Jane Austen (40 page)

But having said so much, her feelings began to veer; she thought it right to remind Fanny of the advantages of the match and to caution her not to do anything silly; but the idea of hastening the child towards a marriage, to which in her innermost heart she had really become unwilling, filled

- 313 -

her aunt with dismay. ". . . Now . . . I shall turn round and entreat you not to commit yourself farther, and not to think of accepting him unless you really do like him. Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without affection." If Fanny's feelings could allow of her dwelling on his drawbacks in manner, Jane's advice was that Fanny should give him up immediately. As she said: "Things are now in such a state that you must resolve upon one or the other, either to allow him to go on as he has done, or whenever you are together, behave with the coldness which may convince him that he has been deceiving himself."

Fanny wrote back to the effect that she was prepared to do whatever her aunt thought right, but Jane would not have this. She answered the letter from Hans Place, saying: "Your affection gives me the highest pleasure, but indeed you must not let anything depend on my opinion. Your own feelings, and none but your own should

determine such an important point." Nonetheless, she could not but lay it before Fanny as her opinion that Fanny's feelings were at least not such as to stand the strain of a long engagement. The marriage could not take place for an indefinite period, and as Jane said: "You like him well enough to marry, but not well enough to wait." And she pointed out the great and very probable danger of Fanny's

meeting someone else in the next six or seven years whom she

would truly love. The situation of obliging Mr. Plumtree to

understand that, if he had not been exactly deceiving himself, somebody else had come rather near to deceiving him, was of course going to be very awkward; but if Fanny made up her mind against the match, it had to be gone through. Jane sympathized, but was firm. "The unpleasantness of appearing fickle is certainly great--but if you think you want punishment for past

- 314 -

illusions, there it is--and nothing can be compared to the misery of being bound
without
love, bound to one and preferring another.
That
is a punishment which you do not deserve."

She said she was sure that Mr. Plumtree would suffer a great deal when he found he must give Fanny up, but she added something

which might be of interest to those who attach such overwhelming importance to the story of her early life; "it is no creed of mine, as you must be well aware, that such sort of disappointments kill anybody."

The carrying on of this correspondence, so important and so private, brings to light one extraordinary quality of Jane Austen's mind. A sister on terms of quite ordinary intimacy with another might have told that other what had been going on in her niece's affairs; that Jane should withhold something from Cassandra seems at first sight incredible; but she did so. Cassandra had been dining with Frank Austen's family at the Great House on the evening that Fanny's first letter arrived, and Jane had said it was a good thing Aunt Cassandra was out of the way, because once she had begun it, she could not bear to put it down. Another one was brought by Mr. Edward Knight himself, who "most conscientiously hunted about" till he found Jane

"alone in the dining parlor" before he gave it to her; but Cassandra had already seen that he had a packet of some sort to deliver, only happily Fanny had put the letter into a piece of music. "Your sending the music was an admirable device; it made everything easy; and I do not know how I could have accounted for the parcel otherwise. . .

. As it was, however, I do not think anything was suspected." On another occasion when Fanny was in the thick of the matter and raining down letters whose arrival everyone must notice, Jane

implored her: "Write something that will do to be read or told!"

- 315 -

The fact that both Cassandra and Jane could be relied upon

implicitly to keep the confidence of their nieces even from each other, was recorded in his memoir by Mr. Edward Austen Leigh. In Jane's case particularly, with her acute interest in the heroine of the story, it is astonishing that she should have denied herself the pleasure of talking over the matter with Cassandra; but it was a matter of which Cassandra knew the essentials already; she would have had no wish to know the details which it seemed to Fanny just at present so important to keep quite private between herself and her Aunt Jane. There was every reason for Jane's refraining from

discussing the matter with her sister, except that in such

circumstances almost nobody would have refrained from so doing.

