Produced by MWS, Barbara Magni and the Online Distributed

JANE AUSTEN AND HER TIMES

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  A BACHELOR GIRL IN LONDON

  THE GIFTS OF ENEMIES

  THE CHILDREN’S BOOK OF LONDON

   [Illustration: MORNING EMPLOYMENTS]

                              JANE AUSTEN
                             AND HER TIMES

                                   BY

                              G. E. MITTON

                     WITH TWENTY-ONE ILLUSTRATIONS

                             METHUEN & CO.
                          36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
                                 LONDON

                       _First Published in 1905_

CONTENTS

  CHAP.                                                      PAGE

      I. PRELIMINARY AND DISCURSIVE                             1
     II. CHILDHOOD                                             22
    III. THE POSITION OF THE CLERGY                            34
     IV. HOME LIFE AT STEVENTON                                49
      V. THE NOVELS                                            80
     VI. LETTERS AND POST                                     105
    VII. SOCIETY AND LOVE-MAKING                              117
   VIII. VISITS AND TRAVELING                                 148
     IX. CONTEMPORARY WRITERS                                 161
      X. A TRIO OF NOVELS                                     176
     XI. THE NAVY                                             196
    XII. BATH                                                 212
   XIII. DRESS AND FASHIONS                                   229
    XIV. AT SOUTHAMPTON                                       249
     XV. CHAWTON                                              266
    XVI. IN LONDON                                            278
   XVII. FANNY AND ANNA                                       296
  XVIII. THE PRINCE REGENT AND _EMMA_                         303
    XIX. LAST DAYS                                            313
         INDEX                                                327

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  MORNING EMPLOYMENTS                              _Frontispiece_
    From a Painting by BUNBURY.

  THE REV. GEORGE AUSTEN                       _Facing page_   16
    From a Family Miniature.

  THE REV. JAMES AUSTEN                            „     „     16
    From a Family Miniature.

  JUVENILE RETIREMENT                              „     „     26
    From a Painting by JOHN HOPPNER.

  THE VICAR RECEIVING HIS TITHES                   „     „     42
    From a Drawing by H. SINGLETON.

  JANE AUSTEN                                      „     „     58
    From a Portrait by her Sister CASSANDRA.

  THE HAPPY COTTAGERS                              „     „     74
    From a Painting by GEORGE MORLAND.

  MISS BURNEY (MADAME D’ARBLAY)                    „     „     96
    From a Portrait by EDWARD BURNEY.

  FROM A SUMMER’S EVENING                          „     „    156
    From a Drawing by DE LOUTHERBOURG.

  TRAVELLERS ARRIVING AT EAGLE TAVERN, STRAND      „     „    159
    From an Old Engraving.

  DOMESTIC HAPPINESS                               „     „    170
    From a Painting by GEORGE MORLAND.

  COWPER                                           „     „    192
    From a Painting by GEORGE ROMNEY, in the
    possession of B. Vaughan Johnson, Esq.

  VICTORY OF LORD DUNCAN (CAMPERDOWN), 1797        „     „    208
    From a Painting by J. S. COPLEY.

  FAÇADE OF THE PUMP ROOM, BATH, IN THE
    EIGHTEENTH CENTURY                             „     „    220
    From a Contemporary Engraving.

  DRESSING TO GO OUT                               „     „    230
    From a Drawing by P. W. TOMKINS.

  INIGO JONES, HON. H. FANE, AND C. BLAIR          „     „    246
    From a Painting by Sir JOSHUA REYNOLDS.

  A PLATE FROM THE GALLERY OF FASHION              „     „    260

  CHARING CROSS, 1795                              „     „    285
    From an Engraving in the Crace Collection.

  THE LITTLE THEATRE, HAYMARKET                    „     „    291
     From an Engraving by WILKINSON in _Londina
     Illustrata_.

  THE REV. GEORGE CRABBE                           „     „    293
    From a Drawing by Sir F. CHANTREY, in the
    National Portrait Gallery.

  THE GARDEN OF CARLTON HOUSE                      „     „    304
    From a Painting by BUNBURY.

JANE AUSTEN AND HER TIMES

CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARY AND DISCURSIVE

Of Jane Austen’s life there is little to tell, and that little has
been told more than once by writers whose relationship to her made them
competent to do so. It is impossible to make even microscopic additions
to the sum-total of the facts already known of that simple biography,
and if by chance a few more original letters were discovered they could
hardly alter the case, for in truth of her it may be said, “Story there
is none to tell, sir.” To the very pertinent question which naturally
follows, reply may thus be given. Jane Austen stands absolutely alone,
unapproached, in a quality in which women are usually supposed to be
deficient, a humorous and brilliant insight into the foibles of human
nature, and a strong sense of the ludicrous. As a writer in _The
Times_ (November 25, 1904) neatly puts it, “Of its kind the comedy
of Jane Austen is incomparable. It is utterly merciless. Prancing
victims of their illusions, her men and women are utterly bare to our
understanding, and their gyrations are irresistibly comic.” Therefore
as a personality, as a central figure, too much cannot be written about
her, and however much is said or written the mystery of her genius will
still always baffle conjecture, always lure men on to fresh attempts to
analyse and understand her.

The data of Jane Austen’s life have been repeated several times, as
has been said, but beyond a few trifling allusions to her times no
writer has thought it necessary to show up the background against
which her figure may be seen, or to sketch from contemporary records
the environment amid which she developed. Yet surely she is even more
wonderful as a product of her times than considered as an isolated
figure; therefore the object of this book is to show her among the
scenes wherein she moved, to sketch the men and women to whom she was
accustomed, the habits and manners of her class, and the England with
which she was familiar. Her life was not long, lasting only from 1775
to 1817, but it covered notable times, and with such an epoch for
presentation, with such a central figure to link together the sequence
of events, we have a theme as inspiring as could well be found.

In many ways the times of Jane Austen are more removed from our own
than the mere lapse of years seems to warrant. The extraordinary
outburst of invention and improvement which took place in the reign
of Queen Victoria, lifted manners and customs in advance of what two
centuries of ordinary routine would have done. Sir Walter Besant in his
_London in the Eighteenth Century_ says, “The passing of the Reform
Bill in 1832, the introduction of steamers on the sea, the beginning
of railways on land, make so vast a break between the first third and
last two-thirds of the nineteenth century, that I feel justified in
considering the eighteenth century as lasting down to the year 1837;
in other words, there were so few changes, and these so slight, in
manners, customs, or prevalent ideas, between 1700 and 1837, that
we may consider the eighteenth century as continuing down to the
beginning of the Victorian era, when change after change—change in
the constitution, change in communications, change in the growth and
extension of trade, change in religious thought, change in social
standards—introduced that new time which we call the nineteenth
century.”

According to this reckoning, Jane Austen may be counted as wholly an
eighteenth-century product, and such a view is fully justified, for the
differences between her time and ours were enormous. It is impossible
to summarise in a few sentences changes which are essentially a matter
of detail, but in the gradual unfolding of her life I shall attempt
to show how radically different were her surroundings from anything to
which we are accustomed.

It is an endless puzzle why, when her books so faithfully represent the
society and manners of a time so unlike our own, they seem so natural
to us. If you tell any half-dozen people, who have not made a special
study of the subject, at what date these novels were written, you will
find that they are all surprised to hear how many generations ago Jane
Austen lived, and that they have always vaguely imagined her to be
very little earlier than, if not contemporary with, Charlotte Brontë or
George Eliot. So far as I am aware, no writer on Jane Austen has ever
touched on this problem before. Her stories are as fresh and real as
the day they were written, her characters might be introduced to us in
the flesh any time, and, with the exception of a certain quaintness of
eighteenth-century flavouring, there is nothing to bring before us the
striking difference between their environment and our own. It is true
that the long coach journeys stand out as an exception to this, but
they are the only marked exception. If we had never had an illustrated
edition of Jane Austen, nine people out of ten at least would have
formed mental pictures of the characters dressed in early Victorian, or
perhaps even in present-day, costume. It is only since Hugh Thompson
and C. E. Brock have put before us the costumes of the age, that
our ideas have accommodated themselves, and we realise how Catherine
Morland and Isabella Thorpe looked in their high-waisted plain gowns,
when they had arrived at that stage of intimacy which enabled them to
pin “up each other’s trains for the dance.” Or how attractive Fanny
Price was in her odd high-crowned hat, with its nodding plume, and the
open-necked short-sleeved dress, as she surveyed herself in the glass
while Miss Crawford snapped the chain round her neck. The knee-breeches
of the men, their slippers and cravats, the neat, close-fitting
clerical garb, these things we owe to the artists,—they are taken for
granted in the text. It would have seemed as ridiculous to Jane Austen
to describe them, as for a present-day novelist to mention that a
London man made a call in a frock-coat and top-hat.

Yet her word-pictures are living and detailed, filled in with
innumerable little touches. How can we reconcile the seeming
inconsistency? The explanation probably is, that without acting
consciously, she, with the unerring touch of real genius, chose that
which was lasting, and of interest for all time, from that which was
ephemeral. In her sketches of human nature, in the strokes with which
she describes character, no line is too fine or too delicate for
her attention; but in the case of manners and customs she gives just
the broad outlines that serve as a setting. Her novels are novels of
character.

But the problem is not confined to the books; in her letters to her
sister, though there is abundant comment on dress, food, and minor
details which should mark the epoch, yet the letters might have been
written yesterday. Austin Dobson in one of his admirable prefaces to
the novels says: “Going over her pages, pencil in hand, the antiquarian
annotator is struck by their excessive modernity, and after a prolonged
examination discovers, in this century-old record, nothing more fitted
for the exercise of his ingenuity that such an obsolete game at cards
as ‘Casino’ or ‘quadrille.’”

And this is true also of her letters. More remarkable still is the
entire absence of comment on the great events which thrilled the world;
with the exception of an allusion to the death of Sir John Moore, we
hear no whisper of the wars and upheavals which happened during her
life. It is true that the Revolution in France, which shook monarchs
on their thrones, occurred before the first date of the published
letters, yet her correspondence covers a time when battles at sea
were chronicled almost continuously, when an invasion by France was
an ever-present terror; Trafalgar and Waterloo were not history, but
contemporary events; but though Jane must have heard and discussed
these matters, no echo finds its way into her lively and amusing
budgets of chit-chat to her sister. Of course women were not supposed
to read the papers in those days, but with two sailor brothers the news
must have often been personal and intimate, and she was, according to
the notions of her time, well educated; yet we search in vain for any
allusion to such contemporary matters. It may be objected that the
letters of a modern girl to a sister would hardly touch on questions
which agitate the public, but there are several replies to this: in
the first place, few such exciting events have occurred in recent
times as happened during Jane Austen’s life; our war in Africa was
a mere trifle in comparison with the bloody field of Waterloo, where
Blucher and Wellington lost 30,000 men, or the thrilling naval victory
of Trafalgar; and stupendous as have been the recent battles between
Russia and Japan, they affect us only indirectly—England is not herself
involved in them, nor are her sons being slain daily. In the second
place, surely even the South African War would probably produce some
comment in letters, especially if the writer had brothers in the army
as Jane had brothers in the navy. Thirdly, letters in Jane Austen’s
time were one great means of news, for newspapers were not so easy to
get, and were much more costly than now, so that we expect to find more
of contemporary events in letters than at a time like the present, when
telegrams and columns of print save us the trouble of recording such
matters in private.

In the forty-two years between 1775 and 1817, vast discoveries of
world-wide importance were made. When Jane Austen was born, Captain
Cook was still in the midst of his exploration, and the map of the
world was being unrolled day by day. Though New Zealand and Australia
had been discovered by the Dutch in the previous century, they were all
but unknown to England. Six years only before her birth had the great
navigator charted and mapped New Zealand for the first time, also the
east coast of Australia, and had christened New South Wales. When she
was four years old, Cook was murdered by the natives at Hawaii.

The atlas from which she learnt her earliest geography lessons
was therefore very different from those now in use. The well-known
cartographer, S. Dunn, published an atlas in 1774, where Australia is
marked certainly, but as though one saw it through distorted glasses;
the east coast, Cook’s discovery, is clearly defined, the rest is
very vague; and the fact that Tasmania was an island had not then
been discovered, for it appears as a projecting headland. In the same
general way is New Zealand treated, and neither has a separate sheet
to itself; beyond their appearance on the map of the world, they are
ignored. Japan also looks queer to modern eyes, it almost touches China
at both ends, enclosing a land-locked sea.

The epoch was one of change and enlargement in other than geographical
directions. In the thirty years before Jane Austen’s birth an immense
improvement had taken place in the position of women. Mrs. Montagu, in
1750, had made bold strokes for the freedom and recognition of her sex.
The epithet “blue-stocking,” which has survived with such extraordinary
tenacity, was at first given, not to the clever women who attended
Mrs. Montagu’s informal receptions, but to her men friends, who were
allowed to come in the grey or blue worsted stockings of daily life,
instead of the black silk considered _de rigueur_ for parties. Up to
this time, personal appearance and cards had been the sole resources
for a leisured dame of the upper classes, and the language of gallantry
was the only one considered fitting for her to hear. By Mrs. Montagu’s
efforts it was gradually recognised that a woman might not only have
sense herself, but might prefer it should be spoken to her; and that
because the minds of women had long been left uncultivated they were
not on that account unworthy of cultivation. Hannah More describes Mrs.
Montagu as “not only the finest genius, but the finest lady I ever saw
... her form (for she has no body) is delicate even to fragility; her
countenance the most animated in the world; the sprightly vivacity of
fifteen, with the judgment and experience of a Nestor.”

