A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Character and Tastes 73
would furnish us with what we wanted from her wardrobe; and
she would be the entertaining visitor in our make-believe house.
She amused us in various ways. Once, I remember, in giving a
conversation as between myself and my two cousins, supposing
we were all grown up, the day after a ball.’
Very similar is the testimony of another niece:°–– ‘Aunt Jane
was the general favourite with children; her ways with them being
so playful, and her long circumstantial stories so delightful.
These were continued from time to time, and were begged for on
all possible and impossible occasions; woven, as she proceeded,
out of nothing but her own happy talent for invention. Ah! if but
one of them could be recovered! And again, as I grew older, when
the original seventeen years between our ages seemed to shrink to
seven, or to nothing, it comes back to me now how strangely I
missed her. It had become so much a habit with me to put by
things in my mind with a reference to her, and to say to myself, I
shall keep this for aunt Jane.’
A nephew of hers° used to observe that his visits to Chawton,
after the death of his aunt Jane, were always a disappointment to
him. From old associations he could not help expecting to be
particularly happy in that house; and never till he got there could
he realise to himself how all its peculiar charm was gone. It was
not only that the chief light in the house was quenched, but that
the loss of it had cast a shade over the spirits of the survivors.
Enough has been said to show her love for children, and her
wonderful power of entertaining them; but her friends of all ages
felt her enlivening influence. Her unusually quick sense of the
ridiculous led her to play with all the common-places of everyday
life, whether as regarded persons or things; but she never played
with its serious duties or responsibilities, nor did she ever turn
individuals into ridicule. With all her neighbours in the village
she was on friendly, though not on intimate, terms. She took a
kindly interest in all their proceedings, and liked to hear about
them. They often served for her amusement; but it was her own
nonsense that gave zest to the gossip. She was as far as possible
from being censorious or satirical. She never abused them or
quizzed° them–– that was the word of the day; an ugly word, now