JANE AUSTEN
DELAFORD is a nice place I
can tell you; exactly what I call a nice, old-fashioned place, full of
comforts, quite shut in with great garden-walls that are covered with
fruit-trees, and such a mulberry-tree in the corner. Then there is a
dovecote,
some delightful fish-ponds, and a very pretty canal, and everything, in
short,
that one could wish for; and moreover it’s close to the church
and only a
quarter of a mile from the turnpike road.
—
"Sense and
Sensibility."
JANE AUSTEN
IT was at Cambridge,
England, I met him — a fine, intelligent clergyman he was, too.
"He's not
a Varsity man," said my new acquaintance, speaking of Doctor Joseph
Parker, the world's greatest preacher.
"If he were, he
wouldn’t do all these preposterous things, you know."
"He’s a little like
Henry Irving," I ventured apologetically.
"True, and what absurd
mannerisms — did you ever see the like! Yes, one’s from
Yorkshire and the other
from Cornwall, and both are Philistines."
He laughed at his joke and
so did I, for I always try to be polite.
So I went my way, and as I
strolled it came to me that my clerical friend was right — a
university course
might have taken all the individuality out of these strong men and made
of
their genius a purely neutral decoction. And when I thought further and
considered how much learning has done to banish wisdom, it was a
satisfaction
to remember that Shakespeare at Oxford did nothing beyond making the
acquaintance
of an innkeeper's wife.
It hardly seems possible
that a Harvard degree would have made a stronger man of Abraham
Lincoln; or
that Edison, whose brain has wrought greater changes than that of any
other man
of the century, was the loser by not being versed in physics as taught
at Yale.
The Law of Compensation
never rests, and the men who are taught too much from books are not
taught by
Deity. Most education in the past has failed to awaken in its subject a
degree
of intellectual consciousness. It is the education that the Jesuits
served out
to the Indian It
made him peaceable,
but took all dignity out of him. From a noble red man he descended into
a dirty
Injun, who signed away his heritage for rum.
The world's plan of
education has mostly been priestly — we have striven to inculcate
trust and
reverence. We have cited authorities and quoted precedents and given
examples:
it was a matter of memory; while all the time the whole spiritual
acreage was
left untilled.
A race educated in this way
never advances, save as it is jolted out of its notions by men with
either a
sublime ignorance of, or an indifference to, what has been done and
said. These
men are always called barbarians by their contemporaries: they are
jeered and
hooted. They supply much mirth by their eccentricities. After they are
dead the
world sometimes canonizes them and carves on their tombs the word
"Savior."
Do I then plead the cause of
ignorance? Well, yes, rather so. A little ignorance is not a dangerous
thing. A
man who reads too much — who accumulates too many facts —
gets his mind filled
to the point of saturation; matters then crystallize and his head
becomes a solid
thing that refuses to let anything either in or out. In his soul there
is no
guest-chamber. His only hope for progress lies in another incarnation.
And so a certain ignorance
seems a necessary equipment for the doing of a great work. To live in a
big
city and know what others are doing and saying; to meet the learned and
powerful, and hear their sermons and lectures; to view the unending
shelves of
vast libraries is to be discouraged at the start. And thus we find that
genius
is essentially rural — a country product it Salons, soirees,
theaters,
concerts, lectures, libraries, produce a fine mediocrity that smiles at
the
right time and bows when 't is proper, but it is well to bear in mind
that
George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett, Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen were
all
country girls, with little companionship, nourished on picked-up
classics,
having a healthy ignorance of what the world was saying and doing.
JANE AUSTEN lived a hundred
years ago. But when you tramp that five miles from Overton, where the
railroad-station is, to Steventon, where she was born, it doesn’t
seem like it.
Rural England does not change much. Great fleecy clouds roll lazily
across the
blue, overhead, and the hedgerows are full of twittering birds that you
hear
but seldom see; and the pastures contain mild-faced cows that look at
you with
wide-open eyes over the stone walls; and in the towering elm-trees that
sway
their branches in the breeze crows hold a noisy caucus. And it comes to
you
that the clouds and the blue sky and the hedgerows and the birds and
the cows
and the crows are all just as Jane Austen knew them — no change.
These stone
walls stood here then, and so did the low slate-roofed barns and the
whitewashed cottages where the roses clamber over the doors.