In art there had never before been seen in England such a trio of
masters as Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Romney. Isolated portrait
painters of brilliant genius, though not always native born, there had
been in England,—Holbein, Vandyke, Lely, Kneller, and Hogarth are all
in the first rank,—but that three such men as the trio above should
flourish contemporaneously was little short of miraculous.

In 1775, Sir Joshua had passed the zenith of his fame, though he lived
until 1792. Gainsborough, who was established in a studio in Schomberg
House, Pall Mall, was in 1775 at the beginning of his most successful
years; his rooms were crowded with sitters of both sexes, and no one
considered they had proved their position in society until they had
received the hall-mark of being painted by him. He was only sixty-one
at his death in 1788. Romney, who lived to 1802, never took quite the
same rank as the other two, yet he was popular enough at the same time
as Gainsborough; Lady Newdigate (_The Cheverels of Cheverel Manor_)
mentions going to have her portrait painted by him, and says that
“he insists upon my having a rich white satin with a long train made
by Tuesday, and to have it left with him all the summer. It is the
oddest thing I ever knew.” Sir Thomas Lawrence and Hoppner carried on
the traditions of the portrait painters, the former living to 1830;
with names such as these it is easy to judge art was in a flourishing
condition.

Among contemporary landscape painters, Richard Wilson, who has been
called “the founder of English Landscape,” lived until 1782. But
his views, though vastly more natural than the stilted conventional
style that preceded them, seem to our modern eyes, trained to what
is “natural,” still to be too much conventionalised. Among others the
names of Gillray, Morland, Rowlandson stand out, all well on the way to
fame while Jane was still a child.

These preliminary remarks have been made with a view to giving some
general idea of that England into which she was born, and they refer
to those subjects which only affected her indirectly. All those
things which entered directly into her life, such as her country
surroundings, contemporary books, prices of food, fashions, and a host
of minor details, are dealt with more particularly in the course of the
narrative.

As we have said, matters of history are not mentioned or noticed
in Jane Austen’s correspondence, which is taken up with her own
environment, her neighbours, their habits and manners, and illumined
throughout by a bright insight at times rather too biting to be
altogether pleasant. Of her immediate surroundings we have a very clear
idea.

Of all the writers of fiction, Jane Austen is most thoroughly English.
She never went abroad, and though her native good sense and shrewd
gift of observation saved her from becoming insular, yet she cannot be
conceived as writing of any but the sweet villages and the provincial
towns of her native country. Even the Brontës, deeply secluded as their
lives were, crossed the German Ocean, and saw something of Continental
life from their school at Brussels. Nothing of this kind fell to
Jane Austen’s share. Yet people did travel in those days, travelled
amazingly considering the difficulties they had to encounter, among
which were the horrors of a sailing-boat with its uncertain hours.
Fielding, in going to Lisbon, was kept waiting a month for favourable
winds! There was also the terrible embarking and landing from a small
boat before such conveniences as landing-stages were built.

In one of Lord Langdale’s letters, dated 1803, we have a vivid
description of these horrors: “We left that place [Dover] about six
o’clock last Saturday morning, and arrived at Calais at four in the
afternoon. Our passage was rather disagreeable, the wind being chiefly
against us, and rain sometimes falling in torrents. I never witnessed
a more curious scene than our landing. When the packet-boat had come
to within two miles of the coast of France, we were met by some French
rowing boats in which we were to be conveyed on shore. The French
sailors surrounded us in the most clamorous and noisy manner, leaping
into the packet and bawling and shouting so loud as to alarm the
ladies on board very much. To these men, however, we were to consign
ourselves, and we entered their boats, eight passengers going in each.
When we got near the shore, we were told it was impossible for the boat
to get close to land, on account of the tide being so low, and that
we must be carried on the men’s shoulders. We had no time to reflect
on this plan before we saw twelve or fourteen men running into the
water,—they surrounded our boat and laid hold of it with such violence,
that one might have thought they meant to sink it, and fairly pulled
us into their arms.... For my part I laughed heartily all the time,
but a lady who was with us was so much frighted, that I was obliged
to support her in my arms a considerable time before she was able to
stand.”

It was not only in the arms of men that passengers were thus carried
ashore, in _Napoleon’s British Visitors and Captives_, by J. G. Alger,
there is a still more extraordinary account quoted from a contemporary
letter. “In an instant the boathead was surrounded by a throng of women
up to their middles and over, who were there to carry us on shore. Not
being aware of this manœuvre, we did not throw ourselves into the arms
of these sea-nymphs so instantly as we ought, whereby those who sat at
the stern of the boat were deluged with sea spray. For myself, I was in
front, and very quickly understood the clamour of the mermaids. I flung
myself upon the backs of two of them without reserve, and was safely
and dryly borne on shore, but one poor gentleman slipped through their
fingers, and fell over head and ears into the sea.”

From the same entertaining book we learn that, “For £4, 13s. you could
get a through ticket by Dover and Calais, starting either from the
City at 4.30 a.m. by the old and now revived line of coaches connected
with the rue Notre Dame des Victoires establishment in Paris, or
morning and night by a new line from Charing Cross. Probably a still
cheaper route, though there were no through tickets, was by Brighton
and Dieppe, the crossing taking ten or fifteen hours. By Calais it
seldom took more than eight hours, but passengers were advised to
carry light refreshments with them. The diligence from Calais to Paris,
going only four miles an hour, took fifty-four hours for the journey,
but a handsome carriage drawn by three horses, in a style somewhat
similar to the English post-chaise, could be hired by four or five
fellow-travellers, and this made six miles an hour.”

During a great part of Jane Austen’s life, much of the Continent was
closed to English people because of the perpetual state of war between
us and either Spain or France, but in any case such an expedition would
seem to have lain quite outside her limited daily round, and was never
even mooted.

Steventon Rectory, where she was born on December 16, 1775, has
long ago vanished, and a new rectory, more in accordance with modern
luxurious notions, has been built. Of the old house, Lord Brabourne,
great-nephew to Jane Austen, writes: “The house standing in the valley
was somewhat better than the ordinary parsonage houses of the day;
the old-fashioned hedgerows were beautiful, and the country around
sufficiently picturesque for those who have the good taste to admire
country scenery.”

Steventon is a very small place, lying in a network of lanes about
seven miles from Basingstoke. The nearest points on the high-roads are
Deane, on the Andover Road, and Popham Lane on the Winchester Road.
There is an inn at the corner of Popham Lane to this day, and that
there was an inn there in Jane Austen’s time we know, for Mrs. Lybbe
Powys, writing in 1792, says: “We stopped at Winchester and lay that
night at a most excellent inn at Popham Lane.” At this time, curiously
enough, her fellow-travellers were Dr. Cooper, Jane Austen’s uncle,
and his son and daughter, though whether the party made a détour to
visit the rectory we do not know. Of course at that time Jane was of
no greater importance than any seventeen-year-old daughter of a country
clergyman, and there would be no reason to mention her.

It is difficult to find Steventon, so little is there of it, and that
so much scattered; a few cottages, a farm, and beyond, half a mile
away, the church, with a pump in a field near to mark the site of the
old rectory house where Jane Austen was born. This is all that remains
of her time. The new rectory stands on the other side of the narrow
road, raised above it, and sheltered by a warm backing of trees in
which evergreens are conspicuous. A very substantial-looking building
it is, much superior to what was considered good enough for a clergyman
in the eighteenth century. The country is well wooded, and the roads
undulating, so that there are no distant views. Probably a good deal
of the planting has been done since Jane Austen’s time, but that there
were trees then we know from her own account, and some of the fine
oaks that still stand can have altered but little since then. Mr.
Austen-Leigh’s account of the house in which she was born is worth
quoting—

“North of the house, the road from Deane to Popham Lane ran at a
sufficient distance from the front to allow a carriage drive through
turf and trees. On the south side, the ground rose gently, and was
occupied by one of those old-fashioned gardens in which vegetables and
flowers are combined, flanked and protected on the east by one of the
thatched mud walls common in that country, and overshadowed by fine
elms. Along the upper or southern side of this garden ran a terrace
of the finest turf, which must have been in the writer’s thoughts when
she described Catherine Morland’s childish delight in ‘rolling down the
green slope at the back of the house.’”

Though there is so little left to see, and the church has been
“restored,” yet it is worth while to pass through this country to
realise the environment in which the authoress spent her childhood.
There are still left in the neighbourhood, notably at North Waltham,
some of the old diamond-paned, heavily-timbered brick houses with
thatched roofs, to which she must have been accustomed. The gentle
curves of the roads, the oak and beech and fir overshadowing the sweet
lanes, the wild clematis, which grows so abundantly that in autumn
it looks like hoar-frost covering all the hedgerows, these things
were prominent objects in the scenery amid which she lived. It is not
likely she looked on her surroundings in the same way as any ordinarily
educated person would now look on them. Love of scenery had not then
been developed. The artificial and formal landscape gardening, with
“made” waterfalls, was the correct thing to admire. Genuine nature,
much less homely nature, was only then beginning to be observed. This
is strange to us, for, as Professor Geikie says, “At no time in our
history as a nation has the scenery of the land we live in been so
intelligently appreciated as it is to-day.”

But Jane was not in advance of her times, and though she loved her
trees and flowers, we find in her writings no reflections of the scenes
amid which she daily walked; in her books scenery is simply ignored. We
know if it rained, because that material fact had an influence on the
actions of her heroines, but beyond that there is little or nothing;
yet she greatly admired Cowper, one of the earliest of the “natural”
poets.

Mr. Austen-Leigh, her own nephew, speaks of the scenery around her
first home as “tame,” and says that it has no “grand or extensive
views,” though he admits it has its beauties, and says that Steventon
“from the fall of the ground, and the abundance of its timber, is
certainly one of the prettiest spots.” But this quiet prettiness,
without the excessive richness to be found in other south-country
villages, is perhaps more thoroughly characteristic of England than any
other.

The impressions of childhood are invariably deep, and are cut with a
clearness and minuteness to which none others of later times attain.
Just as a child examines a picture in a story-book with anxious and
searching care, while an adult gains only a general impression of the
whole, so a child knows the place where it has played in such detail
that every bough of the trees, every root of the lilacs, every tiny
depression or ditch is familiar. And thus Jane must have known the home
at Steventon.

Writing about a storm in 1800, she says: “I was just in time to see
the last of our two highly valued elms descend into the Sweep!!! The
other, which had fallen, I suppose, in the first crash, and which was
the nearest to the pond, taking a more easterly direction, sunk amid
our screen of chestnuts and firs, knocking down one spruce fir, beating
off the head of another, and stripping the two corner chestnuts of
several branches in its fall. This is not all. One large elm out of
the two on the left-hand side as you enter, what I call, the elm walk,
was likewise blown down; the maple bearing the weathercock was broke
in two, and what I regret more than all the rest is that all the three
elms which grew in Hall’s meadow, and gave such ornament to it, are
gone.”

This bespeaks her intimate acquaintance with the trees, of which each
one was a friend.

The country and the writer suited each other so wonderfully, that one
pauses for a moment wondering whether, after all, environment may not
have that magic influence claimed for it by some who hold it to be more
powerful than inherited qualities. Influence of course it has, and one
wonders what could possibly have been the result if two such natures as
those of Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë had changed places; if Jane
had been brought up amid the wild, bleak Yorkshire moors, and Charlotte
amid the pleasant fields of Hampshire. As it is, the surroundings of
each intensified and developed their own peculiar genius.

Jane was born of the middle class, her father, George Austen, being a
clergyman in a day when clergymen were none too well thought of, yet
taking a better position than most by reason of his own family and good
connections. George Austen had early been left an orphan, and had been
adopted by an uncle. He showed the possession of brains by obtaining
first a scholarship at St. John’s College, Oxford, and subsequently a
fellowship.

He took Orders which, in the days when rectories were looked upon
simply as “livings,” was a recognised mode of providing for a young
man, whether he had any vocation for the ministry or not. But he seems
to have fulfilled his duties, or what were then considered sufficient
duties, creditably enough. Of George Austen one of his sons wrote—

“He resided in the conscientious and unassisted discharge of his
ministerial duties until he was turned of seventy years.” He was
a “profound scholar” and had “exquisite taste in every species of
literature.”

The subject of the clergy at that date, and the examples of them
which Jane has herself given us in her books, is an interesting one,
and we shall return to it. The rectory of Steventon was presented to
George Austen by Mr. Knight, the same cousin who afterwards adopted
his son Edward; and the rectory of Deane, a small place about a mile
distant, was bought by an uncle who had educated him, and given to
him. The villages were very small, only containing about three hundred
persons altogether. In those days parish visiting or parochial clubs
and entertainments were unthought of, Sunday schools in their earliest
infancy, and we hear nothing whatever throughout the whole of Jane
Austen’s correspondence which leads us to think that she, in any way,
carried out the duties which in these days fall to the lot of every
clergyman’s daughter. This is not to cast blame upon her, it only means
that she was the child of her times; these things had not then been
organised.

