PART ONE:
Last week I Tweeted the link for a recent blog post of mine entitled: “Sir
Thomas Bertram’s (and Jane Austen’s) ‘encouragement’…of theatrical rebellion in
Mansfield Park”.
My post
originated from my first noticing that Tom Bertram, in speeches six chapters apart
in Mansfield Park, twice refers to paterfamilias Sir Thomas’s early “encouragement”
of Tom and younger brother Edmund, as children, to recite speeches from tragic
plays, as a justification and inspiration for Tom’s successful scheme to
persuade his siblings, and their thespian guests the Crawfords, to stage and
perform in a home theatrical of Inchbald/Kotzebue’s controversial play, Lover’s Vows.
As is
my custom, I specifically Tweeted that link to various Tweeps whose Tweets
suggested a specific interest in the character of Tom Bertram. One of those
Tweeps was @AdmiralByngCampaign who had, a few months earlier, Tweeted: “Jane Austen satirised George III
through avatars: "John Thorpe in Northanger Abbey, TOM BERTRAM & Henry
Crawford in Mansfield Park, Frank Churchill in Emma, & both Sir Walter
Elliot and William Walter Elliot in Persuasion". Would she have satirised
George II & the Adm Byng affair?”
I was pleasantly
surprised to receive a quick reply Tweet from @AdmiralByng, identifying herself
as Thane Byng, an artist and Byng family member. We then moved to email, free
to exceed 280 characters:
Me: “I'm
interested to hear what you've got to tell me about Admiral Byng & Jane
Austen -- i know that
her circle included members of the Byng family, but have no idea of her connection to him personally, mainly because he was executed two decades before she was born.”
her circle included members of the Byng family, but have no idea of her connection to him personally, mainly because he was executed two decades before she was born.”
Thane:
“Please let me know who were the Byngs in Jane
Austen's circle? The tragedy of Admiral John Byng's
execution would not have faded in two decades! I am interested to
know how Jane Austen recorded her thoughts feelings/sentiment/judgement about
it. Any clues?”
I searched
in Twitter, and learned that Thane had intriguing intuitions, which resonated very
strongly with my own sense of Jane Austen as an author passionate about injustice:
05/25/2017:
“Jane Austen, sensitive artist and
writer would have known the story of Admiral John Byng”
09/14/2017:
“#JaneAusten with
her fertile and sensitive mind must have known the story of Admiral the
Honourable John Byng. What were her #thoughts?”
I also
found this article about Thane, which beautifully encapsulates the modern Byng
family’s passionate quest for justice and vindication for Admiral Byng, their martyred
naval COLLATERAL ancestor [NOTE: the
article is unclear on one point: Admiral Byng had no children, and therefore Thane and other Byng Family members are all his COLLATERAL descendants]:
http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/i-ve-remortgaged-my-house-to-clear-my-ancestor-admiral-byng-s-name-says-camden-artist-1-4474149 29 March 2016
“‘I’ve
remortgaged my house to clear my ancestor Admiral Byng’s name’ says Camden
artist”
Thane
Byng, a seventh-generation descendant of Admiral John Byng – the only British
admiral to be executed by firing squad – said she would do whatever it takes to
restore his honour.
“He was made a scapegoat and has
been remembered as a coward – it is simply not right. He faced an impossible
situation that the history books have recorded incorrectly.”
In 1756 Admiral John Byng was despatched to Gibraltar to stop
the French from taking control of the British garrison on the Mediterranean
island of Minorca. But by the time he had arrived, the
enemy had already landed.
“He told the admiralty he didn’t
have enough ships or sailors but all complaints fell on deaf ears,” said Ms
Byng. As a result the garrison surrendered and after an unsuccessful skirmish
with the French, Admiral Byng was ordered home. Charged with “failing to do his
utmost”, and despite the court’s unanimous recommendation for mercy, on March
14 1757 Admiral Byng was executed by firing squad on board the HMS Monarch in
Portsmouth Harbour.
Three previous attempts to clear
Admiral Byng’s name have all failed because his descendants are not considered
“to be in living memory of the deed”.
“His story has affected my entire
life,” said Ms Byng. “I feel like I have always been on a quest to set the
record straight.”
Since 2007 the Admiral Byng Campaign
has lobbied the Ministry of Defence for an official pardon, attempted to have
the case against the Admiral overturned on legal grounds and submitted a
petition to the House of Commons, all without success.
Ms Byng said: “If we can’t change
things the black and white letters way, then we have to be more imaginative in
gaining support, and this year we’re on track to do just that.”
Last month at the Old Royal Naval
College, Greenwich, in an effort to raise the Admiral’s profile, Ms Byng’s
remortgaged house paid for composer Piers Maxim and a number of soloists to
perform a threnody in memory of Admiral Byng. On the 260th anniversary of the
Admiral’s death Ms Byng plans to hand in another petition at the exact time and
date of her forbear’s execution, demanding his exoneration.
