When Jane returned home in October, after her pleasant visit to Godmersham, she began her first real novel. She was then nearly twenty-one, and the girlish scribblings in which she had delighted began to be shaped into something more coherent. This very visit, with all its bright intercourse, all its pleasant variety,—for she had been thrown among a set of county people of better social standing than those she usually saw,—may have quickened the germ, and been the cause of her development. The book was at first called First Impressions, and under this title she herself frequently refers to it; but some time later she re-christened it by the name under which it was published.
The idea that the name Pride and Prejudice was suggested by some sentences at the end of Cecilia has been mooted, and though arguments against this supposition have been found, it appears extremely probable. For in Cecilia it is declared, “The whole of this unfortunate affair has been the result of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE,” which last words are repeated twice on the same page, each time in large type so that they catch the eye. Cecilia itself might well have borne this title in reference to the pride and prejudice of the Delvile family. The book was published in 1786, and we know that Jane had a great admiration for Miss Burney’s work. In re-reading [177] it some time subsequently it may very easily have struck her that “Pride and Prejudice” was an improvement on her own more common-place title, and there was nothing to prevent her adopting it. The repetition of two striking qualities and the alliteration may further have given rise to Sense and Sensibility, which also replaced an earlier title of Elinor and Marianne.
Pride and Prejudice was apparently written solely to gratify the instincts of the writer, without any thought of publication. But after it was completed, a year later, November 1797, Jane’s father wrote for her to the well-known publisher Cadell as follows:—
“Sir,—I have in my possession a manuscript novel comprising 3 vols. about the length of Miss Burney’s Evelina. As I am well aware of what consequence it is that a work of this sort should make its first appearance under a respectable name, I apply to you. I shall be much obliged therefore if you will inform me whether you choose to be concerned in it, what will be the expense of publishing it at the author’s risk, and what you will venture to advance for the property of it, if on perusal it is approved of. Should you give any encouragement I will send you the work.”
This proposal, modest as it is, was rejected by return of post. One would have thought that the success of Miss Burney’s books would have made a leading publisher anxious to look at a work on similar lines, but no—Pride and Prejudice was destined not to be published until 1813, sixteen years later!
As we have said, it is unanimously accorded the premier place amongst Jane Austen’s novels, partly because it is full of that brilliancy and sparkle which are its author’s greatest characteristics, and partly because [178] of the inimitable character of Elizabeth Bennet, whose combined archness and intelligence captivate everyone. Elizabeth is the embodiment of the heroine so many authors have tried to draw. Witty without being pert, having a reasonable conceit of herself without vanity, and a natural gaiety of heart that makes her altogether lovable. Whether she is repelling the patronage of Lady Catherine de Bourgh, or chaffing the sombre Darcy, she is equally delightful. Her first scene with Lady Catherine embodies much character—
“‘Are any of your younger sisters out, Miss Bennet?’
“‘Yes, Ma’am, all.’
“‘All! What, all five out at once? Very odd! And you only the second. The younger ones out before the elder are married! Your younger sisters must be very young?’
“‘Yes, the youngest is not sixteen. Perhaps she is full young to be much in company. But really, Ma’am, I think it would be very hard upon younger sisters that they should not have their share of society and amusement, because the elder may not have the means or inclination to marry early. The last born has as good a right to the pleasures of youth as the first. And to be kept back on such a motive! I think it would not be very likely to promote sisterly affection or delicacy of mind.’
“‘Upon my word,’ said her Ladyship, ‘you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person. Pray what is your age?’
“‘With three younger sisters grown up,’ replied Elizabeth, smiling, ‘your Ladyship can hardly expect me to own it.’”
And again, when Lady Catherine comes to ask if the report of her nephew’s engagement to Elizabeth is true.
[179]
“‘If you believed it impossible to be true,’ said Elizabeth, colouring with astonishment and disdain, ‘I wonder you took the trouble of coming so far. What could your Ladyship propose by it?’
“‘At once to insist on having such a report universally contradicted.’
“‘Your coming to Langbourn to see me and my family,’ said Elizabeth coolly, ‘will be rather a confirmation of it; if, indeed, such a report is in existence.’
“‘If! Do you then pretend to be ignorant of it? Has it not been industriously circulated by yourselves? Do you not know that such a report is spread abroad?’
