The question was raised in Janeites as to what exactly was the 17 year old Jane Austen's intention when she included the following passage in her satirical History of England about James I the first Stuart king of England:
His Majesty was of that amiable disposition which inclines to Freindship, and in such points was possessed of a keener penetration in discovering Merit than many other people. I once heard an excellent Sharade on a Carpet, of which the subject I am now on reminds me, and as I think it may afford my Readers some amusement to FIND IT OUT, I shall here take the liberty of presenting it to them.
SHARADE
My first is what my second was to King James the 1st, and you tread on my whole.
The principal favourites of his Majesty were Car, who was afterwards created Earl of Somerset and whose name perhaps may have some share in the above mentioned Sharade, and George Villiers afterwards Duke of Buckingham...."
Nancy Mayer opined as shown below in quotes, and I responded as indicated:
"People talked about the King's favorites or a king's favorites all the time without meaning any more than that."
Yes, that is certainly true, but what is also well-established historical fact (I have researched this history) is that there was widespread gossip and speculation, both during the reign of James I and also during the nearly 2 centuries following same, about James having been gay, and having had numerous gay lovers, including specifically those "favourites" named by JA.
So if Jane did _not_ know about that history, it either meant she was psychic to include such a "Sharade", or else it was a rather large coincidence.
I think she was a very great genius, but even I don't think she was psychic, nor do I believe in such highly improbable coincidences. I prefer what I believe to be the most plausible and probable explanation, which is that JA meant the "sharade" to refer to the King's gay relationships.
"The worst sorts of descriptions were reserved for homosexual acts-- the nicest term was unnatural act. It was illegal and considered something vile."
Yes, that is certainly true as well, but in my opinion, all that shows is that there have always been many powerful people who held such an attitude toward homosexuality. My idea of Jane Austen is that she was not one of them, and that she did not approve of intolerance masquerading as theology, and so she made the decision, as the courageous satirist that she was, to lampoon that bigotry in this way.
As a teenager writing for a private family audience, she was pretty straightforward. In MP, writing as a mature adult woman for the world, she made it more ambiguous.
And as I pointed out last week in my blog, there is a military/sexual pun on the word "rear" in the famous scene involving gay sexual relations in _Fanny Hill_, which is, in my opinion, strongly resonant with Mary Crawford's naval/sexual pun on the word "rear". Again, putting aside ESP and coincidence, the most probable explanation, in my opinion, is that this was intentional on JA's part.
And when you align what JA wrote in 1793 with what she wrote in 1814, it strongly suggests to me that this was an issue which concerned her during her entire adult life.
Cheers, ARNIE
Friday, December 17, 2010
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Which is the man? Which is the heroine? Which is the allusion?
The P.S. of my immediately preceding message promised that I would bring forward another "candidate" for the allusive source to which Jane Austen alluded in her coded message to her brother James in Letter 146 to his son James Edward (JEAL). Here it is now:
Act IV, Scene I, Which is the man? a comedy by Hannah Cowley (1785)
[In this scene in an Apartment at Lady Bell's, Mr Beauchamp waits an hour in order to tell Lady Bell something important]
Beauchamp: What a misfortune to a lover! I know one to whom your Ladyship appears the disdainful Daphne.— How happy, could he behold in your eye the encouragement of Atalanta's!
Lady Bell: (aside) Mercy ! for so bashful a man that's pretty plain.
Beauchamp: This is probably the last visit I can make you before I leave England. Will your Ladyship permit me, before I leave it, to acquaint you that there is a man, whose happiness depends on your favour? (agitated)
Lady Bell: (aside) So, now he's going to be perplexing again! (looking on her fan) a man whose happiness depends on me, Mr. Beauchamp!
Beauchamp. Yes, Madam!—and—and—(aside) I cannot go on. Why did I accept a commission in which success would destroy me?
Lady Bell. (aside) How evidently this is the first time he ever made love!
--—The man seems to have chosen a very diffident advocate in you, Sir.
Beauchamp: 'Tis more than diffidence, Madam, my talk is painful.
Lady Bell: (aside) Ay, I thought so!
You have taken a brief in a cause you don't like; I could plead it better myself!
Beauchamp: I feel the reproach.
Lady Bell: 'Tis difficult for you, perhaps, to speak in the third person?- Try it in the first. Suppose now, ha! ha! only suppose, I say, for the jest's sake, that you yourself have a passion for me, and then try—how you can plead it.
Beauch: (kneeling) Thus—thus would I plead it, and swear, that thou art dear to my heart as fame, and honour!—To look at thee is rapture; to love thee, though without hope,—felicity!
Lady Bell: (aside) Oh, I thought I should bring him to the point at last!
Beauchamp: (rising, aside) To what dishonesty have I been betray'd!—Thus, Madam, speaks my friend, through my lips; 'tis thus he pleads his passion.
Lady Bell: (aside) Provoking!
—What friend is this. Sir, who is weak enough to use the language of another to explain his heart?
Beauchamp: Lord Sparkle.
Lady Bell: Lord Sparkle! Was it for him you knelt? (he bows to her)— Then, Sir, I must inform you, that the liberty you have taken-
(aside) Heavens, how do I betray myself!
—Tell me, Sir, on.your honour, do you wish to succeed in pleading the passion of Lord Sparkle?
Beauchamp: {hesitating) My obligations to his Lordship—our relationship—the confidence he has reposed in me—
Lady Bell: Stop, Sir! I too will repose confidence in you, and confess that there is a man whom I sometimes suspect not to be indifferent to me;—but 'tis not Lord Sparkle! Tell him so;—and tell him that—that—_tell him what you will._
Beauch. (aside) Heavens, what does she mean! What language is this her eye speaks?
Lady Bell. Do you visit me this evening? Here will be many of my friends, and you shall then see me in the presence of the man my heart prefers.
(Beauchamp bows, and goes to the door; then returns, advances towards Lady Bell, makes an effort to speak; finds it impossible, then bows, and exit.)
So, what could it mean for Jane Austen to allude to this scene in sending a coded message to her brother James? Had James acted as a surrogate for a shy friend from Steventon or thereabouts who was interested in Jane Austen?
But perhaps some of you will now object, and say that while it was likely that both Jane Austen and James Austen knew Richardson's _Clarissa_ well, would they also have known a scene from a play written by the less famous Hannah Cowley?
To which objection my reply is simply to point you to the following passage from Jane Austen's Juvenilia epistolary mini-novel, _The Three Sisters_, written by JA within a few years after Cowley's play was published (in multiple editions). In this scene, sister Georgiana writes to her friend Miss XXX the gory details of how the Mr. Collins-like Mr Watts makes his pitch for Mary Stanhope's hand, and how Mary responds--look for the bold faced passage which specifically refers to Cowley's play:
"Fine weather, Ladies." Then turning to Mary, "Well, Miss Stanhope, I hope you have at last settled the Matter in your own mind; and will be so good as to let me know whether you will condescend to marry me or not."
"I think, Sir (said Mary) You might have asked in a genteeler way than that. I do not know whether I shall have you if you behave so odd."
