Jane Austen (28 page)

The success of the book was not sensational, but the sales not only covered the expenses of printing, the first edition was sold out in twenty months, and brought the authoress one hundred and forty pounds; and it made its mark at once among novel-readers of a

serious nature. In the correspondence of Lady Bessborough with Lord Granville LevesonGower occurs the following notice of it:

"God bless you, dearest G. Have you read
Sense and Sensibility
? It is a clever novel. They were full of it at Althorpe, and though it ends stupidly, I was much amused by it."

Jane Austen would have gone on writing had nothing of her work ever seen the light, but the delightful stimulus of success was now added to her absorbing private pleasure; and her next project was to take up the second of her early works, the
First Impressions
that Messrs. Cadell had not thought it worthwhile to look at.

What she did to it we can never know; considering the difference between the greenish, unripe promise of
Sense and Sensibility
and the brilliant perfection of
Pride and Prejudice
, it seems probable that the revision was thoroughgoing; there are, for instance, no hints about this work as

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there are in the former, that its conception belonged to a time before the present--the worldly, the interesting, the wide-awake year of 1812 to 1813. There are no ideas of abstract interest, such as an unwise indulgence in sensibility, or discussions on the picturesque.

The book is topical--not only of that year but now; the conversations in it, the relationships of its men and women are essentially those of today.

The depth, the perspective of impression conveyed by
Pride and
Prejudice
is so intense that when one re-reads the book one is astonished by its brevity. The people in the story are so distinctly present to one's mind that one searches in vain for the actual passage of description that made them so.

There is none; and in this lies the most characteristic aspect of Jane Austen's art, and the one most difficult to discuss and understand.

What Macaulay said of Milton might with more aptness be said of her: "There would seem at first sight to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the past is present, and the distant, near . . .

Change the structure of the sentence . . . and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses its power, and he who should hope to conjure with it would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood saying Open Wheat, Open Barley, to the door which obeyed no sound but Open Sesame."

Jane Austen uses a perfectly simple sentence, stating a commonplace fact; none of the words in it is beyond the scope of daily

conversation; but used by her they have an evocative power entirely unsuspected; as a ball, bounced on to a hard surface, soars into the air, as one stroke of a tuning fork produces a volume of echo, so a few ordinary words put

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together by Jane Austen produce a scene of absolute solidity and conviction. She uses none of the aids to creating an impression in the reader's mind that other writers use; her words are those we hear round the breakfast table; they are not, as indeed Milton's often are, haloed with association and musical in their concrete sound. She was, for instance, quite oblivious to the associations most of us connect with names. Not many people agree that "That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet," but Jane Austen seems to have thought so. She supplied her characters, every one of them, with a name which we feel to be exactly suitable--

Fitzwilliam Darcy, William Larkins, Admiral Croft, Miss Bates, Lucy Steele--but it was a perfect arrangement of material, rather than one drawn from an extensive choice; in the collection of Letters written as a child she evolved names which she afterwards drew upon when she was grown up: Willoughby, Dashwood, Crawford,

Annesley. Her use of Christian names is remarkable; not only does she use the names of her brothers with complete unselfconsciousness

--James Morland, Edward Ferrars, Charles Bingley, Henry Crawford

, Frank Churchill--but she gives her own to Jane Bennet and Jane Fairfax; even stranger, she uses a name which is consecrated by her readers to one character, for another: Elizabeth Bennet gives her name to the repulsive Elizabeth Elliot, and Jane Bennet to the even more obnoxious Mrs. Robert Watson.

There is no answer to the mystery as to why a plain statement made by her does the work of an architectural description of somebody else. She had the capacity to clear away the hackneyed, battered surface upon words and use them so that we perceive their pristine meaning; but that is the magical aspect of her genius. One cannot learn to do it for oneself by reading her work, any more than one can learn

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to play the piano by listening to Schnabel playing it. It is the secret which she could not have imparted even if she would; but there are a few things we can see as to the manner of her work, and they help us to understand a little how she managed to create an effect of startling realism, almost entirely without the use of descriptive detail.

The structure of
Pride and Prejudice
explains what she meant by saying to Anna Austen that two or three families in a small area was the very thing to work upon and just the situation she liked herself.

She did not mean it to be inferred that a pleasant round of gossip and intrigue and an absence of anything of external interest were all that she herself felt fitted to cope with; but that, for her method of establishing conviction, it was essential to keep the threads of the story converging upon a single point and to show the various

characters, not only as she saw them, or as two of them saw each other, but as each of them appeared to his or her acquaintance as a whole.

In
Pride and Prejudice
this interlacing of the characters forms, as it were, the steel structure upon which the work, with its amazing buoyancy, is sprung. Every important fact in the story is shown to be the inevitable consequence of something that has gone before. The fact that Bingley, pliable as he was, should be deterred by Darcy from his courtship of Jane Bennet is at first surprising; and Darcy's explanation is that Bingley was very modest, and really believed Darcy's representation of Jane's indifference; which, added Darcy, he genuinely believed himself. He saw that Jane liked Bingley, but he did not believe her to be in love, and therefore liable to be injured except in a worldly sense by Bingley's withdrawal. We then

remember what Charlotte Lucas had said, very early in Jane and Bingley's acquaintance, when Elizabeth had remarked to her that though Jane

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was falling in love with Bingley, her serenity and self-control were such that Elizabeth did not think anyone else would be able to notice it.

