In my immediately
preceding post, I explained how JA used veiled Shakespearean quotations to tag
Mrs. Norris as Cottager’s Wife, and Sir Thomas Bertram as the middle-aged Baron
Wildenhaim, of course, both in Mansfield
Park. I concluded as follows: “So, please go on to Part Two to find out
which other Austen novel I am
referring to, and which Austen character in that other novel wears a mask to
conceal the face of the young Baron
Wildenhaim!”
Now in Part Two I will
explain about the “something else” I saw
in the text of Lover’s Vows, which
pointed me directly to another Austen
novel---I saw a SECOND allusion by Inchbald to that very same famous speech of
Hamlet which begins “What a piece of work is man”.
The first one, which I
specified in Part One, was in the scene when Cottager and his blunt-spoken Wife
takes Agatha in and revive her from the door of death. The second one (which
does NOT appear in Plumptre’s translation of Kotzebue’s play, and so appears to
have been Inchbald’s own invention) comes soon after the first, when the
revived Agatha, concealing from her hosts her identity and tragic life story,
subtly questions them about Baron Wildenhaim:
COTTAGER’S
WIFE. …It is almost five weeks since the Baron and all his family arrived at
the castle.
AGATHA. Baron Wildenhaim?
COTTAGER’S
WIFE. Yes, Baron Wildenhaim.
AGATHA. And his lady?
COTTAGER. His lady died in France many miles from
hence, and her death, I suppose, was the cause of his coming to this
estate--For the Baron has not been here till within these five weeks ever since
he was married. We regretted his absence
much, and his arrival has caused great joy.
COTTAGER’S
WIFE [addressing her discourse to Agatha.]
By all accounts the Baroness was very haughty; and very whimsical.
COTTAGER. Wife, wife, never speak ill of the dead. Say what you please against the living, but
not a word against the dead.
COTTAGER’S
WIFE. And yet, husband, I believe the
dead care the least what is said against them--And so, if you please, I'll tell
my story. The late Baroness was, they
say, haughty and proud; and they do say, the Baron was not so happy as he might
have been; but he, bless him, our good Baron is still the same as when a
boy. Soon after Madam had closed her eyes,
he left France, and came to Waldenhaim, his native country.
COTTAGER. Many times has he joined in our village
dances. Afterwards, when he became an
officer, he was rather wild, as most young men are.
COTTAGER’S
WIFE. Yes, I remember when he fell in
love with poor Agatha, Friburg's daughter:
WHAT A PIECE OF WORK THAT WAS--It did not do him much credit. That was a wicked thing.
COTTAGER. Have done--no more of this--It is not well to
stir up old grievances.
COTTAGER’S
WIFE. Why, you said I might speak ill of
the living. 'Tis very hard indeed, if
one must not speak ill of one's neighbours, dead, nor alive.
COTTAGER. Who knows whether he was the father of
Agatha's child? She never said he was.
COTTAGER’S
WIFE. Nobody but him--that I am sure--I
would lay a wager--no, no husband--you must not take his part--it was very
wicked! Who knows what is now become of
that poor creature? She has not been
heard of this many a year. May be she is
starving for hunger. Her father might
have lived longer too, if that misfortune had not happened. [Agatha faints.]
Note that it is precisely when
Agatha learns about the marriage of the Baron after he abandoned her to bear
and raise their illegitimate child, that Cottager’s Wife AGAIN channels Hamlet,
but this time with opposite meaning. I.e., before she used the phrase “a piece
of work” to minimize the credit due herself and her husband for their mercifully
taking in the penniless and near-dying Agatha. But then, soon thereafter, when
they speak with Agatha about the very circumstances, two decades earlier, which
led Agatha to the desperate state she was now in, the Wife uses that same
flexible phrase to emphasize the gravity of the moral turpitude of Baron
Wildenhaim’s cruel, selfish abandonment of Agatha.
So as we are now talking
about the young Baron Wildenhaim, you may reasonably ask, what does that aristocratic
young cad have to do with another Austen novel besides Mansfield Park? Well, if you pored over that passage as carefully
as I did, your Janeite eyes should have paused and then widened several times with
recognition at the following statements by Cottager and his Wife, in describing
the young Baron Wildenhaim:
First,
Cottager, who tries to put a positive spin on the Baron’s behavior and so says:
“…We regretted his absence much, and his arrival has caused great joy … when he
became an officer, he was rather wild, as most young men are…….
