I was
surprised today to notice some extreme editorial carelessness—and, even worse,
a lack of comprehension of the irony that permeates all of Jane Austen’s
writing---in the following puff piece that ran today in The Guardian literary
blog on the happy occasion of Jane’s 239th birthday:
The premise
was to list 30 memorable quotes, taken mostly from JA’s novels, but with a few
from her letters as well, and to invite readers to suggest other JA quotes they
love. A harmless little love fest that only a literary Scrooge could criticize,
you’d think—what could go wrong?
Well,
as much as I enjoy almost any celebration of Jane Austen’s genius, my inner
curmudgeon just could not remain silent in this case---and here is the perfect Austen
quote to explain why, which the author of The
Guardian blog post might wish to carve onto her computer monitor as a
constant reminder from this moment forward. It is from a 1798 letter (Letter 11
in Le Faye’s edition of JA’s letters) written by the nearly 23-year old Jane
Austen to her sister Cassandra:
"I
hope George was pleased with my designs. Perhaps they would have suited him as
well had they been less elaborately finished; but an artist cannot do anything
slovenly."
The
facts behind this famous saying seem clear. George is their 3-year nephew, the
son of their elder brother Edward, the brother who had his “Frank Churchill Moment”,
so to speak, as a young teenager, when he was, in effect, adopted by the
Knights. The Knights were a rich, childless couple, relatives of the Austens, and
within a year of JA writing that letter to Cassandra, the widow Mrs. Knight made
Edward the owner of Godmersham, the great Kentish estate where Cassandra was
then on an extended visit (as unpaid additional governess for Edward’s growing
brood).
So,
it seems that Jane Austen sketched some “elaborately finished designs”—we may
never know of what, but my best guess would be of animals at the Austen family
farm at Steventon---in her previous letter to Cassandra, sketches which were
intended for the viewing pleasure of their little nephew. Even though Cassandra
was the sister with the serious drawing skills, Jane must also have had some
abilities in that domain as well. And it is beyond dispute that Jane Austen was
a favorite among all her nieces and nephews because she lavished such special
attention on them, always encouraging them to grow their minds and make them
laugh at the same time.
But
back to my original point---even in designs intended for the eyes of a 3 year
old, Jane Austen, at age 23 still a young adult, already prided herself on
taking the time to get things right—she had already set an artistic course not to
foist off anything on any audience, no matter how undiscriminating, that would
not pass the test of time. No matter what else, she took extreme care to avoid
careless mistakes. No real life Mr. Knightley was going to say about Jane’s
designs—“That mare is too tall, Jane”.
Which
brings me to that blog post in The
Guardian. Believe it or not, among the thirty quotations, there are THREE
which have material errors. One could slip through the cracks despite diligent
care, two would be suspicious, but three brings us into what Emma might have considered
Miss Bates Territory:
"Oh!
very well," exclaimed Miss Bates, "then I need not be uneasy. 'Three
things very dull indeed.' That will just do for me, you know. I shall be sure
to say three dull things as soon as ever I open my mouth, shan't I? (looking
round with the most good-humoured dependence on every body's assent)—Do not you
all think I shall?"
Emma
could not resist.
"Ah!
ma'am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me—but you will be limited as to
number—only three at once."
And
here are those three:
ERROR
THE FIRST:
“There
are as many forms of love as there are moments in time.” — Personal
correspondence
Actually there is no such quotation, or anything
remotely resembling it that I can find, anywhere in Jane Austen’s actual
writing, fictional or otherwise. What appears to be the source of this
misquotation is the 1999 Patricia Rozema film adaptation of Mansfield Park, Jane
Austen’s novel still celebrating its bicentennial in 1814. I gather this from
the following 1999 online review of that film:
I must advise that I did not actually go back and
re-watch the film, I relied on that website. But regardless of the source, the
misquotation is clear. And this reminds me, this is not the first time I have
been puzzled at seeing an alleged quotation from Jane Austen, one that did not
ring any bell for me, only to discover upon followup that it was a
misquotation! So, watch out for the next one when it appears in your Twitter
feed.
ERROR
THE SECOND:
“Know
your own happiness. Want for nothing but patience - or give it a more
fascinating name: Call it hope” —Sense and Sensibility (1811)
At least here there is an actual line in S&S,
but the actual quotation is slightly different:
“Know
your own happiness. You want nothing but patience -- or give it a more
fascinating name, call it hope.
This slight
alteration, however, turns that misquoted section into nonsense, but only when
you don’t just skim by, but read it carefully. The misquotation attempts to convert
Mrs. Dashwood’s kindly advice to Edward Ferrars into a supercharged pep talk,
with four successive imperative verbs: KNOW your own happiness…WANT for nothing
but patience…GIVE it a more fascinating name…CALL it hope. She sounds like
Knute Rockne exhorting the Fighting Irish to win one for the Gipper.
