Diana Birchalls replied to my previous post: “Arnie, I'm
so glad you liked my story, but I'm laughing at your inventiveness in
attributing allusions and subtext to a LIVING writer (me!) that I know I never
meant! “
Diana,
I know I’m on the right track when I make you laugh – and in that regard, you
should know that Mary Crawford, who I think is JA’s wittiest character (even
more than Elizabeth Bennet, because I think Mary’s wit has more depth
supporting it), is my role model. ;)
MP,
LOVERS VOWS & PARADISE LOST
Diana
also wrote: “When the cherubs popped into my mind it had nothing whatever to do
with Paradise Lost, which I have not revisited since a Milton course in college
forty years ago. I simply thought that meaty fat little cherubs would be
a very funny thing for heavy pink-cloaked Mr. Rushworth to be wanting in his
scenery. You are very learned on the subject, yourself, and incredibly
ingenious, but I have to confirm to you, since you ask - yes, in this case, a
cherub is just a cherub!”
And I’ll
promptly pass that ci-garish news on to my ghostly and not very cherubic friend,
Sigmund. ;)
I
also want you to know that your
inventive juxtaposition of cherubs with Lovers
Vows serendipitously led me to take what has turned out to be a further fruitful
line of scholarly inquiry since yesterday. I.e., I have found strong evidence that
it is not a coincidence that two of
the major allusive sources for Mansfield
Park are (1) Milton’s Paradise Lost and
(2) Kotzebue/Inchbald’s Lovers Vows. It
may seem like these are apples and oranges, and just happen to be the principal
subtexts, respectively, of the Sotherton wilderness episode and the Lovers Vows theatricals episode; but I
can show that these allusions are actually strongly but covertly connected in a
very surprising and thematically significant way-it’s way too complicated to
explain at present, but I just wanted to let you know that I’m in your debt for
(however unintentionally) leading me in that off-the-beaten-trail direction!
MP
& THE PLAYERS IN HAMLET
Diana
also wrote: “It's very clever too, your relating my scene to Hamlet ("will you see the players
well bestowed?"), but again, nothing could have been farther from my mind
in writing the scene, than Hamlet.”
Thank
you, and I believe you on that point as well. What is particularly satisfying
about it, is that the idea of the Scene-Painter as a theatrical
intruder/interloper came to you not via awareness of the Hamlet allusion in MP, but as a rational inference by you based solely
on the “harms” attributed to his brief presence in MP. It’s a great example of
how JA’s literary (and historical) allusions are never just there as a superficial,
heavy-handed show of literary erudition--rather, they’re always subtle, and supported
by an infrastructure of tiny bits of verbal “deal board”—they are earned, if you will—and are therefore
solid and able to support thematic weight.
MP
& JOHN THE PAINTER
Diana
also wrote: “The "John the Painter" reference is most interesting,
and I can't say if it was in Jane Austen's mind or not, but it certainly wasn't
in mine, as I'd never heard of it before.”
Understood—but
mark my words, don’t be surprised if sometime something will “ignite” somewhere
else in JA’s writing which also connects improbably to the notorious arsonist John
the Painter—till then, it will sits there as an intriguing, off-the-wall
possibility of an allusion.
MP
& THE ART OF SCREEN-PAINTING
And now,
before I finish, I will add a fourth insight that I have derived from this
brief but intensive study of the Scene-Painter in MP inspired by Diana’s wonderful
little dramatization. During my
research, I came across a thorough, fascinating summary of the history of theatrical
scene-painting, going back to Renaissance Italy—it’s in the January 30, 1875
issue of All The Year Round, the
periodical founded by Charles Dickens, and owned in 1875 by his son Charles,
Jr., and here is the URL if you want to read the whole thing:
The
article is entitled “Paint and Canvas” and while it’s relatively short, it’s
still too long to quote in full here. But I will give you a couple of excerpts
which relate to my fourth insight about the Scene-Painter in MP:
“…Vasari relates that he conducted Titian to see certain works
of Peruzzi, of which the illusion was most complete. The greater artist
"could by no means be persuaded that they were simply painted, and
remained in astonishment, when, on changing his point of view, he perceived
that they were so."
… [Ben]
Jonson, describing his Masque of Blackness, performed before the court at
Whitehall, on Twelfth Night, 1605, says, "for the scene was drawn a
landscape, consisting of small woods, and here and there a void place, filled
with huntings; which falling, an artificial sea was seen to shoot forth, as if
it flowed to the land, raised with waves, which seemed to move, and in some
places the billows to break, as imitating that orderly disorder which is common
in nature…Thus represented, the scene behind seemed a vast sea, and united with
this that flowed forth, from the termination or horizon of which (being the
head of the state, which was placed in the upper end of the hall) was drawn by
the lines of perspective, the whole work shooting downwards from the eye, which
decorum made it more conspicuous, and caught the eye afar off with a wondering
beauty, to which was added an obscure and cloudy night piece, that made the
whole set off. So much for the bodily part, which was of Master Inigo Jones's
design and art."
