Diane Reynolds wrote in Janeites and Austen L:
“Then a statement that I am not sure I follow, but which ends on a very caustic, even bitter note: "the brown Mare, which as well as the black was to devolve on James at our removal, has not had patience to wait for that, & has settled herself even now at Deane.-The death ofHugh Capet, which like that of Mr. Skipsey-tho' undesired was not wholly unexpected, being purposely effected, has made the immediate possession of the Mare very convenient; & everything else I suppose will be seized by degrees in the same manner."
Diane, your sense of a caustic, bitter tone is validated and explained by a literary/historical allusion that the erudite JA hid in plain sight in the lines you quoted.
I did some quick checking into the name “Hugh Capet”, and found that Shakespeare refers to Hugh Capet in only one speech in all of his plays, in Act 1, Scene 2 of Henry V, when the Archbishop of Canterbury greenlights Henry V to aggressively assert his claim to the French throne.
The Archbishop, with lawyerly precision, summarizes the claims of the King of France as holding “in right and title of the female”, and therefore, he argues (of course to Henry V’s great liking), that the French King has no leg to stand on in trying to deny Henry V’s claim to the French throne, which is also “from the female”. I.e., what’s good for the goose, etc.
The Archbishop also specifically refers to Capet as “the usurper”, and so the claims of the current French king, based in part on Capet, holds a “crooked title usurp’d from” Henry V and _his_ “progenitors”.
And I believe that JA had all of the Archbishop’s speech very firmly in mind as she wrote the lines you quoted, above, in Letter 30. Note first the reference to Revd. Austen’s “ministers” who “are already deserting him to pay their court to his son.” So JA is casting James Austen as a modern day Hugh Capet, a usurper of the “throne” of the Steventon rectory (which also fits perfectly with the interpretation of JA’s History of England as also being a veiled history of the Austen family).
And in this mock legalistic verbiage, we have JA’s absurdist rendition of two mares as Revd. Austen’s “ministers”, one of whom has already bolted to the usurper ahead of schedule.
And note in that the strong parallelism to Fanny Dashwood in S&S, who has not the patience to wait for the Dashwood women to vacate Norland before _she_settles herself there.
So it is no surprise that, in the midst of this tale of royal usurpation, the name “Hugh Capet”, one of Shakespeare’s many royal usurpers, should pop up. Who knows whether Hugh Capet really was the Austen family name for the equine “husband” of the brown mare, or if she made up this name just for Letter 30. Either way, JA took full advantage of the name, and seized upon poor old Hugh Capet having apparently been put to sleep (“purposely effected”), and reframed it, in her way, like Michael Corleone seizing control of his Mafia Family by a coordinated series of hits, so that JA can then expand that one event into a global campaign of usurpation (“everything else will be seized by degrees in the same manner”).
And of course, the background of all of this is that Henry V’s being on the throne is precisely because his father usurped the throne from Richard II, another Shakespeare play which was on JA’s radar screen in a variety of ways.
And as for claims through the female line, well, here is what JA's resident experts have to say about that topic:
"How anyone could have the conscience to entail away an estate from one's own daughters, I cannot understand..."
"I am glad of it; but otherwise I see no occasion for entailing estates from the female line. It was not thought necessary in Sir Lewis de Bourgh's family."
How caustic an irony it is that JA is deploying here in Letter 30, in questioning the morality of women getting the short end of the stick in the devolution of family property!
Cheers, ARNIE
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Margaret Dashwood is a self portrait of the 13 year old Jane Austen
As I will be detailing in my book, Margaret Dashwood is a very very smart young lady, but till today, I did not realize HOW smart, nor did I realize that she was, in a very real sense, a retrospective self portrait of Jane Austen, who, in publishing Sense and Sensibility in 1811 at the age of 35, was remembering herself at the tender age of 13 in the character of Margaret.
And what made me realize that for certain was the following passage in S&S:
""Margaret," said Marianne, with great warmth, "you know that all this is an invention of your own, and that there is no such person in existence."
"Well, then, he is lately dead, Marianne, for I am sure there was such a man once, and his name begins with an F."
This comment by Margaret takes on startling new meaning in light of the following:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/06/very-famous-literary-source-for-almost.html
In my above linked blog post, I claim that Loiterer #45 was ghostwritten by Jane Austen in 1789 when she was 13, and the above passage from S&S is a sly verification of her authorship!
And what makes it even slier is that Marianne Dashwood is ALSO a retrospective self portrait of Jane Austen, but at the slightly less tender age of 17!
Cheers, ARNIE
And what made me realize that for certain was the following passage in S&S:
""Margaret," said Marianne, with great warmth, "you know that all this is an invention of your own, and that there is no such person in existence."
"Well, then, he is lately dead, Marianne, for I am sure there was such a man once, and his name begins with an F."
This comment by Margaret takes on startling new meaning in light of the following:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/06/very-famous-literary-source-for-almost.html
In my above linked blog post, I claim that Loiterer #45 was ghostwritten by Jane Austen in 1789 when she was 13, and the above passage from S&S is a sly verification of her authorship!
And what makes it even slier is that Marianne Dashwood is ALSO a retrospective self portrait of Jane Austen, but at the slightly less tender age of 17!
Cheers, ARNIE
Northanger Abbey's Veiled Allusion to the Real Bluebeard of Bath....who was connected to Jane Austen!
[n Janeites this morning, Derrick Leigh wrote] "Jane Austen's great grandparents on the Leigh side were Theophilus Leigh and Mary Brydges. Their daughter Mary Leigh married the 4th baronet, Sir Hungerford Hoskyns in 1720."
Derrick, did you happen to notice the discussion that I initiated in these groups last November about the excellent presentation by Janine Barchas at the last JASNA AGM in Portland? In her presentation, Barchas laid out, in convincing detail, the multifaceted veiled allusion in Northanger Abbey to the Farleigh Hungerford castle outside Bath, and now her argument can finally be read in the recently published Volume 32 of the print Persuasions, at ppg. 115 et seq., under the title "The Real Bluebeard of Bath: A Historical Model for Northanger Abbey")".
I mention all this because, as I read your comment, above, I was struck by the close proximity of the names "Leigh" and "Hungerford", and I made an immediate semantic association of same to "Farleigh Hungerford".
And as you will see, below, that was a very fortunate association, and, given JA's many covert parodies of the Royal Family during her own lifetime, it is a wonderful and highly ironic serendipity that a significant advance in Jane Austen studies should be furthered by seemingly unrelated news about the latest addition to the modern Royal Family. Read on to see what I am talking about....
My immediate question upon reading your above quoted genealogical factoid was to ask whether "Hungerford" was just a name that percolated around England's noble families, such that there was no special familial linkage to be inferred by its usage? My guess was that it was a very unusual name that _would_ have been associated with a particular family, and therefore it probably _was_ a marker that somehow Sir Hungerford Hoskyns was genealogically connected to the colorful Hungerford family whose real life Gothic history JA alluded to, as Barchas brilliantly elucidated, in NA.
Well, it was my lucky day, because it turns out that my hunch was spot-on. Here is the icing on the allusive layer cake, the factoid which ties _all_ loose ends together, which I just found in Debrett's Baronetage, at p. 139:
"Hoskyns, of Harwood, Co.Hereford. 18 Dec. 1676. John Hoskynswas M.P. for Hereford, 1602 and 1613; /m. /Margery, da. of William Jones, of Llanwarren, co. Hereford, esq., by whom, amongst other children, he had, John, his youngest son, a serjeant-at-law, who was returned to the house of commons, for the same city of Hereford, 1627, in which it appears he had previously sat; because, it is related, that he was committed to the Tower of London, by order of king James 1., for a speech made in that house, reflecting upon mercenary Scottish favourites. He /m. /Benedicta, da. of Robert Moyle, of Buckwell, co. Kent, esq., by whom he had issue, /Benedicta, /m. John Markey, of Alton, co. Hereford, esq., and a son and heir,
1. Sir Bennet, created a bart., 18 Dec. 1676, /m. /ANNE, DA. OF SIR HENRY BINGLEY, of Temple Coombe, co. Somerset, knt., auditor of the exchequer, by whom he had issue, //Sir John, 2d bart. & William, of Kingston; and
2. Sir John, F.R.S., was knighted during the lifetime of his father, sat as member for Hereford during the reign of James II., and was a master in the court of Chancery, /m. /Jane, da. of sir Gabriel Law, of Newark, co. Gloucester, knt., (A LINEAL DESCENDANT, BY HIS MOTHER'S FAMILY, FROM WALTER, LORD HUNGERFORD, K.G., in the reign of Henry VI.,) by Anne, da, of sir Stephen Soame, of Haidon, co. Essex, knt, by whom he had, besides other issue, 1. Sir Bennet, 3d bart. & 2. Sir HUNGERFORD, 4th bart.....who, while a younger brother, served in several campaigns under the duke of Marlborough; m. MARY, DA. OF THEOPHILUS LEIGH, OF ADLESTROP, CO. GLOUCESTER, ESQ. (BY MARY BRYDGES, SISTER TO THE DUKE OF CHANDOS)..... " [END OF DEBRETT'S EXCERPT]
The "Walter, Lord Hungerford during the reign of Henry VI" who is named by Debrett is described as follows in Wikipedia: "Walter Hungerford was the youngest son of Robert Hungerford, 3rd Baron Hungerford and Eleanor, was M.P. for Wiltshire in 1477, and, as a partisan in earlier days of the house of Lancaster, obtained a general pardon from Richard III on his accession in 1483. He was, nevertheless, arrested by Richard on the landing of the Earl of Richmond in 1485, but escaped from custody, and joined Richmond's army. At the battle of Bosworth he slew, in hand-to-hand combat, Sir Robert Brackenbury, lieutenant of the Tower of London, under whose command he had previously served, and was knighted by Henry VII on the battlefield. Farleigh Castle and some other of the forfeited family estates, though not the family honours, were restored to him, and he was made a member of the Privy Council. ....In 1497 he assisted in quelling Perkin Warbeck's rising. After the accession of Henry VIII he continued a member of the privy council, and, dying in 1516, was buried at Farleigh. His wife was Jane....and his only son Edward was father of Walter, Lord Hungerford (1503–1540)......"
