In response to a recent thread in Janeites & Austen-L:
With all
due respect to Diana Birchall (“[JA] is paying [Clarke] the compliment of being serious
and rational when she confides her fears about this latest book...One senses these
are very genuine fears, sincerely confided, and she would not say as much to
just anybody; only to one whom she is sure holds her in high esteem.”) and
Ellen Moody (“So I've not been emphasizing their friendship enough nor how Austen is seriously
confiding in him.”), I totally disagree with the claim that Jane Austen was
sincere in ANY way whatsoever in Letter 132(D) (or for that matter in any of
the three letters she wrote) to James Stanier Clarke.
I’ve
posted previously about a number of ways in which JA’s letters to Clarke were
all utterly disingenuous, totally satirical, and reflective of a deep seated
contempt for him -- they might even be the best examples I know from the real
life of Jane Austen’s “regulated hatred” as Harding described it so brilliantly
70+ years ago)—my personal favorite, of course, has to be the letter to Clarke
dated on April Fool’s Day, in 1816! I’ve been of this opinion about Austen’s
choice of Clarke (along with his sucking-up “twin” Egerton Brydges) since 2005,
when Clarke first really became prominent on my radar screen as I was sleuthing out Emma for the
first time. But I’ve also long opined that Mr.Collins is a representation of Clarke and Brydges as well.
Anyway,
while revisiting this question of JA’s attitude toward Clarke the past two days after reading
Diana’s, Ellen’s and Diane’s posts, and going over my files about Clarke going
back to when I first realized that Jane Austen was toying with him in these
letters, today I was able to finally apply Occam’s Razor to this matrix, and crystallize, in a larger,
simpler, and exquisitely layered allusive context, exactly what JA was up to
with Clarke (which of course is part and parcel of what she was up to in her
fiction vis a vis his boss the Prince of Whales as well).
In a
nutshell:
ONE: In
these three letters to James Stanier Clarke, Jane Austen has (with spectacular
success) turned Clarke into a combination of Malvolio from Twelfth Night, (duping a narcissistic toady into believing
he is loved by a woman who is above him)
Christopher Sly from the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew, and Bottom from
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
TWO:
Despite recent scholarly assertions that Malvolio is represented by Emma in Emma,
it is the character of Mr. Elton who actually represents both James Stanier
Clarke and also Malvolio, Sly, and Bottom. Aside from the (to me) obvious
similarity between Malvolio’s aspirations for the hand of the countess Olivia
and Elton’s aspirations for the hand of Emma, there are also numerous clues
hidden in plain sight in the text of Emma which, when properly decoded, reveal
that Mr. Elton is duped repeatedly by his unseen, shadowy tormenters (who
include, at different times, both Mr. Knightley and Miss Bates), who prey on
his narcissism by giving him delusions of grandeur, exactly as is done to Malvolio, Sly, and Bottom in their
respective Shakespeare plays.
To be
very succinct about it, readers of Emma have not understood that Mr. Elton has
actually been goaded and gulled (aided by Mr. Knightley’s especially SPIKED
spruce beer!), into coming on too strong to Emma in the carriage ride from
Randalls to the Vicarage on Christmas Eve, 1813 (and also has been deliberately
misdirected to Donwell Abbey late in the novel, so as to get him away from the
Vicarage!).
THREE:
Perhaps the most spectacular (and intentional on JA’s part) irony of all in
this matrix is that it actually wasn’t Jane Austen’s original idea to wrap
James Stanier Clarke in the personae of these three memorably deluded
Shakespearean fools—she was beaten to the satirical punch by the Prince Regent
and his co-conspirators, most of all Lord Egremont, master of Petworth, who
came up with that very same idea at
Petworth not too long before JA began writing Emma.
FOUR:
There can be no question that the aristocratic pranksters at Petworth were very
consciously modeling what you will read
about, below, upon the Shakespearean models described in ONE, above, and
that JA fully understood their
Shakespearean subtext, and extended it magnificently in Emma.
DISCUSSION:
First,
if the names Petworth and Egremont sound oddly familiar, it’s because Clarke
himself mentioned them both in Letter 132(A) to JA, the very letter JA was responding to via Letter 132(D):
“On
Monday I go to Lord Egremont’s at Petworth—where your Praises have long been
sounded as they ought to be. “
What
Clarke failed to mention about Lord Egremont and Petworth in Letter 132(A),
however, but which, as Emma and JA’s
3 letters to Clarke both make clear, was known to JA, was what happened to
Clarke one fateful night at Petworth in October 1813 (which was two years
before Clarke wrote Letter 132(A), (as I said) one year before JA began writing
Emma, and a scant TWO MONTHS before Mr. Elton’s fateful fictional
carriage ride with Emma.
I
will give the honor of describing the events that made Clarke a national
laughing stock in 1814 to Chris Viveash. Now Mr Viveash might consider this a dubious
honor, because his own overly flattering
descriptions of Clarke in his little bio and article about Clarke are eerily
reminiscent of Clarke’s own hyper-toadyish effusions about the Prince. So it’s
a safe bet that Viveash would probably not be too thrilled to realize the
lasting significance of what happened to Clarke at Petworth in October 1813.
As
you read Viveash’s account, just keep
thinking about Lord Egremont, the Prince Regent and their cronies as having assumed
for their own unkind purposes the roles
of Maria & Co. in Twelfth Night,
the unnamed Lord who stages Sly’s experiential performance as amnesiac lord of
the manor in the Shrew induction, and
most of all Oberon, with Puck’s
assistance, in Dream):
P.
