Jane Austen (49 page)

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Lambe to have the smallest symptom of a decline, or any complaint which asses' milk could possibly relieve. 'Miss Lambe was under the constant care of an experienced physician; and his prescriptions must be their rule.'--and except in favor of some tonic pills, which a cousin of her own had a property in, Mrs. Griffiths did never deviate from the strict medicinal page."

The expected arrival of the two families and its outcome forms the climax of the novel in so far as it has progressed. Mr. Parker's sister Diana, of whom, with her sister Susan, it was said that they must either be very ill or very busy, had heard, through a chain of intelligence, of Mrs. Griffiths' desire for a seaside resort ("You must have heard me mention Miss Capper, the particular friend of my very particular friend, Fanny Noyce--now Miss Capper is extremely intimate with a Mrs. Darling, who is on terms of constant

correspondence with Mrs. Griffiths herself"); and with her brother's own zeal, though in a more feminine and intensified form, she had insisted on Sanditon's being recommended to Mrs. Griffiths. At the same time she had heard that the lady in charge of the Camberwell seminary was also proposing to move to the seaside, and Diana

Parker got her friend Mrs. Charles Dupuis to recommend Sanditon to her. This lady was strong-minded and capable and able to choose lodgings for herself, but Mrs. Griffiths, Miss Diana Parker believed, was enervated and undecided and quite at a loss, and consequently, although she had been in the throes of severe illness, and her sister Susan equally so, they both, accompanied by their brother Arthur, appeared suddenly at Sanditon, and while Susan and Arthur

remained and settled the question of lodgings, Diana ran about, hiring a house at eight guineas a week for Mrs. Griffiths, and opening preliminary negotiations with cooks, housemaids,

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was her women and bathing-women from whom Mrs. Griffiths was

to take her choice; and then wrote a letter to Mrs. Griffiths, to whom she was entirely unknown, telling her that everything was ready for her reception. The note that had been sounded in the opening pages of Mr. Parker's obsession, swells to a crescendo when it is realized that Mrs. Griffiths' party and the Camberwell seminary are one and the same: "The Mrs. Griffiths who in her friend Mrs. Darling's hands, had wavered as to coming, and been quite unequal to the journey, was the very same Mrs. Griffiths whose plans were at the same period (under another representation), perfectly decided, and who was without fears or difficulties.--All that had had the

appearance of incongruity in the reports of the two, might very fairly be placed to the account of the vanity, the ignorance or the blunders of the many engaged in the cause by the vigilance and caution of Miss Diana Parker.
Her
intimate friends must be officious like herself, and the subject had supplied letters and extracts and messages enough to make everything appear what it was not." This
dénouement
, the resolving of the family party and the girls' boarding school into one party consisting of Mrs. Griffiths and three young ladies, occurs in a scene which is the height of the whole comic achievement.

There are two aspects of the work which are altogether new in Jane Austen's writing, the first concerning her treatment of Sir Edward Denham. The character breaks new ground; because though

Willoughby had a very ugly story in his past, and Wickham thought nothing of eloping with a girl who threw herself at his head, and Henry Crawford was so loose-living that he couldn't resist an affair even in circumstances when it was bound to cost him the

engagement he was really anxious to secure; Edward Denham, the young man who had read too many novels and fancied himself as a Lovelace, approached the matter from a different angle, and

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his attitude is defined with an outspokenness unprecedented even in Jane Austen's workmanlike frankness, and with an almost weary

cynicism. "It was Clara whom he meant to seduce. Her seduction was quite determined on. Her situation in every way called for it.

She was his rival in Lady Denham's favors, she was young, lovely and dependent.--He had very early seen the necessity of the case, and had now been long trying with cautious assiduity to make an impression on her heart, and to undermine her principles.--Clara saw through him and had not the least intention of being seduced--but she bore with him patiently enough to confirm the sort of attachment which her personal charms had raised. A greater degree of

discouragement indeed would not have effected Sir Edward:--he was armed against the highest pitch of disdain or aversion.--If she could not be won by affection he must carry her off. He knew his business.

