Yesterday
in The Telegraph, Sam Marsden
reported that:
[a] newly uncovered manuscript in
which Jane Austen writes of men reciting prayers unthinkingly could shed light
on the gestation of one of her novels. The scrap of paper features a fragment
copied out by the author from a sermon written by her brother, the Rev James
Austen...The passage in Austen’s handwriting, dating from 1814, states:
"Men
may get into a habit of repeating the words of our Prayers by rote, perhaps
WITHOUT THOROUGHLY UNDERSTANDING – CERTAINLY WITHOUT THOROUGHLY FEELING THEIR FULL FORCE & MEANING.”
This
reflects a theme that she wrote about in her novel Mansfield Park, which was published in the same year. The small
piece of manuscript is glued into a first edition dating from 1870 of The Memoirs of Jane Austen, by the
novelist’s nephew, James Edward Austen Leigh. David Dorning, a conservator at
West Dean College…has the job of removing it from the book so the passage on
the back can also be seen. “When I initially read it, I thought it was the sort
of thing that Jane Austen might write. Then I realised that it was a sermon by
her brother. I thought maybe all the Austens felt like that about men,” he
joked.” END QUOTE
Another
article by Alison Flood, also about “The Scrap”, ran in The Guardian, and added a comment by the curator of the Jane Austen
House Museum: "What especially intrigued us about this fragment is its
apparent date, 1814, and the evidence that offers of the cross-currents between
Austen's family life and her literary reflections on prayer in Chapter 34 of Mansfield Park, published the same year…”
END QUOTE
For reasons I will outline below, the above-quoted newspaper articles epitomize a deep and widespread misunderstanding of Jane Austen’s attitude toward the Anglican clergy---based in part on a failure of competent, thorough scholarship, and in part on the incredible persistence of the Myth of Jane Austen, which still prevails worldwide nearly two centuries after her death. It is an agile myth, which dances on the head of a pin, so as to see this most satirical and individualistic of fiction writers as, nonetheless, a pious, humble, obedient, orthodox believer in patriarchal, Tory, Anglican Church doctrine. As you’ll see, that Myth obstructs the ordinary Janeite’s understanding of The Scrap, and also of the religious thematics of Mansfield Park!
For
starters, these two major English newspapers both unashamedly relied (for the claim
that the actual author of The Scrap was not really Jane but instead was her
elder clergyman brother James) upon an unfounded, offhand, joking guess by the man
charged with the technical task of separating the precious document from the
book it was stuck in. This was not a starting point that promised much in terms
of leading the reader to genuine insight about this recent discovery, an event
of significance to Janeites hungry for even a new sentence of her writing. And after all, it wasn’t a laundry list dug
out of a linen trunk at an abbey, it was an important reflection on the lack of
correlation between spoken prayer and felt belief.
The
failure of scholarship I allege is easily demonstrated by the following
embarrassing fact ---nobody involved, either at the Museum, the College, or the
two newspapers, knew or thought to connect the dots between The Scrap and the 8-line
poem Jane Austen wrote in 1807 (as part of a friendly family female poetry competition
rhyming every line with the word “rose”), the subject of the second half of
which is….the inside story on a rustic parishioner’s tenuous grasp of the
meaning of a Sabbath sermon!:
Happy the lab’rer in his Sunday
clothes!
In light-drab coat, smart waistcoat, well-darn'd hose,
And hat upon his head, to church he goes;
As oft with conscious pride, he downward throws
A glance upon the ample cabbage rose
Which, stuck in button-hole, regales his nose,
He envies not the gaiest London beaux.
In church he takes his seat among the rows,
Pays to the place the reverence he owes,
LIKES BEST THE PRAYERS WHOSE MEANING LEAST HE KNOWS.
Lists to the sermon in a softening doze,
And rouses joyous at the welcome close.
In light-drab coat, smart waistcoat, well-darn'd hose,
And hat upon his head, to church he goes;
As oft with conscious pride, he downward throws
A glance upon the ample cabbage rose
Which, stuck in button-hole, regales his nose,
He envies not the gaiest London beaux.
