by Jane Austen
Something like tranquillity might now be hoped for, and accordingly, when Rebecca had been prevailed on to carry away the tea-things, and Mrs. Price had walked about the room some time looking for a shirt sleeve,80 which Betsey at last hunted out from a drawer in the kitchen, the small party of females were pretty well composed, and the mother having lamented again over the impossibility of getting Sam ready in time, was at leisure to think of her eldest daughter and the friends she had come from.
A few enquiries began; but one of the earliest—“How did her sister Bertram manage about her servants? Was she as much plagued as herself to get tolerable servants?”—soon led her mind away from Northamptonshire, and fixed it on her own domestic grievances; and the shocking character of all the Portsmouth servants, of whom she believed her own two were the very worst, engrossed her completely.81 The Bertrams were all forgotten in detailing the faults of Rebecca, against whom Susan had also much to depose,82 and little Betsey a great deal more, and who did seem so thoroughly without a single recommendation, that Fanny could not help modestly presuming that her mother meant to part with her when her year was up.83
“Her year!” cried Mrs. Price; “I am sure I hope I shall be rid of her before she has staid a year, for that will not be up till November. Servants are come to such a pass, my dear, in Portsmouth, that it is quite a miracle if one keeps them more than half-a-year.84 I have no hope of ever being settled; and if I was to part with Rebecca, I should only get something worse. And yet I do not think I am a very difficult mistress to please—and I am sure the place is easy enough, for there is always a girl under her, and I often do half the work myself.”
Fanny was silent; but not from being convinced that there might not be a remedy found for some of these evils. As she now sat looking at Betsey, she could not but think particularly of another sister, a very pretty little girl, whom she had left there not much younger when she went into Northamptonshire, who had died a few years afterwards. There had been something remarkably amiable about her. Fanny, in those early days, had preferred her to Susan; and when the news of her death had at last reached Mansfield, had for a short time been quite afflicted.—The sight of Betsey brought the image of little Mary back again, but she would not have pained her mother by alluding to her, for the world.—While considering her with these ideas, Betsey, at a small distance, was holding out something to catch her eyes, meaning to screen it at the same time from Susan’s.
Southampton High Street.
[From The Repository of arts, literature, fashions, manufactures, &c, Vol. VII (1812), p. 281]
“What have you got there, my love?” said Fanny, “come and shew it to me.”
It was a silver knife. Up jumped Susan, claiming it as her own, and trying to get it away; but the child ran to her mother’s protection, and Susan could only reproach, which she did very warmly, and evidently hoping to interest Fanny on her side. “It was very hard that she was not to have her own knife; it was her own knife; little sister Mary had left it to her upon her death-bed, and she ought to have had it to keep herself long ago.85 But mamma kept it from her, and was always letting Betsey get hold of it; and the end of it would be that Betsey would spoil it, and get it for her own, though mamma had promised her that Betsey should not have it in her own hands.”
Fanny was quite shocked. Every feeling of duty, honour, and tenderness was wounded by her sister’s speech and her mother’s reply.86
“Now, Susan,” cried Mrs. Price in a complaining voice, “now, how can you be so cross? You are always quarrelling about that knife. I wish you would not be so quarrelsome. Poor little Betsey; how cross Susan is to you! But you should not have taken it out, my dear, when I sent you to the drawer. You know I told you not to touch it, because Susan is so cross about it.87 I must hide it another time, Betsey. Poor Mary little thought it would be such a bone of contention when she gave it me to keep, only two hours before she died. Poor little soul! she could but just speak to be heard, and she said so prettily, ‘Let sister Susan have my knife, mamma, when I am dead and buried.’—Poor little dear! she was so fond of it, Fanny, that she would have it lay by her in bed, all through her illness. It was the gift of her good godmother, old Mrs. Admiral Maxwell,88 only six weeks before she was taken for death. Poor little sweet creature! Well, she was taken away from evil to come. My own Betsey, (fondling her), you have not the luck of such a good godmother. Aunt Norris lives too far off, to think of such little people as you.”89
A mother with children.