   [Illustration: THE REV. JAMES AUSTEN]

   [Illustration: THE REV. GEORGE AUSTEN]

George Austen married Cassandra, youngest daughter of the Rev. Thomas
Leigh, who was of good family, her uncle was Dr. Theophilus Leigh,
Master of Balliol College, a witty and well-known man. These things are
not of importance in themselves, but they serve to show that the family
from which Jane sprang was on both sides of some consideration. The
Austens lived first at Deane, but moved to Steventon in 1771. They had
undertaken the charge of a son of Warren Hastings, who died young, and
they had a large family of their own, as was consistent in days when
families of ten, eleven, and even fifteen were no uncommon thing.

There were five sons and two daughters in all, and Jane was the
youngest but one. (See Table, p. 326.) James, the eldest, was probably
too far removed in age from his younger sister ever to have been very
intimate with her. It is said that he had some share in her reading
and in forming her taste, but though she was very fond of him she
never seems, as was very natural, to have had quite the same degree
of intimate affection for him as she felt for those of her brothers
nearer to her own age. James was twice married, and his only daughter
by his first wife was Anna, of whom Jane makes frequent mention in
her letters, and to whom some of the published correspondence was
addressed. His second wife was Mary Lloyd, whose sister Martha was the
very devoted friend, and frequent guest, of the girl Austens, and who
late in life married Francis, one of Jane’s younger brothers. The son
of James and Mary was James Edward, who took the additional name of
Leigh, and was the writer of the _Memoir_ which supplies one of the
only two sources of authoritative information about Jane Austen. He
died in 1874.

The next brother, Edward, as already stated, was adopted by his cousin
Mr. Knight, whose name he took. He came into the fine properties of
Chawton House in Hampshire and Godmersham in Kent, even during the
lifetime of Mr. Knight’s widow, who looked on him as a son and retired
in his favour. Edward married Elizabeth Bridges, and had a family
of eleven children, of whom the eldest, Fanny Catherine, married Sir
Edward Knatchbull, and their eldest son was created Lord Brabourne;
to him we owe the _Letters_ which are the second of the authoritative
books on Jane Austen.

Jane Austen was attached to her niece Fanny Knight in a degree only
second to that of her attachment to her own sister Cassandra. Fanny’s
mother, Mrs. Edward Austen or Knight (for the change of name seems not
to have taken place until her death), died comparatively young, and the
great responsibility thrown upon Fanny doubtless made her seem older,
and more companionable, than her years; of her, her famous aunt writes—

“I found her in the summer just what you describe, almost another
sister, and could not have supposed that a niece would ever have been
so much to me. She is quite after one’s own heart. Give her my best
love and tell her that I always think of her with pleasure.”

The third Austen brother, Henry, interested himself much in his
sister’s writing, and saw about the business arrangements for her,
when, after many years, she decided to publish one of her own books
at her own risk. He was something of a rolling stone, filling various
positions in turn, and at length taking Orders and succeeding his
brother James in the Steventon living. During part of his life he
lived in London, where Jane often stayed with him. He married first
his cousin Eliza, the daughter of George Austen’s sister; she was the
widow of a Frenchman, the Count de Feuillade, who had suffered death
by the guillotine. Eliza was very popular with her girl cousins, as
we can see from Jane’s remarks; she died in 1813, and in 1820 Henry
married Eleanor, daughter of Henry Jackson. The two youngest brothers,
Francis and Charles, came above and below Jane, with about three years’
interval on either side. They both entered the navy, and both became
admirals.

Frank rose to be Senior Admiral of the Fleet, and was created G.C.B.;
he lived to be ninety-two. He, like another of his brothers, was twice
married,—a habit that ran abnormally in the family,—and his second wife
was Martha, the sister of his brother James’s wife, mentioned above.
Charles married first Fanny Palmer, and was left a widower in 1815 with
three small daughters. He married secondly her sister Harriet. The two
Fannies, Mrs. Charles Austen and the eldest daughter of Edward Knight,
sometimes cause a little confusion. Jane Austen mentions calling with
the younger Fanny on the motherless children of her brother, one of
whom was also Fanny, soon after their loss. “We got to Keppel Street,
however, which was all I cared for, and though we could only stay
a quarter of an hour, Fanny’s calling gave great pleasure, and her
sensibility still greater; for she was very much affected at the sight
of the children. Little Fanny looked heavy. We saw the whole party.”

It has been necessary to give a few details respecting the brothers
who played so large a part in Jane’s life, because her visits away from
home were nearly all to their houses, her letters are full of allusions
to them, and the great family affection which subsisted between them
all made the griefs and joys of the others the greatest events in a
very uneventful life. The dearest, however, of the whole family was
the one sister Cassandra, who, like Jane herself, never married, which
seems the stranger when we consider how many of the brothers married
twice. There was a sad little love-story in Cassandra’s life. She
was engaged to a young clergyman who had promise of promotion from a
nobleman related to him. He accompanied this patron to the West Indies
as chaplain to the regiment, and there died of yellow fever. There is
perhaps something more pathetic in such a tale than in any other, the
glowing ideal has not been smirched by any touch of the actual sordid
daily life, it is snatched away and remains an ideal always, and the
happiness that might have been is enhanced by romance so as to be a
greater deprivation than any loss of the actual.

The two sisters were sisters in reality, sharing the same views, the
same friendships, the same interests. When away, Jane’s letters to
Cassandra are full and lively, telling of all the numberless little
events that only a sister can enjoy. And if Jane’s own estimate is to
be believed, Cassandra’s are to the full as vivacious.

“The letter which I have this moment received from you has diverted me
beyond moderation. I could die of laughter at it, as they used to say
at school. You are indeed the finest comic writer of the present age.”

Cassandra lived to 1845, long enough to see that her beloved sister’s
letters would in all probability be published; she was of a reticent
nature, with a strong dislike to revealing anything personal or
intimate to the public, she therefore went through all these neatly
written letters from Jane, which she had so carefully preserved, and
destroyed anything of a personal nature. One cannot altogether condemn
the action, greatly as we have been the losers; the letters that
remain, many in number, deal almost entirely with outside matters,
trivialities of everyday life, and they are written so brightly that we
can judge how interesting the bits of self-revelation by so expressive
a pen would have been.

In 1869, when Mr. Austen-Leigh published his _Memoir_, only one or
two of Jane Austen’s letters were available; but in 1882, on the
death of Lady Knatchbull (_née_ Fanny Knight), the letters above
referred to, which Cassandra Austen had retained, were found among her
belongings, having come to her on her aunt’s death. Her son, created
Lord Brabourne, therefore published these in two volumes in 1884, and
when quotations and extracts are given in this book without further
explanation, it must be inferred that these are taken from letters of
Jane to Cassandra, as given by Lord Brabourne.

CHAPTER II

CHILDHOOD

Of Jane Austen’s childhood in the quiet country rectory we know little,
probably because there is not a great deal to know. It was the custom
in those days to put babies out to nurse in the village, sometimes
until they were as much as two years old, a point often overlooked when
the mothers of what is now extolled as a domestic period are held up
as patterns to a more intellectual and roving generation. Certainly
it was an easy and cheap method of getting rid of the care and trouble
involved by a baby in the house, and it probably answered well, as the
child would learn to do without too much attention, and at an early
age, faddists notwithstanding, could hardly suffer from any influence
of its surroundings, other than physically, and it may be taken for
granted that the material necessities were well provided and kept under
supervision. Nevertheless, a mother who adopted this course at the
present day could hardly escape the epithet of “heartless,” which would
assuredly be levelled at her.

In the time of Jane’s childhood the old days of rigid severity toward
children were past, no longer were mere babies taken to see executions
and whipped on their return to enforce the example they had beheld. In
fact a period of undue indulgence had set in as a reaction, but this
does not seem to have affected the Austen family, who were brought up
very wisely, and perhaps even a little more repressively than would be
the case in a similar household to-day. Jane herself was evidently a
diffident child.

She says of a little visitor many years afterwards: “Our little visitor
has just left us, and left us highly pleased with her; she is a nice
natural open-hearted, affectionate girl, with all the ready civility
one sees in the best children in the present day; so unlike anything
that I was myself at her age, that I am often all astonishment and
shame.

“What is become of all the shyness in the world? Moral as well as
natural diseases disappear in the progress of time and new ones take
their place. Shyness and the sweating sickness have given way to
confidence and paralytic complaints.”

Her own attitude toward children is peculiar. Though on indisputable
testimony she was the most popular and best loved of aunts, the fact
remains that she had no great insight into child nature, nor does she
seem to have had any general love of children beyond those who were
specially connected with her by close ties. She loved her nieces, but
much more as they grew older than as children.

Mr. Austen-Leigh says: “Aunt Jane was the delight of all her nephews
and nieces. We did not think of her as being clever, still less as
being famous; but we valued her as one always kind, sympathising, and
amusing,” and he quotes “the testimony of another niece—’Aunt Jane
was the general favourite with children, her ways with them being
so playful, and her long circumstantial stories so delightful.’” And
again, “Her first charm to children was great sweetness of manner ...
she could make everything amusing to a child.”

The truth probably is that her innate kindness of heart and
unselfishness compelled her to be as amusing as possible when thrown
with little people, but perhaps because she took so much trouble to
entertain them she found children more tiresome than other people
who accept their company more placidly. However this may be, it is
undeniable that the attitude she takes toward children in her books
is almost always that of their being tiresome, there never appears any
genuine love for them or realisation of pleasure in their society; and
she continually satirises the foolish weakness of their doting parents.
It is recorded as a great feature in the character of Mrs. John
Knightley “that in spite of her maternal solicitude for the immediate
enjoyment of her little ones, and for their having instantly all the
liberty and attendance, all the eating and drinking, and sleeping
and playing, which they could possibly wish for, without the smallest
delay, the children were never allowed to be long a disturbance to him
[their grandfather] either in themselves or in any restless attendance
on them.”

Poor Anne in _Persuasion_ is tormented by “the younger boy, a
remarkably stout forward child of two years old, ... as his aunt would
not let him tease his sick brother, [he] began to fasten himself upon
her, in such a way, that busy as she was about Charles, she could not
shake him off. She spoke to him, ordered, entreated, insisted in vain.
Once she did contrive to push him away, but the boy had the greater
pleasure in getting upon her back again directly.”

Perhaps to Anne this annoyance was a blessing in disguise, as it
brought forward the whilom lover to her assistance, but that is beside
the point!

The children of Lady Middleton in _Sense and Sensibility_ are
particularly badly behaved and odious.

“Fortunately for those who pay their court through such foibles, a fond
mother, though in pursuit of praise for her children the most rapacious
of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her demands are
exorbitant, but she will swallow anything, and the excessive affection
and endurance of the Miss Steeles towards her offspring were reviewed
therefore by Lady Middleton without the smallest surprise or distrust.
She saw with maternal complacency all the impertinent encroachments and
mischievous tricks to which her cousins submitted. She saw their sashes
untied, their hair pulled about their ears, their workbags searched and
their knives and scissors stolen away, and felt no doubt of its being
a reciprocal enjoyment.

“‘John is in such spirits to-day!’ said she, on his taking Miss
Steele’s pocket-handkerchief and throwing it out of the window, ‘he is
full of monkey-tricks.’

“And soon afterwards on the second boy’s violently pinching one of the
same lady’s fingers, she fondly observed, ‘How playful William is!’

“‘And here is my sweet little Anna-Maria,’ she added, tenderly
caressing a little girl of three years old, who had not made a noise
for the last two minutes; ‘and she is always so gentle and quiet, never
was there such a quiet little thing!’

“But unfortunately in bestowing these embraces a pin in her ladyship’s
head-dress slightly scratching the child’s neck produced from
this pattern of gentleness such violent screams as could hardly be
outdone by any creature professedly noisy ... her mouth stuffed with
sugar-plums ... she still screamed and sobbed lustily, and kicked her
two brothers for offering to touch her.

                             . . . . . . .

“‘I have a notion,’ said Lucy [to Elinor] ‘you think the little
Middletons are too much indulged. Perhaps they may be the outside of
enough, but it is so natural in Lady Middleton, and for my part I love
to see children full of life and spirits; I cannot bear them if they
are tame and quiet.’

“‘I confess,’ replied Elinor, ‘that while I am at Barton Park I never
think of tame and quiet children with any abhorrence!’”

Those children in the novels who are not detestable are usually
lay-figures, such as Henry and John Knightley, rosy-faced little boys
not distinguished by any individuality. Others are merely pegs on which
to hang their parents’ follies, such as little Harry Dashwood, who
serves his parents as an excuse for their unutterable meanness. The
fact remains there are only two passable children in the whole gallery,
and one is the slightest of slight sketches in that little-known and
half-finished story _The Watsons_. Here the little boy, Charles, spoken
of as “Mrs. Blake’s little boy,” is a real flesh-and-blood child,
who at his first ball when thrown over remorselessly by his grown-up
partner, though “the picture of disappointment, with crimsoned cheeks,
quivering lips, and eyes bent on the floor,” yet contrives to utter
bravely, “‘Oh, I do not mind it!’” and whose naïve enjoyment at dancing
with Emma Watson, who offers herself as a substitute, is well done. His
conversation with her is also very natural, and his cry, “‘Oh, uncle,
do look at my partner; she is so pretty!’” is a human touch.