"'It may perhaps be pleasant,' replied Charlotte, 'to be able to impose on the public in such a case: but it is sometimes a disadvantage to be so very guarded. If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and then it will be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark. There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost every attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all
begin
freely;--a slight preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement. In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show
more
affection than she feels. Bingley likes your sister undoubtedly; but he may never do more than like her, if she does not help him on.'"

"'But She does help him on, as much as her nature will allow. If I can perceive her regard for him, he must be a simpleton indeed not to discover it too.'"

"'Remember, Eliza, he does not know Jane's disposition as you do.'"

The suddenly brought about marriage of Charlotte and Mr. Collins, which is in its way one of the most interesting things in the book, is led up to before the reader has any suspicion of what is to happen. At the Netherfield Ball, before Mr. Collins has made his famous

proposal to Elizabeth, he exacerbates her almost beyond endurance by his pertinacious attentions; as she has refused to dance with him, she is not able, in the etiquette of the day, to accept another partner; therefore she has to sit and endure Mr. Collins, who says he had rather sit by her than dance with anybody else. Her only moments of relief are when Charlotte Lucas

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comes to them and kindly diverts some of Mr. Collins' conversation to herself.

The difference between the meretricious, dishonest Wickham and his father, who had been the trusted steward and lifelong friend of old Mr. Darcy, is explained in a single statement. The elder Wickham had had an extravagant wife.

The celestial brightness of
Pride and Prejudice
is unequalled even in Jane Austen's other work; after a life of much disappointment and grief, in which some people would have seen nothing but tedium and emptiness, she stepped forth as an author, breathing gaiety and youth, robed in dazzling light. The penetration, the experience, the development of a mature mind, are latent in every line of the

construction, in every act and thought; but the whole field of the novel glitters as with sunrise upon morning dew. The impression cannot be wholly analyzed and accounted for, but it is worthwhile noting that in this book there are no people who are thrown in upon themselves by an unsympathetic atmosphere, like Fanny Price; no one who is laboring under a painful secret like Jane Fairfax; no one whose natural frame of mind is one of stormy light and shade, like Marianne Dashwood; no one whose life has been radically altered by a killing past of unhappiness like Anne Elliot; there is

disappointment in the book, and agitation, and acute distress, but the characters are all, even Wickham's, of an open kind, despite their individual variety.

Much of the novel's charm is created by the relationship of the two sisters; the idea that we have here something of the relationship of Jane and Cassandra is inescapable, particularly in such a passage as:

"I was uncomfortable enough --I was very uncomfortable--I may say, unhappy. And with no one to speak to of what I felt, no Jane to comfort me, and

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say that I had not been so very weak and vain and nonsensical as I knew I had! Oh, how I wanted you!" Cassandra Austen is to us something of a sibyl; she is a veiled presence whose face we never see. Her sister is always talking to her; and we listen to her sister's voice and watch the changing expression of her face, but we never see the person to whom Jane is turned. Even the people who tried to give some account of her said very little. She was devoted to Jane, and thought nobody good enough for her, but one; she admired

Jane's work with a full, intelligent participation. She was

exceedingly reserved; she had very strict and delicate notions of honor. Her nephews and nieces remembered her as "sensible and charming": Fanny was "energetic" in her longings for her Aunt Cassandra when a party had come to Godmersham without her. Jane had fancy and invention and a delicious faculty for nonsense; but Caroline Austen remembered that she was sometimes "very grave"; in their early middle age Cassandra seemed, to the younger

generation, the more equably cheerful of the two. So much we piece together; but one quality of Cassandra's we recognize for ourselves: she had a striking sense of humor. In acknowledging one of her letters, Jane declared her to be "one of the finest comic writers of the age." Would Cassandra but read her own letters through five times, she might get some of the pleasure out of them that her sister did.

Jane sent delighted thanks for the "exquisite piece of workmanship"

which had been brought into Henry's breakfast room among the

other letters.

Now a letter from Jane Bennet would never have ranked as an

exquisite piece of workmanship. A partial sister could not have described her as one of the first comic writers of the age. If she had been, Mr. Bingley would not have fallen in love with her. Some characteristics of hers seem to suggest

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Cassandra Austen: she was perfect with Mrs. Gardiner's children, and when Lydia inadvertently burst out with the information that Mr.

Darcy had been at her wedding, and then exclaimed: "But, gracious me! I quite forgot! I ought not to have said a word about it. I promised them so faithfully! What will Wickham say? It was to be such a secret!" Jane replied: "If it was to be a secret, say not another word on the subject. You may depend upon my seeking no further."

But Jane Bennet would not have been described as one who

"admired so few people"; on the contrary, she had the lovely, gentle, candid approach that both men and women find so charming: even Bingley's sisters were attracted to her; she "looked to like." Elizabeth said, when she found that her sister was pleased with Bingley: "I give you leave to like him. You have liked many a stupider person."

Jane delighted in Elizabeth's liveliness, but she never said a lively thing herself; but for the fact that the term conveys a sense of reproach, we should say she had no sense of humor. She was

inclined to take Elizabeth's remarks
au pied de la lettre
; she said she could hardly be happy, even if Bingley did propose to her, knowing that his relations and friends were against the match; Elizabeth said:

"'You must decide for yourself, and if, upon mature deliberation, you find that the misery of disobliging his two sisters is more than equivalent to the happiness of being his wife, I advise you, by all means, to refuse him.' 'How can you talk so!' said Jane, faintly smiling. 'You must know that though I should be exceedingly

grieved at their disapprobation, I could not hesitate.'"

"Mild" and "steady" are words used in describing her; her very beauty was of the reposeful cast; she was not so

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