My post yesterday, “Newton Priors,
Dawlish & J.Austen’s poignant bequest to literary niece Anna …. http://tinyurl.com/zd44xfh …was sparked primarily by the references to
Dawlish (in Devon) in JA’s 1814 letters to literary niece Anna. In this post
today, I’ll be writing about some other Austenian wordplay in Letter 107,
starting with “Newton Priors is really a Nonpareil.-Milton would have given his
eyes to have thought of it.”
In
early 2013, I wrote the following comments Newton Priors as a “Nonpareil”: “There
are several sly learned jokes hidden in this passage, which JA was suggesting
Anna embedded in this place name. First
‘nonpareil’ was a popular variety of apple. And JA as well as Anna, would've
been aware of the legend of Isaac Newton's famous apple which supposedly enabled
him to discover his theory of universal gravitation. In that regard, ‘priors’ sounds like
‘perry’, and Anielka has written in the past about JA engaging in wordplay
associated with that popular form of alcoholic beverage made from pears. So we
have apples and pears both alluded to covertly in this single place name. And
finally, the word nonpareil is anagrammatically related to the name newton
priors! I.e., 5 of the first 6 letters of nonpareil appear in the same order in
Anna's place name. And Newton's theory was of course itself a ‘nonpareil’ in
the history of science. What this all tells us is that JA was a compulsive word
player. She read Anna's place name, and immediately picked up on this bit of sophisticated
wordplay. It would've please Jane greatly to see her niece playing the same kind
of literary word games she herself had always played.”
Yesterday,
as I wrote my previous post, I got to wondering about JA’s witty compliment in
Letter 104 about living “for a twelvemonth” on Anna’s clever place name---as if
an idea could be as nutritious and wholesome as food. Sounds like an ideal item
for a menu at a Mr. Woodhouse-owned restaurant, right? Then I asked myself
whether Jane Austen’s “for a twelvemonth” might also, like the name Newton
Priors, have some intellectual history behind it?
Google quickly
led me to Issue #4 (1729) of The
Busy-Body, in which another genius like Newton and Milton, the enterprising
23-year old Benjamin Franklin, published an invitation to aspiring writers, encouraging
them to send essays for him to include in his new periodical. The parallels of
tone and circumstance, and turn of phrase between Franklin’s call for papers
and Austen’s Letter 107 advice to niece Anna, are striking:
“In my first Paper I invited the Learned and the Ingenious to join
with me in this Undertaking; and I now repeat that Invitation. I would have such
Gentlemen take this Opportunity, (by trying their Talent in Writing) of
diverting themselves and their Friends, and improving the Taste of the Town.
And because I would encourage all Wit of our own Growth and Produce, I hereby
promise, that whoever shall send me a little Essay on some moral or other
Subject, that is fit for publick View in this Manner (and not basely borrow’d
from any other Author) I shall receive it with Candour, and take Care to place
it to the best Advantage. It will be hard if we cannot muster up in the whole
Country, a sufficient Stock of Sence to supply the Busy-Body AT LEAST FOR A TWELVEMONTH…” END
QUOTE FROM FRANKLIN
The
above parallels only reinforce my longstanding belief that Austen read and
admired Franklin’s wit and style, as I’ve previously suggested that Franklin’s famous
“Silence Dogood” faux letters to the editor (which play a key role in the film National Treasure) were inspirations for
the 13 year old JA’s “Sophia Sentiment” (and other) secret contributions to her
brothers’s periodical The Loiterer.
But that’s
not all, there’s even more wit and ingenuity in Letter 107 pertaining to yet another
great genius of the past: “Milton would have given his eyes to have
thought of it.”
That is
of course a wink at the blindness of Milton as he dictated Paradise Lost to his scribe—and perhaps JA also had Milton’s Samson Agonistes in mind as well. Milton
was 34 years older than Newton, and the two of them were among the greatest
intellectual titans of Great Britain during the 17th century. So reading the name Newton may well
have led JA to playfully free associate to Milton, and then she couldn't resist
a final, unabashedly nerdy injoke; i.e., that Milton famously didn't need his
eyes to create his greatest masterwork.
