Jane Austen made
another one of her occasional appearances on the pop culture stage with the
following major article in the NY Times Books section:
JA
loathed the Prince Regent, who later became George IV but he might’ve been one
of her first readers
Schuessler began as follows:
“Jane Austen’s novels may epitomize Regency England, but she
didn’t think much of the man for whom the period was named. Like many of her
compatriots, Austen loathed the Prince Regent, once railing in an 1813 letter
against the man whose gluttony, profligacy and infidelities scandalized the
nation. In 1815, when she was strong-armed into dedicating her fourth novel, Emma, to the future George IV, she
produced a tribute so strained that a scholar called it “one of the worst
sentences she ever committed to print.” But now, in a delicious irony that
Austen herself might have appreciated, it turns out that the man who was
counted among her most reviled readers might also have been one of her very
first….”
END QUOTE FROM SCHUESSLER
Schuessler goes on to recount the tale of the recent, surprising
discovery in the Royal Archives of an October 28, 1811 Bill of Sale, evidencing
that the buyer of the very first copy sold of Austen’s very first published
novel, Sense and Sensibility, was none
other than the Prince Regent! The article is well
written and entertaining, with quotes from two of the better Austen scholars
abroad today, Devoney Looser and Janine Barchas, both JASNA stalwarts.
I’ve found Schuessler’s occasional articles
about Austen to be among the best among the steady stream of such pieces that
are published online about Austen. However, like the others, Schuessler also
consistently and inadvertently presents to cultured readers in the world at
large, as facts, elements of what I call the Myth of Jane Austen. That vast audience,
most of whom have never read a word of Austen, and many of whom have not even
seen any of the film adaptations, rely heavily on such mass media articles about
JA to present accurate, cutting edge information about Austen’s life and works,
when that is actually far from the case. In this instance, articles similar to
Schuessler’s also have appeared in the Guardian (by Alison Flood), and Jezebel
(Kelly Faircloth), and none of them diverges in any significant way from the
others.
So, while Schuessler does a good job
conveying this latest exciting news tidbit about the Prince Regent, the
self-styled “First Gentleman of Europe”, also being Austen’s first “customer”, she
nevertheless unwittingly propagates misinformation about Austen. She demonstrates
popular culture’s stubbornly persistent blind spot about Austen’s literary
artistry, which was actually deeply subversive of the omnipresent, overreaching
patriarchal power that in Great Britain was epitomized by the Prince. This news
about the Prince Regent’s supposed interest in Austen’s writing is no exception.
PART ONE
The Prince Regent & Emma:
First, the image of Jane Austen at the
top of Schuessler’s article is that same tired, fake, Bowdlerized version
commissioned by JA’s nephew for his memoir of his aunt a half century after her
death. Once again what is passed over is the authentic 1810 sketch by Austen’s
sister, which is in display in the National Portrait Gallery. I’d estimate that
90% of such articles do exactly this, setting the readerly expectation from the
start that the Jane Austen described will be the sweet docile creature depicted
in the fake portrait, instead of the sharp-edged, stern-featured, arms-crossed
country woman drawn by her own talented sister.
Second, Schuessler presents the standard
orthodox account of how Emma came to
be dedicated to the Prince Regent, in which a deferential Austen is seen as
bowing to pressure from Clarke, the Court librarian, and others, to flatter the
“great man” with an unctuous over the top Dedication. The reality could not be
further from that – and the irrefutable evidence thereof has been out there
online for over a decade, without being noticed by Schuessler, or her peers. I
refer you to Colleen Sheehan’s amazing discovery, as beautifully laid out in a
pair of companion articles in the Winter 2006 edition of the JASNA journal Persuasions Online:
While I urge you to read Sheehan’s
brilliant discovery and analysis all the way through, the gist of them is that
the two-stanza charade which Mr. Elton delivers to Emma and Harriet Smith has
at least one secret answer, in addition to the “courtship” answer that Emma
blithely assumes is the only one – and that second, secret answer is “Prince of
WHALES”, the savagely satirical moniker given to the corpulent Prince Regent by
the essayist Lamb and the caricaturist Cruikshank, and others in the surprisingly
scandalous tabloids and caricatures of the day.