--Already he had had many musings on the subject. If he
were
constrained so to act, he must naturally wish to strike out something new, to exceed those who had gone before him--and he felt a strong curiosity to ascertain whether the neighborhood of Timbuctoo might not afford some solitary house adapted for Clara's reception;--but the expense, alas! of measures in that masterly style was ill-suited to his purse, and prudence obliged him to prefer the quietest sort of ruin and disgrace for the object of his affections, to the more renowned."

The second consideration is that of a use of scenery--not so beautiful as that in
Persuasion
, or even that in
Mansfield Park
and in
Emma
, but of an eerie sensibility, quite unlike anything she had touched before, and oddly in keeping with the story. One morning Charlotte goes with the simple, pleasant, somewhat wistful Mrs. Parker to pay a call on Lady Denham at Sanditon House. It is a close morning in late July, and the sea mist is so dense that when, on their

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way, they unexpectedly meet with Mr. Parker's brother, the dashing, flippant Sydney, driving himself in his carriage, and taking Sanditon in his way from Eastbourne, they are almost upon him before they can make out what the vehicle is, and whether it is drawn by one horse, two, three or four. The ladies turn into the road to Sanditon House, "a broad, handsome planted approach between fields," and presently come to the park paling, "with clusters of fine elms and rows of old thorns, following its line almost everywhere." But some gaps were left, and as they walked along, "through one of them, Charlotte . . . caught a glimpse over the pales of something white and womanish in the field on the other side; it was a something which immediately brought Miss Brereton into her head--and, stepping to the pales, she saw indeed and very decidedly in spite of the mist, Miss Brereton seated, not far before her, at the foot of the bank. . . .

Miss Brereton seated very composedly, and Sir Edward Denham by her side. They were sitting so near each other and appeared so closely engaged in gentle conversation that Charlotte instantly felt she had nothing to do but step back again and say not a word." The

"something white and womanish" appearing in the mist strikes a note quite different from any she had sounded before, but it follows more naturally upon
Persuasion
than it would have followed upon any of the other novels. At the same time, enough of
Sanditon
remains to show that the remarkable alternation of shadow and light in
Sense
and Sensibility
,
Pride and Prejudice
,
Mansfield Park
,
Emma
and
Persuasion
would have been maintained by
Sanditon
's returning to vivid brightness after the pensive sweetness of
Persuasion
.

The dates attached to the manuscript are January 27th on the first quire, and March 18th on the last.

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ON MARCH 28th occurred the death of Mr. Leigh Perrot. As he was a man of great wealth, childless, and Mrs. Austen his only surviving sister, it was generally expected that he would leave Mrs. Austen and her children provided for in his will. But when the will was read it was found that he had left everything to his wife, except a

considerable sum to James Austen, and a provision that £1,000

should be inherited by each of his nephews and nieces who outlived his wife. Mrs. Austen was not mentioned at all, and despite the very disagreeable shock, it was her common sense which supplied the explanation, namely, that her brother had always expected to outlive her.

The will came hard to the Austen family. The Chawton lawsuit was settled in this year by Edward Knight's retaining possession of the estate but paying down a large sum for it, but he was the only member of the family in a position to do anything substantial

towards helping the rest, and he had eleven children. Still, they were not as a whole unduly cast down by the matter, awkward and

somewhat painful as it was; but Jane was now so weak in nerves and health that it did come as a severe shock to her. She would have faced poverty courageously, but she was nonetheless afraid of it.

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She had always taken a refreshing satisfaction in her own pins.

"Though I like praise as well as anybody, I like what Edwards calls Pewter too," she had said, apropos of
Mansfield Park
. "Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor," she had said to Fanny. She was now in a state in which she felt everything with almost unbearable intensity, and the sensation which the others were able to throw off remained with her. Cassandra had gone with James and Mary to help and console Mrs. Leigh Perrot at Scarlets; but when the will became known at Chawton, Jane felt an alarming

increase of illness; she thought she was going to be quite helpless, and she implored Cassandra to come back.