And I
see another possible meaning. I believe JA knew many of Milton’s writings well,
and that she therefore may’ve in mind, as the source of her bon mot about Milton giving up his eyes, a similar turn of
phrase that the young, still fully sighted John Milton deployed in his
impassioned condemnation of the useless
universities of England. For a description of what Milton wrote, I quote from “Milton
Speaks to Academe” by Irene Samuel, Milton
Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 1 (March 1970), pp. 2-4:
“Milton
finds it unseemly that they who have brought a 'numb and chill stupidity of
soul, an inactive BLINDNESS OF MIND upon the people by their leaden doctrine—or
no doctrine at all' should object against the clamor for reform that it comes
from the ignorant. It is as though 'they
who have PUT OUT THE PEOPLE’S EYES [should] reproach them of their BLINDNESS.'
He
found it also unseemly to argue that rebellion is the wrong time to undertake
reform: ‘ ‘Tis not rebellion that ought to be the hindrance of reformation, but
the want of this which is the cause of that.' For 'whence' he asks 'should we
begin to extinguish a rebellion that hath his cause' from the need of reform
except with needed reform? He argues it 'unreasonable . . . to defer . . . the
most needful constitution of one right discipline while we stand balancing the
discommodities of two corrupt ones.' But second, and more important, who is to
decide what reforms are needed? It cannot be the ignorant, however little their
ignorance is to be held against them. It cannot be the falsely learned, content
with their false inadequate learning. It can as little be those of mere
geniality who readily say yes to everything. The depth of the wound, in
Milton's view, demanded a near-superhuman wisdom to find the right cure: ‘it is
not for every learned or every wise man, though many of them consult in common,
to invent or frame a discipline; but if it be at all the work of man, it must
be of such a one as is a true knower of himself, ... in whom contemplation and
practice, wit, prudence, fortitude, and eloquence must be rarely met, to
comprehend the hidden causes of things .... So far is it from the ken of these
wretched projectors of ours that bescrawl their pamphlets every day with new
forms of government .... If it is not for every learned or even every wise man,
certainly it is not for the unlearned and unwise to frame the needed
discipline.” What Milton attacked was the ignorance of the supposedly learned.
He did not exalt in its place the ignorance of the admittedly unlearned….” END QUOTE FROM SAMUEL
I find
Austen’s satirical irony in speculating about Milton giving up his useless eyes
in payment for a brilliant name in his writing, to be curiously resonant with
Milton’s own satirical irony in his early variant on the famous Yiddish
definition of chutzpah – i.e., his
claim that it would be arrant presumption for the English university
establishment to deny the people a voice about reform of their educational
system, after those people had previously been denied the education needed to
understand what reform was needed.
I also
see Mary Wollstonecraft in this mix. She alluded significantly to Milton’s Paradise Lost in her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and
I assert that it is well-established that JA was particularly focused on
Wollstonecraft’s ideas about female education as JA wrote her novels. So, given
that JA was one of history’s great autodidacts, I believe she’d have agreed
with Milton’s condemnation of the academic gatekeepers who did such a poor job
at educating others. I know she would’ve loved to see the kind of egalitarian
and non-sexist reform of the educational system in England that Wollstonecraft
advocated for.
In
short, then, I believe JA, as she encouraged her aspiring writing niece Anna,
was inspired by Anna’s use of the name of the great polymath Isaac Newton, to wink
back to two other great polymaths, Benjamin Franklin and John Milton. This sort
of injoke between proud aunt and beloved niece only adds to my sense that Jane
considered Anna a “Nonpareil”: a very intelligent and learned young person,
someone with whom JA could share this sort of sophisticated humor. All the more
reason why I’m convinced, as I argued in my previous post, that JA was trying
very hard to raise her niece’s literary game by some intensive coaching and
encouragement, so that Anna might one day write fiction which the reading world
could live a twelvemonth on. That this did not in fact occur would have brought
tears to the eyes of Jane Austen.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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