She said: “We want history to finally be made right and we
will never give up, we’ve waited too long.”
END QUOTE
FROM ARTICLE
I was
inspired by Thane’s passion for justice, and decided to dive right in and see
what I could do to assist her efforts, and, along the way, shed fresh light on
yet another potentially fertile realm of Austenian allusion. And as you’ll see
in this, and my next post to come, it really paid rich dividends on both
fronts!
To kick
things off, a quick scan of Thane’s Tweets over the past year revealed two well-known
(at least in scholarly circles) examples of towering 18th century literary
figures who shared Thane’s anger at the injustice inflicted on Admiral Byng,
and famously articulated that anger, albeit in very different ways:
First,
one of her Tweets referred to this passage from Boswell’s Life of [Samuel] Johnson:
“The generosity with
which [Johnson] pleads the cause of Admiral Byng is highly to the honour of his
heart and spirit. Though Voltaire affects to be witty upon the fate of that
unfortunate officer, observing that he was shot ‘pour encourager les autres,” the
nation has long been satisfied that his life was sacrificed to the political
fervour of the times. In the vault belonging to the Torrington family, in the
church of Southill in Bedfordshire, there is the following epitaph upon his
monument, which I have transcribed:
“TO THE PERPETUAL
DISGRACE OF PUBLIC JUSTICE, THE HONOURABLE JOHN BYNG, ESQ., ADMIRAL OF THE
BLUE, FELL A MARTYR TO POLITICAL PERSECUTION, MARCH 14, IN THE YEAR 1757; WHEN
BRAVERY AND LOYALTY WERE INSUFFICIENT SECURITIES FOR THE LIFE AND HONOUR OF A
NAVAL OFFICER.” END QUOTE FROM BOSWELL
One of
the incontestable facts of Austen studies is that Jane Austen knew Samuel
Johnson’s writings like the back of her hand, as well as Boswell’s famous
biography of his idol -- so that alone would support the notion of JA being
well aware of Admiral Byng’s tragic end via the above quoted passage.
Another
of Thane’s Tweets referred to the following passage from Voltaire’s classic
novel of innocence coming of age in an evil world, Candide, written not long after the execution of Admiral Byng:
“Talking thus they arrived at Portsmouth. The coast was
lined with crowds of people, whose eyes were fixed on a fine man kneeling, with
his eyes bandaged, on board one of the men of war in
the harbour. Four soldiers stood opposite to this man; each of them fired three
balls at his head, with all the calmness in the world; and the whole assembly
went away very well satisfied.
"What is all this?" said Candide; "and what demon
is it that exercises his empire in this country?"
He then asked who was that fine man who had been killed with so
much ceremony. They answered, he was an Admiral.
"And why kill this Admiral?"
"It is because he did not kill a sufficient number of men
himself. He gave battle to a French Admiral; and it has been proved that he was
not near enough to him."
"But," replied Candide, "the French Admiral was as far
from the English Admiral."
"There is no doubt of it; but in this country it is found
good, from time to time, to kill one Admiral to ENCOURAGE the others."
Candide was so shocked and bewildered by what he saw and heard,
that he would not set foot on shore, and he made a bargain with the Dutch
skipper (were he even to rob him like the Surinam captain) to conduct him
without delay to Venice.” END QUOTE FROM
CANDIDE
Voltaire
of course was well known to all the literati of England continuously from long before
Jane Austen’s lifetime, and up to the present; and Candide was translated into English no less than three times within
a few years after its initial publication, so was readily accessible to JA. Voltaire’s
virtually explicit dramatization of the execution of Admiral Byng was famous
for its unconcealed scathing irony and unforgiving moral judgment on the
British Navy and Royal Court.
However,
I’d wager that it was then, and still is today, completely unknown to everyone
currently interested in Admiral Byng’s reputation (and was unknown to myself
till Google enlightened me the other day) that the late Austen scholar, Frank
Bradbrook, in his classic work on Austenian allusions, Jane Austen and her Predecessors
(1966), wrote what I instantly recognized as an inspired speculation about
Austen making a veiled allusion to Admiral Byng’s execution in her final
completed, novel, Persuasion:
p. 122:
“There is almost certainly a reference here to the classic comment in Candide (recalling the sentence passed
on Admiral Byng), ‘Dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un
amiral pour encourager les autres.’ Previously, Sir Walter Elliot had complained
of Lord St. Ives, ‘whose father we all know to have been a country curate,
without bread to eat,’ and who may have been suggested by Lord Nelson himself,
whose life by Southey Jane Austen had read. G. M. Trevelyan has stated that
‘the naval officers were now the sons of gentlemen of modest means (Nelson was
a poor parson’s son), sent to sea as boys…..Sir Walter Elliot, with his
Voltairean wit, and his snobbish imitation of Lord Chesterfield’s code of
manners, is completely opposed to the stoicism of Dr. Johnson and the fortitude
of Nelson and his ‘band of brothers.’ “ END QUOTE FROM BRADBROOK
With eager
excitement, I pulled up the entire relevant portion of Sir Walter Elliot’s
speech in Chapter 3 of Persuasion:
“…One
day last spring, in town, I was in
company with two men, striking instances of what I am talking of; Lord St Ives, whose father we all
know to have been a country curate, without bread to eat; I was to give place
to Lord St Ives, and a certain Admiral Baldwin, the most deplorable-looking
personage you can imagine; his face the colour of mahogany, rough and rugged to
the last degree; all lines and wrinkles, nine grey hairs of a side, and nothing
but a dab of powder at top. 'In the name of heaven, who is that old fellow?'