The
problem is, that “WANT” makes no sense! If taken literally, that exhortation would
mean the opposite of Mrs. Dashwood’s actual meaning. I.e., if she were actually
urging him to want for nothing but patience, it would mean he’d want for
patience, which would means she was exhorting him to be IMpatient!
And
if we know anything, we know that this was exactly the sort of error that Jane
Austen at all costs sought to avoid making. That’s why she famously wrote the following
to Cassandra in 1813 while writing Mansfield
Park: “I learn from Sir J. Carr that there is no Government House at Gibraltar-I
must alter it to the Commissioner’s.”
And
sure enough, in the text of MP, we read Henry Crawford uttering the following:
“…when
Mrs. Brown, and the other women at the Commissioner's at Gibraltar, appeared in
the same trim, I thought they were mad; but Fanny can reconcile me to
anything"
Now,
I defy anyone to tell me how the story of MP is changed in any material way by
JA making sure she was accurately describing a large municipal building on
Gibraltar—only those who knew Gibraltar well enough to know there was no Government
House there would have caught the error. But for JA, it was worth getting hold
of Carr’s book and checking that very point—because “an artist cannot do anything
slovenly.” She did not want anyone—but especially her sailor brothers—to have
the spell of verisimilitude in her fiction be broken even for a second by a
factual incongruity.
And
now…
ERROR
THE THIRD:
“Life
seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.” —Mansfield Park (1814)
Here we have, again, what might at first seem a
slight misquotation, but one which, upon closer consideration, actually changes
the entire meaning from the original:
“Dinner
was soon followed by tea and coffee, a ten miles' drive home allowed no waste
of hours; and from the time of their sitting down to table, it was a quick
succession of busy nothings till the carriage came to the door, and Mrs.
Norris, having fidgeted about, and obtained a few pheasants' eggs and a cream
cheese from the housekeeper, and made abundance of civil speeches to Mrs.
Rushworth, was ready to lead the way.
So, what was in the novel a nice turn of phrase to describe the very
quick tempo of the dinner at Sotherton (in the aftermath of the dramatic and
time-consuming events in the wilderness beyond the fateful ha-ha that Maria
Bertram so Freudianly slips through), becomes a silly cliché that JA never
wrote or intended, conveying a sentiment of cosmic ennui that T.S. Eliot nailed a century later:
“I have measured out my life with teaspoons.”
Somehow I don’t think Jane Austen, who we all know was capable of
aphoristic, metaphorical genius equal to Eliot’s, would want to have attributed
to her the blather of “Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.”
And
it appears we have the website ironically named www.brainyquote.com to thank for this grotesque error:
By
now I think it’s clear—if you’re going to quote Jane Austen, it might just be a
good idea to go back to the source, i.e., to Jane Austen’s actual novel texts
themselves! If you don’t want to pull out a print copy and check, at least go
to one of the half dozen reliable websites where you might find a true copy of
what was actually published!
IRONY
As my
inner curmudgeon is by now exhausted by the effort of carefully documenting these
three errors (a 10% error rate would be magnificent in many other endeavors,
but not in the field of quoting famous authors), I will conclude by quickly
running through the deeper problem with this list of 30 quotations, even if
they had all been exactly and correctly quoted. I.e., that, as at least one of
the commenters on that blog post pointed out, several have been taken completely
out of context, and that lack of context demonstrates a lack of understanding
that they were intended to be read ironically!
Here
are the three best examples:
MISSED
IRONY THE FIRST:
From Mansfield Park:
“Give
a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one
but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody.”
It
sorta changes your idea about this aphorism when you realize that it is Mrs.
Norris—yes, the hasty piece of work for whom JK Rowling named that cat---
speaking out of both sides of her mouth, who says this about Fanny Price, her
niece whom Mrs. Norris will then spend the rest of the novel tormenting, a true
“education” in the school of hard knocks!
MISSED
IRONY THE SECOND:
A
close second in the irony department must be the following bit of self congratulation
in Northanger Abbey:
“There
is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion
of loving people by halves; it is not my nature.”
Of
course, the irony is that this is the Machiavellian Isabella Thorpe, speaking
to the heroine Catherine Morland, after which Isabella will betray Catherine’s
friendship in at least a half dozen different ways before Catherine finally
wises up about Isabella.
MISSED
IRONY THE THIRD:
And
my final choice is this one from Emma:
“Without
music, life would be a blank to me.”
Out
of context, this seems like the statement of a true music lover, a connoisseur—but
when you learn that it is the Philistine Mrs. Elton so opining, you have to
wonder…..
And
on that fitting note of irony, I conclude, hoping that I myself have been
careful enough, by double-checking my sources, not to add any slovenly errors
of my own to the mix.
On
her 239th birthday, Jane Austen deserves no less of an effort.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
1 comment:
COFFEE spoons
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