And that last-named "Walter, Lord Hungerford (1503-1540)" was _exactly_ the same guy whom Barchas devotes a great deal of ink to in her article, indeed he is none other than "The Real Bluebeard of Bath" in her article title!
I capitalized, for emphasis, three parts of that quotation from Debrett's---first, the reference to a woman named "Anne BINGLEY" who married Sir Bennet Hungerford--okay, that surname was not rare, and could be pure coincidence; but second, and clearly _not_ coincidental, this same Walter, Lord Hungerford, had a descendant, Jane Law, who was the mother of the _same_ Sir Hungerford Hoskyns, 4th bart., who married Mary Leigh, as Derrick stated, above!
And now I will show how the veiled allusion to Lord Hungerford and to Jane Austen's own matrilineal ancestry in NA is more than a genealogical parlor game, which relates to my _third_ capitalized bit from the above Debrett's listing, the marriage of Mary Leigh to Sir Hungerford Hoskyns, 4th bart.
Even if there had been no actual family linkage between "Farleigh Hungerford" and "Sir Hungerford Hoskyns", even if this had been just a random coincidence of names, I claim that JA, who knew her _own_ family lineage pretty well, would have seen the wordplay potential of the closeness of these names when she decided to represent Farleigh Hungerford in NA. I know this because I also know that JA was well aware of one extremely important fact about her own Leigh lineage (her "Leigh-niage", if you will), which was directly connected to that same theme of death in childbirth, which I claim is _THE_ central theme of Northanger Abbey. I have argued that Mrs. Tilney is the symbol of all English wives who died in childbirth, the victims of their "Bluebeard" husbands. That was the subject of my own talk at the JASNA AGM, and when I listened to Barchas in November detailing her own wonderful discovery about the wife-killing "Bluebeard" Hungerford husband at Farleigh Hungerford, I knew that this fit perfectly with my own "Bluebeard" exegesis of NA, based on the completely different death in childbirth theme.
And in support of my argument at my AGM talk, I also pointed out one of the very personal connections of this death in childbirth theme to Jane Austen's own family---that same Mary Leigh (nee Brydges) whom you mentioned, above, Derrick----the wife of Theophilus, and great grandmother of JA herself---died in childbirth after bearing her twelfth child!
But what I did not realize till this morning, when I did the sleuthing which I've outlined above, was that JA may very well have selected Farleigh Hungerford, and in particular its most notorious resident, the wife-killer Walter Hungerford, as a crucial allusive source for NA, precisely _BECAUSE_ she already was well aware of the above described genealogical connection---as per my third capitalized section---of JA's _own_ maternal great grandmother (who died in a wifely victim of childbirth) to her "sisters" in wifely victimhood, the three wives of that evil Walter Hungerford!
And, by the way, you will want to read P. 122 of the current Persuasions for Barchas's detailed account of how things went down for Walter Hungerford and, in particular, his third wife, Elizabeth, who managed to survive him and even prosper after his death!
I just rescanned Barchas's article as carefully as I could, and I still cannot find any indication that she realized the connection of the Hungerford family to the Austen family, and I know that she did not draw any connection between the "Bluebeard" antics of Walter Hungerford and the death in childbirth theme which I have described in NA.
So I claim that when you combine Barchas's original discoveries from her article together with my own original additions to same, you get an enormous synergy, which brings out in 3-D a particularly important example of what Jocelyn Harris called "Jane Austen's Art of Memory"!
Cheers, ARNIE
Derrick, did you happen to notice the discussion that I initiated in these groups last November about the excellent presentation by Janine Barchas at the last JASNA AGM in Portland? In her presentation, Barchas laid out, in convincing detail, the multifaceted veiled allusion in Northanger Abbey to the Farleigh Hungerford castle outside Bath, and now her argument can finally be read in the recently published Volume 32 of the print Persuasions, at ppg. 115 et seq., under the title "The Real Bluebeard of Bath: A Historical Model for Northanger Abbey")".
I mention all this because, as I read your comment, above, I was struck by the close proximity of the names "Leigh" and "Hungerford", and I made an immediate semantic association of same to "Farleigh Hungerford".
And as you will see, below, that was a very fortunate association, and, given JA's many covert parodies of the Royal Family during her own lifetime, it is a wonderful and highly ironic serendipity that a significant advance in Jane Austen studies should be furthered by seemingly unrelated news about the latest addition to the modern Royal Family. Read on to see what I am talking about....
My immediate question upon reading your above quoted genealogical factoid was to ask whether "Hungerford" was just a name that percolated around England's noble families, such that there was no special familial linkage to be inferred by its usage? My guess was that it was a very unusual name that _would_ have been associated with a particular family, and therefore it probably _was_ a marker that somehow Sir Hungerford Hoskyns was genealogically connected to the colorful Hungerford family whose real life Gothic history JA alluded to, as Barchas brilliantly elucidated, in NA.
Well, it was my lucky day, because it turns out that my hunch was spot-on. Here is the icing on the allusive layer cake, the factoid which ties _all_ loose ends together, which I just found in Debrett's Baronetage, at p. 139:
"Hoskyns, of Harwood, Co.Hereford. 18 Dec. 1676. John Hoskynswas M.P. for Hereford, 1602 and 1613; /m. /Margery, da. of William Jones, of Llanwarren, co. Hereford, esq., by whom, amongst other children, he had, John, his youngest son, a serjeant-at-law, who was returned to the house of commons, for the same city of Hereford, 1627, in which it appears he had previously sat; because, it is related, that he was committed to the Tower of London, by order of king James 1., for a speech made in that house, reflecting upon mercenary Scottish favourites. He /m. /Benedicta, da. of Robert Moyle, of Buckwell, co. Kent, esq., by whom he had issue, /Benedicta, /m. John Markey, of Alton, co. Hereford, esq., and a son and heir,
1. Sir Bennet, created a bart., 18 Dec. 1676, /m. /ANNE, DA. OF SIR HENRY BINGLEY, of Temple Coombe, co. Somerset, knt., auditor of the exchequer, by whom he had issue, //Sir John, 2d bart. & William, of Kingston; and
2. Sir John, F.R.S., was knighted during the lifetime of his father, sat as member for Hereford during the reign of James II., and was a master in the court of Chancery, /m. /Jane, da. of sir Gabriel Law, of Newark, co. Gloucester, knt., (A LINEAL DESCENDANT, BY HIS MOTHER'S FAMILY, FROM WALTER, LORD HUNGERFORD, K.G., in the reign of Henry VI.,) by Anne, da, of sir Stephen Soame, of Haidon, co. Essex, knt, by whom he had, besides other issue, 1. Sir Bennet, 3d bart. & 2. Sir HUNGERFORD, 4th bart.....who, while a younger brother, served in several campaigns under the duke of Marlborough; m. MARY, DA. OF THEOPHILUS LEIGH, OF ADLESTROP, CO. GLOUCESTER, ESQ. (BY MARY BRYDGES, SISTER TO THE DUKE OF CHANDOS)..... " [END OF DEBRETT'S EXCERPT]
The "Walter, Lord Hungerford during the reign of Henry VI" who is named by Debrett is described as follows in Wikipedia: "Walter Hungerford was the youngest son of Robert Hungerford, 3rd Baron Hungerford
And that last-named "Walter, Lord Hungerford (1503-1540)" was _exactly_ the same guy whom Barchas devotes a great deal of ink to in her article, indeed he is none other than "The Real Bluebeard of Bath" in her article title!
I capitalized, for emphasis, three parts of that quotation from Debrett's---first, the reference to a woman named "Anne BINGLEY" who married Sir Bennet Hungerford--okay, that surname was not rare, and could be pure coincidence; but second, and clearly _not_ coincidental, this same Walter, Lord Hungerford, had a descendant, Jane Law, who was the mother of the _same_ Sir Hungerford Hoskyns, 4th bart., who married Mary Leigh, as Derrick stated, above!
And now I will show how the veiled allusion to Lord Hungerford and to Jane Austen's own matrilineal ancestry in NA is more than a genealogical parlor game, which relates to my _third_ capitalized bit from the above Debrett's listing, the marriage of Mary Leigh to Sir Hungerford Hoskyns, 4th bart.
