[Elissa wrote the following in Janeites responding to my previous message under the above Subject Line]: "...the play [Love's Labour's Lost] was often not included in nicely bound sets of Shakespeare's individual works...."
I responded as follows:
Google Books showed me _several_ different editions of Shakespeare printed _during_ JA's lifetime which _included_ Love's Labour's Lost. However, my personal favorite, hands down, has got to be the following one:
1788 Edition of Shakespeare's Plays, Volume the Sixth, containing Love's Labour's Lost & A Midsummer Night's Dream: The Dramatick Writings of Will. Shakspere, With the Notes of all the various Commentators; Printed Complete from the Best Editions of Sam. Johnson and Geo. Steevens. London: Printed for, and under the Direction of, John Bell, British Library, Strand, Bookseller to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales
Here is the link:
http://books.google.com/books?id=qXs0AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA3&dq=%22Love%27s+Labour%27s+Lost%22&hl=en&ei=KrIHTqGhAcnegQfrhLy4DQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false
So....is it possible to imagine that volumes published by the British Library, Strand, as Bookseller to HRH the Prince of Wales, could be in the category of _not_ nicely bound sets? is it possible that the Prince of Wales---- he who spent (in today's money) untold millions on every imaginable extravagant and wasteful expenditure, a man who considered himself a world leader in aesthetics and culture, a man who, for Pete's sake, presumed, during his amorous youth, to call himself "Florizel"!----might have on display, in Carlton House, numerous _cheesily_ bound sets of Shakespeare?
And, by the way, would Samuel Johnson and George Steevens similarly be in the category of unrecognized commentators on Shakespeare?
In regard to those shleppers, Johnson and Steevens, here is what is printed at the front of this Volume, in oversized letters, right before the text of LLL:
Remarks on the Plot, The Fable, and Construction of Love's Labour's Lost:
"I have not been hitherto so lucky as to discover any novel on which this comedy seems to have been founded, and yet the story of it has most of the features of an ancient romance." Steevens.
"In this play, which all the editors have concurred to censure, and some have rejected as unworthy of our poet, it must be confessed that there are many passages mean, childish, and vulgar; and some which ought not to have been exhibited, as we are told they were, to a maiden queen. But there are scattered through the whole many sparks of genius; nor is there any play that has more evident marks of the hand of Shakspeare." Johnson.
So..... "...."many sparks of genius.....more evident marks of the hand of Shakspere..." What this means is that _even_ Samuel Johnson, he who (as I posted several months ago) absolutely _hated_ Shakespeare's pervasive punning with a furious passion, and did not lack the nerve to tell the world how much he disliked that aspect of Shakespeare's writing---nonetheless even the dour, (at least superficially) conservative Johnson was firmly _opposed_ to those editors who had shown the temerity to exclude LLL "as unworthy of our poet".
And would the Jane Austen _you_ know, upon reading that introduction, have slammed the book shut and raced to get one of those censored editions instead? My Jane Austen would have fought to her last breath to _keep_ , above all others, the edition that included LLL, precisely because my JA not only would not have been offended by any alleged vulgarities, she would have enjoyed them immensely!
And the proof of the "pudding", so to speak, is _Emma_ itself.
And apropos _Emma_ and LLL, I cannot resist to bring forward another spoonful of that allusive pudding.
In all of Jane Austen's fiction and letters, there is only _one_ place where there is a reference to a “saucy look”, and it is in Chapter 53 of Emma, when Mr. Knightley says to Emma: "How often, when you were a girl, have you said to me, with one of your _saucy_ looks -- 'Mr. Knightley, I am going to do so and so; papa says I may...."
In all of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, there is only _one_ place where there is a reference to a "saucy look", and it is in Act 1, Scene 1 of Love's Labour's Lost, when Berowne says "Study is like the heaven's glorious sun, That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks"
Now, in case those lines sound familiar, that may be because those are the very lines which _immediately follow_ the lines I quoted in my previous message, as pointing toward the second charade in Chapter 9 of _Emma_ which I now _re_quote:
As, painfully to pore upon a book,
To seek the light of truth, while truth the while
Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look.
Light seeking light doth light of light beguile:
So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,
Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.