   [Illustration: JUVENILE RETIREMENT]

The other instance is a sample of a very nervous, shy child, perhaps
drawn from the recollections of Jane Austen’s own feelings in
childhood, this is Fanny Price, whose loneliness on her first coming to
Mansfield Park is carefully depicted, but Fanny herself is unchildlike
and exceptional. Her younger brothers rank among the gallery of bad
children, for by “the superior noise of Sam, Tom, and Charles chasing
each other up and down stairs, and tumbling about and hallooing, Fanny
was almost stunned. Sam, loud and overbearing as he was, ... was clever
and intelligent.... Tom and Charles being at least as many years as
they were his juniors distant from that age of feeling and reason which
might suggest the expediency of making friends, and of endeavouring
to be less disagreeable. Their sister soon despaired of making any
impression on them; they were quite untamable by any means of address
which she had spirits or time to attempt.... Betsy, too, a spoilt
child, trained up to think the alphabet her greatest enemy, left to be
with servants at her pleasure, and then encouraged to report any evil
of them.”

But Jane Austen’s abundant pictures of over-indulged, badly-behaved
children are not the only ones to be found in contemporary fiction;
in Hannah More’s _Cœlebs in Search of a Wife_ the children come in
for dessert, “a dozen children, lovely, fresh, gay, and noisy ... the
grand dispute, who should have oranges, and who should have almonds
and raisins, soon raised such a clamour that it was impossible to
hear my Egyptian friend ... the son and heir reaching out his arm to
dart an apple across the table at his sister, roguishly intending to
overset her glass, unluckily overthrew his own brimful of port wine.”
And of another and better behaved family it is observed as a splendid
innovation that the children are not allowed to come into dessert, to
clamour and make themselves nuisances, but are limited to appearing in
the drawing-room later.

One of the characters in _Cœlebs_ is made to observe, “This is the
age of excess in everything; nothing is a gratification of which the
want has not been previously felt. The wishes of children are all so
anticipated, that they never experience the pleasure excited by wanting
and waiting.” He speaks also of the “too great profusion and plethora
of children’s books,” which is certainly not a thing we are used to
attribute to that age.

Several of the children’s books of that date are kept alive to the
present day by a salt of insight into child nature, and are published
and re-published perennially. Many a child still knows and loves _The
Story of the Robins_, by Mrs. Trimmer, first brought out in 1786;
and as for _Sandford and Merton_, by Thomas Day, which was at first
in three volumes, published respectively in 1783, 1787, and 1789,
many a boy has revelled in it, not perhaps entirely from the point of
view in which it was written, but with a keen sense of the ridiculous
in the behaviour of the little prig Harry. Mrs Barbauld’s (and her
brother’s) _Evenings at Home_ still delights many children; and Miss
Edgeworth’s _Parent’s Assistant_, of which the first volume appeared in
1796, is a perennial source of amusement in nurseries and schoolrooms.
_The Fairchild Family_ suffers from an excess of religiosity, and a
terrible belief in the innate wickedness of a little child’s heart,
which is not now tolerated. When Emily and Lucy indulge in a childish
quarrel, they are taken to see what remains of a murderer who has hung
on a gibbet until his clothes are rotting from him, and the warning
is enforced by a long sermon; but in spite of much that would not be
suitable according to present ideas for a child to hear, _The Fairchild
Family_, the first part of which came out a year subsequently to the
death of Jane Austen, contains much that is very human in behaviour and
action. Though later in date than the others mentioned as surviving, it
really is quite as early in treatment, as it is a record of what Mrs.
Sherwood, born in the same year as Jane Austen, remembered of her own
childhood.

The book contains many examples of the spoilt-child phase, in contrast
with which the strict upbringing of the young Fairchilds is shown
as the better way. What Mrs. Sherwood puts into the mouth of Mrs.
Fairchild about her childhood is probably autobiographical, and may
be quoted as an instance of the sterner modes which were then rapidly
passing out of vogue.

“I was but a very little girl when I came to live with my aunts, and
they kept me under their care until I was married. As far as they knew
what was right, they took great pains with me. Mrs. Grace taught me to
sew, and Mrs. Penelope taught me to read; I had a writing and music
master, who came from Reading to teach me twice a week; and I was
taught all kinds of household work by my aunts’ maid. We spent one day
exactly like another. I was made to rise early, and to dress myself
very neatly, to breakfast with my aunts. After breakfast I worked two
hours with my aunt Grace, and read an hour with my aunt Penelope; we
then, if it was fine weather, took a walk; or, if not, an airing in
the coach, I and my aunts, and little Shock, the lap-dog, together.
At dinner I was not allowed to speak; and after dinner I attended my
masters or learned my tasks. The only time I had to play was while my
aunts were dressing to go out, for they went out every evening to play
at cards. When they went out my supper was given to me, and I was put
to bed in a closet in my aunts’ room.”

A modern child under such treatment would probably develop an acute
form of melancholia.

The home education of the time, for girls at least, was very
superficial. We gather something of what was supposed to be taught from
the remarks of the Bertram girls in _Mansfield Park_ when they plume
themselves on their superiority to Fanny—

“‘Dear mamma, only think, my cousin cannot put the map of Europe
together—or my cousin cannot tell the principal rivers in Russia, or
she never heard of Asia Minor, or she does not know the differences
between water colours and crayons! How strange! Did you ever hear
anything so stupid?’

“‘My dear,’ their considerate aunt would reply, ‘it is very bad, but
you must not expect everybody to be as forward and quick at learning as
yourself.’

“‘But, aunt, she is really so very ignorant. Do you know we asked her
last night which way she would go to get to Ireland, and she said she
should cross to the Isle of Wight. I cannot remember the time when I
did not know a great deal that she has not the least notion of yet. How
long ago is it, aunt, since we used to repeat the chronological order
of the kings of England, with the dates of their accession, and most of
the principal events of their reigns?’

“‘Yes,’ added the other, ‘and of the Roman Emperors as low as Severus,
besides a great deal of the heathen mythology, and all the metals,
semi-metals, planets, and distinguished philosophers.’”

The rattle-pate, Miss Amelia, in _Cœlebs_ thus gives an account of her
education: “I have gone on with my French and Italian of course, and
I am beginning German. Then comes my drawing-master; he teaches me to
paint flowers and shells, and to draw ruins and buildings, and to take
views.... I learn varnishing, gilding, and Japanning. And next winter,
I shall learn modelling and etching and engraving in mezzotint and
aquatinta. Then I have a dancing-master who teaches me the Scotch and
Irish steps, and another who teaches me attitudes, and I shall soon
learn to waltz. Then I have a singing-master, and another who teaches
me the harp, and another for the pianoforte. And what little time I can
spare from these principal things, I give by odd minutes to ancient and
modern history, and geography and astronomy, and grammar and botany,
and I attend lectures on chemistry, and experimental chemistry.”

Jane’s early childhood was probably a very happy one; what with the
companionship of Cassandra, with the liveliness and constant comings
and goings of the brothers who were educated at home by Mr. Austen
himself, with all the romps of a large family having unlimited country
as a playground, it can hardly have failed to be so. While she was
still too young to profit much by school teaching on her own account,
she was sent to a school at Reading kept by a Mrs. Latournelle,
because Cassandra was going, and the two sisters could not bear to be
parted. How long she was at this school I do not know, but the subjects
taught were probably those scheduled in the comprehensive summary of
smatterings given by the two Miss Bertrams. This school was a notable
one, and among the later pupils was Mrs. Sherwood, who followed Jane
after an interval of nine years. She probably went to school as late
as Jane went early, which would account for the gap in time between two
who should have been contemporary.

Miss Mitford was also a pupil; she went in 1798 when the school
had been removed to Hans Place, London. She gives a lively account
of it. It was kept by M. St. Quintin, “a well-born, well-educated,
and well-looking French emigrant,” who “was assisted, or rather
chaperoned, in his undertaking by his wife, a good-natured, red-faced
Frenchwoman, much muffled up in shawls and laces; and by Miss Rowden,
an accomplished young lady, the daughter and sister of clergymen, who
had been for some years governess in the family of Lord Bessborough.
M. St. Quintin himself taught the pupils French, history, geography,
and as much science as he was master of, or as he thought it requisite
for a young lady to know; Miss Rowden, with the assistance of finishing
masters for Italian, music, dancing, and drawing, superintended the
general course of study; while Madame St. Quintin sat dozing, either in
the drawing-room, with a piece of work, or in the library with a book
in her hand, to receive the friends of the young ladies or any other
visitors who might chance to call.”

Miss Mitford says further that the school was “excellent,” that the
pupils were “healthy, happy, well-fed, and kindly treated,” and that
“the intelligent manner in which instruction was given had the effect
of producing in the majority of the pupils a love of reading and a
taste for literature.”

Of course Jane, being such a child when she went, can hardly have taken
full use of the opportunities which were afforded her, but perhaps she
laid at school the foundations of that cleverness in neat sewing and
embroidery which is manifested in the specimens still in the possession
of her relatives.

There is a portrait of Jane painted when she was about fifteen. It
shows a bright child with shining eyes and one loose lock of hair
falling over her forehead; not particularly pretty, but intelligent
and with character. She is standing, and is dressed in the simple white
gown, high waist, short sleeves, and low neck which little girls wore
as well as their elders, and round her neck is a large locket slung on
a slender chain. Her portrait was painted by Zoffany when she was about
fifteen, on her first visit to Bath, but whether this reproduction,
which appears in the beginning of Lord Brabourne’s _Letters of Jane
Austen_, is from that picture I have not been able to ascertain.

Mr. Austen-Leigh says of her—

“In childhood every available opportunity of instruction was made use
of. According to the ideas of the time she was well-educated, though
not highly accomplished, and she certainly enjoyed that important
element of mental training, associating at home with persons of
cultivated intellect.” He says in another place, “Jane herself was fond
of music, and had a sweet voice, both in singing and conversation; in
her youth she had received some instruction on the pianoforte ... she
read French with facility, and knew something of Italian.”

In French she had at one time a great advantage in the continual
association with Madame de Feuillade, her cousin, and afterwards
her sister-in-law, who, as already mentioned, had been married to a
Frenchman.

The illustration on p. 26 is a portrait group of the children of the
Hon. John Douglas of the Morton family. It was painted by Hoppner,
who lived 1758-1810; and, in the costumes of the little boy and elder
girl especially, gives a good notion of the dress of the better-class
children of the period.

THE POSITION OF THE CLERGY

Jane Austen was a clergyman’s daughter. At the present time there are
undoubtedly wide differences in the social standing of the clergy
according to their own birth and breeding, but yet it may be taken
for granted that a clergyman is considered a fit guest for any man’s
table. It was not always so. There was a time when a clergyman was a
kind of servant, ranking with the butler, whose hospitality he enjoyed;
we have plenty of pictures of this state of affairs in _The Vicar of
Wakefield_, to go no further. But before Jane was born, matters had
changed. The pendulum had not yet swung to the opposite extreme of our
own day, when the fact of a man’s being ordained is supposed to give
him new birth in a social sense, and a tailor’s son passes through the
meagrest of the Universities in order that he may thus be transformed
into a gentleman without ever considering whether he has the smallest
vocation for the ministry. In the Austens’ time the status of a
clergyman depended a very great deal on himself, and as the patronage
of the Church was chiefly in the hands of the well-to-do lay-patrons,
who bestowed the livings on their younger sons or brothers, there was
very frequently a tie of relationship between the vicarage and the
great house, which was sufficient to ensure the vicar’s position. In
the case of relationship the system was probably at its best, obviating
any inducement to servility; but there was a very evil side to what
may be called local patronage, which was much more in evidence than
it is in our time. Archbishop Secker, in his charges to the clergy
of the diocese of Oxford, when he was their Bishop in 1737, throws a
very clear light on this side of the question. He expressly enjoins
incumbents to make no promise to their patrons to quit the benefice
when desired before entering into office. “The true meaning therefore
is to commonly enslave the incumbent to the will and pleasure of the
patron.” The motive for demanding such a promise was generally that the
living might be held until such time as some raw young lad, a nephew
or younger son of the lord of the manor, was ready to take it. The
evils of such a system are but too apparent. We can imagine a nervous
clergyman who would never dare to express an opinion contrary to the
will of the benefactor who had the power to turn him out into the
world penniless; we can imagine the time-server courting his patron
with honied words. This debased type is inimitably sketched in the
character of Mr. Collins in _Pride and Prejudice_. “‘It shall be my
earnest endeavour to demean myself with grateful respect towards her
ladyship, and be very ready to perform those rites and ceremonies which
are instituted by the Church of England.’ Lady Catherine [he said] had
been graciously pleased to approve of both the discourses which he had
already had the honour of preaching. She had also asked him twice to
dine at Rosings, and had sent for him only the Saturday before, to make
up her pool of quadrille in the evening. Lady Catherine was reckoned
proud, he knew, by many people, but he had never seen anything but
affability in her. She had always spoken to him as she would to any
other gentleman; she made not the smallest objection to his joining in
the society of the neighbourhood.”

