PERSONALITIES

All art is the expression of an individuality, and environment has some influence on genius. Without questionEvelinaandCeciliaowe much to the accidents of Miss Burney’s own experience. Hers, indeed, was an eventful, almost romantic, life. To-day we only rememberDr.Burney as the father of Fanny; but he was a man of mark in his own generation, and his industrious enthusiasm was obviously infectious. Fanny was not early distinguished among his clever children, and we must conclude that she had something of that delicate refinement granted her heroines, making her rather shy and diffident among the mixed gatherings in which he took such pride and delight. As one of her sisters remarked, this lack of self-confidence gave her at times the appearance of hauteur; and it is quite obvious that no suspicions could have been aroused in any of them of her capacity for “taking notes.” Hers was always the quiet corner where “the old lady,” as they called her at home, could observethe quality, occasionally join in a spirited conversation, and—after her own fashion—enjoy “the diversions.” Her characteristics, says fourteen-year-old Susan, “seem to be sense, sensibility, and bashfulness, even to prudery.” It would be kinder, perhaps, to credit her with modesty such as we find expressed in her own account ofEvelina; or, A Young Lady’s Entrance into the World:

“Perhaps this may seem rather a bold attempt and title for a female whose knowledge of the world is very confined, and whose inclinations, as well as situation, incline her to a private and domestic life. All I can urge is, that I have only presumed to trace the accidents and adventures to which a ‘young woman’ is liable; I have not pretended to shew the world what it actually is, but what itappearsto a young girl of seventeen: and so far as that, surely any girl who is past seventeen may safely do? The motto of my excuse shall be taken from Pope’sTemple of Fame:‘In every work, regard the author’s end;None e’er can compass more than they intend.’”

‘In every work, regard the author’s end;None e’er can compass more than they intend.’”

How far she had actually experienced adventures, or at least met characters, similar to those of her novel, her entertaining Diaries most abundantly illustrate. One is almost ashamed before the enthusiasm which, between domesticities consideredbecoming a lady, secretarial work forDr.Burney, and voluminous letters to her faithful friend Daddy Crisp, the authoress accomplished so much in so comparatively short a period.

For she had not only to “scribble”Evelina, but to copy it all out in a feigned upright hand. It was natural enough that Lowndes, bookseller, should have refused to publish without the whole manuscript, but equally natural that she should complain:

“This man, knowing nothing of my situation, supposed, in all probability, that I could sit quietly at my bureau, and write on with expedition and ease, till the work was finished. But so different was the case, that I had hardly time to write half a page a day; and neither my health nor inclination would allow me to continue mynocturnalscribbling for so long a time, as to write first, and then copy, a whole volume. I was therefore obliged to give the attempt and affair entirely over for the present.”

Genius, of course, would not be stifled; and, in the end, she completed her work within the year, gaily accepting the payment of £20 down for the copyright, to which the publisher added £10 when its success was assured by a sale of 2300 copies during 1778.

Frances Burney became immediately the pet ofSociety. The diaries of this period are crowded with records of flattery which may seem extravagant, if not ludicrous, to modern reticence; and she has been criticised for repeating them. Yet for us it is fortunate that there were “two or three persons,” for whom her diaries were written, “to whom her fame gave the purest and most exquisite delight.” They have become history, and, as Macaulay remarks, “nothing can be more unjust than to confound these outpourings of a kind heart, sure of perfect sympathy, with the egotism of a blue-stocking who prates to all who come near her about her own novel or her own volume of sonnets.”

The fact is that, by a comparison with the Early Diaries, we may feel confident that Miss Burney was never spoilt by popularity. Inevitably she came out of the shade, talked more as she was more often singled out for compliments or conversation; but there is no appearance of conceit, and little increase in self-confidence. The youthful simplicity of her work remains her prevailing characteristic; and the slight maturity ofCecilia, not always an advantage, is obviously no more than a desire to please. It is not her own sense of dignity in authorship, but the pride of Crisp and the affectionofDr.Johnson which stimulates the effort. Always “instinct with the proprieties and the delicacies implanted by careful guardians,”[16]it was her business to “describe the world as it seems to a woman utterly preoccupied with the thought of how she seems to the world,” to picture man “simply and solely as a member of a family.” One recognises the limit and single-mindedness of her aim, in her reason for abandoning drama. She found she could not “preserve spirit and salt, and yet keep up delicacy.”

