PERSUASION JANE AUSTEN EDITED BY PATRICIA MEYER SPACKSA NORTON pptx

PERSUASION
JANE AUSTEN
EDITED
BY PATRICIA MEYER SPACKS
A
NORTON CRITICAL EDITION
PERSUASION
The
text of this Norton Critical Edition is that
of
the first edition (dated 1818 but probably
issued in late
1817),
which was published
posthumously. The editor has spelled out amper-
sands and made superscript letters lowercase.
The
novel, which is fully annotated, is followed by
the two canceled chapters that comprise
Persuasion's
original ending.
"Backgrounds
and Contexts" collects contemporary assess-
ments of Jane Austen as well as materials relating to the social
issues of the day. Included is an excerpt from William Hayley's
1785
"Essay on Old Maids"; Austen's letters to Fanny Knight,
which reveal her skepticism about marriage as the key to
happi-
ness;
Henry Austen's memorial tribute to his famous sister; as-

sessments by nineteenth-century critics Julia Kavanagh and
Goldwin Smith, who saw Austen as an unassuming, sheltered,
"feminine,"
rural
writer; and the perspective of Austen's biogra-
pher, Géraldine Edith Mitten.
"Modern Critical Views" reflects a dramatic shift in the way
that scholars view both Austen and
Persuasion.
Increasingly, the
focus
is on Austen's moral purposefulness and political acumen
and on
Persuasions
historical, social, and political implications.
A
variety of perspectives are provided by
A.
Walton Litz, Marilyn
Butler,
Tony Tanner, Robert Hopkins, Ann W. Astell, Claudia L.
Johnson,
and Cheryl Ann Weissman.
A
Selected Bibliography is included.
ABOUT
THE
SERIES:
Each Norton Critical Edition includes an authoritative
text,

contextual and source materials, and a wide range of interpretations—
from contemporary perspectives to the most current critical theory—as well
as a bibliography and, in many cases, a chronology of the
author's
life
and
work.
COVER
ILLUSTRATION:
Thomas Hearne, "View of Bath from Spring Garden,"
Yale
Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
AUTHOR'S
PORTRAIT:
Watercolor sketch
of
Jane
Austen by Cassandra Austen.
Reproduced by courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London.
ISBN-10:
0-393-96018-8
780393"960181
90000
>
W.W.NORTON
NEW YORK LONDON
\_
The
Editor
PATRICIA

MEYER
SPACKS
is
Edgar
F. Shannon Professor of
English at the University of Virginia. She is the author of
eleven books including An Argument of Images: The Poetry of
Alexander
Pope, The
Female
Imagination, The Adolescent
Idea:
Myths of Youth in the Adult Imagination, Desire and
Truth:
Functions of
Plot
in Eighteenth-Century English Nov-
els,
and Boredom: The Literary History of a
State
of Mind.
Professor
Spacks is a contributing editor
of The
Norton Anthol-
ogy of World Masterpieces.
PERSUASION
AUTHORITATIVE
TEXT

BACKGROUNDS
AND CONTEXTS
CRITICISM
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A
NORTON
CRITICAL EDITION
Jane
Àusten
PERSUASION
AUTHORITATIVE TEXT

BACKGROUNDS AND CONTEXTS
CRITICISM
Edited
by
PATRICIA MEYER SPACKS
UNIVERSITY
OF VIRGINIA
W. W.
Norton
&
Company
New York
London
Copyright © 1995 by W.W. Norton & Company
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First
Edition
The text of
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by Antonina Krass
Library
of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Austen,
Jane,
1775-1817.
Persuasion : an authoritative text, backgrounds, and contexts,
reviews
and
essays
in criticism /
Jane
Austen ;
edited
by
Patricia
Meyer Spacks.
p. cm.—(A Norton critical ed.)
Includes bibliographical references.
1.
England—Social
life
and customs —19th century—Fiction.
2.
Man-woman relationships—England—Fiction. 3. Austen,
Jane,
1775-1817.
Persuasion. I. Spacks,
Patricia
Ann Meyer. II. Title.