Almost as soon as her sister was in the house once more, Jane began to feel better. On April 6th she wrote to Keppel Street, to Charles, a letter long overdue, but, she said, "I am ashamed to say that the shock of my uncle's will brought on a relapse and I was so ill on Friday and thought myself so likely to be worse, that I could but press for Cassandra's returning with Frank after the funeral last night, which of course she did, and either her return or my having seen Mr. Curtis, or my disorder choosing to go away, have made me better this morning. I live upstairs however for the present and am coddled. I am the only one of the legatees who has been so silly, but a weak body must excuse weak nerves." Charles' second child Harriet had been causing great anxiety by an affection of the head which they thought might be water on the brain; but she seemed now to be a little better. Jane sent her a message at the end of the letter to her father. "Tell dear Harriet that whenever she wants me in her service again, she must send a hackney chariot all the way for me, for I am not strong enough to travel any other way, and I hope Cassy will take care that it is a green one." On the

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outside of this letter is written in Captain Charles Austen's

handwriting: "My last letter from dearest Jane." The circumstance of Mr. Leigh Perrot's will, or perhaps a feeling that her own death might be nearer than she knew, caused her to make her own will in this month. In it she left all the money she possessed at the time of her death, and any which might afterwards accrue through the sale of her works, to Cassandra, except that she left £50 to Henry, and £50

to poor Madame Bigeon.

But on May 22nd she wrote cheerfully to Miss Anne Sharp, who had at one time been a governess at Godmersham. In this letter she said that she had had another relapse, and been in bed since April 15th, only moving from there to the sofa; but now she was getting better once more, and would have got up, had she been left to herself. As it was, she could employ herself perfectly well in bed, of which her writing the letter was a proof. She had had many things, she said, for which to be thankful; she had never been delirious, and she seemed very much to value that: and she had had, on the whole, very little pain. She had had a discharge which the Alton apothecary did not pretend to be able to cope with, and so a Mr. Lyford from

Winchester had been called in, and his applications had been very successful, and the consequence was, she said, "that instead of going to town to put myself into the hands of some physician, as I should otherwise have done, I am going to Winchester instead for some weeks, to see what Mr. Lyford can do farther towards reestablishing me in tolerable health." Cassandra was going to take her there on Saturday, "and as that is only two days off, you will be convinced that I am now really a very genteel, portable sort of invalid." Mrs.

Heathcote had engaged lodgings for them already, and James was sending the carriage from Steventon to take them. Jane mentioned, as ever, the

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unspeakable kindness and comfort she had had from Cassandra; but everyone, she said, had shown her such kindness. She said: "In short, if I live to be an old woman, I must expect to wish I had died now; blessed in the tenderness of such a family, and before I had survived either them or their affection." In a letter posthumously published in the form of an extract by Henry, she showed the state of her nerves and how agonizingly acute every feeling and emotion had become:

"as to . . . the anxious affection of all my beloved family on this occasion, I can only cry over it, and pray to God to bless them more and more."

She ended gaily to Anne Sharp, saying what a comfort it would be to have Elizabeth Heathcote in Winchester; but Alethea Bigg would not be with them: "she being frisked off, like half England, into Switzerland."

It had been arranged that while James and Mary Austen were at

Scarlets, Caroline should come to Chawton, but when it came to the point, Jane was found to be too ill for them to have such a young visitor in the house, and Caroline went to her sister at Wyards instead. One morning at the beginning of April they both walked over to see her. She was upstairs, but they were allowed to go up to her, and found her sitting in a chair in her dressing gown. She was cheerful and like her usual self, except that she looked pale and weak; she got up when they came in, and pointed to two seats by the fire, saying: "There is a chair for the married lady, and a little stool for you, Caroline." On looking back, those were the last words of her Aunt Jane's that Caroline could remember; she retained nothing else of what was said: nor was there time for much conversation; in less than a quarter of an hour, their Aunt Cassandra came and fetched them away, and in Caroline's words: "I never saw Aunt Jane again."