"Mary!" (said my Mother). "Well, Mama, if he will be so cross..."
"Hush, hush, Mary, you shall not be rude to Mr. Watts."
"Pray Madam, do not lay any restraint on Miss Stanhope by obliging her to be civil. If she does not choose to accept my hand, I can offer it else where, for as I am by no means guided by a particular preference to you above your Sisters, it is equally the same to me which I marry of the three." Was there ever such a Wretch! Sophy reddened with anger and I felt so spiteful!
"Well then (said Mary in a peevish Accent) I will have you if I must."
"I should have thought, Miss Stanhope, that when such Settlements are offered as I have offered to you, there can be no great violence done to the inclinations in accepting of them." Mary mumbled out something, which I who sat close to her could just distinguish to be "What's the use of a great Jointure, if Men live forever?" And then audibly "Remember the pin-money; two hundred a year."
"A hundred and seventy-five, Madam."
"Two hundred indeed, Sir" said my Mother.
"And Remember, I am to have a new Carriage hung as high as the Duttons', and blue spotted with silver; and I shall expect a new saddle horse, a suit of fine lace, and an infinite number of the most valuable Jewels. Diamonds such as never were seen, [2] and Pearls, Rubies, Emeralds, and Beads out of number. You must set up your Phaeton, which must be cream-coloured with a wreath of silver flowers round it; You must buy 4 of the finest Bays in the Kingdom and you must drive me in it every day. This is not all; You must entirely new furnish your House after my Taste, You must hire two more Footmen to attend me, two Women to wait on me, must always let me do just as I please and make a very good husband."
Here she stopped, I beleive rather out of breath.
"This is all very reasonable, Mr. Watts, for my Daughter to expect."
"And it is very reasonable, Mrs. Stanhope, that your daughter should be disappointed." He was going on, but Mary interrupted him: "You must build me an elegant Greenhouse and stock it with plants. You must let me spend every Winter in Bath, every Spring in Town, Every Summer in taking some Tour, and every Autumn at a Watering Place, and if we are at home the rest of the year (Sophy and I laughed) You must do nothing but give Balls and Masquerades. You must build a room on purpose and a Theatre to act Plays in. The first Play we have shall be Which is the Man, and I will do Lady Bell Bloomer."
"And pray, Miss Stanhope (said Mr. Watts), What am I to expect from you in return for all this."
"Expect? Why, you may expect to have me pleased."
"It would be odd if I did not. Your expectations, Madam, are too high for me, and I must apply to Miss Sophy, who perhaps may not have raised her's so much."
"You are mistaken, Sir, in supposing so, (said Sophy) for tho' they may not be exactly in the same Line, yet my expectations are to the full as high as my Sister's; for I expect my Husband to be good-tempered and Chearful; to consult my Happiness in all his Actions, and to love me with Constancy and Sincerity."
Mr. Watts stared. "These are very odd Ideas, truly, young Lady. You had better discard them before you marry, or you will be obliged to do it afterwards."
My Mother, in the meantime, was lecturing Mary, who was sensible that she had gone too far, and when Mr. Watts was just turning towards me in order, I beleive, to address me, she spoke to him in a voice half humble, half sulky.
"You are mistaken, Mr. Watts, if you think I was in earnest when I said I expected so much. However I must have a new Chaise."
"Yes, Sir, you must allow that Mary has a right to expect that."
"Mrs. Stanhope, I mean and have always meant to have a new one on my Marriage. But it shall be the colour of my present one."
"I think, Mr. Watts, you should pay my Girl the compliment of consulting her Taste on such Matters."
Mr. Watts would not agree to this, and for some time insisted upon its being a Chocolate colour, while Mary was as eager for having it blue with silver Spots. At length, however, Sophy proposed that to please Mr. W. it should be a dark brown, and to please Mary it should be hung rather high and have a silver Border. This was at length agreed to, tho' reluctantly on both sides, as each had intended to carry their point entire. We then proceeded to other Matters, and it was settled that they should be married as soon as the Writings could be completed. Mary was very eager for a Special Licence and Mr. Watts talked of Banns. A common Licence was at last agreed on. Mary is to have all the Family Jewels, which are very inconsiderable, I beleive, and Mr. W. promised to buy her a Saddle horse; but in return, she is not to expect to go to Town or any other public place for these three Years. She is to have neither Greenhouse, Theatre, or Phaeton; to be contented with one Maid without an additional Footman. It engrossed the whole Evening to settle these affairs; Mr. W. supped with us and did not go till twelve. As soon as he was gone, Mary exclaimed "Thank Heaven! he's off at last; how I do hate him!" It was in vain that Mama represented to her the impropriety she was guilty of, in disliking him who was to be her Husband, for she persisted in declaring her aversion to him and hoping she might never see him again. What a Wedding will this be! END OF EXCERPT FROM GEORGIANA'S LETTER
So, which was JA's allusion, to Richardson or to Cowley? I say, to both! And I also say, that there is also a connection to the novel that James's daughter Anna was writing in 1814 under her aunt's loving wing---the title of which was "Which is the heroine?" And we may also wish to note that "Beauchamp", in addition to being the name of the shy suitor in Cowley's comedy, is also an important name in Anna Austen's published story Mary Hamilton.
Wheels within wheels.
Cheers, ARNIE
Act IV, Scene I, Which is the man? a comedy by Hannah Cowley (1785)
[In this scene in an Apartment at Lady Bell's, Mr Beauchamp waits an hour in order to tell Lady Bell something important]
Beauchamp: What a misfortune to a lover! I know one to whom your Ladyship appears the disdainful Daphne.— How happy, could he behold in your eye the encouragement of Atalanta's!
Lady Bell: (aside) Mercy ! for so bashful a man that's pretty plain.
Beauchamp: This is probably the last visit I can make you before I leave England. Will your Ladyship permit me, before I leave it, to acquaint you that there is a man, whose happiness depends on your favour? (agitated)
Lady Bell: (aside) So, now he's going to be perplexing again! (looking on her fan) a man whose happiness depends on me, Mr. Beauchamp!
Beauchamp. Yes, Madam!—and—and—(aside) I cannot go on. Why did I accept a commission in which success would destroy me?
Lady Bell. (aside) How evidently this is the first time he ever made love!
--—The man seems to have chosen a very diffident advocate in you, Sir.
Beauchamp: 'Tis more than diffidence, Madam, my talk is painful.
Lady Bell: (aside) Ay, I thought so!
You have taken a brief in a cause you don't like; I could plead it better myself!
Beauchamp: I feel the reproach.
Lady Bell: 'Tis difficult for you, perhaps, to speak in the third person?- Try it in the first. Suppose now, ha! ha! only suppose, I say, for the jest's sake, that you yourself have a passion for me, and then try—how you can plead it.
Beauch: (kneeling) Thus—thus would I plead it, and swear, that thou art dear to my heart as fame, and honour!—To look at thee is rapture; to love thee, though without hope,—felicity!
