This
post was inspired by my listening to a remarkable video this morning….
..written
and spoken by Mark Sundaram [@alliterative on Twitter] with assistance from his
wife Aven McAllister [(@AvenSarah on Twitter], in which Mark spins a delicate
web of intellectual connection out of a dozen threads, all having to do with
the origins of the various connotations of the English word “coach”. Before you go further, I urge you to click on
the above YouTube video and invest 10 minutes in a wonderful magic carpet ride
of allusions traced (and explained in plain English without a trace of academic
jargon!). Then come back here for the decoder ring for my cryptic Subject Line.
Here’s
the part of Mark’s video that inspired this post:
“So
how do we get from the development of transportation technology in the early
modern period to the modern sense of coaching, like with those St Louis Rams I
started with? Well, the answer is, it’s a metaphor that developed in the
early 19th century at Oxford University, bringing us back to academic
institutions, the modern equivalent of Plato’s Academy. Coach came to be
used as a slang term for a tutor who metaphorically carries a student through
an exam, in other words helping him get to where he wants to be. The
first recorded instance in the Oxford English Dictionary of the noun ‘coach’
being used with this sense is in a poem written in 1848 by Arthur Clough, who
had been an Oxford University student, and who in addition to writing poetry
and being involved with educational matters, worked for a time as an unpaid
secretarial assistant to the famous nurse Florence Nightingale. Clough’s
narrative poem “The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich” features an Oxford University
student as the main character. As a side note, Clough’s sister Anne was a
suffragette who promoted higher education for women, and became the principle
of Newnham College at Cambridge University, the other major academic institution
in England along with Oxford. But anyway, the first recorded instance of
the verb “to coach” in this sense is in the novel Pendennis by William
Makepeace Thackeray, who is most famous for his novel Vanity Fair. The
main character in the novel Pendennis is a student at a fictional college at
the fictional university called Oxbridge…”
END QUOTE
From
my past experience of Jane Austen as a profound student and innovator of
nuances in the English language, I wondered whether she, who had a father and two
brothers who attended Oxford, among other family academic connections, might
have covertly used the word “coach” in the metaphorical Oxfordian sense that
Mark articulated, above, which, per the OED, was supposed not to have been used
in literature until 1848, over 30 years after Jane’s premature death.
And
sure enough, in 3 minutes of browsing, I found the following passage in Chapter
23 of Emma, which lit up like a
Christmas tree with unexpected new and deeper meaning when I read it with Mark’s
explanation in mind—or, more aptly, when I read it with Mark’s insights as a
special pair of spectacles seemingly created especially to help me “see” the
following dialog in a startling new light:
"You
are acquainted with Miss Jane Fairfax, sir, are you?" said Mr. Woodhouse,
always the last to make his way in conversation; "then give me leave to
assure you that you will find her a very agreeable young lady. She is staying
here on a visit to her grandmama and aunt, very worthy people; I have known
them all my life. They will be extremely glad to see you, I am sure; and one of
my servants shall go with you to shew you the way."
[Frank]
"My dear sir, upon no account in the world; my father can direct me."
"But
your father is not going so far; he is only going to the Crown, quite on the
other side of the street, and there are a great many houses; you might be very
much at a loss, and it is a very dirty walk, unless you keep on the footpath;
but MY COACHMAN CAN TELL YOU where you had best cross the street."
Mr.
Frank Churchill still declined it, looking as serious as he could, and his
father gave his hearty support by calling out, "My good friend, this is
quite unnecessary; FRANK KNOWS A PUDDLE OF WATER WHEN HE SEES IT, and as to
Mrs. Bates's, he may get there from the Crown in a hop, step, and jump."
They
were permitted to go alone; and with a cordial nod from one, and a graceful bow
from the other, the two gentlemen took leave….”
Read
with the grain, the above passage is just another sad but comic example of Mr.
Woodhouse’s baseless neurotic fears about every tiny aspect of the world beyond
the tiny cocoon of his hermetically sealed existence at Highbury. But read
AGAINST the grain, I hear a sophisticated parody of a lecture by an Oxford
philosophy professor (or “coachman”) setting forth wisdom about epistemological
issues – how do we recognize a thing for what it truly is?
This
passage of course occurs just after Frank arrives in Highbury after endless
promises to come visit his father and new stepmother. What happens when we
reread it through these special spectacles provided by Mark, and also apply the
hindsight we gained on first reading of the novel, when we learned in Chapter
49 that Jane and Frank have had a secret relationship since before we ever saw or
even heard of either of them in the novel?
I
suggest that it is a broad hint to us from Jane Austen that Mr. Woodhouse knows
more about that secret relationship than Emma (through whose eyes we see all
the action) realizes---Mr. Woodhouse appears to be a kind of Oxford don
lecturing to Frank, saying, in code, “Come now, young man, I know very well
about your secret connection to Miss Jane Fairfax, and so stop pretending to me
that you want to talk to me--get on your way to her….and get away from my
daughter!!”
And…I
also distinctly hear a veiled allusion by Mr. Weston to the following famous
line spoken by Hamlet to his false friends Rosencrantz & Guildenstern in Mr.
W’s “Frank knows a puddle of water when he sees it””:
And I
already had previously noticed Mary Crawford channeling Hamlet when SHE
said: "South or north, I know a
black cloud when I see it”
Food
for thought, isn’t it? Seems like many of the things Mr. Woodhouse says in the
novel are not the “thin gruel” that most
Janeites take it for, but are actually rich, savory dishes filled with hidden
delights and mysteries!
So
once again, major thanks to Mark Sundaram and Aven McAllister for inspiring
this post, and I look forward to watching all of their videos in the very near
future, and urge you all reading this to do so as well. If you like what I write,
the chances are extremely great that you will buy what Mark is selling, too,
since we all specialize in spotting and explaining hidden literary and
historical connections!
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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