Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters Part 35

MY DEAREST Ca.s.sANDRA,--Thank you five hundred and forty times for the exquisite piece of workmans.h.i.+p which was brought into the room this morning, while we were at breakfast, with some very inferior works of art in the same way, and which I read with high glee, much delighted with everything it told, whether good or bad. It is so rich in striking intelligence that I hardly know what to reply to first. I believe finery must have it.

I am extremely glad that you like the poplin. I thought it would have my mother's approbation, but was not so confident of yours. Remember that it is a present. Do not refuse me. I am very rich.

Let me know when you begin the new tea, and the new white wine. My present elegancies have not yet made me indifferent to such matters. I am still a cat if I see a mouse.

''Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more,'

but to make amends for that, our visit to the Tyldens is over. My brother, f.a.n.n.y, Edwd., and I went; Geo. stayed at home with W. K. There was nothing entertaining, or out of the common way. We met only Tyldens and double Tyldens. A whist-table for the gentlemen, a grown-up musical young lady to play backgammon with f.a.n.n.y, and engravings of the Colleges at Cambridge for me. In the morning we returned Mrs. Sherer's visit. I like _Mr._ S.[264] very much.

Poor Dr. Isham is obliged to admire _P. and P._, and to send me word that he is sure he shall not like Madame D'Arblay's new novel[265] half so well. Mrs. C[ooke] invented it all, of course. He desires his compliments to you and my mother.

I am now alone in the library, mistress of all I survey; at least I may say so, and repeat the whole poem if I like it, without offence to anybody.

I have _this_ moment seen Mrs. Driver driven up to the kitchen door. I cannot close with a grander circ.u.mstance or greater wit.

Yours affectionately, J. A.

Miss Austen, Chawton.

The next of Jane's surviving letters was addressed to her brother Frank.

G.o.dmersham Park [September 25, 1813].[266]

MY DEAREST FRANK,--The 11th of this month brought me your letter, and I a.s.sure you I thought it very well worth its two and three-pence. I am very much obliged to you for filling me so long a sheet of paper; you are a good one to traffic with in that way, you pay most liberally; my letter was a scratch of a note compared to yours, and then you write so even, so clear, both in style and penmans.h.i.+p, so much to the point, and give so much intelligence, that it is enough to kill one. I am sorry Sweden is so poor, and my riddle so bad. The idea of a fas.h.i.+onable bathing-place in Mecklenberg! How can people pretend to be fas.h.i.+onable or to bathe out of England? Rostock market makes one's mouth water; our cheapest butcher's meat is double the price of theirs; nothing under nine-pence all this summer, and I believe upon recollection nothing under ten-pence.

Bread has sunk and is likely to sink more, which we hope may make meat sink too. But I have no occasion to think of the price of bread or of meat where I am now; let me shake off vulgar cares and conform to the happy indifference of East Kent wealth. I wonder whether you and the King of Sweden knew that I was come to G.o.dmersham with my brother. Yes, I suppose you have received due notice of it by some means or other. I have not been here these four years, so I am sure the event deserves to be talked of before and behind, as well as in the middle. We left Chawton on the 14th, spent two entire days in town, and arrived here on the 17th. My brother, f.a.n.n.y, Lizzie, Marianne and I composed this division of the family, and filled his carriage inside and out.

Two post-chaises, under the escort of George, conveyed eight more across the country, the chair brought two, two others came on horseback, and the rest by coach, and so by one means or another, we all are removed. It puts me in remind of St.

Paul's s.h.i.+pwreck, when all are said, by different means, to reach the sh.o.r.e in safety. I left my mother, Ca.s.sandra, and Martha well, and have had good accounts of them since. At present they are quite alone, but they are going to be visited by Mrs. Heathcote and Miss Bigg, and to have a few days of Henry's company likewise.

Of our three evenings in town, one was spent at the Lyceum, and another at Covent Garden. _The Clandestine Marriage_ was the most respectable of the performances, the rest were sing-song and trumpery; but it did very well for Lizzie and Marianne, who were indeed delighted, but I wanted better acting. There was no actor worth naming. I believe the theatres are thought at a very low ebb at present. Henry has probably sent you his own account of his visit in Scotland. I wish he had had more time, and could have gone further north, and deviated to the lakes on his way back; but what he was able to do seems to have afforded him great enjoyment, and he met with scenes of higher beauty in Roxburghs.h.i.+re than I had supposed the South of Scotland possessed. Our nephew's gratification was less keen than our brother's.

Edward is no enthusiast in the beauties of nature.

His enthusiasm is for the sports of the field only. He is a very promising and pleasing young man, however, behaves with great propriety to his father, and great kindness to his brothers and sisters, and we must forgive his thinking more of grouse and partridges than lakes and mountains.