In his delightful exordium to Elizabeth as to his reasons for proposing
to her, he says—

“‘My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right thing
for every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the
example of matrimony in his parish; secondly, that I am convinced it
will add very greatly to my happiness; and, thirdly, which perhaps I
ought to have mentioned earlier, that it is the particular advice and
recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honour of calling
patroness. Twice has she condescended to give me her opinion (unasked
too!) on this subject; and it was but the very Saturday night before I
left Hunsford—between our pools at quadrille while Mrs. Jenkinson was
arranging Miss de Bourgh’s footstool—that she said, ‘Mr. Collins, you
must marry. A clergyman like you must marry. Choose properly, choose a
gentlewoman for my sake, and for your own; let her be an active useful
sort of person, not brought up high, but able to make a small income go
a good way.’”

And when, after his marriage with her friend, Elizabeth goes to stay
with them, and is invited to dine with them at the Rosings, Lady
Catherine’s place, he thus encourages her—

“‘Do not make yourself uneasy, my dear cousin, about your apparel.
Lady Catherine is far from requiring that elegance of dress in us
which becomes herself and daughter. I would advise you merely to put on
whatever of your clothes is superior to the rest, there is no occasion
for anything more. Lady Catherine will not think the worse of you
for being simply dressed. She likes to have the distinction of rank
preserved.’”

In the case of Mr. Collins, the patron happened to be a lady, but
the instances were numberless in which clergymen spent all their time
toadying and drinking with a fox-hunting squire.

Arthur Young says of the French clergy—

“One did not find among them poachers or fox-hunters, who, having
spent the morning scampering after hounds, dedicate the evening to the
bottle, and reel from inebriety to the pulpit,” from which we may infer
that many English clergymen did.

Cowper’s satire on the way in which preferment is secured is worth
quoting in full—

    “Church-ladders are not always mounted best
    By learned clerks and Latinists professed.
    The exalted prize demands an upward look,
    Not to be found by poring on a book.
    Small skill in Latin, and still less in Greek,
    Is more than adequate to all I seek.
    Let erudition grace him or not grace,
    I give the bauble but the second place;
    His wealth, fame, honours, all that I intend
    Subsist and centre in one point—a friend.
    A friend whate’er he studies or neglects,
    Shall give him consequence, heal all defects.
    His intercourse with peers and sons of peers—
    There dawns the splendour of his future years;
    In that bright quarter his propitious skies
    Shall blush betimes, and there his glory rise.
    ‘Your lordship’ and ‘Your Grace,’ what school can teach
    A rhetoric equal to those parts of speech?
    What need of Homer’s verse or Tully’s prose,
    Sweet interjections! if he learn but those?
    Let reverend churls his ignorance rebuke,
    Who starve upon a dog-eared pentateuch,
    The parson knows enough who knows a duke.”

At the end of the eighteenth century the Church was at its deadest,
enthusiasm there was none. Torpid is the only word that fitly describes
the spiritual condition of the majority of the clergy. Secker says,
“An open and professed disregard of religion is become, through a
variety of unhappy causes, the distinguishing character of the present
age”; and the clergy, as the salt of the earth, had certainly lost
their savour, and did little or nothing to resist an apathy which, too
commonly, extended to themselves.

The duties of clergymen were therefore almost as light as they chose
to make them. One service on Sunday, and the Holy Communion three times
yearly, at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, was considered enough.

“A sacrament might easily be interposed in the long interval between
Christmas and Whitsuntide, and the usual season for it, the Feast of
St. Michael, is a very proper time, and if afterwards you can advance
from a quarterly communion to a monthly one, I make no doubt you will.”
(Secker.)

Baptisms, marriages, and funerals were looked on as nuisances; the
clergyman ran them together as much as possible, and often arrived
at the last minute, flinging himself off his smoking horse to gabble
through the service with the greatest possible speed; children were
frequently buried without any service at all.

The churches were for the most part damp and mouldy; there were, of
course, none of the present conveniences for heating and lighting.
Heavy galleries cut off the little light that struggled through the
cobwebby windows. There were mouse-eaten hassocks, curtains on rods
thick with dust, a general smell of mouldiness and disuse, and a cold,
but ill-ventilated, atmosphere.

In some old country churches there still survive the family pews, which
were like small rooms, and in which the occupants could read or sleep
without being seen by anyone; in one or two cases there are fire-grates
in these; and in one strange example at Langley, in Bucks, the pew is
not only roofed in, but it has a lattice in front, with painted panels
which can be opened and shut at the occupants’ pleasure, and there is
a room in connection with it in which is a library of books, so that
it would be quite possible for anyone to retire for a little interlude
without the rest of the congregation’s being aware of it!

The church, only opened as a rule once a week, was left for the rest
of the time to the bats and birds. Compare this with one of the neat,
warm, clean churches to be found almost everywhere at present; churches
with polished wood pews, shining brass fittings, tessellated floor in
place of uneven bricks, a communion table covered by a cloth worked by
the vicar’s wife, and bearing white flowers placed by loving hands. A
pulpit of carved oak, alabaster, or marble, instead of a dilapidated
old three-decker in which the parish clerk sat below and gave out the
tunes in a droning voice.

Organs were of course very uncommon at the end of the eighteenth
century in country parishes, and though there might be at times a
little local music, as an accompaniment, the hymns were generally
drawled out without music at all. This is Horace Walpole’s idea of
church in 1791: “I have always gone now and then, though of late years
rarely, as it was most unpleasant to crawl through a churchyard full
of staring footmen and apprentices, clamber a ladder to a hard pew, to
hear the dullest of all things, a sermon, and croaking and squalling of
psalms to a hand organ by journey-men brewers and charity children.”

The sermons were peculiarly dry and dull, and it would have taken
a clever man to suck any spiritual nourishment therefrom. They were
generally on points of doctrine, read without modulation; and if, as
was frequently the case, the clergyman had not the energy to prepare
his own, a sermon from any dreary collection sufficed. The black gown
was used in the pulpit.

Cowper gives a picture of how the service was often taken—

    “I venerate the man whose heart is warm;
    Whose hands are pure, whose doctrine and whose life
    Coincident, exhibit lucid proof
    That he is honest in the sacred cause.
    A messenger of grace to guilty men.
    Behold the picture! Is it like? Like whom?
    The things that mount the rostrum with a skip,
    And then skip down again; pronounce a text,
    Cry, ahem! and reading what they never wrote,
    Just fifteen minutes, huddle up their work,
    And with a well-bred whisper, close the scene.”

In this dismal account the average only is taken, and there were many
exceptions; we have no reason to suppose, for instance, that the Rev.
George Austen marred his services by slovenliness or indifference,
though no doubt the most earnest man would find it hard to struggle
against the disadvantages of his time, and the damp mouldy church must
have been a sore drawback to church-going.

Twining’s _Country Clergyman_ gives us a picture of an amiable sort of
man of a much pleasanter type than those of Cowper or Crabbe.

We gain an idea of a man of a genial, pleasant disposition, cultured
enough, and fond of the classics; who kept his house and garden well
ordered, who enjoyed a tour throughout England in company with his
wife, who thoroughly appreciated the lines in which his lot was cast,
but who looked upon the living as made for him, and not he for the
parishioners. A writer in the _Cornhill_ some years ago gives a series
of pleasant little pen-pictures of typical clergymen of this date. “Who
cannot see it all—the curate-in-charge himself sauntering up and down
the grass on a fine summer morning, his hands in the pockets of his
black or drab ‘small clothes,’ his feet encased in broad-toed shoes,
his white neckcloth voluminous and starchless, his low-crowned hat a
little on one side of his powdered head, his eye wandering about from
tree to flower, and from bird to bush, as he chews the cud of some
puzzling construction in Pindar, or casts and recasts some favourite
passage in his translation of Aristotle.”

There was the fox-hunter who in the time not devoted to sport was
always “welcome to the cottager’s wife at that hour in the afternoon
when she had made herself tidy, swept up the hearth, and was sitting
down before the fire with the stockings of the family before her. He
would chat with her about the news of the village, give her a friendly
hint about her husband’s absence from church, and perhaps, before
going, would be taken out to look at the pig.”

Or “the pleasant genial old gentleman in knee-breeches and sometimes
top-boots, who fed his poultry, and went into the stable to scratch the
ears of his favourite cob, and round by the pig-stye to the kitchen
garden, where he took a turn for an hour or two with his spade or
his pruning knife, or sauntered with his hands in his pockets in the
direction of the cucumbers ... coming in to an early dinner.”

Mr. Austen seems to have been a mixture of the first and third of these
types, for he was certainly a good scholar, and yet some of his chief
interests in life were connected with his pigs and his sheep.

But though these are charming sketches, and their counterparts were
doubtless to be found, we fear they are too much idealised to be a
true representation of the generality of the clergy of that time; and,
charming as they are, there is an easy freedom from the responsibility
of office which is strange to modern ideas.

Livings, many of which are bad enough now, were then even worse paid;
£25 a year was the ordinary stipend for a curate who did most of
the work. Massey (_History of England in the Reign of George II._)
estimates that there were then five thousand livings under £80 a year
in England; consequently pluralism was oftentimes almost a necessity.
Gilbert White, the naturalist, was a shining light among clergymen; he
was vicar of Selborne, in Hampshire, until his death in 1793; but while
he was curate of Durley, near Bishop’s Waltham, the actual expenses of
the duty exceeded the receipts by nearly twenty pounds in the one year
he was there. To reside at all was a great thing for a clergyman to do,
and we may be sure, from what we gather, that the Rev. George Austen
had this virtue, for he resided all the time at Steventon.

But though the clergy frequently left all the work to their curates,
they always took care to receive the tithes themselves. In the picture
engraved by T. Burke after Singleton, in the period under discussion,
we see the fat and somewhat cross-looking vicar receiving these tithes
in kind from the little boy, who brings his basket containing a couple
of ducks and a sucking pig into the vicarage study.

   [Illustration: THE VICAR RECEIVING HIS TITHES]

Hannah More gives us an account of the usual state of things in regard
to non-residence—

“The vicarage of Cheddar is in the gift of the Dean of Wells; the
value nearly fifty pounds per annum. The incumbent is a Mr. R., who
has something to do, but I cannot find out what, in the University
of Oxford, where he resides. The curate lives at Wells, twelve miles
distant. They have only service once a week, and there is scarcely an
instance of a poor person being visited or prayed with. The living of
Axbridge ... annual value is about fifty pounds. The incumbent about
sixty years of age. Mr. G. is intoxicated about six times a week, and
very frequently is prevented from preaching by two black eyes, honestly
earned by fighting.”

“We have in this neighbourhood thirteen adjoining parishes without so
much as even a resident curate.”

“No clergyman had resided in the parish for forty years. One rode
over three miles from Wells to preach once on a Sunday, but no weekly
duty was done or sick persons visited; and children were often buried
without any funeral service. Eight people in the morning, and twenty in
the afternoon, was a good congregation.”

She evidently means that the service was sometimes held in the
morning, and sometimes in the afternoon, as she says there were not two
services.

She also speaks of it as an exceptionally disinterested action of Dr.
Kennicott that he had resigned a valuable living because his learned
work would not allow him to reside in the parish.

By far the best account of what was expected from a contemporary
clergyman is to be gathered from Jane Austen’s own books. It is one of
her strong points that she wrote only of what she knew, and as her own
father and two of her brothers were clergymen, we cannot suppose that
she was otherwise than favourably inclined to the class. Her sketch
of Mr. Collins is no doubt something of a caricature, but it serves
to illustrate very forcibly one great error in the system then in
vogue—that of local patronage.

The other clergymen in her books are numerous: we have Mr. Elton in
_Emma_, Edmund Bertram and Dr. Grant in _Mansfield Park_, Henry Tilney
in _Northanger Abbey_, and Edward Ferrars in _Sense and Sensibility_.

It is impossible to deny that Edmund Bertram is a prig, or perhaps,
to put it more mildly, is inclined to be sententious, so sometimes
one almost sympathises with the gay Miss Crawford, whose ideas so
shocked him and Fanny; yet though those ideas only reflected the
current opinion of the times, they were reprehensible enough. When Miss
Crawford discovers, to her chagrin, that Edmund, whom she is inclined
to like more than a little, is going to be a clergyman, she asks—

“‘But why are you to be a clergyman? I thought that was always the lot
of the youngest, where there were many to choose before him!’

“‘Do you think the Church itself never chosen, then?’

“‘Never is a black word. But yes, in the never of conversation which
means not very often, I do think it. For what is to be done in the
Church? Men love to distinguish themselves, and in either of the other
lines distinction may be gained, but not in the Church. A clergyman is
nothing.’”

