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 ACERTAIN 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."