In church he takes his seat among the rows,
Pays to the place the reverence he owes,
LIKES BEST THE PRAYERS WHOSE MEANING LEAST HE KNOWS.
Lists to the sermon in a softening doze,
And rouses joyous at the welcome close.
You must notice the almost 100%
parallelism between:
ONE: the country laborer who “ [l]ikes
best the prayers whose meaning least he knows” in the “Rose Poem”, which has
been universally acknowledged, since its first publication in 1884, to have
been composed by Jane Austen no later than 1807,
and
TWO: “"[m]en [who] may get into a habit of repeating
the words of our Prayers by rote, perhaps without thoroughly understanding –
certainly without thoroughly feeling their full force & meaning”, in The
Scrap, composed, so the cited “experts” assert, not by Jane Austen, but by her
brother, James, and merely transcribed by Jane, at a time roughly coinciding
with her publishing of Mansfield Park
in 1814.
The extreme
parallelism I cited between ONE and TWO makes it very clear that Jane Austen herself
not only wrote but also authored not only the 1807 Rose Poem but also The Scrap
(including whatever additional text on the back is eventually recovered, as we
all hope it will be).
In
the rest of this post I want to focus on why it fit so much better with the Myth
of Jane Austen, for experts to concoct a theory out of thin air that one of the
world’s greatest novelists would act as a mere scrivener for one of her
clergyman brother’s sermons, rather than to dare to think that she’d have
written The Scrap herself. After all, it bears another repetition that THE
SCRAP IS IN JANE AUSTEN’S OWN HANDWRITING! So the burden of proof sufficient to
shift authorship from her to anyone else should have been heavy, right? And yet,
the shift was passed off by all concerned without the slightest hesitation, or even
acknowledgment of anything questionable having been done.
This
is no accident, no mere carelessness. As you’ll see, beneath the apparent
cluelessness is an indictable sleight of hand, born of desire, dating back to
the dawn of modern Austen studies, on the part of generations of a determined coterie
of conservative Austen scholars, to conceal her true, subversive, radical
feminist critique of every aspect of her patriarchal society, and in particular
of the Anglican church which, I am certain she felt, was an arch-conspirator in
that patriarchy when it ought to have been its strongest critic.
And here’s
where the orthodox dogma about Jane Austen’s personal Christianity comes in.
Almost all Janeites assume that Jane Austen would never have written an even
faintly sacrilegious word about the Anglican church, an ancient institution in
which both her father and her eldest brother were clergymen, and her third
eldest brother in turn became a clergyman later in his life, and her two
sailors and sister were all known for their piety.
Somehow
ignored in all of this is the fact that some of the biggest fools, opportunists,
and gluttons (all of the deadly sins well represented) in her novels are
clergymen—Mr. Collins, Mr. Elton, Dr. Grant—and even some of the “heroes” are
clergymen who don’t show a great deal of spine or character in a pinch—Edward
Ferrars and Edmund Bertram, to name the two worst clergyweenies. Only one of the six lead clergymen in her
novels is free of any significant bad scent, and is actually heroic--- Henry
Tilney in Northanger Abbey. 16% is not a percentage that suggests a
healthy respect on Jane Austen’s part for the clergy as they actually were, on
the ground.
Why
am I so focused on clergymen in Austen’s novels? Because The Scrap refers to
those who REPEAT the words in prayers without apparent comprehension of their
true meaning---well, it would be the men giving the sermons who would be
leading the flock in the repetition of those words! And what would the Janeite
world think, if word spread that Jane Austen, in a random scrap found in a desk
at her death, was being very satirical about clergyman talking the talk, but
not walking the walk? Shocking! So a great deal is at stake in this seemingly
small issue—hence the need to stonewall.
So,
e.g., the only two Austen scholars to have ever published commentary on the
1807 Rose Poem I quoted above, David Selwyn & Laura Mooneyham-White, are two
of the most conservative of Austen scholars---and no surprise, both of them
interpret it as completely vanilla, unthreatening, unsubversive, trivial
silliness, a chuckling portrait of country manners which don’t really matter
one way or the other.
