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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
Lady Newdigate also gives the cost of this journey, which is
interesting: “We paid 14d. per mile great part of the way for the
chaisehorses, and 6d. all the way for the saddle horse; the whole,
baits and sleepings included, comes to above £24 to this place.”
On the way to Brighton, two years later, she says, “I never saw this
road so rotted, so heavy, or so deep. It was with difficulty my poor
poneys could drag us.”
We have therefore a tolerable notion of the fatigues attendant on a
journey in those days.
Another drawback was, that if one wished to travel by coach instead
of going post, one could not always be sure of a place unless booked
beforehand. This kind of thing frequently happened—
“I was called up early—to be ready for the coach, but judge my
disappointment and chagrin, when on my approach I found it chock-
full. I petitioned, reasoned, urged and entreated, but all to no effect.
I could not make any impression on the obdurate souls, who, proud
and sulky, kept easy and firm possession of their seats, and hardly
deigned to answer, when I requested permission to squeeze in. I
was hoisted on the coach box as the only alternative; but on the first
movement of the vehicle, had it not been for the arm of the
coachman, I should have been instantly under the wheels in the
street. I was chucked into a basket as a place of more safety, though
not of ease or comfort, where I suffered most severely from the
jolting, particularly over the stones; it was most truly dreadful and
made one suffer almost equal to sea sickness.” (Tate Wilkinson,
Memoirs.)
This basket was actually a basket slung on for the purpose of
carrying luggage, though it was also used for passengers, and
sometimes filled with people in spite of its discomfort, because seats
here were charged at a low price.
Richard Thomson, in Tales of an Antiquary, gives a very good word-
picture of a stage coach: “Stage coaches were constructed
principally of a dull black leather, thickly studded by way of
ornament with broad black head nails tracing out the panels, in the
upper tier of which were four oval windows with heavy red wooden
frames or leathern curtains. The roofs of the coaches in most cases
rose in a swelling curve. Behind the coach was the immense basket,
stretching far and wide beyond the body, to which it was attached
by long iron bars or supports passing beneath it. The wheels of
these old carriages were large, massive, ill-formed and usually of a
red colour, and the three horses that were affixed to the whole
machine were all so far parted from it by the great length of their
traces that it was with no little difficulty that the poor animals
dragged their unwieldly burden along the road.”

FROM “A SUMMER’S EVENING”

The accidents attendant on coach journeys were many and various,

and the badness of the roads was the principal cause. In Under
England’s Flag, the autobiography of Captain Charles Boothby, R.E.,
we have this account of what happened to him in 1805 when he first
left home—
“Down to Portsmouth then I went on the outside of the mail, in the
highest health and the ardent spirits of youth, spirits that made, I
suppose, even my body buoyant and elastic, for the Mail overturned
in the night and threw me on the road without giving me so much as
a scratch or a bruise. It was about twenty miles from London when
we met a team of horses standing in a slant direction on the road,
the night very foggy with misting rain, and the lamps not
penetrating further into the mist than the rumps of the wheelers.
The coachman, to avoid the waggon, turned suddenly out of the
way and ran up the bank. Finding the coach staggering, I got up,
with my face to the horses, hardly daring to suppose it possible that
the Mail could overturn, when the unwieldly monster was on one
wheel, and then down it came with a terminal bang. During my
descent I had just time to hope that I might escape with the fracture
of one or two legs, and then found myself on my two shoulders,
very pleased with the novelty and ease of the journey. I got up and
spied the monster with his two free wheels whirling with great
velocity, but quite compact and still in the body, and as soon as I
had shaken my feathers and opened my senses I began to think of
the one female and three males in the inside, whom I supposed to
be either dead or asleep. I ran to open the door, when the guard,
having thought of the same thing, did it for me, and we then took
the folks out one by one, like pickled ghirkins or anything else
preserved in a jar, by putting our hands to the bottom; we found
that the inmates were only stupefied, though all had bruises of some
kind, and one little gentleman complained that he was nipped in the
loins by the mighty pressure of his neighbour, who had sat upon him
some time after the door was opened to recollect himself or to give
thanks for his escape.”
