"I have met him forever at the Bedford": John Thorpe Channeling Shakespeare (PART ONE) and another Genius, too! (PART TWO)

Since my initial post the other day about one short, seemingly trivial speech by John Thorpe to Catherine Morland (in Chapter 12 of Northanger Abbey) ...

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2014/01/i-have-met-him-forever-at-bedfordone-of.html

....I've had the first part of that speech in the back of my mind, tickling my further curiosity:

"I have met him forever at the Bedford; and I knew his face again today the moment he came into the billiard–room. One of the best players we have, by the by; and we had a little touch together, though I was almost afraid of him at first: the odds were five to four against me; and, if I had not made one of the cleanest strokes that perhaps ever was made in this world—I took his ball exactly—but I could not make you understand it without a table; however, I did beat him..."

Today, I reached the mother lode of this passage, as my Subject Line suggests. I had no idea two days ago how rich the vein of ore actually was, but then, that seems to always happen, the longer I let the negative sit, the more of the picture hidden within it seems to emerge unbidden--courtesy of another Trojan Horse Moment provided to me by the Ulysses of fiction--Jane Austen!  Sounds grandiose, I know, but wait till you read this all, and you tell me if it isn't something really cool and really extraordinary!


To begin, the second and third sections of my above linked post were my preliminary analyses of two aspects of the above-quoted passage, i.., the gambling/odds-making aspect, and the identity of "the Bedford".  As I will demonstrate, below, they are in fact inextricably and significantly tied.

As to the odds-making aspect, in my previous post I extrapolated speculatively as follows:

"...is this anecdote a hint to the reader as to WHY it is that General Tilney is so greedy, so focused on the wealth of a prospective wife---does this chauvinist bully, who burns the midnight oil writing anti-Jacobin tracts, and reading dangerous subversive “trash” (like Northanger Abbey?), have a gambling addiction, one which has put him in dire land-rich but cash-poor straits??  Food for thought."

GENERAL TILNEYS POUND OF FLESH
In support of my initial claims that JA lets us know about General Tilney's billiard-playing for a good reason, and not just as literary window-dressing, a closer reader reveals just how significant her reasons were. Unless Thorpe's lying, which is theoretically possible but I see no good reason to suspect he is about this, Thorpe makes a point that he has seen the General at the Bedford repeatedly, so much so that even after some lapse of time Thorpe knows his face (but, by negative implication, had not previously interacted directly with the General, or he'd know more than just his face, he'd know him personally). So the General was a seriously regular billiards player at some earlier time, and Thorpe himself must also have been a regular during the same time period, or he wouldn't have been there to observe and know the General's high reputation amongst the billiards aficionados. 

Second, the General is a seriously GOOD billiards player, that's why he gets such good odds when playing against Thorpe. And so Thorpe's defeating him was quite the major upset, just the sort of vainglory that Thorpe would revel in and boast about to Catherine. In short, Thorpe had not just beaten the odds in winning, he had beaten the best.

But then, here's the important part. The General has now lost to Thorpe, when previously he had been a billiards god, so...this hints strongly to us that the General has, like the cartoon RoadRunner, recently found himself ten feet beyond the metaphorical cliff, with no solid financial ground beneath his feet, having lost his shirt, perhaps, in recent months, by losing a lot of big bets on himself at the Bedford.  All the little details provided by Thorpe point in this precise direction, especially when the setting is given an especially vivid shade by the General's seemingly boundless greed. While not forgiving it in any way, perhaps we now better understand the General's peremptory ejection of Catherine from the Abbey when he learns that Catherine is not a rich heiress. Yes, it's easy to see him as just a one-dimensional character in this regard-a  greedy pig, who freaks out for no good reason when his greedy expectations are foiled at what seems to him to be the eleventh hour (an apt metaphor for discussions of events at the Abbey in general). But he becomes a much more complex, interesting and realistic character, if one of his real horrible secrets, one that Catherine never even dreams of, is that he's a gambler with huge debts who is desperate to get some quick infusion of cash flow, so that he can get himself out of deep debt without having to sell the Abbey or any of his other real estate holdings, or before he is publicly shamed before his entire community of gamblers and degenerate gentlemen, or both.
In that regard, who knows who he owes the money to? Was it merely the other billiard sharks who perhaps had spent years losing money to him, and now, when he's down on his skills and suddenly vulnerable, they all plan to descend on him to collect, without mercy? Or was it some Regency Era version of the Mafia, who would break his legs if he didn't repay, with high interest, the debts that they specialized in enforcing?