I paused in front of one of
these snug, homely, handsome, pretty little cottages and looked at the
two
exact rows of flowers that lined the little walk leading from gate to
cottage-door.
The pathway was made from coal-ashes and the flowerbeds were
marked off with
pieces of broken crockery set on edge. 'T was an absent-minded,
impolite thing
to do — to stand leaning on a gate and critically examine the
landscape
gardening, evidently an overworked woman's gardening, at that.
As I leaned there the door
opened and a little woman with sleeves rolled up appeared. I mumbled an
apology, but before I could articulate it she held out a pair of
scissors and
said, "Perhaps, sir, you 'd like to clip some of the flowers —
the roses
over the door are best!"
Three children hung to her
skirts, peeking 'round faces from behind, and quite accidentally
disclosing a
very neat ankle.
I took the scissors and
clipped three splendid Jacqueminots and said it was a beautiful day.
She agreed
with me and added that she was just finishing her churning and if I 'd
wait a
minute until the butter came, she 'd give me a drink of buttermilk.
I waited without urging and
got the buttermilk, and as the children had come out from hiding I was
minded
to give them a penny apiece. Two coppers were all I could muster, so I
gave the
two boys each a penny and the little girl a shilling. The mother
protested that
she had no change and that a bob was too much for a little girl like
that, but
I assumed a Big-Bonanza air and explained that I was from California
where the
smallest change is a dollar.
"Go thank the
gentleman, Jane."
"That’s right, Jane
Austen, come here and thank me!"
"How did you know her
name was Jane Austen — Jane Austen Humphreys?"
"I didn't know — I only
guessed."
Then little Mrs. Humphreys
ceased patting the butter and told me that she named her baby girl for
Jane
Austen, who used to live near here a long time ago. Jane Austen was one
of the
greatest writers that ever lived — the Rector said so. The
Reverend George
Austen preached at Steventon for years and years, and I should go and
see the
church — the same church where he preached and where Jane Austen
used to go.
And anything I wanted to know about Jane
Austen's books the Rector
could tell, for he was a wonderful learned man was the Rector —
"Kiss the
gentleman, Jane."
So I kissed Jane Austen's
round, rosy cheek and stroked the towsled heads of the two boys by way
of
blessing, and started for Steventon to interview the Rector who was
very wise
it And the clergyman who teaches his people the history of their
neighborhood,
and tells them of the excellent men and women who once lived
thereabouts, is
both wise and good. And the present Rector at Steventon is both —
I'm sure of
that.
IT was a very happy family
that lived in the Rectory at Steventon from Seventeen Hundred
Seventy-five to
Eighteen Hundred One. There were five boys and two girls, and the
younger
girl's name was Jane. Between her and James, the oldest boy, lay a
period of
twelve years of three hundred and sixty-five days each, not to mention
leap-years.
The boys were sent away to
be educated, and when they came home at holiday time they brought
presents for
the mother and the girls, and there was great rejoicing. James was sent
to
Oxford. The girls were not sent away to be educated — it was
thought hardly
worth while then to educate women, and some folks still hold to that
belief.
When the boys came home, they were made to stand by the door-jamb, and
a mark
was placed on the casing, with a date, which showed how much they had
grown.
And they were catechized as to their knowledge, and cross-questioned
and their
books inspected; and so we find one of the sisters saying, once, that
she knew
all the things her brothers knew, and besides that she knew all the
things she
knew herself. There
was plenty of books
in the library, and the girls made use of them. They would read to
their father
"because his eyesight was bad," but I can not help thinking this a
clever ruse on the part of the good Rector.
I do not find that there
were any secrets in that household, or that either Mr. or Mrs. Austen
ever said
that children should be seen and not heard. It was a little republic of
letters-all
their own. Thrown in on themselves, for not many of the yeomanry
thereabouts
could read, there was developed a fine spirit of comradeship among
parents and
children, brothers and sisters, servants and visitors, that is a joy to
contemplate. Before the days of railroads, a "visitor" was more of an
institution than he is now. He stayed longer and was more welcome; and
the news
he brought from distant parts was eagerly asked for. Nowadays we know
all about
everything, almost before it happens, for yellow journalism is so alert
that it
discounts futurity.
In the Austen household had
lived and died a son of Warren Hastings. The lad had so won the love of
the
Austens that they even spoke of him as their own; and this bond also
linked
them to the great outside world of statecraft. The things the elders
discussed
were the properties, too, of the children.
