In Letter
153, written by JA to niece Fanny about 4 months before JA’s death, we read the
following paragraph, which I now find
extremely poignant when considered in that specific context of JA’s (with 20:20 hindsight looking back from
2014) imminent, tragically premature death:
“Poor
Mrs. C. Milles, that she should die on the wrong day at last, after being about
it so long! It was unlucky that the Goodnestone party could not meet you; and I
hope her friendly, obliging, social spirit, which delighted in drawing people
together, was not conscious of the division and disappointment she was
occasioning. I am sorry and surprised that you speak of her as having little to
leave, and must feel for Miss Milles, though she is Molly, if a material loss
of income is to attend her other loss. Single women have a dreadful propensity
for being poor, which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony; but I
need not dwell on such arguments with you, pretty dear.”
It
gives me a shiver now to realize that Jane Austen was writing about the death
of the nonagenarian Mrs. Milles on the surface, but was writing with the most quicksilver
light touch of irony about her own
death at less than half that age, which JA, I think, had already come to anticipate
as likely, if not inevitable.
But
first, the bookend to the above passage in Letter153, a bookend which provides crucial
insight to aid our understanding of the subtext of what Jane Austen is really
saying, in code, in Letter 153, is Letter 94, written by JA to sister CEA 3 ½ years
before she wrote Letter 153. Indeed, the
connection between Letters 94 and 153, which to the best of my knowledge, has
never been made before by an Austen scholar, is a perfect example of why this
sustained Group Read of JA’s novels over a period of more than 3 years by my
count, was such a great idea, since it’s only in this way that connections between
letters written over a period of years, and which do not contain any overt
cross-referencing cues, come into focus.
So, a
little introduction first about Mrs. and Miss Milles, courtesy of John McAleer writing
in the 1991 issue of Persuasions:
“Chapman,
in a buried note in the last index of the Austen letters, points to the
likelihood that Mrs. and Miss ‘Molly’ Milles of Canterbury were the originals
of Mrs. and Miss Bates. Miss Milles,
whom Jane Austen had had under observation at least since August 1805, was a
great talker and “so foolishly minute,” Jane says she had to suppress the
desire to laugh at her. She admired the mother, though, “because she
is chearful [sic] & grateful for what she is at the age of 90 &
upwards.”
In
the following blog post from fifteen months ago……
....under
the self-explanatory Subject Line “Letter 94 and Emma: Miss Milles, Miss Bates,
and Miss (Jane) Austen: All (Not so) Foolishly Minute”, I added my own additional
turn of the allusive screw to Chapman and McAleer’s respective takes, when I wrote:
“I previously
found very precise textual verification of the very conscious connection that
JA was making among Miss Milles, her new creation Miss Bates (the action of Emma actually begins on almost exactly the same date as Letter
94, and JA surely had already started dreaming about Emma even as she was not quite done
getting MP out in print), AND HERSELF.”
That’s
a crucial point, because it supports my claim today that Letter 153’s reference
to Mrs. and Miss Milles is ALSO self-referential on JA’s part, and in a sense
lands the plane of the Emma allusion,
as you will shortly see!
JA,
in Letter 94, did not explicitly link niece Fanny to Mrs. and Miss Milles, when
JA wrote:
"Miss
Milles was queer as usual, and provided us with plenty to laugh at. She
undertook in three words to
give us the history of Mrs. Scudamore's reconciliation, and then talked on
about it for half-an-hour, using such odd expressions, and so foolishly minute,
that I could hardly keep my countenance."
As I
noted then, JA was just beginning to
write Emma when she wrote Letter 94,
and I infer that even though JA did not explicitly link Fanny to Mrs. and Miss
Milles (who were after all at the edge of Fanny’s social circle at Godmersham),
JA clearly had Fanny in mind in relation
to the Milles ladies when she wrote Emma,
and it was not a pretty picture of Fanny that JA painted in that regard---Emma
ignoring everything Miss Bates said as so much blah blah blah, and then of
course the Box Hill humiliation. It is hardly a major inferential leap to opine
that Fanny Knight must have often spoken to and about Miss Milles in particular
in ways that JA caricatured in Emma. The
parallels are painfully obvious.
And that
takes us to Letter 153, written a year after
publication of Emma. Clearly, JA’s
comments to Fanny about Mrs. Milles’s death must have been prompted by some
extremely insensitive comments by Fanny about the inconvenience of the timing
of the funeral services—from Fanny’s narcissistic, entitled, snobbish point of
view, Mrs. Milles was so inconsiderate as to die on a day that did not suit
Fanny’s timetable, because it interfered with an outing with the Goodnestone
party (the Bridgeses) that Fanny clearly really wanted to go on—Fanny is 23, so
this can’t be excused as the selfishness
of a 15 year old, this is just disgusting, and much worse than Emma’s jab at
Miss Bates on Box Hill!
Does
anyone think JA was serious in her reference to the old lady’s spirit as
regretting having interfered with Fanny’s party of pleasure? It’s satire of the subtlest kind, because Fanny almost
certainly did not read it and realize how shameful her complaints were!
I am
reminded of two memorable instances in S&S, the aptness of which to my
point will be obvious:
"…if
you observe, people always live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid
them; and she is very stout and healthy, and hardly forty. An annuity is a very
serious business; it comes over and over every year, and there is no getting rid
of it. You are not aware of what you are doing. I have known a great deal of
the trouble of annuities; for my mother was clogged with the payment of three
to old superannuated servants by my father's will, and it is amazing how
disagreeable she found it. Twice every year these annuities were to be paid;
and then there was the trouble of getting it to them; and then one of them was
said to have died, and afterwards it turned out to be no such thing. My mother
was quite sick of it….”
&
"Come
Colonel," said Mrs. Jennings, "before you go, do let us know what you
are going about."
He
wished her a good morning, and, attended by Sir John, left the room. The
complaints and lamentations which politeness had hitherto restrained, now burst
forth universally; and they all agreed again and again how provoking it was to
be so disappointed. “
I
could spend another page specifying more nuances of JA’s painful satire in this
passage, but you can gather them yourself now that I have pointed out the lens
through which to read this passage most
fully.
I will
conclude by commenting on JA’s final famous words therein:
“Single
women have a dreadful propensity for being poor, which is one very strong
argument in favor of matrimony; but I need not dwell on such arguments with
you, pretty dear.”
What
I hear in this passage is JA speaking in a higher frequency than Fanny’s dull
ears are capable of registering, and saying something like “You cruel, selfish,
repulsive young snob, you are so stupid and insensitive that you don’t realize
that your cruel remarks about Miss Milles, whose welfare YOU ought, as a good
person of means, to take a personal interest in, are also indirectly revealing
of what you will say the day I, your “dear
Aunt Jane”, leave this world. And so, you ought to practice some Christian
charity and wake up from your entitled dreamworld, and do some good on this
earth before YOU meet YOUR maker and have to account for your actions in a
higher court of morality than the world that places a higher value on people
because of birth or wealth than actual
personal merit.”
Bu we
know from the trash talk about JA and CEA that Fanny Knight wrote a half
century later that she, at least, did not have any sort of epiphany at “Box
Hill”-probably because there was no Mr. Knightley in Fanny’s life who was going
to tell her how awful her attitude toward Miss Milles and Aunt Jane really was!
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
P.S.:
I am puzzled as to why JA wrote that she “must feel for Miss Milles, though she
is Molly…”while I understand that Molly was Miss Milles’ nickname, JA seems to
use it here as an adjective. Any thoughts?
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