66 JANE AUSTEN 



read her as often as I have. Nor am I willing to 

 allow that this is intellectual idleness, for her works 

 like those of Nature, always yield something new 

 to the faithful student. 



And she, Hke Nature, has the power of creating 

 in her devotees a minute interest which I rarely 

 experience in other writers. It does not seem to 

 Austenites a fooHsh thing to inquire what was 

 Mr. Woodhouse's Christian name, a problem only 

 soluble by remembering that he thought it "very 

 pretty" of poor Isabella to call her eldest little 

 boy Henry, and by implication proving that the 

 child, who should have been christened John after 

 his father, was named after his grandfather. And 

 I am proud to remember that when the problem 

 of Mr. Woodhouse's name was propounded to my 

 mother, she solved it at once, and as though it were 

 a question too simple to be asked. Nor does it 

 seem to us trivial that the word given by Frank 

 Churchill to Jane during the "word-game" at 

 Hartfield was 'Pardon,' This was traditionally 

 known in the author's family, indeed Mr. Austen 

 Leigh^ says that she was always ready to reveal 

 such valuable facts as that Mrs. Norris' "con- 

 siderable sum" given as a present to William in 

 Mansfield Park was one pound; that Miss Steele 

 never caught the Doctor, and that Mary Bennet 

 married an unfortunate clerk of her uncle Philip's. 

 These revelations lend an air of history to her 

 romance, they give the exciting quality of treasure- 

 trove to the secrets she shares with us. "And 



' Memoir, p. 148. 