Study me how to please the eye indeed
By fixing it upon a _fairer eye_,
Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed
And give him light that it was blinded by.
And here's the best part of this---what is Berowne really talking about in this speech? He is arguing, with his usual great skill and casuistry, that book-study will not enlighten a person. Which of course is absurd, as both he, and the author who created him, are both book-learned to an absurdly high degree!
But back to Emma---is it just a coincidence that in Chapter 5 of _Emma_, the only other place (besides the above quoted passage in Chapter 53) where Knightley reminisces about Emma as a girl, we read Knightley saying the following about Emma's book-study habits?:
""Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through—and very good lists they were—very well chosen, and very neatly arranged—sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen—I remember thinking it did her judgment so much credit, that I preserved it some time; and I dare say she may have made out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding. Where Miss Taylor failed to stimulate, I may safely affirm that Harriet Smith will do nothing.—You never could persuade her to read half so much as you wished.—You know you could not."
Is it a coincidence that "saucy looks" appears in two passages which are so strongly connected to playful challenges to the benefits of book-study? I leave it to you all to decide for yourselves.
Cheers, ARNIE
Sunday, June 26, 2011
P.S. re Letter 30: Black Peter DeBary & The Massacre of Steventon: “What does he think of Glencoe or Lake Katherine?”
Several hours after I sent my message earlier today under the above Subject Line, it occurred to me that it was very strange that I had only found one contemporary reference to "Lake Katherine" (the 1820 geographical book I quoted from), and that this lake appeared to be worthy of mention in only one book from that entire era. Somehow I felt JA would not have mentioned it if it had not been more than that, a place of greater fame for some reason.
And then it dawned on me that the reason I only found one source was that that the _Scots_ didn't call it "Lake Katherine"!
It did not take me much Googling after that to establish that the Scottish name for Lake Katherine was, and still is, Loch Katrine!
And.. using _that_ name, I quickly found several contemporary sources, and it became immediately clear that Loch Katrine was during JA's lifetime a major tourist destination, located very close to Loch Lomond, and therefore must have been a mandatory stop for English tourists because of the unique picturesque beauty of the lake and its surroundings, that all these sources referred to.
And you'd better believe that the author who created Fanny Price would have found a way to read descriptions like the following from a 1791 book by George Keate, _Sketches from nature_:
"What exquisite pleasures some men miss for want of a higher and purer appreciation of the forms, colours, and harmonies of nature! We all feel, more or less, the emotion awakened by the beautiful, and can recall spots which have made indelible impressions on our minds. For example, how beautiful is the morning light, as it comes with its golden tint through the lattice, and by its gentle potency awakes you from slumber! How sweet to gaze through the mouldering window of an old abbey on a sunny landscape, and with a friend whom we love! How charming to watch the moonbeams shimmering on the sea or falling on a pellucid lake, as Windermere, _LOCH KATRINE_, or Killarney, when memory recalls the past, and hope glances into the future! How pure are the impressions which real beauty makes on the mind!"
If Keate's purple prose begins to sound like JA's greatest (or should I say her worst) uber-Romanticism blowhard, Sir Edward Denham, that is not an accident!
In the 16 years that intervened between JA's writing Letter 30 and JA's writing the fragment of Sanditon, Loch Katrine's greatest claim to fame arose like a fireworks rocket zooming into the night sky. In 1810, 9 years _after_ JA wrote Letter 30, a fellow named Scott (I think his name was "Sir Walter"?) decided to write a poem based on Loch Katrine, and he called it something like......The Lady of the Lake, and apparently it caught on! ;)
So that is why, in 1817, JA chose to have Sir Edward Denham, her greatest (or perhaps we should say her worst) uber-Romanticist, quote the following lines from "Lady of the Lake":
""Some feelings are to mortals given,
With less of earth in them than Heaven."
Sir Edward refers to Lady of the Lake as "that unequalled, unrivalled address to parental affection."
Has anyone reading along here actually read The Lady of the Lake? I have a feeling that Cathy Janofsky has, since she goes by the code name "NimueSprite"!