Coaches did not as a rule run on Sundays, so passengers whose
journeys were to extend over several days had to take care to start
early in the week if they did not wish to pay expenses at an inn
during the Sabbath.
This rule was, however, not stringently observed, as M. Grosley
found when he landed in England on his tour of observation—
“The great multitude of passengers with which Dover was then
crowded, formed a reason for dispensing with a law of the police, by
which public carriages are in England, forbid to travel on Sundays. I
therefore set out on a Sunday with seven more passengers in two
carriages called flying machines. These vehicles, which are drawn by
six horses, go twenty-eight leagues in a day from Dover to London
for a single guinea. Servants are entitled to a place for half that
money, either behind the coach or upon the coach box, which has
three places. A vast repository, under this seat, which is very lofty,
holds the passengers’ luggage, which is paid for separately. The
coachmen, whom we changed every time with our horses, were
lusty, well made men, dressed in good cloth.”
Among the advantages of travelling on a Sunday when coaches were
not expected, he enumerates that “we should meet none of those
gentry who are called collectors of the highway, and of whom there
is a great number upon the road; in fact we saw none of that sort,
but such as were hanging upon gibbets at the road side; there they
dangle, dressed from head to foot, and with wigs upon their heads.”
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.
 TRAVELLERS ARRIVING AT ‘EAGLE TAVERN,’ STRAND

Though one lady could not very well go alone on a journey, for two
ladies to travel together was considered quite proper. In 1798, Jane
and her mother returning from Godmersham managed for
themselves very well. Jane says, “You have already heard from
Daniel, I conclude, in what excellent time we reached and quitted
Sittingbourne and how very well my mother bore her journey
thither.... She was a very little fatigued on her arrival at this place,
has been quite refreshed by a comfortable dinner, and now seems
quite stout. It wanted five minutes of twelve when we left
Sittingbourne, from whence we had a famous pair of horses, which
took us to Rochester in an hour and a quarter; the postboy seemed
determined to show my mother that Kentish drivers were not always
tedious.
“Our next stage was not quite so expeditiously performed; the road
was heavy and our horses very indifferent. However we were in such
good time, and my mother bore her journey so well, that expedition
was of little importance to us; and as it was, we were very little
more than two hours and a half coming hither, and it was scarcely
past four when we stopped at the inn. My mother took some of her
bitters at Ospringe, and some more at Rochester, and she ate some
bread several times. We sat down to dinner a little after five, and
had some beefsteak and a boiled fowl, but no oyster sauce.”
Though Jane refused to avail herself of the very present excitement
of highwaymen in any of her novels, she might legitimately have
done so, for these perils were by no means imaginary; the
newspapers of the latter part of the eighteenth century are full of
accounts of these pests, who were seldom caught.
Mrs. Lybbe Powys says—
“The conversation was for some time on a subject you’d hardly
imagine—robbery. Postchaises had been stopped from Hodges to
Henley, about three miles; but though the nights were dark we had
flambeaux. Miss Pratt and I thought ourselves amazingly lucky; we
were in their coach, ours next, and the chaise behind that, robbed.
It would have been silly to have lost one’s diamonds so totally
unexpected, and diamonds it seems they came after, more in
number than mine indeed.”
The Duke of York and one of his brothers were robbed of watches,
purses, etc., when they were returning late at night in a hackney
coach along Hay Hill.
In 1786, Horace Walpole mentions, “The mail from France was
robbed last night in Pall Mall, at half an hour after eight, yes! in the
great thoroughfare of London, and within call of the guard at the
Palace. The chaise had stopped, the harness was cut, and the
portmanteau was taken out of the chaise itself.”
The travellers who had to give up their valuables were numberless,
and many ladies took to carrying secondary purses full of false
money, which, with hypocritical tears they handed out on
compulsion. There was really not much risk in the business of a
highwayman, if a man had a good horse and good nerve. The poor
citizens he robbed were not fighting men, and though the penalty of
hanging was the award if my well-mannered and gallant gentleman
were caught, yet his chances of escape were many. 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.
