Letters To Dead Authors LETTER--To Jane Austen byLang, Andrew
Madam,--If to the enjoyments of your present state be lacking a view
of the minor infirmities or foibles of men, I cannot but think (were
the thought permitted) that your pleasures are yet incomplete.
Moreover, it is certain that a woman of parts who has once meddled
with literature will never wholly lose her love for the discussion
of that delicious topic, nor cease to relish what (in the cant of
our new age) is styled "literary shop." For these reasons I attempt
to convey to you some inkling of the present state of that agreeable
art which you, madam, raised to its highest pitch of perfection.
As to your own works (immortal, as I believe), I have but little
that is wholly cheering to tell one who, among women of letters, was
almost alone in her freedom from a lettered vanity. You are not a
very popular author: your volumes are not found in gaudy covers on
every bookstall; or, if found, are not perused with avidity by the
Emmas and Catherines of our generation. 'Tis not long since a blow
was dealt (in the estimation of the unreasoning) at your character
as an author by the publication of your familiar letters. The
editor of these epistles, unfortunately, did not always take your
witticisms, and he added others which were too unmistakably his own.
While the injudicious were disappointed by the absence of your
exquisite style and humour, the wiser sort were the more convinced
of your wisdom. In your letters (knowing your correspondents) you
gave but the small personal talk of the hour, for them sufficient;
for your books you reserved matter and expression which are
imperishable. Your admirers, if not very numerous, include all
persons of taste, who, in your favour, are apt somewhat to abate the
rule, or shake off the habit, which commonly confines them to but
temperate laudation.
'Tis the fault of all art to seem antiquated and faded in the eyes
of the succeeding generation. The manners of your age were not the
manners of to-day, and young gentlemen and ladies who think Scott
"slow," think Miss Austen "prim" and "dreary." Yet, even could you
return among us, I scarcely believe that, speaking the language of
the hour, as you might, and versed in its habits, you would win the
general admiration. For how tame, madam, are your characters,
especially your favourite heroines! how limited the life which you
knew and described! how narrow the range of your incidents! how
correct your grammar!
As heroines, for example, you chose ladies like Emma, and Elizabeth,
and Catherine: women remarkable neither for the brilliance nor for
the degradation of their birth; women wrapped up in their own and
the parish's concerns, ignorant of evil, as it seems, and
unacquainted with vain yearnings and interesting doubts. Who can
engage his fancy with their match-makings and the conduct of their
affections, when so many daring and dazzling heroines approach and
solicit his regard?
Here are princesses dressed in white velvet stamped with golden
fleurs-de-lys --ladies with hearts of ice and lips of fire, who
count their roubles by the million, their lovers by the score, and
even their husbands, very often, in figures of some arithmetical
importance. With these are the immaculate daughters of itinerant
Italian musicians--maids whose souls are unsoiled amidst the
contaminations of our streets, and whose acquaintance with the art
of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Daedalus and Scopas, is the more
admirable, because entirely derived from loving study of the
inexpensive collections vended by the plaster-of-Paris man round the
corner. When such heroines are wooed by the nephews of Dukes, where
are your Emmas and Elizabeths? Your volumes neither excite nor
satisfy the curiosities provoked by that modern and scientific
fiction, which is greatly admired, I learn, in the United States, as
well as in France and at home.
You erred, it cannot be denied, with your eyes open. Knowing Lydia
and Kitty so intimately as you did, why did you make of them almost
insignificant characters? With Lydia for a heroine you might have
gone far; and, had you devoted three volumes, and the chief of your
time, to the passions of Kitty, you might have held your own, even
now, in the circulating library. How Lyddy, perched on a corner of
the roof, first beheld her Wickham; how, on her challenge, he
climbed up by a ladder to her side; how they kissed, caressed, swung
on gates together, met at odd seasons, in strange places, and
finally eloped: all this might have been put in the mouth of a
jealous elder sister, say Elizabeth, and you would not have been
less popular than several favourites of our time. Had you cast the
whole narrative into the present tense, and lingered lovingly over
the thickness of Mary's legs and the softness of Kitty's cheeks, and
the blonde fluffiness of Wickham's whiskers, you would have left a
romance still dear to young ladies.
