A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Appendix
soon after the inimitable Mr. Collins had made his appearance in
literature, an old friend attacked her on the score of having
pourtrayed an individual; in recurring to the subject afterwards
she expressed a very great dread of what she called ‘such an
invasion of social proprieties.’ She said she thought it fair to note
peculiarities, weaknesses, and even special phrases, but it was her
desire to create not to reproduce, and at the same time said ‘I am
much too proud of my own gentlemen ever to admit that they are
merely Mr. A or Major C.’
Mrs. Barrett declared that to a perfect modesty of character
she united a real judgement of her own powers, and that on the
appearance of a good review (I almost think it was one by Archbishop
Whately in the Quarterly, at one time printed among Sir
W. Scott’s miscellanies) she said, ‘Well! that is pleasant! Those are
the very characters I took most pains with, and the writer has
found me out.’
To a question ‘which of your characters do you like best’? she
once answered, ‘Edmund Bertram and Mr. Knightley; but they
are very far from being what I know English gentlemen often are.’
The change of ideas as to clerical duty may be discovered in a
fact mentioned by the same lady, that Miss Austen was once
attacked by an Irish dignitary, who preferred a residence at Bath
to his own proper sphere, ‘for being over particular about Clergymen
residing on their cures.’ This was, of course, in allusion to
the conversation of Bertram & Crawford in Mansfield Park.
There is one fragment more which I would willingly linger on
and expand,–– the tribute of my old friend to the real and true
spring of a religion which was always present though never
obtruded. Miss Austen, she used to say, had on all the subjects of
enduring religious feeling the deepest and strongest convictions,
but a contact with loud and noisy exponents of the then popular
religious phase made her reticent almost to a fault. She had to
suffer something in the way of reproach from those who believed
she might have used her genius to greater effect; but her old
friend used to say, ‘I think I see her now defending what she
thought was the real province of a delineator of life and manners,
and declaring her belief that example and not “direct preaching”