And in reply to Edmund’s defence, she continues—

“‘You assign greater consequence to a clergyman than one has been used
to hear given, or than I can quite comprehend. One does not see much of
this influence and importance in society, and how can it be acquired
where they are so seldom seen themselves? How can two sermons a week,
even supposing them worth hearing, supposing the preacher to have the
sense to prefer Blair’s to his own, do all that you speak of, govern
the conduct and fashion and manners of a large congregation for the
rest of the week? One scarcely sees a clergyman out of his pulpit!’

“‘You are speaking of London, I am speaking of the nation at large.’”

But it is noteworthy that even Edmund, who is upheld as a bright
example, does not in his defence assert anything relative to the
careful looking after the lives of his flock which nowadays is a chief
part of a parish clergyman’s duty. He speaks of conduct, and declares
that “as the clergy are or are not what they ought to be, so are the
rest of the nation,” but all the retort he wins from the girl he so
much admires is that she is just as much surprised at his choice as
ever, and that he really is fit for something better!

In another place, where the same discussion is reopened, she says: “‘It
is indolence, Mr. Bertram, indeed—indolence and love of ease—a want of
all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination
to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A
clergyman has nothing to do but to be slovenly and selfish, read the
newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate
does all the work, and the business of his own life is to dine.’”

This type is exemplified in the same book by Dr. Grant, who is not
drawn vindictively, but is described by his own sister-in-law, Miss
Crawford, as “‘an indolent, selfish _bon vivant_, who must have his
palate consulted in everything; who will not stir a finger for the
convenience of anyone; and who, moreover, if the cook makes a blunder,
is out of humour with his excellent wife. To own the truth, Henry and
I were driven out this very evening by a disappointment about a green
goose, which he could not get the better of. My poor sister was forced
to stay and bear it.’”

And when Edmund is about to enter on the living, Henry Crawford gaily
observes, “‘I apprehend he will not have less than seven hundred a
year. Seven hundred a year is a fine thing for a younger brother;
and as, of course, he will still live at home, it will be all for his
_menus plaisirs_; and a sermon at Christmas and Easter, I suppose, will
be the sum total of sacrifice.’”

After all this, it is pleasant to know that some upright and serious
men, even in those days, thought differently of the life and duties of
a clergyman, for Jane makes Sir Thomas Bertram reply—

“‘A parish has wants and claims which can be known only by a clergyman
constantly resident, and which no proxy can be capable of satisfying
to the same extent. Edmund might, in the common phrase, do the duty of
Thornton, that is, he might read prayers and preach without giving up
Mansfield Park; he might ride over every Sunday to a house nominally
inhabited, and go through divine service; he might be the clergyman
of Thornton Lacey every seventh day, for three or four hours, if that
would content him. But it will not. He knows that human nature needs
more lessons than a weekly sermon can convey; and that if he does not
live among his parishioners, and prove himself by constant attention to
be their well-wisher and friend, he does very little either for their
good or his own.’”

It is also striking to see how very much the taking of Orders depended
upon some living to be obtained; there seems to have been no special
idea of suitability, and still less of preparation, only the merest and
most perfunctory examination was demanded of the candidate for Orders.
There is a story of this date of one examination for ordination where
only two questions were asked, one of which was, “What is the Hebrew
for a skull?”

In an entertaining book on Jane Austen by Miss Constance Hill,
published in 1902, there is a quotation from a letter anent the
ordination examination of Mr. Lefroy, who married Anna, Jane’s niece.
“The Bishop only asked him two questions, first if he was the son of
Mrs. Lefroy of Ashe, and secondly if he had married a Miss Austen.”

It is said also that Brownlow North, Bishop of Winchester, examined
his candidates for ordination in a cricket-field during a match.
One candidate is described by Boswell as having read no books of
divinity, not even the Greek Testament. There were, of course, serious
and learned bishops enough; Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, who lived
from 1643 to 1715, was horrified at the ignorance of candidates, who
apparently had never read the Old Testament and hardly knew what was
in the New. “They cry, and think it a sad disgrace to be denied Orders,
though the ignorance of some is such that in a well-regulated state of
things they would appear not to know enough to be admitted to the Holy
Sacrament.”

It is probable that the Bishops judged a great deal more, on the whole,
by the appearance and manners of the man before them, and the prospects
he had of holding a living, than by his own knowledge, and in the case
of a well-born, serious-minded man like Edmund Bertram there would be
no difficulty whatever about his lack of divinity.

Of Henry Tilney’s duties in _Northanger Abbey_, very little can be
said or gathered, he never appears like a clergyman at all. We are told
that the parsonage was a “new built, substantial stone house.” We know
that he had to go there, much to Catherine Morland’s distress, when
she was a guest at his father’s house, Northanger Abbey, because the
engagements of his curate at Woodston obliged him to leave on Saturday
for a couple of nights. But at all events he does seem to have spent
most of his time at the parsonage, though he still kept on his room at
home.

Of Edward Ferrars’ clerical avocations we also hear so very little that
he might almost as well have been of any other profession.

The only other clergyman in the novels is Mr. Elton, a specimen not
quite so egregious as Mr. Collins, but sufficiently so to be very
amusing. On him the waves of Emma’s match-making break with force—

“‘Poor Mr. Elton! You like Mr. Elton, papa! I must look about for a
wife for him. There is nobody in Highbury who deserves him, and he
has been here a whole year, and has fitted up his house so comfortably
that it would be a shame to have him single any longer; and I thought
when he was joining their hands to-day, he looked so very much as if he
would like to have the same kind office done for him!’”

Emma thinks he will do admirably for her somewhat ambiguously placed
friend Harriet Smith, while Mr. Elton himself fixes his eyes on the
heiress Emma. A nice little illustration of the social status of the
cleric, who would not have been thought entirely out of the question
for the heiress, though doubtless a little beneath her. Mr. Elton is
represented as a handsome, ingratiating, debonair young man, who spends
his time playing the gallant, reading aloud, making charades with the
young ladies, and preaching sermons that please everybody. However, he
meets his match in the dashing and vulgar Mrs. Elton, whom he picks up,
soon after his rejection by Emma, at a watering place, and thereafter
they spend their time in a blissful state of mutual admiration.

CHAPTER IV

HOME LIFE AT STEVENTON

For the first five-and-twenty years of her life, from her birth in
December 1775 to the spring of 1801, Jane lived at Steventon, in her
father’s rectory, as peaceful and quiet a home as even she could have
wished. But though her own circumstances were peaceful and happy, the
great world without was full of flux and reflux.

Wars and rumours of wars, revolutions and upheavals, which changed
the whole face of Europe, were going on year by year, but of these
things, as I have said, hardly an echo reaches us in her writing; not
even in the correspondence with her sister, which begins in 1796 when
the turmoil was at its height, which is the more surprising when we
consider that her own sailor brothers were taking an active part in
affairs; and her cousin, the Countess de Feuillade, had fled to the
Austens for shelter when her husband suffered death by the guillotine.
What depths these things stirred in Jane, or whether she lacked the
imagination to bring home to her their enormous importance relative to
the small details of immediate surroundings, we shall never know. Her
minute observation, her unrivalled faculty for using that which lay
under her hand, the stores of little human characteristics which, by
her transmuting touch, she invested with such intense interest, lead
one to suppose that such a clear, near-sighted mental vision carried
with it defective mental long sight. There are a number of persons who,
deeply and warmly interested in that which immediately appeals to them,
cannot throw their sympathy far out over unseen events and persons. We
are all prone to this, there is not one of us who is not more affected
by a single tragic death in the neighbourhood than by the loss of
a hundred lives in America; life in this world would be intolerable
were it not so, this is one of the provisions of a merciful providence
for making it endurable. But there are some more near-sighted in this
respect than others, and from internal evidence in the letters we may
judge that Jane belonged to them; it is only conjecture, but it is
often the case in life, that virtues carry corresponding faults, that
extreme cleverness in one direction induces a little want of perception
in another. The law of balance and compensation is so omnipresent, that
Jane’s intensely clear vision in regard to near objects may have been
paid for by absorption in them, somewhat to the exclusion of larger
interests.

In 1789, while she was yet but fourteen years old, there began that
Revolution which, taking it altogether, is the most tremendous fact in
the history of Europe. France was seething, but as yet the ferment had
not affected other nations. In the July of that year the tricolour was
adopted as the national flag, excess reigned supreme, and the nobles
began to emigrate. It was not until 1792 that France began to grasp
the lands of others, and reached forth the first of those tentacles,
which, like those of an octopus, were to spread all over Europe. In
the beginning Austria and Prussia opposed her, but after the murder
of the French King, in January 1793, England was forced to join in to
protect Holland, and to uphold the general status of nations. Treaties
were signed between almost all the civilised nations of Europe, for
the crushing of a common enemy; Switzerland alone, of those affected by
France’s movements, remaining perfectly neutral.

The echoes of the Reign of Terror that followed must have reached even
to the remotest recesses of England, and it is impossible to believe
that the Austens were not deeply affected.

Walpole’s forcible language on the Revolution shows its effect on
contemporary opinion: “I have wanted to vent myself, Madam [the
Countess of Ossory], but the French have destroyed the power of words.
There is neither substantive nor epithet that can express the horror
they have excited! Brutal insolence, bloody ferocity, savage barbarity,
malicious injustice, can no longer be used but of some civilised
country, where there is still some appearance of government. Atrocious
frenzy would, till these days, have sounded too outrageous to be
pronounced of a whole city—now it is too temperate a phrase for Paris,
and would seem to palliate the enormity of their guilt by supposing
madness the spring of it—but though one pities a herd of swine that
are actuated by demons to rush into the sea, even those diabolical
vagaries are momentary, not stationary, they do not last for three
years together nor infect a whole nation—thank God it is but one nation
that has ever produced _two massacres_ of Paris.”

“But of all their barbarities the most inhuman has been their _not_
putting the poor wretched King and Queen to death three years ago. If
thousands have been murdered, tortured, broiled, it has been extempore;
but Louis and his Queen have suffered daily deaths in apprehension for
themselves and their children.”

The newspapers gave long extracts from the doings of the National
Assembly, but of course these always appeared some days subsequently
to the events. The news of the death of the French King was known, by
rumour at least, with extraordinary quickness, about two days after
it happened, and was received with execration. Detailed accounts did
not come in until some days after. The first notice is thus announced
in the _St. James’s Chronicle_: “The murder took place at four in the
morning on Monday, and was conducted in the most private manner. The
guillotine was erected in a court of the Temple. A hole dug under it
into which the King’s head fell, and his body was precipitated after.”
This was incorrect in some particulars, as the murder did not take
place until after ten in the morning. In all the newspapers of the
time, there are little sentences that strike us sadly even now, and
when freshly recorded, as having just happened, they must have moved
many persons to deep sorrow. July 1, 1793, “A greater regard is shown
for the august prisoners. A small waggon has been sent in loaded with
playthings for the son of the unfortunate Louis XVI.” “After many
entreaties the widow of Capet finally resolved to deliver up to us her
son, who has been conducted to the apartments designed for him under
the care of citizen Simon.” Charlotte Corday’s bold speech, when she
was brought up to answer for her murder of the tyrant, is quoted: “I
did not expect to appear before you; I always thought that I should be
delivered up to the rage of the people, torn in pieces, and that my
head, stuck upon the top of a pike, would have preceded Marat on his
state bed to serve as a rallying point to Frenchmen, if there still are
any worthy of that name.”

In August of the same year, the death of Marie Antoinette was daily
expected. “The queen was dressed in white lawn and wore a black girdle
... her cell is only eight feet long, and eight feet wide. Her couch
consists of a hard straw bed and very thin coverings; her diet, soup
and boiled meat.”

But in an anguish of mind which must have made her indifferent to
the horrors of material surroundings, the poor Queen was kept alive
until October, when finally news came of her execution. “As soon as
the ci-devant queen left the Conciergerie to ascend the scaffold, the
multitude cried out _brava_ in the midst of plaudits. Marie Antoinette
had on a white loose dress, her hands were tied behind her back. She
looked firmly round her on all sides, and on the scaffold preserved her
natural dignity of mind.”

This is the kind of reading of contemporary events that would greet
Jane when the household received its bi-weekly or tri-weekly paper.

All through 1794 war continued, while the French slowly bored their way
into the Continent. Of the splendid naval victories of these years we
speak in the chapter on the Navy; these surely must have affected Jane,
and made her heart beat high at the thought of what her brothers might
be called upon to undergo any day. Toward the end of 1795, Austria
and Britain alone were left to uphold the right of nations against the
all-devouring French. In England food was at famine prices, and there
was actually a party who wished the enemy to win in order that the war
might end. London was in a state of great agitation, so that public
meetings were suppressed in the interests of public safety. In 1796,
Spain declared war against Great Britain, having previously patched up
peace with her dangerous neighbour. In this year Napoleon Buonaparte
first began to be heard of outside his own country, by his successes in
his Italian campaign.