[From Randall Davies, English Society of the Eighteenth Century in Contemporary Art (London, 1907), p. 52]
Fanny had indeed nothing to convey from aunt Norris, but a message to say she hoped her goddaughter was a good girl, and learnt her book. There had been at one moment a slight murmur in the drawing-room at Mansfield Park, about sending her a Prayer-book;90 but no second sound had been heard of such a purpose. Mrs. Norris, however, had gone home and taken down two old Prayer-books of her husband, with that idea, but upon examination, the ardour of generosity went off.91 One was found to have too small a print for a child’s eyes, and the other to be too cumbersome for her to carry about.
Fanny fatigued and fatigued again, was thankful to accept the first invitation of going to bed; and before Betsey had finished her cry at being allowed to sit up only one hour extraordinary in honour of sister, she was off, leaving all below in confusion and noise again, the boys begging for toasted cheese, her father calling out for his rum and water,92 and Rebecca never where she ought to be.
There was nothing to raise her spirits in the confined and scantily-furnished chamber that she was to share with Susan. The smallness of the rooms above and below indeed, and the narrowness of the passage and staircase, struck her beyond her imagination. She soon learnt to think with respect of her own little attic at Mansfield Park, in that house reckoned too small for anybody’s comfort.
A sailor.
[From William Alexander, Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the English (London, 1813), Plate 18]
Chapter Eight
Could Sir Thomas have seen all his niece’s feelings, when she wrote her first letter to her aunt, he would not have despaired; for though a good night’s rest, a pleasant morning, the hope of soon seeing William again, and the comparatively quiet state of the house, from Tom and Charles being gone to school, Sam on some project of his own, and her father on his usual lounges,1 enabled her to express herself cheerfully on the subject of home, there were still to her own perfect consciousness, many drawbacks suppressed. Could he have seen only half that she felt before the end of a week, he would have thought Mr. Crawford sure of her, and been delighted with his own sagacity.
Before the week ended, it was all disappointment. In the first place, William was gone. The Thrush had had her orders, the wind had changed, and he was sailed2 within four days from their reaching Portsmouth; and during those days, she had seen him only twice, in a short and hurried way, when he had come ashore on duty. There had been no free conversation, no walk on the ramparts,3 no visit to the dock-yard,4 no acquaintance with the Thrush—nothing of all that they had planned and depended on. Every thing in that quarter failed her, except William’s affection. His last thought on leaving home was for her. He stepped back again to the door to say, “Take care of Fanny, mother. She is tender, and not used to rough it like the rest of us. I charge you, take care of Fanny.”
William was gone;—and the home he had left her in was—Fanny could not conceal it from herself—in almost every respect, the very reverse of what she could have wished. It was the abode of noise, disorder, and impropriety. Nobody was in their right place, nothing was done as it ought to be. She could not respect her parents, as she had hoped. On her father, her confidence had not been sanguine, but he was more negligent of his family, his habits were worse, and his manners coarser, than she had been prepared for. He did not want abilities;5 but he had no curiosity, and no information6 beyond his profession; he read onl
y the newspaper and the navy-list;7 he talked only of the dock-yard, the harbour, Spithead, and the Motherbank;8 he swore and he drank, he was dirty and gross.9 She had never been able to recal anything approaching to tenderness in his former treatment of herself. There had remained only a general impression of roughness and loudness; and now he scarcely ever noticed her, but to make her the object of a coarse joke.
Posting a letter.
