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It was at Cambridge, England, I met him—a fine, intelligent clergyman
he was, too.
"He's not a 'Varsity man," said my new acquaintance, speaking
of Doctor Joseph Parker, the world's greatest preacher. "If he were,
he wouldn't do all these preposterous things, you know."
"He's a little like Henry Irving," I ventured apologetically.
"True, and what absurd mannerisms—did you ever see the like!
Yes, one's from Yorkshire and the other's from Cornwall, and both are
Philistines."
He laughed at his little joke and so did I, for I always try to be
polite.
So I went my way, and as I strolled it came to me that my clerical
friend was right—a university course might have taken all the
individuality out of these strong men and made of their genius a purely
neutral decoction. And when I thought further and considered how much
learning has done to banish wisdom, it was a satisfaction to remember that
Shakespeare at Oxford did nothing beyond making the acquaintance of an
inn-keeper's wife.
It hardly seems possible that a Harvard degree would have
made a stronger man of Abraham Lincoln; or that Edison, whose brain has
wrought greater changes than that of any other man of the century, was the
loser by not being versed in physics as taught at Yale.
The Law of Compensation never rests, and the men who are taught too
much from books are not taught by Deity. Most education in the past has
failed to awaken in its subject a degree of intellectual consciousness. It
is the education that the Jesuits served out to the Indian. It made him
peaceable, but took all dignity out of him. From a noble red man he
descended into a dirty Injun, who signed away his heritage for rum.
The world's plan of education has mostly been priestly—we have
striven to inculcate trust and reverence. We have cited authorities and
quoted precedents and given examples: it was a matter of memory; while all
the time the whole spiritual acreage was left untilled.
A race educated in this way never advances, save as it is jolted out of
its notions by men with either a sublime ignorance of, or an indifference
to, what has been done and said. These men are always called barbarians by
their contemporaries: they are jeered and hooted. They supply much mirth
by their eccentricities. After they are dead the world sometimes canonizes
them and carves on their tombs the word "Savior."
Do I then plead the cause of ignorance? Well, yes, rather so. A little
ignorance is not a dangerous thing. A man who reads too much—who
accumulates too many facts-gets his mind filled
to the point of saturation; matters then crystallize and his head becomes
a solid thing that refuses to let anything either in or out. In his soul
there is no guest-chamber. His only hope for progress lies in another
incarnation.
And so a certain ignorance seems a necessary equipment for the doing of
a great work. To live in a big city and know what others are doing and
saying; to meet the learned and powerful, and hear their sermons and
lectures; to view the unending shelves of vast libraries is to be
discouraged at the start. And thus we find that genius is essentially
rural—a country product. Salons, soirees, theaters, concerts, lectures,
libraries, produce a fine mediocrity that smiles at the right time and
bows when 't is proper, but it is well to bear in mind that George Eliot,
Elizabeth Barrett, Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen were all country
girls, with little companionship, nourished on picked-up classics, having
a healthy ignorance of what the world was saying and doing.
It is over a hundred years since Jane Austen lived. But when you tramp
that five miles from Overton, where the railroad-station is, to Steventon,
where she was born, it doesn't seem like it. Rural England does not change
much. Great fleecy clouds roll lazily across the blue, overhead, and the
hedgerows are full of twittering birds that you hear but seldom see; and
the pastures contain mild-faced cows that look at you with wide-open eyes
over the stone walls; and in the towering elm-trees that sway their
branches in the breeze crows hold a noisy caucus. And it comes to you that
the clouds and the blue sky and the hedgerows and the birds and the cows
and the crows are all just as Jane Austen knew them—no change. These
stone walls stood here then, and so did the low slate-roofed barns and the
whitewashed cottages where the roses clamber over the doors.
I paused in front of one of these snug, homely, handsome, pretty little
cottages and looked at the two exact rows of flowers that lined the little
walk leading from gate to cottage-door. The pathway was made from
coal-ashes and the flowerbeds were marked off with pieces of broken
crockery set on edge. 'T was an absent-minded, impolite thing to do—to
stand leaning on a gate and critically examine the landscape-gardening,
evidently an overworked woman's gardening, at that.