One way or another, I have a hunch that Sir Edward's description of Lady of the Lake is topsy turvy from what actually occurs, and that in some way the Lady of the Lake can fairly be construed as some sort of dreadful _lapse_ in parental affection---sort of like what happened to JA in January 1801 when she was uprooted from Steventon!
I also note from Wikipedia that one of the three subplots of Lady of the Lake is "a war between the lowland Scots (led by James V) and the highland clans (led by Roderick Dhu of Clan Alpine)." And that sounds suspiciously like what happened at Glencoe in 1689!
So, the point is that JA knew exactly what she was doing when she referred to Lake Katherine, which (according to Google Maps) is really not that far away from Glencoe, both of them being situated to the northwest of Edinburgh, and Glencoe being about 35 miles (as the crow flies) further away.
Cheers, ARNIE
And then it dawned on me that the reason I only found one source was that that the _Scots_ didn't call it "Lake Katherine"!
It did not take me much Googling after that to establish that the Scottish name for Lake Katherine was, and still is, Loch Katrine!
And.. using _that_ name, I quickly found several contemporary sources, and it became immediately clear that Loch Katrine was during JA's lifetime a major tourist destination, located very close to Loch Lomond, and therefore must have been a mandatory stop for English tourists because of the unique picturesque beauty of the lake and its surroundings, that all these sources referred to.
And you'd better believe that the author who created Fanny Price would have found a way to read descriptions like the following from a 1791 book by George Keate, _Sketches from nature_:
"What exquisite pleasures some men miss for want of a higher and purer appreciation of the forms, colours, and harmonies of nature! We all feel, more or less, the emotion awakened by the beautiful, and can recall spots which have made indelible impressions on our minds. For example, how beautiful is the morning light, as it comes with its golden tint through the lattice, and by its gentle potency awakes you from slumber! How sweet to gaze through the mouldering window of an old abbey on a sunny landscape, and with a friend whom we love! How charming to watch the moonbeams shimmering on the sea or falling on a pellucid lake, as Windermere, _LOCH KATRINE_, or Killarney, when memory recalls the past, and hope glances into the future! How pure are the impressions which real beauty makes on the mind!"
If Keate's purple prose begins to sound like JA's greatest (or should I say her worst) uber-Romanticism blowhard, Sir Edward Denham, that is not an accident!
In the 16 years that intervened between JA's writing Letter 30 and JA's writing the fragment of Sanditon, Loch Katrine's greatest claim to fame arose like a fireworks rocket zooming into the night sky. In 1810, 9 years _after_ JA wrote Letter 30, a fellow named Scott (I think his name was "Sir Walter"?) decided to write a poem based on Loch Katrine, and he called it something like......The Lady of the Lake, and apparently it caught on! ;)
So that is why, in 1817, JA chose to have Sir Edward Denham, her greatest (or perhaps we should say her worst) uber-Romanticist, quote the following lines from "Lady of the Lake":
""Some feelings are to mortals given,
With less of earth in them than Heaven."
Sir Edward refers to Lady of the Lake as "that unequalled, unrivalled address to parental affection."
Has anyone reading along here actually read The Lady of the Lake? I have a feeling that Cathy Janofsky has, since she goes by the code name "NimueSprite"!
One way or another, I have a hunch that Sir Edward's description of Lady of the Lake is topsy turvy from what actually occurs, and that in some way the Lady of the Lake can fairly be construed as some sort of dreadful _lapse_ in parental affection---sort of like what happened to JA in January 1801 when she was uprooted from Steventon!
I also note from Wikipedia that one of the three subplots of Lady of the Lake is "a war between the lowland Scots (led by James V) and the highland clans (led by Roderick Dhu of Clan Alpine)." And that sounds suspiciously like what happened at Glencoe in 1689!
So, the point is that JA knew exactly what she was doing when she referred to Lake Katherine, which (according to Google Maps) is really not that far away from Glencoe, both of them being situated to the northwest of Edinburgh, and Glencoe being about 35 miles (as the crow flies) further away.
Cheers, ARNIE
Letter 30: Black Peter DeBary & The Massacre of Steventon: “What does he think of Glencoe or Lake Katherine?”