We are all familiar enough to-day with the cruelty of the reward by which foolish persons thought to acknowledge her prowess. The five years’ imprisonment at Court, though it could not ultimately tame her spirit, brought about temporary physical wreck, and seems to have lulled for ever the desire for literary fame. We have endeavoured to show, in an earlier chapter, thatCamillais not entirely without significance; but there can be no question that after her marriage she wrote only for money, and, if not without individuality, yet, as it were, to order and by rule.

We are concerned here only with her earlieryears, when she was the replica of her own heroines.

The real character of Miss Austen almost defies analysis. Contemporary evidence, of any discrimination, is practically non-existent; her life presents no outstanding adventure; and it is very dangerous to assume identity between any expression in the novels and her experience or opinion. As a matter of fact, she never even states a truth, exhibits an emotion, or judges a case except by implication. Even the apparent generalisations or author’s comments on life are really attuned to the atmosphere of the particular novel in which they appear.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged,” we read, “that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Miss Austen knows better. She is perfectly aware of the perverseness often exhibited by wealthy bachelors. The sentence is no more than a most ingenious stroke of art. It plunges us at once into the atmosphere of Meryton and the subject of the tale. It betrays Mrs. Bennet and, in a lesser degree, Lady Lucas. It prepares us for her vulgarity, at once distressing, and elevating by contrast, the refinement of Jane and Elizabeth. Never surelydid a novel open with a paragraph so suggestive. Again, the first page ofMansfield Parkcontains a phrase of similar significance. The author remarks: “There certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them.” Again, she is not speaking in her own person. Lady Bertram felt this—so far as she ever formed an opinion for herself. Mrs. Norris and Mrs. Price had personal experience of its truth. The subtle irony revealstheirpoint of view, not Miss Austen’s.

It requires, of course, no particular subtlety to trace from her novels the type of character she approves and loves best, her general standard of manners and conduct, and her scorn for hypocrisy. We have even hazarded to affirm evidence for her opinions on one or two questions of more importance. But they donotreveal her personality in detail; and to say, with her nephew, that she possessed all the charms of all her heroines, would be to make her inhuman.

There is, in fact, an undiscriminating conventionality about such descriptions as we possess which gives us no real information. We are told, for example, that

“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. It might with truth be said that her eloquent blood spoke through her modest cheek. Her voice was extremely sweet. She delivered herself with fluency and precision. Indeed, she was formed for elegant and rational society, excelling in conversation as much as in composition. In the present age it is hazardous to mention accomplishments. Our authoress would, probably, have been inferior to few in such acquirements had she not been so superior to most in higher things.”

It would seem as if the writer were really intent on describing perfection.

Andyet, we are convinced personally that Miss Austen had a peculiar charm of her own. Undoubtedly she lived among persons as empty-headed as those she has immortalised; probably she had met Mrs. Norris,Mr.Elton, andMr.Collins: apparently she was happy. No doubt her devotion to Cassandra (suggesting her partiality for sister-heroines) counted for much; and all her family were agreeable. They had a good deal of “sense.” Her life provided even less variety of incident than she discovered at Longbourn orUppercross; and, if she was fond of reading, she knew nothing about literature. Her letters do not suggest the uneasiness attached to the possession of a soul—as we moderns understand it.

Yet one point merits attention and may partially reveal. There can be no question that the very breath of her art is satire, and she is at times even cynical. Yet the one thing we know positively of her private life is that she was a favourite aunt, a devoted sister, a sympathetic daughter. Now the child-lover, beloved of children, must possess certain qualities, which prove that her cynicism was not ingrained, misanthropic, or pessimistic; that her pleasure in fun was neither ill-natured nor unsympathetic. There must have been strength of character in two directions not often united. Her life was, in a measure, isolated—from superiority. She gave more than she received. Nor can we believe her entirely unaware of what life might have yielded her in more equal companionship; entirely without bitterness—for example—in the invention of Mrs. Norris. There can be no question, we think, that life never awakened the real Jane Austen. She lived absolutely in, and for, her art, of which the delight to her was supreme. Yetfamily tradition declares, with obvious truth, that her genius never tempted her to arrogance, affectation, or selfishness. She worked in the family sitting-room, writing on slips of paper that could immediately, without bustle or parade, be slippedinsideher desk at the call of friendship or courtesy. At any moment she suffered interruption without protest. The absolute self-command so obvious in the work governed her life.