 CHAPTER IX
CONTEMPORARY WRITERS

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. When Hannah More first visited London, in 1774, she was
plunged at once into the society of men of letters, of wit, of learning,
and of rank. Her plays, which to our taste are intolerably stiff and
dull, were accepted by Garrick, she became his personal friend, and
he introduced her to everyone whose acquaintance was worth
having. The Garricks’ house became her second home, and she met
Bishops by the half dozen, visited the Lord Chamberlain at Apsley
House, and was on familiar terms with Sheridan, Johnson, Walpole,
Reynolds, and many another whose name is still a household word
in England.
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. Calls are bad enough now as custom
decrees, but we are at least free from the terror of people dropping
in upon us before the day’s work is begun. When staying in
Northumberland Miss Mitford remarks, “Morning calls are here made
so early, that one morning three different people called before we
had done breakfast.” Hannah More looked on a morning visit as an
immorality, yet she breakfasted with a Bishop, afterwards going to
an evening party with another on the same day! She, being of a
sensible mind, soon grew tired of the ceaseless talk, though much of
it may have been good stuff and worthy of preservation, and she
rejoiced when she could get a day to herself, and deny herself to
everyone.
After Garrick’s death, when she came to stay with his brave but
heart-broken widow she lived very quietly. “My way of life is very
different from what it used to be. After breakfast I go to my own
apartment for several hours, where I read, write and work; very
seldom letting anybody in. At four we dine. We have the same
elegant table as usual, but I generally confine myself to one single
dish of meat. I have taken to drink half a glass of wine. At six we
have coffee; at eight tea, when we have sometimes, a dowager or
two of quality. At ten we have sallad and fruits.”
This was in 1779, and two years previously her play Percy had been
brought out with extraordinary success; she says of it herself, “far
beyond my expectation,” and it produced more excitement than any
tragedy had done for many years. The author’s rights, sale of copy,
etc., amounted to near six hundred pounds, and “as my friend Mr.
Garrick has been so good as to lay it out for me on the best security
and at five per cent., it makes a decent little addition to my small
income. Cadell gave £150, a very handsome price, with conditional
promises. He confesses that it had had a very great sale and that he
shall get a good deal of money by it. The first impression is near
four thousand and the second is almost sold.”
It is customary to think of Hannah More as so quiet and Quakerish
that the idea of her writing plays and living a gay society life is new
to many people, but the seriousness and retirement came later.
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, as
will be related in due course. And 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. Herein Miss Burney had an immense advantage over her, from
her babyhood she was surrounded by men and women of
distinction. Her father, himself an author and possessing musical
talent, drew to his house all sorts of persons. Macaulay says, “It
would be tedious to recount the names of all the men of letters and
artists whom Fanny Burney had an opportunity of seeing and
hearing. Hundreds of remarkable persons had passed in review
before her, English, French, German, Italian, lords and fiddlers,
deans of cathedrals and managers of theatres, travellers leading
about newly caught savages, and singing-women escorted by
deputy-husbands.” She was fêted, caressed and brought forward
until she accepted the appointment at the court which condemned
her to a weary round of dull duties, and must have made her life
appear like a draught of ditch-water after the heady champagne to
which she was accustomed.
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. Johnson was
dead, Walpole was dead, Garrick was dead, Reynolds was dead,
Sheridan living but sunk in debt and disease; of the brilliant band
that Hannah More had known few were left. Doctor Johnson had
died fourteen years previously, when Jane was only nine years old.
Miss Burney had had not only his friendship but his help in the
revision of her works—perhaps a doubtful privilege. To quote Lord
Macaulay again: “When she wrote her early journals, and her novel
of Evelina, her style was not indeed brilliant or energetic; but it was
easy, clear, and free from all offensive faults. When she wrote Cecilia
she aimed higher. She had then lived much in a circle of which
Johnson was the centre; and she was herself one of his most
submissive worshippers.... In an evil hour the author of Evelina took
the Rambler for her model. She had her style. It was a tolerably
good one; she determined to throw it away to adopt a style in which
she could attain excellence only by achieving an almost miraculous
victory over nature and over habit. In Cecilia the imitation of
Johnson, though not always in the best taste, is sometimes
eminently happy. There were people who whispered that Johnson
had assisted his young friend and that the novel owed all its finest
passages to his hand. This was merely the fabrication of envy.”
