This little domestic
tragedy caused great and lasting grief to the principal sufferer, and
could not but cast a gloom over the whole party. The sympathy of Jane
was probably, from her age, and her peculiar attachment to her sister,
the deepest of all.
Of Jane herself I know of no such definite tale of love to relate. Her
reviewer in the 'Quarterly' of January 1821 observes, concerning the
attachment of Fanny Price to Edmund Bertram: 'The silence in which this
passion is cherished, the slender hopes and enjoyments by which it is
fed, the restlessness and jealousy with which it fills a mind naturally
active, contented, and unsuspicious, the manner in which it tinges every
event, and every reflection, are painted with a vividness and a detail of
which we can scarcely conceive any one but a female, and we should almost
add, a female writing from recollection, capable.' This conjecture,
however probable, was wide of the mark. The picture was drawn from the
intuitive perceptions of genius, not from personal experience. In no
circumstance of her life was there any similarity between herself and her
heroine in 'Mansfield Park.
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