Now, connect the dots from this line of reasoning to my Subject Line AND to the heading I gave to this section of this post, and can you see where I'm going with this (which by the way I did not even realize when I started writing this post!)???

I think it must be obvious by now, but here's a big additional hint, courtesy of....who else? John Thorpe, in THE VERY NEXT SENTENCE of that same speech!:

A very fine fellow; as rich as a Jew. I should like to dine with him; I dare say he gives famous dinners."   See it now?

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Of course Thorpe's saying the General is rich as a JEW, and then talking about wanting to dine with him, is an obvious (once you see it in the proper context and from the proper perspective, which is the whole ball of wax with pretty much all of JA's hidden meanings) allusion to the following passage in The Merchant of Venice, Act One, Scene Three:


SHYLOCK:  ....I think I may take [Antonio's] bond.
BASSANIO: Be assured you may.
SHYLOCK: I will be assured I may; and, that I may be assured,
I will bethink me. May I speak with Antonio?
BASSANIO: If it please you to dine with us.
SHYLOCK:  Yes, to smell pork, to eat of the habitation which your prophet the Nazarite conjured the devil into. I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following, BUT I WILL NOT EAT WITH YOU, DRINK WITH YOU, nor pray with you.

So it turns out that while John Thorpe's referring to the General as being "rich as a Jew" is on one level a gratuitous bit of anti-Semitic drivel, it is also, metafictionally, JA's klaxon, alerting the reader (via the additional large hint toward Shylock's very very famous "but I will not eat with you, drink with you" ) to look to The Merchant of Venice through the lens of money-lending going on offstage in Northanger Abbey, and good insights into JA's shadows will ensue!


There is much much more to say on this subject, but I have no time to write it all up right now, so I will leave that for Part Two, when I do have the chance, at which point I will expand on the above, and then turn to the topic of that additional Genius I alluded to in my Subject Line, which, it turns out, is part and parcel of this same matrix of meaning, courtesy of the greatest literary billiards player of all time, Jane Austen!

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter 

P.S.: I just checked my files and I see that I realized the allusion to The Merchant of Venice in that passage of Northanger Abbey back in 2010, but then forgot about it entirely, so that I "rediscovered" again today, but this time with lots of supporting context to make it clearer why it's there in the first place!

P.S.: I just checked my files and I see that I realized the allusion to The Merchant of Venice in that passage of Northanger Abbey back in 2010, but then forgot about it entirely, so that I "rediscovered" again today, but this time with lots of supporting context to make it clearer why it's there in the first place!

“I have met him forever at the Bedford…one of the cleanest strokes ever was made in this world—I took his ball directly”: The Subtly Mysterious John Thorpe

During the past few years, I’ve come to appreciate the subtle nuances of JA’s characterization of John Thorpe. You might think there’s not much worth looking at closely, but in this monster of crude narcissism, I suggest she gives us lots to notice just beneath the surface. A great example is in Chapter 12 of NA, when Thorpe says the following to Catherine about General Tilney:

"I have met him forever at the Bedford; and I knew his face again today the moment he came into the billiard–room. One of the best players we have, by the by; and we had a little touch together, though I was almost afraid of him at first: the odds were five to four against me; and, if I had not made one of the cleanest strokes that perhaps ever was made in this world — I took his ball exactly — but I could not make you understand it without a table; however, I did beat him..."

That is a passage I never paid any attention to before, but when I did, today, I found all sorts of stuff of interest to the inquiring minds of serious Janeites.