PR4034.P4
1994
823'.7-dc20
94-4510
ISBN
0-393-96018-8
W.
W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New
York,
N.Y. 10110
W.
W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House,
75/76
Wells Street,
London WIT 3QT
567890
Contents
Preface
ix
The Text of
Persuasion
1
[The
Original Ending of
Persuasion]
168
Backgrounds and Contexts
[William
Hayley] • [On Old Maids] 181
Jane

Austen • Letters about
Persuasion
187
To
Fanny Knight (March
13, [1817])
187
To
Fanny Knight (March
23,
[1817])
189
Henry Austen • Biographical Notice of the Author 191
[Richard
Whateley] • [A New Style of Novel] 196
Anonymous • [Austen's Characters] 206
Julia
Kavanagh • [The Language of
Feeling]
208
Goldwin Smith •
From
Life
of Jane Austen 211
Géraldine Edith Mitton •
From
Jane Austen and Her Times 212
Modern
Critical
Views

A.
Walton Litz • New Landscapes 217
Marilyn Butler • [On
Persuasion]
224
Tony Tanner • In Between: Persuasion 231
Robert Hopkins • Moral Luck and Judgment in Jane Austen's
Persuasion 265
Ann W. Astell • Anne Elliot's Education: The Learning of
Romance in Persuasion 275
Claudia L. Johnson • Persuasion: The "Unfeudal Tone
of the Present Day" 286
Cheryl Ann Weissman • Doubleness and Refrain
in Jane Austen's Persuasion 307
Jane
Austen: A Chronology 313
Selected
Bibliography 315
vii
Preface
Jane
Austen wrote
Persuasion,
her last complete novel, while suffering
from the illness (Addison's disease) that would kill her. She began work
on it in 1815, finishing her alterations of the final chapters on July 18,
1816,
precisely a year before she died. Her brother Frank published it,
along with

Northanger
Abbey
and his own biographical notice of his
sister,
at the end of
1817.
Certain critics (including some whose work is excerpted in the
Back-
grounds
and Contexts and Criticism sections of this volume) have found
in the novel a melancholy strain, attributable, in their view, to the
author's illness. Early commentators on
Persuasion—and
some fairly
recent
ones—glimpsed in the book the sadness of mortality, comment-
ing on its elegiac tone and on a new kind of seriousness in its imagining.
Those
with a literary-historical bent have noted the incursion of atti-
tudes
and assumptions that we associate with romanticism: the novelist
who once mocked Marianne's enthusiasm for dead leaves
(Sense
and
Sensibility)
now allows her heroine, without overt criticism, to take
pleasure in evidence of the "declining year."
Social
critics have found
splendid material for investigation in the novel's new emphasis on the

life
and values of the Royal Navy, discovering that Austen not only
drew
on knowledge gained from two admiral-brothers but appeared to criti-
cize
the aristocracy and welcome the accession to social power of a new
class.
Persuasion,
in short, contains something for everybody, a fertile
field
for
varied sorts of
critical
investigation.
The
documents collected in the Backgrounds and Contexts and Criti-
cism
sections of this volume suggest a range of possibilities and
adum-
brate changing attitudes and
trends
in critical discourse. The excerpt
from William Hayley's
Essay
on Old
Maids
(1785),
for instance, implic-
itly
sketches the social context in which Austen chose to investigate the

emotional situation of a twenty-seven-year-old unmarried woman. For
Austen, at least in her role as fiction maker, as for Hayley, marriage
constituted the
happy
ending of a woman's youth. Within this concep-
tual framework, however, Austen found it possible to imagine a woman
neither preoccupied with marriage nor initially convinced that no
female
fulfillment can exist outside it. Her letters to Fanny Knight
remind us of Jane Austen's comic skepticism about marriage as consti-
tuting
inevitable female
bliss;
Persuasion
helps elucidate that skepticism.
ix
X
PREFACE
In
his memorial notice her brother describes Jane Austen as a woman
of
notable piety and familial devotion. That woman's last completed
novel
reminds us how rich an emotional
life
may underlie exemplary
female
conduct. One of Austen's communications to Fanny Knight
describes
Anne

