Jane Austen's Sailor Brothers - J. H. Hubback (novels for students txt) 📗

No one can read Jane Austen’s novels, her life, or her letters, without feeling that to her the ties of family were stronger and more engrossing than any others.

Among the numbers of men and women who cheerfully sacrifice the claims of their family in order that they may be free to confer somewhat doubtful benefits on society, it is refreshing to find one who is the object of much love and gratitude from countless unknown readers, and who yet would have been the first to laugh at the notion that her writing was of more importance than her thought for her brothers and sister, or the various home duties which fell to her share. It is this sweetness and wholesomeness of thought, this clear conviction that her “mission” was to do her duty,that gives her books and letters their peculiar quality. Her theory of life is clear. Whatever troubles befall, people must go on doing their work and making the best of it; and we are not allowed to feel respect, or even overmuch sympathy, for the characters in the novels who cannot bear this test. There is a matter-of-courseness about this view which, combined with all that we know of the other members of the family, gives one the idea that the children at Steventon had a strict bringing up. This, in fact, was the case, and a very rich reward was the result. In a family of seven all turned Out well, two rose to the top of their profession, and one was—Jane Austen.

The fact of her intense devotion to her family could not but influence her writing. She loved them all so well that she could not help thinking of them even in the midst of her work; and the more we know of her surroundings, and the lives of those she loved, the more we understand of the small joyous touches in her books. She was far too good an artist, as well as too reticent in nature, to take whole characters from life; but small characteristics and failings, dwelt on with humorous partiality, can often be traced back to the natures of those she loved. Mary Crawford’s brilliant letters to Fanny Price remind one of Cassandra, who was the “finest comic writer of the present age. Charles’ impetuous disposition is exaggerated in Bingley, who says, “Whatever I do is done in a hurry,” a remark which is severely reproved by Darcy (and not improbably by Francis Austen), as an “indirect boast.” Francis himself comes in for his share of teasing on the opposite point of his extreme neatness, precision, and accuracy. “They are so neat and careful in all their ways,” says Mrs. Clay, in “Persuasion,” of the naval profession in general; and nothing could be more characteristic of Francis Austen and some of his descendants than the overpowering accuracy with which Edmund Bertram corrects Mary Crawford’s hasty estimate of the distance in the wood.

“‘I am really not tired, which I almost wonder at; for we must have waled at least a mile in this wood. Do you not think we have?’

“‘Not half a mile,’ was his sturdy answer; for he was not yet so much in love as to measure distance, or reckon time, with feminine lawlessness.

“‘Oh, you do not consider how much we have wound about. We have taken such a very serpentine course, and the wood itself must be half a mile long in a straight line, for we have never seen the end of it yet since we left the first great path.’

“‘But if you remember, before we left that first great path we saw directly to the end of it. We looked down the whole vista, and saw it closed by iron gates, and it could not have been more than a furlong in length.’

“‘Oh, I know nothing of your furlongs, but I am sure it is a very long wood; and that we have been winding in and out ever since we came into it; and therefore when I say that we have walked a mile in it I must speak within compass.’

“‘We have been exactly a quarter of an hour here,’ said Edmund, taking out his watch. ‘Do you think we are walking four miles an hour?’

“‘Oh, do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.’

“A few steps farther brought them out at the bottom of the very walk they had been talking of.

“‘Now, Miss Crawford, if you will look up the walk, you will convince yourself that it cannot be half a mile long, or half half a mile.’

“‘It is an immense distance,’ said she; ‘I see that with a glance.’

“‘He still reasoned with her, but in vain. She would not calculate, she would not compare. She would only smile and assert. The greatest degree of rational consistency could not have been more engaging, and they talked with mutual satisfaction.’”

It is in “Mansfield Park” and in “Persuasion” that the influence of her two sailor brothers, Francis and Charles, on Jane Austen’s work can be most easily traced. Unlike the majority of writers of all time, from Shakespeare with his “Seacoast of Bohemia” down to the author of a penny dreadful, Jane Austen never touched, even lightly, on a subject unless she had a real knowledge of its details. Her pictures of the life of a country gentleman and of clergymen are accurate, if not always sympathetic. Perhaps it was all too near her own experience to have the charm of romance, but concerning sailors she is romantic. Their very faults are lovable in her eyes, and their lives packed with interest. When Admiral Croft, Captain Wentworth, or William Price appears on the scene, the other characters immediately take on a merely subsidiary interest, and this prominence is always that given by appreciation. The distinction awarded to Mr. Collins or Mrs. Elton, as the chief object of ridicule, is of a different nature. The only instance she cared to give us of a sailor who is not to be admired is Mary Crawford’s uncle, the Admiral, and even he is allowed to earn our esteem by disinterested kindness to William Price.

No doubt some of this enthusiasm was due to the spirit of the times, when, as Edward Ferrars says, “The navy had fashion on its side”; but that sisterly partiality was a stronger element there can be no question. Her place in the family was between these two brothers, Francis just a year older, and Charles some four years younger. Much has been said about her fondness for “pairs of sisters” in her novels, but no less striking are the “brother and sister” friendships which are an important factor in four out of her six books. The love of Darcy for his sister Georgina perhaps suggests the intimacy between James Austen and Jane, where the difference in their ages of ten years, their common love of books, the advice and encouragement that the elder brother was able to give his sister over her reading, are all points of resemblance. The equal terms of the affection of Francis and Jane are of another type.

Henry Tilney and his sister Eleanor, Mrs. Croft and Frederick Wentworth, give us good instances of firm friendships. In the case of the Tilneys, confidences are exchanged with ease and freedom; but in “Persuasion,” the feeling in this respect, as in all others, is more delicate, and only in the chapter which Jane Austen afterwards cancelled can we see the quickness of Mrs. Croft’s perceptions where her brother was concerned. For so long as she supposes him to be on the brink of marrying Louisa Musgrove, sympathy is no