But after the death of Johnson, “she had to write in Johnson’s
manner without Johnson’s aid. The consequence was that in Camilla
every passage which she meant to be fine is detestable; and that
the book has been saved from condemnation only by the admirable
spirit and force of those scenes in which she was content to be
familiar.”
After he had read Camilla, Walpole says of Miss Burney: “Alas! She
had reversed experience which I have long thought reverses its own
utility by coming at the wrong end of our life when we do not want
it. This author knew the world and penetrated characters before she
had stepped over the threshold; now she has seen so much of it she
has little or no insight at all.”
It was therefore, perhaps, lucky for Jane Austen that she was not so
overshadowed by the direct personality of a mighty man as to lose
her clear, bright English style. Her admiration for Miss Burney’s work
was decided and clearly expressed, and she was among the first
subscribers to Camilla in 1796.
Though Jane never came into contact with the men and women who
made literature in her day, she took a keen interest in their works,
and was a great novel reader. She says in one place, “As an
inducement to subscribe (to her library) Mrs. Martin tells me that her
collection is not to consist only of novels but of every kind of
literature. She might have spared this pretension to our family, who
are great novel readers and not ashamed of being so.”
There are frequent references to novels in her letters: “We have got
Fitz-Albini, my father has bought it against my private wishes, for it
does not quite satisfy my feelings that we should purchase the only
one of Egerton’s works of which his family are ashamed.”
In another place: “To set against your new novel, of which nobody
ever heard before, and perhaps never may again, we have got Ida
of Athens by Miss Owenson, which must be very clever because it
was written the authoress says in three months. We have only read
the preface yet, but her Irish girl does not make me expect much. If
the warmth of her language could affect the body it might be worth
reading this weather.” [January.]
There were many writers thought highly of at the time of their
writing, who have yet dropped into oblivion to all but the student;
among these is Jane Porter, born a year later than Jane Austen, who
published her first romance, Thaddeus of Warsaw, in 1803, this was
a great success, and immediately ran through several editions; it
was followed in 1810 by her chef d’œuvre The Scottish Chiefs. In
1809, when it had just come out, and was anonymous, Hannah
More’s Cœlebs in Search of a Wife came into Cassandra’s hands.
Jane writes of it: “You have by no means raised my curiosity after
Caleb. My disinclination for it before was affected but now it is real. I
do not like the evangelicals. Of course I shall be delighted when I
read it like other people, but till I do, I dislike it.” And in her next
letter she replies to her sister, “I am not at all ashamed about the
name of the novel, having been guilty of no insult towards your
handwriting; the diphthong I always saw, but knowing how fond you
were of adding a vowel wherever you could, I attributed it to that
alone, and the knowledge of the truth does the book no service; the
only merit it could have was in the name of Caleb, which has an
honest unpretending sound, but in Cœlebs there is pedantry and
affectation. Is it written only to classical scholars?”
Cœlebs itself it must be admitted is dull, unqualifiedly dull. Jane
Austen’s own books are not novels of plot, but they radiate plot in
comparison. In Cœlebs a procession of persons stalks solemnly
through the pages; they never reveal themselves by action, but are
described as by a Greek chorus by the other characters in
conversation or by the author, while long dry disquisitions on religion
fill half, or more than half, of the book, and Cœlebs himself is a prig
of the first water. Yet there are certain little touches which indicate a
knowledge of human nature, such as that of the man who has
married a beauty, “Who had no one recommendation but beauty. To
be admired by her whom all his acquaintance admired gratified his
amour-propre.”