England, in sore straits, attempted to make peace, but the arrogance of
France left her no other course compatible with honour than to continue
the war, and the opening of 1797 found her in great difficulties. On
all sides invasion by France was dreaded; in fact, in the previous
December an attempt at such an invasion by landing on the coast
of Ireland, which was in a state of bitter rebellion, was made. In
February the victory of St. Vincent put a little heart into the English
people, and did away for a time with the possibility of another attempt
at invasion by Hoche, whose fleet was scattered by a storm. In May
of 1797 a dangerous mutiny broke out among the sailors, followed by
another at the Nore, but these were firmly quelled.

In 1798, Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign must have been followed with
tense interest, though news would be slow in coming, and it would
probably be many days before the news of Lord Nelson’s glorious
victory at the Battle of the Nile, which had smashed up the French
fleet and left Napoleon stranded, was received in England. This
victory gave renewed spirit to the Allies in Europe. A whole string
of affiliated Republics had now been established by France, made out
of her conquests—including Switzerland, whose strict neutrality had
not preserved her from invasion. Yet Austria carried on her share
of the war bravely, and in the autumn of 1799 the English made a
desperate attempt to retrieve the integrity of Holland, but after a
short campaign were compelled to evacuate the country. In October 1799,
Napoleon, finding his dreams of establishing a great Eastern kingdom
impracticable, returned to France, and in the December of the same year
was acclaimed First Consul.

Thus, from her early girlhood, Jane would hear of events which greatly
affected her own country, she would be accustomed to a perpetual state
of war, she would share in the apprehensions of invasions, and the
name of Napoleon, ever swelling into greater and greater menace, would
continually strike upon her ear.

In November 1800, Jane makes one of her few allusions to historical
events, and then only because it concerned her brother. “The _Petterel_
with the rest of the Egyptian squadron was off the Isle of Cyprus,
whither they went from Jaffa for provisions, and whence they were to
sail in a day or two for Alexandria, there to await the result of the
English proposals for the evacuation of Egypt.”

In 1800, with Buonaparte at the head of a military despotism, a new era
began in the war. The two terrific battles of Marengo and Hohenlinden,
hotly contested, left the French victors; and at the latter seven
thousand of the Allies were taken prisoners, and seven thousand killed
and wounded.

In this year, at home the most important event was the Union of Ireland
with Great Britain.

When the Continental war was going on, the news from the field of
battle was generally eight or nine days old. But this, of course, was
nothing to the time which elapsed in the case of India, for events
which had happened there in February were given to the public as news
in August! Then, indeed, to send a boy to the East was to part with
him in reality. There was a long voyage round the Cape, prolonged
indefinitely by wind and weather, to encounter. It would be a year
from his setting out before the news of his arrival could reach
his relations in England. It is the enormous difference made by the
telegraph that strikes us most in the contemplation of this era. Of
course the officials in India could not get instructions from home,
they were responsible for the conduct of affairs, and the sense of
responsibility and the impossibility of being checked in anything they
wished to do, no doubt gave them that splendid decision which won for
us our Indian Empire.

It was in 1784 that the India Act, introduced by Pitt, had given
England power over Indian affairs. In the following year, Hastings
had returned home, and his celebrated trial, ending in his complete
acquittal in 1795, must have taught the English more about Indian
matters than they had ever known before. To attend the trial in
Westminster Hall was one of the society diversions of the day.

In 1791, in one day, the Duchess of Gordon “went to Handel’s music in
the Abbey; she then clambered over the benches and went to Hastings’
trial in the Hall; after dinner to the play; then to Lady Lucan’s
assembly; after that to Ranelagh, and returned to Mrs. Hobart’s faro
table; gave a ball herself in the evening of that morning, into which
she must have got a good way, and set out for Scotland the next day.”

Long before Jane’s death, the mighty Empire of India had passed
almost completely under British control. But if her lifetime saw the
foundation of one Empire it witnessed also the loss of another country.
The United States were declared independent in the first year of
her life, and before she was of an age to take any practical note of
politics they had been recognised by France as an independent nation.
She lived, indeed, in an epoch when history was made, and she lived
on into a new era of things, when Buonaparte was finally subdued,
France settled, the Continent at peace. At present we have only
briefly outlined the extraordinary series of events which filled the
five-and-twenty years during which she, living in her sheltered nook at
Steventon, heard only echoes. There is something peculiarly suitable in
picturing her in this tranquil backwater.

As far as Jane’s personal appearance is concerned, we can gather some
notion of her, though the materials are slight. The only portrait
preserved of her when grown up is from a water-colour drawing by
her sister, and represents a bright, intelligent, but not very
prepossessing face, with large eyes and a straight nose. There is
humour and decision in the expression, and in spite of the quaint
cap and the simple dress with elbow-sleeves and tucked chemisette,
which make it look a little odd to modern eyes, there is distinct
personality. It may be a good likeness of her as she was then, but,
on the other hand, one must allow something for the treatment of an
amateur, and we can afford to think of her as being more attractive
than she is here represented. A contemporary verbal description left
of her is that given by Sir Egerton Brydges, who knew her personally.
He says: “She was fair and handsome, slight and elegant, but with
cheeks a little too full.” We may well believe that, as to looks, she
was in that middle state of neither exceptional beauty nor exceptional
plainness, which is certainly the happiest. Emma Woodhouse is supposed
to have resembled her more than any of her other heroines, and she
herself describes Emma by the mouth of one of the other characters in
the book: “‘Such an eye! the true hazel eye, and so brilliant! Regular
features, open countenance, with a complexion—oh, what a bloom of full
health; and such a pretty height and size, such a firm and upright
figure. There is health, not merely in her bloom, but in her air, her
head, her glance. One sometimes hears of a child being “the picture
of health,” now Emma always gives me the idea of being the complete
picture of grown-up health.’”

The most exact personal description we have of Jane is to be found in
the preface to the first edition of _Northanger Abbey_, written by her
brother Henry. Allowing for the fact that this was penned at a time
when the hearts of all who knew her were bleeding for the early death
by which she had been taken from them, and that her gentle and gradual
decline had previously softened and toned down the whole of that
bright lively nature, so that any small imperfections had been entirely
smoothed away, we may gather a good picture of her from his words—

“Her stature was that of true elegance, it could not have been
increased without exceeding the middle height. Her carriage and
deportment were quiet yet graceful. Her features were separately
good. Their assemblage produced an unrivalled expression of that
cheerfulness, sensibility, and benevolence, which were her real
characteristics. Her complexion was of the finest texture. Her voice
was extremely sweet.” He says also that “she excelled in conversation
as much as in composition; she was faultless, and never commented with
unkindness even on the vices of others; she always sought in the faults
of others something to excuse, forgive, or forget. She never uttered a
hasty, a silly, or a severe expression.” He speaks further of her good
memory, of her fondness for landscape, and her musical skill, and says
that Johnson was her favourite author in prose, Cowper in verse.

Yet though bright and clever, and animated by indisputable genius, she
was not intellectual; the world of ideas held no place in her mind. We
can see very well from her books that the great fundamental laws so
important to a wide, deep mind were entirely ignored by her. She was
of the mental calibre of her own Elizabeth Bennet, a bright intelligent
companion, without depth or brain force. We cannot imagine her grasping
abstractions or wrestling with theories; her mind was formed for
practicalities and facts.

   [Illustration: JANE AUSTEN]

Jane, we know, was very healthy and full of spirits, we hear of
no ailments beyond a weakness of the eyes from which she certainly
suffered; she says, “My eyes have been very indifferent since it [the
last letter] was written, but are now getting better once more; keeping
them so many hours open on Thursday night, as well as the dust of the
ballroom, injured them a good deal. I use them as little as I can,
but you know, and everybody who has ever had weak eyes knows, how
delightful it is to hurt them by employment, against the advice and
entreaty of all one’s friends.”

The Austens had special advantages in their position in the fact that
they were relatives of Mr. Knight, to whom the whole parish belonged.
Mr. Austen seems to have been referred to, in the absence of Mr.
Knight, as a kind of squire. He lived simply, but had apparently
enough money to allow his daughters the privileges of gentlewomen, and
they went to all the dances and balls in the neighbourhood, and paid
frequent visits to their brothers’ houses for weeks at a time. Mr.
Austen kept a carriage and pair, though that meant less than it would
do now, as private means of conveyance was much more necessary and
there was no carriage tax to add to the expense.

Mrs. Austen seems to have been constantly ailing, which threw the
housekeeping a good deal into the hands of her daughters. It is
possible that her ailments were more imaginary than real, as she lived
to a great age, and in her old age employed herself about the garden
and poultry, and is spoken of as being brisk and bright. Perhaps she
grew more energetic as she grew older, a not uncommon process. Jane’s
allusions to her mother’s health are frequent, and sometimes seem to
point to the fact that she did not altogether believe in them—

“Now indeed we are likely to have a wet day, and though Sunday, my
mother begins it without any ailment.”

“It began to occur to me before you mentioned it, that I had been
somewhat silent as to my mother’s health for some time, but I thought
you could have no difficulty in divining its exact state—you, who have
guessed so much stranger things. She is tolerably well, better upon the
whole than she was some weeks ago. She would tell you herself that she
has a very dreadful cold in her head at present, but I have not much
compassion for colds in the head without fever or sore throat.”

“My mother continues hearty; her appetite and nights are very good, but
she sometimes complains of an asthma, a dropsy, water in her chest, and
a liver disorder.”

“For a day or two last week my mother was very poorly with a return of
one of her old complaints, but it did not last long, and seems to have
left nothing bad behind it. She began to talk of a serious illness, her
two last having been preceded by the same symptoms, but thank heaven
she is now quite as well as one can expect her to be in the weather
which deprives her of exercise.”

In the family memoirs, Mrs. George Austen is always spoken of as a
person of wit and imagination, in whom might be found the germs of her
daughter’s genius; such opinion based on recollections must be deferred
to, but such is not the picture we gather from the letters. There, Mrs.
Austen seems to have exercised none but the slightest influence on her
daughters’ lives, and when they do mention her, it is only to remark on
her health, or the care of her in a journey, or that she will not have
anything to do with choosing the furniture for the new home in Bath.

It is a curious circumstance, taken in conjunction with this, that all
the mothers of Jane’s heroines, when living, are described as fools or
worse. It is not intended to hint that she drew such characters from
the home circle or from her mother’s friends, but it is plainly to be
seen that she did not look for, or expect from women of this standing,
the wit and sense she found elsewhere. Indeed, when one thinks of the
bringing up of women in those days, their narrowness of education and
extraordinary ignorance of the world, it is wonderful how many did
possess keen sense and mother wit. The most notable of the examples in
point in the books is Mrs. Bennet in _Pride and Prejudice_, who, with
her foolish indulgence of her younger children, her mad desire to get
her daughters married to anyone who could furnish a home of whatever
sort, is the worst specimen of her kind. “‘Oh, Mr. Bennet, you are
wanted immediately; we are all in an uproar. You must come and make
Lizzie marry Mr. Collins, for she vows she will not have him; and if
you do not make haste he will change his mind and not have her.’” Mr.
Bennet’s subsequent calm rebuke in his admonition to his daughter, “‘An
unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be
a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again
if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you
do,’” heightens the effect of his wife’s folly.

Mrs. Bennet’s fatuous self-complacency, selfishness, and want of sense
might have been almost too painful to cause amusement even in a book,
had they not been set off by her husband’s sardonic humour, just the
touch that Jane Austen knew so well how to give.

But Mrs. Bennet is not the only one. Mrs. Jennings, in _Sense and
Sensibility_, is “a good-humoured, merry, fat, elderly woman, who
talked a great deal, seemed very happy and rather vulgar.” She
is perpetually making the Dashwood girls wince with her outspoken
allusions, and seems altogether deficient in taste and sense, though
extremely kind-hearted.

As for Mrs. Dashwood senior, in the same book, in her belief in
the charming but double-faced Willoughby, she is, if possible, one
degree more credulous than her most foolish daughter. Lady Bertram
of _Mansfield Park_ is kind enough to her niece in her own way, but
“she did not go into public with her daughters. She was too indolent
even to accept a mother’s gratification in witnessing their success
and enjoyment at the expense of any personal trouble.” “Lady Bertram
did not at all like to have her husband leave her; but she was not
disturbed by any alarm for his safety or solicitude for his comfort,
being one of those persons who think nothing can be dangerous or
difficult or fatiguing to anyone but themselves.”

Mrs. Musgrove senior, in _Persuasion_, is nothing but a soft-hearted
fool, and “Captain Wentworth should be allowed some credit for the
self-command with which he attended to her large fat sighings over the
destiny of a son whom, alive, nobody had cared for.”

The middle-aged women without daughters, such as Lady Russell and Mrs.
Croft, in the same book, are allowed to be sensible, but a mother with
grown-up daughters seems always to be mercilessly delineated by Jane.

Of Mr. Austen not much is known; he was a quiet, reserved man, noted
for his good looks, and clever enough to educate his sons for the
University himself. In his younger days he took pupils, and it was one
of these pupils who in after years became so much attached to Cassandra
that he entered into the engagement with her which terminated so sadly.
Mr. Austen probably kept a restraining hand over his large household,
and was responsible for the sensible and kindly upbringing which his
daughters received; he seems to have placed no restraint whatever on
their pleasures as they grew up. It may be noted that the husbands
of all the foolish women in Jane’s books noted above are sensible,
self-restrained, capable men.