Or, again, you might entrance fair students still, had you
concentrated your attention on Mrs. Rushworth, who eloped with Henry
Crawford. These should have been the chief figures of "Mansfield
Park." But you timidly decline to tackle Passion. "Let other
pens," you write, "dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious
subjects as soon as I can." Ah, THERE is the secret of your
failure! Need I add that the vulgarity and narrowness of the social
circles you describe impair your popularity? I scarce remember more
than one lady of title, and but very few lords (and these
unessential) in all your tales. Now, when we all wish to be in
society, we demand plenty of titles in our novels, at any rate, and
we get lords (and very queer lords) even from Republican authors,
born in a country which in your time was not renowned for its
literature. I have heard a critic remark, with a decided air of
fashion, on the brevity of the notice which your characters give
each other when they offer invitations to dinner. "An invitation to
dinner next day was despatched," and this demonstrates that your
acquaintance "went out" very little, and had but few engagements.
How vulgar, too, is one of your heroines, who bids Mr. Darcy "keep
his breath to cool his porridge." I blush for Elizabeth! It were
superfluous to add that your characters are debased by being
invariably mere members of the Church of England as by law
established. The Dissenting enthusiast, the open soul that glides
from Esoteric Buddhism to the Salvation Army, and from the Higher
Pantheism to the Higher Paganism, we look for in vain among your
studies of character. Nay, the very words I employ are of unknown
sound to you; so how can you help us in the stress of the soul's
travailings?
You may say that the soul's travailings are no affair of yours;
proving thereby that you have indeed but a lowly conception of the
duty of the novelist. I only remember one reference, in all your
works, to that controversy which occupies the chief of our
attention--the great controversy on Creation or Evolution. Your
Jane Bennet cries: "I have no idea of there being so much Design in
the world as some persons imagine." Nor do you touch on our mighty
social question, the Land Laws, save when Mrs. Bennet appears as a
Land Reformer, and rails bitterly against the cruelty "of settling
an estate away from a family of five daughters, in favour of a man
whom nobody cared anything about." There, madam, in that cruelly
unjust performance, what a text you had for a tendenz-romanz. Nay,
you can allow Kitty to report that a Private had been flogged,
without introducing a chapter on Flogging in the Army. But you
formally declined to stretch your matter out, here and there, "with
solemn specious nonsense about something unconnected with the
story." No "padding" for Miss Austen! in fact, madam, as you were
born before Analysis came in, or Passion, or Realism, or Naturalism,
or Irreverence, or Religious Open-mindedness, you really cannot hope
to rival your literary sisters in the minds of a perplexed
generation. Your heroines are not passionate, we do not see their
red wet cheeks, and tresses dishevelled in the manner of our frank
young Maenads. What says your best successor, a lady who adds fresh
lustre to a name that in fiction equals yours? She says of Miss
Austen: "Her heroines have a stamp of their own. THEY HAVE A
CERTAIN GENTLE SELF-RESPECT AND HUMOUR AND HARDNESS OF HEART . . .
Love with them does not mean a passion as much as an interest, deep
and silent." I think one prefers them so, and that Englishwomen
should be more like Anne Elliot than Maggie Tulliver. "All the
privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest when
existence or when hope is gone," said Anne; perhaps she insisted on
a monopoly that neither sex has all to itself. Ah, madam, what a
relief it is to come back to your witty volumes, and forget the
follies of to-day in those of Mr. Collins and of Mrs. Bennet! How
fine, nay, how noble is your art in its delicate reserve, never
insisting, never forcing the note, never pushing the sketch into the
caricature! You worked, without thinking of it, in the spirit of
Greece, on a labour happily limited, and exquisitely organised.
"Dear books," we say, with Miss Thackeray--"dear books, bright,
sparkling with wit and animation, in which the homely heroines
charm, the dull hours fly, and the very bores are enchanting."
