Memoir of Jane Austen - James Edward Austen-Leigh (some good books to read TXT) 📗

making small prizes.  At one time he was absent from England on such services for seven years together.  In later life he commanded the Bellerophon, at the bombardment of St. Jean d’Acre in 1840.  In 1850 he went out in the Hastings, in command of the East India and China station, but on the breaking out of the Burmese war he transferred his flag to a steam sloop, for the purpose of getting up the shallow waters of the Irrawaddy, on board of which he died of cholera in 1852, in the seventy-fourth year of his age.  His sweet temper and affectionate disposition, in which he resembled his sister Jane, had secured to him an unusual portion of attachment, not only from his own family, but from all the officers and common sailors who served under him.  One who was with him at his death has left this record of him: ‘Our good Admiral won the hearts of all by his gentleness and kindness while he was struggling with disease, and endeavouring to do his duty as Commander-in-chief of the British naval forces in these waters.  His death was a great grief to the whole fleet.  I know that I cried bitterly when I found he was dead.’  The Order in Council of the Governor-General of India, Lord Dalhousie, expresses ‘admiration of the staunch high spirit which, notwithstanding his age and previous sufferings, had led the Admiral to take his part in the trying service which has closed his career.’

These two brothers have been dwelt on longer than the others because their honourable career accounts for Jane Austen’s partiality for the Navy, as well as for the readiness and accuracy with which she wrote about it.  She was always very careful not to meddle with matters which she did not thoroughly understand.  She never touched upon politics, law, or medicine, subjects which some novel writers have ventured on rather too boldly, and have treated, perhaps, with more brilliancy than accuracy.  But with ships and sailors she felt herself at home, or at least could always trust to a brotherly critic to keep her right.  I believe that no flaw has ever been found in her seamanship either in ‘Mansfield Park’ or in ‘Persuasion.’

But dearest of all to the heart of Jane was her sister Cassandra, about three years her senior.  Their sisterly affection for each other could scarcely be exceeded.  Perhaps it began on Jane’s side with the feeling of deference natural to a loving child towards a kind elder sister.  Something of this feeling always remained; and even in the maturity of her powers, and in the enjoyment of increasing success, she would still speak of Cassandra as of one wiser and better than herself.  In childhood, when the elder was sent to the school of a Mrs. Latournelle, in the Forbury at Reading, the younger went with her, not because she was thought old enough to profit much by the instruction there imparted, but because she would have been miserable without her sister; her mother observing that ‘if Cassandra were going to have her head cut off, Jane would insist on sharing her fate.’  This attachment was never interrupted or weakened.  They lived in the same home, and shared the same bed-room, till separated by death.  They were not exactly alike.  Cassandra’s was the colder and calmer disposition; she was always prudent and well judging, but with less outward demonstration of feeling and less sunniness of temper than Jane possessed.  It was remarked in her family that ‘Cassandra had the merit of having her temper always under command, but that Jane had the happiness of a temper that never required to be commanded.’  When ‘Sense and Sensibility’ came out, some persons, who knew the family slightly, surmised that the two elder Miss Dashwoods were intended by the author for her sister and herself; but this could not be the case.  Cassandra’s character might indeed represent the ‘sense’ of Elinor, but Jane’s had little in common with the ‘sensibility’ of Marianne.  The young woman who, before the age of twenty, could so clearly discern the failings of Marianne Dashwood, could hardly have been subject to them herself.

This was the small circle, continually enlarged, however, by the increasing families of four of her brothers, within which Jane Austen found her wholesome pleasures, duties, and interests, and beyond which she went very little into society during the last ten years of her life.  There was so much that was agreeable and attractive in this family party that its members may be excused if they were inclined to live somewhat too exclusively within it.  They might see in each other much to love and esteem, and something to admire.  The family talk had abundance of spirit and vivacity, and was never troubled by disagreements even in little matters, for it was not their habit to dispute or argue with each other: above all, there was strong family affection and firm union, never to be broken but by death.  It cannot be doubted that all this had its influence on the author in the construction of her stories, in which a family party usually supplies the narrow stage, while the interest is made to revolve round a few actors.