Then once a year the Bishop
came-came in knee-breeches, hobnailed shoes, and shovel hat, and the
little
church was decked with greens. The Bishop came from Paradise, little
Jane used
to think, and once, to be polite, she asked him how all the folks were
in
Heaven. Then the other children giggled and the Bishop spilt a whole
cup of tea
down the front of his best coat, and coughed and choked until he was
very red
in the face.
When Jane was ten years old
there came to live at the Rectory a daughter of Mrs. Austen's sister.
She came
to them direct from France. Her name was Madame Fenillade. She was a
widow and
only twenty-two. Once, when little Jane overheard one of the brothers
say that
Monsieur Fenillade had kissed Mademoiselle Guillotine, she asked what
he meant
and they would not tell her.
Now Madame spoke French with
grace and fluency, and the girls thought it queer that there should be
two
languages — English and French — so they picked up a few
words of French, too,
and at the table would gravely say "Merci, Papa," and "S' il
vous plait, Mamma." Then Mr. Austen proposed that at table no one
should
speak anything but French. So Madame told them what to call the sugar
and the
salt and the bread, and no one called anything except by its French
name. In
two weeks each of the whole dozen persons who sat at that board, as
well as the
girl who waited on table, had a bill-of-fare working capital of French.
In six
months they could converse with ease.
And science with all its
ingenuity has not yet pointed out a better way for acquiring a new
language
than the plan the Austens adopted at Steventon Rectory. We call it the
"Berlitz Method" now.
Madame Fenillade's widowhood
rested lightly upon her; and she
became quite the life of the whole household: One of the Austen boys
fell in
love with the French widow; and surely it would be a very stupid
country boy
that wouldn't love a French widow like that!
And they were married and
lived happily ever afterward. But before Madame married and moved away
she
taught the girls charades, and then little plays, and a theatrical
performance
was given in the barn.
Then a play could not be
found that just suited, so Jane wrote one and Cassandra helped, and
Madame
criticized and the Reverend Mr. Austen suggested a few changes. Then it
was all
rewritten. And this was the first attempt at writing for the public by
Jane
Austen.
JANE AUSTEN wrote four great
novels. "Pride and Prejudice" was begun when she was twenty and
finished a year later. The old father started a course of novel-reading
on his
own account in order to fit his mind to pass judgment on his daughter's
work.
He was sure it was good, but feared that love had blinded his eyes, and
he
wanted to make sure. After six months' comparison he wrote to a
publisher
explaining that he had the MS. of a great novel that would be parted
with for a
consideration. He assured the publisher that the novel was as excellent
as any
Miss Burney, Miss Edgeworth, or any one else ever wrote it Now
publishers get
letters like that by every mail, and when Mr. Austen received his reply
it was
so antarctic in sentiment that the MS. was stored away in the garret,
where it
lay for just eleven years before it found a publisher. But in the
meantime Miss
Austen had written three other novels, not with much hope that any
one would
publish them, but to please her father and the few intimate friends who
read
and sighed and smiled in quiet.
The year she was thirty
years of age her father died — died with no thought that the
world would yet
endorse his own loving estimate of his daughter's worth.
After the father's death
financial troubles came, and something had to be done to fight off
possible
hungry wolves. The MS. was hunted out, dusted, gone over, and submitted
to
publishers. They sniffed at it and sent it back. Finally a man was
found who
was bold enough to read. He liked it, but wouldn't admit the fact. Yet
he
decided to print it. He did so. The reading world liked it and said so,
although not very loudly. Slowly the work made head, and small-sized
London
drafts were occasionally sent by publishers to Miss Austen with
apologies
because the amounts were not larger.
Now, in reference to writing
books it may not be amiss to explain that no one ever said, "Now then,
I'll write a story!" and sitting dawn at table took up pen and dipping
it
in ink, wrote. Stories don't come that way. Stories take possession of
one —
incident after incident — and you write in order to get rid of
'em — with a few
other reasons mixed in, for motives, like silver, are always found
mixed.
Children play at keeping house: and men and women who have loved think
of the
things that have happened, then imagine all the things that might have
happened, and from thinking it all over to writing it out is but a
step. You
begin one chapter and write it this forenoon; and do all you may to
banish the
plot, the next chapter is all in your head before sundown. Next morning
you
write chapter number two., to unload it, and so the story spins itself
out into
a book. All this if you live in the country and have time to think and
are not
broken in upon by too much work and worry — save the worry of the
ever-restless
mind. Whether the story is good or not depends upon what you leave out.