Elliot,
the heroine of
Persuasion,
as "almost too good
for
me." Henry Austen's characterization of his sister makes goodness
sound like a simple matter.
Persuasion
tells us otherwise. Goodness can
include resistance as well as persuadability—and it by no means pre-
cludes private judgment.
If
such commentators on the social scene as Hayley and such observ-
ers of character as Henry Austen
call
attention to components of con-
ventional female compliance in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries,
nineteenth- and early twentieth-century commentary on
Per-
suasion
tends
to stress other stereotypically feminine elements of the
novel,
notably its alleged emphasis on feeling and its concern for the
everyday. Such commentary
supports
a view of Austen that has long
survived; as an unmarried woman living in a village, she knew and cared
little

about problems and experience beyond her immediate setting.
Limited
in imaginative range, according to this view, Austen evinced
sharp
observation, acumen about a fairly restricted realm of emotions,
and a gift for sharp, often
comic,
characterization. Twentieth-century
criticism,
however, heavily represented in the present volume, considers
the Austen of
Persuasion
a serious moralist and a significant commenta-
tor on
social,
even political, issues.
My
decision to emphasize recent criticism of
Persuasion
reflects my
conviction
that the current critical shift has enormous importance for
our comprehension of Austen's achievement. New ways of approaching
the novels make it possible for the first time to think complexly about
Austen in the context of her contemporaries—not only her literary
peers, but all the other men and women living
through
the Napoleonic
Wars
on the Continent and their political repercussions in England.

Persuasion
speaks of more
than
life
in a village, or even in Bath. It
sharply ironizes Austen's well-known profession to her brother about
"the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a
Brush,
as produces little
effect
after much labour." Devoted readers have
always denied the claim that Austen works to "little
effect";
the notion
of
her two inches of ivory is equally questionable.
"Pictures of perfection . . . make me
sick
and wicked," Austen
observed, in the letter containing her claim that Anne
Elliot
was "almost
too good" for her. Good
though
she is, the heroine of
Persuasion
never
runs
the danger of "perfection." She plays music so that others may
dance, cares for a

sick
child so that her sister and brother-in-law can go
out to dinner, changes residence in response to the real or fancied needs
of
her relatives. Behaving like the very model of a well-bred spinster,
she nonetheless vibrates with passion and preserves a will of her own.
PREFACE
XI
The
early commentators who praised Austen's characterization and
noted the high degree of feeling in
Persuasion
had it right. Thus
Julia
Kavanagh, in 1862, observes that the portrayal of Anne constitutes "the
first
genuine picture of that silent
torture
of an unloved woman." Just
so:
Austen makes her readers experience vicariously the full intensity of
such torture.
But
those interested in the social and political implications
of
Austen's
fiction
get
it right too. The special brilliance of
Persuasion

depends
partly on its combined focus on the private experience of
a
sharply imag-
ined individual and the social actualities that necessarily inform individ-
ual experience. As in her other fiction, Austen here provides a
penetrating
study
of self-love in its varied manifestations. The
Elliot
family
supplies numerous examples, from the comic to the simply
appalling. Anne's sister Mary, her state of health varying according to
the degree of attention others pay her, has found an
appropriate
mate in
Charles,
concerned mainly with his
hunting,
his dogs, and his guns.
Elizabeth,
the other
Elliot
sister, resembles her father in vanity and in
self-referential
snobbery. Sir Walter, for whom his own appearance and
rank constitute the primary
standard
of value against which he judges
others (usually to their disadvantage), cares not at all for the welfare of

his
daughter
Anne, whom he considers plain and unlikely to marry well.
He and Elizabeth decide, as an economy measure, to bring Anne no
gift
from their visit to London. The tiny episode epitomizes their utter
self-absorption, which signifies a widespread and dangerous social
malady.
Less
dramatic but more sinister in his self-preoccupation is William
Elliot,
who calculates his every move in relation to selfish interest. Anne
condemns him for lack of "openness" well before she learns of his more
openly destructive behavior. He acts like a man of the world—if one
defines the world as a place where everyone is out for him- or
herself
and where success entails winning place, power, and wealth at the
expense
of others.
Persuasion
raises the question of whether any alterna-
tive conception of the world can prove viable.
It
does not treat this question as a simple one. As Alexander Pope had
recognized
("Self-love,
the spring of motion, acts the soul; / Reason's
comparing balance rules the whole"), self-interest energizes everyone
and provides a fundamental engine of social progress. Anne, to whom
her family denies the right of openly expressed self-concern, experiences