As I leaned there the door opened and a little woman with sleeves
rolled up appeared. I mumbled an apology, but
before I could articulate it, she held out a pair of scissors and said,
"Perhaps, sir, you'd like to clip some of the flowers—the roses
over the door are best!"
Three children hung to her skirts, peeking, round faces from behind,
and quite accidentally disclosing a very neat ankle.
I took the scissors and clipped three splendid Jacqueminots and said it
was a beautiful day. She agreed with me and added that she was just
finishing her churning and if I'd wait a minute until the butter came,
she'd give me a drink of buttermilk.
I waited without urging and got the buttermilk, and as the children had
come out from hiding I was minded to give them a penny apiece. Two coppers
were all I could muster, so I gave the two boys each a penny and the
little girl a shilling. The mother protested that she had no change and
that a bob was too much for a little girl like that, but I assumed a
Big-Bonanza air and explained that I was from California where the
smallest change is a dollar.
"Go thank the gentleman, Jane."
"That's right, Jane Austen, come here and thank me!"
"How did you know her name was Jane Austen—Jane Austen Humphreys?"
"I didn't know—I only guessed."
Then little Mrs. Humphreys ceased patting the butter and told me that
she named her baby girl for Jane Austen, who used to live near here a long
time ago. Jane Austen was one of the greatest
writers that ever lived—the Rector said so. The Reverend George Austen
preached at Steventon for years and years, and I should go and see the
church—the same church where he preached and where Jane Austen used to
go. And anything I wanted to know about Jane Austen's books the Rector
could tell, for he was a wonderful learned man was the Rector—"Kiss
the gentleman, Jane."
So I kissed Jane Austen's round, rosy cheek and stroked the tousled
heads of the boys by way of blessing, and started for Steventon to
interview the Rector who was very wise.
And the clergyman who teaches his people the history of their
neighborhood, and tells them of the excellent men and women who once lived
thereabouts, is both wise and good. And the present Rector at Steventon is
both—I'm sure of that.
It was a very happy family that lived in the Rectory at Steventon from
Seventeen Hundred Seventy-five to Eighteen Hundred One. There were five
boys and two girls, and the younger girl's name was Jane. Between her and
James, the oldest boy, lay a period of twelve years of three hundred and
sixty-five days each, not to mention leap-years.
The boys were sent away to be educated, and when they came home at
holiday time they brought presents for the mother and the girls, and there
was great rejoicing.
James was sent to Oxford. The girls were not sent away to be
educated—it was thought hardly worth while then to educate women, and
some folks still hold to that belief. When the boys came home, they were
made to stand by the door-jamb, and a mark was placed on the casing, with
a date, which showed how much they had grown. And they were catechized as
to their knowledge, and cross-questioned and their books inspected; and so
we find one of the sisters saying, once, that she knew all the things her
brothers knew, and besides that she knew all the things she knew herself.
There was plenty of books in the library, and the girls made use of
them. They would read to their father "because his eyesight was
bad," but I can not help thinking this a clever ruse on the part of
the good Rector.
I do not find that there were any secrets in that household or that
either Mr. or Mrs. Austen ever said that children should be seen and not
heard. It was a little republic of letters—all their own. Thrown in on
themselves for not many of the yeomanry thereabouts could read, there was
developed a fine spirit of comradeship among parents and children,
brothers and sisters, servants and visitors, that is a joy to contemplate.
Before the days of railroads, a "visitor" was more of an
institution than he is now. He stayed longer and was more welcome; and the
news he brought from distant parts was eagerly asked for. Nowadays we know
all about everything, almost before it happens, for yellow journalism is
so alert that it discounts futurity.
In the Austen household had lived and died a son of Warren Hastings.
The lad had so won the love of the Austens that they even spoke of him as
their own; and this bond also linked them to the great outside world of
statecraft. The things the elders discussed were the properties, too, of
the children.
Then once a year the Bishop came—came in knee-breeches, hobnailed
shoes, and shovel hat, and the little church was decked with greens. The
Bishop came from Paradise, little Jane used to think, and once, to be
polite, she asked him how all the folks were in Heaven. Then the other
children giggled and the Bishop spilt a whole cup of tea down the front of
his best coat, and coughed and choked until he
was very red in the face.