FOREVER: First, I was struck by how 21^st century John Thorpe sounds, using “forever” as a slangily hyperbolic synonym for “repeatedly & over a long time”, especially among young people. We all knew thatThorpe was fond of slang terms like “quiz”, but it’s remarkable to see modern slang coming out of his mouth. JA kept her ear finely tuned to the vocabulary of different sectors of her society, so she could capture character by the kinds of words her characters speak and think.

FIVE TO FOUR ODDS: Second, I wondered about how odds were set in a game of billiards in those days. I found the answer in the following colorful passage from Thackeray’s “Cox’s Diary”:

“Afterwards, down we went to billiards…. Well, we went to play. "FIVE TO FOUR on Coxe," screams out the Count.—" Done and done," says another nobleman. "Ponays," says the Count.—"Done," says the nobleman. "I vill take your six crowns to four," says the Baron.—" Done," says I. And, in the twinkling of an eye, I beat him; once making thirteen off the balls without stopping.

…"I'll take your seven to four, in tens," said I to the Baron. "Give me three," says he, "and done." I gave him three, and lost the game by one. "Dobbel, or quits," says he." "Go it," says I, up to my mettle: "Sam Coxe never says no;"—and to it we went. I went in, and scored eighteen to his five. "Holy Moshesh!" says Abednego, "dat little Coxsh is a vonder! who'll take odds?"

"I'll give twenty to one," says I, "in guineas."

"Ponays! yase, done," screams out the Count.

"Ponies, done," roars out the Baron: and, before I could speak, went in, and—would you believe it?—in two minutes he somehow made the game!”

So, assuming things hadn’t changed amongst gamblers between the Regency Era  and a half century later, there must have been a crowd of onlookers at the billiards game between Thorpe and the General, at which one of the bettors called out “5 to 4” odds against Thorpe’s great “stroke”.

Another wrinkle of this seemingly throwaway information just occurred to me---is this anecdote a hint to the reader as to why it is that General Tilney is so greedy, so focused on the wealth of a prospective wife---does this chauvinist bully, who burns the midnight oil writing anti-Jacobin tracts, and reading dangerous subversive “trash” (like Northanger Abbey?), have a gambling addiction, one which has put him in dire land-rich but cash-poor straits??  Food for thought.

 THE BEDFORD: Third, apropos Thorpe’s reference to the Bedford, perhaps you all assumed, as I did at first, that it was a club in Bath where Thorpe had been meeting the General during the current season in Bath. However, that is clearly not the case. First, see what Nancy wrote in 1999:

“The editor of this edition of NA, Claire Grogan, glosses the Bedford: The Bedford Coffee House near Covent Garden, London, was a regular haunt of David Garrick, William Collins, Henry Fielding, Alexander pope. Sheridan and Horace Walpole.”  Now, I ask you does John Thorpe seem the sort of person who would be going to a coffee house frequented by the literary set? Would the general? if he ever went to London? Why would he? There was a club and a hotel for the military gentlemen. It just does not seem something that either gentleman would do-- go to London from Oxford or Bath enough to be known.
However, there is another explanation of the term which finds more favor in my eyes and that is the Bedford Hunt. It is also called the Oakley now but it was sponsored by the Duke of Bedford from his place Woburn near Leighton Buzzard In 1790 the Duke of Bedford—who had inherited the dukedom at six, and was now only about 26. The new kennels and the hunting were written
up in Sporting Magazine.”  END QUOTE

I suggest that JA indeed meant to wink at that London literary club—after all, doesn’t the General attend the performance (of Hamlet, I claim) at the theatre? And doesn’t John Thorpe read literature? Fielding, Burney, & Lewis, for starters. And he is a college man, after all, and he expresses more opinions about literature than most Austen characters. So even if we may not agree with his opinions, the point is that John Thorpe believes himself to be a literary critic, so he’d be there in the Bedford Club, opining away.

THE CLEANEST STROKE: Fourth and last, I have found that John Thorpe is incapable of saying anything anywhere in the novel that is NOT a sexual double entendre, and this is yet another example. In this passage, his reference to “one of the cleanest STROKES that perhaps ever was made in this world—I took HIS BALL exactly” is extraordinarily suggestive, indicating that John got a distinctly sexual charge out of his billiards victory over the General.  

