Persuasion (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (39 page)

Sir Walter indeed, though he had no affection for Anne, and no vanity flattered, to make him really happy on the occasion, was very far from thinking it a bad match for her. On the contrary, when he saw more of Captain Wentworth, saw him repeatedly by daylight and eyed him well, he was very much struck by his personal claims, and felt that his superiority of appearance might be not unfairly balanced against her superiority of rank; and all this, assisted by his well-sounding name, enabled Sir Walter at last to prepare his pen with a very good grace for the insertion of the marriage in the volume of honour.

The only one among them, whose opposition of feeling could excite any serious anxiety, was Lady Russell. Anne knew that Lady Russell must be suffering some pain in understanding and relinquishing Mr. Elliot, and be making some struggles to become truly acquainted with, and do justice to Captain Wentworth. This however was what Lady Russell had now to do. She must learn to feel that she had been mistaken with regard to both; that she had been unfairly influenced by appearances in each; that because Captain Wentworth’s manners had not suited her own ideas, she had been too quick in suspecting them to indicate a character of dangerous impetuosity; and that because Mr. Elliot’s manners had precisely pleased her in their propriety and correctness, their general politeness and suavity, she had been too quick in receiving them as the certain result of the most correct opinions and well regulated mind. There was nothing less for Lady Russell to do, than to admit that she had been pretty completely wrong, and to take up a new set of opinions and of hopes.

There is a quickness of perception in some, a nicety in the discernment of character, a natural penetration, in short, which no experience in others can equal, and Lady Russell had been less gifted in this part of understanding than her young friend. But she was a very good woman, and if her second object was to be sensible and well-judging, her first was to see Anne happy. She loved Anne better than she loved her own abilities; and when the awkwardness of the beginning was over, found little hardship in attaching herself as a mother to the man who was securing the happiness of her other child.

Of all the family, Mary was probably the one most immediately gratified by the circumstance. It was creditable to have a sister married, and she might flatter herself with having been greatly instrumental to the connexion, by keeping Anne with her in the autumn; and as her own sister must be better than her husband’s sisters; it was very agreeable that Captain Wentworth should be a richer man than either Captain Benwick or Charles Hayter.—She had something to suffer perhaps when they came into contact again, in seeing Anne restored to the rights of seniority,
^ff
and the mistress of a very pretty landau lette;
^fg
but she had a future to look forward to, of powerful consolation. Anne had no Uppercross-hall before her, no landed estate, no headship of a family; and if they could but keep Captain Wentworth from being made a baronet, she would not change situations with Anne.

It would be well for the eldest sister if she were equally satisfied with her situation, for a change is not very probable there. She had soon the mortification of seeing Mr. Elliot withdraw; and no one of proper condition has since presented himself to raise even the unfounded hopes which sunk with him.

The news of his cousin Anne’s engagement burst on Mr. Elliot most unexpectedly. It deranged his best plan of domestic happiness, his best hope of keeping Sir Walter single by the watchfulness which a son-in-law’s rights would have given. But, though discomfited and disappointed, he could still do something for his own interest and his own enjoyment. He soon quitted Bath; and on Mrs. Clay’s quitting it likewise soon afterwards, and being next heard of as established under his protection
^fh
in London, it was evident how double a game he had been playing, and how determined he was to save himself from being cut out by one artful woman, at least.

Mrs. Clay’s affections had overpowered her interest, and she had sacrificed, for the young man’s sake, the possibility of scheming longer for Sir Walter. She has abilities, however, as well as affections; and it is now a doubtful point whether his cunning, or hers, may finally carry the day; whether, after preventing her from being the wife of Sir Walter, he may not be wheedled and caressed at last into making her the wife of Sir William.

It cannot be doubted that Sir Walter and Elizabeth were shocked and mortified by the loss of their companion, and the discovery of their deception in her. They had their great cousins, to be sure, to resort to for comfort; but they must long feel that to flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment.

Anne, satisfied at a very early period of Lady Russell’s meaning to love Captain Wentworth as she ought, had no other alloy to the happiness of her prospects than what arose from the consciousness of having no relations to bestow on him which a man of sense could value. There she felt her own inferiority keenly. The disproportion in their fortune was nothing; it did not give her a moment’s regret; but to have no family to receive and estimate him properly; nothing of respectability, of harmony, of goodwill to offer in return for all the worth and all the prompt welcome which met her in his brothers and sisters, was a source of as lively pain as her mind could well be sensible of, under circumstances of otherwise strong felicity. She had but two friends in the world to add to his list, Lady Russell and Mrs. Smith. To those, however, he was very well disposed to attach himself. Lady Russell, in spite of all her former transgressions, he could now value from his heart. While he was not obliged to say that he believed her to have been right in originally dividing them, he was ready to say almost every thing else in her favour; and as for Mrs. Smith, she had claims of various kinds to recommend her quickly and permanently.

Her recent good offices by Anne had been enough in themselves; and their marriage, instead of depriving her of one friend, secured her two. She was their earliest visitor in their settled life; and Captain Wentworth, by putting her in the way of recovering her husband’s property in the West Indies; by writing for her, acting for her, and seeing her through all the petty difficulties of the case, with the activity and exertion of a fearless man and a determined friend, fully requited the services which she had rendered, or ever meant to render, to his wife.