When Jane was ten years old there came to live at the Rectory a
daughter of Mrs. Austen's sister. She came to them direct from France. Her
name was Madame Fenillade. She was a widow and only twenty-two. Once, when
little Jane overheard one of the brothers say that Monsieur Fenillade had
kissed Mademoiselle Guillotine, she asked what he meant and they would not
tell her.
Now Madame spoke French with grace and fluency, and the girls thought
it queer that there should be two languages—English and French—so they
picked up a few words of French, too, and at the table would gravely say
"Merci, Papa," and "S'il vous plait, Mamma." Then Mr.
Austen proposed that at table no one should speak anything but French. So
Madame told them what to call the sugar and the salt and the bread, and no
one called anything except by its French name. In two weeks each of the
whole dozen persons who sat at that board, as well as the girl who waited
on table, had a bill-of-fare working capital of French. In six months they
could converse with ease.
And science with all its ingenuity has not yet pointed out a better way
for acquiring a new language than the plan the Austens adopted at
Steventon Rectory. We call it the "Berlitz Method" now.
Madame Fenillade's widowhood rested lightly upon her,
and she became quite the life of the whole household.
One of the Austen boys fell in love with the French widow; and surely
it would be a very stupid country boy that wouldn't love a French widow
like that!
And they were married and lived happily ever afterward.
But before Madame married and moved away she taught the girls charades,
and then little plays, and a theatrical performance was given in the barn.
Then a play could not be found that just suited, so Jane wrote one and
Cassandra helped, and Madame criticized and the Reverend Mr. Austen
suggested a few changes. Then it was all rewritten. And this was the first
attempt at writing for the public by Jane Austen.
Jane Austen wrote four great novels, "Pride and Prejudice"
was begun when she was twenty and finished a year later. The old father
started a course of novel-reading on his own account in order to fit his
mind to pass judgment on his daughter's work. He was sure it was good, but
feared that love had blinded his eyes, and he wanted to make sure. After
six months' comparison he wrote to a publisher explaining that he had the
manuscript of a great novel that would be parted with for a consideration.
He assured the publisher that the novel was as excellent as any Miss
Burney, Miss Edgeworth, or any one else ever wrote.
Now publishers get letters like that by every mail, and when Mr. Austen
received his reply it was so antarctic in sentiment that the manuscript
was stored away in the garret, where it lay for just eleven years before
it found a publisher. But in the meantime Miss Austen had written three
other novels—not with much hope that any one would publish them, but to
please her father and the few intimate friends who read and sighed and
smiled in quiet.
The year she was thirty years of age her father died—died with no
thought that the world would yet endorse his own loving estimate of his
daughter's worth.
After the father's death financial troubles came, and something had to
be done to fight off possible hungry wolves. The manuscript was hunted
out, dusted, gone over, and submitted to
publishers. They sniffed at it and sent it back. Finally a man was found
who was bold enough to read. He liked it, but wouldn't admit the fact. Yet
he decided to print it. He did so. The reading world liked it and said so,
although not very loudly. Slowly the work made head, and small-sized
London drafts were occasionally sent by publishers to Miss Austen with
apologies because the amounts were not larger.
Now, in reference to writing books it may not be amiss to explain that
no one ever said, "Now then, I'll write a story!" and sitting
down at table took up pen and dipping it in ink, wrote. Stories don't come
that way. Stories take possession of one—incident after incident—and
you write in order to get rid of 'em—with a few other reasons mixed in,
for motives, like silver, are always found mixed. Children play at keeping
house: and men and women who have loved think of the things that have
happened, then imagine all the things that might have happened, and from
thinking it all over to writing it out is but a step. You begin one
chapter and write it this forenoon; and do all you may to banish the plot,
the next chapter is all in your head before sundown. Next morning you
write chapter number two, to unload it, and so the story spins itself out
into a book. All this if you live in the country and have time to think
and are not broken in upon by too much work and worry—save the worry of
the ever-restless mind. Whether the story is
good or not depends upon what you leave out.