And, by the way, this was not Thorpe’s first sexualized usage of the word “stroke”.  JA used the word only seven times in all six novels combined, and so it’s noteworthy that Thorpe speaks two of them. Look at this earlier one from Chapter 7:

"You have lost an hour," said Morland; "it was only ten o'clock when we came from Tetbury."

"Ten o'clock! It was eleven, upon my soul! I counted every STROKE. This brother of yours would persuade me out of my senses, Miss Morland; do but look at my horse; did you ever see an animal so made for speed in your life?"

Jill Heydt-Stevenson insightfully described the many sexual innuendoes of Thorpe’s equine  obsession, and so I add to her insight this additional wrinkle on the word phallic “stroke” in those two passages, one of them horse-related.

And so, in conclusion, you see these four wrinkles hidden in that one short speech, which go a long way toward illustrating why one can read JA’s novels a tenth or twentieth time and still find amazing new things in them—in fact, I’d say the odds are a whole lot better than five to four in favor of that happening every time you reread one of them! ;)

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Mr. Knightley’s Spiked Spruce Beer Receipt & Mr. Elton as Malvolio, Christopher Sly, Bottom, and… James Stanier Clarke!

In response to a recent thread in Janeites & Austen-L:

With all due respect to Diana Birchall (“[JA] is paying [Clarke] the compliment of being serious and rational when she confides her fears about this latest book...One senses these are very genuine fears, sincerely confided, and she would not say as much to just anybody; only to one whom she is sure holds her in high esteem.”) and Ellen Moody (“So I've not been emphasizing their friendship enough nor how Austen is seriously confiding in him.”), I totally disagree with the claim that Jane Austen was sincere in ANY way whatsoever in Letter 132(D) (or for that matter in any of the three letters she wrote) to James Stanier Clarke.

I’ve posted previously about a number of ways in which JA’s letters to Clarke were all utterly disingenuous, totally satirical, and reflective of a deep seated contempt for him -- they might even be the best examples I know from the real life of Jane Austen’s “regulated hatred” as Harding described it so brilliantly 70+ years ago)—my personal favorite, of course, has to be the letter to Clarke dated on April Fool’s Day, in 1816! I’ve been of this opinion about Austen’s choice of Clarke (along with his sucking-up “twin” Egerton Brydges) since 2005, when Clarke first really became prominent on my radar  screen as I was sleuthing out Emma for the first time. But I’ve also long opined that Mr.Collins is a  representation of Clarke and Brydges  as well.

  

Anyway, while revisiting this question of JA’s attitude toward  Clarke the past two days after reading Diana’s, Ellen’s and Diane’s posts, and going over my files about Clarke going back to when I first realized that Jane Austen was toying with him in these letters, today I was able to finally apply Occam’s Razor to  this matrix, and crystallize, in a larger, simpler, and exquisitely layered allusive context, exactly what JA was up to with Clarke (which of course is part and parcel of what she was up to in her fiction vis a vis his boss the Prince of Whales as well).

In a nutshell:

ONE: In these three letters to James Stanier Clarke, Jane Austen has (with spectacular success) turned Clarke into a combination of Malvolio from Twelfth Night,  (duping a narcissistic toady into believing he  is loved by a woman who is above him) Christopher Sly from the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew, and Bottom from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

TWO: Despite recent scholarly assertions that Malvolio is represented by Emma in Emma, it is the character of Mr. Elton who actually represents both James Stanier Clarke and also Malvolio, Sly, and Bottom. Aside from the (to me) obvious similarity between Malvolio’s aspirations for the hand of the countess Olivia and Elton’s aspirations for the hand of Emma, there are also numerous clues hidden in plain sight in the text of Emma which, when properly decoded, reveal that Mr. Elton is duped repeatedly by his unseen, shadowy tormenters (who include, at different times, both Mr. Knightley and Miss Bates), who prey on his narcissism by giving him delusions of grandeur, exactly as is done  to Malvolio, Sly, and Bottom in their respective Shakespeare plays.