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.” Miss
Mitford in regard to this book quotes the opinions of two men, one
of whom said it ought to be burnt by the common hangman and the
other that it ought to be written in letters of gold, which shows that
public opinion was as various in those days as it is in these. In 1807,
Jane mentions Clarentine, a novel of Sarah Burney’s, who was a
younger sister of the famous Miss Burney; though the same author
brought out another novel later, it was evidently only because she
followed in her sister’s wake, and not from any inherent ability. Jane
says, “We are reading Clarentine and are surprised to find how
foolish it is. I remember liking it much less on a second reading than
at the first, and it does not bear a third at all. It is full of unnatural
conduct and forced difficulties, without striking merit of any kind.”
But these impressions of long-forgotten books are hardly worth
recording, except as specimens of the quantities of worthless novels
to be had at the libraries then.
Samuel Rogers says, “Lane made a large fortune by the immense
quantity of trashy novels which he sent forth from the Minerva press.
I perfectly well remember the splendid carriage in which he used to
ride, and his footmen with their cockades and gold-headed canes.
Now-a-days as soon as a novel has had its run, and is beginning to
be forgotten, out comes an edition of it as a standard novel.”
In Miss Mitford’s Life is given a list of the books which she had from
the circulating library in a month, and which she presumably read,
when she was a girl just back from school. It is here quoted as, with
one or two exceptions, the titles tell the style of work in vogue.
“St. Margaret’s Cave; St. Claire of the Isles; Scourge of Conscience;
Emma Corbett; Poetical Miscellany; Vincenza; A Sailor’s Friendship
and a Sailor’s Love; The Castles of Athlin and Dumbayn; Polycratia;
Travels in Africa; Novice of St. Dominick; Clarentina; Leonora; Count
de Valmont; Letters of a Hindu Rajah; Fourth Vol. of Canterbury
Tales; The Citizen’s Quarter; Amazement; Midnight Weddings;
Robert and Adela; The Three Spaniards; De Clifford.”
In his History of Eighteenth Century Literature Edmund Gosse says:
“The flourishing period of the eighteenth century novel lasted exactly
twenty-five years, during which time we have to record the
publication of no less than fifteen eminent works of fiction. The
fifteen are naturally divided into three groups. The first contains
Pamela, Joseph Andrews, David Simple (Sarah Fielding) and
Jonathan Wild. In these books the art is still somewhat crude, and
the science of fiction incompletely understood. After a silence of five
years we reach the second and greatest section of this central
period, during which there appeared in quick succession, Clarissa,
Roderick Random, Tom Jones, Peregrine Pickle, Amelia and Sir
Charles Grandison ... there followed another silence of five years,
and then were issued each on the heels of the other, Tristram
Shandy, Rasselas, Chrysal, The Castle of Otranto and The Vicar of
Wakefield—five years later still—Humphrey Clinker, and then, with
one or two such exceptions as Evelina and Caleb Williams, no great
novel appeared again in England for forty years until in 1811 the
new school of fiction was inaugurated by Sense and Sensibility.”
Though we may not agree entirely with Mr. Gosse’s classification,
this paragraph is suggestive.
As we have seen in her brother’s record, Jane’s favourites in prose
and poetry respectively were Johnson and Cowper. These two are
mentioned in one sentence of hers: “We have got Boswell’s Tour to
the Hebrides, and are to have his Life of Johnson; and as some
money will yet remain in Burdon’s hands, it is to be laid out in the
purchase of Cowper’s works.”
She warmly admired Cowper, which is hardly wonderful, for, with
some manifest differences, Cowper was trying to do in poetry what
she did in prose. He was utterly lacking, of course, in her light
vivacity of touch and sense of humour, but he did genuinely try to
describe what he saw, not what he merely knew by hearing. The
green fields and full rivers of the Olney country are depicted with
fidelity to detail and clearness of line. Cowper was born in 1731, but
his first volume of verse was not published until 1782, and it was not
until The Task appeared a year or two later, with John Gilpin in the
same volume, that he really came to his own.
In 1798, Jane writes: “My father reads Cowper to us in the morning
to which I listen when I can.” This implies no disparagement of the
poet, but merely that her numerous household duties did not always
allow her time to listen. In Morland’s picture, “Domestic Happiness,”
we have a scene which helps us to realise the family group at these
readings. The mother and daughter in their caps, with elbow-sleeves
and white kerchiefs, are dressed as Jane and her mother must have
been, and the plain simplicity of the part of the room shown is quite
in accordance with the rectory environment.