I have read all the comments in this thread and have a very different take on the following passage in Letter 30, which I first reproduce in its delicious entirety, below, for ready reference:
“Mr. Peter Debary has declined Dean curacy; he wishes to be settled nearer London. A foolish reason!, as if Deane were not near London in comparison of Exeter or York.-Take the whole world through, & he will find many more places at a greater distance from London than Deane, than he will at a less.-What does he think of Glencoe or Lake Katherine?-I feel rather indignant that any possible objection should be raised against so valuable a peice of preferment, so delightful a situation!-that Deane should not be universally allowed to be as near the Metropolis as any other country villages.-As this is the case however, as Mr. Peter Debary has shewn himself a Peter in the blackest sense of the Word, We are obliged to look elsewhere for an heir; & my father has thought it a necessary compliment to James Digweed to offer the Curacy to him, tho' without considering it as either a desirable or an eligible situation for him.-Unless he is in love with Miss Lyford, I think he had better not be settled exactly in this neighbourhood, & unless he is very much in love with her indeed, he is not likely to think a salary of 50 equal in value or efficacy to one of 75.-Were you indeed to be considered as one of the fixtures of the house!-but you were never actually erected in it either by Mr. Egerton Brydges or Mrs. Lloyd.”
The events relevant to the above which were happening in January 1801 were that because Revd. Austen was moving to Bath, he was giving his clerical position at Steventon to son James, and of course James was therefore moving with his family from Deane to the Steventon rectory. _That_ left a vacancy for a resident curate at Deane, and _that_ is what was what Revd. Austen apparently offered to Peter DeBary. That all is pretty straightforward, and not news to anybody.
I begin my analysis by pointing out that I read this passage as a put-on, with JA, for its duration, assuming the voice of her father. Hyperbolically, she speaks the outraged thoughts she imagines her father to be thinking at this moment, after Peter DeBary has crossed him up (sorta like Sir Thomas’s bewildered reaction when Fanny Price refuses to marry Crawford) and actually said “No, thank you” to what probably was a pretty chintzy offer, from DeBary’s perspective.
And of course Ellen is correct that Le Faye’s footnote (citing Chapman) is wrong, but I go further and say that it is quintessential cock-and-bull. It is not simply obtuse and wrong-headed to suggest a reference to “the knave of spades”, when the Biblical allusion is staring everyone in the face! Anyone can make a mistake, but it is much worse!
What offends me is that the footnote was calculated, written by Le Faye (and probably Chapman as well) for one reason alone—the desire to avoid even the slightest whiff of a suggestion that JA might have sacrilegiously and frivolously alluded to the denial of Jesus by Peter in Scripture—a particularly sacred portion of the Gospels. Which of course is _exactly_ what JA was doing, and, to boot, she was doing it (I cannot resist it) “in spades”!
But that is all prelude to the new perspective on this passage that I have just spent an enjoyable hour researching. Neither Le Faye, nor any other Austen biographer I can detect online, has ever given any attention to _another_ aspect of the question, which is the role of Peter DeBary in particular in JA’s satirical mini-melodrama, one in which JA gave us not one but two rather large hints:
“What does [DeBary] think of Glencoe or Lake Katherine?-
The Jane Austen I have come to know _never_ throws in place names like that without a reason, and so I was intrigued by her reference to these two places, one of which was obviously in Scotland (I dimly remembered the name “Glencoe” from elementary school, but could not recall why).
So I called on my old friends Google and Wikipedia (who get a bad rap from some folks, I think), and look what they told me:
“Early in the morning of 13 February 1692, in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution and the Jacobite uprising of 1689, ....an infamous masacre took place in Glen Coe, in the Highlands of Scotland. This incident is referred to as the “Massacre of Glencoe”...Thirty-eight MacDonalds from the Clan MacDonald of Glencoe were killed by the guests who had accepted their hospitality, on the grounds that the MacDonalds had not been prompt in pledging allegiance to the new monarchs, William and Mary.... Under Scots law, …[such] "murder under trust"…was considered to be even more heinous than ordinary murder….The challenge to the inquiry which had been established, was to apportion blame on those responsible for the massacre, and yet the orders which led to it were signed by the King himself, who could not be seen to be responsible. The scandal was further enhanced when the leading Scottish jurist... was, in 1692, offered the post of Lord Advocate but declined it because the condition was attached that he should not prosecute the persons implicated in the Glencoe Massacre ....The conclusion of the commission was to exonerate the King and to place the blame for the massacre upon Secretary Dalrymple. The Scottish Parliament, after reviewing the commission report, declared the execution of the MacDonald men to have been murder...The Glencoe massacre became a propaganda piece for Jacobite sympathies, which were to come to a head in the next generation in the Rising of 1745.....the massacre was romanticised in art and literature, such as Sir Walter Scott's "The Highland Widow". “
The _massacre_ of Glencoe---of course, that was what I had once read about nearly five decades ago!