“‘I never heard that it was.’
“‘And can you likewise declare there is no foundation for it?’
“‘I do not pretend to possess equal frankness with your Ladyship. You may ask questions which I shall not choose to answer.’
“‘This is not to be borne, Miss Bennet, I insist on being satisfied. Has he, has my nephew, made you an offer of marriage?’
“‘Your Ladyship has declared it to be impossible.’”
Her verbal encounters with Darcy are equally characteristic.
“Elizabeth turned away to hide a smile.
“‘Your examination of Mr. Darcy is over, I presume?’ said Miss Bingley, ‘and pray what is the result?’
“‘I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr. Darcy has no defect. He owns it himself without disguise.’
“‘No,’ said Darcy, ‘I have made no such pretension. I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding; certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their offences [180] against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost is lost for ever.’
“‘That is a failing indeed,’ cried Elizabeth. ‘Implacable resentment is a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me.’
“‘There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.’
“‘And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.’
“‘And yours,’ he replied with a smile, ‘is wilfully to misunderstand them.’”
Darcy, by the way, is one of the least attractive of the principal men characters. It is inconceivable that any man with the remotest pretension to gentlemanly feeling should say, even to himself, much less aloud in a ball-room, on having his attention called to a young girl sitting out: “‘Which do you mean?’ and, turning round, he looked for a moment at Elizabeth, till, catching her eye, he withdrew his own, and coldly said,—’She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.’”
Indeed, Darcy’s whole character is so averse from anything usually associated with the word gentleman, that one wonders where Miss Austen found her prototype. Possibly he was one of the few characters for which she drew entirely on her imagination. In saying this there is no innuendo that in other cases she drew straight from the life; it is, I believe, very few novelists who ever wish to do such a thing, but it is certainly true, and [181] everyone who has attempted fiction knows it, that nearly every character in a life-like book has some prototype in real life, some man or woman who gave the first indication of a certain character; the personality may be altered entirely, it may be only one small quality which is derived from the prototype, but it is nevertheless that person who brought that particular character into existence. So far as we know there was no haughty, self-satisfied man of the world in Jane Austen’s list of acquaintances.
It is true that Darcy is represented as behaving much better when his pride has been bitterly stung by Elizabeth’s rejection of him, but it is hard to believe that a man, such as he is at first represented, could have had sufficient good in him to change his character completely as the effect of love.
To show how entirely opinions differ it is amusing to quote some of the remarks of Miss Mitford, who wrote in 1814, the year after the publication of Pride and Prejudice: “The want of elegance is almost the only want in Miss Austen. I have not read her Mansfield Park but it is impossible not to feel in every line of Pride and Prejudice, in every word of Elizabeth, the entire want of taste which could produce so pert, so worldly a heroine as the beloved of such a man as Darcy. Wickham is equally bad. Oh, they were just fit for each other, and I cannot forgive that delightful Darcy for parting them. Darcy should have married Jane. He is of all the admirable characters the best designed and the best sustained. I quite agree with you in preferring Miss Austen to Miss Edgeworth. If the former had a little more taste, a little more perception of the graceful, as well as of the humorous, I know not indeed anyone to whom I should not prefer her. There is none of the hardness, the cold selfishness, of Miss [182] Edgeworth about her writings; she is in a much better humour with the world; she preaches no sermons; she wants nothing but the beau ideal of the female character to be a perfect novel writer!”
Miss Mitford would no doubt have preferred as a heroine the elegant languishing female, without any of the savour of originality about her, who was the stereotyped heroine of most works of fiction at that time.
Sir Walter Scott in the Quarterly Review of 1815 makes the base insinuation that Elizabeth having refused Darcy “does not perceive that she has done a foolish thing, until she accidentally visits a very handsome seat and grounds belonging to her admirer.”
