In
Letter 149 to 12-year old niece
Caroline, Jane Austen wrote this about “Anne”, apparently a fictional character created
by Caroline herself:
“She should not only place her Quilt in the Centre, but give its' Latitude & Longitude, & measure its Dimensions by a LUNAR OBSERVATION if she chose.”
Ellen
Moody wrote this in Janeites & Austen-L: "I take “Lunar” to be a reference to the group that met calling
themselves the Lunar Society and that’s interesting because it shows her
awareness of philosophical cults in her time. She did know Maria Edgeworth
enough to send her a copy of Emma so she might have been able to hear of
Edgeworth, Day and that group’s activities. They were located in Birmingham: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Society_of_Birmingham "
And then Diana
Birchall replied: "Good on Ellen, picking up that "Lunar" shows Jane Austen's awareness
of the Lunar Society!"
Yes, Diana, it is very good on Ellen, thank you for alerting me to what she wrote, which I had not noticed earlier.
But you and she have only scratched the surface of the full extent of the "goodness" of Ellen's catch, because it’s even better than the explanation Ellen stated. Let me explain.
First
of all, it’s not news that JA was aware of the Lunar Society. In the below-linked
1993 Persuasions article by a Staffordship native, Gaye King…
…we
hear all about JA’s one degree of separation from various members of the Lunar
Society, which had its center of gravity, so to speak, in and near Staffordshire.
In that article, King gave excellent background on the luminaries the Austen
women might have encountered socially during their 1806 trip to Hamstall
Ridware in Staffordshire (the major city of which, I believe, is Newcastle,
where, interestingly, Wickham is initially stationed after he and Lydia are
married).
King’s
article describes the Lunar Society social circle, which included the Austens’
cousin, the porcine Revd. Edward Cooper.
[I describe
him as porcine because of CEA’s satirical portrait of his face in the guise of
one of Edward IV in JA’s History of England (as per Annette Upfal’s persuasive
case for that satire):
Anyway,
it’s therefore been known for 20 years that JA was only one degree of separation
removed from that illustrious circle, one of the famous members of which was Erasmus
Darwin, of course grandpa to Charles Darwin, but in his time one of the great famous names of British science and culture.
And,
on top of that, I’ve known since 2005 that JA was aware of the Lunar Society in
an even more direct way than King’s article demonstrates, because I discovered (as
I’ve posted numerous times since) that the “Mrs. Pole” who gives such a sophisticated,
laudatory opinion about Mansfield Park
was actually the widow of Erasmus Darwin himself!:
(one
post among many of mine on various aspects of Mrs. Pole vis a vis JA)
So,
if JA was connected closely enough to Mrs. Pole aka Mrs. Darwin to elicit such
praise of MP in 1814-5, it is not at all surprising that JA would refer to “lunar
observation” in 1817. But that is still peripheral to what I think is the
deepest significance of JA’s specific reference to “lunar observation” in Letter 149.
The
salient fact here is that the name of one of the members of the Lunar Society was
actually virtually synonymous with “lunar observation”, because he was the
greatest astronomer of the 18th century, and also a designer
of
state of the art telescopes, who famously observed (in many cases from
his observatory in--you'll never guess---BATH!) not only Earth’s moon,
but
also discovered moons of other planets as well, as well as discovering
the
planet Uranus itself---of course I am talking about William Herschel!
In
fact, Erasmus Darwin included an oblique tribute to his friend, Herschel, in
Canto 2 of Darwin’s famous poem, The
Loves of the Plants:
--The
calm Philosopher in ether fails,
Views
broader stars, and breathes in purer gales;
Sees,
like a map, in many a waving line
Round
Earth's blue plains her lucid waters mine; 45
Sees
at his feet the forky lightnings glow,
And
hears innocuous thunders roar below.
----Rise,
great MONGOLFIER! urge thy venturous flight
High
o'er the Moon's pale ice-REFLECTED light;
High
o'er the pearly Star, whose beamy horn. 50
Hangs
in the east, gay harbinger of morn;
Leave
the red eye of Mars on rapid wing;
Jove's
silver guards, and Saturn's dusky ring;
Leave
the fair beams, which, issuing from afar;
Play
with new lustres round the Georgian star;
55
Shun
with strong oars the Sun's ATTRACTIVE throne,
The
sparkling zodiack, and the MILKY zone;
Where
headlong COMETS with increasing force
Through
other systems bend their BLAZING course.-
For
thee Cassiope her chair withdraws, 60
For
thee the Bear retracts his shaggy paws;
High
o'er the North thy golden orb shall roll,
And BLAZE
ETERNAL round the WONDERING pole.
So
Argo, rising from the southern main,
Lights
with new stars the BLUE etherial plain; 65
With
favoring beams the mariner protects,
And
the bold course, which first it steer'd, directs.
I
knew
all this, because I have been working off and on for a couple of months
on a
post I will be making in the next month about the heretofore never
noticed Jane Austen literary allusion to William Herschel AND also about
the smaller, less famous astronomer-“star” who orbited around him, i.e,.
his
younger sister, Caroline, who was famous in her own right during JA’s
lifetime as
the femal comet-discoverer!
What
I will be posting about as soon as I have followed a few more leads, is my claim
that Caroline Herschel was a major allusive source for Fanny Price in Mansfield Park, and that it is Caroline Herschel whom
Jane Austen specifically wished to honor in the famous star-gazing scene in MP, which, not
coincidentally, ALSO (like Darwin’s poem) refers to Cassiopeia and the North
Star!
So, again, very good on Ellen, because, for all the apparently frivolity of JA’s reference to “lunar observation” in Letter 149, there was actually all this rich subtext related to the Darwins (including the “Pole” Erasmus married!) and the Herschels.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
No comments:
Post a Comment