the omnipresence of individually focused perspectives as she moves from
one small social environment to another, to find that the concerns of
one household mean nothing at all to residents of another only a few
miles
away. Driving
down
a Bath street with Lady Russell, Anne sees
only
the presence of the man she loves on the sidewalk. What will Lady
Russell
say about him? she wonders. Lady Russell, of course preoccu-
pied with her own affairs, comments instead on the window curtains
Xll
PREFACE
she has been contemplating. Anne appropriately recognizes the irony of
conflicting
personal assignments of significance, but the recognition
does not protect her—even her—from seeing in the light of her own
feelings,
thoughts, and obsessions.
Yet
Persuasion
suggests the possibility of surmounting narrow
self-
concern,
not only through the self-sacrificing "goodness" that Anne at
first appears to embody but through a kind of "openness" antithetical to
William
Elliot's calculation and promising new social horizons. Pope
went on from his observation of self-love as energizing principle to the

Utopian hope that self-love and social might ultimately merge. Austen
adumbrates
less Utopian versions of
that
merging in the members of the
navy she depicts, Admiral and Mrs. Croft, Captain Wentworth, and
Anne herself, who becomes Mrs. Wentworth. The Crofts and Captain
Wentworth exhibit healthy self-concern. Admiral Croft does not
feel
shy about drawing his own conclusions as to the character of Sir Walter
Elliot;
Mrs. Croft speaks her judgments and attitudes forthrightly. Cap-
tain Wentworth, in worldly terms successful, has indeed gained his
wealth at others' expense, triumphing in naval combat, capturing ships,
winning promotion presumably over other people's heads. To some
extent,
then, the world operates as William
Elliot
assumes, by clamber-
ing competition. Yet these people who have won status and money have
not had to sacrifice personal feeling. The Crofts exemplify cooperative
and satisfying marriage. Wentworth, despite his
hurt
feelings over
Anne's earlier rejection and his determination to marry anyone but her,
finally
faces
the
truth
of his emotions and risks rejection once more for

the sake of his newly discovered, long-enduring devotion. If we take
Anne and her lover as exemplary, it is not quite accurate to generalize,
as Anne does, that women love longest when all hope is gone. Men can
love
just as long—they just have more trouble acknowledging the
fact
about themselves.
One need not conclude that the navy will replace the aristocracy as
center
of social power. But the navy epitomizes a better moral as well as
social
order, specifically in the way its representatives embody a produc-
tive union between self-directed and outward-directed interest. Anne,
marrying Wentworth, can abandon
self-sacrifice
for self-fulfillment—
which is not to say that she at all abandons her concern for others. The
novel's final sentences direct the reader's attention both to the
life
of
personal feeling and to the navy's symbolic connection with private as
well
as public virtue. "Anne was tenderness itself, and she had the full
worth of it in Captain Wentworth's affection. . . . She gloried in being
a
sailor's wife, but she must pay the tax of quick alarm for belonging to
that profession which is, if possible, more distinguished in its domestic
virtues
than
in its national importance.

"
The language of finance ("the
full
worth of it," "pay the tax") applied to emotions calls attention to the
processes
of exchange involved in virtually every
human
transaction.
PREFACE
xiii
Ideally
one achieves balance between what is given and what received;
one does not, like William
Elliot,
aspire only to take.
Being
a sailor, or
a
sailor's wife, allows for intricate balances, between loving and being
loved,
between
pride
and fear, but also between personal absorption
and public responsibility. The private satisfaction Wentworth receives
corresponds to the national service he gives; Anne pays for her
pride
in
his public role by fear for the possibility of her private deprivation. At
any moment such precarious balances can tip, but the novel concludes
with the imagining of their preservation and of their moral resonance.