Whereas,
5 months ago, when I first became aware of the Rose Poem’s existence (nearly a
decade into my long, intense research, precisely because this poem was
invisible, i.e., it had never been treated as worthy of serious study), it was
immediately clear to me that it was actually, under the mask of a trivial bit
of mildly satirical wordplay, a wide portal deep into the allusive, subversive
depths of Jane Austen’s radical Christianity, as well as further evidence of
her virtuosic allusions to Shakespeare.
I
have long seen Jane Austen as espousing a radical Christianity, very personal
and eccentric to herself, one which
actually took a concern in the weak and the poor as did Jesus himself, and
which was a searing critique of every one of the varied forms of patriarchal
hypocrisy and self-deception which characterized both the men in the pulpits
and the men in the pews with equal sharpness.
Here is my blog post from over 4 months ago, where I spelled out my
interpretation of the Rose Poem in great detail:
But today
I am focused on The Scrap. What these two newspaper articles also fail to alert
the reader to is the presence of a massive conflict of interest in their presentation
of the meaning of The Scrap, another factor which dictated the preference for James
Austen as casually presumed author thereof, instead of the true author, sister
Jane.
To
wit: as the two recent newspaper articles both disclose, but without realizing
the significance thereof, The Scrap was found glued into a first edition of the
1870 Memoir of Jane Austen’s life and
writing, authored by her nephew James Edward Austen Leigh (or JEAL)—who just
happened to be the only son of the Reverend James Austen, as well as the sole
heir of the fortune of Jane Austen’s Mrs. Norris-like Aunt Leigh-Perrot!
So in
effect we have an ageing son ascribing authorship of the skeptical opinion
about some men’s sincere feeling for and understanding of Christian doctrine to
his own long-dead clergyman father. Whereas, if these lines were authored by
Jane Austen herself, then we might wonder whether the “men” whose religious sincerity
and comprehension is questioned in The Scrap might include not only the male
parishioners sitting in the pews on Sunday, but also the male clergymen—like brother
James Austen!!--who delivered the sermons to them! I.e., was this a stinging
satire of the shepherds as much or more as of the sheep under their spiritual
care?
Well,
if the author of The Scrap was himself a “shepherd”, then the implication would
be that he was sermonizing, preaching to, and talking only about, the “sheep”.
But if the author of Tthe Scrap was a “sheep”—and a female one, at that---then,
well, maybe, all bets would be off. Maybe the effectiveness, or relevance, of
the “shepherd”’s meaning as he “repeated” spiritual verses in his sermon, might
be at fault.
And the conflict of interest is even
more salient when I tell you that I have over a period of years documented numerous other cases in which JEAL,
in the 1870 Memoir, whitewashed and
bowdlerized facts about Jane Austen and/or her family—especially Jane Austen’s
angry veiled critique of her brother James and his and his wife’s treatment of
both Jane Austen herself, and also her beloved niece Anna (James’s daughter)….
…all in order to propagate the myth
of a pious conservative Jane Austen who deeply loved and respected her brother
James (again, JEAL’s father)—you can see this is a propaganda campaign that
succeeded so well that even almost a century and a half later, the Myth of Jane
Austen still rules the ethereal waves of Austen scholarship. And these recent
articles are proof of the longevity of that reign.
So I conclude by giving you a quick
tour of my alternative vision of Jane Austen, one which does not require
closing one’s eyes to obvious meanings in the texts that survive, both Jane
Austen’s novels and also her other writings (such as The Scrap), and I direct
you, ironically, to the most powerful evidence for the notion that Jane Austen
wrote The Scrap as a parody of the kind of hypocrisy exhibited by James Austen
himself—and those are the words of the “bad guys”, Mary and Henry Crawford, in Mansfield Park.