[From Andrew Tuer, Old London Street Cries (London, 1885), p. 57]
Her disappointment in her mother was greater; there she had hoped much, and found almost nothing. Every flattering scheme of being of consequence to her soon fell to the ground.10 Mrs. Price was not unkind—but, instead of gaining on her affection and confidence, and becoming more and more dear, her daughter never met with greater kindness from her, than on the first day of her arrival. The instinct of nature was soon satisfied, and Mrs. Price’s attachment had no other source.11 Her heart and her time were already quite full; she had neither leisure nor affection to bestow on Fanny. Her daughters never had been much to her. She was fond of her sons, especially of William, but Betsey was the first of her girls whom she had ever much regarded. To her she was most injudiciously indulgent. William was her pride; Betsey, her darling; and John, Richard, Sam, Tom, and Charles,12 occupied all the rest of her maternal solicitude, alternately her worries and her comforts. These shared her heart; her time was given chiefly to her house and her servants. Her days were spent in a kind of slow bustle; always busy without getting on, always behindhand13 and lamenting it, without altering her ways; wishing to be an economist,14 without contrivance15 or regularity;16 dissatisfied with her servants, without skill to make them better, and whether helping, or reprimanding, or indulging them, without any power of engaging17 their respect.18
Of her two sisters, Mrs. Price very much more resembled Lady Bertram than Mrs. Norris. She was a manager by necessity, without any of Mrs. Norris’s inclination for it, or any of her activity. Her disposition was naturally easy and indolent, like Lady Bertram’s; and a situation of similar affluence and do-nothingness would have been much more suited to her capacity, than the exertions and self-denials of the one, which her imprudent marriage had placed her in. She might have made just as good a woman of consequence as Lady Bertram, but Mrs. Norris would have been a more respectable mother of nine children, on a small income.19
Much of all this, Fanny could not but be sensible of. She might scruple to make use of the words, but she must and did feel that her mother was a partial, ill-judging parent, a dawdle,20 a slattern, who neither taught nor restrained her children, whose house was the scene of mismanagement and discomfort from beginning to end, and who had no talent, no conversation,21 no affection towards herself; no curiosity to know her better, no desire of her friendship, and no inclination for her company that could lessen her sense of such feelings.22
Fanny was very anxious to be useful, and not to appear above her home, or in any way disqualified or disinclined, by her foreign23 education, from contributing her help to its comforts, and therefore set about working for Sam immediately, and by working early and late, with perseverance and great dispatch, did so much, that the boy was shipped off at last, with more than half his linen ready.24 She had great pleasure in feeling her usefulness, but could not conceive how they would have managed without her.
Sam, loud and overbearing as he was, she rather regretted when he went, for he was clever and intelligent, and glad to be employed in any errand in the town; and though spurning the remonstrances of Susan, given as they were—though very reasonable in themselves, with ill-timed and powerless warmth, was beginning to be influenced by Fanny’s services, and gentle persuasions; and she found that the best of the three younger ones was gone in him; Tom and Charles being at least as many years as they were his juniors distant from that age of feeling and reason, which might suggest the expediency of making friends, and of endeavouring to be less disagreeable. Their sister soon despaired of making the smallest impression on them; they were quite untameable by any means of address which she had spirits or time to attempt.25 Every afternoon brought a return of their riotous games all over the house; and she very early learnt to sigh at the approach of Saturday’s constant half holiday.26
Betsey too, a spoilt child, trained up to think the alphabet her greatest enemy,27 left to be with the servants at her pleasure, and then encouraged to report any evil of them,28 she was almost as ready to despair of being able to love or assist; and of Susan’s temper, she had many doubts. Her continual disagreements with her mother, her rash squabbles with Tom and Charles, and petulance with Betsey, were at least so distressing to Fanny, that though admitting they were by no means without provocation, she feared the disposition that could push them to such length must be far from amiable, and from affording any repose to herself.29
Such was the home which was to put Mansfield out of her head, and teach her to think of her cousin Edmund with moderated feelings. On the contrary, she could think of nothing but Mansfield, its beloved inmates,30 its happy ways. Every thing where she now was was in full contrast to it. The elegance, propriety, regularity, harmony—and perhaps, above all, the peace and tranquillity of Mansfield, were brought to her remembrance every hour of the day, by the prevalence of every thing opposite to them here.31
The living in incessant noise was to a frame and temper, delicate and nervous like Fanny’s, an evil which no super-added elegance or harmony could have entirely atoned for. It was the greatest misery of all. At Mansfield, no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness; every body had their due importance; every body’s feelings were consulted. If tenderness could be ever supposed wanting, good sense and good breeding supplied its place;32 and as to the little irritations, sometimes introduced by aunt Norris, they were short, they were trifling, they were as a drop of water to the ocean, compared with the ceaseless tumult of her present abode. Here, every body was noisy, every voice was loud (excepting, perhaps, her mother’s, which resembled the soft monotony of Lady Bertram’s, only worn into fretfulness).—Whatever was wanted, was halloo’d for, and the servants halloo’d out their excuses from the kitchen. The doors were in constant banging, the stairs were never at rest, nothing was done without a clatter, nobody sat still, and nobody could command attention when they spoke.