Mrs. Smith’s enjoyments were not spoiled by this improvement of income, with some improvement of health, and the acquisition of such friends to be often with, for her cheerfulness and mental alacrity did not fail her; and while these prime supplies of good remained, she might have bid defiance even to greater accessions of worldly prosperity. She might have been absolutely rich and perfectly healthy, and yet be happy. Her spring of felicity was in the glow of her spirits, as her friend Anne’s was in the warmth of her heart. Anne was tenderness itself, and she had the full worth of it in Captain Wentworth’s affection. His profession was all that could ever make her friends wish that tenderness less; the dread of a future war all that could dim her sunshine. She gloried in being a sailor’s wife, but she must pay the tax of quick alarm for belonging to that profession which is, if possible, more distinguished in its domestic virtues than in its national importance.

Endnotes

1
. (p. 3)
Baronetage:
The reference is to John Debrett’s two-volume
Baronetage of England
(1808). A baronet is just above the rank of knight and below that of baron.

2
(p. 4)
Dugdale:
Sir William Dugdale’s catalogue of the seventeenth-century nobility was published in 1675 and 1676.

3
(p. 9)
There was only a small part ... alienable:
Sir Walter’s estate is entailed, meaning that he is legally obliged to pass most of the estate to an heir, and thus may sell only a small part of it, that which is alienable, or separate from the entailed portion.

4
(p. 17)
This peace:
The reference is to the Treaty of Paris (1814), the seeming defeat of the forces of Napoleon, until his escape from Elba in 1815.

5
(p. 17)
greatest prize of all:
When British naval officers captured an enemy ship, they were legally entitled to seize and sell all its contents as “prizes.” Since the British navy was powerful and successful in the Napoleonic Wars, many officers enriched themselves this way, as Wentworth is said to have done.

6
(p. 19)
Lord St. Ives:
Austen may have been thinking of the British naval hero Lord Horatio Nelson (1758-1805), victor over Napoleon at Trafalgar, whose father was a country clergyman (as was Jane Austen’s own father).

7
(p. 21)
rear admiral of the white:
Rear-admirals were ranked below vice-admirals, the rank just below admiral; the three squadrons of the British Navy were ranked, in downward order, red, white, and blue.

8
(p. 21)
Trafalgar action:
Trafalgar was the site of an important battle of 1805 that established Britain’s naval power as supreme over Napoleon’s.

9
(p. 25)
St. Domingo:
The reference is to an 1806 victory for the British against the French Navy in Santo Domingo.

10
(p. 62)
privateers:
Privateers were armed vessels owned and commanded by private persons who held government commissions to use arms against hostile nations, especially for the purpose of profiteering in merchandise seized.

11
(p. 72)
new creations:
The reference is to bestowings of the title of baronet. Mary echoes her father’s contempt for recent “creations” (see p. 3).

12
(p. go)
as
the
nature of the country required, for going and returning:
Lyme and the countryside around it are very hilly, and the journey would have been slow. Jane Austen visited Lyme in 1804 and here drew on that experience.

13
(p.91)
romantic rocks:
Austen may have been thinking of the poem “Kubla Khan” (1798), by the Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), with its “deep romantic chasm” (1. 12) and “dancing rocks” (1.23).

14
(p. 96) Marmion
or
The Lady of the Lake: Sir Walter Scott (1771- 1832) is the author of these two popular long poems,
Marmion: A Tale of Flooden Field
(1808) and
The Lady of the Lake: A Poem
(1810).

15
(p. 96) Giaour
and
The Bride of Abydos: George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) wrote
The Giaour, A Fragment of a Turkish Tale
(1813) and
The Bride of Abydos: A Turkish Tale
(1813). These publications would have been recent at the time the novel takes place, and much talked about.

16
(p. 104)
“dark
blue
seas”:
The reference is Byron’s long poem of 1812,
Childe Harold’s Pilgrzmage,
canto 2, stanza 17.

17
(p. 111)
Henry:
The reference is to Matthew Prior’s poem “Henry and Emma” (1709). Based on the old ballad “The Nut-Brown Maid,” it tells the story of Emma, who proves her selfless love for her lover, Henry, in part by willingness to extend her devotion for his sake to the woman she thinks is her rival.

18
(p. 116)
Camden-place:
Jane Austen drew here and elsewhere on her knowledge of Bath’s addresses and establishments, with their varying indications of social status and fashionability; she resided there from 1801 until 1806.

19
(p. 135)
silver sounds:
The “silver sound” of the timepiece that awakens the heroine is found in
The Rape of the Lock
(1714), canto 1, line 18, by Alexander Pope (1688-1744).

20
(p. 179)
Miss Larolles:
A character in
Cecilia
(1782), a novel by Fanny Burney (1752-1840); the heroine seats herself when attending performances so as to talk to those she wants to cultivate.

21
(p. 205)
youth ... many years:
Charles will temporarily fill the position for a clergyman who has been promised to the parish by a patron but is not yet old enough to be ordained.

22
(p. 216)
head:
This is a reference to the collection of tales called
The Arabian Nights or The Thousand and One Nights.
The conceit is that a legendary king of Samarkand killed each of his wives the morning following their wedding night until he married Scheherazade, who remained alive by promising to tell him a new tale every night.

Inspired by
Persuasion