Lady Bell: (aside) Oh, I thought I should bring him to the point at last!
Beauchamp: (rising, aside) To what dishonesty have I been betray'd!—Thus, Madam, speaks my friend, through my lips; 'tis thus he pleads his passion.
Lady Bell: (aside) Provoking!
—What friend is this. Sir, who is weak enough to use the language of another to explain his heart?
Beauchamp: Lord Sparkle.
Lady Bell: Lord Sparkle! Was it for him you knelt? (he bows to her)— Then, Sir, I must inform you, that the liberty you have taken-
(aside) Heavens, how do I betray myself!
—Tell me, Sir, on.your honour, do you wish to succeed in pleading the passion of Lord Sparkle?
Beauchamp: {hesitating) My obligations to his Lordship—our relationship—the confidence he has reposed in me—
Lady Bell: Stop, Sir! I too will repose confidence in you, and confess that there is a man whom I sometimes suspect not to be indifferent to me;—but 'tis not Lord Sparkle! Tell him so;—and tell him that—that—_tell him what you will._
Beauch. (aside) Heavens, what does she mean! What language is this her eye speaks?
Lady Bell. Do you visit me this evening? Here will be many of my friends, and you shall then see me in the presence of the man my heart prefers.
(Beauchamp bows, and goes to the door; then returns, advances towards Lady Bell, makes an effort to speak; finds it impossible, then bows, and exit.)
So, what could it mean for Jane Austen to allude to this scene in sending a coded message to her brother James? Had James acted as a surrogate for a shy friend from Steventon or thereabouts who was interested in Jane Austen?
But perhaps some of you will now object, and say that while it was likely that both Jane Austen and James Austen knew Richardson's _Clarissa_ well, would they also have known a scene from a play written by the less famous Hannah Cowley?
To which objection my reply is simply to point you to the following passage from Jane Austen's Juvenilia epistolary mini-novel, _The Three Sisters_, written by JA within a few years after Cowley's play was published (in multiple editions). In this scene, sister Georgiana writes to her friend Miss XXX the gory details of how the Mr. Collins-like Mr Watts makes his pitch for Mary Stanhope's hand, and how Mary responds--look for the bold faced passage which specifically refers to Cowley's play:
"Fine weather, Ladies." Then turning to Mary, "Well, Miss Stanhope, I hope you have at last settled the Matter in your own mind; and will be so good as to let me know whether you will condescend to marry me or not."
"I think, Sir (said Mary) You might have asked in a genteeler way than that. I do not know whether I shall have you if you behave so odd."
"Mary!" (said my Mother). "Well, Mama, if he will be so cross..."
"Hush, hush, Mary, you shall not be rude to Mr. Watts."
"Pray Madam, do not lay any restraint on Miss Stanhope by obliging her to be civil. If she does not choose to accept my hand, I can offer it else where, for as I am by no means guided by a particular preference to you above your Sisters, it is equally the same to me which I marry of the three." Was there ever such a Wretch! Sophy reddened with anger and I felt so spiteful!
"Well then (said Mary in a peevish Accent) I will have you if I must."
"I should have thought, Miss Stanhope, that when such Settlements are offered as I have offered to you, there can be no great violence done to the inclinations in accepting of them." Mary mumbled out something, which I who sat close to her could just distinguish to be "What's the use of a great Jointure, if Men live forever?" And then audibly "Remember the pin-money; two hundred a year."
"A hundred and seventy-five, Madam."
"Two hundred indeed, Sir" said my Mother.
"And Remember, I am to have a new Carriage hung as high as the Duttons', and blue spotted with silver; and I shall expect a new saddle horse, a suit of fine lace, and an infinite number of the most valuable Jewels. Diamonds such as never were seen, [2] and Pearls, Rubies, Emeralds, and Beads out of number. You must set up your Phaeton, which must be cream-coloured with a wreath of silver flowers round it; You must buy 4 of the finest Bays in the Kingdom and you must drive me in it every day. This is not all; You must entirely new furnish your House after my Taste, You must hire two more Footmen to attend me, two Women to wait on me, must always let me do just as I please and make a very good husband."
Here she stopped, I beleive rather out of breath.
"This is all very reasonable, Mr. Watts, for my Daughter to expect."
"And it is very reasonable, Mrs. Stanhope, that your daughter should be disappointed." He was going on, but Mary interrupted him: "You must build me an elegant Greenhouse and stock it with plants. You must let me spend every Winter in Bath, every Spring in Town, Every Summer in taking some Tour, and every Autumn at a Watering Place, and if we are at home the rest of the year (Sophy and I laughed) You must do nothing but give Balls and Masquerades. You must build a room on purpose and a Theatre to act Plays in. The first Play we have shall be Which is the Man, and I will do Lady Bell Bloomer."
"And pray, Miss Stanhope (said Mr. Watts), What am I to expect from you in return for all this."
"Expect? Why, you may expect to have me pleased."
"It would be odd if I did not. Your expectations, Madam, are too high for me, and I must apply to Miss Sophy, who perhaps may not have raised her's so much."
"You are mistaken, Sir, in supposing so, (said Sophy) for tho' they may not be exactly in the same Line, yet my expectations are to the full as high as my Sister's; for I expect my Husband to be good-tempered and Chearful; to consult my Happiness in all his Actions, and to love me with Constancy and Sincerity."
Mr. Watts stared. "These are very odd Ideas, truly, young Lady. You had better discard them before you marry, or you will be obliged to do it afterwards."
My Mother, in the meantime, was lecturing Mary, who was sensible that she had gone too far, and when Mr. Watts was just turning towards me in order, I beleive, to address me, she spoke to him in a voice half humble, half sulky.
"You are mistaken, Mr. Watts, if you think I was in earnest when I said I expected so much. However I must have a new Chaise."
"Yes, Sir, you must allow that Mary has a right to expect that."
"Mrs. Stanhope, I mean and have always meant to have a new one on my Marriage. But it shall be the colour of my present one."
"I think, Mr. Watts, you should pay my Girl the compliment of consulting her Taste on such Matters."
Mr. Watts would not agree to this, and for some time insisted upon its being a Chocolate colour, while Mary was as eager for having it blue with silver Spots. At length, however, Sophy proposed that to please Mr. W. it should be a dark brown, and to please Mary it should be hung rather high and have a silver Border. This was at length agreed to, tho' reluctantly on both sides, as each had intended to carry their point entire. We then proceeded to other Matters, and it was settled that they should be married as soon as the Writings could be completed. Mary was very eager for a Special Licence and Mr. Watts talked of Banns. A common Licence was at last agreed on. Mary is to have all the Family Jewels, which are very inconsiderable, I beleive, and Mr. W. promised to buy her a Saddle horse; but in return, she is not to expect to go to Town or any other public place for these three Years. She is to have neither Greenhouse, Theatre, or Phaeton; to be contented with one Maid without an additional Footman. It engrossed the whole Evening to settle these affairs; Mr. W. supped with us and did not go till twelve. As soon as he was gone, Mary exclaimed "Thank Heaven! he's off at last; how I do hate him!" It was in vain that Mama represented to her the impropriety she was guilty of, in disliking him who was to be her Husband, for she persisted in declaring her aversion to him and hoping she might never see him again. What a Wedding will this be! END OF EXCERPT FROM GEORGIANA'S LETTER
So, which was JA's allusion, to Richardson or to Cowley? I say, to both! And I also say, that there is also a connection to the novel that James's daughter Anna was writing in 1814 under her aunt's loving wing---the title of which was "Which is the heroine?" And we may also wish to note that "Beauchamp", in addition to being the name of the shy suitor in Cowley's comedy, is also an important name in Anna Austen's published story Mary Hamilton.