Since Sheehan’s two articles were
published, I’ve written over a dozen posts in my own blog, extending and
fleshing out Sheehan’s brilliant discovery in a variety of directions – the
bottom line is that, in a dozen ways beyond Austen’s suspiciously toadyish
Dedication to the Prince, Emma is
actually Ground Zero of Austen’s career-long mocking skewering of the most
powerful man in England, the Prince of W(h)ales!
But you get absolutely no sense from
Schuessler’s article that Austen’s subservient Dedication of Emma to the Prince
might actually be a massive and audacious put-on—a brave “charade” which might
well have had dire consequences for Austen personally had it been discovered
when it was first published, before fate intervened less than two years later
and illness claimed her life.
And it’s not just
conventional wisdom about Austen’s supposed meek Dedication to the Prince that
is mythological. I’ve also written several posts over the years about how she
skewered, in a different way appropriate to her different target, that court
librarian James Stanier Clarke, mentioned by Schuessler. The piece de resistance is Austen’s letter dated (NOT coincidentally)
on April Fool’s Day, 1816, which is filled from one end to the other with faux
flattery of Clarke’s career in service to the Prince; and which just barely
conceals JA’s contempt for his hypocritical, Mr. Collins-esque sucking up. Via
a veiled allusion to Corinthians, Austen
subliminally sends Clarke up as a self-styled man of God who is actually a man of
Mammon! Read this for the gory, hilarious, satirical details:
So….how could the same author who did
what Sheehan and I have detailed, be the doe-like creature of the nephew’s fake
portrait, and Schuessler’s tale of submission? No, Austen wass actually one and
the same as the writer of the famous private expression of undisguised hatred
for the Prince that Schuessler did quote. And it’s crucial to understand that
such hatred was expressed not to sister Cassandra, to whom Jane rarely
expressed an uncharitable remark about other people, but to the confidante of Austen’s most subversive
feelings- Martha Lloyd, the co-habitor (and perhaps more) of Chawton Cottage during
most of the time JA lived there.
How could anyone who
has taken the time to read and understand this incontrovertible scholarship
about a Jane Austen capable of such satire of the Prince and his toady, believe
for one second the explanation given in Schuessler’s article? And yet, think of
how many people have read that article this week, and believe it presents
uncontroversial truth about Austen’s life and work.
PART TWO The Prince Regent and Sense and Sensibility:
Now I come to my final
point, one which relates, in very interesting ways, to the recent discovery
reported by Schuessler of evidence showing that the Prince Regent bought,
apparently at special “pre-sale” perhaps for his sole and private benefit, the
very first sold copy of Sense and
Sensibility. Strap in for what I think are the most interesting aspects of
this discovery, which I seem to be the first Austen scholar to notice.
Schuessler shows
almost no interest in the Prince’s purchase of Sense and Sensibility on October 28, 1811, because she rushes past
it, in order to get to the long-famous tale of his interest in Emma more than 4 years later (which I
have already debunked, above):
“To fevered Janeites
(and perhaps Hollywood screenwriters), the discovery of the Prince Regent’s
early interest might be the seed of a fanciful historical romantic comedy in
which the rakish royal book-stalks the tart-tongued, independent-minded (and
never-married) commoner. But the real-life connection between the Prince Regent
and Austen is delectably awkward social comedy enough. When Sense and Sensibility appeared in 1811, Austen was a nobody,
identified on the title page only as “A Lady.” She wasn’t publicly named as the
author of her books until after her death, but as her reputation grew, her
identity circulated in some circles.” END QUOTE FROM SCHUESSLER
What Schuessler (and, apparently, all the folks at the Royal
Archives) were not familiar with, because it is known only to mostly hardcore
Austen scholars, is the following excerpt (which first appeared in print, as
least as early as 1949, and perhaps much earlier) from a letter written by the
then-16 year old Princess Charlotte on
January 22, 1812 (i.e., less than 3 months after her father, the Prince Regent,
purchased that first sold copy of S&S), to her bosom friend Miss Mercer
Elphinstone:
“Sence and
Sencibility I have just finished reading; it certainly is
interesting, & you feel quite one of the company. I think Maryanne & me
are very like in disposition, that certainly I am not so good, the same
imprudence, &c, however remain very like. I must say it interested me
much.’
