Henry Austen’s 1818
Biographical Notice for Jane Austen:
“Her power of inventing
characters seems to have been intuitive, and almost unlimited. She drew from
nature; but, whatever may have been surmised to the contrary, never from
individuals.”
James Edward Austen-Leigh’s
1870 Memoir of Jane Austen:
“Some persons have
surmised that she took her characters from individuals with whom she had been
acquainted. …But surely such a supposition betrays an ignorance of the
high prerogative of genius to create out of its own resources imaginary
characters, who shall be true to nature and consistent in themselves…Her own
relations never recognised any individual in her characters… She herself, when
questioned on the subject by a friend, expressed a dread of what she called
such an ‘invasion of social proprieties.’ She said that she thought it
quite fair to note peculiarities and weaknesses, but that it was her desire to
create, not to reproduce…”
File the following post in
your folder marked “Some of the best evidence yet that HTA and JEAL both lied
through their teeth, and protested WAY too much, when they penned the above
propaganda that was so decisively crucial in creating The Myth of Jane Austen,
in particular, the notion that her novels do not point to real people.
Today, you’re going to
read a true Smoking Gun, that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jane
Austen, in Sense & Sensibility, her first published novel, hid, in the
plain sight of her family, a savagely satirical portrait of the real life—both public
and private---not only of Warren Hastings, but, to make the allusion
unavoidable to everyone in her family, also of his nefarious right hand man in
India!
Those of you with strong
knowledge of modern scholarship about JA’s family, whether through reading
biographies, or reading along in Austen-L, Janeites, and/or my blog, will
already be aware of the longstanding, scandalous theory that Eliza (Hancock de
Feuillide) Austen, JA’s cousin and wife of Henry Austen, was the illegitimate
daughter of the major public figure Warren Hastings.
The most fervent denier of
this theory has of course been the (re)doubtable Deirdre Le Faye, but I think it
fair to say that the theory has acquired a large and increasing pool of subscribers
in recent years. And at least some of those subscribers, including myself, also
believe that the tale of the two Elizas—especially the younger illegitimate
Eliza--in S&S is in part based on that very same real life subtext. I.e.,
JA chose to include this real-life open secret, that prudish propriety would
have dictated be ignored at all costs, in her first published novel, and to put
the theme of illegitimacy front and center, and to connect it firmly, to
Colonel Brandon.
In support of that core
thread of allusion, there has also been in more recent years a parallel track
of theorizing, in which Colonel Brandon is seen as a representation of Warren
Hastings in regard to Hastings’s very famous impeachment trial during the
1790s, for misconduct by him during his lengthy tenure in Bengal (India).
Most notable in that
regard have been:
The 1998 book Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History by Gideon
Polya; and
The 2013 article by my good
friend Linda Robinson Walker, “Jane Austen, the Second Anglo-Mysore War, and
Colonel Brandon’s Forcible Circumcision: A Rereading of Sense and Sensibility”:
http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol34no1/walker.html
The smoking gun I bring
forward today fills in a heretofore unrecognized large piece in the jigsaw
puzzle of JA’s allusion to Warren Hastings in S&S, it being something that, in hindsight, I ought
to have recognized back in 2010 when I
wrote, in these two posts about that allusion….
…the following: “…Lady Middleton is the key because, during
Warren Hastings’s never-ending impeachment trial, the leading “supporting
actor” throughout—mentioned several dozen times by Sheridan, for all manner of
chicanery, cruelty, and depravity--was Hastings’s right-hand man—who in essence
played Christopher to Hastings’s Tony Soprano in regard to the complex plot
that Hastings was accused of—was a gentleman by the name of Middleton! “
What it never dawned on me
to check till yesterday was a lead that was staring me (and, for that matter,
everyone familiar with details of JA’s residence from 1809-1817 at Chawton
Cottage, just down the road from the Chawton Great House) right in the face, i.e.,
that the tenant of Chawton Great House from 1808-1812 was a man named….”John
Middleton”!
Was it possible, I wondered,
that the John Middleton who lived in Chawton while JA lived there, with his
daughters and sister in law whom JA mentions in her letters, was somehow
related to the Mr. Middleton who was the notorious “star” of Warren Hastings’s
sensational, OJ-like trial while JA was a young teenager?