Even if there had been no actual family linkage between "Farleigh Hungerford" and "Sir Hungerford Hoskyns", even if this had been just a random coincidence of names, I claim that JA, who knew her _own_ family lineage pretty well, would have seen the wordplay potential of the closeness of these names when she decided to represent Farleigh Hungerford in NA. I know this because I also know that JA was well aware of one extremely important fact about her own Leigh lineage (her "Leigh-niage", if you will), which was directly connected to that same theme of death in childbirth, which I claim is _THE_ central theme of Northanger Abbey. I have argued that Mrs. Tilney is the symbol of all English wives who died in childbirth, the victims of their "Bluebeard" husbands. That was the subject of my own talk at the JASNA AGM, and when I listened to Barchas in November detailing her own wonderful discovery about the wife-killing "Bluebeard" Hungerford husband at Farleigh Hungerford, I knew that this fit perfectly with my own "Bluebeard" exegesis of NA, based on the completely different death in childbirth theme.
And in support of my argument at my AGM talk, I also pointed out one of the very personal connections of this death in childbirth theme to Jane Austen's own family---that same Mary Leigh (nee Brydges) whom you mentioned, above, Derrick----the wife of Theophilus, and great grandmother of JA herself---died in childbirth after bearing her twelfth child!
But what I did not realize till this morning, when I did the sleuthing which I've outlined above, was that JA may very well have selected Farleigh Hungerford, and in particular its most notorious resident, the wife-killer Walter Hungerford, as a crucial allusive source for NA, precisely _BECAUSE_ she already was well aware of the above described genealogical connection---as per my third capitalized section---of JA's _own_ maternal great grandmother (who died in a wifely victim of childbirth) to her "sisters" in wifely victimhood, the three wives of that evil Walter Hungerford!
And, by the way, you will want to read P. 122 of the current Persuasions for Barchas's detailed account of how things went down for Walter Hungerford and, in particular, his third wife, Elizabeth, who managed to survive him and even prosper after his death!
I just rescanned Barchas's article as carefully as I could, and I still cannot find any indication that she realized the connection of the Hungerford family to the Austen family, and I know that she did not draw any connection between the "Bluebeard" antics of Walter Hungerford and the death in childbirth theme which I have described in NA.
So I claim that when you combine Barchas's original discoveries from her article together with my own original additions to same, you get an enormous synergy, which brings out in 3-D a particularly important example of what Jocelyn Harris called "Jane Austen's Art of Memory"!
Cheers, ARNIE
Monday, June 20, 2011
Letter 30: The (Un)faithful Maria's (Un)happy Event
With the help of two of Diana Birchall's speculations back in 2006, I think I have figured out a bit more about the Payne Mystery in Letters 28 and 30, which I discussed in my previous post.
Letter 28 jokes about "the Faithful Maria" Payne's feeling more certain of "the happy Event", and Letter 30 jokes about "to what noblemen [Mr. Payne] bequeathed his four daughters in marriage", and now I think that "happy Event" in the former is one and the same thing as the hypothetical marriage of Maria--who was the eldest of Mr. Payne's four daughters---in the latter! Here is how I see it all playing out via JA's clever wordplay.
There are only two places in all of JA's novels where JA refers to a "happy Event".
One is in Ch. 57 of P&P:
"[A letter f]rom Mr. Collins! and what can /he/ have to say?"
"Something very much to the purpose, of course. He begins with congratulations on the approaching nuptials of my eldest daughter, of which, it seems, he has been told by some of the good-natured, gossiping Lucases. I shall not sport with your impatience by reading what he says on that point. What relates to yourself is as follows: 'Having thus offered you the sincere congratulations of Mrs. Collins and myself on this _HAPPY EVENT_, let me now add a short hint on the subject of another; of which we have been advertised by the same authority. Your daughter Elizabeth, it is presumed, will not long bear the name of Bennet after her elder sister has resigned it, and the chosen partner of her fate may be reasonably looked up to as one of the most illustrious personages in this land.'
"Can you possibly guess, Lizzy, who is meant by this? -- 'This young gentleman is blessed, in a peculiar way, with everything the heart of mortal can most desire -- splendid property, noble kindred, and extensive patronage. Yet, in spite of all these temptations, let me warn my cousin Elizabeth, and yourself, of what evils you may incur by a precipitate closure with this gentleman's proposals, which, of course, you will be inclined to take immediate advantage of.'
"Have you any idea, Lizzy, who this gentleman is? But now it comes out --
"'My motive for cautioning you is as follows: we have reason to imagine that his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, does not look on the match with a friendly eye."
"/Mr. Darcy/, you see, is the man! Now, Lizzy, I think I /have/ surprised you. Could he or the Lucases have pitched on any man, within the circle of our acquaintance, whose name would have given the lie more effectually to what they related? Mr. Darcy, who never looks at any woman but to see a blemish, and who probably never looked at /you/ in his life! It is admirable!"
Of course the "happy event" to which Mr. Collins's letter refers is the impending marriage of Bingley and Jane. But what is equally interesting vis a vis Letter 30 and it's reference "to what nobleman" is Mr. Collins's hint about the additional likely marriage of Lizzy and Darcy! After all, it is universally acknowledged among Janeites that Mr. Darcy is both a "nobleman" _and_ a "noble man", and a quick word search in the text of the novel reveals that Darcy has a "noble mien" and a "noble" estate, and also, in Ch. 54, bears Bingley's sitting next to Jane with "noble indifference"! With these five essential aspects of nobility covered, we can safely aver that Mr. Darcy is in fact the "quintessence" of nobility!
So it seems clear to me from all of the above that part of the background meaning of JA's jokes about Maria Payne and her family in Letters 28 & 30 is to point to the romantic climax of P&P.
And that's exactly where Diana's catch from 2006 kicks in, to make it _doubly_ clear, because Diana had observed that "the faithful Maria" sounds an awful lot like the narrative description of Caroline Bingley as Darcy's "faithful assistant" when she chimes in to get a dig at Lizzy on the topic of the truly accomplished woman:
" 'Oh! certainly,' cried his _FAITHFUL ASSISTANT_, "no one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with."
When you put these two bits of allusive wordplay together, one from Letter 28 and one from Letter 30, there can be no reasonable doubt that this pointing to P&P (which JA was clearly still revising at that time) is all entirely intentional on JA's part.
And.....it turns out that my suggestion to Diana back in 2006 that Maria Bertram might be an allusive source behind "the faithful Maria" _also_ gets a boost, from the _second_ of the two references to "happy event" in JA's novels, in Ch. 9 of MP:
Mr. Crawford smiled his acquiescence, and stepping forward to Maria, said, in a voice which she only could hear, “I do not like to see Miss Bertram so near the altar.”
Starting, the lady instinctively moved a step or two, but recovering herself in a moment, affected to laugh, and asked him, in a tone not much louder, “If he would give her away?”
“I am afraid I should do it very awkwardly,” was his reply, with a look of meaning.
Julia, joining them at the moment, carried on the joke.
“Upon my word, it is really a pity that it should not take place directly, if we had but a proper licence, for here we are altogether, and nothing in the world could be more snug and pleasant.” And she talked and laughed about it with so little caution as to catch the comprehension of Mr. Rushworth and his mother, and expose her sister to the whispered gallantries of her lover, while Mrs. Rushworth spoke with proper smiles and dignity of its being a most _HAPPY EVENT_ to her whenever it took place.
However, where "happy event" was accurate in P&P, here in MP, the meaning of "happy event" is completely ironic and dark. The "happy event' is the impending marriage of (the anything but faithful) Maria to Mr. Rushworth, but here there is no real happiness at all, in this doomed mismatch. What a tragic ironic the reader already knows, which is that happiness will not be in either Maria's or Mr. R's future, because the only man to whom Maria is actually faithful is Henry Crawford!
Now, I am not claiming that JA already had a draft of Mansfield Park in the works in 1800 when she wrote Letters 28 & 30--rather, I think that when JA conceived MP in 1813 or thereabouts, she still had, in the back of her mind, the idea of a Maria who is both faithful and unfaithful, with the real life Maria Payne and her life at Daylesford in 1800 having somehow remained vivid in JA's fertile imagination!
And, finally, as to what sort of veiled commentary this all constitutes about the real life Maria Payne, who was over 50 at the time JA wrote Letters 28 & 30 (whereas two of her three younger sisters were only around 30 at the time)--I think Diana's guess is a shrewd one---i.e., that Maria's role at Daylesford was something like that of Caroline Bingley at Netherfield. I would only add that equally apt would be an even less savory representation in JA's novels, and one a lot closer in age-----the middle aged unmarried Mrs. Norris at Mansfield Park, playing the role of "surrogate wife" to the master of the house.
Either way, not a flattering portrait at all!
And therefore, perhaps, just perhaps....JA had one additional bit of wordplay fun in MP, when she wrote:
"...though Mansfield Park might have some pains [Paynes?], Portsmouth could have no pleasures."
Cheers, ARNIE
Letter 28 jokes about "the Faithful Maria" Payne's feeling more certain of "the happy Event", and Letter 30 jokes about "to what noblemen [Mr. Payne] bequeathed his four daughters in marriage", and now I think that "happy Event" in the former is one and the same thing as the hypothetical marriage of Maria--who was the eldest of Mr. Payne's four daughters---in the latter! Here is how I see it all playing out via JA's clever wordplay.
There are only two places in all of JA's novels where JA refers to a "happy Event".
One is in Ch. 57 of P&P:
"[A letter f]rom Mr. Collins! and what can /he/ have to say?"
