On
Feb. 4 & 5 of this year, I posted my initial reactions….
…to
the exciting (to wonky Janeites like me, at least) news story about the scrap
of a portion of a sermon in Jane Austen’s own handwriting that was discovered/brought
forward not long ago, which was found to contain additional portions of the text
of that sermon hidden on the reverse side of the scrap glued into a copy of
James Edward Austen Leigh’s 1870 Memoir
of his famous aunt.
I was
wondering how long the process of viewing the hidden textual fragments would
take, and the other day I saw two followup news stories revealing that
heretofore hidden text.
So….(Drum
roll)….here is what is written on the back of The Scrap:
“…great
propriety preserved. – Wherever [MISSING WORD]
wanted to be cleared of the Superstitious [ADDRESS?]
of Popery – or whenever new ones were to be
composed in order to fill up & connect the Services,
[SEVERAL MISSING WORDS] with a true spirit…”
wanted to be cleared of the Superstitious [ADDRESS?]
of Popery – or whenever new ones were to be
composed in order to fill up & connect the Services,
[SEVERAL MISSING WORDS] with a true spirit…”
And FYI,
here are links to the two news articles from yesterday:
Briony
Leyland, Reporter, BBC South Today, West Dean
Name
of Author not stated
The
second of the above linked articles shows an image of the actual yellowing document
with the words on it. And both articles quote Oxford’s Kathryn Sutherland speculating
as follows as to Jane Austen’s connection to the sermon: "The scrap raises the possibility that [Mansfield Park] inspired James's sermon
and even demonstrates the cross-fertilization between Jane Austen's creative
writing and the wider life of her family." END QUOTE
I
take a completely different approach to the Scrap, as it now stands (i.e., with
all the now visible text).
Three
months ago (for those who do not wish to read my 2 above-linked blog posts),
the bottom line conclusion I reached in them, was that I am the first (and am
still the only) Austen scholar to recognize the striking parallels between the following
lines of text in the Scrap….
"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.”
….and
one line in particular from a poem that JA is believed to have written in 1807
(but for certain wrote no later than 1808, because we know it was written
contemporaneously with a poem written by JA’s sister in law Elizabeth Austen,
who died in October 1808):
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.
While
those 2 initial news articles both took on faith James Edward Austen Leigh’s
claim that the sermon was authored by his father James Austen, and was (re)written
by younger sister Jane in support of his clerical duties, I took the contrarian
position that JA was herself the
author of the sermon. I also predicted that seeing the full text of the sermon
would reveal it to be a sermon parody
written in the style of Mary Crawford from Mansfield
Park, and would have been in effect a private bit of extratextual humor on
JA’s part. Recall how Mary spontaneously and satirically rewrites a stanza from
a well known poem by Pope:
"Sir
Thomas is to achieve many mighty things when he comes home," said Mary,
after a pause. "Do you remember Hawkins Browne's 'Address to Tobacco,' in
imitation of Pope?—
Blest leaf! whose aromatic gales dispense
To Templars modesty, to Parsons sense.
I
will parody them—
Blest Knight! whose dictatorial looks
dispense
To Children affluence, to Rushworth sense.
So,
my thinking was that JA wrote a mock sermon in parody of her brother’s sermons.
Well….now
that I’ve seen the additional bits of text (which, it should be pointed out,
still leaves significant portions of the sermon unrecovered), and with the
perspective of 3 ½ months of this question percolating through my subconscious
mind, I now find it most probable that:
ONE James
Austen was indeed the author of the sermon after all, but he wrote it some time
before 1807, not, as Sutherland
suggests, after reading MP in 1814;
TWO: Jane
Austen did indeed copy his sermon out, but…..
THREE
(and most important) In 1807 or 1808, Jane Austen copied her brother’s sermon
out precisely so that she could have it in front of her when she wrote her “Rose
Poem” which I reproduced, above, as a PARODIC REACTION to James’s sermon!
And…last
but not least…
FOUR:
When JA wrote Mansfield Park in 1814, she specifically alluded to
her Rose Poem, and to James’s sermon, in the various sections in MP which I
discussed in my two above-linked February 2014 posts, which pertain to sermonizing,
including Mary Crawford’s satirical comments about the effect of sermons on
parishioners, which are exactly congruent with the mockery expressed in JA’s
earlier Rose Poem!
I.e.,
I am now convinced that JA used her own brother’s sermon as a prime example of
the kind of sermon that put ordinary parishioners to sleep, in part because these
people were only in the church on Sunday for show, and in part because the
sermon itself was filled with empty, tedious, hypocritical (and, as we see in
the recovered text, ANTI-CATHOLIC) pomposities, a la Mr. Collins’s favorite sermon
writer, Rev. Fordyce.
And,
in JA’s characteristic M.O., she tagged her parody with an unmistakable textual
echo, in this case the ALL CAPS language in the sermon Scrap, and in the Rose Poem,
both of which I quoted, above.
Finally,
additional tangential support, by analogy, for this interpretation comes, I
claim, from the following observations I made 4 years ago in another context:
“I
spoke at Oxford in 2007 about how JA deliberately changed individual two WORDS
in the "woman" charade in Chapter 9 of Emma for thematic purposes. She did the same thing, EXACTLY, with
her private handwritten copy of Byron's
Napoleon poem that was found in her papers, where she changed two words-
RHYMING words. These are not accidents, or misrememberings, they are
intentional. JA was self-assured enough to alter Shakespeare, Byron, the Bible,
ANY SOURCE, for her own purposes. “
To
that distinguished list of creative parodic rewritings, I now add this parody
of James Austen’s sermon. I leave you with two questions to consider:
If
James actually ever saw his sister’s 1807-8 Rose Poem, did HE notice the echo,
and wonder whether JA was mocking him?
AND
Was Mary
Crawford’s parody of two lines from a poem by the “infallible” Alexander POPE
also a broad but very private wink to those few who had ever read JA’s Rose
Poem and James’s sermon at the use of the word “Popery” in the recently
disclosed hidden text on the back of the sermon Scrap?
With
Jane Austen, such wordplay is so routine that I tend to think Mary Crawford (aka
Jane Austen) DID mean this….
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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