JANE AUSTEN 67 



here," as children's books say, "a very pretty game 

 may be played by each child saying" what question 

 he would put to the ghost of Jane Austen. For 

 myself I believe I should ask, "Would Fanny Price 

 really have married Crawford if he had not eloped 

 with Miss Bertram ? If in the words of Captain 

 Price there had not been "the devil to pay" in 

 Wimpole Street. Then, too, I should have liked 

 some eugenic information about Elizabeth's (Mrs. 

 Darcy's) children. Because if there was reversion 

 to the type of Lydia it would have been serious. One 

 can fancy Elizabeth retorting that if he said another 

 word about the Lydia type she would pray for an 

 infant possessing all the qualities of Lady Catherine 

 de Burgh, a gift well within the powers of the gods 

 who rule heredity. 



I doubt whether Jane Austen consciously 

 painted the results of heredity ; rather, I suppose 

 that her memory working instinctively, made, for 

 instance, the Bennet family consist of types recalling 

 the father or mother. She could hardly have known 

 of the questionable theory that the eldest child is 

 commonly inferior to the second, and nevertheless 

 she makes Jane Bennet inferior in capacity to 

 Elizabeth, although so greatly superior to the 

 younger children of Mrs. Bennet's ts^pe. 



There are other cases of heredity among her 

 characters; for instance, in Persuasion, the snobbery 

 and selfishness of Miss Elliott clearly reproduces her 

 father, while Anne, as we know from Lady Russell, 

 was a true child of her mother, I like to fancy that 

 the querulousness and weakness of Mary (Mrs. 

 Charles) was a perverted gentleness coming from 