We are sure from what we know of Lizzie, that this is quite unfounded. Had she been liable to any undue influence of that sort, she would have accepted Darcy at the first, for she knew very well all about his position and estates from the beginning. That she had the courage and good sense to snub him speaks much more forcibly for her character than a like action on the part of any girl similarly circumstanced would do now. For then a position gained by marriage was the only one a woman could hope for, and such chances were few and far between when, as we have seen, men were desperately prudent in their matrimonial affairs, and looked on marriage more as a well considered and suitable monetary alliance than as a love match, though perhaps the actual person of the woman was not always such a matter of perfect indifference to them as it seems to have been to the writer of the following contemporary letter:—
“I thank you with ye utmost Gratitude for ye good offices you was to have done me; and though I cannot now for Reasons above specifyd accept of them, yet I hope they will still continue in Reversion: not that I have any schemes for ever resuming my Designs upon [183] Miss A.: (on ye contrary I should be very loth she should wait so long) but because whenever my Time is come You are ye first person I should apply to, as having a good Number of Friends and Correspondents; and none who are priviledged with ye Intimacy of Mrs. Jennings can fail of Accomplishments to render them highly agreable to your most obedient servant.” (A Kentish Country House.)
The character of the solemn, pompous, thick-skinned Mr. Collins is the best of the kind Jane ever drew; he is a creation whose name might signify a quality of “collinesqueness.”
Perhaps within the limits possible for quotation there is nothing which in so short a space sums up so well his inimitable character as the letter of condolence he sends to Mr. Bennet on the occasion of Lydia’s having eloped with the weak and untrustworthy Wickham.
“I feel myself called upon by our relationship and my situation in life, to condole with you on the grievous affliction you are now suffering under, of which we were yesterday informed by a letter from Hertfordshire. Be assured, my dear sir, that Mrs. Collins and myself sincerely sympathise with you, and all your respectable family, in your present distress, which must be of the bitterest kind, because proceeding from a cause which no time can remove. No arguments shall be wanting on my part, that can alleviate so severe a misfortune; or that can comfort you under a circumstance that must be of all others, most afflicting to a parent’s mind. The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison of this. And it is the more to be lamented, because there is reason to suppose, as my dear Charlotte informs me, that this licentiousness of behaviour in your daughter has proceeded from a faulty degree of indulgence; though, at the same time, for the consolation of [184] yourself and Mrs. Bennet, I am inclined to think that her own disposition must be naturally bad, or she could not be guilty of such an enormity, at so early an age. This false step in one daughter will be injurious to the fortunes of all the others; for who, as Lady Catherine herself condescendingly says, will connect themselves with such a family? And this consideration leads me to reflect, with augmented satisfaction on a certain event of last November, for had it been otherwise I must have been involved in all your sorrow and disgrace. Let me advise you then, my dear sir, to console yourself as much as possible, to throw off your unworthy child from your affection for ever, and leave her to reap the fruits of her own heinous offence.”
Jane’s own impressions of Pride and Prejudice are given in a letter to her sister, written many years later, on the publication of the book—
“Miss B. dined with us on the very day of the book’s coming, and in the evening we fairly set at it and read half the first vol. to her.... She was amused, poor soul! That she could not help you know, with two such people to lead the way, but she really does seem to admire Elizabeth. I must confess that I think her as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print, and how I shall be able to tolerate those who do not like her at least, I do not know. There are a few typical errors; and a ‘said he’ or a ‘said she’ would sometimes make the dialogue more immediately clear; but ‘I do not write for such dull elves’ as have not a great deal of ingenuity themselves.... Our second evening’s reading to Miss B. had not pleased me so well, but I believe something must be attributed to my mother’s too rapid way of getting on: though she perfectly understands the characters herself, she cannot speak as they ought. Upon the whole, however, I am quite vain enough and [185] well satisfied enough. The work is rather too light and bright and sparkling; it wants shade, it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long chapter of sense if it could be had; if not, of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story; an essay on writing, a critique on Walter Scott or the history of Buonaparte or something that would form a contrast, and bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness and epigrammatism of the general style.” And later, in reference to the same subject, she writes—
“I am exceedingly pleased that you can say what you do, after having gone through the whole work, and Fanny’s praise is very gratifying. My hopes were tolerably strong of her, but nothing like a certainty. Her liking Darcy and Elizabeth is enough. She might hate all the others if she would.” (Mr. Austen-Leigh’s Memoir.)
The fact that Jane felt the extreme brilliancy and lightness of her own work shows that the critical faculty was active in her, but as for wishing to do away with it in order to bring the book more into conformity with the heavily padded novels of the time, that of course is pure nonsense.
After only the lapse of a month or two from the completion of First Impressions, Jane began on Sense and Sensibility, which she at first called............