Pending my giving
the answer to my pending quiz question posed yesterday, here’s another smaller-scale Austen
quiz for which I’ll give you the answer, below, in this same post. As you’ll
find out tomorrow when you see the answer to yesterday’s quiz, I stumbled upon
today’s finding, while following up on yesterday’s.
Without further
ado:
I’m thinking of a
passage in Jane Austen’s writing, which includes all 15 of the following
specific points:
1, 2, 3 & 4: It
describes a long “agreeable” trip in a chaise taken by a few women from one
part of England to another.
5: The trip
includes a stop midway to eat at a roadside inn.
6: The trip takes
place early in May.
7: The arrival of
the chaise at a stop is observed from a window by a waiting observer.
8: We hear about meat
and a cucumber during the food stop.
9: We hear about bonnets.
10: We hear about
someone with “a long chin”.
11: We hear about
someone who looks odd.
12: We hear about a
servant.
13 & 14: We
hear about someone named Chamlerlayne dressed in a gown.
15: The person
doing all the talking is a young single women who speaks in a brash, jocular voice.
So, what passage am
I thinking of? Scroll down a bit for my answer….
SCROLL DOWN
SCROLL DOWN
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I think it safe to
guess that most of you reading this quiz who recognized the answer, thought of
the following scene in Chapter 39 of Pride
&Prejudice (and I’ve put in ALL CAPS the 15 quiz points):
“It was the SECOND WEEK IN MAY,
in which the THREE young LADIES set out together from Gracechurch Street for
the town of ——, in Hertfordshire; and, as they drew near the appointed INN
where Mr. Bennet's carriage was to meet them, they quickly perceived, in token
of the coachman's punctuality, both Kitty and Lydia LOOKING OUT of a
dining-room up stairs. These two girls had been above an hour in the place,
happily employed in visiting an opposite milliner, watching the sentinel on
guard, and dressing a salad and CUCUMBER.
After welcoming their sisters, they
triumphantly displayed a table set out with such cold MEAT as an inn larder
usually affords, exclaiming, "Is not this nice? Is not this an AGREEABLE
surprise?...
…Lydia laughed, and said --
"Ay, that is just like your formality and discretion. You thought the WAITER
must not hear, as if he cared! I dare say he often hears worse things said than
I am going to say. But he is an UGLY fellow! I am glad he is gone. I never saw
such A LONG CHIN in my life. Well, but now for my news...How nicely we are all crammed
in," cried Lydia. "I am glad I bought my BONNET, if it is only for
the fun of having another bandbox!...and then, what do you think we did? We
dressed up CHAMBERLAYNE in WOMAN’S CLOTHES on purpose to PASS FOR A LADY, only
think what fun! Not a soul knew of it, but Colonel and Mrs. Forster, and Kitty
and me, except my aunt, for we were forced to borrow ONE OF HER GOWNS; and you
cannot imagine how well he looked!”
So what, I hear you
saying, where’s the magic in those 14 scattered points?
Well, now let me
now show you another passage, also written by Jane Austen, which ALSO contains all 14 of those same
specific points! It is in Jane Austen’s own real life Letter
35 dated May 3-5, 1801, written by her just after her arrival to live in Bath,
written, I believe, from her aunt & uncle’s residence at the Paragon:
My Dear Cassandra, I have the pleasure
of writing from my own room up two pair of stairs, with
everything very comfortable about me. Our journey here was perfectly free from
accident or event; we changed horses at the end of every stage, and paid at
almost every turn-pike. We had charming weather, hardly any dust, and were
exceedingly AGREEABLE, as we did not speak above once in three miles. Between
Luggershall and Everley WE MADE OUR GRAND MEAL, and then with admiring
astonishment perceived in what a magnificent manner our support had been
provided for. We could not with the utmost exertion consume above the twentieth
part of the BEEF. The CUCUMBER will, I believe, be a very acceptable present,
as my uncle talks of having inquired the price of one lately, when he was told
a shilling.