… It
will be remembered that Mr. Puff in the Critic giving a specimen of "the
puff direct" in regard to a new play, says: "As to the scenery, the
miraculous powers of Mr. De Loutherbourg are universally acknowledged. In
short, we are at a loss which to admire most, the unrivalled genius of the
author, the great attention and liberality of the managers, the wonderful
abilities of the painter, or the incredible exertions of all the
performers." Shortly after his arrival in England, about 1770, De
Loutherbourg became a contributor to the exhibition of the Royal Academy….
Turner when, in 1808, he was appointed Professor of Perspective to the Royal
Academy, is said to have taken up his abode at Hammersmith in order that he
might be near De Loutherbourg, for whose works he professed cordial admiration.
The old scene-painter's bold and strong effects, his daring treatment of light
and shade, his system of colour, bright even to gaudiness, probably arrested
the attention of the younger artist, and were to him exciting influences. Upon
De Loutherbourg's landscapes, however, little store is now placed; but, as a scene-painter, he deserves to be remembered for the
ingenious reforms he introduced. He found the scene a mere "flat " of
strained canvas extending over the whole stage. He was the first to use
"set scenes" and "raking pieces." He also invented
transparent scenes with representations of moonlight, sunshine, firelight,
volcanoes, etc., and obtained new effects of colour by means of silken screens
of various hues placed before the foot and side lights. He discovered, too,
that ingenious effects might be obtained by suspending gauzes between the scene
and the spectators. These are now, of course, but commonplace contrivances:
they were, however, distinctly the inventions of De Loutherbourg, and were
calculated to impress the playgoers of his time
very signally. To Garrick, De Loutherbonrg rendered
very important assistance, for Garrick was much
inclined to scenic decorations of a showy character, although as a rule he
restricted these embellishments to the afterpieces, and for the more legitimate
entertainments of his stage was content to employ old and stock scenery that
had been of service in innumerable plays. …”
Reading
the above made me realize that JA, who, it is already well established, knew a
great deal about visual art and the picturesque, was probably also pretty sophisticated
in her knowledge of what a Scene-Painter actually did---and what she didn’t
know, sister Cassandra, the accomplished visual artist, surely did.
We
know JA really loved the theatre, so of course she’d have been attentive not
merely to the words spoken in a play, but also to the backdrops, the staging, i.e.,
the totality of a performed play. Were she and CEA members of the crew in those
Steventon theatricals when she was 12-13 years old—did she also play appropriately
small roles as well? I guess so!
What
I know for sure is that she really would have had a backstory in mind for the
Scene-Painter. I imagine that Tom Bertram would have had his Scene-Painter
friend avoid busy, distracting backdrops, in favor of subtler, targeted images.
But
more important, as I stepped back one level further, away from the Lover’s Vows production itself, I
meditated on scene-painting as a metaphor for narration in a novel. I thought
about JA’s minimalist narrative artistry, in which she deliberately omitted a
great deal of general physical description that clutters up the narration of so
many other novelists, in favor of a number of precise, targeted visual images
(like, e.g., Robert Ferrars’s toothpick case, or the colors of the faces of the
sailors observed by Sir Walter, etc.) which reveal character in a visual flash.
And
what especially caught my eye in the above quoted 1875 article about
scene-painting was the description of the kinds of subtle illusions that were
already being achieved by the likes of De Loutherberg, using gauze, screens, perspectives,
etc. It reminded me of two passages in JA’s novels, one of them the various
reference to the ha-ha in the Sotherton wilderness in MP, and the other Henry
Tilney’s lecture on visual aesthetic techniques that sails right over poor Catherine’s
head:
“In
the present instance, she confessed and lamented her want of knowledge,
declared that she would give anything in the world to be able to draw; and a
lecture on the picturesque immediately followed, in which his instructions were
so clear that she soon began to see beauty in everything admired by him, and
her attention was so earnest that he became perfectly satisfied of her having a
great deal of natural taste. He talked of foregrounds, distances, and second
distances—side-screens and perspectives—lights and shades; and Catherine was so
hopeful a scholar that when they gained the top of Beechen Cliff, she
voluntarily rejected the whole city of Bath as unworthy to make part of a landscape….”
I
suggest to you that Jane Austen was very conscious of herself as a literary scene-painter
and landscape designer par excellence,
using words instead of paint or trees, and she was particularly skilled and
innovative in creating novelistic versions of the ha-ha at Sotherton and the
side-screens and perspectives described by Henry and utilized by
scene-painters like de Loutherberg. She knew how to create illusions via
words, to lead her readers down the garden path of superficial interpretation, making
them think they understood exactly what they were seeing, but also providing
subtle clues to her close readers enabling them to assume alternative perspectives
from which her novels could be perceived very very differently.
And I
would never have walked down that particular path of interpretation if Diana had
not invited me to notice the Scene-Painter of Mansfield Park.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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