"Something very much to the purpose, of course. He begins with congratulations on the approaching nuptials of my eldest daughter, of which, it seems, he has been told by some of the good-natured, gossiping Lucases. I shall not sport with your impatience by reading what he says on that point. What relates to yourself is as follows: 'Having thus offered you the sincere congratulations of Mrs. Collins and myself on this _HAPPY EVENT_, let me now add a short hint on the subject of another; of which we have been advertised by the same authority. Your daughter Elizabeth, it is presumed, will not long bear the name of Bennet after her elder sister has resigned it, and the chosen partner of her fate may be reasonably looked up to as one of the most illustrious personages in this land.'
"Can you possibly guess, Lizzy, who is meant by this? -- 'This young gentleman is blessed, in a peculiar way, with everything the heart of mortal can most desire -- splendid property, noble kindred, and extensive patronage. Yet, in spite of all these temptations, let me warn my cousin Elizabeth, and yourself, of what evils you may incur by a precipitate closure with this gentleman's proposals, which, of course, you will be inclined to take immediate advantage of.'
"Have you any idea, Lizzy, who this gentleman is? But now it comes out --
"'My motive for cautioning you is as follows: we have reason to imagine that his aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, does not look on the match with a friendly eye."
"/Mr. Darcy/, you see, is the man! Now, Lizzy, I think I /have/ surprised you. Could he or the Lucases have pitched on any man, within the circle of our acquaintance, whose name would have given the lie more effectually to what they related? Mr. Darcy, who never looks at any woman but to see a blemish, and who probably never looked at /you/ in his life! It is admirable!"
Of course the "happy event" to which Mr. Collins's letter refers is the impending marriage of Bingley and Jane. But what is equally interesting vis a vis Letter 30 and it's reference "to what nobleman" is Mr. Collins's hint about the additional likely marriage of Lizzy and Darcy! After all, it is universally acknowledged among Janeites that Mr. Darcy is both a "nobleman" _and_ a "noble man", and a quick word search in the text of the novel reveals that Darcy has a "noble mien" and a "noble" estate, and also, in Ch. 54, bears Bingley's sitting next to Jane with "noble indifference"! With these five essential aspects of nobility covered, we can safely aver that Mr. Darcy is in fact the "quintessence" of nobility!
So it seems clear to me from all of the above that part of the background meaning of JA's jokes about Maria Payne and her family in Letters 28 & 30 is to point to the romantic climax of P&P.
And that's exactly where Diana's catch from 2006 kicks in, to make it _doubly_ clear, because Diana had observed that "the faithful Maria" sounds an awful lot like the narrative description of Caroline Bingley as Darcy's "faithful assistant" when she chimes in to get a dig at Lizzy on the topic of the truly accomplished woman:
" 'Oh! certainly,' cried his _FAITHFUL ASSISTANT_, "no one can be really esteemed accomplished who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with."
When you put these two bits of allusive wordplay together, one from Letter 28 and one from Letter 30, there can be no reasonable doubt that this pointing to P&P (which JA was clearly still revising at that time) is all entirely intentional on JA's part.
And.....it turns out that my suggestion to Diana back in 2006 that Maria Bertram might be an allusive source behind "the faithful Maria" _also_ gets a boost, from the _second_ of the two references to "happy event" in JA's novels, in Ch. 9 of MP:
Mr. Crawford smiled his acquiescence, and stepping forward to Maria, said, in a voice which she only could hear, “I do not like to see Miss Bertram so near the altar.”
Starting, the lady instinctively moved a step or two, but recovering herself in a moment, affected to laugh, and asked him, in a tone not much louder, “If he would give her away?”
“I am afraid I should do it very awkwardly,” was his reply, with a look of meaning.
Julia, joining them at the moment, carried on the joke.
“Upon my word, it is really a pity that it should not take place directly, if we had but a proper licence, for here we are altogether, and nothing in the world could be more snug and pleasant.” And she talked and laughed about it with so little caution as to catch the comprehension of Mr. Rushworth and his mother, and expose her sister to the whispered gallantries of her lover, while Mrs. Rushworth spoke with proper smiles and dignity of its being a most _HAPPY EVENT_ to her whenever it took place.
However, where "happy event" was accurate in P&P, here in MP, the meaning of "happy event" is completely ironic and dark. The "happy event' is the impending marriage of (the anything but faithful) Maria to Mr. Rushworth, but here there is no real happiness at all, in this doomed mismatch. What a tragic ironic the reader already knows, which is that happiness will not be in either Maria's or Mr. R's future, because the only man to whom Maria is actually faithful is Henry Crawford!
Now, I am not claiming that JA already had a draft of Mansfield Park in the works in 1800 when she wrote Letters 28 & 30--rather, I think that when JA conceived MP in 1813 or thereabouts, she still had, in the back of her mind, the idea of a Maria who is both faithful and unfaithful, with the real life Maria Payne and her life at Daylesford in 1800 having somehow remained vivid in JA's fertile imagination!
And, finally, as to what sort of veiled commentary this all constitutes about the real life Maria Payne, who was over 50 at the time JA wrote Letters 28 & 30 (whereas two of her three younger sisters were only around 30 at the time)--I think Diana's guess is a shrewd one---i.e., that Maria's role at Daylesford was something like that of Caroline Bingley at Netherfield. I would only add that equally apt would be an even less savory representation in JA's novels, and one a lot closer in age-----the middle aged unmarried Mrs. Norris at Mansfield Park, playing the role of "surrogate wife" to the master of the house.
Either way, not a flattering portrait at all!
And therefore, perhaps, just perhaps....JA had one additional bit of wordplay fun in MP, when she wrote:
"...though Mansfield Park might have some pains [Paynes?], Portsmouth could have no pleasures."
Cheers, ARNIE
Jane Austen's Letter 30 cryptically pointing back to cryptic passage in Letter 28 about the Payne Family
Several years ago, Diana Birchall wrote a very interesting article about Warren Hastings entitled something like "Gold Mohrs and Palanquins" for Jane Austen's Regency World, in which, among many other points, she mentioned, in passing, Maria Payne, who was a companion to Mrs. Warren Hastings during the latter's old age.
Diana and I had, back when she wrote the article (in 2006, I believe), tossed ideas back and forth very briefly about the following very cryptic passage which begins Letter 28, dated December 1, 1800, which I had noticed for the first time and brought to her attention:
“Shall you expect to hear from me on Wednesday or not?-I think you will, or I should not write, as the three days & half which have passed since my last letter was sent, have not produced many materials towards filling another sheet of paper.-But like Mrs. Hastings, " I do not despair "-& you perhaps like the faithful Maria may feel still more certain of the happy Event.”
At the time, as I recall, we were not able to make much of it, and even two weeks ago, I looked at it again and found I had nothing fresh to say about it. Tonight, though, I was startled into recalling the above quoted passage (still fresh in my memory from rereading it two weeks ago) when I read, this evening, the _following_ parallel passage which begins Letter 30 dated January 3, 1800:
"The "perhaps" which concluded my last letter being only a "perhaps," will not occasion your being overpowered with surprise, I dare say, if you /should/ receive this before Tuesday, which, unless circumstances are very perverse, will be the case. I received yours with much general philanthropy, and still more peculiar good will, two days ago; and I suppose I need not tell you that it was very long, being written on a foolscap sheet, and very entertaining, being written by you. Mr. Payne has been dead long enough for Henry to be out of mourning for him before his last visit, though we knew nothing of it till about that time. Why he died, or of what complaint, or to what noblemen he bequeathed his four daughters in marriage, we have not heard."
Hmmm....how very strange that Letter 28 and Letter 30, written less than 5 weeks apart, _both_ begin with an apparently absurdist discussion about (a) durations between letters passing between the Austen sisters, and also about (b) the lengths of their letters, and then _both_ (c) also lurch abruptly into an apparent non sequitur about a subject never previously addressed by JA in any prior letter, i.e., the Payne family.....
I had never connected these two introductory epistolary passages before, but I reaized right away that in some way they _must_ be connected....but how??
First, it drove me back to Le Faye's Bio Index, and then to my old notes about Diana's article, to refresh my dim memory about Mr. Payne, both his life and his demise. What I learned from Le Faye is that Mr. Payne died suddenly and intestate (i.e., without a Will) on December 7, 1800, just 6 days after JA began Letter 28 writing about "the faithful Maria" who "may feel still more certain of the _happy_ Event."
That is very curious, don't you think? What does JA mean, exactly, by "we knew nothing of it till about that time"? Is "it" Mr. Payne's death? And when is "about that time"? Is she saying that she knew about Mr. Payne being mortally ill _before_ he died, or after? It seems that JA and CEA know what JA meant, but it seems very muddy to me, and I wonder if that was intentionally so, JA did not want to be too precise, in case other eyes at Godmersham than CEA's read Letter 30.
Apparently Henry Austen has been in mourning for Mr. Payne, because Henry is Eliza's husband, and Mr. Payne was (as Le Faye tells us) Warren Hastings's old friend, and Eliza of course was (officially) Warren Hastings's goddaughter. If JA really did not know about Mr. Payne being ill when she wrote Letter 28 on December 1, it seems to me a very improbable coincidence for JA to suddenly write about this man's daughter so cryptically on December 1, only to have him suddenly drop dead six days later!
No, surely JA and CEA first heard (from Henry, no doubt) that he was dying, _then_ JA wrote Letter 28, _then_ JA heard the news of his actual death.
