Little Journeys to the Homes of Famous Women — Jane Austen, Part 1

And then she was carried to the churchyard at Edmonton.

There she rests in the grave with her brother.

In life they were never separated, and in death they are not divided.

JANE AUSTEN

Delaford is a nice place I can tell you; exactly what I call a nice, old-fashioned place, full of comforts, quite shut in with great garden-walls that are covered with fruit-trees, and such a mulberry-tree in the corner.

Then there is a dovecote, some delightful fish-ponds, and a very pretty canal, and everything, in short, that one could wish for; and moreover it's close to the church and only a quarter of a mile from the turnpike road.

--_Sense and Sensibility_ [Illustration: JANE AUSTEN] 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.