Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889)/Chapter 4
From about the age of twenty to five-and-twenty—that is, during the five last years of her life at Steventon—Jane had fairly taken up her pen, and worked really hard with it all the time. At least three of her best-known novels were written during this period, although, from their not having been published till much later, there is difficulty in fixing the exact dates of their composition. Pride and Prejudice, however, was begun in October 1796, when she was nearly twenty-one, and finished in August 1797. Three months after it was completed she began upon what we now know as Sense and Sensibility, but with which, as has been already said, she incorporated a good deal of an earlier story, Elinor and Marianne, originally written in letters. Northanger Abbey she wrote in 1798, soon after finishing Sense and Sensibility.
Even in the quiet life at Steventon, it is difficult to understand how Jane managed to combine so much literary work with all her household and social occupations, for so little was writing a serious business to her that she never mentions it in her letters throughout those years. It is provoking to read through the pages of correspondence with the sister to whom she told everything, and to find them full of little every-day details of home life without a single word upon the subject which would be so interesting now to us. It cannot have been from shyness that she avoided the topic, for her own family knew of her stories when completed, and, wonderful to relate, she carried on all her writing in the little parsonage sitting-room, with everyone coming in and out and pursuing occupations there. This, by the way, speaks volumes for the Austen family and their friends; for if even one of them had been a Mrs. Allen, or, worse still, a Miss Bates, all Elizabeth Bennett's and Emma Woodhouse's doings might have been for ever lost to posterity. While perfectly free from shyness or false shame with her own family about her works, Jane was nevertheless careful to keep the knowledge of them from the outer world, and, in spite of her writing being so openly carried on, one intimate friend of her family's wrote afterwards that he "never suspected her of being an authoress." She always used a little mahogany desk—still in existence—which was easily put away if necessary; and she wrote on very small sheets of paper, which could be quickly concealed without attracting any notice.
When we hear of so much steady work between 1795 and 1800, it seems wonderful that she published nothing until 1811; but Jane Austen, like other people, was destined to work her way slowly to success, and her first attempts at getting into print were so disheartening that they deserve to be recorded for the benefit of all despairing young authors.
When Pride and Prejudice was finished and given to the family circle, Mr. Austen was much struck by the story, and determined to make an effort to get it published. Accordingly, in November 1797, he wrote to Mr. Cadell, the well-known London publisher, as follows:
Sir,
I have in my possession a manuscript novel, comprising 3 vols., about the length of Miss Barney's Evelina. As I am well aware of what consequence it is that a work of this sort shd 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 that 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.
I am, Sir, your humble servant,
George Austen.
Steventon, near Overton, Hants,
1st Nov., 1797.
Was Mr. Cadell already overwhelmed with novels in imitation of Evelina, or had he made some unlucky ventures in that line, or was he offended by the epithet "respectable" which Mr. Austen applied to him? It is impossible to tell now; but by return of post, and without having seen a line of the book, he declined to undertake it on any terms, and Pride and Prejudice remained unknown to the public till sixteen years later. Probably Mr. Austen made a mistake in not sending the MS. direct to the publisher at first, for if Mr. Cadell had glanced at the first chapter of it, he must have seen it was no ordinary novel.
Nevertheless, this was not the only unsuccessful attempt at publication which befell Jane Austen. Six years later, in 1803, while living at Bath, she offered Northanger Abbey, which had then undergone careful revision, to a local publisher, who actually accepted it and gave her—ten pounds! On second thoughts the worthy man seems to have repented of his bargain, for he never brought it out, and the MS. remained in oblivion for thirteen years longer. By that time Jane Austen had begun to recognise her position as a successful authoress, and thought with justice that if she could recover the MS. it might be published without detracting from her fame. Henry Austen, her third brother, who often helped her in her intercourse with publishers and printers, undertook the errand, and found no difficulty whatever in regaining the work, copyright and all, by repaying the original ten pounds. On this occasion the publisher learnt his error (which Mr. Cadell probably never did); for as soon as Henry Austen had safely concluded the bargain, and gained possession of the MS., he quietly informed the unlucky man that it was by the author of Pride and Prejudice, and left him, we may hope, raging at himself over the opportunity which he had missed of making so good a stroke of business.
In 1801 the state of her father's health brought about the first important change in Jane's life, for the old home was given up, and she was destined never to spend so much of her life in any other. The change was a great sorrow to her, but she was allowed very little time to dwell upon it, for Mr. George Austen was a man of prompt decision and rapid action, and having made up his mind, while Jane was away on a visit, that he would leave Steventon, she found, when she returned, that the preparations for departure were being carried on. Mr. Austen was then upwards of seventy, and felt himself no longer fit for the active duties of a clergyman. He did not resign his livings, but installed his eldest son in them as a kind of perpetual curate, and this arrangement lasted till Mr. Austen's death in 1805.