Before Jane left Hans Place she wrote to tell Fanny of the visit she had made to Anna. She said that as Fanny's father had also paid a visit from Hans Place, Fanny would be able to gather most of what she wanted to know from him. "Your papa will be able to answer
almost
every question. I certainly could describe her bedroom and her drawers and her closet better than he can, but I do not feel that I can stop to do it." Her letter showed that Anna, even though the married lady, was an interesting child, and Fanny almost another sister. Though Fanny was exactly Anna's age, for they were both twenty-one, Jane spoke to her of the bride as if Fanny herself were on quite a different level of intelligence and sense. She told Fanny she was sorry to hear that Anna
was
to have a piano after all: "It seems throwing money away. They will wish the twenty-four

guineas in the shape of sheets and towels six months hence, and as to her playing, it never can be anything." When Anna's trousseau was being prepared, her aunts from Chawton had seen it, and knew

- 316 -

very well the standard, in number of garments and their degree of elegance, which the Steventon family could afford, and Anna's new life make necessary or suitable. Jane was surprised on visiting Hendon to see Anna in a violet pelisse whose existence had been quite unsuspected by her. Not, as she said, that she blamed Anna for having bought it. "It looked very well, and I dare say she wanted it. I suspect nothing worse than its being got in secret, and not owned to anybody. She is capable of that, you know."

She told Fanny also of a visit to Keppel Street, when "dear Uncle Charles" was at home with the little girls. The two-year-old Fanny was "a fine, stout girl," who talked all the time with a lisp and indistinctness that were very charming. Harriet, who was four, sat in her Aunt Jane's lap and was very affectionate. Cassy, however, who was old enough to remember having seen Aunt Jane before, did not rise to the occasion; the latter said: "That puss Cassy did not show more pleasure in seeing us than her sisters, but I expected no better;-

-she does not shine in the tender feelings. She will never be a Miss O'Neal;--more in the Mrs. Siddons line."

In the year of October 1814 to 1815, Anna and Ben left Hendon and came back to Hampshire once again. They took possession of

Wyards, near Alton, an old farmhouse which had been converted

into a private dwelling. Anna's baby, Anna Jemima, was born in October 1815, and the young mother had so much to do that
Which
Is the Heroine?
was put aside. After her Aunt Jane's death Anna burned the manuscript, and one of her little daughters remembered sitting on the rug and watching it burn, "amused with the flames and the sparks which kept breaking out in the blackened paper." When the child was old enough, she said how

- 317 -

sorry she was her mother should have burned the story, but Anna told her that she could never have borne to finish it; it brought back the loss of her Aunt Jane too vividly.

Which is the Heroine?
was laid by, but
Emma
was finished. Jane went, as usual, to Henry while arrangements were made for its

publication. In the middle of October she was writing to Cassandra from Hans Place; the letter began with congratulations on the new cook at Chawton being able to make good apple pies; it went on to speak of the new publisher. Mr. Egerton was no longer acting for her, the fame of
Pride and Prejudice
and
Mansfield Park
was such that the second edition of the latter had been undertaken by the most fashionable and talked-of publisher in London--none other than the celebrated Mr. Murray. The fact that Murray had published for Lord Byron and enjoyed much of his confidence, and had been,

consequently, involved in Byron's meteoric career: visited and consulted by Byron's agitated friends, and hoaxed out of a portrait of his lordship by a forged letter presented by Lady Caroline Lamb, made of Mr. Murray something more than a publisher. To be

undertaken by him was not only a sign of successful authorship; it was an honor. It might have been expected that Jane Austen, writing to a sister in the country, would have devoted a good deal of space to talking of Mr. Murray. Actually, she summed him up in a sentence:

"He is a rogue, of course, but a civil one." Mr. Murray offered £450

for
Emma
, but he said the contract must include the copyright of
Mansfield Park
and
Sense and Sensibility
; and therefore for
Emma
alone he was offering roughly one-third of this sum; and as Jane Austen had made £140 on the first edition of
Sense and Sensibility
, as an author quite unknown, something in the nature of £150 for
Emma
, which was to include the copyright of that novel, was not as much as she, or as Henry for

- 318 -

her, would naturally expect. But Mr. Murray was very civil; he sent Jane a letter containing so much praise as quite surprised her.

