Jane Austen by Jenkins Elizabeth

Author:Jenkins, Elizabeth [Jenkins, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780862205621
Publisher: Chivers Press
Published: 1968-01-02T07:00:00+00:00

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and bound with a ribbon, which was something against her better judgment, but to which she was partially reconciled by their saying how charming it looked. Edward said that in the Chawton period, which began when she was thirty-four, though she was always

dressed with beautiful care, she had given up being fashionable; and he thought he remembered that people in general said she was too young and attractive to be so regardless of making the most of herself.

One characteristic that impressed them all was the wonderful

regularity of any of her handiwork. Her handwriting, controlled and flawless as the cutting on a gem, remains for us to see; but the family remembered how deftly her letters were always folded. "In those days there was an art in folding and sealing. No adhesive envelopes made all easy. Some people's letters always looked loose and untidy; but her paper was sure to take the right folds, and her sealing wax to drop into the right place." She sewed exquisitely, with such regular stitches "as might almost have put a sewing machine to shame." A great deal of her sewing was done on garments for the poor, but she usually had a piece of embroidery at hand that she might take up if visitors were there; satinstitch was her especial forte; on one occasion she sent Fanny an embroidered strip; and there still exists a large muslin scarf bordered with her handiwork. She was the deftest of any at games requiring dexterity of hand, such as spillikins or cup and ball. She amazed Edward by what she could do with the latter; sometimes she caught the ivory ball upon its point over a hundred times in succession.

She seems to have had, besides a dislike for much expression of religious enthusiasm, a dislike for anything bordering on an

affectation of enthusiasm for music. Today such an affectation is almost unknown; the majority of people who do not care for music do not imagine that they make

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themselves more interesting by pretending that they do; but when diversions were relatively few, and, while general information was scanty, the standard of accomplishments was high, there was a

temptation to pretend to musical fervor which is quite outside our experience. A vivid illustration of this is supplied by Mrs. Elton.

Jane frequently, in private life, displayed a determination not to show more pleasure in music than she actually felt. In Bath she had said of a public concert in Sydney Gardens that happily the gardens were large enough for her to get out of earshot of the strains; and though we might take that as a not unjust reflection on the orchestra, she said of a singer in town, "that she gave me no pleasure is no reflection upon her, nor I hope upon myself, being what nature made me on that article." She did not think a defective appreciation of music was an unsympathetic trait in a heroine; at a party, Elinor Dashwood who "was neither musical

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