But we have always believed that one passage inPride and Prejudicedoes give us a suggestive glimpse—again only by implication—of very real autobiography:

“‘You are a great deal too apt,’ says Eliza to Jane Bennet, ‘to like people in general. You never see a fault in anybody. All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a human being in my life.’“‘I would not wish to be hasty in censuring anyone,’ answers Jane, ‘but I always speak what I think.’“‘I know you do, and it isthatwhich makes the wonder. Withyourgood sense, to be so honestly blind to the follies and nonsense of others. Affectation of candour is common enough—one meets it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design—to take the good of everybody’s character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad—belongs to you alone.’”

“‘I would not wish to be hasty in censuring anyone,’ answers Jane, ‘but I always speak what I think.’

“‘I know you do, and it isthatwhich makes the wonder. Withyourgood sense, to be so honestly blind to the follies and nonsense of others. Affectation of candour is common enough—one meets it everywhere. But to be candid without ostentation or design—to take the good of everybody’s character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad—belongs to you alone.’”

This is, we like to fancy, a portrait of her own sister, Cassandra. Jane Austen herself wasnot“a great deal too apt to like people in general,” though she too could be marvellously tender with Marianne Dashwood, most “silly” of heroines, and her still more ridiculous mother. It is certain, indeed, that she never neglected even the most tiresome “neighbours,” but she did not love them. There is evidence enough inPersuasionthat she could sympathise with deep feelings, which were necessarily suppressed in such surroundings as she gives all her heroines, and had experienced herself.

Her reverend father, “the handsome proctor,” like most clergymen of his generation, was essentially a country gentleman, not very much better educated, and scarcely more strenuous, than his neighbours. His wife took a simple and honest pride in the management of her household; and his sons followed their father’s footsteps, entered the navy, or pursued whatever other profession they could mostconvenientlyenter. The whole atmosphere of the vicarage was complacently material and old-fashioned, where the ideas of progress filtered slowly and discontent was far from being considered divine. The personal aloofness fromcharacters delineated, so conspicuous in her art, was borrowed from life. Everywhere, and always, the real Jane stood aside.

Nor were there granted her any of the consolations of culture. We have no doubt that she received no more education than might be acquired at Mrs. Goddard’s:

“A school, not a seminary, or an establishment, or anything which professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirements with elegant morality, upon new principles and new systems—and where young ladies, for enormous pay, might be screwed out of health and into vanity—but a real, honest, old-fashioned boarding-school, where a reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price, and where girls might be sent out of the way and scramble themselves into a little education, without any danger of coming back prodigies.”

It needed, perhaps, some such unromantic, unruffled, and unvaried existence, with a mind perfectly composed, to produce those six flawless works of art which remain for us the most complete expression of good sense, the most complete triumph over the fanciful exaggerations of romance. Genius alone could adjust the balance with such nicety and leave us content. She forces us, by sheerwit and sympathy, to love and admire the very persons of all time and place who have in themselves least to interest or attract.

The character of Charlotte Brontë, like her work, brings us at once into a new atmosphere. All here is emotionally strenuous, if not melodramatic. The bleak parsonage, the stern widowed father, the vicious son, the three wonderful sisters: around and about them the mysteries ofWuthering Heights. The picture of those lonely girls, all the world to each other and nothing to the world, dreaming and scribbling in the cold, without sympathy and without guidance, is stamped for ever on our imagination. We know something, moreover, fromJane Eyre, about their cruel experience of schooldays, something, fromAgnes Grey, about their noble efforts at independence. Finally, we have studied and talked over “the Secret”—supposed to reconcile work and life. As to the main outlines of temperament, at any rate, there can be no question.

Charlotte Brontë’s experience of life was strictly limited: she had little interest about the trivialities of the tea-table. But she observed keenly, had a tenacious memory, and felt with intensity.Without hardness or conceit, she was entirely self-centred: there is no aloofness about her work: it centres passionately around the heroine, reflecting her own emotional outlook. She took life seriously, like her heroines: acutely sensitive to words and looks; caring nothing for what did not personally affect her. No doubt there is something Irish, something too of the grim moorlands, in that mysterious instinct which fired Charlotte, and her sisters, to their perpetual questionings of Providence, their burning protests against the harshness and hypocrisy of the world. Circumstances stifle them and they must speak. Speaking, they must strike.