DOMESTIC HAPPINESS

Another of Jane’s favourite poets was Crabbe. Crabbe and Cowper

are both rather heavy reading, and of both it may be said that their
poetry is not poetical, but they are honestly seeking after truth and
thus they attracted Jane Austen. They were amongst the earliest of
the natural school which used the method of realism. Crabbe had a
bitter struggle to obtain a hearing, but his struggle was over before
1796. Burke had taken him up, and in those days much depended
on a patron. In 1781 he had published The Library, two years after
The Village, and two years later again came The Newspaper, and
then he did not bring out anything more until 1807.
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. It was a brilliant age as regards writing. Perhaps the
best way to give some general idea of those writers not already
mentioned will be to divide the time into three sections; and, without
any attempt at being exhaustive, to mention generally the leading
names among the writers who lived on into her epoch, but whose
best work had been published before her time; those who actually
were contemporary in the sense that their books, by which their
names are known, were published in her lifetime; and those whose
names had not begun to be known when she died, though the
owners were born in her epoch.
First, then, those whose work was done; foremost among these was
Johnson, who has already been mentioned.
Walpole was considerably past middle-age at her birth, and died in
1797; Wesley’s collected Works came out in 1771, and he died in
1791; Adam Smith preceded him by a year.
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.
Just to give some general idea of the wonderful fruitfulness of this
epoch it may also be mentioned that 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.
Southey’s Thalaba came out in the first year of the new century, and
Thomas Moore published the first of his Irish Melodies in 1807.
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.” But she was not the only one to
make such a conjecture, for Miss Mitford having read Waverley also
imputes it unhesitatingly to him, she says, “If there be any belief in
internal evidence it must be his.” Judging by these two specimens,
the secret of Scott’s anonymity was not the great mystery it is
generally imagined to have been.
The third period, that of the great men who were actually
contemporary with Jane Austen, though she was unconscious of
their existence, as they did not win their laurels until after her death,
is of course much less interesting, and may be quickly dismissed,
such names as those of Lingard and Hallam among historians; Mill,
Hazlitt, and De Quincey belong by right of birth to an earlier epoch,
though their works place them in this.
Miss Ferrier and Miss Mitford, too, were not much younger than Jane
Austen, but neither had brought out anything noticeable before her
death. Miss Ferrier’s first novel, Marriage, made its appearance in
1818; and though Miss Mitford had written poems, her Our Village
first appeared in the Lady’s Magazine only in 1819. As we have seen,
Miss Mitford was a scholar at the same school as Jane Austen,
though many years later. She was also a native of Jane’s county,
Hants.
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.
Perhaps no forty years that could have been chosen at any period of
English history would have covered such a variety of talent, and that
of such a high order, as was given to the world during Jane Austen’s
brief life. And if she did not know personally the men whose names
have lived with her own, at all events she drew from their works
inspiration and knowledge, and she herself was not by any means
the least among so mighty a company.
 CHAPTER X
A TRIO OF NOVELS

When Jane returned home in October, after her pleasant visit to

Godmersham, she began her first real novel. She was then nearly
twenty-one, and the girlish scribblings in which she had delighted
began to be shaped into something more coherent. This very visit,
with all its bright intercourse, all its pleasant variety,—for she had
been thrown among a set of county people of better social standing
than those she usually saw,—may have quickened the germ, and
been the cause of her development. The book was at first called
First Impressions, and under this title she herself frequently refers to
it; but some time later she re-christened it by the name under which
it was published.
The idea that the name Pride and Prejudice was suggested by some
sentences at the end of Cecilia has been mooted, and though
arguments against this supposition have been found, it appears
extremely probable. For in Cecilia it is declared, “The whole of this
unfortunate affair has been the result of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE,”
which last words are repeated twice on the same page, each time in
large type so that they catch the eye. Cecilia itself might well have
borne this title in reference to the pride and prejudice of the Delvile
family. The book was published in 1786, and we know that Jane had
a great admiration for Miss Burney’s work. In re-reading it some
time subsequently it may very easily have struck her that “Pride and
Prejudice” was an improvement on her own more common-place
title, and there was nothing to prevent her adopting it. The
repetition of two striking qualities and the alliteration may further
have given rise to Sense and Sensibility, which also replaced an
earlier title of Elinor and Marianne.