And
second, Cottager’s Wife, who feels guilty about glossing over ugly truths about
the Baron, even as she still loves him. So, under pressure from her husband, she first says: “…he, bless him, our
good Baron is still the same as when a boy….”
But then, overriding her husband’s censorship—he perhaps fearing
reprisal from his master, the Baron--she courageously follows her conscience
and blurts out her true feelings:
“Yes,
I remember when he fell in love with poor Agatha, Friburg's daughter: WHAT A PIECE OF WORK THAT WAS--It did not do
him much credit. That was a wicked thing….
it was very wicked!”
Do
you hear the Austenian echoes now? I think they’re obvious! But if not, just
compare the above quoted snippets spoken by Cottager’s Wife in particular to
the following statements made by ANOTHER plain spoken old woman of low status
living near a great estate, whose words, unlike Cottager’s Wife’s, you probably
know by heart:
"He is now gone into
the army," she added; "but I am afraid he has turned out very
wild."
["Is your master much
at Pemberley in the course of the year?" ] "Not so much as I could
wish, sir; but I dare say he may spend half his time here…”
"I
have never known a cross word from him in my life, and I have known him ever
since he was four years old…But I have always observed, that they who are
good-natured when children, are good-natured when they grow up; and he was
always the sweetest-tempered, most generous-hearted boy in the world."
Of course these are all the
famous words of Mrs. Reynolds in P&P, and I think you will agree that there
are just too many points of correspondence between Cotttager’s Wife’s words and
Mr. Reynolds’s words to be a coincidence, ESPECIALLY when we take into account
that Mrs. Norris speech shows us that JA was alert to usages of Hamlet’s famous
phrase in Lover’s Vows, and so would
have actually read the above quoted descriptions provided by Inchbald.
For starters, Mrs. Reynolds is speaking to Lizzy
who has just arrived in the vicinity of Darcy’s great estate, just as Agatha is
then for the first time in twenty years within a stone’s throw (as in the
stone Frederick threatens to cast at the
inhospitable landlord).
But….what’s very VERY strange
indeed is that Cottager’s Wife descriptions of the Baron which I have quoted
above seem to correspond to Mrs. Reynolds’s descriptions of BOTH Darcy AND
Wickham!
So why did JA go out of
her way to have Mrs. Reynolds, like some master Chef in Wonderland, cut the character
of the Baron in half, and sprinkle the good parts on Darcy, but the bad ones on
Wickham? The very absurdity of that image made me realize that I had been
reminded (and I am sure, NOT coincidentally) of the following two very famous comments
by Lizzy about Darcy and Wickham:
"This will not
do," said Elizabeth; "you never will be able to make both of them
good for anything. Take your choice, but you must be satisfied with only one.
There is but such a quantity of merit between them; just enough to make one
good sort of man; and of late it has been shifting about pretty much. For my
part, I am inclined to believe it all Darcy's; but you shall do as you
choose."
"There certainly was
some great mismanagement in the education of those two young men. One has got
all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it."
JA might just as well have
added the name “Baron Wildenhaim” to both of these epigrams, it’s so clear that
they are her winks in his specific direction!
And I promise this is not
the last you will hear from me on this subject, and in particular my explanation
for why Mrs. Reynolds seems to speak about BOTH the Darcy and the Wickham in the
wicked Baron Wildenhaim (or should I have written WICKenHAM?) –to say nothing
about the Frederick Wentworth in Frederick Fribourg! ;)
I could go on for pages
setting forth my own interpretations of the significance of this lopping and
cropping of Cottager’s Wife’s speeches about the Baron. However, beyond making
the simple point that I consider this to provide extraordinarily strong support
for my claim that P&P (like all of JA’s novels) is a double story, for now I
will leave it to let you, gentle readers, to draw your own inferences.
And in conclusion, a final
word where I started in Part One, about Mansfield
Park:
Nancy also wrote about Lover’s Vows: "The story is of a
woman who had been abandoned by her lover who had borne a child out of wedlock
and that man's legitimate daughter who boldly chose her own husband-- not subjects most parents would want to introduce
into a household of unmarried females”.
Well, Nancy, speaking of MP, what if the (aristocratic)
father, Sir Thomas, had in his wild youth emulated the notorious Don Giovanni,
and abandoned his credulous lover (Mrs. Norris?), who was then forced to bear a
child out of wedlock, and to manage to place that illegitimate child (Fanny?) with
(secret) adoptive parents (the Prices) of
lesser status?
Then that father would want to burn all evidence of
same, don’t you think? ;)
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode onTwitter
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