Charlotte Brontë, indeed, lived almost as much aside from the world as Jane Austen. But Haworth was not Stevenage: theRev.Patrick was certainly not a “handsome proctor,” and Bramwell could never have risen in “the Service.” It was in nature, however, that the contrast is most marked. The author ofJane Eyre, however shy and unsociable, was not content to stand aloof and look on. With little enough experience of actualities, she was for evermaking lifefor herself, sending that plain, visionary, eager, andsensitive ego of hers out into the world; and uttering with fiery eloquence her comments on what she imagined herself to have done and seen. Until recently, indeed, we have supposed that even the heart of her work, that passionate devotion which she was the first of women to reveal, was entirely imaginative, aninventioncreated without guidance from personal experience. Now evidence has been published which scarcely permits doubt; that whereas, obviously, her pupil-teacherdom at Brussels widened her social outlook, it also awoke her heart. Charlotte Brontë, evidently, fell in love with the “Professor” at the Pensionnat Heger; and thus gained the memory of passion. But it may be reasonably questioned, after all, whether the experience did much for her art. Since Monsieur Heger, no less certainly, did not return her love, and seldom even answered her letters, he could not have taught her the mysteries; and as, like her heroines, she was fatally addicted to exaggeration—in love or hate—it is not probable that her heroes—or ideal men—bear any very real likeness to him in character. After all, she practically “invented” him, as independent witnesses have established; and the accidentof her idealisations centring about a living man is not particularly significant. Her attitude, and that of her heroines, towards mankind in general, and towards “the man” in particular, is really woven out of a strong imagination: and the essence of her being remains a dreamer’s.Jane EyreandVilletteare, transparently, the work of one who created her own world for herself only; and we need not modify this impression from any letters of hers ever printed or written. Emotionally she was nourished on her own thoughts; and, in her case, we may read them fearlessly in her work. It was not her nature to suppress, or conceal, anything.She has put herself on record.Here lies the essential difference between her work and Miss Burney’s or Jane Austen’s. While they reflected, with almost unruffled enjoyment, the surface of life, she tore off the wrappings and revealed a Soul. That, too, was of her very self. She had missed everything that mattered. It was at once her consolation and her revenge to project herself into the heart of life, and tell the tale.

The character and experience of George Eliot is far more complex, like her achievement, thanthat of those who preceded her. Like them, bred in retirement, though among more strenuous surroundings, her youth gave her also much insight into what life means to “small” people. But there was a strong religious atmosphere around her, accident gave her the early control of affairs, and her education—of a later date—was more thorough. Then came the stirring of doubt, from associations with sceptics; the professional training from practical journalism; and the “problem” evoked by her friendship with George Henry Lewes. Life was training her for modern work.

The intense seriousness, the active conscience of primitive faith, remained always with her, influencing characterisation. But it was the wider teachings of philosophy, the later experiences, and the conscious desire after advance that made her didactic. Her letters reveal an unexpected sentimentalism and an intense craving for personal affection; her teachings are all interpreted by what she has read, or inspired by men she has met; but they are in touch with real life and directed by real thought. It was her personal experience and character which enabled George Eliot to combine the “manners” comedy ofFanny Burney and Jane Austen with Miss Brontë’s moral campaign; to weld the message of woman into modernity.

She was, however, before all things, a professional student of humanity. Though she actually commenced novelist at a comparatively advanced age, the previous years, and every item of character, had been a training for this work. She observed with accuracy, remembered without effort, and studiously cultivated her natural literary powers. Emotionally and intellectually she got the most out of life; never, perhaps, quite letting herself go, but keenly alive to every impression, on the alert for experience and information. It was not in her ever to let things alone.

Such a temperament, of course, does not produce either spontaneous fun, sleepless humour, or unbridled self-torment; but it acquires the power of responding to all human difficulties, understanding the “problem” of life, and sympathising in its beauty and joy. George Eliot was always pondering about truth, considering the remedies for evil, looking forward towards progress. Her own experience was utilised freely, with an instinct for dramatic effect, but it is notthe whole body of her work. That was a deliberately composed art, put out as an instrument for a given purpose, studied and ornamented. But while thus nurtured and apart, it is also the expression of herself, the sum of her being. Therein, like an actress, she plays many parts, putting on the mood of each new story and living in it.

She is, in fact, a typical woman of letters, as we now understand the term, with all the excellences and all the limitations of even the greatest among us.

FOOTNOTES:[16]Her stepmother.

[16]Her stepmother.

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