It’s an old story by now,
that I consider (and Diane Reynolds agrees) Miss Bates to be the most telling self
portrait JA ever wrote. Well, today I found another important jigsaw puzzle
piece that helps fill in and flesh out that portrait still further.
Recall first how Miss
Bates first addresses Emma after arriving at the Crown Inn ball:
“Dear Miss Woodhouse, how
do you do?—Very well I thank you, quite well. This is meeting quite in
fairy-land!—Such a transformation!—Must not compliment, I know (eyeing Emma
most complacently)—that would be rude—but upon my word, Miss Woodhouse, you do
look—…”
I thought immediately of
the above passage, among others involving Miss Bates, when I read the following
description by JEAL in his Memoir of his aunt’s way with her nieces and
nephews:
“… Her first charm to children
was great sweetness of manner. She
seemed to love you, and you loved her in return. This, as well as I can now
recollect, was what I felt in my early days, before I was old enough to be
amused by her cleverness. But soon came
the delight of her playful talk. She
could make everything amusing to a child.
Then, as I got older, when cousins came to share the entertainment, she
would tell us the most delightful stories, chiefly of Fairyland, and her
fairies had all characters of their own.
The tale was invented, I am sure, at the moment, and was continued for two
or three days, if occasion served.’… “
And then:
“...Very similar is the
testimony of another niece:—‘Aunt Jane was the general favourite with children;
her ways with them being so playful, and her long circumstantial stories so
delightful. These were continued from
time to time, and were begged for on all possible and impossible occasions;
woven, as she proceeded, out of nothing but her own happy talent for
invention. Ah! If but one of them could
be recovered!..”
Which then sends me right
back to Emma, when Knightley
chastises Emma for humiliating Miss Bates:
“You, whom she had known
from an infant, whom she had seen grow up from a period when her notice was an
honour, to have you now, in thoughtless spirits, and the pride of the moment,
laugh at her, humble her—and before her niece, too—and before others, many of
whom (certainly some,) would be entirely guided by your treatment
of her….”
And there we have Fanny
Knight, who must in 1815, at age 21, have already shown JA the kind of casual
snobbish disrespect that prompted JA to portray it in Emma.
And when you think about
it, Emma is indeed the ultimate “fairy
story”—long , circumstantial, delightful, playful, woven out of JA’s own (infinitely)
happy talent for invention, and (as a winking punning bonus), with its own
eponymous “fairy” –Mr. Perry aka the imaginary “peri” of the novel!
Emma is also
the ultimate sophisticated literary “charade”, written by Jane Austen, the
Queen of Fairyland:
“…Mr. Woodhouse came in,
and very soon led to the subject again, by the recurrence of his very frequent
inquiry of "Well, my dears, how does your book go on?—Have you got any
thing fresh?"
"Yes, papa; we have
something to read you, something quite fresh. A piece of paper was found on the
table this morning—(dropt, we suppose, by a fairy)—containing a very pretty
charade, and we have just copied it in."
She read it to him, just
as he liked to have any thing read, slowly and distinctly, and two or three
times over, with explanations of every part as she proceeded—and he was very
much pleased, and, as she had foreseen, especially struck with the
complimentary conclusion.
"Aye, that's very
just, indeed, that's very properly said. Very true. 'Woman, lovely woman.' It
is such a pretty charade, my dear, that I can easily guess what fairy brought
it.—Nobody could have written so prettily, but you, Emma."
Emma only nodded, and
smiled….”
And I can only nod and
smile as well at these (to me, obvious) self referential tips of the mobcap by
JA to herself. JA knew that she had surpassed her triumph with P&P, and
that she had written the fairy story that would, like Scheherazade, last 1001….years.
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
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