Early in Letter 85, writing from London to CEA in Chawton, JA effuses
about a portrait she saw that day which reminds her, with great specificity, of
Mrs. Bingley (i.e., the former Miss Jane Bennet):
“…Henry & I went to the Exhibition in Spring
Gardens. It is not thought a good collection, but I was very well
pleased-particularly (pray tell Fanny) with a small portrait of Mrs. Bingley,
excessively like her. I went in hopes of seeing one of her Sister, but there
was no Mrs. Darcy;-perhaps however, I may find her in the Great Exhibition
which we shall go to, if we have time;-I have no chance of her in the
collection of Sir Joshua Reynolds's Paintings which is now shewing in Pall
Mall, & which we are also to visit.-Mrs. Bingley's is exactly herself,
size, shaped face, features & sweetness; there never was a greater
likeness. She is dressed in a white gown, with green ornaments, which convinces
me of what I had always supposed, that green was a favourite colour with her. I
dare say Mrs. D. will be in Yellow.”
Later in Letter 85, JA returns to the topic of real
life portraits of characters in P&P when she writes:
“We
have been both to the Exhibition & Sir J. Reynolds',-and I am disappointed,
for there was nothing like Mrs. D. at either. I can only imagine that Mr. D.
prizes any Picture of her too much to like it should be exposed to the public
eye.-I can imagine he wd have that sort of feeling-that mixture of Love, Pride
& Delicacy.-Setting aside this disappointment, I had great amusement among
the Pictures…”
These
passages have been oft noted by Austen scholars as light-hearted, and ultimately
insignificant examples of JA’s ebullient and justified pride as she visits
Henry in London. She already knows that her “darling child” is by then already
the buzz of the literati, and so she imagines her heroines’ faces hanging on
walls and admired by all, the way Lizzy
admires the Darcy portraits at Pemberley.
However, following
the trail of an interpretation of P&P that I had been developing for a
while before then, a year ago, I discovered a very surprising alternative significance
of the above passages. I.e., based on various pieces of evidence which I quickly
found with the aid of ILL and scholarly databases, I presented evidence at the end of my address
to the JASNA SW California chapter a year ago, supporting my claim that the
portrait of “Mrs. Bingley” which JA playfully refers to in Letter 85 was an
actual real life portrait, which, in turn, was _strongly_ linked to, of all
women, the most famous _courtesan_ of the Regency Era, Harriette Wilson!
As many of
you already know, Harriette Wilson, 5 years after JA’s death, published the
most scandalous tell-all memoir of the Regency Era, famously excluding
therefrom only those illustrious clients who paid handsomely for her silence.
I
concluded that final segment of my presentation by suggesting, in perfect
seriousness, that, in (the recently published) P&P, Jane Austen very consciously intended to
represent Harriette Wilson in the character of
Jane Bennet, and, further, that Harriette Wilson’s most high profile
client, the Prince Regent, was represented by none other than the “Prince” of Pemberley
himself, the “First Gentleman of
Austenland”, Mr. Darcy himself!
Make of all
that what you will, pending my publication of the supporting evidence for those
claims.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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