And....bigger question----why is JA making this jarringly tasteless joke about this man bequeathing his daughters to noblemen? Especially when you consider that Maria Payne is one of those four daughters, and that she is as attached to Daylesford as Harriet Smith was to Hartfield during the first part of Emma, and JA has written that weird thing about Maria Payne and "the happy Event" in Letter 28.
And...perhaps the seemingly silly discussion of durations between letters, and lengths of letters, in some way is a veiled reference to the perhaps sensitive subject of the chronology of these letters in relation to Mr. Payne's final illness and death? Again, maybe JA is conveying information to CEA in a coded fashion.
My sense is that Le Faye recognized this connection between these opening sections of Letters 28 and 30, and all this "smoky" fuzziness on JA's part, and Le Faye was hoping nobody else would notice it. But, being pragmatic, she knew that perhaps some stubborn readers (like myself) might, and then she did not want anyone to make any unpleasant inferences, such as inferring that Mr. Payne's death was not _that_ sudden, and that JA and CEA had been informed of his being mortally ill at least a week or two before he actually died, and therefore "the happy Event" JA was suggesting that Maria (Payne) was feeling "still more certain" about was her own father's imminent _death_! That would not be borne!
Except I really do think it is the most logical inference from the material at hand. Certainly it fits with JA's joke about the daughters being bequeathed to noblemen, which would, according to the black humor of the joke, be a "happy Event" for Maria!
And Le Faye's bio index also revealed that Mr. Payne had, during his life, been an old friend of Warren Hastings, so it would make sense that the Austens would pay close attention to the death of this man, who, Le Faye also tells us, had connections via his deceased mother, to the Royal Family!--Hence JA's wisecrack about bequeathing his daughters to noblemen.
And.... it also just occurs to me as I write this, that there is even blacker humor in JA's joke. Why? Because Le Faye's Bio Index emphasizes Mr. Payne's very sudden death (so sudden, we are to infer, that he had no time to make a Will). And the clear implication is that because he was intestate, his estate, a la Jarndyce v Jarndyce, took 6+ years to settle, and during that long duration of his probate estate, his unfortunate wife apparently was burdened with the obligation to pay for the upkeep of the royal menagerie for that whole time, because that apparently had been _his_ obligation while alive, although I have no idea why the Royal Family did not pay its own bills for its own menagerie.....
Anyway, the darker humor of JA"s joke is based on the conceit of a man bequeathing his daughters to noblemen, as if his daughters were _farm_ animals, which is darkly funny if the delay in estate settlement apparently caused his wife to have to shell out big bucks to pay for the upkeep of _royal_ animals.
In short, JA was never far away from her dark vision of Englishwomen being treated like farms animals under English marriage and family laws and customs.
In summary, then, Le Faye's handling of all of this is very strange, and that fits with the fact that Mr. Payne was, as I mentioned above, an old friend of Warren Hastings. After all, if memory serves me right, Le Faye took a big bite out of David Nokes and another well known Austen scholar some years ago, because they dared to suggest what has been rumored for over 200 years by many people, i.e., that Eliza Hancock de Feuillide Austen was Warren Hastings's illegitimate daughter, sired on JA's paternal aunt Philadelphia. So it would make sense that Le Faye would be extra vigilant about anything unsavory in JA's Letters (which of course were long in the public domain) which pertained to Hastings, and would, if she could, divert readers from any sort of inference that JA was not kindly disposed toward Warren Hastings.
Of course, as I have blogged and posted in these groups, I am convinced that JA was _not at all_ kindly disposed toward Warren Hastings, despite the sugar coated mythology to the contrary that has been promulgated over two centuries by the likes of Le Faye.
Very interesting, as Arte Johnson would have said......
Cheers, ARNIE
sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com
P.S. And, in light of all the above, should we make anything of the following last P.S. to Letter 66?:
"The Portsmouth paper gave a melancholy history of a poor mad woman, escaped from confinement, who said her husband and daughter, of the name of _Payne_, lived at Ashford, in Kent. Do you own them?"
Le Faye has no Bio Index entry for a Payne family living in Kent. Perhaps the reason is that there was no such family, and that there was no such "melancholy history" in real life at all, but that this was JA's (characteristic) sort of mini-fantasy (like "Mr. Floor who is _low_ in our estimation"), a kind of "bookend" to her "faithful Maria" confabulation in Letter 28, prompted by some news about Maria Payne?
Diana and I had, back when she wrote the article (in 2006, I believe), tossed ideas back and forth very briefly about the following very cryptic passage which begins Letter 28, dated December 1, 1800, which I had noticed for the first time and brought to her attention:
“Shall you expect to hear from me on Wednesday or not?-I think you will, or I should not write, as the three days & half which have passed since my last letter was sent, have not produced many materials towards filling another sheet of paper.-But like Mrs. Hastings, " I do not despair "-& you perhaps like the faithful Maria may feel still more certain of the happy Event.”
At the time, as I recall, we were not able to make much of it, and even two weeks ago, I looked at it again and found I had nothing fresh to say about it. Tonight, though, I was startled into recalling the above quoted passage (still fresh in my memory from rereading it two weeks ago) when I read, this evening, the _following_ parallel passage which begins Letter 30 dated January 3, 1800:
"The "perhaps" which concluded my last letter being only a "perhaps," will not occasion your being overpowered with surprise, I dare say, if you /should/ receive this before Tuesday, which, unless circumstances are very perverse, will be the case. I received yours with much general philanthropy, and still more peculiar good will, two days ago; and I suppose I need not tell you that it was very long, being written on a foolscap sheet, and very entertaining, being written by you. Mr. Payne has been dead long enough for Henry to be out of mourning for him before his last visit, though we knew nothing of it till about that time. Why he died, or of what complaint, or to what noblemen he bequeathed his four daughters in marriage, we have not heard."
Hmmm....how very strange that Letter 28 and Letter 30, written less than 5 weeks apart, _both_ begin with an apparently absurdist discussion about (a) durations between letters passing between the Austen sisters, and also about (b) the lengths of their letters, and then _both_ (c) also lurch abruptly into an apparent non sequitur about a subject never previously addressed by JA in any prior letter, i.e., the Payne family.....
I had never connected these two introductory epistolary passages before, but I reaized right away that in some way they _must_ be connected....but how??
First, it drove me back to Le Faye's Bio Index, and then to my old notes about Diana's article, to refresh my dim memory about Mr. Payne, both his life and his demise. What I learned from Le Faye is that Mr. Payne died suddenly and intestate (i.e., without a Will) on December 7, 1800, just 6 days after JA began Letter 28 writing about "the faithful Maria" who "may feel still more certain of the _happy_ Event."
That is very curious, don't you think? What does JA mean, exactly, by "we knew nothing of it till about that time"? Is "it" Mr. Payne's death? And when is "about that time"? Is she saying that she knew about Mr. Payne being mortally ill _before_ he died, or after? It seems that JA and CEA know what JA meant, but it seems very muddy to me, and I wonder if that was intentionally so, JA did not want to be too precise, in case other eyes at Godmersham than CEA's read Letter 30.
Apparently Henry Austen has been in mourning for Mr. Payne, because Henry is Eliza's husband, and Mr. Payne was (as Le Faye tells us) Warren Hastings's old friend, and Eliza of course was (officially) Warren Hastings's goddaughter. If JA really did not know about Mr. Payne being ill when she wrote Letter 28 on December 1, it seems to me a very improbable coincidence for JA to suddenly write about this man's daughter so cryptically on December 1, only to have him suddenly drop dead six days later!
No, surely JA and CEA first heard (from Henry, no doubt) that he was dying, _then_ JA wrote Letter 28, _then_ JA heard the news of his actual death.
And....bigger question----why is JA making this jarringly tasteless joke about this man bequeathing his daughters to noblemen? Especially when you consider that Maria Payne is one of those four daughters, and that she is as attached to Daylesford as Harriet Smith was to Hartfield during the first part of Emma, and JA has written that weird thing about Maria Payne and "the happy Event" in Letter 28.
And...perhaps the seemingly silly discussion of durations between letters, and lengths of letters, in some way is a veiled reference to the perhaps sensitive subject of the chronology of these letters in relation to Mr. Payne's final illness and death? Again, maybe JA is conveying information to CEA in a coded fashion.
My sense is that Le Faye recognized this connection between these opening sections of Letters 28 and 30, and all this "smoky" fuzziness on JA's part, and Le Faye was hoping nobody else would notice it. But, being pragmatic, she knew that perhaps some stubborn readers (like myself) might, and then she did not want anyone to make any unpleasant inferences, such as inferring that Mr. Payne's death was not _that_ sudden, and that JA and CEA had been informed of his being mortally ill at least a week or two before he actually died, and therefore "the happy Event" JA was suggesting that Maria (Payne) was feeling "still more certain" about was her own father's imminent _death_! That would not be borne!
Except I really do think it is the most logical inference from the material at hand. Certainly it fits with JA's joke about the daughters being bequeathed to noblemen, which would, according to the black humor of the joke, be a "happy Event" for Maria!
And Le Faye's bio index also revealed that Mr. Payne had, during his life, been an old friend of Warren Hastings, so it would make sense that the Austens would pay close attention to the death of this man, who, Le Faye also tells us, had connections via his deceased mother, to the Royal Family!--Hence JA's wisecrack about bequeathing his daughters to noblemen.