To be very succinct about it, readers of Emma have not understood that Mr. Elton has actually been goaded and gulled (aided by Mr. Knightley’s especially SPIKED spruce beer!), into coming on too strong to Emma in the carriage ride from Randalls to the Vicarage on Christmas Eve, 1813 (and also has been deliberately misdirected to Donwell Abbey late in the novel, so as to get him away from the Vicarage!).

THREE: Perhaps the most spectacular (and intentional on JA’s part) irony of all in this matrix is that it actually wasn’t Jane Austen’s original idea to wrap James Stanier Clarke in the personae of these three memorably deluded Shakespearean fools—she was beaten to the satirical punch by the Prince Regent and his co-conspirators, most of all Lord Egremont, master of Petworth, who came up with that  very same idea at Petworth not too long before JA began writing Emma. 

FOUR: There can be no question that the aristocratic pranksters at Petworth were very consciously modeling what you will read  about, below, upon the Shakespearean models described in ONE, above, and that JA  fully understood their Shakespearean subtext, and extended it magnificently in Emma.

DISCUSSION:  

First, if the names Petworth and Egremont sound oddly familiar, it’s because Clarke himself mentioned them both in Letter 132(A) to JA, the very letter JA  was responding to via  Letter 132(D):

“On Monday I go to Lord Egremont’s at Petworth—where your Praises have long been sounded as they ought to be. “

 

What Clarke failed to mention about Lord Egremont and Petworth in Letter 132(A), however, but which, as Emma and JA’s 3 letters to Clarke both make clear, was known to JA, was what happened to Clarke one fateful night at Petworth in October 1813 (which was two years before Clarke wrote Letter 132(A), (as I said) one year before JA began writing Emma, and a scant TWO MONTHS before Mr. Elton’s fateful fictional carriage ride with Emma.

I will give the honor of describing the events that made Clarke a national laughing stock in 1814 to Chris Viveash. Now Mr Viveash might consider this a dubious honor, because his  own overly flattering descriptions of Clarke in his little bio and article about Clarke are eerily reminiscent of Clarke’s own hyper-toadyish effusions about the Prince. So it’s a safe bet that Viveash would probably not be too thrilled to realize the lasting significance of what happened to Clarke at Petworth in October 1813.

As you read  Viveash’s account, just keep thinking about Lord Egremont, the Prince Regent and their cronies as having assumed for  their own unkind purposes the roles of Maria & Co. in Twelfth Night, the unnamed Lord who stages Sly’s experiential performance as amnesiac lord of the manor in the Shrew induction, and most of all Oberon, with Puck’s  assistance, in Dream):

P. 46: “Fatigued and exasperated, JSC took a well-earned break during Christmas 1809, whilst staying at Petworth House, with Lord Egremont and his distinguished houseparty. However when James heard there was to be A GREAT CHRISTMAS BALL, which most of the aristocratic assembly would attend, he fled. [recall that the party at Randalls occurs on Christmas Eve 1813]

P. 52: “The wonderful news of a decisive battle fought against the French, at Leipzig, in October 1813, caused great rejoicing when the news eventually filtered back to England. This clash of arms became known as the Battle of the Nations. Everyone wanted to celebrate the victory…a distinguished gathering at Petworth, blessed by the presence of both the Prince Regent and the Duke of Clarence, celebrated in style. This was a fete well worth attending. James was there on the specific command of the Princes, and by the sincere wish of Lord Egremont. Spirits were high, and noisy horse play was considered acceptable, on this gala evening. Unfortunately, our hero was the butt of the royal jest, and the dignity of James’s office did not protect him. After he had retired to bed, he was woken by a hammering at his bedroom door. The ebullient royals demanded that he come downstairs to charge another bumper with them in patriotic toasts to the recent victory. The upshot was that James was FORCED TO DRINK TOO MUCH and when he was helplessly inebriated, they took the drunken prelate to bed.