The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts
of the marble block as are not needed. Really happy people do not write
stories—they accumulate adipose tissue and die at the top through fatty
degeneration of the cerebrum. A certain disappointment in life, a
dissatisfaction with environment, is necessary to stir the imagination to
a creative point. If things are all to your taste you sit back and enjoy
them. You forget the flight of time, the march of the seasons, your future
life, family, country—all, just as Antony did in Egypt. A deadly,
languorous satisfaction comes over you. Pain, disappointment, unrest or a
joy that hurts, are the things that prick the mind into activity.
Jane Austen lived in a little village. She felt the narrowness of her
life—the inability of those beyond her own household to match her
thoughts and emotions. Love came that way—a short heart-rest, a being
understood, were hers. The gates of Paradise swung ajar and she caught a
glimpse of the glories within, and sighed and clasped her hands and bowed
her head in a prayer of thankfulness.
When she arose from her knees the gates were closed; the way was dark;
she was alone—alone in a little quibbling, carping village, where tired
folks worked and gossiped, ate, drank, slept. Her home was pleasant, to
be sure, but man is a citizen of the world, not of a house.
Jane Austen began to write—to write about these village people. Jane
was tall, and twenty—not very handsome, but better, she was
good-looking. She looked good because she was. She was pious, but not too
pious. She used to go calling among the parishioners, visiting the sick,
the lowly, the troubled. Then when Great Folks came down from London to
"the Hall," she went with the Rector to call on them too, for
the Rector was servant to all—his business was to minister: he was a
Minister. And the Reverend George Austen was a bit proud of his younger
daughter. She was just as tall as he, and dignified and gentle: and the
clergyman chuckled quietly to himself to see how she was the equal in
grace and intellect of any Fine Lady from London town.
And although the good Rector prayed, "From all vanity and pride of
spirit, good Lord, deliver us," it never occurred to him that he was
vain of his tall daughter Jane, and I'm glad it didn't. There is no more
crazy bumblebee gets into a mortal's bonnet than the buzzing thought that
God is jealous of the affection we have for our loved ones. If we are ever
damned, it will be because we have too little love for our fellows, not
too much.
But, egad! brother, it's no small delight to be sixty and a little
stooped and a trifle rheumatic, and have your
own blessed daughter, sweet and stately, comb your thinning gray locks,
help you on with your overcoat, find your cane, and go trooping with you,
hand in hand, down the lane on merciful errand bent. It's a temptation to
grow old and feign sciatica; and if you could only know that, some day,
like old King Lear, upon your withered cheek would fall Cordelia's tears,
the thought would be a solace.
So Jane Austen began to write stories about the simple folks she knew.
She wrote in the family sitting-room at a little mahogany desk that she
could shut up quickly if prying neighbors came in to tell their woes and
ask questions about all those sheets of paper! And all she wrote she read
to her father and to her sister Cassandra. And they talked it all over
together and laughed and cried and joked over it. The kind old minister
thought it a good mental drill for his girls to write and express their
feelings. The two girls collaborated—that is to say, one wrote and the
other looked on. Neither girl had been "educated," except what
their father taught them. But to be born into a bookish family, and
inherit the hospitable mind and the receptive heart, is better than to be
sent to Harvard Annex. Preachers, like other folks, sometimes assume a
virtue when they have it not. But George Austen didn't pretend—he was.
And that's the better plan, for no man can deceive his children—they
take his exact measurement, whether others ever do or not—and the only
way to win and hold the love of a child (or a
grown-up) is to be frank and simple and honest. I've tried both schemes.
I can not find that George Austen ever claimed he was only a worm of
the dust, or pretended to be more or less than he was, or to assume a
knowledge that he did not possess. He used to say: "My dears, I
really do not know. But let's keep the windows open and light may yet
come."
It was a busy family of plain, average people—not very rich, and not
very poor. There were difficulties to meet, and troubles to share, and
joys to divide.
Jane Austen was born in Seventeen Hundred Seventy-five; "Jane
Eyre" in Eighteen Hundred Sixteen—one year before Jane Austen died.