Such
preservation, such resonance signify for national
life
as well as for
a
couple's marriage.
The
text of
Persuasion
here printed is that of the first edition,
dated
1818
but probably issued in late 1817. The
printing
of the two canceled
chapters follows the edition of R. W. Chapman. Ampersands that
appeared in the original texts have been spelled out, and superscript
letters have been lowered.
The Text of
PERSUASION
Persuasion
Chapter
I
Sir
Walter Elliot, of Kellynch-hall, in Somersetshire, was a man
who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronet-
age;
1

there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a
distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and
respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents;
2
there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs, changed
naturally into pity and contempt. As he
turned
over the almost endless
creations
3
of the last century—and there, if every other
leaf
were power-
less,
he could read his own history with an interest which never failed—
this was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:
ELLIOT
OF
KELLYNCH-HALL.
Walter
Elliot, born March 1, 1760, married, July 15, 1784,
Elizabeth,
daughter
of
James
Stevenson, Esq. of South Park, in the
county of Gloucester; by which lady (who died
1800)
he has issue
Elizabeth,

born June 1,
1785;
Anne, born August 9,
1787;
a still-
born son, Nov. 5,
1789;
Mary, born Nov. 20, 1791.
Precisely
such had the
paragraph
originally stood from the printer's
hands; but Sir Walter had improved it by
adding,
for the information of
himself
and his family, these words, after the date of Mary's birth—
"married, Dec. 16, 1810, Charles, son and heir of Charles Musgrove,
Esq.
of Uppercross, in the county of Somerset,"—and by inserting most
accurately
the day of the month on which he had lost his wife.
Then
followed the history and rise of the ancient and respectable fam-
ily,
in the usual terms: how it had been first settled in Cheshire; how
mentioned in Dugdale—
4
serving the
office

of High Sheriff, represent-
ing a borough in three successive parliaments, exertions of loyalty, and
dignity of baronet, in the first year of Charles II., with all the Marys and
1.
Presumably!.
Debrett's
Baronetage
of
England
(1808).
2.
Titles (of
nobility).
3.
New
peerages.
4.
Sir William Dugdale, The Ancient Usage in
Bearing
of
Such
Ensigns
of
Honour
as Are
Com-
monly
Caïïd
Arms,
with

a Catalogue of the Present Nobility of
England
. . . Scotland . . .
and
Ireland
(mi).
3
4
CHAPTER
I
Elizabeths
they had married; forming altogether two handsome duodec-
imo
pages, and concluding with the arms and motto: "Principal seat,
Kellynch
hall, in the county of Somerset," and Sir Walter's
hand-writ-
ing again in this finale:
"Heir presumptive, William Walter
Elliot,
Esq., great grandson of
the second Sir Walter."
Vanity
was the beginning and the end of
Sir
Walter
Elliot's
character;
vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in
his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could

think more of their personal appearance
than
he did; nor could the valet
of
any new made lord be more delighted with the place he held in
society.
He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the bless-
ing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter
Elliot,
who united these gifts, was
the constant
object
of his warmest respect and devotion.
His good looks and his rank had one fair claim on his attachment;
since
to them he must have owed a wife of very superior character to
any thing deserved by his own. Lady
Elliot
had been an excellent
woman, sensible and amiable; whose judgment and conduct, if they
might be
pardoned
the youthful infatuation which made her Lady
Elliot,
had never required indulgence afterwards.—She had
humoured,
or
softened, or concealed his failings, and promoted his real respectabil-
ity
for seventeen years; and

though
not the very happiest being in the
world herself, had found enough in her duties, her friends, and her
children, to attach her to
life,
and make it no matter of indifference to
her when she was called on to quit them.—Three girls, the two eldest
sixteen
and fourteen, was an awful legacy for a mother to bequeath; an
awful charge rather, to confide to the authority and guidance of a con-
ceited,
silly father. She had, however, one very intimate friend, a sensi-
ble,
deserving woman, who had been brought, by strong attachment to
herself,
to settle
close
by her, in the village of Kellynch; and on her
kindness and advice, Lady
Elliot
mainly relied for the best help and
maintenance of the good principles and instruction which she had been
anxiously
giving her daughters.
This
friend, and Sir Walter, did not marry, whatever might have been
anticipated on that head by their acquaintance.—Thirteen years had
passed away since Lady
Elliot's
death,

and they were still near
neighbours and intimate friends; and one remained a widower, the other
a
widow.
That
Lady Russell, of steady age and character, and extremely well
provided for, should have no thought of a second marriage, needs no
apology to the public, which is rather apt to be unreasonably discon-
tented when a woman
does
marry again,
than
when she does not; but
Sir
Walter's continuing in singleness requires explanation.—Be it
known then, that Sir Walter, like a good father, (having met with one
or
two private disappointments in very unreasonable applications)
prided
CHAPTER I
5
himself
on remaining single for his dear
daughter's
sake. For one
daugh-
ter, his eldest, he would really have given up any thing, which he had
not been very much tempted to do. Elizabeth had succeeded, at sixteen,
to all that was possible, of her mother's rights and consequence; and
being very handsome, and very like himself, her influence had always

