There
are the _three_ short passages in Letter 87 which refer to Warren Hastings, who
was, of course, the former Governor General of India. His impeachment trial was
one of the major political events of Jane Austen's teenage years, and his
personal connections to the Austen family over a period of decades are
extremely well known:
"And
Mr. Hastings! I am quite delighted with what SUCH A MAN writes about it. Henry
sent him the books after his return from Daylesford, but you will hear the
letter too….I long to have you hear Mr. H.'s
opinion of P. and P. His admiring my Elizabeth so much is
particularly
welcome to me...I
heard Edward last night pressing Henry to come to G[odmersha]m, and I think
Henry engaged to go there after his November collection. Nothing has been done
as to S&S. The books came to hand too late for him to have time for it
before he went. Mr. Hastings never hinted at Eliza in the smallest
degree...."
So
as not to reinvent the wheel, here is the link to the blog post I wrote early
last year in which I spelled out the many ways--in particular the veiled
negative connotations, in _all_ of JA's novels, of the expression "such a
man"---in which the three short above-quoted passages in Letter 87 are, in
a thinly veiled way, pointing to Warren Hastings as the biological father of
Jane Austen's cousin, Eliza (Hancock de Feuillide) Austen, and also to Hastings
as an important allusive source for the character of
Colonel
Brandon in S&S:
As
you will see if you read the above post, the textual evidence supporting my
ironic, sarcastic interpretation really is overwhelming in this case, and the
"punch line" of my post was as follows:
"But
I think JA is most curious to know if Hastings will take the hint of the two
references to Brandon's illegitimate daughter, combined with other items
connecting him to Hastings, such as the duel, and all the
stuff
connecting to Tysoe and Phila Austen. Whereas in P&P JA writes "His
admiring my Elizabeth so much is particularly welcome to me."—this seems
sincere, as Eliza Bennet is in part a tribute to Eliza Hancock Austen, and her
Beatrice-like sparkling with and vivacity, and JA believes that Hastings did
have a soft spot for his "daughter". But it's also why JA writes
"Mr. Hastings never hinted at Eliza in the smallest degree" in the
immediately preceding sentence. I suggest that this is not Eliza Bennet (who is
referred to sentences later as "Elizabeth"), but Eliza _Williams_
from S&S--and the way JA encodes this is two sentences later when she
refers to various members of the Williams family. If they are actual people in
the first place, and I think they are, I suggest that even so they are
mentioned in _that_ sentence in the letter, sandwiched between sentences about
Hastings, purposely to flag for CEA's sensitized eyes a veiled reference to Eliza
_Williams_!"
I.e.,
it is only when Letter 87 is read in the context of the open secret of Hastings
as Eliza's biological father, and Hastings having been given copies of both
S&S and P&P, that JA's otherwise cryptic statement "Mr. Hastings
never hinted at Eliza in the smallest degree" becomes utterly clear in its
meaning --it's Eliza Williams, who bears an illegitimate daughter named Eliza
to a man who owns a great estate named _Delaford_ (sounds almost exactly like
_Daylesford_).
This
is the essence of the Jane Austen Code--what the reader can understand depends
entirely on what assumptions the reader is operating under.
And,
since I wrote the above linked post, I have realized that Warren Hastings is
also represented in _another_ of JA's novels---Mansfield Park-in the character
of the ponderous Sir Thomas Bertram--and of course Mary Crawford is yet another
representation of Hastings's illegitimate daughter Eliza. And so it comes as no
surprise that the novel of which JA was deep in the writing as she wrote Letter
87, was that very same Mansfield Park!
Therefore,
the above probably qualifies as perhaps
the _quintessential_ example of the dangers of not being sensitive to irony
while reading Jane Austen. If one is tone deaf to her irony, one is at grave
risk of reading one of her passage utterly opposite to Jane Austen's true
meaning.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
P.S.: After
posting the above, today, it occurs to me that I ought to finish with a brief speculative
leap into the darkest shadows of Jane Austen’s novels, and to look more closely
at Elizabeth Bennet as a representation of Eliza (Hancock de Feuillide) Austen,
in connection with JA’s writing “Mr. Hastings never hinted at Eliza
in the smallest degree". In my above linked blog post from last year, I concluded that Eliza _Bennet_ was not the hint
from Warren Hastings that JA was watching out for, but instead, it was Eliza _Williams_.
But what if the hint from Hastings that JA was
watching out for was not just regarding the (undisguised) illegitimacy of Eliza
_Williams_, but was _also_regarding the (deeply
disguised) illegitimacy of Eliza
_Bennet_?
Sounds completely crazy?
Well, I have for over 7 years taken special
note of the extraordinary coincidence of
so many suitors (Darcy, Wickham, and Collins)
all showing up at Lizzy’s door within such a short time period. I have long
been of the opinion that this is not a coincidence at all, but instead Jane
Austen’s broadest possible hint that things are going on offstage of which
Lizzy, and therefore also the passive
reader, is utterly unaware..
And one theory I have long kept in
the back of my mind, as being a key element of solving the winking hint of that
giant coincidence, was that perhaps there was something about the circumstances
of Lizzy’s birth---completely _unknown_ to Lizzy herself—which perhaps made her
an especially inviting target for those
three men---i.e., might she not be the biological child of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet,
but instead of some rich powerful man—like, say, the elder Mr. Darcy—and some young woman living 21 years earlier in the vicinity of
Pemberley---like, say, the younger,
unmarried Mrs. Gardiner?
It would explain an awful lot if it
were so, especially if Lizzy had been Mr. Darcy’s _only_ true biological
offspring.
And there I leave off with my brief
speculative leap……
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