snuff box of tortoiseshell, mounted with gold, having the picture of a lady on the top.""
"Jane Austen's brother Edward would dress, as befitted his position, with greater variety of colour and style than his clergyman father and brother. It was the usual thing for a clergyman to dress in black, with knee-breeches and white stock, but it was not essential. In Northanger Abbey when Henry Tilney is first introduced to Catherine in the lower rooms at Bath, there is nothing in his attire to indicate that he is a clergyman, a fact which she only learns subsequently.
"In ordinary civilian dress, men wore long green, blue, or brown cloth coats with stocks and frilled ruffles. In the Man of Feeling a man casually met with is wearing "a brownish coat with a narrow gold edging, and his companion an old green frock with a buff coloured waistcoat," while an ex-footman trying to play the gentleman has on "a white frock and a red laced waistcoat."
"At that time footgear for men consisted of slippers in the house, and riding-boots for out of doors. When Beau Nash was forming the assemblies at Bath, as has been said he made a dead set against the habit some men had of wearing boots in the dancing-room. ... "
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"During the four years that had passed since the beginning of the century, Europe had been in a continual turmoil, a turmoil that could never cease while Napoleon was at liberty. The Battle of Alexandria in the first year of the new century had taught him that the English were as formidable on land as on sea, and the Battle of the Baltic in the following month, further convinced him that there was one unconquered nation that dared oppose him. He recognised, however, that while he could not but acknowledge the superiority of Britain on the sea, and in places accessible by sea, he could do much as he pleased on the continent, therefore a compromise was arrived at, and on March 27, 1803, the Treaty of Amiens was signed, and for the first time for many years the strain of war was relaxed in Great Britain."
"Mrs. Austen was not well off, for her husband had had no private means and she herself but little, yet her son Edward was well able to help her, for Chawton alone is said to have been worth £5000 a year. There was also money in the family, for Jane some years later speaks of her eldest brother's income being £1100 a year. She and her sister must have had some little allowance also, as it was with her own money that she paid for the publication of the first of her books. Simply as she had always lived, she does not seem to have had small ideas on the subject, the couples in her books require about two thousand a year before they can be considered prosperous, and incomes of from five thousand to ten thousand pounds are not rare. She makes one of the characters in Mansfield Park remark, on hearing that Mr. Crawford has four thousand pounds a year, "'Those who have not more must be satisfied with what they have. Four thousand a year is a pretty estate.'""
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"At this time an amicable arrangement had been arrived at, by which Frank Austen and his wife shared the house of the mother and sisters at Southampton, Frank himself being of course frequently away. His first wife, Mary Gibson, whom he had only recently married, lived until 1823; and is referred to by her sister-in-law as "Mrs. F. A.," doubtless to distinguish her from the other Mary, James's wife. Martha Lloyd, whom Frank married as his second wife, long, long after, seems to have been such a favourite with the family that she practically lived with the Austens at Southampton, as her own mother had died some years before."
"There does not seem to be any record of the first year spent here, there are no letters preserved, and we know that Jane wrote no more novels. Household affairs and altering clothes according to the mode must have filled up days too pleasantly monotonous to have anything worth recording. Southampton evidently did not inspire her, for it figures in none of her books, though its neighbour, Portsmouth, is described as the home of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park.
"Yet in October 1805, just at the time Jane was settling into her new home, was fought the Battle of Trafalgar, which smashed the allied fleets of Spain and France, and freed Britain from any fear of invasion. As it was a naval battle, we can imagine for the sake of her brothers she must have thrilled at the tremendous news, which would arrive as fast as a sailing ship could bring it —probably a day or two after the action."
"The garden at Southampton was evidently the cause of much enjoyment. "We hear that we are envied our house by many people, and that our garden is the best in the town.""
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"Terrific fighting continued on the continent, and in December the prestige of Napoleon was enhanced on the stubborn field of Austerlitz. In the beginning of 1806, England had the misfortune to lose by death the great minister Pitt, who had steered her through such perilous times. It is said that the news of Austerlitz was the final blow to a nature worn out by stress and anxiety. In September of the same year his talented but inferior rival, Fox, died also. In this year was issued the famous Berlin Decree, by which Napoleon prohibited all commerce with Great Britain, and declared confiscated any British merchandise or shipping. But Britain had spirit enough to retort in the following year with a decree declaring a blockade of France, and that any of her merchant vessels were fair prizes unless they had previously touched at a British port.
"The war continued without intermission throughout 1807. Austria, exhausted, had sullenly withdrawn, Prussia had plucked up spirit to join with Russia in opposing the conqueror of Europe, but in June, after the hard fought Battle of Frieland, France concluded with Russia the secret Peace of Tilsit, based upon mutual hatred of England. England, however, soon found out the menace directed against her, and as the French troops marched to Denmark, evidently with the intention of summoning that country to use her fleet in accordance with their orders, England by a prompt and brilliant countermove appeared before Copenhagen first, and by bombarding the town compelled submission, and carried away the whole fleet for safety's sake. Those were glorious days for the navy, when measures were prompt and decisive, when no hesitation and shilly-shallying and fear of "hurting the feelings" of an unscrupulous enemy prevented Britain from taking care of herself.
"Britain was now at war with Russia and Denmark as well as France, but the unprecedented duplicity of Napoleon in Spain in 1807 gave Britain an unexpected field on which to do battle, and allies by no means to be despised. Spain was France's ally, yet France after marching through the country to crush Portugal, quietly annexed the country of their ally in returning, and by a ruse made the whole Royal Family prisoners in France, while Napoleon's brother Joseph, King of Naples, was subsequently proclaimed king. The Spaniards were aroused, and though the best of their troops had been previously drawn off into Germany by the tyrant, they managed to give a good account of themselves, even against the invincible French. Joseph Buonaparte had been proclaimed King of Spain in June 1808. In that month Jane was at Godmersham again, and though she did not know it, this was the last visit she would pay before the death of Mrs. Edward Knight, which occurred in the following October, at the birth of her eleventh child; Jane seems to have noticed her sister-in-law was not in good health, she says, "I cannot praise Elizabeth's looks, but they are probably affected by a cold.""
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"Poor Fanny was then in her sixteenth year, the time when a girl perhaps feels the loss of a sensible, affectionate mother more than any other. She acquitted herself splendidly in the difficult task that fell on her as the eldest of so many brothers and sisters. Her next sister Lizzy was at this time only eight years old, and though she seems to have felt the loss keenly, it could not be the same to her as it was to Fanny.
"Mourning at that time entailed heavy crape, and Jane at once fitted herself out with all that was proper. The two eldest boys, Edward and George, were by this time at Winchester College, but when their mother died they went first to their aunt and uncle at Steventon, and on October 24 came on to Southampton. Jane's next letter is full of them. ... "
"In 1809 another move was contemplated. Edward Knight had found it in his power to offer his mother and sisters a home rent free; and he gave them the choice of a house in Kent, probably not far from Godmersham, or a cottage at Chawton close to his manor house there."
"Chawton was her home for the rest of her short life, though she actually died at Winchester. At Chawton her three last novels were written, as will be recounted in detail. It is curious that the periods of her literary activity seem to have been synchronous with her residence in the country; at Steventon and at Chawton respectively she produced three novels; at Bath only a fragment, and at Southampton nothing at all.
"The life at Chawton during this and the next few years must have been part of the happiest time she ever experienced. Her first book, Sense and Sensibility, was published in 1811; she had tasted the joys of earning money, and, what was much greater, the joy of seeing her own ideas and characters in tangible shape; she lived in a comfortable, pretty home, with the comings and goings of her relatives at the manor house to add variety, and she had probably lost the restlessness of girlhood. ... "
"For six months, during the year 1813, the whole of the Godmersham party lived at Chawton, while their other house was being repaired and painted, and this intercourse added greatly to Jane's happiness. She cemented that affectionate friendship with her eldest niece Fanny ... "
"But during these years there was no abatement of the fierce turmoil in Europe, the Peninsular War, demanding ever fresh levies of men and fresh subsidies of money, was a continual drain on England's resources, and the beginning of 1812 found the French practically masters of Spain; but in that year the tide turned, and after continual and bloody battles and sieges in which the loss of life was enormous, Wellington drove the French back across the Pyrenees, and in the following year planted his victorious standard actually on French soil."
" ... Austria had signed the disastrous Peace of Vienna with France in 1809, and during this and the following years the continent with small exception was ground beneath the heel of Napoleon, who in 1812 commenced the invasion of Russia which was to cost him so dearly. In 1811 there is rather a characteristic exclamation in one of Jane's letters apropos of the war: "How horrible it is to have so many people killed! And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!"
"Napoleon's tyranny and utter regardlessness of the feelings of national pride in the countries he had conquered now began to bring forth for him a bitter harvest. The Sixth Coalition of nations was formed against him, including Russia, Prussia, Austria, Great Britain and Sweden. After terrific fighting his armies were forced back over the Rhine, and the mighty Empire he had formed of powerless and degraded "republics" melted away like snow in an August sun. In March 1814, Paris, itself was forced to surrender to the triumphant armies of the Allies. In April, Napoleon signed his abdication and retired to Elba. Ever since he first appeared as an active agent on the battlefields of Europe he had kept the continent in a perpetual ferment; cruelty, bloodshed and horror had followed in his train. His mighty personality had seemed scarcely human, and his very name struck terror into all hearts, and became a bugbear with which to frighten children."
"In the June letter she says to Cassandra, who was in London, "Take care of yourself and do not be trampled to death in running after the Emperor. The report in Alton yesterday was that they would certainly travel this road either to or from Portsmouth." This referred to the visit of the Allied monarchs to England after their triumph in Paris, and the "emperor" was the Emperor Alexander of Russia, who but a few years ago had formed a secret treaty with Napoleon to the detriment of England!"
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"In 1811 the first of her books, Sense and Sensibility, was published at her own expense, and produced in three neat little volumes in clear type by T. Egerton, Whitehall. Her identity was not disclosed by the title-page, which simply bore the words "By a Lady." ... "
" ... The gratifying reception of Sense and Sensibility seems to have awakened the powers of writing which had so long lain dormant from want of encouragement. In 1812 she began Mansfield Park ... "
"Mrs. Norris, with her sycophantic speeches towards her well-to-do nieces, her own opinion of her virtues, her admonitions to Fanny, her habit of taking credit for the generous acts performed by other people, her sponging, and trick of getting everything at the expense of others, is the most striking figure in the book. When poor Fanny, having been neglected and left alone all day, the odd one of the party, is returning with the rest rather drearily from Rushworth Park, Mrs. Norris remarks —
""Well, Fanny, this has been a fine day for you, upon my word! Nothing but pleasure from beginning to end! I am sure you ought to be very much obliged to your Aunt Bertram and me for contriving to let you go. A pretty good day's amusement you have had." This, when she has done her best to stop Fanny's going at all, depicts her character in unmistakable colours. On another occasion she tells the meek Fanny, "The nonsense and folly of people's stepping out of their rank and trying to appear above themselves makes me think it right to give you a hint, Fanny, now that you are going into company without any of us, and I do beseech and entreat you not to be putting yourself forward, and to talking and giving your opinion as if you were one of your cousins, as if you were dear Mrs. Rushworth or Julia. That will never do, believe me. Remember wherever you are you must be the lowest and last." In the same book Sir Thomas Bertram's conference with his niece on the proposals he has received for her from Mr. Crawford is a wonderful commentary on the opinions of the time, but is too long to quote in entirety. That Fanny should refuse a handsome eligible young man, merely because she could neither respect nor love him, was quite incredible, and not only foolish but wicked. Sir Thomas speaks sternly of his disappointment in her character, "I had thought you peculiarly free from wilfulness of temper, self-conceit and every tendency to that independence of spirit which prevails so much in modern days, even in young women, and which, in young women, is offensive and disgusting beyond all common offence."
"We know what Jane herself thought of coercion of this kind, and how fully her sentiments were on the side of liberty of choice."
"In 1813 came the publication of Pride and Prejudice, apparently at Mr. Egerton's risk. This was evidently Jane's own favourite among the novels, and her references to it are made with genuine delight."
"Mansfield Park was finished in the same year, and came out under the auspices of Mr. Egerton in 1814, though the second edition was transferred to Mr. Murray. Before the publication of Emma, Jane had begun to be known in spite of the anonymity of her title-pages. ... "
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"During the years when she lived at Chawton, Jane stayed pretty frequently in London, generally with her brother Henry. She was with him in 1811, when he was in Sloane Street, going daily to the bank in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, in which he was a partner."
"Henry was at this time married to his cousin Eliza, widow of the Count de Feuillade, who has already been mentioned, and Eliza was evidently vivacious and fond of society, so her sister-in-law had by no means a dull time when staying with her. But how different were Jane's visits to London, unknown, and certainly without any idea of the fame that was to attend her later, to those of her forerunners and contemporaries who had been "discovered," and who on the very slightest grounds were fêted and adored. The company of Mrs. Austen's friends, a little shopping, an occasional visit to the play, these were the details which filled up the daily routine of Jane's visit. She made the acquaintance of many of her sister-in-law's French friends, and enjoyed a large musical party given by her, where, "including everybody we were sixty-six," and where "the music was extremely good harp, pianoforte, and singing," and the "house was not clear till twelve.""
"The streets were full of enormous coaches, sometimes gilt, hung on high springs, drawn by four, and even six horses; footmen, to the number of four or six, ran beside them, and the wheels splashed heavily in the dirt described, sending up the mud in black spurts. It was early in the nineteenth century that a new kind of paving was tried, blocks of cast-iron covered with gravel, but this was not a success. Besides the large coaches there were hackney coaches, which would seem to us almost equally clumsy and unwieldy. Omnibuses were not seen in the metropolis until 1823, but there was something of the kind running from outlying places to London ... "
"Hackney coaches were in severe competition with sedan chairs, for to call a chair was as frequent a custom as to send for a hackney coach. The chairmen were notorious for their incivility, just as the watermen had previously been, and as their successors, the cabmen, became later, though now the reproach is removed from them."
"These chairs were kept privately by great people, and often were very richly decorated with brocade and plush; it was not an unusual thing for the footmen or chairmen of the owner to be decoyed into a tavern while the chair was stolen for the sake of its valuable furniture. The chairs opened with a lid at the top to enable the occupant to stand up on entrance, and then were shut down; in the caricatures of the day, these lids are represented as open to admit of the lady's enormous feather being left on her head.
"It was of course quite impossible for a lady to go about alone in the streets of London at this date, and even dangerous sometimes for men. The porters, carriers, chairmen, drunken sailors, etc., ready to make a row, are frequently mentioned by Grosley, and scuffles were of constant occurrence. George Selwyn in 1782 was so "mobbed, daubed, and beset by a crew of wretched little chimney-sweeps" that he had to give them money to go away.
"These pests were under no sort of control, as there were no regular police in the streets."
"In 1811 gas was just beginning to be used in lighting the streets! The town was in a strange transitional state. Pall Mall was first lighted with a row of gas lamps in 1807, and on the king's birthday, June 4, the wall between Pall Mall and St. James's Park was brilliantly illuminated in the same way, but gas generally was not placed in the thoroughfares until 1812 or 1813, and meantime oil-lamps requiring much care and attention were the only resource."
"When one realises the crowds that habitually frequented the place it seems as if there must be some mistake in the record that a man was accidentally shot in 1798 when the keepers "were hunting foxes in Kensington Gardens!""
""On the stage the principal actresses drag long trains after them, and are followed by a little boy in quality of a train-bearer, who is as inseparable from them as the shadow from the body. This page keeps his eye constantly upon the train of the princess, sets it to rights when it is ever so little ruffled or disordered, and is seen to run after it with all his might, when a violent emotion makes the princess hurry from one side of the stage to another.""
"Just as in novels during the lifetime of Jane Austen, there was an enormous change from the grandiloquent and conventional, to the natural and simple, and the same in poetry, so it was on the stage. The absurd conventionalism, the unsuitable dresses, no matter what, so long as they were grand, were exchanged for easy declamation and natural attitude."
"We have no letters of Jane's before November 1815; but she was probably at home at Chawton with her sister and mother, when the news that Napoleon had escaped from Elba burst upon the world like a thunderclap! The call to arms rang throughout Europe, and then followed the terrible Hundred Days which ended on June the eighteenth with the Battle of Waterloo."
"Louis XVIII. was once more placed on the throne of his fathers, and Napoleon was sent to St. Helena. He arrived there on November the sixteenth, and by that date Jane was again in London nursing her brother Henry."
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"Persuasion was finished in July 1816, but Jane was not satisfied with it, perhaps her own failing health and the sense of tiredness that went with it, had made her lose that grip of the action that she had hitherto held so well; she felt the story did not end satisfactorily, that it wanted bringing together and clinching so to speak; Mr. Austen-Leigh says: "This weighed upon her mind, the more so probably on account of her weak state of health, so that one night she retired to rest in very low spirits. But such depression was little in accordance with her nature, and was soon shaken off. The next morning she woke to more cheerful views and brighter inspirations; the sense of power revived and imagination resumed its course. She cancelled the condemned chapter and wrote two others, entirely different, in its stead.""
"This book was not published until after her death, when it appeared in one volume with Northanger Abbey, the first to which her name was prefixed, this came out in 1818 with a Memoir by her brother Henry. Up to the time of her death she had received nearly seven hundred pounds for the published books, which, considering her anonymity, and entire lack of publicity and influence, must have appeared to her, and indeed was, wonderful, though in comparison with the true value of the work very little indeed."
"She had taken to using a donkey-carriage in good weather, and doubtless this was a great boon, though she was able to walk one way either to or from Alton without over-fatigue, and hoped to be able to manage both ways when the summer came. In January also she mentions that her brother Henry, who was now ordained, was coming down to preach. "It will be a nervous hour for our pew, though we hear that he acquits himself with as much ease and collectedness as if he had been used to it all his life.""
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"Cassandra herself survived for twenty-eight years, and spent her last days in the cottage at Chawton endeared to her by recollections of her mother and beloved sister."
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August 31, 2021 - September 05, 2021.
Kindle Edition
Published July 7th 2020
(first published 1905)
Original Title
Jane Austen and Her Times, 1775 - 1817
ASIN:- B08CKZ1KPF
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