At first the idea of a move was a great grief to Jane, but she was always resolute in seeing the bright side of life, and so she repressed her own regrets, and could soon write gaily to her sister: "I am becoming more and more reconciled to the idea of departure. We have lived long enough in this neighbourhood; the Basingstoke balls are certainly on the decline; there is something interesting in the bustle of going away, and the prospect of spending future summers by the sea or in Wales is very delightful. For a time we shall now possess many of the advantages which I have often thought of with envy in the wives of sailors or soldiers. It must not be generally known, however, that I am not sacrificing a great deal in quitting the country, or I can expect to inspire no tenderness, no interest in those we leave behind." It was fortunate that she had a hopeful disposition to bear her up throughout the worries of house-hunting, and the inevitable discomforts of "a move," for Cassandra was away at the time, and, Mrs. Austen being in delicate health, all the burden fell upon Jane. Mr. Austen wished to live at Bath, where Mrs. Austen had a married sister, Mrs. Leigh Perrot; so in May 1801 Jane and her parents moved to Bath, where they were to stay with their relatives till they found a house. Jane's account of the journey brings before us the gap that railroads have made between her days and ours, for "our journey was perfectly free from accident or event; we changed horses at the end of every stage, and paid at almost every turnpike. We had charming weather, hardly any dust, and were exceedingly agreeable as we did not speak above once in three miles. We had a very neat chaise from Devizes; it looked almost as well as a gentleman's, at least as a very shabby gentleman's. In spite of this advantage, however, we were above three hours coming from thence to the Paragon, and it was half after seven by your clocks before we entered the house. We drank tea as soon as we arrived; and so ends the account of our journey, which my mother bore without any fatigue."
Bath was not new to Jane Austen, as all readers of Northanger Abbey must perceive; but its palmy days, as we read of them in The Virginians, Evelina and Northanger Abbey, were past before she went to live there; and though there was still a fair amount of small gaieties in the town, they can hardly have been very attractive to a girl of her age. With all her cheerfulness she was a good deal bored by them, and it is not wonderful when we read such an account as this, and remember that ab uno disce omnes. "I hope you honoured my toilette and ball with a thought. I dressed myself as well as I could, and had all my finery much admired at home. By nine o'clock my uncle, aunt, and I entered the rooms, and linked Miss Winstone on to us. Before tea it was rather a dull affair, but then the before tea did not last long, for there was only one dance, danced by four couple. Think of four couple surrounded by about a hundred people, dancing in the upper rooms at Bath." We may well think of it, and this was the liveliest form of dissipation Jane had, for she records soon after "another stupid party last night; perhaps if larger they might be less intolerable, but here there were only just enough to make one card-table, with six people to look on and talk nonsense to each other." It is not wonderful that she adds, "I cannot anyhow continue to find people agreeable; I respect Mrs. Chamberlayne for doing her hair well, but cannot feel a more tender sentiment." Soon after this, however, her spirits again rising to their usual playfulness, she gives an absurd little account of a walk undertaken with the very lady who did her hair so well. "The friendship between Mrs. Chamberlayne and myself, which you predicted, has already taken place, for we shake hands whenever we meet. Our grand walk to Weston was again fixed for yesterday, and accomplished in a very striking manner. Everyone of the party declined it under some pretext or other except our two selves, and we had, therefore, a tête-à-tête; but that we should equally have had after the first two yards, had half the inhabitants of Bath set off with us. It would have amused you to see our progress. We went up by Sion Hill, and returned across the fields. In climbing a hill Mrs. Chamberlayne is very capital; I could with difficulty keep pace with her, yet would not flinch for the world. On plain ground I was quite her equal. And so we posted away under a fine hot sun, she without any parasol or shade to her hat, stopping for nothing, and crossing the church-yard at Weston with as much expedition as if we were afraid of being buried alive. After seeing what she is equal to I cannot help feeling a regard for her. As to agreeableness, she is much like other people."
In spite of its dulness Bath suited both Mr. and Mrs. Austen in many ways, and before long they and their daughters were settled at 4 Sydney Terrace. Some time later they moved to Green Park Buildings, and were there till Mr. Austen's death in the spring of 1805, when, after a short residence in lodgings in Gay Street, his widow and daughters left Bath "for good."
Whether the life there had been too full of small bustles for authorship to be easy, or whether the declining health of her parents occupied her too fully for writing, the fact remains that Jane Austen composed nothing of importance while at Bath; perhaps the failure of Northanger Abbey in 1803 disheartened her for a time from further efforts. One story she did begin, but it was never finished, nor even divided into chapters, so that she cannot have thought seriously of publishing it, and it certainly would not have satisfied her in its present state. In 1871 Mr. Austen Leigh, at the earnest request of many friends, published it in the same volume with Lady Susan, and called it The Watsons, as it had not any title. It is not a production to enhance her fame, and, indeed, the fragment is so slight and unfinished in manner and in matter that it shows how she must have polished and re-polished her writings before she gave them to the public.