been great, and they had gone on together most happily. His two other
children were of very inferior value. Mary had acquired a little artificial
importance, by becoming Mrs. Charles Musgrove; but Anne, with an
elegance
of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed
her high with any people of real
understanding,
was nobody with either
father or sister: her word had no weight; her convenience was always to
give
way;—she was only Anne.
To
Lady Russell, indeed, she was a most dear and highly valued god-
daughter,
favourite and friend. Lady Russell loved them all; but it was
only
in Anne that she could fancy the mother to revive again.
A
few years before, Anne
Elliot
had been a very pretty girl, but her
bloom
had vanished early; and as even in its height, her father had
found little to admire in her, (so totally different were her delicate
fea-
tures and mild
dark
eyes from his own); there could be nothing in them
now that she was faded and thin, to
excite

his esteem. He had never
indulged much hope, he had now none, of ever reading her name in
any other page of his favourite work. All equality of alliance must rest
with Elizabeth; for Mary had merely connected
herself
with an old
country family of respectability and large fortune, and had therefore
given
all the honour, and received none: Elizabeth would, one day or
other, marry suitably.
It
sometimes happens, that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine
than
she was ten years before; and, generally speaking, if there has been
neither ill health nor anxiety, it is a time of
life
at which scarcely any
charm is lost. It was so with Elizabeth; still the same handsome Miss
Elliot
that she had begun to be thirteen years ago; and Sir Walter might
be
excused, therefore, in forgetting her age, or, at least, be deemed only
half
a
fool,
for thinking
himself
and Elizabeth as blooming as ever,
amidst the wreck of the good looks of every body
else;

for he could
plainly see how old all the rest of his family and acquaintance were
growing. Anne haggard, Mary coarse, every
face
in the neighbourhood
worsting;
5
and the rapid increase of the crow's foot about Lady Russell's
temples had long been a distress to him.
Elizabeth
did not quite equal her father in personal contentment.
Thirteen
years had seen her mistress of Kellynch Hall, presiding and
directing with a self-possession and decision which could never have
given the idea of her being younger
than
she was. For thirteen years had
she been doing the honours, and laying
down
the domestic law at home,
5.
Worsening.
6
CHAPTER
I
and leading the way to the chaise and four,
6
and walking immediately
after
Lady Russell out of all the drawing-rooms and dining-rooms in the

country. Thirteen winters' revolving frosts had seen her opening every
ball
of credit which a scanty neighbourhood afforded; and thirteen
springs shewn their blossoms, as she travelled up to London with her
father, for a few weeks annual enjoyment of the great world. She had
the remembrance of all this; she had the consciousness of being nine-
and-twenty, to give her some regrets and some apprehensions. She was
fully
satisfied of being still quite as handsome as ever; but she felt her
approach to the years of danger, and would have rejoiced to be certain
of
being properly solicited by baronet-blood within the next twelve-
month or two. Then might she again take up the book of books with as
much enjoyment as in her early youth; but now she liked it not. Always
to be presented with the date of her own birth, and see no marriage
follow
but that of a youngest sister, made the book an evil; and more
than
once, when her father had left it open on the table near her, had
she closed it, with averted eyes, and pushed it away.
She
had had a disappointment, moreover, which that book, and espe-
cially
the history of her own family, must ever present the remembrance
of.
The heir presumptive, the very William Walter
Elliot,
Esq. whose
rights had been so generously
supported

by her father, had disap-
pointed her.
She
had, while a very young girl, as soon as she had known him to
be,
in the event of her having no brother, the future baronet, meant to
marry him; and her father had always meant that she should. He had
not been known to them as a boy, but soon after Lady Elliot's
death
Sir
Walter
had sought the acquaintance, and though his overtures had not
been
met with any warmth, he had persevered in seeking it, making
allowance
for the modest
drawing
back of youth; and in one of their
spring excursions to London, when Elizabeth was in her first bloom,
Mr.
Elliot
had been forced into the introduction.
He was at that time a very young man, just engaged in the
study
of
the law; and Elizabeth found him extremely agreeable, and every plan
in his favour was confirmed. He was invited to Kellynch Hall; he was
talked of and expected all the rest of the year; but he never came. The
following
spring he was seen again in town, found equally agreeable,