The Myth of Jane Austen would have
you believe that pious, frightened, strict believer Fanny Price represents Jane
Austen’s point of view on religious matters in Mansfield Park, her most overtly religious novel; and that the
Crawfords (especially witty, outspoken Mary) represent the fashionable, modern,
secularized dismissal of organized religion that Jane Austen supposedly abhorred. But I suggest to you that it was Mary
Crawford who would have written the Rose Poem and The Scrap, and not Fanny
Price—see if you agree as you read the following excerpts from Mansfield Park! I’ve given the full
passages for maximum context, but have put in ALL CAPS the lines which relate
most directly to the Rose Poem and The Scrap. NOTE IN PARTICULAR the repeated
expositions of the theme of hypocrisy in the clergy, the apparent lack in most men
of the cloth of understanding of and feeling for the meaning of the sermons and
prayers they repeat! I.e., The Scrap could easily have been an epigraph for Mansfield Park itself!
Chapter
9: "It is a pity," cried Fanny, "that the custom
[of twice daily chapel services] should have been discontinued. It was a valuable
part of former times. There is something in a chapel and chaplain so much in
character with a great house, with one's ideas of what such a household should
be! A whole family assembling regularly for the purpose of prayer is
fine!"
"Very fine indeed," said
Miss Crawford, laughing. "It must do the heads of the family a great deal
of good to force all the poor housemaids and footmen to leave business and
pleasure, and SAY THEIR PRAYERS HERE TWICE A DAY, WHILE THEY ARE INVENTING
EXCUSES THEMSELVES FOR STAYING AWAY."
"That is hardly Fanny's
idea of a family assembling," said Edmund. "If the master and
mistress do not attend themselves, there must be more harm than good in
the custom."
"At any rate, it is safer to
leave people to their own devices on such subjects. Everybody likes to go their
own way—to chuse their own time and manner of devotion. The obligation of
attendance, the formality, the restraint, the length of time—altogether it is a
formidable thing, and what nobody likes; and if the good people who used to
kneel and gape in that gallery could have foreseen that the time would ever
come when men and women might lie another ten minutes in bed, when they woke
with a headache, without danger of reprobation, because chapel was missed, they
would have jumped with joy and envy. Cannot you imagine with what unwilling
feelings the former belles of the house of Rushworth did many a time repair to
this chapel? The young Mrs. Eleanors and Mrs. Bridgets—STARCHED UP INTO SEEMING
PIETY, BUT WITH HEADS FULL OF SOMETHING VERY DIFFERENT—especially if the poor
chaplain were not worth looking at—and, in those days, I fancy parsons were
very inferior even to what they are now."
For a few moments she was
unanswered. Fanny coloured and looked at Edmund, but felt too angry for speech;
and he needed a little recollection before he could say, "Your lively mind
can hardly be serious even on serious subjects. You have given us an amusing
sketch, and human nature cannot say it was not so. We must all feel at times
THE DIFFICULTY OF FIXING OUR THOUGHTS AS WE COULD WISH; but if you are
supposing it a frequent thing, that is to say, a weakness grown into a habit
from neglect, what could be expected from the private devotions of such
persons? Do you think the minds which are suffered, which are INDULGED IN
WANDERINGS IN A CHAPEL, would be more collected in a closet?"
"Yes, very likely. They would
have two chances at least in their favour. There would be LESS TO DISTRACT THE
ATTENTION FROM WITHOUT, and it would NOT BE TRIED SO LONG."
"The mind which does not
struggle against itself under one circumstance, would find objects to
distract it in the other, I believe; and the influence of the place and
of example may often rouse better feelings than are begun with. The GREATER
LENGTH OF THE SERVICE, however, I admit to be sometimes TOO HARD A STRETCH UPON
THE MIND. One wishes it were not so; but I have not yet left Oxford long enough
to forget what chapel prayers are."
"You assign greater
consequence to the clergyman than one has been used to hear given, or than I
can quite comprehend. One does not see much of this influence and importance in
society, and how can it be acquired where they are so seldom seen themselves?
How can TWO SERMONS A WEEK, even supposing them worth hearing, supposing the
preacher to have the sense to prefer Blair's to his own, do all that you speak
of? GOVERN THE CONDUCT AND FASHION THE MANNERS OF A LARGE CONGREGATION for the
rest of the week? One scarcely sees a clergyman out of his pulpit."
"You are speaking of
London, I am speaking of the nation at large."
"The metropolis, I imagine, is
a pretty fair sample of the rest."