The sculptor produces the
beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are
not
needed.
Really happy people do not
write stories — they accumulate adipose tissue and die at
the top through
fatty degeneration of the cerebrum. A certain disappointment in life, a
dissatisfaction with environment, is necessary to stir the imagination
to a
creative point. If things are all to your taste you sit back and enjoy
them.
You forget the flight of time, the march of the seasons, your future
life,
family, country — all, just as Antony did in Egypt. A deadly,
languorous
satisfaction comes over you. Pain, disappointment, unrest or a joy that
hurts,
are the things that prick the mind into activity.
Jane Austen lived in a
little village. She felt the narrowness of her life — the
inability of those
beyond her own household to match her thoughts and emotions. Love came
that way
— a short heart-rest, a being understood, were hers. The gates of
Paradise
swung ajar and she caught a glimpse of the glories within, and sighed
and
clasped her hands and bowed her head in a prayer of thankfulness.
When she arose from her
knees the gates were closed; the way was dark; she was alone —
alone in a
little quibbling, carping village, where tired folks worked and
gossiped, ate,
drank, slept. Her home was pleasant, to be sure, but man is a citizen
of the
world, not of a house.
Jane Austen began to write —
to write about these village people. Jane was tall, and twenty —
not very
handsome, but better, she was good-looking. She looked good because she
was.
She was pious, but not too pious. She used to go calling among the
parishioners, visiting the sick, the lowly, the troubled. Then when
Great Folks
came down from London to "the Hall," she went with the Rector to call
on them too, for the Rector was servant to all — his business was
to minister:
he was a Minister. And the Reverend George Austen was a bit proud of
his
younger daughter. She was just as tall as he, and dignified and gentle:
and the
clergyman chuckled quietly to himself to see how she was the equal in
grace and
intellect of any Fine Lady from Londontown. And although the good
Rector
prayed, "From all vanity and pride of spirit, good Lord, deliver us,"
it never occurred to him that he was vain of his tall daughter Jane,
and I 'm
glad it did n't. There is no more crazy bumblebee gets into a mortal's
bonnet
than the buzzing thought that God is jealous of the affection we have
for our
loved ones. If we are ever damned, it will be because we have too
little love
for our fellows, not too much.
But, egad! brother, it’s no
small delight to be sixty and a little stooped and a trifle rheumatic,
and have
your own blessed daughter, sweet and stately, comb your thinning gray
locks,
help you on with your overcoat, find your cane, and go trooping with
you, hand
in hand, down the lane on merciful errand bent. It’s a temptation
to grow old
and feign sciatica; and if you could only know that, some day, like old
King
Lear, upon your withered cheek would fall Cordelia's tears, the thought
would
be a solace.
So Jane Austen began to
write stories about the simple folks she knew. She wrote in the family
sitting-room at a little mahogany desk that she could shut up quickly
if prying
neighbors came in to tell their woes and ask questions about all those
sheets
of paper! And all she wrote she read to her father and to her sister
Cassandra.
And they talked it all over
together and laughed and cried and joked over it. The kind old minister
thought
it a good mental drill for his girls to write and express their
feelings.
The two girls collaborated —
that is to say, one wrote and the other looked on. Neither girl had
been
"educated," except what their father taught them. But to be born into
a bookish family, and inherit the hospitable mind and the receptive
heart, is
better than to be sent to Harvard Annex. Preachers, like other folks,
sometimes
assume a virtue when they have it not. But George Austen didn’t
pretend — he
was. And that's the better plan, for no man can deceive his children
— they
take his exact measurement, whether others ever do or not; and the only
way to
win and hold the love of a child (or a grown-up) is to be frank and
simple and
honest. I've tried both schemes.
I can not find that George
Austen ever claimed he was only a worm of the dust, or pretended to be
more or
less than he was, or to assume a knowledge that he did not possess. He
used to
say, "My dears, I really do not know. But let’s keep the windows
open and
light may yet come."
It was a busy family of plain
average people — not very rich, and not very poor. There were
difficulties to
meet, and troubles to share, and joys to divide.
Jane Austen was born in
Seventeen Hundred Seventy-five; "Jane Eyre" in Eighteen Hundred
Sixteen — one year before Jane Austen died.