Charlotte Bronte knew all about Jane Austen, and her example fired
Charlotte's ambition. Both were daughters of country clergymen. Charlotte
lived in the North of England on the wild and treeless moors, where the
searching winds rattled the panes and black-faced sheep bleated piteously.
Jane Austen lived in the rich quiet of a prosperous farming country, where
bees made honey and larks nested. The Reverend Patrick Bronte disciplined
his children: George Austen loved his. In Steventon there is no
"Black Bull"; only a little dehorned inn, kept by a woman who
breeds canaries, and will sell you a warranted singer for five shillings,
with no charge for the cage. At Steventon no red-haired Yorkshiremen offer
to give fight or challenge you to a drinking-bout.
The opposites of things are alike, and that is why the world ties Jane
Eyre and Jane Austen in one bundle. Their methods of work were totally
different: their effects gotten in different ways. Charlotte Bronte
fascinates by startling situations and highly colored lights that dance
and glow, leading you on in a mad chase. There's pain, unrest, tragedy in
the air. The pulse always is rapid and the temperature high.
It is not so with Jane Austen. She is an artist in her gentleness, and
the world is today recognizing this more and more. The stage now works its
spells by her methods—without rant, cant or fustian—and as the years
go by this must be so more and more, for mankind's face is turned toward
truth.
To weave your spell out of commonplace events and brew a love-potion
from every-day materials is high art. When Kipling takes three average
soldiers of the line, ignorant, lying, swearing, smoking, dog-fighting
soldiers, who can even run on occasion, and by telling of them holds a
world in thrall—that's art! In these soldiers three we recognize
something very much akin to ourselves, for the thing that holds no
relationship to us does not interest us—we can not leave the personal
equation out. This fact is made plain in "The Black Riders,"
where the devils dancing in Tophet look up and espying Steve Crane address
him thus: "Brother!"
Jane Austen's characters are all plain, every-day folks. The
work is always quiet. There are no entangling situations, no mysteries, no
surprises.
Now, to present a situation, an emotion, so it will catch and hold the
attention of others, is largely a knack—you practise on the thing until
you do it well. This one thing I do. But the man who does this thing is
not intrinsically any greater than those who appreciate it—in fact, they
are all made of the same kind of stuff. Kipling himself is quite a
commonplace person. He is neither handsome nor magnetic. He is plain and
manly and would fit in anywhere. If there was a trunk to be carried
upstairs, or an ox to get out of a pit, you'd call on Kipling if he
chanced that way, and he'd give you a lift as a matter of course, and then
go on whistling with hands in his pockets. His art is a knack practised to
a point that gives facility.
Jane Austen was a commonplace person. She swept, sewed, worked, and did
the duty that lay nearest her. She wrote because she liked to, and because
it gave pleasure to others. She wrote as well as she could. She had no
thought of immortality, or that she was writing for the ages—no more
than Shakespeare had. She never anticipated that Southey, Coleridge, Lamb,
Guizot and Macaulay would hail her as a marvel of insight, nor did she
suspect that a woman as great as George Eliot would declare her work
flawless.
But today strong men recognize her books as rarely excellent, because
they show the divinity in all things, keep close
to the ground, gently inculcate the firm belief that simple people are as
necessary as great ones, that small things are not necessarily
unimportant, and that nothing is really insignificant. It all rings true.
And so I sing the praises of the average woman—the woman who does her
work, who is willing to be unknown, who is modest and unaffected, who
tries to lessen the pains of earth, and to add to its happiness. She is
the true guardian angel of mankind!
No book published in Jane Austen's lifetime bore her name on the
title-page; she was never lionized by society; she was never two hundred
miles from home; she died when forty-two years of age, and it was sixty
years before a biography was attempted or asked for. She sleeps in the
cathedral at Winchester, and not so very long ago a visitor, on asking the
verger to see her grave, was conducted thither, and the verger asked:
"Was she anybody in particular? So many folks ask where she's buried,
you know!"
But this is changed now, for when the verger took me to her grave and
we stood by that plain black marble slab, he spoke intelligently of her
life and work. And many visitors now go to the cathedral, only because it
is the resting-place of Jane Austen, who lived a beautiful, helpful life
and produced great art, yet knew it not.
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