"Not, I should hope, of the
proportion of virtue to vice throughout the kingdom. We do not look in great
cities for our best morality….
Chapter
11: "I have been so little addicted to take my opinions from my
uncle," said Miss Crawford, "that I can hardly suppose—and since you
push me so hard, I must observe, that I am not entirely without the means of
seeing WHAT CLERGYMEN ARE, being at this present time the guest of my own
brother, Dr. Grant. And though Dr. Grant is most kind and obliging to me, and
though he is really a gentleman, and, I dare say, a good scholar and clever,
and OFTEN PREACHES GOOD SERMONS, and is very respectable, I see him to
be AN INDOLENT, SELFISH BON VIVANT, who must have his palate consulted
in everything; who will not stir a finger for the convenience of any one; and
who, moreover, if the cook makes a blunder, is out of humour with his excellent
wife. To own the truth, Henry and I were partly driven out this very evening by
a disappointment about a green goose, which he could not get the better of. My
poor sister was forced to stay and bear it."
“…A man—a
sensible man like Dr. Grant, cannot be in the habit of TEACHING OTHERS THEIR
DUTY EVERY WEEK, cannot go to church twice every Sunday, and PREACH SUCH VERY
GOOD SERMONS in so good a manner as he does, without BEING THE BETTER FOR IT
HIMSELF. It must make him think; and I have no doubt that he oftener endeavours
to restrain himself than he would if he had been anything but a
clergyman."
"We
cannot prove to the contrary, to be sure; but I wish you a better fate, Miss
Price, than to be the wife of A MAN WHOSE AMIABLENESS DEPENDS UPON HIS OWN
SERMONS; for though HE MAY PREACH HIMSELF INTO A GOOD-HUMOUR EVERY SUNDAY, it
will be bad enough to have him quarrelling about green geese from Monday
morning till Saturday night."
"I
think the man who could often quarrel with Fanny," said Edmund
affectionately, "must be beyond the reach of any sermons."
Chapter
34: "A SERMON, WELL DELIVERED, is more uncommon even than PRAYERS
WELL READ. A sermon, good in itself, is no rare thing. It is more difficult to
speak well than to compose well; that is, the rules and trick of composition
are oftener an object of study. A thoroughly good sermon, thoroughly well
delivered, is a capital gratification. I can never hear such a one without the
greatest admiration and respect, and more than half a mind to take orders and
preach myself. There is something in THE ELOQUENCE OF THE PULPIT, when it is
really eloquence, which is entitled to the highest praise and honour. The
preacher who can TOUCH AND AFFECT such an heterogeneous MASS OF HEARERS, on
subjects limited, and long worn threadbare in all common hands; who can say
anything new or striking, anything that rouses the attention without offending
the taste, or WEARING OUT THE FEELINGS OF HIS HEARERS, is a man whom one could
not, in his public capacity, honour enough. I should like to be such a man."
Edmund laughed.
"I should indeed. I never
listened to a distinguished preacher in my life without a sort of envy. But
then, I must have a London audience. I could not preach but to the educated; to
those who were capable of estimating my composition. And I do not know that I
should be fond of preaching often; now and then, perhaps once or twice in the
spring, after being anxiously expected for half a dozen Sundays together; but
not for a constancy; it would not do for a constancy."
Here Fanny, who could not but
listen, involuntarily shook her head…”
And here I voluntarily shake MY
head, and conclude this post with the hope that I’ve convinced you (a) that the
Myth of Jane Austen lives on, continuing to obscures truths like (b) Mary
Crawford speaking in the true voice of Jane Austen in these spirited debates
about preachers and the disconnect between their own sermonizing and their own
adherence to the morals they repeat and preach to others, as Jane Austen
remembered both her 1807 Rose Poem and The Scrap as she LOL’ed to herself while
writing Mansfield Park.
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
ADDED Feb. 5, 2014 at 11 am EST my followup post responding to several responses to my initial post:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2014/02/more-about-jane-austens-newly.html
ADDED Feb. 5, 2014 at 11 am EST my followup post responding to several responses to my initial post:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2014/02/more-about-jane-austens-newly.html
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