Austen, Jane.
From the Ilustrated Cabinet Edition of Sense and Sensibility.
Jane Austen was born at Steventon, in the northern part of the county of Hampshire, on 16 December 1775. Her father was the Rev. George Austen, an Oxford man, who had received the neighbouring rectories of Deane and Steventon in 1764, the year of his marriage to Cassandra Leigh. Instead of bringing woe and death in her train, Cassandra brought the parson conjugal bliss and seven children, to one of whom she gave her own name, in defiance of augury. It is not true, as stated in the Dictionary of National Biography, that Jane was "the youngest of seven children," and the Dictionary's further statement, that her brother Charles died in 1832, at the age of seventy-three, would place his birth before the marriage of his parents! The Dictionary article on Jane Austen is singularly brief and unsympathetic; but that affords no excuse for its flagrant errors in fact. The oldest son, James, was born at Deane in 1765. At Oxford he had a high reputation among the undergraduates for his literary skill and his knowledge of English literature. It is to this young Oxonian that the world owes a debt of gratitude; for on his return to the rectory, his mind full of his favourite books, he took charge of the reading of his two younger sisters, and guided them at their most docile age into the green pastures of literature. Edward was the second son; he was born at Deane in 1768, but at an early age left the family circle, being adopted by his cousin, Thomas Knight, who owned estates at Godmersham Park, Kent, and Chawton in Hampshire He came into the inheritance in 1794, and in 1812 changed his name to Knight. This adoption was a fortunate thing not only for him, but for the whole family; for after some years he was able to give his widowed mother and sisters a home, and was especially kind and helpful to Jane. The next arrival in the family was the third son, Henry Thomas, born in Deane in 1771. He lived a life of active uselessness. Brilliant, witty, and charming in conversation, eternally hopeful and enthusiastic, he went through life with innocent gaiety, and with a constantly increasing sense toward the end that he might have reached distinction had he concentrated his energies. We should not forget, however, that he did help Jane in some details of her business dealings with her publishers, and that she highly valued his criticisms. He died in 1850.
The dearest member of the family to Jane, and indeed by far the most intimate friend she had in the world, was her sister Cassandra, three years her senior. Two girls of about the same age with five brothers would naturally form an offensive and defensive alliance; and between these two sisters as they grew from childhood into maturity ripened a marvellous friendship, where each took delight in the other's gifts and pleasures. They were all in all to each other; they were never married, and they remained in the diminishing family circle while the brothers struck out into the world. It was to Cassandra that Jane wrote nearly all of the letters that have come down to us; and the very absence of literary style in these documents and their meagreness of information about Jane's literary career is a substantial proof of the complete intimacy of the two women. It was in Cassandra's arms that Jane died; and how terribly the survivor suffered we shall never know, for she thought it to be her duty to control the outward expression of her grief. She was indeed a woman of extraordinary good sense, independence, and self-reliance, who loved her younger and more impulsive sister with an affection unknown to many more demonstrative individuals. She died in 1845.
The fifth child was Francis, born in 1773. In striking contrast to the serene and tranquil life of his sisters, this resolute and ambitious man lived in the very whirlwind of action. His career affords a striking illustration of the truth that those who seek death do not find it; for he served in the navy during England's most stormy and most glorious period of warfare on the sea. In the midst of death he found life, for while the other members of the family, all but one of whom dwelt in peace and apparent security, passed away, he rose steadily in the service, and lived to be ninety-two years old. He was a very religious man, and was known as "the officer who kneeled at church." Most remarkable of all for a sailor, no one ever heard him swear. His long years of service in the navy were crowned with success, for he rose to the highest rank obtainable, being at the time of his death the Senior Admiral of the Fleet.
The youngest child in the family was Charles, who was born in 1778. He is said to have closely resembled Jane in sweetness of disposition and general loveableness of character. He also entered the navy, and frequently smelt gunpowder. He survived all the perils of action, however, and rose to be an Admiral. While on a steam-sloop in Eastern waters, he died of cholera in 1852. He was beloved by both offlcers and sailors, one of whom said, "I know that I cried bitterly when I found he was dead." Readers of her novels have often wondered why Jane Austen, who lived in wars and rumours of wars, showed apparently so little interest in the momentous events of her time. As a matter of fact she took her part in those world-combats `-icariously, and the welfare of her brothers was more interesting to her than the fate of Napoleon. The sea-faring men in her books afford the evidence of her knowledge of the navy, though, true to her primal principle of art, she did not let them escape beyond the boundaries of her personal experience.
Jane Austen has been regarded by many as a prim, prudish old maid, and yet the stricter women of our more liberal times would look upon her as a daughter of Belial, for she loved to drink Wine and play cards, she loved to dance, and she delighted in the theatre. The very smallness of Steventon brought its inhabitants together in social intercourse; and in a house where a genie] father and mother presided over seven children, and wh.ere there were often dances and social gatherings several times a week, we need not waste any pity on her desolate and lonely youth. She was so fond of society that had she lived in a large city, among brilliant men and women, she might never have written a book. In her four residences, Steventon, Bath, Southampton, and Chawton, she saw all phases of society, for Thomas Hardy has shown us that the human comedy is played in the villages as well as in great cities Her close proximity to the persons she saw m village balls and dances gave her unrivalled opportunities for observation, since the; main traits in human nature are always the same. We need not regret therefore, that the geographical limits of her bodily life were so circumscribed. She could have lived in a nutshell, and counted herself a monarch of infinite space, for she had no bad dreams like those of Hamlet. It has been well said that the happiest person is he who thinks the most interesting thoughts; and the enJoyment and entertainment that this quiet, woman got out of life can hardly be over-estimated.
As a child she began to scribble, regretting in later life that she had not read more and written less. She composed "The Mystery: an Unfinished Comedy," and dedicated it to her father with mock gravity. Even then she loved burlesque, and she delighted in laughing at the two great schools in literature so prominent in her childhood, the school of impossible romance and the school of absurd sentimentality. She saw clearly the ridiculous side of the sentimental books that followed in the wake of Richardson and Sterne, and the absurdity of the Gothic romances that pursued hard upon the Castle of Otranto. She did not know then that she was to write an immortal burlesque, wherein both these tendencies were treated with genial contempt; but her attitude of mind did not change as she grew older, and before she was twenty-one, she had begun the composition of one of the greatest novels in all literature, Pride and Prejudice. She was surely in the vein; for upon the completion of this work, she immediately began Sense and Sensibility, and during her residence in Steventon she also composed Northanger Abbey. These three books constitute sufflcient proof of the manner in which genius finds its own environment.
Jane Austen had visited Bath before the composition of the last-named work, and thither the whole family moved in the spring of 1801, beginning the century under as different surroundings from the old home as can well be imagined. Steventon was a small village, Bath a city alive with s