46: “Fatigued and exasperated, JSC took a well-earned break during Christmas
1809, whilst staying at Petworth House, with Lord Egremont and his
distinguished houseparty. However when James heard there was to be A GREAT
CHRISTMAS BALL, which most of the aristocratic assembly would attend, he fled.
[recall that the party at Randalls occurs on Christmas Eve 1813]
P.
52: “The wonderful news of a decisive battle fought against the French, at
Leipzig, in October 1813, caused great rejoicing when the news eventually
filtered back to England. This clash of arms became known as the Battle of the
Nations. Everyone wanted to celebrate the victory…a distinguished gathering at
Petworth, blessed by the presence of both the Prince Regent and the Duke of
Clarence, celebrated in style. This was a fete well worth attending. James was
there on the specific command of the Princes, and by the sincere wish of Lord
Egremont. Spirits were high, and noisy horse play was considered acceptable, on
this gala evening. Unfortunately, our hero was the butt of the royal jest, and
the dignity of James’s office did not protect him. After he had retired to bed,
he was woken by a hammering at his bedroom door. The ebullient royals demanded
that he come downstairs to charge another bumper with them in patriotic toasts
to the recent victory. The upshot was that James was FORCED TO DRINK TOO MUCH
and when he was helplessly inebriated, they took the drunken prelate to bed.
In
the darkness of his bedchamber, they pushed him roughly into his bed, causing
James to scream out as he touched the hairy flank of a live DONKEY, which had
been trussed, DRESSED IN FEMALE ATTIRE and thrust between the sheets. A near
riot ensued as the whole of the company crowded into the room to witness
James’s distress. It took hours for the excitement to die down, and James felt
hot and humiliated by this unprovoked
prank.
In
the morning he tried to put a brave face on it, at breakfast, but guests
giggled and sneered with the remembrance of it all. The PR and the Duke of
Clarence patronizingly told him he was a dashed good sport, but James was most uneasy. Later, when
the gossip rattled through Sussex retelling and embellishing the scandal of a
cleric in bed with an ass, James felt the full force of local censure. Poor
man, he was quite innocent, but the cloth was scandalized. A [Cruikshank caricature] print was published
in 1814, entitled The Divine and the Donkey—or Petworth Frolicks, depicting the
events which took place in the Petworth bedchamber, adding to James’s
humiliation.
….When
JA told JSC that in her opinion the duties of a courtier could not be too well
paid, considering the twin sacrifices of
time and feeling, SHE MUST HAVE BEEN THINKING OF THE SHAMEFUL INCIDENT AT
PETWORTH. [My added emphasis]” END QUOTE
Viveash’s
Persuasions article is entitled “The Donkey and the Divine”, and here is a link
for an image of same:
So….does
anyone who has read the above still
think JA was sincerely confiding in James Stanier Clarke in any of her letters
to him? That she would actually have trusted this man with anything resembling
the truth, at the very same moment she was extending her satire of him from her
fiction into her real life correspondence with him?
I
have a dozen more pages of supporting evidence for my above claims—stuff like
the repeated motif of SPIKED spruce beer in Emma,
especially Knightley’s receipt (or recipe) therefor; and like Mrs.Elton’s
desire to “ride on a donkey” to Donwell Abbey---but this is not the time or the
place for me to bring it all forward. I suggest that I’ve brought more than enough
forward already, above, to justify an indictment from any reasonable grand jury of Janeites on the question of
whether Jane Austen not only portrayed
James Stanier Clarke as Mr. Elton, but also emulated Maria from Twelfth
Night in dropping a letter (from a fairy?) for Malvolio which read:
“To the unknown beloved,
this, and my good wishes
Jove knows I love, But who?
Lips, do not move; No man must know.”
I may command where I
adore,
But silence, like a Lucrece knife,
With bloodless stroke my heart doth gore;
M.O.A.I. doth sway my life.”
If this fall into
thy hand, revolve. In my stars I am above thee, but be not afraid of greatness.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust
upon 'em. Thy Fates open their hands. Let thy blood and spirit embrace them.
And, to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy humble slough and
appear fresh. Be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants.”
Now go back and
reread all three of JA’s letters to Clarke, and see that the tone is identical,
the same appeal to grandiose vanity, the same faux acknowledgment of
superiority. Can’t you just picture JA and her trusted confidantes (like Martha
Lloyd, to whom JA wrote undisguisedly about her contempt for the Prince Regent)
savoring Clarke’s responses, in which he buys her put-on hook, line AND
sinker…… on DRY ground (as Richard Pryor was fond of saying for extra emphasis,
and a nautical image that fits Clarke’s
nautical obsessions)!
In particular, when
Clarke writes repeatedly urging JA to write her next novel about a cleric who
(like himself) divides time between country and town and otherwise tilts the
course of world history in his spare time, JA and her confidantes, like Maria
and Sir Toby giggling behind the box tree (as in Box Hill, as Fiona Stafford
pointed out in 1995), must have been delighting in Clarke’s ridiculousness,
because he already was depicted as Mr. Collins in P&P and now Mr.Elton in Emma!
At the very least,
we may safely say that JS Clarke could have had little idea in 1815 that nearly
two centuries later, when Clarke, despite his vainglorious ambitions, is only
remembered for his role in brokering the dedication of Emma to his boss, the world would now learn how JA thrust a strange
kind of additional “greatness” upon him after, by casting him in the role of
Malvolio in her own very private production of Twelfth Night.
Speaking
of which, the show’s just starting, ladies and gentlemen, please hurry to your
seats so as not to miss another minute.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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