CHAPTER VI.

Habits of Composition resumed after a long interval—­First publication—­The interest taken by the Author in the success of her Works.

It may seem extraordinary that Jane Austen should have written so little during the years that elapsed between leaving Steventon and settling at Chawton; especially when this cessation from work is contrasted with her literary activity both before and after that period.  It might rather have been expected that fresh scenes and new acquaintance would have called forth her powers; while the quiet life which the family led both at Bath and Southampton must have afforded abundant leisure for composition; but so it was that nothing which I know of, certainly nothing which the public have seen, was completed in either of those places.  I can only state the fact, without assigning any cause for it; but as soon as she was fixed in her second home, she resumed the habits of composition which had been formed in her first, and continued them to the end of her life.  The first year of her residence at Chawton seems to have been devoted to revising and preparing for the press ’Sense and Sensibility,’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice’; but between February 1811 and August 1816, she began and completed ‘Mansfield Park,’ ‘Emma,’ and ‘Persuasion,’ so that the last five years of her life produced the same number of novels with those which had been written in her early youth.  How she was able to effect all this is surprising, for she had no separate study to retire to, and most of the work must have been done in the general sitting-room, subject to all kinds of casual interruptions.  She was careful that her occupation should not be suspected by servants, or visitors, or any persons beyond her own family party.  She wrote upon small sheets of paper which could easily be put away, or covered with a piece of blotting paper.  There was, between the front door and the offices, a swing door which creaked when it was opened; but she objected to having this little inconvenience remedied, because it gave her notice when anyone was coming.  She was not, however, troubled with companions like her own Mrs. Allen in ‘Northanger Abbey,’ whose ’vacancy of mind and incapacity for thinking were such that, as she never talked a great deal, so she could never be entirely silent; and therefore, while she sat at work, if she lost her needle, or broke her thread, or saw a speck of dirt on her gown, she must observe it, whether there were any one at leisure to answer her or not.’  In that well occupied female party there must have been many precious hours of silence during which the pen was busy at the little mahogany writing-desk, {102} while Fanny Price, or Emma Woodhouse, or Anne Elliott was growing into beauty and interest.  I have no doubt that I, and my sisters and cousins, in our visits to Chawton, frequently disturbed this mystic process, without having any idea of the mischief that we were doing; certainly we never should have guessed it by any signs of impatience or irritability in the writer.