The weather of the 16th of October was like summer still. It did not suit Henry, who came home from Henrietta Street feeling feverish and bilious, and went straight to bed, leaving Jane to dine
tête-à-tête
with Mr. Seymour; Jane hoped he would be better by the morning.

But he was not; he stayed in bed all Tuesday, and on Wednesday Jane wrote to Chawton: "It is a fever-something bilious but chiefly inflammatory. I am not alarmed but I have determined to send this letter today by the post that you may know how things are going on."

She called in the apothecary from the corner of Sloane Street, Mr.

Haden, a very attentive and clever young man who seemed to

understand the case, and reassured her somewhat. "Henry," she said,

"is an excellent patient, lies quietly in bed and is ready to swallow anything. He lives upon medicine, tea and barley-water." He was in bed "in the back room upstairs." Jane added: "I am generally there also working or writing." In a day or two Henry seemed better and was able to dictate a letter to Mr. Murray in which he thanked him for his politeness and said that his favorable opinion of
Emma
was most gratifying; but that the sum Mr. Murray was offering for the three copyrights was not equal to the amount Jane Austen had

actually made already by one edition of
Mansfield Park
, and a still smaller one of
Sense and Sensibility
.

But before the matter could be agreed upon, Henry had suffered a sharp relapse. On October 22nd Jane sent expresses to Godmersham, Steventon and Chawton, for Edward, James and Cassandra. Edward arrived immediately, and James, who had gone to Chawton to fetch Cassandra, arrived with her the day after. For a week they thought

- 319 -

Henry was dying. Jane and Cassandra nursed him night and day, in an unrelieved horror of suspense; but Henry's mercurial temperament was capable of startling seizures and equally rapid recoveries. After a week the two brothers felt able to go back to their families, leaving Jane and Cassandra, and at the end of October Jane was able to write to another niece who was engaged in literary composition; the ten-year-old Caroline was writing a story, and had sent it to Aunt Jane to look at.

Jane said: "I have not yet felt quite equal to taking up your manuscript, but I think I shall soon." Caroline was staying at Chawton with her grandmother, and her Aunt Martha, and her Aunt Jane said: "You will practice your music, of course, and I trust to you for taking care of my instrument and not letting it be ill-used in any respect.--Do not allow anything to be put on it, but what is very light."

The birth of Anna Jemima had exalted Caroline to the dignity of an aunt, and Jane concluded the letter by saying: "I am sorry you got wet in your ride; now that you are become an aunt, you are a person of some consequence and must excite great interest whatever you do.

I have always maintained the importance of aunts as much as

possible, and I am sure of your doing the same now. Believe me, my dear Sister-Aunt, yours affectionately, Jane Austen." A couple of months later she was writing to say--"My dear Caroline, I wish I could finish stories as fast as you can.--I am much obliged to you for the sight of Olivia, and think you have done for her very well; but the good-for-nothing father, who was the real author of all her faults and sufferings, should not escape unpunished. I hope he hung

himself, or took the name of Bone or underwent some direful

penance or other."

In the meantime Henry's illness had been the cause of Jane Austen's making a very interesting acquaintance. Mr. Haden,

- 320 -

the clever young apothecary, was a friend of the Rev. J. S. Clarke, who was librarian to the Prince Regent at Carlton House. A great deal of what we hear of George IV is unfavorable, but he was an artist. That monument to his taste, the Pavilion at Brighton, with its blending of Chinese and Hindu architecture, conveys something of the breadth of the Prince Regent's taste. Another aspect of it is indicated by the fact that by 1815 he had become a profound admirer of the novels of Jane Austen. He had a set of those already published in each of the houses he was accustomed to occupy; his admiration was so well known to his librarian, that when Mr. Haden told his friend that the lady who had written
Pride and Prejudice
was actually in London, and that he had met her at the bedside of one of his patients, Mr. Clarke knew that the news would be well