When she wrote that
letter to her BFF, I’m pretty sure that the Princess was living in her father the
Prince’s household. So, I bet you’re with me already in putting the two facts
together – doesn’t it sound like the copy of S&S that the Prince bought was
actually not bought for himself at all, as Schuessler’s article suggested, but
instead was for his daughter to read!?
Read on…..
Next, some quick background
on the Princess’s correspondent, Mercer Elphinstone. Her full name was Margaret
Mercer Elphinstone, she was the only child of Lord Keith, the admiral, and she
was seven years the Princess’s senior, a large age superiority at that stage of
life. And, most intriguingly of all, the 1889 edition of the Dictionary of National Biography provided
this suggestive tidbit about her:
“[She]
was introduced at a young age to the circle of the Princess Charlotte of Wales, to
whom she became attached and a close confidante; and this position raised a rumour against her (which, however, she was able
entirely to refute) that she betrayed the princess's secrets to the Prince Regent.”
It didn’t take me
long to seek out some additional detail on this rumored betrayal:
“…Margaret,
often referred to as Miss Mercer in contemporary documents, became a close and
influential companion of Charlotte, Princess of Wales. According to Princess
Charlotte’s lady companion, Cornelia Knight, the Princess ‘constantly
communicated’ with Margaret. Princess Charlotte’s biographer Coote agreed,
stating: “The amiable Miss Elphinstone
enjoyed her particular confidence and was continually employed by her to
execute her several benevolent commissions.”
Princess Charlotte’s relationship
with Margaret was probably encouraged by her father. In 1813, some of the details of
the supposedly secret 'Delicate Investigation' into the alleged adultery of
Princess Charlotte’s mother, Princess Caroline of Wales, became common
knowledge. Princess Charlotte was inclined to take her mother’s part against
her father, as did most of the public.
Some
people believed that Margaret was being used by the PR to turn Princess
Charlotte against her mother. Cornelia Knight wrote: “About this time Miss Mercer Elphinstone came to Town, and Princess
Charlotte wrote to ask the Regent’s permission for seeing her; which was
granted. It was evident that this had been arranged beforehand, and that the
conditions were that Miss Mercer, who had more influence than any one with
Princess Charlotte, should open her eyes to her mother’s imprudence, and break
the confidential intimacy between them.”
Think about that
last sentence in Knowles’s excellent speculations. I wonder if she derived them
from that very same comment by Princess Charlotte about Marianne Dashwood: “…I think
Maryanne & me are very like in disposition, that certainly I am not so
good, the same imprudence, &c, however remain very like….”
Viewed in this
context, the Prince’s very early purchase of S&S begins to appear to be the
beginning of a scheme of his to give it to his daughter, while at the same time
authorizing his “double agent” Mercer Elphinstone, to shape Charlotte’s
reaction to Marianne Dashwood. The almost tragic tale of Marianne, with her
impulsive and irrational clinging to Willoughby even after he has clearly
jilted her, is in the Prince’s eyes, a perfect cautionary tale for his
impulsive daughter – and perhaps the loving but overly romantic Mrs. Dashwood
was also being suggested to Charlotte as being similar to her own mother
Princess Caroline, as being not the best or steadiest parental guide for an
impulsive daughter?
But a question may
have already occurred to you – how would the Prince have known enough about the
story and characters of S&S when he bought that first copy of it in October
1811, to know that Marianne Dashwood would make an ideal Exhibit B for his
daughter to learn about the perils of over-sensibility?
I have no solid
answer at present, but can speculate about it. Perhaps Jane Austen and/or her
publisher Egerton wished for the Prince Regent to have some advance inside info
about S&S, so as to tempt him to buy it, as he did? If so, how would either
of them have managed to get that inside info communicated to the Prince? Egerton
had accepted S&S for publication a year before it was actually published,
so there was time during which some summary of S&S might have somehow
reached the Prince?