In this house there is a constant succession of small events, somebody is always going or coming; this morning we had Edward Bridges unexpectedly to breakfast with us, on his way from Ramsgate, where is his wife, to Lenham, where is his church, and to-morrow he dines and sleeps here on his return.

They have been all the summer at Ramsgate for her health; she is a poor honey--the sort of woman who gives me the idea of being determined never to be well and who likes her spasms and nervousness, and the consequence they give her, better than anything else. This is an ill-natured statement to send all over the Baltic. The Mr. Knatchbulls, dear Mrs. Knight's brothers, dined here the other day. They came from the Friars, which is still on their hands. The elder made many inquiries after you. Mr. Sherer is quite a new Mr. Sherer to me; I heard him for the first time last Sunday, and he gave us an excellent sermon, a little too eager sometimes in his delivery, but that is to me a better extreme than the want of animation, especially when it evidently comes from the heart, as in him. The clerk is as much like you as ever.

I am always glad to see him on that account. But the Sherers are going away. He has a bad curate at Westwell, whom he can eject only by residing there himself. He goes nominally for three years, and a Mr. Paget is to have the curacy of G.o.dmersham; a married man, with a very musical wife, which I hope may make her a desirable acquaintance to f.a.n.n.y.

I thank you very warmly for your kind consent to my application,[267] and the kind hint which followed it. I was previously aware of what I should be laying myself open to; but the truth is that the secret has spread so far as to be scarcely the shadow of a secret now, and that, I believe, whenever the third appears, I shall not even attempt to tell lies about it. I shall rather try to make all the money than all the mystery I can of it. People shall pay for their knowledge if I can make them. Henry heard _P. and P._ warmly praised in Scotland by Lady Robert Kerr and another lady; and what does he do, in the warmth of his brotherly vanity and love, but immediately tell them who wrote it? A thing once set going in that way--one knows how it spreads, and he, dear creature, has set it going so much more than once.

I know it is all done from affection and partiality, but at the same time let me here again express to you and Mary my sense of the _superior_ kindness which you have shown on the occasion in doing what I wished. I am trying to harden myself.

After all, what a trifle it is, in all its bearings, to the really important points of one's existence, even in this world.

Your very affectionate sister, J. A.

There is to be a second edition of _S. and S._ Egerton advises it.

The last paragraph of this letter sets two things plainly before us: a strong preference for remaining unknown if she could, and the invariable sweetness of temper which forbade her to blame a brother whom she loved because he had made such concealment impossible. That this acquiescence, however, was not reached without a struggle the last few words of the paragraph show.

Next follows a letter to Ca.s.sandra, dated Monday (October 11):--

We had our dinner party on Wednesday, with the addition of Mrs. and Miss Milles. . . . Both mother and daughter are much as I have always found them.

I like the mother--first, because she reminds me of Mrs. Birch; and, secondly, because she is cheerful and grateful for what she is at the age of ninety and upwards. The day was pleasant enough. I sat by Mr. Chisholme, and we talked away at a great rate about nothing worth hearing.

Lizzie is very much obliged to you for your letter and will answer it soon, but has so many things to do that it may be four or five days before she can. This is quite her own message, spoken in rather a desponding tone. Your letter gave pleasure to all of us; we had all the reading of it of course, I _three times_, as I undertook, to the great relief of Lizzie, to read it to Sackree,[268] and afterwards to Louisa.

Mrs. ---- called here on Sat.u.r.day. I never saw her before. She is a large, ungenteel woman, with self-satisfied and would-be elegant manners.

On Thursday, Mr. Lus.h.i.+ngton,[269] M.P. for Canterbury, and manager of the Lodge Hounds, dines here, and stays the night. He is chiefly young Edward's acquaintance. If I can I will get a frank from him, and write to you all the sooner. I suppose the Ashford ball will furnish something.

I am looking over _Self-Control_ again, and my opinion is confirmed of its being an excellently-meant, elegantly-written work, without anything of nature or probability in it. I declare I do not know whether Laura's pa.s.sage down the American river is not the most natural, possible, everyday thing she ever does.

_Tuesday._--I admire the sagacity and taste of Charlotte Williams. Those large dark eyes always judge well. I will compliment her by naming a heroine after her.

Southey's _Life of Nelson_: I am tired of _Lives of Nelson_, being that I never read any. I will read this, however, if Frank is mentioned in it.

[October 14, 1813.]

Now I will prepare for Mr. Lus.h.i.+ngton, and as it will be wisest also to prepare for his not coming, or my not getting a frank, I shall write very close from the first, and even leave room for the seal in the proper place. When I have followed up my last with this I shall feel somewhat less unworthy of you than the state of our correspondence now requires.

Mr. W. is about five-or six-and-twenty, not ill-looking, and not agreeable. He is certainly no addition. A sort of cool, gentlemanlike manner, but very silent. They say his name is Henry, a proof how unequally the gifts of fortune are bestowed. I have seen many a John and Thomas much more agreeable.