said I to a friend of mine who was standing near, (Sir Basil Morley). 'Old
fellow!' cried Sir Basil, 'it is Admiral Baldwin. What do you take his age to
be?' 'Sixty,' said I, 'or perhaps sixty-two.' 'Forty,' replied Sir Basil,
'forty, and no more.' Picture to yourselves my amazement; I shall not easily
forget Admiral Baldwin. I never saw quite so wretched an example of what a
sea-faring life can do; but to a degree, I know it is the same with them all:
they are all knocked about, and exposed to every climate, and every weather,
till they are not fit to be seen. It is a
pity they are not knocked on the head at once, before they reach Admiral
Baldwin's age…"
I’d imagine that most Austen
scholars reading Bradbrook’s breezy certainty of intentional parody by Jane
Austen would remain skeptical of his inference, because Bradbrook is so brief
and cryptic in his explanation, and the allusion itself is subtle. In a
nutshell, I see his claim as resting on two related points:
First, by
his reference to Sir Walter’s “Voltairean wit”, Bradbrook surely means that Sir
Walter’s “It is a pity [the admirals] are not knocked on the head at once” (for
the “crime” of looking much older than their age) is Austen’s brilliant parody
of Voltaire’s famous acidic irony about Byng’s execution: “in this country it is found good, from time to time, to
kill one Admiral to encourage the others."
Second, Sir Walter’s other sneering
reference to “Lord St Ives, whose father
we all know to have been a country curate, without bread to eat” surely is, as
Bradbrook does explain well, Jane Austen’s broad wink at the greatest British
admiral of all, Horatio Nelson.
Byng and Nelson – consider
these (in Sir Walter’s words “these two men”) side by side. I did, and that is
why I am 100% with Bradbrook in seeing Austen’s unmistakably razor sharp, dark (and
yes, Voltairean) irony. She has her narcissistic blowhard Sir Walter
unwittingly refer, in the same speech, to the two strangest “ship-fellows” in
the history of the British Navy:
Admiral Horatio Nelson, for
more than two centuries the epitome of heroic death in naval battle; and Admiral
John Byng, the only British admiral ever executed for alleged cowardice for
avoiding naval battle.
Both Admirals, the (fairly)
famous and the (unfairly) infamous, are condemned, convicted, and sentenced (in
the same sentence) by Sir Walter to the same punishment -- a knock on the head,
and both, so to speak, for the crime of looking
(as) old (as death itself)!
And that concludes, more or less,
the existing scholarly wisdom responding to Thane Byng’s sharp intuition that Jane
Austen must have alluded to the Byng Family's tragically famous collateral ancestor Admiral Byng,
who left the world 18 years before JA entered it.
Two additional quick observations:
First, this validates Thane’s Tweeted
intuition that JA would have also parodied King George
II, the monarch who insisted on the rapid execution of Admiral Byng despite the
judges urging clemency. I say that Bradbrook showed this 50 years ago, and that once again Sir Walter Elliot was JA's parodic vehicle for regal satire.
Second, it occurred to me as I worked
on this Part One that there was an amazingly lucky serendipity in my Tweeting
to Thane the link to my very recent post about “encouragement” in Mansfield Park, only to then find out that
Voltaire’s very famous bon mot about Admiral Byng was about the salutary practice
of killing one Admiral to “encourage” the others!
That serendipity
“encouraged” me to do the two days of enjoyable scholarship that will enable me
to bring to you, within the next day, the second half of the large iceberg of “Byng-ly”
allusion by Jane Austen in both her novels and her letters! So, strap in, and
get ready for a second, dizzying ride deep into the subtext of Jane Austen’s multilayered
engagement with the memory of Admiral Byng and his family.
And, at
the center of that allusive matrix, I will also reveal the identity of yet
another very famous work of 18th century literature by another
famous English author, who engaged, as it turns out, on a massive, if covert,
scale, with the memory of Admiral Byng, cut down so cruelly and unjustly in
martyrdom for an alleged lack of courage which was not at all the case.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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