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!
As we have said, it is unanimously accorded the premier place
amongst Jane Austen’s novels, partly because it is full of that
brilliancy and sparkle which are its author’s greatest characteristics,
and partly because of the inimitable character of Elizabeth Bennet,
whose combined archness and intelligence captivate everyone.
Elizabeth is the embodiment of the heroine so many authors have
tried to draw. Witty without being pert, having a reasonable conceit
of herself without vanity, and a natural gaiety of heart that makes
her altogether lovable. Whether she is repelling the patronage of
Lady Catherine de Bourgh, or chaffing the sombre Darcy, she is
equally delightful. Her first scene with Lady Catherine embodies
much character—
“‘Are any of your younger sisters out, Miss Bennet?’
“‘Yes, Ma’am, all.’
“‘All! What, all five out at once? Very odd! And you only the second.
The younger ones out before the elder are married! Your younger
sisters must be very young?’
“‘Yes, the youngest is not sixteen. Perhaps she is full young to be
much in company. But really, Ma’am, I think it would be very hard
upon younger sisters that they should not have their share of society
and amusement, because the elder may not have the means or
inclination to marry early. The last born has as good a right to the
pleasures of youth as the first. And to be kept back on such a
motive! I think it would not be very likely to promote sisterly
affection or delicacy of mind.’
“‘Upon my word,’ said her Ladyship, ‘you give your opinion very
decidedly for so young a person. Pray what is your age?’
“‘With three younger sisters grown up,’ replied Elizabeth, smiling,
‘your Ladyship can hardly expect me to own it.’”
And again, when Lady Catherine comes to ask if the report of her
nephew’s engagement to Elizabeth is true.
“‘If you believed it impossible to be true,’ said Elizabeth, colouring
with astonishment and disdain, ‘I wonder you took the trouble of
coming so far. What could your Ladyship propose by it?’
“‘At once to insist on having such a report universally contradicted.’
“‘Your coming to Langbourn to see me and my family,’ said Elizabeth
coolly, ‘will be rather a confirmation of it; if, indeed, such a report is
in existence.’
“‘If! Do you then pretend to be ignorant of it? Has it not been
industriously circulated by yourselves? Do you not know that such a
report is spread abroad?’
“‘I never heard that it was.’
“‘And can you likewise declare there is no foundation for it?’
“‘I do not pretend to possess equal frankness with your Ladyship.
You may ask questions which I shall not choose to answer.’
“‘This is not to be borne, Miss Bennet, I insist on being satisfied. Has
he, has my nephew, made you an offer of marriage?’
“‘Your Ladyship has declared it to be impossible.’”
Her verbal encounters with Darcy are equally characteristic.
“Elizabeth turned away to hide a smile.
“‘Your examination of Mr. Darcy is over, I presume?’ said Miss
Bingley, ‘and pray what is the result?’
“‘I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr. Darcy has no defect. He
owns it himself without disguise.’
“‘No,’ said Darcy, ‘I have made no such pretension. I have faults
enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I
dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding; certainly too
little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and
vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their offences against myself.
My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them.
My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once
lost is lost for ever.’
“‘That is a failing indeed,’ cried Elizabeth. ‘Implacable resentment is
a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. I really
cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me.’
“‘There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some
particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education
can overcome.’
“‘And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.’
“‘And yours,’ he replied with a smile, ‘is wilfully to misunderstand
them.’”
Darcy, by the way, is one of the least attractive of the principal men
characters. It is inconceivable that any man with the remotest
pretension to gentlemanly feeling should say, even to himself, much
less aloud in a ball-room, on having his attention called to a young
girl sitting out: “‘Which do you mean?’ and, turning round, he looked
for a moment at Elizabeth, till, catching her eye, he withdrew his
own, and coldly said,—’She is tolerable; but not handsome enough
to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence
to young ladies who are slighted by other men.’”