And.... it also just occurs to me as I write this, that there is even blacker humor in JA's joke. Why? Because Le Faye's Bio Index emphasizes Mr. Payne's very sudden death (so sudden, we are to infer, that he had no time to make a Will). And the clear implication is that because he was intestate, his estate, a la Jarndyce v Jarndyce, took 6+ years to settle, and during that long duration of his probate estate, his unfortunate wife apparently was burdened with the obligation to pay for the upkeep of the royal menagerie for that whole time, because that apparently had been _his_ obligation while alive, although I have no idea why the Royal Family did not pay its own bills for its own menagerie.....
Anyway, the darker humor of JA"s joke is based on the conceit of a man bequeathing his daughters to noblemen, as if his daughters were _farm_ animals, which is darkly funny if the delay in estate settlement apparently caused his wife to have to shell out big bucks to pay for the upkeep of _royal_ animals.
In short, JA was never far away from her dark vision of Englishwomen being treated like farms animals under English marriage and family laws and customs.
In summary, then, Le Faye's handling of all of this is very strange, and that fits with the fact that Mr. Payne was, as I mentioned above, an old friend of Warren Hastings. After all, if memory serves me right, Le Faye took a big bite out of David Nokes and another well known Austen scholar some years ago, because they dared to suggest what has been rumored for over 200 years by many people, i.e., that Eliza Hancock de Feuillide Austen was Warren Hastings's illegitimate daughter, sired on JA's paternal aunt Philadelphia. So it would make sense that Le Faye would be extra vigilant about anything unsavory in JA's Letters (which of course were long in the public domain) which pertained to Hastings, and would, if she could, divert readers from any sort of inference that JA was not kindly disposed toward Warren Hastings.
Of course, as I have blogged and posted in these groups, I am convinced that JA was _not at all_ kindly disposed toward Warren Hastings, despite the sugar coated mythology to the contrary that has been promulgated over two centuries by the likes of Le Faye.
Very interesting, as Arte Johnson would have said......
Cheers, ARNIE
sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com
P.S. And, in light of all the above, should we make anything of the following last P.S. to Letter 66?:
"The Portsmouth paper gave a melancholy history of a poor mad woman, escaped from confinement, who said her husband and daughter, of the name of _Payne_, lived at Ashford, in Kent. Do you own them?"
Le Faye has no Bio Index entry for a Payne family living in Kent. Perhaps the reason is that there was no such family, and that there was no such "melancholy history" in real life at all, but that this was JA's (characteristic) sort of mini-fantasy (like "Mr. Floor who is _low_ in our estimation"), a kind of "bookend" to her "faithful Maria" confabulation in Letter 28, prompted by some news about Maria Payne?
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Non-Dwelling on My Fanny's Hill Street Blues
As collateral benefit from my research earlier today into the “improvement” and “capability” wordplay of P&P and MP, I noticed something else for the first time today, which is the common thread in the following four short excerpts from the last three chapters of MP:
Ch. 46: To-morrow! to leave Portsmouth to-morrow! She was, she felt she was, in the greatest danger of being exquisitely happy, while so many were miserable. The evil which brought such good to her! She dreaded lest she should learn to be insensible of it. To be going so soon, sent for so kindly, sent for as a comfort, and with leave to take Susan, was altogether such a combination of blessings as set her heart in a glow, and for a time seemed to distance every pain, and make her incapable of suitably sharing the distress even of those whose distress she thought of most. Julia's elopement could affect her comparatively but little; she was amazed and shocked; but it could not occupy her, could not _DWELL_ on her mind. She was obliged to call herself to think of it, and acknowledge it to be terrible and grievous, or it was escaping her, in the midst of all the agitating pressing joyful cares attending this summons to herself.
Ch. 47:She had met him, he said, with a serious—certainly a serious—even an agitated air; but before he had been able to speak one intelligible sentence, she had introduced the subject in a manner which he owned had shocked him. "'I heard you were in town,' said she; 'I wanted to see you. Let us talk over this sad business. What can equal the folly of our two relations?' I could not answer, but I believe my looks spoke. She felt reproved. Sometimes how quick to feel! With a graver look and voice she then added, 'I do not mean to defend Henry at your sister's expense.' So she began, but how she went on, Fanny, is not fit, is hardly fit to be repeated to you. I cannot recall all her words. I would not _DWELL_**upon them if I could. Their substance was great anger at the /folly/ of each….
Ch. 47: ….all this together most grievously convinced me that I had never understood her before, and that, as far as related to mind, it had been the creature of my own imagination, not Miss Crawford, that I had been too apt to _DWELL_ on for many months past. That, perhaps, it was best for me; I had less to regret in sacrificing a friendship, feelings, hopes which must, at any rate, have been torn from me now. And yet, that I must and would confess that, could I have restored her to what she had appeared to me before, I would infinitely prefer any increase of the pain of parting, for the sake of carrying with me the right of tenderness and esteem….
Ch. 48:Let other pens _DWELL_ on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest. My Fanny, indeed, at this very time, I have the satisfaction of knowing, must have been happy in spite of everything. She must have been a happy creature in spite of all that she felt, or thought she felt, for the distress of those around her. She had sources of delight that must force their way. She was returned to Mansfield Park, she was useful, she was beloved; she was safe from Mr. Crawford; and when Sir Thomas came back she had every proof that could be given in his then melancholy state of spirits, of his perfect approbation and increased regard; and happy as all this must make her, she would still have been happy without any of it, for Edmund was no longer the dupe of Miss Crawford.
So, within the short space of a little more than two chapters, we have four usages of the word “dwell”, and all of them expressed in the negative, in terms, respectively, of incapability, avoidance, regret, and refusal:
INCAPABILITY: When Fanny learns that Edward will pick her up the next day, the Bertram family scandals could _not_ dwell on her mind, she had to dutifully force herself to think about them.
AVOIDANCE: Then, Edmund tells Fanny that he would rather _not_ dwell upon what Mary said to him about the Maria/Henry fracas.
REGRET: Then Edmund regrets having been _too_ apt to dwell upon an idealization of Mary Crawford.
REFUSAL:And finally the narrator joins this “dwelling” chorus by _refusing_ to dwell on the Bertram family’s guilt and misery, leaving it to “other pens”.
So it’s not a happy ending, so much as a stuffing down of uncomfortable memories and feelings.
“Let other pens dwell” is of course more famous than the other three combined, because it is a rare JA narrative intrusion. But no prior commentator I can find has connected these four passages before and spotted “dwell” as the link. Furthermore, this blurring of the line between narrator and heroine, viatheir shared “non-dwelling”, is compounded by the narrator referring to “My Fanny”, in the next sentence.
It’s almost as though the narrator _is_ Fanny Price Bertram, but at age 40, thinking back twenty years, and writing the story of how she met and married Edmund, editing out the worst parts.
Which…..is exactly the temporal scheme of another very famous English novel with another famous heroine named Fanny, who tells _her_ story as a reminiscence of _her_ “coming out” ---Fanny Hill!
Which perhaps is why there are four references to the _hill_ at Sotherton, and also why Mrs. Grant says to Mary Crawford early in MP:"Ah! You have been in a bad school for matrimony, in _Hill_ Street."
And also why Mrs. Norris says: “And when we got to the bottom of Sandcroft _Hill_, what do you think I did?”(especially when we realize that one of the awful “clients” Fanny Hill must endure at Mrs. Cole’s is named Mr. _Crofts_).
And perhaps the most telling parallel of all in a novel with an infamous pun about “rears and vices”, consider the scene near the end of Fanny Hill involving Fanny’s horror at witnessing homosexual sex, vis a vis the “business” (that vague word is repeated twice) that Henry transacts with William at Hill Street, described in a passage that teems with Freudian innuendoes:
“[Henry’s] last journey to London had been undertaken with no other view than that of introducing her brother in _Hill_ Street, and prevailing on the Admiral to exert whatever interest he might have for getting him on. This had been his business. He had communicated it to no creature: he had not breathed a syllable of it even to Mary; while uncertain of the issue, he could not have borne any participation of his feelings, but this had been his business; and he spoke with such a glow of what his solicitude had been, and used such strong expressions, was so abounding in the /deepest/ /interest/, in /twofold/ /motives/, in /views/ /and/ /wishes/ /more/ /than/ /could/ /be/ /told/, that Fanny could not have remained insensible of his drift, had she been able to attend.”
Fanny could not have remained insensible of Henry’s drift, and, I suggest, neither can we any longer.
Cheers, ARNIE
Ch. 46: To-morrow! to leave Portsmouth to-morrow! She was, she felt she was, in the greatest danger of being exquisitely happy, while so many were miserable. The evil which brought such good to her! She dreaded lest she should learn to be insensible of it. To be going so soon, sent for so kindly, sent for as a comfort, and with leave to take Susan, was altogether such a combination of blessings as set her heart in a glow, and for a time seemed to distance every pain, and make her incapable of suitably sharing the distress even of those whose distress she thought of most. Julia's elopement could affect her comparatively but little; she was amazed and shocked; but it could not occupy her, could not _DWELL_ on her mind. She was obliged to call herself to think of it, and acknowledge it to be terrible and grievous, or it was escaping her, in the midst of all the agitating pressing joyful cares attending this summons to herself.