Wheels within wheels.
Cheers, ARNIE
The Importance of Being Discreet about Cucumbers and Settlements
After writing my birthday tribute to Jane Austen earlier today, I remembered to follow up and figure out why JA wrote the following passage in Letter 146 to her nephew JEAL as she did, with part of it in quotes:
“Tell your Father [i.e., James Austen], with Aunt Cass's Love & mine, that the Pickled Cucumbers are extremely good, & tell him also--'tell him what you will”--No, don't tell him what you will.....”
Given the literary wordplay that the Austens all engaged in, it sounded like a coded message, one that brother James would recognize instantly, even though his less literate and much younger messenger, JEAL, probably would not be able to decipher on his own.
And sure enough, Google quickly led me to the passage which JA had surely alluded to, in a letter written by Lovelace to his friend Belford at the critical moment in Samuel Richardson's _Clarissa_, when Clarissa is insisting that Lovelace tell Uncle Harlowe the truth about her still not being Lovelace's wife, even if it blows all his carefully made plans sky high, and also results, ultimately, in Clarissa's own death:
"I was going on; when, interrupting me, You see, Mr Lovelace, said [Clarissa], how you have embarrassed yourself by your obliquities! You see that you have not been able to return a direct answer to a plain and honest question, though upon it depends all the happiness on the prospect of which you congratulate me!
You know, my best love, what my prudent, and, I will say, my kind motives were for giving out that we were married. You see that I have taken no advantage of it, and that no inconvenience has followed it. You see that your uncle wants only to be assured from ourselves that it is so---
Not another word on this subject, Mr Lovelace. I will not only risk, but I will forfeit, the reconciliation so near my heart, rather than I will go on to countenance a story so untrue.
My dearest soul! would you have me appear—
I would have you appear, sir, as you are. I am resolved that I will appear to my uncle's friend, and to my uncle, as I am.
For one week, my dearest life ! Cannot you for one week—only till the settlements--
Not for one hour, with my own consent.— You don't know, sir, how much I have been afflicted that I have appeared to the people below what I am not. But my uncle, sir, shall never have it to upbraid me, nor will I to upbraid myself, that I have wilfully passed upon him in false lights.
What, my dear, would you have me to say to the captain to-morrow morning? I have given him room to think---
Then put him right, Mr Lovelace. Tell the truth. Tell him what you please of the favour of your relations to me—_tell him what you will_ about the settlements; and if, when drawn, you will submit them to his perusal and approbation, it will shew him _how much you are in earnest._
[etc etc]
What additional private meaning this allusion may have been intended to signify to James Austen is not clear, but I speculate that it might be a veiled allusion to the "settlements" of Uncle Leigh Perrot's estate on James's side of the family. Perhaps Jane is telling James that she, like Clarissa, demands honesty, instead of casuistry, regarding that unjust disposition of assets, but also would rather die than beg for financial help to the Austen women?
In any event, besides that, I also wonder whether Oscar Wilde, who was himself a literary scholar as well as a writer of fiction, read Letter 146, recognized the veiled allusion to _Clarissa_, and also the sexual innuendo in that "pickled cucumber" wisecrack, and then paid a great homage to Jane Austen's wit with the title of his most famous play, and also with those cucumber sandwiches which are a wicked leitmotif in the play. Wilde, like Austen, knew the importance of being discreet about cucumbers and legal settlements.
Cheers, ARNIE
P.S.: There is one other allusion in "tell him what you will"--stand by for my next blog post on that very topic:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/which-is-man-which-is-heroine-which-is.html
“Tell your Father [i.e., James Austen], with Aunt Cass's Love & mine, that the Pickled Cucumbers are extremely good, & tell him also--'tell him what you will”--No, don't tell him what you will.....”
Given the literary wordplay that the Austens all engaged in, it sounded like a coded message, one that brother James would recognize instantly, even though his less literate and much younger messenger, JEAL, probably would not be able to decipher on his own.
And sure enough, Google quickly led me to the passage which JA had surely alluded to, in a letter written by Lovelace to his friend Belford at the critical moment in Samuel Richardson's _Clarissa_, when Clarissa is insisting that Lovelace tell Uncle Harlowe the truth about her still not being Lovelace's wife, even if it blows all his carefully made plans sky high, and also results, ultimately, in Clarissa's own death:
"I was going on; when, interrupting me, You see, Mr Lovelace, said [Clarissa], how you have embarrassed yourself by your obliquities! You see that you have not been able to return a direct answer to a plain and honest question, though upon it depends all the happiness on the prospect of which you congratulate me!
You know, my best love, what my prudent, and, I will say, my kind motives were for giving out that we were married. You see that I have taken no advantage of it, and that no inconvenience has followed it. You see that your uncle wants only to be assured from ourselves that it is so---
Not another word on this subject, Mr Lovelace. I will not only risk, but I will forfeit, the reconciliation so near my heart, rather than I will go on to countenance a story so untrue.
My dearest soul! would you have me appear—
I would have you appear, sir, as you are. I am resolved that I will appear to my uncle's friend, and to my uncle, as I am.
For one week, my dearest life ! Cannot you for one week—only till the settlements--
Not for one hour, with my own consent.— You don't know, sir, how much I have been afflicted that I have appeared to the people below what I am not. But my uncle, sir, shall never have it to upbraid me, nor will I to upbraid myself, that I have wilfully passed upon him in false lights.
What, my dear, would you have me to say to the captain to-morrow morning? I have given him room to think---
Then put him right, Mr Lovelace. Tell the truth. Tell him what you please of the favour of your relations to me—_tell him what you will_ about the settlements; and if, when drawn, you will submit them to his perusal and approbation, it will shew him _how much you are in earnest._
[etc etc]
What additional private meaning this allusion may have been intended to signify to James Austen is not clear, but I speculate that it might be a veiled allusion to the "settlements" of Uncle Leigh Perrot's estate on James's side of the family. Perhaps Jane is telling James that she, like Clarissa, demands honesty, instead of casuistry, regarding that unjust disposition of assets, but also would rather die than beg for financial help to the Austen women?
In any event, besides that, I also wonder whether Oscar Wilde, who was himself a literary scholar as well as a writer of fiction, read Letter 146, recognized the veiled allusion to _Clarissa_, and also the sexual innuendo in that "pickled cucumber" wisecrack, and then paid a great homage to Jane Austen's wit with the title of his most famous play, and also with those cucumber sandwiches which are a wicked leitmotif in the play. Wilde, like Austen, knew the importance of being discreet about cucumbers and legal settlements.
