[There are two parts to
this Austen quiz, which, as I’ve said, is about Persuasion. This one is a doozy, and I was inspired to discover the
answer by a galvanizing insight presented to me a week ago by a brilliant member
of my local JASNA chapter]
What short episode (comprising less than 400 words) contained in a very long
work of literature written sometime (I won’t say how long) before 1816, was covertly,
slyly, and profoundly alluded to by Jane Austen in the following five short passages in Persuasion?:
Ch. 8: From this time Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot were repeatedly in the same circle. Whether former feelings were to
be renewed must be brought to the proof; former times must undoubtedly be
brought to the recollection of each; they could not but be reverted to…and
though his voice did not falter, and though she had no reason to suppose his
eye wandering towards her while he spoke, Anne felt the utter impossibility,
from her knowledge of his mind, that he could be unvisited by remembrance any
more than herself. There must be the same immediate association of thought,
though she was very far from conceiving it to be of equal pain….
Ch. 11: [Anne &
Benwick sharing a love of poetry] …she ventured to hope he did not always read
only poetry, and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry to be
seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong
feelings which alone could estimate it truly were the very feelings which ought
to taste it but sparingly….
Ch. 12: [re Anne]: She
was looking remarkably well; her very regular, very pretty features, having the
bloom and freshness of youth restored by the fine wind which had been blowing
on her complexion, and by the animation of eye which it had also produced.
Ch. 12: [re the walk at
the Cobb]: …There was too much wind to make the high part of the new Cobb
pleasant for the ladies, and they agreed to get down the steps to the lower,
and all were contented to pass quietly and carefully down the steep flight,
excepting Louisa; she must be jumped down them by Captain Wentworth...
she smiled and said,
"I am determined I will:" he put out his hands; she was too
precipitate by half a second, she fell on the pavement on the Lower Cobb, and was
taken up lifeless! There was no wound, no blood, no visible bruise; but her
eyes were closed, she breathed not, her face was like death. The horror of the
moment to all who stood around!
Ch. 13: [Anne with Admiral
Croft in Bath] Anne, amused in spite of herself, was rather distressed for an
answer, and the Admiral, fearing he might not have been civil enough, took up
the subject again, to say--
"The next time you
write to your good father, Miss Elliot, pray give him my compliments and Mrs
Croft's, and say that we are settled here quite to our liking, and have no
fault at all to find with the place. The breakfast-room chimney smokes a
little, I grant you, but it is only when the wind is due north and blows hard,
which may not happen three times a winter. And take it altogether, now that we
have been into most of the houses hereabouts and can judge, there is not one
that we like better than this. Pray say so, with my compliments. He will be
glad to hear it."
BONUS CLUE: The following
2 additional passages in Persuasion also
covertly allude to that same great prior work of literature, but to different
passages in that earlier work, besides the single episode alluded to by the afore-quoted
5 passages in Persuasion:
Ch. 8: [Wentworth recalling
his naval exploits at Uppercross]
"Your first was the
Asp, I remember; we will look for the Asp."
"You will not find
her there. Quite worn out and broken up. I was the last man who commanded her.
Hardly fit for service then. Reported fit for home service for a year or two,
and so I was sent off to the West Indies."
The girls looked all
amazement.
"The Admiralty,"
he continued, "entertain themselves now and then, with sending a few
hundred men to sea, in a ship not fit to be employed. But they have a great
many to provide for; and among the thousands that may just as well go to the
bottom as not, it is impossible for them to distinguish the very set who may be
least missed."
"Phoo! phoo!"
cried the Admiral, "what stuff these young fellows talk! Never was a
better sloop than the Asp in her day. For an old built sloop, you would not see
her equal. Lucky fellow to get her! He knows there must have been twenty better
men than himself applying for her at the same time. Lucky fellow to get
anything so soon, with no more interest than his."
"I felt my luck,
Admiral, I assure you;" replied Captain Wentworth, seriously. "I was
as well satisfied with my appointment as you can desire. It was a great object
with me at that time to be at sea; a very great object, I wanted to be doing
something."
"To be sure you did.
What should a young fellow like you do ashore for half a year together? If a
man had not a wife, he soon wants to be afloat again."
"But, Captain
Wentworth," cried Louisa, "how vexed you must have been when you came
to the Asp, to see what an old thing they had given you."
"I knew pretty well
what she was before that day;" said he, smiling. "I had no more
discoveries to make than you would have as to the fashion and strength of any
old pelisse, which you had seen lent about among half your acquaintance ever
since you could remember, and which at last, on some very wet day, is lent to
yourself. Ah! she was a dear old Asp to me. She did all that I wanted. I knew
she would. I knew that we should either go to the bottom together, or that she
would be the making of me; and I never had two days of foul weather all the
time I was at sea in her; and after taking privateers enough to be very
entertaining, I had the good luck in my passage home the next autumn, to fall
in with the very French frigate I wanted. I brought her into Plymouth; and here
another instance of luck. We had not been six hours in the Sound, when a gale
came on, which lasted four days and nights, and which would have done for poor
old Asp in half the time; our touch with the Great Nation not having much
improved our condition. Four-and-twenty hours later, and I should only have
been a gallant Captain Wentworth, in a small paragraph at one corner of the
newspapers; and being lost in only a sloop, nobody would have thought about
me." Anne's shudderings were to herself alone; but the Miss Musgroves
could be as open as they were sincere, in their exclamations of pity and horror….
Ch. 18: [Admiral Croft to Anne]: “…. Here I am, you
see, staring at a picture. I can never get by this shop without stopping. But
what a thing here is, by way of a boat! Do look at it. Did you ever see the
like? What queer fellows your fine painters must be, to think that anybody
would venture their lives in such a shapeless old cockleshell as that? And yet
here are two gentlemen stuck up in it mightily at their ease, and looking about
them at the rocks and mountains, as if they were not to be upset the next
moment, which they certainly must be. I wonder where that boat was built!’
(laughing heartily); ‘I would not venture over a horsepond in it….Lord! what a
boat it is!’ taking a last look at the picture, as they began to be in motion.
....."There comes old Sir Archibald Drew and his grandson. Look, he sees us; he kisses his hand to you; he takes you for my wife. Ah! the peace has come too soon for that younker. Poor old Sir Archibald!..."
If you figure out the
answer to this quiz, bravo, please reply. But that’s the easy part of this quiz.
The “cream” is to then figure out the reason why Jane Austen alluded to that earlier great work of literature in
the above-quoted passages in Persuasion
which all involve Anne Elliot.
In particular, see if you
can discern what drew her special attention to that earlier work, and in
particular, that short episode, which she pointed to, I suggest, with all five
fingers on one hand, and (at least) two on the other! When someone gets the answer,
or if not, then within the next few days, I will reveal my own interpretation
of this extraordinary allusion by Jane Austen.
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter
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