Certainly there was
NOTHING in Le Faye’s Biographical Index entry for John Middleton in her edition
of JA’s letters: “JOHN MIDDLETON: (1755-1826). Mr. Middleton
seems to have had no fixed home or estate of his own, but moved constantly from
one rented property to another throughout his life. He was at Hinton Ampner and
Twyford in Hampshire, and Weybridge in Surrey; at Chawton Great House 1795 and
again 1808-1813; and finally at Hildersham House, Cambridge 1824-6. Married
1793 Charlotte Beckford (d. 1803) and had six children….His wife’s sister, Miss
Maria Beckford, lived with him as his hostess.”
I was already looking at
the real life John Middleton at Chawton, in the aftermath of researching my
most recent post about the connections between Fanny Knight’s young suitor Mr.
Wildman and the notorious super-rich slavery heir William Beckford, equally
famous for having written the Orientalist-gothic novel Vathek:
As I speculated about the
likelihood that JA could have covertly gathered all sorts of data about Beckford
from his female first and second cousins, with whom she socialized, I became
curious to know more about the father of the family, Mr. Middleton, and that’s
when the question popped into my head, to wonder whether this was yet another
situation where Le Faye, whether through ignorance born of a negligent (for a
biographer) lack of curiosity, or through
intentional omission of biographical data she knew, had failed to provide to
Janeites, who might, like me, have noticed the suspicious TRIPLE coincidence of
last name among a major character in S&S, an intimate neighbor of JA while
publishing S&S, and a real life figure who was so prominent in the
Hastings impeachment trial which had
already been identified as a source for S&S.
Well, as I’ve already
given away in my Subject Line and introductory comments, you’ve surely guessed
by now that my hunch proved accurate. It took a bit of digging online, but eventually, after a
day’s repeated attempts with a variety of search terms in Google, I came upon
the following 1995 publication: Some
Indian or related bookplates by the
late antiquarian Brian North Lee, at ppg. 53-4: “John Charles Middleton was '
Memory' Middleton 's second brother, and
he also served in the East India Company….The estate [Townhill] was purchased
by the wealthy Nathaniel Middleton whose name is well known in association with
the impeachment of Warren Hastings. Making Townhill his seat, the great
potentate—often spoken of as the Nabob—expended vast sums. On the decline of
the Middleton fortunes as sudden as their rise, the property was sold to
William Gater. John Charles Middleton resided at Shawford House, Twyford, and
later at Chawton Manor, which until 1812 'was let to the Middletons', according
to Marghanita Laski's JA and her World (P
69)…”
So, ironically (but
typically of the extraordinarily Balkanized state of Austen studies over the years),
the little-noted, late Austen scholar/biographer Marghanita Laski, 45 long years
ago, noted in passing that the John Charles Middleton who rented Chawton Manor
was in fact the younger brother of the Nathaniel Middleton who was, along with the aptly named “Impe” Hastings’s nefarious
minion in Bengal, whose name Sheridan mentioned about 75 times in his famously eloquent
and widely read closing argument in the Hastings impeachment trial!
I.e, JA’s ageing neighbor,
the squire who rented Chawton Manor from JA’s brother Edward (not only from
1808-12, but also in 1796 as well) was, as a young man, up to his neck in the
grievous misconduct that had resulted in the most famous English court case of
JA’s youth!
Now, doesn’t that put a
whole different spin on JA’s decision, as an author, to give the name “John
Middleton” to the character in S&S who is intimately connected, in so many
mysterious ways, to Colonel Brandon (aka Warren Hastings)? What do you think of Henry Austen’s and JEAL’s
protesting so much about JA never writing about real people? Especially when
you think about how Henry Austen was known to have sucked up to Warren Hastings
bigtime? And especially when you think about the myriad personal connections
between Warren Hastings and the Austen family, many of them involving shadowy
goings on with the movement of children back and forth between families?
The mind of any curious
Janeite must simply reel at the thought that Jane Austen KNEW Hastings’s
right-hand man personally—especially when that same man was ALSO directly
connected (via marriage) to one of the OTHER most notorious men in all of
England, William Beckford.
I could expand upon many
of the points I have made, above, but I’ve gone on long enough, and I am eager
to hear reactions, especially from anyone reading this who has heretofore believed that
scholars like myself were overreaching in claiming the existence of covert
allusions by JA that her family would most definitely NOT have approved of!
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
P.S.: For those who enjoy
tracing the history of insights and ideas, Polya came close in 1998, as I did
in 2010, to connecting the dots I connected above:
“The
connections between Warren Hastings and India in this novel extend to the
names, conduct and locations of some of the characters. While
"Middleton" is the name of the Austens' neighbour at Chawton who
rented Chawton House from Edward, it is also the name of Warren Hastings' associates
in Bengal, the brothers Samuel and Nathaniel Middleton.”
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