Cheers, ARNIE
P.S.: There is one other allusion in "tell him what you will"--stand by for my next blog post on that very topic:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/which-is-man-which-is-heroine-which-is.html
Notice of our Jane Austen event on January 23
http://nova.campusguides.com/content.php?pid=170246&sid=1433873
The above is the link to a beautiful, vivid notice put out by the Alvin Sherman Library at Nova Southeastern University, advertising our Jane Austen event to take place on Sunday January 23, 2011, as well as a couple of teen-oriented Austen events earlier in that same week.
We're distributing 2,000 postcards with that same notice of our event all around South Florida, and this event will hopefully be the "magnet" to pull all the Janeite "needles" out of our sprawling suburban metropolis.
Please help me spread the word!
Cheers, ARNIE
The above is the link to a beautiful, vivid notice put out by the Alvin Sherman Library at Nova Southeastern University, advertising our Jane Austen event to take place on Sunday January 23, 2011, as well as a couple of teen-oriented Austen events earlier in that same week.
We're distributing 2,000 postcards with that same notice of our event all around South Florida, and this event will hopefully be the "magnet" to pull all the Janeite "needles" out of our sprawling suburban metropolis.
Please help me spread the word!
Cheers, ARNIE
Jane Austen's Last Birthday
This is my birthday tribute to Jane Austen.
On Monday, December 16, 1816, Jane Austen sat down (or, possibly, given the recurrent illness which plagued her subsequent to the publication of Emma in early 1816, reclined) and wrote the only one of her surviving letters which was written (at least in part) on her actual birthday. It is Letter 146 in Le Faye's edition, and it is written to her nephew, James Edward Austen (whom I will refer to as JEAL to avoid confusion with Jane's brother Edward) .
Jane was 41 that day--exactly the same age, curiously, that her brother Edward achieved on October 7, 1808, when Jane wrote Letter 57 to Cassandra, and (for various reasons I will explain in my book having to do with her complex relationship with Edward) jokingly referred to his having completed his thirtieth year, when he had actually completed his _fortieth_. But there are no jokes in Letter 146 about her own completion of four decades on earth; in fact there is no reference to her birthday _at all_, which itself is quite curious.
Some might suggest this was yet another example of Jane's modesty, self-deprecation, and dislike of the limelight, alongside the string of examples so often produced to support that claim. However, all of them are, in my opinion, written with strong irony, and are intended to mean--to those attuned to Jane's irony---precisely the opposite. Letter 146 itself contains a particularly famous one of those examples, when Jane first jokes with JEAL about 2 ½ chapters from a novel he was writing having gone mysteriously missing—Jane mockingly claims her own innocence of the theft—and then writes these now-famous words:
“I do not think however that any theft of that sort would be really very useful to me. What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited Sketches, fill of Variety & Glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labour?”
It is mind-boggling to me that this epigram has been quoted hundreds of times in books and articles as evidence of the modesty of Jane Austen's literary scope and aspirations. Hats off to the relative handful of scholars who have recognized the enormous irony that completely undercuts the apparent meaning. In reality, and as Jane herself knew better than anyone in the world, her novels have enormous scope and aspirations--- in their shadow stories, they depict the entirety of her world---national and world affairs and literature, both contemporary and historical, are painted in a thousand ways on those two inches of ivory, by Jane's patient Brush. And Jane could not resist the pun of “much labour”, to recall her strong sense of her novels as her own children, born, indeed, “after much labour”!
Did JEAL himself have any clue that he was the target of a major put-on by his hoax-loving aunt? I doubt it. He was an 18-year old young buck flush with his own grandiose schemes to achieve literary glory. He had not only his aunt, published author by then of four novels, to emulate, but also his father, who co-wrote the Loiterer literary magazine when_he_ was that age, and who wrote poetry all his life, and his Uncle Henry the sermon writer (and I cannot help thinking of Henry Crawford and his thoughts about sermon writing as I read Jane's praise of Henry's sermons in Letter 146), and also JEAL's elder half-sister, Anna, who, he surely was also aware, had been working on a novel of her own--which is so famously memorialized in several of the surviving letters from her aunt Jane--two and a half years earlier. Over a half century later, when JEAL wrote his Memoir of his by then famous aunt, he certainly showed no awareness of more than a fraction of the scope of his aunt's writing.
There is another unstated subtext to Letter 146, one which JEAL might have been aware of. His acronym is JEAL because he was christened James Edward Austen, but was, two decades after his celebrated aunt's death, to add the hyphenated name “Leigh” to his surname when he hit the inheritance jackpot as an adult and inherited Rosings from Aunt Leigh Perrot.
The following is a link to the first of five posts I wrote nearly a year ago in this blog, on the subject of the disinheritance of the Austen women upon the death of Uncle Leigh Perrot in early 1816, less than a year before Jane Austen wrote Letter 146 to JEAL:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/01/news-that-really-made-jane-austen.html
Jane writes Letter 146 as if none of that heartbreak and emotional trauma described in that series of blog posts had ever occurred, but you can be sure that it was vividly present in Jane's mind as she wrote to JEAL. This was true Christian charity on her part.
The subtly poignant highlight of this letter, for me, is the other literary subtext which never gets noticed , when Jane writes “You will hear from Uncle Henry how well Anna is. She seems perfectly recovered.”
As I noted, above, Anna Austen Lefroy, JEAL's elder half sister (and Jane's psychological daughter), had been working on a novel, under Aunt Jane's loving tutelage, when she got married in 1814. The unspoken subtext of Jane reporting on Anna's health is that it was no joking matter to either Anna or her aunt that Anna had been forced to suspend work on her novel after marrying and then bearing two children in rapid succession. She had borne her second daughter nearly three months earlier, and that was the “recovery” alluded to by Jane. Did Jane foresee that Anna would never finish that novel, and would, one sad evening years later, burn the manuscript? I believe Jane harbored great hopes for Anna as a writer, and would have greatly saddened to hear that, but also proud to know that Anna would eventually become a published author more or less at the same age as Jane was when writing Letter 146.
And what an ironic shadow that subtext casts on JEAL's “manly sketches”, which, if we may judge from the Memoir, would have been just the sort of narcissistic pompous tripe that Jane satirized in her Plan for a Novel, and also in her famous covertly mocking letters to James Stanier Clarke.
I finish this post with a quotation from Letter 146 which alarmingly reminds me of the suspiciously phallic cucumber sandwiches of The Importance of Being Earnest: “Tell your Father, with Aunt Cass's Love & mine, that the Pickled Cucumbers are extremely good, & tell him also--'tell him what you will”--No, don't tell him what you will.....”
Was Jane ever “earnest” in the sense of literally meaning what she wrote? I think not!
Cheers, ARNIE
P.S.: Jane wrote Letter 146 from Chawton Cottage, her home with her mother, her sister and her dear friend Martha Lloyd, for eight productive years, but it is not our only window into how the mature Jane Austen thought and felt on her birthday. The one other writing we have which we know to have been written on or about her birthday was the eulogistic poem she composed exactly seven years before Letter 146, and less than a year after settling at Chawton Cottage, in honor of the death of Madam Lefroy, which I wrote about a few weeks ago in Part III of the following blog post:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/11/jane-austens-great-chasms-and-dirty.html
On Monday, December 16, 1816, Jane Austen sat down (or, possibly, given the recurrent illness which plagued her subsequent to the publication of Emma in early 1816, reclined) and wrote the only one of her surviving letters which was written (at least in part) on her actual birthday. It is Letter 146 in Le Faye's edition, and it is written to her nephew, James Edward Austen (whom I will refer to as JEAL to avoid confusion with Jane's brother Edward) .
Jane was 41 that day--exactly the same age, curiously, that her brother Edward achieved on October 7, 1808, when Jane wrote Letter 57 to Cassandra, and (for various reasons I will explain in my book having to do with her complex relationship with Edward) jokingly referred to his having completed his thirtieth year, when he had actually completed his _fortieth_. But there are no jokes in Letter 146 about her own completion of four decades on earth; in fact there is no reference to her birthday _at all_, which itself is quite curious.
Some might suggest this was yet another example of Jane's modesty, self-deprecation, and dislike of the limelight, alongside the string of examples so often produced to support that claim. However, all of them are, in my opinion, written with strong irony, and are intended to mean--to those attuned to Jane's irony---precisely the opposite. Letter 146 itself contains a particularly famous one of those examples, when Jane first jokes with JEAL about 2 ½ chapters from a novel he was writing having gone mysteriously missing—Jane mockingly claims her own innocence of the theft—and then writes these now-famous words:
“I do not think however that any theft of that sort would be really very useful to me. What should I do with your strong, manly, spirited Sketches, fill of Variety & Glow? How could I possibly join them on to the little bit (two Inches wide) of Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush, as produces little effect after much labour?”
It is mind-boggling to me that this epigram has been quoted hundreds of times in books and articles as evidence of the modesty of Jane Austen's literary scope and aspirations. Hats off to the relative handful of scholars who have recognized the enormous irony that completely undercuts the apparent meaning. In reality, and as Jane herself knew better than anyone in the world, her novels have enormous scope and aspirations--- in their shadow stories, they depict the entirety of her world---national and world affairs and literature, both contemporary and historical, are painted in a thousand ways on those two inches of ivory, by Jane's patient Brush. And Jane could not resist the pun of “much labour”, to recall her strong sense of her novels as her own children, born, indeed, “after much labour”!
Did JEAL himself have any clue that he was the target of a major put-on by his hoax-loving aunt? I doubt it. He was an 18-year old young buck flush with his own grandiose schemes to achieve literary glory. He had not only his aunt, published author by then of four novels, to emulate, but also his father, who co-wrote the Loiterer literary magazine when_he_ was that age, and who wrote poetry all his life, and his Uncle Henry the sermon writer (and I cannot help thinking of Henry Crawford and his thoughts about sermon writing as I read Jane's praise of Henry's sermons in Letter 146), and also JEAL's elder half-sister, Anna, who, he surely was also aware, had been working on a novel of her own--which is so famously memorialized in several of the surviving letters from her aunt Jane--two and a half years earlier. Over a half century later, when JEAL wrote his Memoir of his by then famous aunt, he certainly showed no awareness of more than a fraction of the scope of his aunt's writing.
There is another unstated subtext to Letter 146, one which JEAL might have been aware of. His acronym is JEAL because he was christened James Edward Austen, but was, two decades after his celebrated aunt's death, to add the hyphenated name “Leigh” to his surname when he hit the inheritance jackpot as an adult and inherited Rosings from Aunt Leigh Perrot.
The following is a link to the first of five posts I wrote nearly a year ago in this blog, on the subject of the disinheritance of the Austen women upon the death of Uncle Leigh Perrot in early 1816, less than a year before Jane Austen wrote Letter 146 to JEAL:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/01/news-that-really-made-jane-austen.html
Jane writes Letter 146 as if none of that heartbreak and emotional trauma described in that series of blog posts had ever occurred, but you can be sure that it was vividly present in Jane's mind as she wrote to JEAL. This was true Christian charity on her part.
The subtly poignant highlight of this letter, for me, is the other literary subtext which never gets noticed , when Jane writes “You will hear from Uncle Henry how well Anna is. She seems perfectly recovered.”
As I noted, above, Anna Austen Lefroy, JEAL's elder half sister (and Jane's psychological daughter), had been working on a novel, under Aunt Jane's loving tutelage, when she got married in 1814. The unspoken subtext of Jane reporting on Anna's health is that it was no joking matter to either Anna or her aunt that Anna had been forced to suspend work on her novel after marrying and then bearing two children in rapid succession. She had borne her second daughter nearly three months earlier, and that was the “recovery” alluded to by Jane. Did Jane foresee that Anna would never finish that novel, and would, one sad evening years later, burn the manuscript? I believe Jane harbored great hopes for Anna as a writer, and would have greatly saddened to hear that, but also proud to know that Anna would eventually become a published author more or less at the same age as Jane was when writing Letter 146.
And what an ironic shadow that subtext casts on JEAL's “manly sketches”, which, if we may judge from the Memoir, would have been just the sort of narcissistic pompous tripe that Jane satirized in her Plan for a Novel, and also in her famous covertly mocking letters to James Stanier Clarke.
I finish this post with a quotation from Letter 146 which alarmingly reminds me of the suspiciously phallic cucumber sandwiches of The Importance of Being Earnest: “Tell your Father, with Aunt Cass's Love & mine, that the Pickled Cucumbers are extremely good, & tell him also--'tell him what you will”--No, don't tell him what you will.....”
Was Jane ever “earnest” in the sense of literally meaning what she wrote? I think not!
Cheers, ARNIE
P.S.: Jane wrote Letter 146 from Chawton Cottage, her home with her mother, her sister and her dear friend Martha Lloyd, for eight productive years, but it is not our only window into how the mature Jane Austen thought and felt on her birthday. The one other writing we have which we know to have been written on or about her birthday was the eulogistic poem she composed exactly seven years before Letter 146, and less than a year after settling at Chawton Cottage, in honor of the death of Madam Lefroy, which I wrote about a few weeks ago in Part III of the following blog post:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/11/jane-austens-great-chasms-and-dirty.html
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
The Answer to my Best Quiz Ever
The answer to the quiz question is Hancock, which is the connection among the following three seemingly completely unrelated bits of Austeniana, as explained below:
#1: my recent string of posts about my speculation, based on the intersection of textual evidence from _Emma_ and _MP_, on the one hand, and from historical data, on the other, that the young Phila Austen may have been a prostitute in London from age 15 to 20, before she was transported by ship--whether voluntarily or not--to India.
Connection: Of course, Hancock was the married name of Phila Austen.
#2: The following charade attributed to Henry Austen:
“I with a Housemaid once was curst,
Whose name when shortened makes my first;
She an ill natured Jade was reckoned,
And in the house oft raised my second,
My whole stands high in lists of fame,
Exalting e’en great Chatham’s name.”
The official answer given by David Selwyn for this charade is "pat" + "riot" = "patriot". However, as with the charades in _Emma_, there is a second, secret answer to this charade as well, which is why I believe the actual author of the above charade was not Henry Austen, but his precocious young teenaged sister Jane!
I hinted to think about the names of the housemaids in _Emma_. Miss Bates's housemaid is Patti, or Pat for short. The Randalls housemaid, daughter of James at Hartfield, is Hannah, or Han for short. If you give the matter some thought, you will be able to figure out how I derived the second syllable of the secret answer.
And what is even cooler is that the two answers, "Hancock" and "patriot" are themselves connected in an additional way, i.e., while Mr. Pitt, the Earl of Chatham was considered a great English patriot, we here in the States are all well aware that one of our great American patriots was John Hancock!
......yes, I do believe that JA had a very wickedly irreverent sense of humor, and also a spectacular level of ingenuity!
#3: The following two passages in _Emma_ which pertain to the family of the lawyer of Highbury, specifically refer to "Anne Cox". That sounds very much like "Hancocks", and the reference to the Coles in the same sentence is an unmistakable tag pointing to #1, above, because of the real life close connection between Mrs. Cole and Phila Austen:
Ch. 26: "The party was rather large, as it included one other family, a proper unobjectionable country family, whom the Coles had the advantage of naming among their acquaintance, and the male part of Mr Cox's family, the lawyer of Highbury."
Ch. 27: [Harriet]: “...The Coxes were wondering last night whether [Jane] would get into any great family. How did you think the Coxes looked?......They talked a great deal about [Robt. Martin], especially Anne Cox... Miss Nash thinks either of the Coxes would be very glad to marry him."
...[Emma] "She meant to be impertinently curious, just as such an Anne Cox should be."
So I do claim that JA meant to be impertinently mysterious, but playing it fair, not so mysterious as to be completely inscrutable!
Cheers, ARNIE
P.S.: At my JASNA-NYC presentation, one young gentleman in the audience was able to guess the answer "Hancock" to that charade.
#1: my recent string of posts about my speculation, based on the intersection of textual evidence from _Emma_ and _MP_, on the one hand, and from historical data, on the other, that the young Phila Austen may have been a prostitute in London from age 15 to 20, before she was transported by ship--whether voluntarily or not--to India.
Connection: Of course, Hancock was the married name of Phila Austen.
#2: The following charade attributed to Henry Austen:
“I with a Housemaid once was curst,
Whose name when shortened makes my first;
She an ill natured Jade was reckoned,
And in the house oft raised my second,
My whole stands high in lists of fame,
Exalting e’en great Chatham’s name.”
The official answer given by David Selwyn for this charade is "pat" + "riot" = "patriot". However, as with the charades in _Emma_, there is a second, secret answer to this charade as well, which is why I believe the actual author of the above charade was not Henry Austen, but his precocious young teenaged sister Jane!
I hinted to think about the names of the housemaids in _Emma_. Miss Bates's housemaid is Patti, or Pat for short. The Randalls housemaid, daughter of James at Hartfield, is Hannah, or Han for short. If you give the matter some thought, you will be able to figure out how I derived the second syllable of the secret answer.
And what is even cooler is that the two answers, "Hancock" and "patriot" are themselves connected in an additional way, i.e., while Mr. Pitt, the Earl of Chatham was considered a great English patriot, we here in the States are all well aware that one of our great American patriots was John Hancock!
......yes, I do believe that JA had a very wickedly irreverent sense of humor, and also a spectacular level of ingenuity!
#3: The following two passages in _Emma_ which pertain to the family of the lawyer of Highbury, specifically refer to "Anne Cox". That sounds very much like "Hancocks", and the reference to the Coles in the same sentence is an unmistakable tag pointing to #1, above, because of the real life close connection between Mrs. Cole and Phila Austen:
Ch. 26: "The party was rather large, as it included one other family, a proper unobjectionable country family, whom the Coles had the advantage of naming among their acquaintance, and the male part of Mr Cox's family, the lawyer of Highbury."
Ch. 27: [Harriet]: “...The Coxes were wondering last night whether [Jane] would get into any great family. How did you think the Coxes looked?......They talked a great deal about [Robt. Martin], especially Anne Cox... Miss Nash thinks either of the Coxes would be very glad to marry him."
...[Emma] "She meant to be impertinently curious, just as such an Anne Cox should be."
So I do claim that JA meant to be impertinently mysterious, but playing it fair, not so mysterious as to be completely inscrutable!
Cheers, ARNIE
P.S.: At my JASNA-NYC presentation, one young gentleman in the audience was able to guess the answer "Hancock" to that charade.
The North Banger Sisters
A group read of Jane Austen's letters has begun in Austen L and Janeites, and here is my response to some interesting comments there by Diana Birchall about Letter #1, dated Jan 9-10, 1796, when Jane has recently turned 20.
[Diana] "How young she sounds in this first one. Laughing and mocking, very interested in young men, and sounding quite carefree, full of gayety"
Diana, JA's voice in this letter is, to me, uncannily similar to the voice of Elizabeth Bennet, but more so--it is like Lizzy after a couple of disinhibiting glasses of wine, and a couple of provoking Darcy sneers. ;)
"This tone, I recall, soon is somewhat reined in, but it's endearing to see it here."
What do you mean, Diana? Reined in by whom? The tone of this letter does not strike me as reined in at all--and may I immediately add--I love that it is not reined in, it suggests to me that JA was often "wired", particularly after a stimulating social event, such as the ball which is the subject matter of much of this letter. It means she was most fully alive after being in a crowd, enjoying the human comedy.
"Still, she is not quite like other girls - how many would write, "I am sorry for the Beaches' loss of their little girl, especially as it is the one so much like me."
That is putting it mildly. That is so "beyond everything" (to use the phrase JA used jokingly in later letters to CEA). It is consistent, right from this first surviving letter, with JA already feeling a lot of negative emotion, even aggression, associated with pregnancy and childbirth, especially death (of both mothers and infants) in childbirth. Here's the evidence.
First, Le Faye tells us that Henrietta-Maria Hicks-Beach, who was 36 when this letter was written, lost four of her nine children born live in infancy. I don't think JA was a cruel insensitive person who would mock such a sad history of personal loss of the poor mother--rather I hear JA's anger at that woman being subjected to such a life experience during what should have been the prime of life. This is gallows humor.
And the proof is in the very next sentence, which also is the last sentence of the letter, and therefore is also the end of JA's short literary "performance", and therefore has an extra oomph and wit befitting that placement:
"I condole with Miss M. on her losses and with Eliza on her gains, and am ever yours..."
Le Faye tells us that "Miss M." is Tom Fowle's maiden aunt Jane, who died in 1807--we can only speculate as to what "losses" JA is (I think ironically) referring to. See further below for my speculation.
Le Faye also claims that "Eliza" is Elizabeth Fowle, wife of Revd. Fulwar Craven Fowle, elder brother of Tom Fowle. It takes one minute to look at Le Faye's Bio Index and to also realize that of equal importance was that Eliza was the middle of the three Lloyd sisters, of whom Mary of course married James Austen, and Martha was JA's closest friend. So both JA and CEA each had two very close connections to this woman over a lifetime.
And looking at the description of Eliza's life in the Bio Index also gives us a big hint as to what "her gains" refers to---I believe Eliza had become pregnant _again_--I write "again" because she was in 1796 in her early thirties and had already borne children in 1791, 1792, 1793, and 1794 (baby born and died). That is _every_ year for four straight years.
Le Faye's listings show the next children born to Eliza in 1798 and 1799, resuming the annual drumbeat, but I betcha that the 3-year "gap" in between serial pregnancies was itself filled by one, maybe even two, miscarriages. Somehow I doubt that the good Revd Fowle took a 3-year vacation from his Biblical "duty" to multiply as rapidly as humanly possible.
And that also suggests to me that JA was joking with a dark edginess about Miss Murden's "losses", as it sounds a lot to me like JA's infamous bit of acid wit about Edward Austen Knight's 47-year old widowed "adoptive" mother in Letter 32:
"I am happy to hear of Mrs. Knight's amendment, whatever might be her complaint. [Words omitted in Brabourne edition: "I cannot think so ill of her however, in spite of your insinuations, as to suspect her of having lain-in -- I do not think she would be betrayed beyond an accident at the utmost."]
I think JA has, to add force to her comments about Eliza Fowle, conjured up a mini-tale of the pregnant maiden aunt having a miscarriage ("losses"). I think JA, at 20, already had a decided bent toward venting a considerable amount of anger, sarcasm and spleen when the topic of pregnancy and childbirth was extant, and it continued till the day she died.
"[Cassandra] must have shared in all the jokes.
Diana, I think that JA was the ticcingly inveterate punster, and that CEA was her "straight man"--and I think CEA did understand a good deal of JA's humor, but that does not mean that she was always happy with what came out of JA's mouth or quill pen. There are many close relationships like that, where opposite temperaments complement each other, and I speak from personal experience. I think JA spent her life trying to make CEA smile more....and also to get her overly compliant and submissive older sister to return to the days of The History of England, and get angry more.
I.e., I see a bit of the Banger Sisters in this passage.
Cheers,
Arnie
[Diana] "How young she sounds in this first one. Laughing and mocking, very interested in young men, and sounding quite carefree, full of gayety"
Diana, JA's voice in this letter is, to me, uncannily similar to the voice of Elizabeth Bennet, but more so--it is like Lizzy after a couple of disinhibiting glasses of wine, and a couple of provoking Darcy sneers. ;)
"This tone, I recall, soon is somewhat reined in, but it's endearing to see it here."
What do you mean, Diana? Reined in by whom? The tone of this letter does not strike me as reined in at all--and may I immediately add--I love that it is not reined in, it suggests to me that JA was often "wired", particularly after a stimulating social event, such as the ball which is the subject matter of much of this letter. It means she was most fully alive after being in a crowd, enjoying the human comedy.
"Still, she is not quite like other girls - how many would write, "I am sorry for the Beaches' loss of their little girl, especially as it is the one so much like me."
That is putting it mildly. That is so "beyond everything" (to use the phrase JA used jokingly in later letters to CEA). It is consistent, right from this first surviving letter, with JA already feeling a lot of negative emotion, even aggression, associated with pregnancy and childbirth, especially death (of both mothers and infants) in childbirth. Here's the evidence.
First, Le Faye tells us that Henrietta-Maria Hicks-Beach, who was 36 when this letter was written, lost four of her nine children born live in infancy. I don't think JA was a cruel insensitive person who would mock such a sad history of personal loss of the poor mother--rather I hear JA's anger at that woman being subjected to such a life experience during what should have been the prime of life. This is gallows humor.
And the proof is in the very next sentence, which also is the last sentence of the letter, and therefore is also the end of JA's short literary "performance", and therefore has an extra oomph and wit befitting that placement:
"I condole with Miss M. on her losses and with Eliza on her gains, and am ever yours..."
Le Faye tells us that "Miss M." is Tom Fowle's maiden aunt Jane, who died in 1807--we can only speculate as to what "losses" JA is (I think ironically) referring to. See further below for my speculation.
Le Faye also claims that "Eliza" is Elizabeth Fowle, wife of Revd. Fulwar Craven Fowle, elder brother of Tom Fowle. It takes one minute to look at Le Faye's Bio Index and to also realize that of equal importance was that Eliza was the middle of the three Lloyd sisters, of whom Mary of course married James Austen, and Martha was JA's closest friend. So both JA and CEA each had two very close connections to this woman over a lifetime.
And looking at the description of Eliza's life in the Bio Index also gives us a big hint as to what "her gains" refers to---I believe Eliza had become pregnant _again_--I write "again" because she was in 1796 in her early thirties and had already borne children in 1791, 1792, 1793, and 1794 (baby born and died). That is _every_ year for four straight years.
Le Faye's listings show the next children born to Eliza in 1798 and 1799, resuming the annual drumbeat, but I betcha that the 3-year "gap" in between serial pregnancies was itself filled by one, maybe even two, miscarriages. Somehow I doubt that the good Revd Fowle took a 3-year vacation from his Biblical "duty" to multiply as rapidly as humanly possible.
And that also suggests to me that JA was joking with a dark edginess about Miss Murden's "losses", as it sounds a lot to me like JA's infamous bit of acid wit about Edward Austen Knight's 47-year old widowed "adoptive" mother in Letter 32:
"I am happy to hear of Mrs. Knight's amendment, whatever might be her complaint. [Words omitted in Brabourne edition: "I cannot think so ill of her however, in spite of your insinuations, as to suspect her of having lain-in -- I do not think she would be betrayed beyond an accident at the utmost."]
I think JA has, to add force to her comments about Eliza Fowle, conjured up a mini-tale of the pregnant maiden aunt having a miscarriage ("losses"). I think JA, at 20, already had a decided bent toward venting a considerable amount of anger, sarcasm and spleen when the topic of pregnancy and childbirth was extant, and it continued till the day she died.
"[Cassandra] must have shared in all the jokes.
Diana, I think that JA was the ticcingly inveterate punster, and that CEA was her "straight man"--and I think CEA did understand a good deal of JA's humor, but that does not mean that she was always happy with what came out of JA's mouth or quill pen. There are many close relationships like that, where opposite temperaments complement each other, and I speak from personal experience. I think JA spent her life trying to make CEA smile more....and also to get her overly compliant and submissive older sister to return to the days of The History of England, and get angry more.
I.e., I see a bit of the Banger Sisters in this passage.
Cheers,
Arnie
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