again encouraged, invited and expected, and again he did not come;
and the next tidings were that he was married. Instead of
pushing
his
fortune in the line marked out for the heir of the house of
Elliot,
he
had purchased independence by uniting
himself
to a rich woman of
inferior
birth.
Sir
Walter had resented it. As the head of the house, he felt that he
ought to have been consulted, especially after taking the young man so
6.
A light, open
carriage
drawn
by
four
horses.
CHAPTER
I
7
publicly by the
hand:
"For they must have been seen together," he
observed, "once at Tattersal's,
7

and twice in the lobby of the House of
Commons." His disapprobation was expressed, but apparently very little
regarded. Mr.
Elliot
had attempted no apology, and shewn
himself
as
unsolicitous of being longer noticed by the family, as Sir Walter consid-
ered him unworthy of
it:
all acquaintance between them had ceased.
This
very awkward history of Mr.
Elliot,
was still, after an interval of
several years, felt with anger by Elizabeth, who had liked the man for
himself,
and still more for being her father's heir, and whose strong
family
pride
could see only in him, a proper match for Sir Walter Elliot's
eldest daughter. There was not a baronet from A to Z, whom her
feel-
ings could have so willingly acknowledged as an equal. Yet so miserably
had he conducted himself, that though she was at this present time, (the
summer of
1814,)
wearing black ribbons for his wife,
8
she could not

admit him to be worth thinking of again. The disgrace of his first mar-
riage might, perhaps, as there was no reason to suppose it perpetuated
by
offspring, have been got over, had he not done worse; but he had, as
by
the accustomary intervention of kind friends they had been informed,
spoken most disrespectfully of them all, most slightingly and contemptu-
ously of the very blood he belonged to, and the honours which were
hereafter to be his own. This could not be
pardoned.
Such
were Elizabeth Elliot's sentiments and sensations; such the cares
to alloy, the agitations to vary, the sameness and the elegance, the pros-
perity and the nothingness, of her scene of life—such the feelings to
give
interest to a long, uneventful residence in one country
circle,
to
fill
the vacancies which there were no habits of utility abroad, no talents or
accomplishments for home, to occupy.
But
now, another occupation and solicitude of mind was beginning
to be
added
to these. Her father was growing distressed for money. She
knew, that when he now took up the Baronetage, it was to drive the
heavy bills of his tradespeople, and the unwelcome hints of Mr. Shep-
herd, his agent, from his thoughts. The Kellynch property was good,
but not equal to Sir Walter's apprehension of the state required in its

possessor. While Lady
Elliot
lived, there had been method, moderation,
and economy, which had just kept him within his income; but with her
had died all such right-mindedness, and from that period he had been
constantly exceeding it. It had not been possible for him to spend
less;
he had done nothing but what Sir Walter
Elliot
was imperiously called
on to do; but blameless as he was, he was not only growing dreadfully
in debt, but was hearing of it so often, that it became vain to attempt
concealing
it longer, even partially, from his daughter. He had given
her some hints of it the last spring in town; he had gone so far even as
to say, "Can we retrench? does it occur to you that there is any one
7.
A
center
for betting,
located
in
Grosvenor
Crescent.
8.
Tokens of
mourning:
his wife had died
recently.
8

CHAPTER II
article
in which we can retrench?"—and Elizabeth, to do her
justice,
had, in the first
ardour
of female alarm, set seriously to think what could
be
done, and had finally proposed these two branches of economy: to
cut off some unnecessary charities, and to refrain from new-furnishing
the drawing-room; to which expedients she afterwards
added
the
happy
thought of their taking no present
down
to Anne, as had been the usual
yearly
custom. But these measures, however good in themselves, were
insufficient
for the real extent of the evil, the whole of which Sir Walter
found
himself
obliged to confess to her soon afterwards. Elizabeth had
nothing to propose of deeper
efficacy.
She
felt
herself
ill-used and unfor-