And then I found the following in Google Books from an 1820geographical book:
“The Forth: This river, the most considerable in Scotland, has its origin from a lake under Ben Lomond, in the western angle of Stirlingshire, and runs Eastward toStirling,near which place it unites with the Teith, and forms_LAKE KATHERINE_. From Stirling it flows west by south, and mixes with the German Ocean by a wide estuary, called the Firth of Forth. From its origin to Berwick, at the mouth of the Firth, its course, exclusive of windings, is seventy-five miles.”
So, two seemingly random names selected by JA as “evidence” in her Through the Looking Glass sort of absurdist logical sequence, and _both_ of them point to places in _Scotland_--what could this mean?
I thought about it a moment, and my first hunch was that in some way known to JA and CEA, but unknown to the world of Janeites, Peter DeBary must have had some personal connection to Scotland.
So I called on my friends Google and Wikipedia _again_, and look what they told me this time, from the 1860 _Memoir of Andrew Dalzel, professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh_:
Letter from Lord Adam Gordon, 11/2/1796: "Lord Henry Petty, son to Marquis of Lansdown, and MR. DEBARY, being in Edinburgh and to attend the Colleges there, Lord Adam Gordon begs leave to introduce them to Mr. Dalzel, and to request his best attentions to them during their residence in Scotland. Mr. Debary is tutor to Lord Henry Petty, and is a man of very uncommon good character, and well informed. Any attentions to them from Mr. Dalzel will be gratefully acknowledged by his faithful and obedt. humble servant, Ad. Gordon." "Per favour of Lord Henry Petty and Mr. Debary."
I immediately recognized the name “Lansdowne” as having multiple Austen connections.
Le Faye’s Bio Index entry for the Marquis of Lansdowne names him as “John-Henry Petty (1765-1809) a “widely travelled but rather solitary man” who built a Gothic castle in Southampton a la Walpole’s Strawberry Hill, and that is why, I believe, John Thorpe wants to drive Catherine “up Lansdown Hill”.
But…. that is _not_ the same “Lord Henry Petty” mentioned in Lord Adam Gordon’s 1796 letter.
_That_ Mr. Petty is described by Chris Viveash and Le Faye, respectively, as follows:
“... one of Miss Austen's novelsbecame the subject of conversation and praise, especially from Lord Lansdowne, who observed that one of the circumstances of his life which he looked back upon with vexation was that Miss Austen should once have been living some weeks in his neighborhood [when she lived in Southampton] without his knowing it. “
“…Lord Henry Petty, half brother of the 2^nd Marquis. It was this 3^rd Marquis…who admired JA’s works and was ‘grieved and affected’ in 1817 to hear of her death.”
So I think it highly likely that Peter deBary (who was born in 1764 and therefore was an older contemporary of the future 3^rd Marquis of Lansdowne) was that very same “Mr. DeBary” mentioned in Adam Gordon’s 1796 letter, and that he was, at the age of 32, several years after graduating from Cambridge, but still 8 years prior to beginning his career in Hampshire (but _not_ at Deane) as a curate,the tutor to his fellow Hampshireman the future Marquis in Ediburgh!
And _that_ is why, I claim, having reached the end of my own deadly serious chain of logical inferences, that JA, in early 1801, makes these two sly veiled references to Scotland in a passage depicting Peter DeBary as a “black” Peter! And of course CEA (indeed the whole Austen family) would have also been well aware that Peter DeBary had probably only just returned from that stint as tutor in Scotland, and was out of work and looking for a job!
But I think there is even more going on here than all of that. The reference to Lake Katherine would have been just a tag to point to Scotland, but the reference to Glencoe is extremely thematic, because the Massacre of Glencoe was a very famous historical event—so famous that even I, an American schoolboy in the early 1960’s, read about it in some book or another! How much more famous it would havebeen in England way back in 1801, especially to a young woman who at age 16 had written her own satirical (yet very learned) History of England! And it would have been even fresher news to JA, because we also all know that JA loved to espouse the Jacobite cause (Mary Queen of Scots being the most notable example), and Glencoe was a major rallying cry for that very cause, which reached fever pitch in 1746, only thirty years before JA was born, and was a major subtext of Fielding’s _Tom Jones_!
And here is the most important point. The veiled allusion to a massacre fits, in a very dark and very striking way, with the Biblical allusion to Peter and Jesus. Both of them involve fatal betrayals associated with horrific and infamous murders ordered by monarchs who sought to avoid responsibility for their murderous orders (Pontius Pilate and William & Mary, respectively). _Way_ too close for coincidence.
So, what does this suggest JA is saying, in a veiled way, about her father, her brother James (with _his_ “Queen” Mary!) and Peter DeBary? My personal sense is that JA viewed the entire process of the abrupt move to Bath as a kind of “massacre”, a sudden, completely unexpected betrayal of her and CEA by her parents, with brother James as the primary beneficiary of the massacre of JA’s life at Steventon, which indeed “died” very shortly after she wrote Letter 30.
Cheers, ARNIE
“Mr. Peter Debary has declined Dean curacy; he wishes to be settled nearer London. A foolish reason!, as if Deane were not near London in comparison of Exeter or York.-Take the whole world through, & he will find many more places at a greater distance from London than Deane, than he will at a less.-What does he think of Glencoe or Lake Katherine?-I feel rather indignant that any possible objection should be raised against so valuable a peice of preferment, so delightful a situation!-that Deane should not be universally allowed to be as near the Metropolis as any other country villages.-As this is the case however, as Mr. Peter Debary has shewn himself a Peter in the blackest sense of the Word, We are obliged to look elsewhere for an heir; & my father has thought it a necessary compliment to James Digweed to offer the Curacy to him, tho' without considering it as either a desirable or an eligible situation for him.-Unless he is in love with Miss Lyford, I think he had better not be settled exactly in this neighbourhood, & unless he is very much in love with her indeed, he is not likely to think a salary of 50 equal in value or efficacy to one of 75.-Were you indeed to be considered as one of the fixtures of the house!-but you were never actually erected in it either by Mr. Egerton Brydges or Mrs. Lloyd.”
The events relevant to the above which were happening in January 1801 were that because Revd. Austen was moving to Bath, he was giving his clerical position at Steventon to son James, and of course James was therefore moving with his family from Deane to the Steventon rectory. _That_ left a vacancy for a resident curate at Deane, and _that_ is what was what Revd. Austen apparently offered to Peter DeBary. That all is pretty straightforward, and not news to anybody.
I begin my analysis by pointing out that I read this passage as a put-on, with JA, for its duration, assuming the voice of her father. Hyperbolically, she speaks the outraged thoughts she imagines her father to be thinking at this moment, after Peter DeBary has crossed him up (sorta like Sir Thomas’s bewildered reaction when Fanny Price refuses to marry Crawford) and actually said “No, thank you” to what probably was a pretty chintzy offer, from DeBary’s perspective.
And of course Ellen is correct that Le Faye’s footnote (citing Chapman) is wrong, but I go further and say that it is quintessential cock-and-bull. It is not simply obtuse and wrong-headed to suggest a reference to “the knave of spades”, when the Biblical allusion is staring everyone in the face! Anyone can make a mistake, but it is much worse!
What offends me is that the footnote was calculated, written by Le Faye (and probably Chapman as well) for one reason alone—the desire to avoid even the slightest whiff of a suggestion that JA might have sacrilegiously and frivolously alluded to the denial of Jesus by Peter in Scripture—a particularly sacred portion of the Gospels. Which of course is _exactly_ what JA was doing, and, to boot, she was doing it (I cannot resist it) “in spades”!
But that is all prelude to the new perspective on this passage that I have just spent an enjoyable hour researching. Neither Le Faye, nor any other Austen biographer I can detect online, has ever given any attention to _another_ aspect of the question, which is the role of Peter DeBary in particular in JA’s satirical mini-melodrama, one in which JA gave us not one but two rather large hints:
“What does [DeBary] think of Glencoe or Lake Katherine?-
The Jane Austen I have come to know _never_ throws in place names like that without a reason, and so I was intrigued by her reference to these two places, one of which was obviously in Scotland (I dimly remembered the name “Glencoe” from elementary school, but could not recall why).
So I called on my old friends Google and Wikipedia (who get a bad rap from some folks, I think), and look what they told me:
“Early in the morning of 13 February 1692, in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution and the Jacobite uprising of 1689, ....an infamous masacre took place in Glen Coe, in the Highlands of Scotland. This incident is referred to as the “Massacre of Glencoe”...Thirty-eight MacDonalds from the Clan MacDonald of Glencoe were killed by the guests who had accepted their hospitality, on the grounds that the MacDonalds had not been prompt in pledging allegiance to the new monarchs, William and Mary.... Under Scots law, …[such] "murder under trust"…was considered to be even more heinous than ordinary murder….The challenge to the inquiry which had been established, was to apportion blame on those responsible for the massacre, and yet the orders which led to it were signed by the King himself, who could not be seen to be responsible. The scandal was further enhanced when the leading Scottish jurist... was, in 1692, offered the post of Lord Advocate but declined it because the condition was attached that he should not prosecute the persons implicated in the Glencoe Massacre ....The conclusion of the commission was to exonerate the King and to place the blame for the massacre upon Secretary Dalrymple. The Scottish Parliament, after reviewing the commission report, declared the execution of the MacDonald men to have been murder...The Glencoe massacre became a propaganda piece for Jacobite sympathies, which were to come to a head in the next generation in the Rising of 1745.....the massacre was romanticised in art and literature, such as Sir Walter Scott's "The Highland Widow". “
The _massacre_ of Glencoe---of course, that was what I had once read about nearly five decades ago!
And then I found the following in Google Books from an 1820geographical book:
“The Forth: This river, the most considerable in Scotland, has its origin from a lake under Ben Lomond, in the western angle of Stirlingshire, and runs Eastward toStirling,near which place it unites with the Teith, and forms_LAKE KATHERINE_. From Stirling it flows west by south, and mixes with the German Ocean by a wide estuary, called the Firth of Forth. From its origin to Berwick, at the mouth of the Firth, its course, exclusive of windings, is seventy-five miles.”
So, two seemingly random names selected by JA as “evidence” in her Through the Looking Glass sort of absurdist logical sequence, and _both_ of them point to places in _Scotland_--what could this mean?
I thought about it a moment, and my first hunch was that in some way known to JA and CEA, but unknown to the world of Janeites, Peter DeBary must have had some personal connection to Scotland.
So I called on my friends Google and Wikipedia _again_, and look what they told me this time, from the 1860 _Memoir of Andrew Dalzel, professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh_:
Letter from Lord Adam Gordon, 11/2/1796: "Lord Henry Petty, son to Marquis of Lansdown, and MR. DEBARY, being in Edinburgh and to attend the Colleges there, Lord Adam Gordon begs leave to introduce them to Mr. Dalzel, and to request his best attentions to them during their residence in Scotland. Mr. Debary is tutor to Lord Henry Petty, and is a man of very uncommon good character, and well informed. Any attentions to them from Mr. Dalzel will be gratefully acknowledged by his faithful and obedt. humble servant, Ad. Gordon." "Per favour of Lord Henry Petty and Mr. Debary."
I immediately recognized the name “Lansdowne” as having multiple Austen connections.
Le Faye’s Bio Index entry for the Marquis of Lansdowne names him as “John-Henry Petty (1765-1809) a “widely travelled but rather solitary man” who built a Gothic castle in Southampton a la Walpole’s Strawberry Hill, and that is why, I believe, John Thorpe wants to drive Catherine “up Lansdown Hill”.
