In Janeites and Austen L today,
Diana Birchall wrote as follows:
"My reading group has just
finished The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things by Paula Byrne. I was
prepared to dislike it, because of all the publicity Byrne whipped up about that
questionable
portrait, and her general way of
proceeding; however, I have to concede that the book is actually an excellent
companion when reading the Letters. At our meeting we went through all the
errors and misreadings she makes (and there is quite a list), but we all liked
the book's approach, which was interesting, provocative, and more fruitful than
reading another straight biography. Importantly, she does make many really good
connections about things in the letters that Deirdre [Le Faye] does not
address. It's worth reading. "
I then responded as follows:
“…that's exactly what I have said
about Byrne's biography on a couple of occasions during the past six months,
including the following post I wrote about 2 months ago about Jane Austen’s
Letter 105, which illustrates the good work that Byrne has done, which makes up
for her sloppiness on other points---it's easy for an informed reader to
correct a false positive, but there's no easy cure for a reader to correct a
false negative (as to which there must be more than a hundred in Le Faye’s
editions of the Letters, and in her Family Record)! :
"Here is what Paula Byrne has
to say about the Hampson family in her very recent bio of JA:
“[Jane] Austen was intimately
connected with the slave trade and plantation owners. In her own family, there
were the Hampson and the Walter cousins on her father’s side…Her closest
connection to a plantation family was through her
father’s family...The Hampson family had a plantation in Jamaica, and two of
William’s sons were sent there. It was
their sister Philadelphia Walter (named after their aunt) who preserved Eliza
de Feuillide’s letter...In one of her few surviving letters, Mrs. Austen wrote
to Phila Walter, whom she considered her ‘third niece’, complaining that “You
might as well have been in Jamaica keeping your Brother’s house, for anything
that we see or are likely to see of you.” In 1773 Mrs. Austen wrote to Susannah
Walter to say that she was sorry to hear about Sir George Hampson’s accident
and that she hoped he would still be able to take Susannah’s son George back to
Jamaica with him the following spring. Sir George, the sixth Baronet of Taplow,
was Rebecca Hampson’s nephew. He married Mary Pinnock of Jamaica and was
succeeded by his son, Sir Thomas Hampson. In other words, Jane Austen had a
cousin twice removed who was called Sir Thomas and who owned a plantation in
Jamaica.” END QUOTE
That “Sir Thomas” is the very fellow
who, per Le Faye, wanted to be called “Mr.” , which of course is not how Sir
Thomas Bertram felt about such things. Isn’t it very curious, though, that Le
Faye referred to him as a republican, but completed omitted any mention
whatsoever (even in the detailed Biographical Index entry for the Hampson
family) that he was a plantation owner?
It’s hard (no, impossible) to
believe that Le Faye was unaware of the Jamaica connection, and yet, Byrne
appears to be the first JA biographer to present this crucial fact to the
Janeite world. By emphasizing Thomas-Philip’s republican leanings
(and I still would very much like to see the actual evidence for same), it’s
almost as though Le Faye has chosen a fact about him that would be the furthest
thing away from his having owned a plantation in Jamaica. And why might she
have done this? It seems clear to me why she would. A reader of Letter 105 who
wondered why JA would have wished to avoid seeing her cousin Hampson, and who then
read Le Faye's footnote to that passage in Letter 105, would reasonably infer
that what JA disliked about the 7th baronet were his republican leanings!
Whereas, a reader of Letter 105 who could instead have been informed by a
footnote that he owned a slave plantation in Jamaica, would reasonably speculate
that what JA disliked about the 7th baronet was his owning a slave
plantation--and that would especially be the case if he also was alerted that
JA was right in the midst of writing Mansfield Park as she wrote
Letter 105!
If all of that doesn't make you
wonder about Le Faye's extreme editorial bias in favor of a (fake) conservative
image of Jane Austen--someone who would look the other way about slave-owning
in her own extended family (remember, this man was one of Henry Austen's major
banking guarantors),
but who disliked a man born to
privilege who did not wish to be known to the world as such, I don't know what
would.
I've always maintained that JA's
portrait of Sir Thomas Bertram was most of all that of a hypocrite who talked
the talk of a higher morality, but who walked the walk of a greedy mercenary
amoral monster. Perhaps Sir Thomas Bertram was a strong representation of Sir
(or Mr.) Thomas-Philip Hampson, a portraiture which Henry Austen of all people
would have wished never to come to light, given that Henry tried to benefit
from the largesse of his slave-owning cousin.
And even today, two centuries later,
Le Faye seems to be continuing Henry's project of hiding who JA really was.
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
P.S.: In case anyone was wondering,
Le Faye's 4th edition is identical to her 3rd edition of the Letters in terms
of the information presented about the Hampson family.
No comments:
Post a Comment