tunate, as did her father; and they were neither of them able to devise
any means of lessening their expenses without compromising their dig-
nity, or relinquishing their comforts in a way not to be borne.
There
was only a small
part
of his estate that Sir Walter could dispose
of;
but had every acre been alienable,
9
it would have made no differ-
ence.
He had condescended to mortgage as far as he had the power, but
he would never condescend to
sell.
No; he would never disgrace his
name so far. The Kellynch estate should be transmitted whole and
entire, as he had received it.
Their
two confidential friends, Mr. Shepherd, who lived in the
neighbouring market town, and Lady Russell, were called on to advise
them; and both father and
daughter
seemed to expect that something
should be struck out by one or the other to remove their embarrassments
and reduce their expenditure, without involving the loss of any indul-
gence
of taste or pride.
Chapter
II

Mr.
Shepherd, a
civil,
cautious lawyer, who, whatever might be his
hold or his views on Sir Walter, would rather have the
disagreeable
prompted by any body
else,
excused
himself
from offering the slightest
hint, and only begged leave to recommend an implicit deference to the
excellent
judgment of Lady Russell,—from whose known good sense he
fully
expected to have just such resolute measures advised, as he meant
to see finally
adopted.
Lady
Russell was most anxiously zealous on the subject, and gave it
much serious consideration. She was a woman rather of sound
than
of
quick
abilities, whose difficulties in coming to any decision in this
instance were great, from the opposition of two leading principles. She
was of strict integrity herself, with a delicate sense of honour; but she
was as desirous of saving Sir Walter's feelings, as solicitous for the credit
of
the family, as aristocratic in her ideas of what was due to them, as

9.
Sellable (i.e., not prevented by legal
restriction
from
being sold).
CHAPTER
II
9
any body of sense and honesty could well be. She was a benevolent,
charitable,
good woman, and capable of strong attachments; most cor-
rect
in her conduct, strict in her notions of decorum, and with manners
that were held a
standard
of good-breeding. She had a cultivated mind,
and was, generally speaking, rational and consistent—but she had preju-
dices
on the side of ancestry; she had a value for rank and consequence,
which blinded her a little to the faults of those who possessed them.
Herself,
the widow of only a knight, she gave the dignity of a baronet all
its due;
1
and Sir Walter, independent of his claims as an old acquain-
tance,
an attentive neighbour, an obliging landlord, the husband of her
very dear friend, the father of Anne and her sisters, was, as being Sir
Walter,
in her apprehension entitled to a great deal of compassion and

consideration
under
his present difficulties.
They
must retrench; that did not admit of a
doubt.
But she was very
anxious to have it done with the least possible pain to him and
Eliza-
beth. She
drew
up plans of economy, she made exact calculations, and
she did, what nobody else thought of doing, she consulted Anne, who
never seemed considered by the others as having any interest in the
question. She consulted, and in a degree was influenced by her, in
marking out the scheme of retrenchment, which was at last submitted
to Sir Walter. Every emendation of Anne's had been on the side of
honesty against importance. She wanted more vigorous measures, a
more complete reformation, a quicker release from debt, a much higher
tone of indifference for every thing but justice and equity.
"If
we can persuade your father to all this," said Lady Russell, looking
over her paper, "much may be done. If he will
adopt
these regulations,
in seven years he will be clear; and I hope we may be able to convince
him and Elizabeth, that Kellynch-hall has a respectability in itself,
which cannot be affected by these reductions; and that the
true
dignity

of
Sir
Walter
Elliot
will be very far from lessened, in the eyes of sensible
people, by his acting like a man of principle. What will he be doing, in
fact,
but what very many of our first families have done,—or ought to
do?—There
will be nothing singular in his
case;
and it is singularity
which often makes the worst
part
of our suffering, as it always does of
our conduct. I have great hope of our prevailing. We must be serious
and decided—for, after all, the person who has contracted debts must
pay them; and though a great deal is due to the feelings of the gentle-
man, and the head of a house, like your father, there is still more due
to the character of an honest man."
This
was the principle on which Anne wanted her father to be pro-
ceeding, his friends to be urging him. She considered it as an act of
indispensable
duty
to clear away the claims of creditors, with all the
expedition
2
which the most comprehensive retrenchments could
1.

A knight
ranked
immediately below a
baronet
in the
peerage.
2.
Speed.