Issue: 27 November 2004	PAGE 1 of 2 next >>

In the art of writing, one of the central problems is what to put in and what to leave out. In the past, I have always been one for putting in. I felt myself full of good things I did not want the reader to miss. So my books got longer and longer. This gigantism spent itself, and from the gross satisfaction of putting everything in I turned to the more delicate pleasure of deciding what to leave out. I discovered I could write down everything a reasonable person needed to know about the Renaissance in 40,000 words, and I have since done Napoleon and Washington at the same length. It has proved to be great fun.

It is one thing, however, to leave out material for reasons of space, bulk, balance and other physical causes, quite another to leave out for reasons of art. That is one of the great mysteries and problems — and delights — of creation. One great artist who knows exactly what to leave out and what to put in is Jane Austen. When I went up to Oxford I had read only Pride and Prejudice, and thought it quite good, but had no present plans to move further into her oeuvre. Then, through the good offices of my sister, a don at St Anne’s, I was invited to have tea — I am not sure it was not ‘to take tea’ — with Miss Mary Lascelles at Somerville. Miss Lascelles was from a grand Yorkshire family and most particular about manners, and I went with some trepidation. She was also a woman of remarkable sensibilities and acute intelligence. A few years before, in 1939, she had published a striking work, Jane Austen and Her Art, which more than 60 years later is still the best book written on the subject. One reason for this is that Miss Lascelles, like Jane Austen, was a lady, and therefore perceived certain hesitations, reticences, lacunae and other subtleties which, say, a Bloomsbury or Maida Vale bluestocking, or an American female professor, no matter how clever, will not catch. Over the Lapsang Souchong and Fuller’s walnut cake (which then still existed; its extinction is one of the minor tragedies of my lifetime), Miss Lascelles soon got down to business, and there was only one business in her life. ‘Have you read all the novels, or just some, and if so, which?’ I confessed, only Pride and Prejudice. ‘Ah yes. The funniest, perhaps — the author herself said so, but not by any means the best.’ She then conjured me most earnestly to make myself master of Jane Austen’s entire slender output at the earliest possible opportunity. ‘Because, you know, a thorough familiarity with Jane Austen’s work is the greatest passport to human happiness in the world that I know, and the richest gift of divine providence. And the earlier you acquire it, the longer there will be for enjoyment. Those novels are precious jewels to be carried through life, to sparkle and, unlike mere diamonds, to warm our senses and gladden our hearts, at all seasons but especially in times of trouble and distress, in sickness and in pain, in bereavement and low spirits, on all occasions when the world seems harsh and grim. Oh, Mr Johnson, I beg you to follow my advice!’ Well, in due course I did — not immediately, for there were wine, women and song to be relished first — but when I went into the army. And of course she was right, and everything she said proved to be true, as I have learnt over the past half-century. So I beg readers who have not yet acquired that thorough familiarity to do so with all deliberate speed. On that same occasion, Miss Lascelles quoted to me an observation of Virginia Woolf (which also occurs in her book on p. 134). Mrs Woolf called Jane Austen ‘a mistress of much deeper emotion than appears upon the surface. She stimulates us to supply what is not there.’ Miss Lascelles added, ‘It is a mark of a great writer that he or she takes the reader into the magic circle of composition, and gets you to join them in the art of creation. You supply what is not there. And what you supply is to some extent of your own choosing, though to be sure within the parameters of the author’s intentions. The supreme gift of authorship is to make the reader his co-creator. Shakespeare had this gift. So did Jane Austen. And so does that remarkable Mr Eliot who is astonishing us with his “Four Quartets”.’