The leading idea of The Watsons is of a girl of natural refinement early taken away from a vulgar home, and placed among cultivated people. When grown up, unfortunate circumstances compel her to live again with her own family, and their vulgarity becomes painfully obvious to her, especially when they come in contact with the great people of the neighbourhood. These grandees have been accustomed to treat the Watsons with contemptuous familiarity, and now find themselves repelled by the lady-like manners of Emma, whose beauty at the same time attracts universal notice. The first half of the story is chiefly taken up with the description of a country ball; then follow scenes of family life at the Watsons' home, where a married brother, Robert Watson, is introduced with his wife, in whom we certainly see the germ of Mrs. Elton. There is also a gleam of resemblance between old Mr. Watson and Mr. Woodhouse, but Mr. Watson is a very inferior edition of the delightful old man at Hartfield.
At this point the story, which only fills sixty-seven pages of print, closes abruptly, and it cannot be said that there was promise enough in it to make anyone regret its unfinished state. Probably Jane felt this herself, for at first she designed to continue it, and as she talked it over with her sister Cassandra she told her the intended sequel. "Mr. Watson was soon to die, and Emma to become dependent for a home on her narrow-minded sister-in-law and brother. She was to decline an offer of marriage from Lord Osborne" (one of the grandees who had formerly insulted her family), "and much of the interest of the tale was to arise from Lady Osborne's love for Mr. Howard (Lord Osborne's tutor) and his counter affection for Emma, whom he was finally to marry."
Mr. Howard is an agreeable person, who from the first is evidently destined for Emma, but it is doubtful if even Jane Austen could have made an interesting and pleasant story out of such materials. The Watsons are too vulgar, and their vulgarity is too obtrusive: there is no one, Emma herself and perhaps Mr. Howard excepted, to contrast with it, for the Osbornes are quite as vulgar in their way. Mrs. Robert Watson just escapes being amusing, and is only snappish and ill-tempered. Even in the fragment which we have, there is too much husband-hunting of the lowest kind to have been tolerable in detail. The probability is that she wrote nothing more for some time; at all events, when she left Bath with her mother and sister in 1805 she had added nothing but this fragment to the valuable stock of writing which she brought with her from Steventon.
Her next home was in Southampton, where her mother took a house with a garden in Castle Square, and there Jane was established for four more years of her fast shortening life. A friend of hers, Martha Lloyd, to whom she constantly refers in her letters, came to live with them, and this was a source of great happiness to Jane, who frequently mentions her in terms of warm affection. Ultimately Miss Lloyd married Frank Austen, Jane's youngest brother; but this connection, which would have given her so much pleasure, did not take place till several years after Jane herself had passed away. The Southampton house was a pleasant one, but the Austens never took root comfortably there, and it is significant of how little Jane felt at home in it, that she wrote absolutely nothing during her four years of Southampton life; not even as much as she had accomplished at Bath. She had come under circumstances of loss and sorrow which would probably have made any place unattractive to her, and her mother and sister evidently shared her feeling, for as soon as an opportunity occurred of changing their home they gladly seized it.
This opportunity came through Jane's second brother, Edward. He owned two estates, both left to him by a distant cousin, and he offered a home at either to his mother and sisters. Godmersham Park, in Kent, was one of his places; Chawton House, in Hampshire, the other; and Mrs. Austen and her daughters chose the latter. Chawton Cottage, a small house on the Hampshire estate, was altered, improved, and fitted up for them, and in 1809 the party of four ladies (for Miss Lloyd remained with them) moved from Southampton and established themselves in what was to prove Jane Austen's last home. We may well believe that when she left Southampton she rejoiced in the hope that it would be her last move, but she could scarcely have foreseen for how short a time she would need any earthly home, and those who loved her so dearly would, indeed, have mourned if they had known that she would have been with them for only eight more years. Yet without those eight years how incomplete her life would have been, and how little of her work would have been left for posterity to admire.
For some time she had felt herself only a sojourner in strange towns, not really "at home" anywhere; and though she seldom complained of this feeling, it showed itself in the way she had dropped her favourite home pursuit of writing. Now, after the move to Chawton, she dwelt among her own people, and to such a domestic nature as hers this was a great boon.
Edward Austen—or Edward Knight as he had now become—deserves the warm gratitude of all Jane Austen's readers for the arrangement by which his sister found herself again in a real "home," and felt able to take up once more the writing which she had almost entirely laid aside after leaving Steventon. As one would like to know whether, on leaving her first home, she ever realised that in that quiet parsonage she had laid the foundations of a world-wide fame, so one longs to know whether, on settling at Chawton, she guessed that she should there attain the zenith of her powers, and see at least some measure of her future success. Probably neither idea ever occurred to her; she was too simple-minded to think much of herself and her works at any time, and her principal feeling would have been a peaceful satisfaction at finding herself once more in a house that she could really call "home," blessed with the continual companionship of her sister, as well as her dearest friend, and enjoying the country life that was associated with her earliest childish recollections.