Ch. 47:She had met him, he said, with a serious—certainly a serious—even an agitated air; but before he had been able to speak one intelligible sentence, she had introduced the subject in a manner which he owned had shocked him. "'I heard you were in town,' said she; 'I wanted to see you. Let us talk over this sad business. What can equal the folly of our two relations?' I could not answer, but I believe my looks spoke. She felt reproved. Sometimes how quick to feel! With a graver look and voice she then added, 'I do not mean to defend Henry at your sister's expense.' So she began, but how she went on, Fanny, is not fit, is hardly fit to be repeated to you. I cannot recall all her words. I would not _DWELL_**upon them if I could. Their substance was great anger at the /folly/ of each….
Ch. 47: ….all this together most grievously convinced me that I had never understood her before, and that, as far as related to mind, it had been the creature of my own imagination, not Miss Crawford, that I had been too apt to _DWELL_ on for many months past. That, perhaps, it was best for me; I had less to regret in sacrificing a friendship, feelings, hopes which must, at any rate, have been torn from me now. And yet, that I must and would confess that, could I have restored her to what she had appeared to me before, I would infinitely prefer any increase of the pain of parting, for the sake of carrying with me the right of tenderness and esteem….
Ch. 48:Let other pens _DWELL_ on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest. My Fanny, indeed, at this very time, I have the satisfaction of knowing, must have been happy in spite of everything. She must have been a happy creature in spite of all that she felt, or thought she felt, for the distress of those around her. She had sources of delight that must force their way. She was returned to Mansfield Park, she was useful, she was beloved; she was safe from Mr. Crawford; and when Sir Thomas came back she had every proof that could be given in his then melancholy state of spirits, of his perfect approbation and increased regard; and happy as all this must make her, she would still have been happy without any of it, for Edmund was no longer the dupe of Miss Crawford.
So, within the short space of a little more than two chapters, we have four usages of the word “dwell”, and all of them expressed in the negative, in terms, respectively, of incapability, avoidance, regret, and refusal:
INCAPABILITY: When Fanny learns that Edward will pick her up the next day, the Bertram family scandals could _not_ dwell on her mind, she had to dutifully force herself to think about them.
AVOIDANCE: Then, Edmund tells Fanny that he would rather _not_ dwell upon what Mary said to him about the Maria/Henry fracas.
REGRET: Then Edmund regrets having been _too_ apt to dwell upon an idealization of Mary Crawford.
REFUSAL:And finally the narrator joins this “dwelling” chorus by _refusing_ to dwell on the Bertram family’s guilt and misery, leaving it to “other pens”.
So it’s not a happy ending, so much as a stuffing down of uncomfortable memories and feelings.
“Let other pens dwell” is of course more famous than the other three combined, because it is a rare JA narrative intrusion. But no prior commentator I can find has connected these four passages before and spotted “dwell” as the link. Furthermore, this blurring of the line between narrator and heroine, viatheir shared “non-dwelling”, is compounded by the narrator referring to “My Fanny”, in the next sentence.
It’s almost as though the narrator _is_ Fanny Price Bertram, but at age 40, thinking back twenty years, and writing the story of how she met and married Edmund, editing out the worst parts.
Which…..is exactly the temporal scheme of another very famous English novel with another famous heroine named Fanny, who tells _her_ story as a reminiscence of _her_ “coming out” ---Fanny Hill!
Which perhaps is why there are four references to the _hill_ at Sotherton, and also why Mrs. Grant says to Mary Crawford early in MP:"Ah! You have been in a bad school for matrimony, in _Hill_ Street."
And also why Mrs. Norris says: “And when we got to the bottom of Sandcroft _Hill_, what do you think I did?”(especially when we realize that one of the awful “clients” Fanny Hill must endure at Mrs. Cole’s is named Mr. _Crofts_).
And perhaps the most telling parallel of all in a novel with an infamous pun about “rears and vices”, consider the scene near the end of Fanny Hill involving Fanny’s horror at witnessing homosexual sex, vis a vis the “business” (that vague word is repeated twice) that Henry transacts with William at Hill Street, described in a passage that teems with Freudian innuendoes:
“[Henry’s] last journey to London had been undertaken with no other view than that of introducing her brother in _Hill_ Street, and prevailing on the Admiral to exert whatever interest he might have for getting him on. This had been his business. He had communicated it to no creature: he had not breathed a syllable of it even to Mary; while uncertain of the issue, he could not have borne any participation of his feelings, but this had been his business; and he spoke with such a glow of what his solicitude had been, and used such strong expressions, was so abounding in the /deepest/ /interest/, in /twofold/ /motives/, in /views/ /and/ /wishes/ /more/ /than/ /could/ /be/ /told/, that Fanny could not have remained insensible of his drift, had she been able to attend.”
Fanny could not have remained insensible of Henry’s drift, and, I suggest, neither can we any longer.
Cheers, ARNIE
Darcy's and Lizzy's Mutual "Improvement"....and the "Capability" Crawfords
In Austen L today, Ellen Moody wrote, re: Jane Brown's The Omnipotent Magician: Lancelot 'Capabililty' Brown, 1716-1783:
"This appears to be an worthwhile biography which while it does not replace Dorothy Stroud's "magnificent" Life first published in 1950 and thoroughly revised 25 years later, adds much, if at times Brown slides into novelizing. A full informative review by John Barrell: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article7176032.ece I hope I need not review the connections between this man's work and the aesthetics of landscape and Austen's ironic and celebratory attitudes towards it."
Ellen, thank you for bringing the link for the above review to the group, I read it with great interest.
At first It led me to revisit the way that JA alluded to "Capability" Brown in MP, as Alistair Duckworth so comprehensively discussed 40 years ago, in an article that was expanded into a book, in terms of how the idea of "improvement" of estates and other physical structures becomes a defining battleground between the reckless urbanized improver, Henry Crawford, and the defenders of imperiled ancient nature, Fanny and Edmund.
But, as I refreshed my reading of Duckworth, it also led me to realize that there is even more going on with this motif of "improvement" and "capability" than is treated in Duckworth's excellent and comprehensive analysis of this theme, when one pays even more attention to JA's wordplay than Duckworth already did.
Duckworth, in addition to his well known analysis of the theme of architectural and landscape improvement in JA's novels, takes explicit notice of the usage of the word "capabilities" in Chapter 9 of MP [when the improvement of Sotherton is first discussed by Crawford, Rushworth, et al] and also, elsewhere in his book, Duckworth takes note of the metaphorical meaning in P&P of one usage of the word "improvement" as it pertains to _people_ as opposed to buildings. But he never goes further than that, and I quickly realized that there was much rich ore to be mined in this wordplay vein which neither Duckworth, or anyone else that I could detect after some online searching, had never tapped. So here goes.
IMPROVEMENT AND CAPABILITY IN PRIDE AND PREJUDICE:
First, recall the following very famous passage in Chapter 41 of P&P in this light:
[Lizzy] "....But I think Mr. Darcy _improves_ upon acquaintance." "Indeed!" cried Mr. Wickham with a look which did not escape her. "And pray, may I ask?—" But checking himself, he added, in a gayer tone, "Is it in address that he _improves_? Has he deigned to add aught of civility to his ordinary style?—for I dare not hope," he continued in a lower and more serious tone, "that he is _improved_ in essentials." "Oh, no!" said Elizabeth. "In essentials, I believe, he is very much what he ever was."
I love the slyness of the clever pun on "address"--of course a residence like Pemberley has an "address", too, and, amidst the myriad narrative references in P&P to "addresses" in terms of how a person speaks to another, especially the amorous addresses of a man toward a woman in courtship, JA playfully wakens that different, locational meaning in the reader's mind at _one_ single place in the entire novel, in Chapter 23:
"The promised letter of thanks from Mr. Collins arrived on Tuesday, _addressed_ to their father..."
But second and more important than this sly bit of subliminal wordplay, think about P&P and the strong emphasis throughout the novel on human _improvement_--this is arguably the central theme of the novel, as it applies not only to Darcy and Elizabeth, who each "improve" so as to be worthy of the other---but also the further echo when Lizzy speaks one last time with Wickham and they discuss how Georgiana is also _improved_ since last he saw her.
And there is other wordplay that teases the reader at the edges of the metaphor of "improvement" as applicable to both people and buildings.
The following one is amazingly clever:
“Elizabeth here felt herself called on to say something in vindication of [Darcy's] behaviour to Wickham; and therefore gave them to understand, in as guarded a manner as she could, that by what she had heard from his relations in Kent, his actions were CAPABLEOF A VERY DIFFERENT CONSTRUCTION; and that his character was BY NO MEANS SO FAULTY, nor Wickham's so amiable, as they had been considered in Hertfordshire."
I put the relevant phrases in all caps to point to the architectural metaphor that Lizzy inadvertently draws, speaking about Darcy almost as if he were a building which was "capable of a very different construction" which was "by no means so faulty"! And of course this should remind those who have read the scholarly literature about P&P of the oft repeated insight that when Lizzy sees Pemberley, her feelings of love for Darcy are translated into her rhapsodies of blissful reactions to seeing Pemberley and its grounds. I.e., Pemberley _becomes_ Darcy at that moment!
And speaking of the sexual overtones of Lizzy's responses upon first seeing Pemberley, consider the subliminal foreshadowing of those feelings in the following passage in Chapter 31, which points, I claim, to Capability Brown in a very risque way:
//
//"My fingers," said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I will not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe /my/ fingers as _capable_ as any other woman's of superior execution."