The article (by Lettice
Fowler in the November 4 1949 issue of The Spectator ) which was the first to
quote from the Princess’s comments about S&S, as part of a review of a new
edition of Princess Charlotte’s letters, went on as follows:
“In this observation
the Princess showed one of her periodic flashes of perspicacity. For, like
Marianne Dashwood, she was destined to be a heroine. She possessed all a
heroine’s capacity for entanglement in hopeless love affairs; she devoured the
works of Lord Byron; her health was delicate and often gave way; she was
consistently misunderstood and occasionally persecuted; she had a confidante to
whom she could pour out, in long and almost daily letters, the latest
developments in her own affections and in her relations’ plots (Miss Elphinstone
indeed, was not unlike Elinor; sensible, calm, urging patience and restraint) and in the end she made a perfectly
suitable marriage to an unexceptionable Prince, who was both devoted to her and
highly successful in managing her impossible family. " I can only say
this," she wrote of her marriage a week after it had taken place, "
that the foundation is very reasonable, and therefore there is less chance of
its ever being otherwise than with most others; indeed, on the contrary, I am
more inclined to think it will improve. I do not see how it can fail to go on
well, tho' sometimes I believe it is best not to analyse one's feelings too much
or probe them too deeply or nearly." So, surely, might Marianne have
written a few days after becoming Mrs. Brandon.” END QUOTE
So, that makes me
wonder, wandering further outside the box: Was Marianne Dashwood herself
actually a veiled portrait of the young Princess, and Elinor one of Mercer
Elphinstone? We know that Jane Austen took a very strong, longstanding interest
in the goings on in the Royal Family, and the whole English nation took a very
strong interest in the marital “war” waged by the Prince against his wife over
a period of years – it is not far-fetched to speculate that Jane Austen knew
enough to have woven Princess Charlotte into Marianne Dashwood’s character,
such that the Princess’s comments about “Maryann” would actually have been looking
in a “mirror” without knowing it!
In that regard, there’s
still one last data point to try to fit into this matrix. Let’s go back to that
February 1813 letter in which Jane Austen avowed, to her trusted friend Martha
Lloyd, her implacable hatred for the Prince, because of his horrid treatment of
his wife. That comment was in response to the huge ongoing public scandal and uproar
triggered by the Prince’s outrageous and hypocritical denying his wife,
Princess Caroline, access to their daughter Charlotte. The Prince’s smear
campaign against his estranged wife was based on trumped up charges relating to
her unfitness as a mother, for ‘scandalous’ behavior that paled in comparison
to his own!
And, it just so
happens, that a few sentences earlier in that same February1813 letter, Jane
Austen mentioned, of all people, Mercer Elphinstone’s mother, Lady Keith, albeit seemingly only in passing:
“We read of the Pyramus being
returned into Port, with interest-& fear Mrs [Dean-Dundas]. will be
regretting that she came away so soon. —There is no being up to the tricks of
the Sea. — Your friend has her little Boys about her I imagine. I hope their
Sister enjoyed the Ball at Lady Keith-tho’ I do not know that I do much hope
it, for it might be quite as well to have her shy & uncomfortable in such a
croud of Strangers.”
I can’t find that Le Faye or any other
Austen scholar has ever claimed to know the identity of Martha Lloyd’s unnamed
friend, who had a young unmarried daughter who attended Lady Keith’s ball. It
couldn’t be Mrs. Dean-Dundas, named in the prior sentence, because I checked,
and Mrs Dundas was under 30 and so could not have had a teenaged daughter
attending a ball! But what this passage shows is that Jane Austen’s close
friend Martha Lloyd had a married friend, who had a daughter who attended Lady
Keith’s ball, and therefore Martha’s friend moved in the same social circle as
Lord and Lady Keith, and by extension, Mercer Elphinstone as well! Might this
be a possible chain of connection?
All speculative, I freely
acknowledge, but at least it suggests a possible personal channel, via a few
steps, between Jane Austen and the Prince. At the very least, this line of speculation should
suffice to initiate a scholarly search for the best explanation for the
Prince’s early purchase of S&S, other than an uncritical, unfounded assertion
of his love of the writing of an author he supposedly had never heard of.
There’s more going on here than at first meets the eye.
And so, please keep
in mind the next time you read a mainstream pop culture article about Jane Austen,
that you will probably be reading some aspect or another of The Myth of Jane Austen.
But if you follow my blog, and I’ve also gotten wind of that article, I will do
my best to debunk any such mythology, and help you get closer to the elusive
truth.
[Added 07/26/18: Here is the link to my followup post:
[Added 07/26/18: Here is the link to my followup post:
"Marianne’s “sensibility…without bounds”: Why the
Prince Regent bought Sense & Sensibility"
Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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