Natural exuberance

More today from Chesterton:

“These pages betray her secret; which is that she was naturally exuberant. And her power came, as all power comes, from the control and direction of that exuberance. . . . her original passion was a sort of joyous scorn and a fighting spirit against all that she regarded as morbid and lax and poisonously silly.”

G.K. Chesterton, from the introduction to Love & Freindship
Chatto & Windus, 1922

Many thanks to Helen Scott at Chawton House Library for helping me track this quote down.

Love his description of Jane’s “joyous scorn,” which just captures her, to my mind.