Lizzy has, I claim, no idea of the secondary meaning of what she is saying there, in terms of her own fingers's "capability" for "improvement" in terms of "playing" a very different sort of "instrument"!
IMPROVEMENT AND CAPABILITY IN MANSFIELD PARK:
As briliant as JA's wordplay is in P&P with the words "improvement" and "capability" as they pertain to people, it is even more pervasive and brilliant in Mansfield Park. It is far beyond the scope of this message to unpack all of the many ramifications of this theme in MP, but I suggest to you that if you search the word "capability" and its variants in MP, you will find yourself marveling at the twenty different places in the novel where JA spins out a dozen different nuances on this theme.
In my opinion, the most important aspect of this treatment by JA in MP is the way that Henry and Mary Crawford play around with the words "improvement" and "capability". In the case of Mary, the "improvement" she is most concerned with throughout the entire novel is the need she perceives for "improvement" of _Edmund_, in terms of his career (from the clergy to the law), his location (from the country to the city), and his sexuality (from his original rigid propriety toward her own extreme moral flexibility). And, in the case of Henry, it's even more alarming, as he, like Sir Thomas, notices the "improvement" in Fanny's _body_, and practically drools with lecherous delight over the prospect and challenge (a la Lovelace) of seducing a moral paragon.
You get the general drift, I think, and, as I suggested, if you want more, just do the word searches in MP that I suggested, and you will pass the same enjoyable time I did savoring each of JA's many deployments of her wordplay artistry firmly in the service of her deepest and most important themes.
Cheers, ARNIE
sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com
P.S.: I almost forgot to give you the two usages in JA's letters:
Letter 56: “Mr. Choles is gone to drive a Cow to Brentford, & his place is supplied to us by a Man who lives in the same sort of way by odd jobs, & among other _capabilities_ has that of working in a garden, which my Mother will not forget, if we ever have another garden here.”
Given Brown's fame for his handling of gardens, I think that is a deliberate allusion by JA for CEA's delectation.
Letter 132(D) to Clarke, 12/21/15: “I am quite honoured by your thinking me _capable_ of drawing such a clergyman as you gave the sketch of in your note of Nov. 16. But I assure you I am not.”
And here, I find exquisite JA's intentional irony of pretending to be incapable of depicting a clergyman as the fool Clarke asks her to, when, only the year before, JA has published MP, in which she demonstrated, as I have suggested in my above post, her own astonishing capability to draw clergymen like Edmund Bertram and Dr. Grant, two of the most memorable depictions of clergymen in all of English literature!
"This appears to be an worthwhile biography which while it does not replace Dorothy Stroud's "magnificent" Life first published in 1950 and thoroughly revised 25 years later, adds much, if at times Brown slides into novelizing. A full informative review by John Barrell: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article7176032.ece I hope I need not review the connections between this man's work and the aesthetics of landscape and Austen's ironic and celebratory attitudes towards it."
Ellen, thank you for bringing the link for the above review to the group, I read it with great interest.
At first It led me to revisit the way that JA alluded to "Capability" Brown in MP, as Alistair Duckworth so comprehensively discussed 40 years ago, in an article that was expanded into a book, in terms of how the idea of "improvement" of estates and other physical structures becomes a defining battleground between the reckless urbanized improver, Henry Crawford, and the defenders of imperiled ancient nature, Fanny and Edmund.
But, as I refreshed my reading of Duckworth, it also led me to realize that there is even more going on with this motif of "improvement" and "capability" than is treated in Duckworth's excellent and comprehensive analysis of this theme, when one pays even more attention to JA's wordplay than Duckworth already did.
Duckworth, in addition to his well known analysis of the theme of architectural and landscape improvement in JA's novels, takes explicit notice of the usage of the word "capabilities" in Chapter 9 of MP [when the improvement of Sotherton is first discussed by Crawford, Rushworth, et al] and also, elsewhere in his book, Duckworth takes note of the metaphorical meaning in P&P of one usage of the word "improvement" as it pertains to _people_ as opposed to buildings. But he never goes further than that, and I quickly realized that there was much rich ore to be mined in this wordplay vein which neither Duckworth, or anyone else that I could detect after some online searching, had never tapped. So here goes.
IMPROVEMENT AND CAPABILITY IN PRIDE AND PREJUDICE:
First, recall the following very famous passage in Chapter 41 of P&P in this light:
[Lizzy] "....But I think Mr. Darcy _improves_ upon acquaintance." "Indeed!" cried Mr. Wickham with a look which did not escape her. "And pray, may I ask?—" But checking himself, he added, in a gayer tone, "Is it in address that he _improves_? Has he deigned to add aught of civility to his ordinary style?—for I dare not hope," he continued in a lower and more serious tone, "that he is _improved_ in essentials." "Oh, no!" said Elizabeth. "In essentials, I believe, he is very much what he ever was."
I love the slyness of the clever pun on "address"--of course a residence like Pemberley has an "address", too, and, amidst the myriad narrative references in P&P to "addresses" in terms of how a person speaks to another, especially the amorous addresses of a man toward a woman in courtship, JA playfully wakens that different, locational meaning in the reader's mind at _one_ single place in the entire novel, in Chapter 23:
"The promised letter of thanks from Mr. Collins arrived on Tuesday, _addressed_ to their father..."
But second and more important than this sly bit of subliminal wordplay, think about P&P and the strong emphasis throughout the novel on human _improvement_--this is arguably the central theme of the novel, as it applies not only to Darcy and Elizabeth, who each "improve" so as to be worthy of the other---but also the further echo when Lizzy speaks one last time with Wickham and they discuss how Georgiana is also _improved_ since last he saw her.
And there is other wordplay that teases the reader at the edges of the metaphor of "improvement" as applicable to both people and buildings.
The following one is amazingly clever:
“Elizabeth here felt herself called on to say something in vindication of [Darcy's] behaviour to Wickham; and therefore gave them to understand, in as guarded a manner as she could, that by what she had heard from his relations in Kent, his actions were CAPABLEOF A VERY DIFFERENT CONSTRUCTION; and that his character was BY NO MEANS SO FAULTY, nor Wickham's so amiable, as they had been considered in Hertfordshire."
I put the relevant phrases in all caps to point to the architectural metaphor that Lizzy inadvertently draws, speaking about Darcy almost as if he were a building which was "capable of a very different construction" which was "by no means so faulty"! And of course this should remind those who have read the scholarly literature about P&P of the oft repeated insight that when Lizzy sees Pemberley, her feelings of love for Darcy are translated into her rhapsodies of blissful reactions to seeing Pemberley and its grounds. I.e., Pemberley _becomes_ Darcy at that moment!
And speaking of the sexual overtones of Lizzy's responses upon first seeing Pemberley, consider the subliminal foreshadowing of those feelings in the following passage in Chapter 31, which points, I claim, to Capability Brown in a very risque way:
//
//"My fingers," said Elizabeth, "do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault—because I will not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe /my/ fingers as _capable_ as any other woman's of superior execution."
Lizzy has, I claim, no idea of the secondary meaning of what she is saying there, in terms of her own fingers's "capability" for "improvement" in terms of "playing" a very different sort of "instrument"!
IMPROVEMENT AND CAPABILITY IN MANSFIELD PARK:
As briliant as JA's wordplay is in P&P with the words "improvement" and "capability" as they pertain to people, it is even more pervasive and brilliant in Mansfield Park. It is far beyond the scope of this message to unpack all of the many ramifications of this theme in MP, but I suggest to you that if you search the word "capability" and its variants in MP, you will find yourself marveling at the twenty different places in the novel where JA spins out a dozen different nuances on this theme.
In my opinion, the most important aspect of this treatment by JA in MP is the way that Henry and Mary Crawford play around with the words "improvement" and "capability". In the case of Mary, the "improvement" she is most concerned with throughout the entire novel is the need she perceives for "improvement" of _Edmund_, in terms of his career (from the clergy to the law), his location (from the country to the city), and his sexuality (from his original rigid propriety toward her own extreme moral flexibility). And, in the case of Henry, it's even more alarming, as he, like Sir Thomas, notices the "improvement" in Fanny's _body_, and practically drools with lecherous delight over the prospect and challenge (a la Lovelace) of seducing a moral paragon.
You get the general drift, I think, and, as I suggested, if you want more, just do the word searches in MP that I suggested, and you will pass the same enjoyable time I did savoring each of JA's many deployments of her wordplay artistry firmly in the service of her deepest and most important themes.
Cheers, ARNIE
sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com
P.S.: I almost forgot to give you the two usages in JA's letters:
Letter 56: “Mr. Choles is gone to drive a Cow to Brentford, & his place is supplied to us by a Man who lives in the same sort of way by odd jobs, & among other _capabilities_ has that of working in a garden, which my Mother will not forget, if we ever have another garden here.”
Given Brown's fame for his handling of gardens, I think that is a deliberate allusion by JA for CEA's delectation.
Letter 132(D) to Clarke, 12/21/15: “I am quite honoured by your thinking me _capable_ of drawing such a clergyman as you gave the sketch of in your note of Nov. 16. But I assure you I am not.”
And here, I find exquisite JA's intentional irony of pretending to be incapable of depicting a clergyman as the fool Clarke asks her to, when, only the year before, JA has published MP, in which she demonstrated, as I have suggested in my above post, her own astonishing capability to draw clergymen like Edmund Bertram and Dr. Grant, two of the most memorable depictions of clergymen in all of English literature!
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