As for the surroundings and small details of the home where Jane
remained with her sister and parents when the brothers went out into
the world, it is very difficult to give an adequate picture. There was
a great simplicity, and an absence of many things which are now turned
out in profusion by machinery but were then not known. We have all
of us been in old houses of the simpler kind, and noted the severity
of uncorniced walls, the smallness of the inconvenient sash-windows,
the plainness of the whole aspect. To the furniture, also, the
same remarks would apply, there would be fewer things and of a more
solid kind. “Perhaps we should be most struck with the total absence
of those elegant little articles which now embellish and encumber
our drawing-room tables. We should miss the sliding bookcases, and
picture stands, the letter weighing machines and envelope cases, the
periodicals and illustrated newspapers—above all, the countless swarm
of photograph books which now threaten to swallow up all space.” (Mr.
Austen-Leigh in the _Memoir_.)

By the following quotation from Jane herself before the removal to
Bath, what a vision is instantly conjured up of the yellow speckled
prints in cheap, varnished frames, the crude colours and stereotyped
subjects of those old pictures which still occasionally remain in the
spare rooms of country houses—

“As to our pictures, the battle piece, Mr. Nibbs, Sir William East, and
all the old heterogeneous miscellany, manuscript, scriptural pieces
dispersed over the house are to be given to James. Your own drawings
will not cease to be your own, and the two paintings on tin will be at
your disposal. My mother says that the French agricultural prints in
the best bedroom were given by Edward to his two sisters.”

In regard to minor matters of domestic comfort, lucifer matches
were not in general use until 1834, though the fact that they were
anticipated by some genius in advance of his time is evidenced by this
advertisement in the _Morning Post_ of 1788—

“For Travellers, Mariners, etc., Promethean Fire and Phosphorus.

“G. Watts respectfully acquaints the public that he has prepared
a large variety of machines of a portable and durable kind, with
Promethean fire, paper and match enclosed, most admirably calculated
to prevent those disagreeable sensations which most frequently arise
in the dreary hour of midnight, from sudden alarm, thieves, fire, or
sickness.”

Considering this, it is probable that some sort of sulphur match was in
use before 1834, though the general method would be the tedious flint
and steel.

For firing, wood was, of course, largely used, the cottagers depended
totally on “pilfering, breaking hedges, and cutting trees.” Coal
was very expensive, being of course mined with difficulty in the
pre-machinery days; here is a contemporary account of a visit to
a coal-mine in Yorkshire. “We had the curiosity to walk and take a
near outside view of one seventy yards deep. The manner they work
them is strange and not a little dangerous, as they are obliged to
have candles, and sometimes with a roof so low that men dig on their
knees.... They have two boxes which are alternately pulled up and down
by pullies worked by a horse, which goes round and round in a sort of
well.”

Added to the expense of mining was the expense of carriage, which, in
the days before railways, had to be done by canal or sea, and the term
sea-coal so frequently used in the literature of the day refers to this
sea-borne coal. Sometimes after a storm the vessels were delayed, so
that the scarcity of coal ran up the price enormously.

This is a brief sketch of the details at the rectory. In such a home
there was plenty of occupation for a bright spirit like Jane’s, and
we can hardly imagine her ever to have been idle. When her sister was
away, she undertook the housekeeping, and writes playfully—

“My mother desires me to tell you that I am a good housekeeper, which
I have no reluctance in doing, because I really think it my peculiar
excellence, and for this reason—I always take care to provide such
things as please my own appetite, which I consider as the chief merit
in housekeeping. I have had some ragout veal, and I mean to have some
haricot mutton to-morrow. We are to kill a pig soon.”

“I am very fond of experimental housekeeping, such as having an
ox-cheek now and then; I shall have one next week, and I mean to have
some little dumplings put into it.”

At another time, speaking of the family doctor, she says—

“I was not ashamed of asking him to sit down to table, for we had some
pease-soup, a sparerib, and a pudding.”

Dinner at that date (1799) was, for the unfashionable, at the hour of
three, and for the fashionable not earlier than five, and sometimes
much later. Lady Newdigate (_The Cheverels of Cheverel Manor_) says,
“The hours of the family are what the polite world would not conform
to, viz., breakfast at half past eight, dine at half past three, supper
at nine, and go to bed at ten.”

Jane Austen in her home life was not in a fashionable set, and her
people did not ape the manners of society; she writes at another time,
“We dine now at half past three, and have done dinner I suppose before
you begin; we drink tea at half past six.”

When she went to stay at Godmersham, which she frequently did, she
mingled with county people and noted their manners and ways; but she
was entirely free from snobbishness, and her quiet satire of those who
imitated all the superficial details in the life of a higher class than
their own is seen in her account of Tom Musgrave in _The Watsons_,
who condescends to stay and play cards with the Watsons until nine,
when “the carriage was ordered to the door, and no entreaties for his
staying longer could now avail; for he well knew that if he stayed he
would have to sit down to supper in less than ten minutes, which, to a
man whose heart had long been fixed on calling his next meal a dinner,
was quite insupportable.”

It is not difficult to trace the evolution of the dinner-hour; in
the time of Pepys, busy men rose early and took hardly any breakfast,
perhaps a glass of wine or a draught of ale with a bit of bread.

M. Grosley, a Frenchman who visited England about the middle of the
eighteenth century, says that “the butter and tea, which the Londoners
live upon from the morning till three or four o’clock in the afternoon,
occasion the chief consumption of bread, which is cut in slices, and
so thin that it does as much honour to the address of the person who
cuts it as to the sharpness of the knife. Two or three of these slices
furnish out a breakfast.”

After this slight repast, corresponding to the Continental coffee and
roll, men worked hard until dinner-time, a meal that occupied several
hours, and at which they consumed an enormous amount; and they did
little or no work afterwards. It is easy to imagine how, on account
of work, the early dinner-hour of the poorer classes at noon began to
be postponed among men who were more or less their own masters until
they could feel, in a common phrase, they had “broken the back of
the day’s work”; hence the curious hour of three. In out-of-the-way
places to this day the Sunday dinner-hour is at four o’clock. When
breakfast became more usual, it was not necessary to have dinner so
early as three; and with our present fashion of breakfast and lunch,
to say nothing of afternoon tea, which we have transferred from after
to before dinner, the dinner may be postponed to as late an hour as is
desired without inconvenience.

Mrs. Lybbe Powys (then Caroline Girle) mentions in her lively Journal:
“We had a breakfast at Holkham in the genteelest taste, with all
kinds of cakes and fruit, placed undesired in an apartment we were to
go through, which, as the family were from home, I thought was very
clever in the housekeeper, for one is often asked by people whether one
chooses chocolate, which forbidding word puts (as intended) a negative
on the question.”

Table decorations were unknown even at large banquets, people sat on
benches and were served in the simplest manner. Lady Newdigate gives an
account of suppers and prices when she was staying at Buxton—

“Being examined by the Bart in regard to our suppers and what we paid,
he [her cousin] owned that we were charged but one shilling and it
seems they pay two. Upon this poor Mrs. Fox [the landlady] was attacked
and abused in very gross terms. So she came to us with streaming
eyes to beg we would explain to the Edmonstones that our suppers were
never anything more than a tart and cold chicken which we eat when the
company went to supper above, whereas the E.’s order a hot supper of
five or six dishes to be got at nine o’clock.”

She also gives many details as to the items constituting her meals: “We
are going to sup upon crawfish and roasted potatoes. Our feast [dinner]
will consist of neck of mutton, lamb steaks, cold beef, lobsters,
prawns, and tart.”

This is the menu of a dinner given to Prince William of Gloucester in
1798—

                             Salmon Trout.
                                 Soles.
               Fricando of Veal.       Raised Giblet Pie.
                           Vegetable Pudding.
                         Chickens.        Ham.
                            Muffin Pudding.
              Curry of Rabbits.        Preserve of Olives.
                     Soup.       Haunch of Venison.
                Open Tart Syllabub.       Raised Jelly.
                       Three Sweetbreads Larded.
                   Maccaroni.       Buttered Lobster.
                                 Peas.
                               Potatoes.
                   Baskets of Pastry.       Custards.
                                 Goose.

Forks were two-pronged and not in universal use; knives were
broad-bladed at the ends, and it was the fashion to eat peas with them.

“The taste for cleanliness has preserved the use of steel forks with
two prongs.... With regard to little bits of meat, which cannot so well
be taken hold of with the two pronged forks, recourse is had to the
knife, which is broad and round at the extremity.”

It is to be wished that two-pronged forks still survived in the public
restaurants of to-day, as the use of the present forks in such places
is one of the minor trials of daily life.

Mrs. Papendick’s account of the plate and services acquired at her
marriage gives us an idea of what was then thought necessary in this
respect. She says, “Two of our rooms were furnished by her Majesty,
and a case of plate was also sent by her, which contained cruets,
saltcellars, candle-sticks, and spoons of different sizes, silver forks
not being then used. From the Queen came also six large and six small
knives and forks, to which mamma added six more of each, and a carving
knife and fork. Our tea and coffee set were of common Indian china,
our dinner service of earthenware, to which, for our rank, there was
nothing superior, Chelsea porcelain and fine India china being only
for the wealthy. Pewter and Delft ware could also be had, but were
inferior.” Though Mr. Papendick was attached to the Court, he was
anything but wealthy.

Turning to the novels, we find food frequently mentioned in _Emma_,
when the little suppers of minced chicken and scalloped oysters,
so necessary after an early dinner, were always provided at the
Woodhouses. Poor Mr. Woodhouse’s feelings on these occasions are mixed.
“He loved to have the cloth laid because it had been the fashion of his
youth; but his conviction of suppers being very unwholesome, made him
rather sorry to see anything put upon it; and while his hospitality
would have welcomed his visitors to everything, his care for their
health made him grieve that they would eat. Such another small
basin of thin gruel as his own was all that he could, with thorough
self-approbation, recommend; though he might constrain himself, while
the ladies were comfortably clearing the nicer things, to say—

“‘Mrs. Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs. An
egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome. Serle understands boiling an
egg better than anybody. I would not recommend an egg boiled by anyone
else, but you need not be afraid, they are very small you see—one of
our small eggs will not hurt you. Miss Bates, let Emma help you to a
little bit of tart—a very little bit. Ours are all apple tarts. You
need not be afraid of unwholesome preserves here. I do not advise
the custard. Mrs. Goddard, what say you to half a glass of wine? A
small half glass put into a tumbler of water? I do not think it could
disagree with you.’”

Arthur Young, who made a tour through the southern counties of England
in 1771, gives us carefully tabulated facts, from which we learn that
the average price for meat of all kinds, beef, mutton, veal, and pork,
was no more than 3½d. per pound. Butter was 6½d. per pound, and bread
a 1¼d. By 1786 we find that “meat, taking one kind with another, was
fivepence a pound; a fowl ninepence to a shilling; a quartern loaf
fourpence; sugar fourpence a pound; tea six shillings a pound and
upwards.”

With these prices it must be remembered that wages ruled much lower
than at present. By 1801, when Jane was in Bath, the incessant state
of war had raised everything. She writes: “I am not without hopes of
tempting Mrs. Lloyd to settle in Bath; meat is only 8d. per pound,
butter 12d., and cheese 9½d. You must carefully conceal from her,
however, the exorbitant price for fish; a salmon has been sold at 2s.
9d. per pound the whole fish.”

In 1800 the price of the quartern loaf was 1s. 10½d., and then peace
was declared. In the preceding ten years the scarcity of flour had
been so great that all sorts of changes were suggested in the making
of bread. The members of the Privy Council set the example in their
own households of not eating puddings, or anything that required flour,
excepting the necessary bread, which was to be half made of rye. Flour
as powder for wigs was no more used, being needed for consumption, and
rice was recommended to the poor.

In 1800, also, was passed the Brown Bread Act, forbidding the sale of
pure white wheaten bread, or the consumption of any sort of bread new,
as if it were stale it was thought it would go farther. In the seven
years before 1800 the prices of not only bread, but meat, butter, and
sugar, had risen to double what they had been previously.

With a small household of only three persons, in the absence of
Cassandra, the ordering at Steventon Rectory cannot have occupied much
time or thought.

Though there would possibly be rather more active superintendence of
the domestics than at present, ladies of comfortable means did not
then, any more than now, spend all their mornings in the kitchen, as is
sometimes erroneously supposed. Jane would doubtless fill up her time
with a little practising, a little singing, the re-trimming of a hat,
correspondence, and the other small items that go to make up a country
girl’s life. In the usual avocations of a genteel young lady, “the
pianoforte, when they were weary of the harp, copying some indifferent
drawings, gilding a set of flower pots, and netting white gloves and
veils,” we see a tedious inanition quite foreign to our conception of
Jane.

Though gardening was not then a hobby, as it is now, there would be
general superintendence of the gardener, and many a lingering walk by
the borders and flower-beds on sunny mornings. Jane evidently loved
flowers, as she often refers to them in her letters.

“Hacker has been here to-day, putting in the fruit trees. A new plan
has been suggested concerning the plantation of the new enclosures on
the right-hand side of the elm walk; the doubt is whether it would be