It will be seen also that though her circle of society was small, yet she found in her neighbourhood persons of good taste and cultivated minds.  Her acquaintance, in fact, constituted the very class from which she took her imaginary characters, ranging from the member of parliament, or large landed proprietor, to the young curate or younger midshipman of equally good family; and I think that the influence of these early associations may be traced in her writings, especially in two particulars.  First, that she is entirely free from the vulgarity, which is so offensive in some novels, of dwelling on the outward appendages of wealth or rank, as if they were things to which the writer was unaccustomed; and, secondly, that she deals as little with very low as with very high stations in life.  She does not go lower than the Miss Steeles, Mrs. Elton, and John Thorpe, people of bad taste and underbred manners, such as are actually found sometimes mingling with better society.  She has nothing resembling the Brangtons, or Mr. Dubster and his friend Tom Hicks, with whom Madame D’Arblay loved to season her stories, and to produce striking contrasts to her well bred characters.

Steventon Parsonage

CHAPTER II.

Description of Steventon—Life at Steventon—Changes of Habits and Customs in the last Century.

As the first twenty-five years, more than half of the brief life of Jane Austen, were spent in the parsonage of Steventon, some description of that place ought to be given.  Steventon is a small rural village upon the chalk hills of north Hants, situated in a winding valley about seven miles from Basingstoke.  The South-Western railway crosses it by a short embankment, and, as it curves round, presents a good view of it on the left hand to those who are travelling down the line, about three miles before entering the tunnel under Popham Beacon.  It may be known to some sportsmen, as lying in one of the best portions of the Vine Hunt.  It is certainly not a picturesque country; it presents no grand or extensive views; but the features are small rather than plain.  The surface continually swells and sinks, but the hills are not bold, nor the valleys deep; and though it is sufficiently well clothed with woods and hedgerows, yet the poverty of the soil in most places prevents the timber from attaining a large size.  Still it has its beauties.  The lanes wind along in a natural curve, continually fringed with irregular borders of native turf, and lead to pleasant nooks and corners.  One who knew and loved it well very happily expressed its quiet charms, when he wrote

True taste is not fastidious, nor rejects,
Because they may not come within the rule
Of composition pure and picturesque,
Unnumbered simple scenes which fill the leaves
Of Nature’s sketch book.

Of this somewhat tame country, Steventon, from the fall of the ground, and the abundance of its timber, is certainly one of the prettiest spots; yet one cannot be surprised that, when Jane’s mother, a little before her marriage, was shown the scenery of her future home, she should have thought it unattractive, compared with the broad river, the rich valley, and the noble hills which she had been accustomed to behold at her native home near Henley-upon-Thames.

The house itself stood in a shallow valley, surrounded by sloping meadows, well sprinkled with elm trees, at the end of a small village of cottages, each well provided with a garden, scattered about prettily on either side of the road.  It was sufficiently commodious to hold pupils in addition to a growing family, and was in those times considered to be above the average of parsonages; but the rooms were finished with less elegance than would now be found in the most ordinary dwellings.  No cornice marked the junction of wall and ceiling; while the beams which supported the upper floors projected into the rooms below in all their naked simplicity, covered only by a coat of paint or whitewash: accordingly it has since been considered unworthy of being the Rectory house of a family living, and about forty-five years ago it was pulled down for the purpose of erecting a new house in a far better situation on the opposite side of the valley.

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 Catharine Morland’s childish delight in ‘rolling down the green slope at the back of the house.’

But the chief beauty of Steventon consisted in its hedgerows.  A hedgerow, in that country, does not mean a thin formal line of quickset, but an irregular border of copse-wood and timber, often wide enough to contain within it a winding footpath, or a rough cart track.  Under its shelter the earliest primroses, anemones, and wild hyacinths were to be found; sometimes, the first bird’s-nest; and, now and then, the unwelcome adder.  Two such hedgerows radiated, as it were, from the parsonage garden.  One, a continuation of the turf terrace, proceeded westward, forming the southern boundary of the home meadows; and was formed into a rustic shrubbery, with occasional seats, entitled ‘The Wood Walk.’  The other ran straight up the hill, under the name of ‘The Church Walk,’ because it led to the parish church, as well as to a fine old manor-house, of Henry VIII.’s time, occupied by a family named Digweed, who have for more than a century rented it, together with the chief farm in the parish.  The church itself—I speak of it as it then was, before the improvements made by the present rector—

      A little spireless fane,
Just seen above the woody lane,

might have appeared mean and uninteresting to an ordinary observer; but the adept in church architecture would have known that it must have stood there some seven centuries, and would have found beauty in the very narrow early English windows, as well as in the general proportions of its little