In the darkness of his bedchamber, they pushed him roughly into his bed, causing James to scream out as he touched the hairy flank of a live DONKEY, which had been trussed, DRESSED IN FEMALE ATTIRE and thrust between the sheets. A near riot ensued as the whole of the company crowded into the room to witness James’s distress. It took hours for the excitement to die down, and James felt hot  and humiliated by this unprovoked prank.

In the morning he tried to put a brave face on it, at breakfast, but guests giggled and sneered with the remembrance of it all. The PR and the Duke of Clarence patronizingly told him he was a dashed good  sport, but James was most uneasy. Later, when the gossip rattled through Sussex retelling and embellishing the scandal of a cleric in bed with an ass, James felt the full force of local censure. Poor man, he was quite innocent, but the cloth was scandalized.  A [Cruikshank caricature] print was published in 1814, entitled The Divine and the Donkey—or Petworth Frolicks, depicting the events which took place in the Petworth bedchamber, adding to James’s humiliation.

….When JA told JSC that in her opinion the duties of a courtier could not be too well paid, considering  the twin sacrifices of time and feeling, SHE MUST HAVE BEEN THINKING OF THE SHAMEFUL INCIDENT AT PETWORTH. [My added emphasis]”  END QUOTE

Viveash’s Persuasions article is entitled “The Donkey and the Divine”, and here is a link for an image of same:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/Petworth_Frolicks.jpg/220px-Petworth_Frolicks.jpg

So….does anyone who has read  the above still think JA was sincerely confiding in James Stanier Clarke in any of her letters to him? That she would actually have trusted this man with anything resembling the truth, at the very same moment she was extending her satire of him from her fiction into her real life correspondence with him?

I have a dozen more pages of supporting evidence for my above claims—stuff like the repeated motif of SPIKED spruce beer in Emma, especially Knightley’s receipt (or recipe) therefor; and like Mrs.Elton’s desire to “ride on a donkey” to Donwell Abbey---but this is not the time or the place for me to bring it all forward. I suggest that I’ve brought more than enough forward already, above, to justify an indictment from any reasonable  grand jury of Janeites on the question of whether Jane Austen not  only portrayed James Stanier Clarke as Mr. Elton, but also emulated Maria  from Twelfth Night in dropping a letter (from a fairy?) for Malvolio which read:

“To the unknown beloved, this, and my good wishes

Jove knows I love, But who?

Lips, do not move; No man must know.”

 I may command where I adore,

But silence, like a Lucrece knife,

With bloodless stroke my heart doth gore;

M.O.A.I. doth sway my life.”

If this fall into thy hand, revolve. In my stars I am above thee, but be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em. Thy Fates open their hands. Let thy blood and spirit embrace them. And, to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy humble slough and appear fresh. Be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants.”

Now go back and reread all three of JA’s letters to Clarke, and see that the tone is identical, the same appeal to grandiose vanity, the same faux acknowledgment of superiority. Can’t you just picture JA and her trusted confidantes (like Martha Lloyd, to whom JA wrote undisguisedly about her contempt for the Prince Regent) savoring Clarke’s responses, in which he buys her put-on hook, line AND sinker…… on DRY ground (as Richard Pryor was fond of saying for extra emphasis, and a nautical image that fits  Clarke’s nautical obsessions)!

In particular, when Clarke writes repeatedly urging JA to write her next novel about a cleric who (like himself) divides time between country and town and otherwise tilts the course of world history in his spare time, JA and her confidantes, like Maria and Sir Toby giggling behind the box tree (as in Box Hill, as Fiona Stafford pointed out in 1995), must have been delighting in Clarke’s ridiculousness, because he already was depicted as Mr. Collins in P&P and now Mr.Elton in Emma!

At the very least, we may safely say that JS Clarke could have had little idea in 1815 that nearly two centuries later, when Clarke, despite his vainglorious ambitions, is only remembered for his role in brokering the dedication of Emma to his boss, the world would now learn how JA thrust a strange kind of additional “greatness” upon him after, by casting him in the role of Malvolio in her own very private production of Twelfth Night.

Speaking of which, the show’s just starting, ladies and gentlemen, please hurry to your seats so as not to miss another minute.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter