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IS IT JUST?
from Fanny Caroline Lefroy (1883)
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It's hard to imagine how much forbearance was required for the family of a genius of an author, of impeccable propriety in her personal life as well as her writing, when she was targeted- of all the things - precisely for that.
On some level, all but corporeal, it's no different from being whiplashed by strangers just for visibility of a toe. It's really not for the visibility of that toe, but punishment for courage of having stepped out of the boundary of housework slavery, at all.
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One is exasperated and indignant right off the bat, for readers of Jane Austen and her relatives as well.
""HAD Miss Austen felt more deeply, she would have written differently."
But Fanny, the author of this, reminds one of comments of Mikes about the famous incident of Queen Victoria, displeased, remarking "We are not amused" - Mikes applauded the British pride in what he said they thought was her rudeness, in an incident that, on the continent, would have had a tiniest ruler order a beheading of the offender. It's not an exact quote, memory being of reading it several decades ago.
"These words in a recent number of 'Temple Bar' are the reason why this paper is written. They are, in whatever point of view we look at them, very wide of the truth, and are not the only error their author has fallen into, nor is he the only person who thus misjudges her. It is, notwithstanding all the praises bestowed, becoming the fashion to accuse her of being shallow and cold-hearted, and her heroines of being prudish; and undoubtedly there is not to be found in her novels those highly-spiced love scenes with which we are all so familiar, but which, while requiring little genius to write, only deprave the taste and imagination of the reader."
Fanny is being as patient and courteous as it was possible in face of such horrible criticism, which is not new for any woman not exactly blending in woodwork - if one isn't accused of impropriety, one is labelled frigid; and this goes in every field, not merely of propriety or otherwise. One is either too aggressive or incapable of a career, and so on.
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"Without exaggeration, it may be said that on few other female writers has such an amount of study, criticism, and praise been bestowed as on Jane Austen. Others, notably Miss Burney, enjoyed far more fame during their lives. They sowed one week and they reaped the next; admiring crowds followed them, and their name was in everybody's mouth. They were the lions of their day and enjoyed their own lionhood. But she never knew that she was a lion, and lived and died scarcely more widely known than Cowper's old woman, who "never was heard of half a mile from home." and now her name and the praise of her works is for ever cropping up in the most unlikely places, and her admirers and readers are innumerable, ranging from Cardinal Newman (nay, it would not astonish us to find the Pope himself amongst the number) to the young Hindus in the college at Calcutta. And yet there is no modern writer of equal fame of whom the public know so little. The blank of her life in some sort impairs the interest of her books, and so far is, and has been, an injury to her fame.... "
Which is as unjust, unfair, even mindlessly stupid as it gets. What difference does it make if those books were written by a mother of ten with ten score servants and five palaces, or by a daughter of a clergyman who led a normal life in country as others in her station did? The point really is how much joy her writing gives, and to that there's no addition or subtraction either way.
" ... That blank is mainly owing to her own nearest relations. They did not perceive that genius must always, bon grè, mal grè, lift its possessor out of the class of private individuals and more or less deprive them of the shelter, as it does of the obscurity, of private life. The more rare and excellent the genius, the more interesting to the public is the character of its possessor and the incidents of his or her life. Fame cannot be separated from publicity, and those who secure it do not often wish that it should be; but now and then it comes to those who have never sought it, and to whose modesty and reserve it is really painful. ... "
It's not those who are reserved despite fame, nor their families, that are at fault; it's those who target them for the reason of the fame.
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"Surely people, even geniuses, have a right to keep their lives hidden if they shrink from fame, and their relations a right to respect such a wish, even though it injures, as it must often do, the permanence of the renown. But the destruction of Miss Austen's letters has we think hurt, not so much her literary fame, as the loveableness of her character as shown to us. This her family could not have foreseen, and would not have desired. It could not have been their wish that she should be esteemed by any of her readers and critics, hard and shallow-hearted."
Nobody has a right to do the last, not without actual proof thereof (such as having seen someone get off a horse just to kick someone poor and old sitting quietly by wayside), and the beginning sentence of that paragraph is entirely correct.
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" ... But first we must observe that it is incorrect to say that she had "only her own taste to guide her." From her earliest youth she had the help and guidance of a father and mother much above the average in point of ability, and the companionship of brothers almost all of whom were clever and scholarly. Her nephew, Mr. Austen Leigh, who gave us the very pleasant recollections and memoir published a few years ago, says that her father was so good a scholar that he could himself prepare his sons for the university, and was able to increase his income by taking pupils; and that in her "mother was to be found the germ of that ability which was concentrated in Jane, but of which almost all of her children had a share." The boys were all brought up at home, until they went out into the world, no small advantage to their sisters, who, if they did not share the teaching, must often have heard it, and have listened to grammatical instructions which, though primarily concerning Latin and Greek, could not but influence their own language."
This would be all too familiar to anyone of India, where for over a millennium the invading colonial cultures did not allow any schools (other than those restricted to islamic teaching) to exist publicly, and hence parents taught children at home, sometimes taking a few students who could be fit in the household. Women of the family learned by hearing, even when they were busy learning necessities of household - which included medicine, apart from other necessities.
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Fanny Caroline Lefroy goes on with delightful accounts of mother of Jane Austen, including a few letters written by her, before returning to the main offense given (by what thoughtkess boor?).
"We are told that neither in Miss Austen's letters nor her books do we find any traces of a spirit ill at ease and restless, and dissatisfied with its lot, and it is therefore inferred that she had never had any "serious attachment," or met with any disappointment. If by disappointment be meant the having loved without meeting any return, that is undoubtedly true. No such trouble befell her. But does the absence of restlessness and discontent imply that no "serious attachment" has ever been felt? What if the love have ended in the grave?"
Yes, and really, it's offensive that people made any insinuations just because writing of Jane Austen remained clean. So did, incidentally, that of Emily Bronte, and yet there is no other greater love story.
"Jane Austen could indeed draw "the pangs of disappointed love," and certainly knew "they were curable." And truly she must have been a fool to suppose otherwise in the vast majority of cases, but when she painted Marianne Dashwood's misery she was not describing any suffering the like of which she had herself endured, and still less in drawing Harriet Smith was she giving us any picture of her own finer nature."
The difference between the two sisters in Sense and Sensibility was that of conduct, not degree of feeling; Elinore bore her devastating silently, holding up propriety of conduct in every trying situation. There is no point in questioning whether or not Jane Austen did suffer any such thing, but it's clear when one reads her, that if in privacy of their home she was Mariane, she held Elinore higher, and aspired to be her. On the other hand there's Jane Bennet, whose suffering was borne in silence; again, there's no point speculating if Jane Austen was Jane Bennet in real life, but it is frameless when people go the other extreme and accuse her of not feeling.
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"The village of Steventon lies about half a mile from the great western road from London to Exeter, and about six from Basingstoke. Just where the lane turned off from the turnpike there stood a small public-house, where the coaches stopped before mounting the next hill to water their horses and to pick up parcels and letters, and, occasionally, passengers. Here it was, no doubt, one summer's morning that Mr. and Mrs. Austen and their daughters set off on their memorable tour into South Devon. They moved from place to place, halting at each a short time; but there is no record of where they went. It was in one of these halts that they made the acquaintance of two brothers, one of whom was a doctor and the other a clergyman. The latter fell in love with Jane Austen, as others had vainly done before. But he was so charming that he won her heart—and not only so, but such were his gifts of person and manner that even Cassandra, highly as she rated her sister, allowed he was worthy of her; and when in after-years she once spoke of him, did so as something quite exceptionally captivating and excellent. How the acquaintance was made we do not know. It might have been that Mrs. Austen, whose health was not good at the time, needed medical advice and called in the doctor, and the acquaintance with one brother led naturally to that of the other. But this is only conjecture. The clergyman was himself only a visitor in the place, as were they. However the introduction was effected, they could not have been long together. A week, or a fortnight at most, had seen the beginning and the end of the acquaintance. But brevity as to time does not always prove that the regard is only slight and fleeting. Two people staying in the same house for three or four days may have as much intercourse and come to know each other as well, or better, than they would have done in as many years if living half a dozen miles apart. And thus a few long summer days spent together in sight-seeing or in admiring the same lovely views, and the daily meetings, which a very little exertion on the gentleman's side must have been able to secure, might have given time not only for love to arise, but to have struck its roots deeply into the heart. Jane Austen so delighted in beautiful scenery that she thought it would form one of the joys of Heaven. Was it because it was in her mind associated with this sweetest summer of her life?
"When the day came for their moving on, the gentleman asked for permission to join them again at some farther point of their travels, and the permission was given. What time elapsed we do not know, but when they reached the place at which they were to meet, they received a letter from his brother announcing his death. No tidings of previous illness could have reached them to soften the shock. The hard pitiless fact is all we know. Of her suffering no word has reached us, but we do know that her sister so cherished his memory that many years afterwards, when an elderly woman, she took a good deal of trouble only to see again the brother of the man who had been so dear to Jane—surely proof enough of how dear he had been to her, and how mourned! Two facts also point to the same conclusion. Jane Austen never married, though she was solicited to do so, and from 1798 until 1810 there fell on her a strange, long silence. She wrote nothing for twelve years. Somewhere in 1804 she began 'The Watsons,' but her father died early in 1805, and it was never finished. Nearly at the same time as this grievous blow fell on her, a similar sorrow fell also on her sister. The young clergyman to whom she was engaged died of yellow fever in the West Indies. He had been one of her father's pupils, and she must therefore have known him from childhood and the attachment have been the growth of many years; but scarcely more is known of this story than the other.
"United in the closest and tenderest affection, Cassandra's sorrow could have been scarcely less to Jane than her own, or Jane's to Cassandra. To each other their griefs were confided, and to each other alone."
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"Is it not much more probable that this double affliction was the cause of Jane Austen's long silence, than that she who had been writing ever since she was sixteen, or indeed ever since she could hold a pen, should have lost both power and inclination because a single publisher had rejected 'Pride and Prejudice'? She had written, as all true genius does, as the bird sings, because she must, neither for fame nor for money; and it is not one disappointment which would have stopped her. To write was a necessity of her nature, and nature is only suddenly changed by some sudden shock. The blow must have paralysed her imagination. The sweet temper and the cheerfulness, and even playfulness of manner might have hidden the change from all save her sister, but the inclination to write was gone. She who at three-and-twenty had produced 'Lady Susan,' 'Northanger Abbey.' 'Sense and Sensibility,' and 'Pride and Prejudice,' during what should have been the finest and most productive years of her life wrote nothing! excepting the fragment which, as it seems to us, her father's death made her lay aside. Had her feelings only been skin deep, how much more might she not have given to the world! What a loss the tenacity of her affections has been! But if a happier end had been granted to her love, perhaps in the wife and the mother the genius would have disappeared altogether. It is impossible not to grieve over the destruction of the letters which would have given us a better insight into so true and lovely a spirit as hers. We are the richer for her genius, but we might have been enriched also by the posthumous companionship with a heart of such rare sweetness and strength that it would have exalted our standard, not only of the capacity of feeling in feminine nature, but in all humanity."
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" ... In manner, also, the change between those days and these is as great as in the matter of clothes, and here the change does no doubt give an appearance of coldness. It is not feeling, but the expression of feeling which has altered. If we do not wear our hearts on our sleeves, we seem to keep them on our lips, much more than formerly. Family affection was as strong then as now, but there was much more reticence in the expression of it, whether between parents and children or brothers and sisters. It is not only that nicknames were not in fashion, but "loves, dears and darlings" were much less plentifully used. ... Dear as Jane is to Lizzie in 'Pride and Prejudice' she is to her Jane and Jane only—and Elinor and Marianne in 'Sense and Sensibility,' who would in these days have certainly been Nellie and Minnie, are contented with their own unabbreviated names, without any prefix of affection. ... "
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" ... She moved about the world as much or more than most clergymen's daughters of the time, for those were days when the necessity of an annual change had not arisen, and people lived, with no other variety than a certain amount of visiting, year after year in their own houses. The Austens seem to have been more locomotive than most of their neighbours.
"In 1798 or 1799 they made their tour in South Devon; in 1802 they went to Teignmouth, where they resided some weeks in a house called Belle Vista, which is still standing. Two years afterwards they were at Lyme Regis, which Jane Austen has immortalised.
"In 1806 she went with her mother to stay at Stoneleigh Abbey, which on the death of Mrs. Mary Leigh, under the will of her brother Edward, the last Baron of the old creation, reverted to the elder branch of the family."
"These, with visits to her brothers in Kent and London, and to her other friends, formed the varieties and pleasures of her life. Not its happiness; that she found in her home and in her own warm family affections. From these also arose all her cares and most of her sorrows. In 1798 she lost her cousin, Lady Williams, who had been almost brought up with her and Cassandra, and who was married from Steventon some six years before. She was thrown from her carriage, and killed on the spot. In 1801 her father and mother left Steventon and settled in Bath, to her great grief. No young person can leave what has been the happy home of her childhood unconcerned, and to her Steventon was much more. ... The move was made on account of Mrs. Austen's health, which had for some time been very indifferent and to which it was hoped Bath would be beneficial; but there, she had a long and very severe illness, from which, she said, she owed her recovery to the prayers of her husband and the great care of her daughters. Here the father died in 1805, and the three ladies were obliged to give up the house and move into lodgings. Jane disliked Bath and thought it disagreed with her, and she must therefore have rejoiced when they were able to remove to Southampton, where they shared a house with one of her brothers. In 1809 they settled in the cottage at Chawton, which was the last home of all three; and the year after, what may be called her all too short literary life began. Perhaps it would have been longer, and she might have been spared to have given us more, but for the anxiety and fatigue she underwent in 1815 in nursing a brother through an illness, which brought him down to the very edge of the grave. She was staying with him alone when it came on, and upon her fell the greatest part of the strain. In a letter written soon afterwards, we find the first indication of failing health. It was followed by the bankruptcy of the firm of which this brother was head, the dread of which had caused his breakdown. No blame attached to him, the misfortune was produced in part by the failure of some other bank. Most of his brothers lost more or less, but they all behaved most kindly and nobly. Nevertheless it was a great blow, and Jane's health gave way beneath it. "I am the only one," she wrote, "so foolish as to have been made ill by it, but feeble nerves make a feeble body." She rallied, but never recovered, and died, to the inexpressible sorrow of all who loved her, in 1817."
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September 14, 2021 - September 14, 2021.
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