Charlotte Bronte knew all
about Jane Austen, and her example fired Charlotte's ambition. Both
were
daughters of country clergymen. Charlotte lived in the North of
England on the
wild and treeless moors, where the searching winds rattled the panes
and black-faced
sheep bleated piteously. Jane Austen lived in the rich quiet of a
prosperous farming country, where bees
made honey and larks nested. The Reverend Patrick Bronte disciplined
his
children: George Austen loved his. In Steventon there is no "Black
Bull";
only a little dehorned inn, kept by a woman who breeds canaries, and
will sell
you a warranted singer for five shillings, with no charge for the cage.
At
Steventon no red-haired Yorkshiremen offer to give fight or challenge
you to a
drinking-bout.
The opposites of things are
alike, and that is why the world ties Jane Eyre and Jane Austen in one
bundle.
Their methods of work were totally different: their effects gotten in
different ways. Charlotte Bronte fascinates by startling
situations and highly
colored lights that dance and glow, leading you on in a mad chase.
There's
pain, unrest, tragedy in the air. The pulse always is rapid and the
temperature
high.
It is not so with Jane
Austen. She is an artist in her gentleness, and the world is today
recognizing
this more and more. The stage now works its spells by her methods
— without
rant, cant or fustian — and as the years go by this must be so
more and more,
for mankind's face is turned toward truth.
To weave your spell out of
commonplace events and brew a love-potion from every-day materials is
high art.
When Kipling takes three average soldiers of the line, ignorant, lying,
swearing, smoking, dog-fighting soldiers, who can even run on occasion,
and by
telling of them holds a world in thrall — that's art I In these
soldiers three
we recognize something very much akin to ourselves, for the thing that
holds no
relationship to us does not interest us — we can not leave the
personal
equation out. This fact is made plain in "The Black Riders," where
the devils dancing in Tophet look up and espying Steve Crane, address
him thus:
"Brother!"
Jane Austen's characters are
all plain, every-day folks. The work is always quiet. There are no
entangling
situations, no mysteries, no surprises.
Now, to present a situation,
an emotion, so it will catch and hold the attention of others, is
largely a
knack — you practise on the thing until you do it well. This one
thing I do.
But the man who does this thing is not intrinsically any greater than
those who
appreciate it in fact, they are all made of the same kind of stuff.
Kipling
himself is quite a commonplace person. He is neither handsome nor
magnetic. He
is plain and manly and would fit in anywhere. If there was a trunk to
be
carried upstairs, or an ox to get out of a pit, you'd call on Kipling
if he
chanced that way, and he'd give you a lift as a matter of course, and
then go
on whistling with hands in his pockets. His art is a knack practised to
a point
that gives facility.
Jane Austen was a
commonplace person. She swept, sewed, worked, and did the duty that lay
nearest
her. She wrote because she liked to, and because it gave pleasure to
others.
She wrote as well as she could. She had no thought of immortality, or
that she
was writing for the ages — no more than Shakespeare had. She
never anticipated
that Southey, Coleridge, Lamb, Guizot and Macaulay would hail her as a
marvel
of insight, nor did she suspect that a woman as great as George Eliot
would
declare her work flawless.
But today strong men
recognize her books as rarely excellent, because they show the
divinity in all
things, keep close to the ground, gently inculcate the firm belief that
simple
people are as necessary as great ones, that small things are not
necessarily
unimportant, and that nothing is really insignificant. It all rings
true.
And so I sing the praises of
the average woman — the woman who does her work, who is willing
to be unknown,
who is modest and unaffected, who tries to lessen the pains of earth,
and to
add to its happiness. She is the true guardian angel of mankind!
No book published in Jane
Austen's lifetime bore her name on the title-page; she was never
lionized by
society; she was never two hundred miles from home; she died when
forty-two
years of age, and it was sixty years before a biography was attempted
or asked
for. She sleeps in the cathedral at Winchester, and not so very long
ago a
visitor, on asking the verger to see her grave, was conducted thither,
and the
verger asked, "Was she anybody in particular? So many folks ask where
she’s buried, you know!"
But this is changed now, for
when the verger took me to her grave and we stood by that plain, black,
marble
slab, he spoke intelligently of her life and work. And many visitors
now go to
the cathedral, only because it is the resting-place of Jane Austen, who
lived a
beautiful, helpful life and produced great art; yet knew it not.
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