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. In saying
this there is no innuendo that in other cases she drew straight from
the life; it is, I believe, very few novelists who ever wish to do such
a thing, but it is certainly true, and everyone who has attempted
fiction knows it, that nearly every character in a life-like book has
some prototype in real life, some man or woman who gave the first
indication of a certain character; the personality may be altered
entirely, it may be only one small quality which is derived from the
prototype, but it is nevertheless that person who brought that
particular character into existence. So far as we know there was no
haughty, self-satisfied man of the world in Jane Austen’s list of
acquaintances.
It is true that Darcy is represented as behaving much better when
his pride has been bitterly stung by Elizabeth’s rejection of him, but
it is hard to believe that a man, such as he is at first represented,
could have had sufficient good in him to change his character
completely as the effect of love.
To show how entirely opinions differ it is amusing to quote some of
the remarks of Miss Mitford, who wrote in 1814, the year after the
publication of Pride and Prejudice: “The want of elegance is almost
the only want in Miss Austen. I have not read her Mansfield Park but
it is impossible not to feel in every line of Pride and Prejudice, in
every word of Elizabeth, the entire want of taste which could
produce so pert, so worldly a heroine as the beloved of such a man
as Darcy. Wickham is equally bad. Oh, they were just fit for each
other, and I cannot forgive that delightful Darcy for parting them.
Darcy should have married Jane. He is of all the admirable
characters the best designed and the best sustained. I quite agree
with you in preferring Miss Austen to Miss Edgeworth. If the former
had a little more taste, a little more perception of the graceful, as
well as of the humorous, I know not indeed anyone to whom I
should not prefer her. There is none of the hardness, the cold
selfishness, of Miss Edgeworth about her writings; she is in a much
better humour with the world; she preaches no sermons; she wants
nothing but the beau ideal of the female character to be a perfect
novel writer!”
Miss Mitford would no doubt have preferred as a heroine the elegant
languishing female, without any of the savour of originality about
her, who was the stereotyped heroine of most works of fiction at
that time.
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 to the writer of the following contemporary letter:—
“I thank you with ye utmost Gratitude for ye good offices you was to
have done me; and though I cannot now for Reasons above specifyd
accept of them, yet I hope they will still continue in Reversion: not
that I have any schemes for ever resuming my Designs upon Miss
A.: (on ye contrary I should be very loth she should wait so long)
but because whenever my Time is come You are ye first person I
should apply to, as having a good Number of Friends and
Correspondents; and none who are priviledged with ye Intimacy of
Mrs. Jennings can fail of Accomplishments to render them highly
agreable to your most obedient servant.” (A Kentish Country House.)
The character of the solemn, pompous, thick-skinned Mr. Collins is
the best of the kind Jane ever drew; he is a creation whose name
might signify a quality of “collinesqueness.”
Perhaps within the limits possible for quotation there is nothing
which in so short a space sums up so well his inimitable character as
the letter of condolence he sends to Mr. Bennet on the occasion of
Lydia’s having eloped with the weak and untrustworthy Wickham.
“I feel myself called upon by our relationship and my situation in life,
to condole with you on the grievous affliction you are now suffering
under, of which we were yesterday informed by a letter from
Hertfordshire. Be assured, my dear sir, that Mrs. Collins and myself
sincerely sympathise with you, and all your respectable family, in
your present distress, which must be of the bitterest kind, because
proceeding from a cause which no time can remove. No arguments
shall be wanting on my part, that can alleviate so severe a
misfortune; or that can comfort you under a circumstance that must
be of all others, most afflicting to a parent’s mind. The death of your
daughter would have been a blessing in comparison of this. And it is
the more to be lamented, because there is reason to suppose, as my
dear Charlotte informs me, that this licentiousness of behaviour in
your daughter has proceeded from a faulty degree of indulgence;
though, at the same time, for the consolation of yourself and Mrs.
Bennet, I am inclined to think that her own disposition must be
naturally bad, or she could not be guilty of such an enormity, at so
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