We had a very neat CHAISE from
Devizes; it looked almost as well as a gentleman's, at least as a very shabby
gentleman's; in spite of this advantage, however, we were above three hours
coming from thence to Paragon, and it was half after seven by your clocks before
we entered the house. FRANK, WHOSE BLACK HEAD was in WAITING IN THE HALL
WINDOW, received us very kindly; and his master and mistress did not show less
cordiality…One thing only among all our concerns has not arrived in
safety: when I got into the CHAISE at Devizes I discovered that your drawing ruler
was broke in two; it is just at the top where the cross-piece is fastened on. I
beg pardon.
…The CHAMBERLAYNES are still here. I
begin to think better of Mrs. C----, and upon recollection believe she has
rather A LONG CHIN than otherwise, as she remembers us in Gloucestershire when
we were very charming young women.
…My
mother has ordered a new BONNET, and so have I; both white strip, TRIMMED with
white ribbon. I find my straw BONNET looking very much like other people's, and
quite as smart. BONNETS of cambric muslin on the plan of Lady Bridges' are a
good deal worn, and some of them are very pretty; but I shall defer one of that
sort till your arrival. …We have had Mrs. Lillingstone and the CHAMBERLAYNES to call on us. My
mother was very much struck with the ODD LOOKS of the two
latter; I have only seen her. Mrs. Busby drinks tea and plays at
cribbage here to-morrow; and on Friday, I believe, we go to the CHAMBERLAYNES….”
So, what in the
world does this mean?
Why would JA, in
her 1813 novel, so obviously (to CEA, at least) go out of her way to make such
a 15-pronged, extremely specific echoing of her letter, written to CEA 12 years
earlier on the momentous occasion of the Austen family’s move to Bath?
More specifically,
why take the real life Mrs. Chamberlayne (who, from the several mentions we
read of her in JA’s letters from May 1801, was someone JA really liked, and was
genuinely sad when Mrs. Chamberlayne abruptly left Bath) and re-present her as
a young, involuntarily cross-dressed militiaman, who is lewdly joked about by
Lydia?
And most shocking of
all, why in the world would JA choose to translate her own real-life words, written
to her sister, into the fictional words spoken by the vulgar, outrageous Lydia
Bennet to three of her sisters?
Isn’t this taking an
Austen family in-joke a little far?
I leave you with my
best guess at this moment:
First, I see this
as strong further confirmation of the sense I got dozens of times during our
long group read of JA’s 154 surviving letters --- i.e., that so many of these
letters were always hoped/ intended by JA to be kept, to survive, and one day to
be published, as a kind of codebook for readers to use to decipher the meaning
of the shadows in her novels.
But that’s only
half of it--in reverse, I believe she intended that the survival of these coded
letters would also turn her novels into a codebook for those who personally
knew her, for deciphering the meaning of the shadows of her letters, the better
for her secret self, the secret story of her own life, to be safely revealed,
to those with eyes to see.
And so my answer re
why she so puzzlingly chose Lydia as her mouthpiece in this instance is the
same reason, at other points in P&P, why she chose Mary as her mouthpiece.
They are both reflections not of her actual character, but of sides of her own
character, as she knew she was (inaccurately) perceived by her family and
friends.
I.e., to some (like
e.g., Mitford who famously referred to her as a sharp poker), JA had too big a
mouth for her own good, and was an embarrassment to the Austen family, just as
is Lydia in the Bennet family --- in contrast to the diffident, retiring
Cassandra, who was like Jane in the Bennet family.
But, to others in
her family circle, JA was perceived the way Elizabeth sees sister Mary, which
is as a pompous, attention-hungry, piano-playing nerd and killjoy.
So….what do you
see? What I hope I will not hear is that this was a coincidence, of which JA was
unaware when she wrote P&P, or that it had no meaning beyond a harmless
little family joke.
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on
Twitter
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