on which she had ventured under the advice of her
publisher Egerton, appeared.[278] According to our dates, she was not
now actually engaged in regular composition--for _Mansfield Park_[279]
was completed 'soon after June 1813,' and _Emma_ was not begun till
January 21, 1814. We may guess, however, that she was either putting a
few humorous touches to Mrs. Norris and Lady Bertram, or else giving
herself hints in advance for Miss Bates or Mr. Woodhouse; for we learn
something of her process from an eyewitness, her niece Marianne Knight,
who related her childish remembrances of her aunt not very many years
ago. 'Aunt Jane,'[280] she said, 'would sit very quietly at work beside
the fire in the Godmersham library, then suddenly burst out laughing,
jump up, cross the room to a distant table with papers lying upon it,
write something down, returning presently and sitting down quietly to
her work again.' She also remembered how her aunt would take the elder
girls into an upstairs room and read to them something that produced
peals of laughter, to which the little ones on the wrong side of the
door listened, thinking it very hard that they should be shut out from
hearing what was so delightful! The laughter may have been the result of
the second novel then published, for there is an entry in Fanny Knight's
diary: 'We finished _Pride and Prejudice_'; or it may have been caused
by a first introduction to Aunt Norris and Lady Bertram. Happy indeed
were those who could hear their creator make her characters 'speak as
they ought.' The dramatic element in her works is so strong that for
complete enjoyment on a first acquaintance it is almost indispensable
that they should be read aloud by some person capable of doing them
justice. She had this power herself, according to the concurrent
testimony of those who heard her, and she handed it on to her nephew,
the author of the _Memoir_.

On November 13 Jane left Godmersham with Edward, spent two days with
some connexions of his at Wrotham, and reached London on the 15th, in
time to dine with Henry in Henrietta Street.

After that she had various plans; but we do not know which she adopted;
and there is nothing further to tell of her movements until March 1814.
We know, however, that _Emma_ was begun in January; and that on March 2,
when Henry drove his sister up to London, spending a night at Cobham on
the way, he was engaged in reading _Mansfield Park_ for the first time.
Jane was of co