In a review of the two houses, as they appeared to her before the end of a week, Fanny was tempted to apply to them Dr. Johnson’s celebrated judgment as to matrimony and celibacy,33 and say, that though Mansfield Park might have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures.34
A fashionable London interior of the time.
[From E. Beresford Chancellor, The XVIIIth Century in London (New York, 1921), p. 227]
Burlington House, a leading London house.
[From E. Beresford Chancellor, The XVIIIth Century in London (New York, 1921), p. 163]
Chapter Nine
Fanny was right enough in not expecting to hear from Miss Crawford now, at the rapid rate in which their correspondence had begun; Mary’s next letter was after a decidedly longer interval than the last, but she was not right in supposing that such an interval would be felt a great relief to herself.—Here was another strange revolution of mind!—She was really glad to receive the letter when it did come. In her present exile from good society, and distance from every thing that had been wont to interest her, a letter from one belonging to the set where her heart lived, written with affection, and some degree of elegance, was thoroughly acceptable.—The usual plea of increasing engagements was made in excuse for not having written to her earlier, “and now that I have begun,”1 she continued, “my letter will not be worth your reading, for there will be no little offering of love at the end, no three or four lines passionées2 from the most devoted H. C. in the world,3 for Henry is in Norfolk; business called him to Everingham ten days ago,4 or perhaps he only pretended the call, for the s
ake of being travelling5 at the same time that you were. But there he is, and, by the by, his absence may sufficiently account for any remissness of his sister’s in writing, for there has been no ‘well, Mary, when do you write to Fanny?—is not it time for you to write to Fanny?’ to spur me on. At last, after various attempts at meeting, I have seen your cousins, ‘dear Julia and dearest Mrs. Rushworth’; they found me at home yesterday, and we were glad to see each other again.6 We seemed very glad to see each other,7 and I do really think we were a little.—We had a vast deal to say.—Shall I tell you how Mrs. Rushworth looked when your name was mentioned? I did not use to think her wanting in self-possession, but she had not quite enough for the demands of yesterday.8 Upon the whole Julia was in the best looks of the two, at least after you were spoken of. There was no recovering the complexion from the moment that I spoke of ‘Fanny,’ and spoke of her as a sister should.9—But Mrs. Rushworth’s day of good looks will come; we have cards for her first party on the 28th.10—Then she will be in beauty, for she will open one of the best houses in Wimpole Street.11 I was in it two years ago, when it was Lady Lascelles’s, and prefer it to almost any I know in London, and certainly she will then feel—to use a vulgar phrase—that she has got her pennyworth for her penny.12 Henry could not have afforded her such a house. I hope she will recollect it, and be satisfied, as well she may, with moving the queen of a palace, though the king may appear best in the back ground; and as I have no desire to tease13 her, I shall never force your name upon her again. She will grow sober by degrees.—From all that I hear and guess, Baron Wildenhaim’s attentions to Julia continue,14 but I do not know that he has any serious encouragement. She ought to do better. A poor honourable is no catch,15 and I cannot imagine any liking in the case, for, take away his rants,16 and the poor Baron has nothing. What a difference a vowel makes!—if his rents were but equal to his rants!17—Your cousin Edmund moves slowly; detained, perchance, by parish duties. There may be some old woman at Thornton Lacey to be converted.18 I am unwilling to fancy myself neglected for a young one. Adieu, my dear sweet Fanny, this is a long letter from London; write me a pretty one in reply to gladden Henry’s eyes, when he comes back—and send me an account of all the dashing young captains whom you disdain for his sake.”19