But…. that is _not_ the same “Lord Henry Petty” mentioned in Lord Adam Gordon’s 1796 letter.
_That_ Mr. Petty is described by Chris Viveash and Le Faye, respectively, as follows:
“... one of Miss Austen's novelsbecame the subject of conversation and praise, especially from Lord Lansdowne, who observed that one of the circumstances of his life which he looked back upon with vexation was that Miss Austen should once have been living some weeks in his neighborhood [when she lived in Southampton] without his knowing it. “
“…Lord Henry Petty, half brother of the 2^nd Marquis. It was this 3^rd Marquis…who admired JA’s works and was ‘grieved and affected’ in 1817 to hear of her death.”
So I think it highly likely that Peter deBary (who was born in 1764 and therefore was an older contemporary of the future 3^rd Marquis of Lansdowne) was that very same “Mr. DeBary” mentioned in Adam Gordon’s 1796 letter, and that he was, at the age of 32, several years after graduating from Cambridge, but still 8 years prior to beginning his career in Hampshire (but _not_ at Deane) as a curate,the tutor to his fellow Hampshireman the future Marquis in Ediburgh!
And _that_ is why, I claim, having reached the end of my own deadly serious chain of logical inferences, that JA, in early 1801, makes these two sly veiled references to Scotland in a passage depicting Peter DeBary as a “black” Peter! And of course CEA (indeed the whole Austen family) would have also been well aware that Peter DeBary had probably only just returned from that stint as tutor in Scotland, and was out of work and looking for a job!
But I think there is even more going on here than all of that. The reference to Lake Katherine would have been just a tag to point to Scotland, but the reference to Glencoe is extremely thematic, because the Massacre of Glencoe was a very famous historical event—so famous that even I, an American schoolboy in the early 1960’s, read about it in some book or another! How much more famous it would havebeen in England way back in 1801, especially to a young woman who at age 16 had written her own satirical (yet very learned) History of England! And it would have been even fresher news to JA, because we also all know that JA loved to espouse the Jacobite cause (Mary Queen of Scots being the most notable example), and Glencoe was a major rallying cry for that very cause, which reached fever pitch in 1746, only thirty years before JA was born, and was a major subtext of Fielding’s _Tom Jones_!
And here is the most important point. The veiled allusion to a massacre fits, in a very dark and very striking way, with the Biblical allusion to Peter and Jesus. Both of them involve fatal betrayals associated with horrific and infamous murders ordered by monarchs who sought to avoid responsibility for their murderous orders (Pontius Pilate and William & Mary, respectively). _Way_ too close for coincidence.
So, what does this suggest JA is saying, in a veiled way, about her father, her brother James (with _his_ “Queen” Mary!) and Peter DeBary? My personal sense is that JA viewed the entire process of the abrupt move to Bath as a kind of “massacre”, a sudden, completely unexpected betrayal of her and CEA by her parents, with brother James as the primary beneficiary of the massacre of JA’s life at Steventon, which indeed “died” very shortly after she wrote Letter 30.
Cheers, ARNIE
Jane Austen's Allusions to Love's Labour's Lost in _Emma_
In Janeites, Elissa Schiff just wrote: "It is with Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Lear, and The Tempest that we have strong, strong allusive ties to JA's Emma. And these, as you note, are all plays JA would likely have been quite familiar with, unlike Love's Labour's Lost (LLL), which she never read/saw performed, that was suggested last year."
To refresh memory, last October, Elissa, in followup to a Shakespeare/Austen quiz I had just posed to the group, which she had answered......
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/10/trick-question.html
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/10/answer-to-my-trick-question-theres-rub.html
....posed a Shakespeare/Austen quiz of her own listing the following plot elements, sounding suspiciously like those of _Emma_...
Five pairs of romantic attachments including a "secret" engagement,
An elaborately planned-for picnic,
Pudding,
An elderly father,
Letters read aloud,
A musical instrument,
The education of main character through romantic errors, a character associated with representing the essence of Chivalry, a major theme of the need for women to be more independent and to look out for their own interests.
... and then giving the trick answer, LLL.
But then Elissa, to my surprise, claimed that this was _not_ an intentional allusion by JA to LLL! I disagreed at the time, pointing out that I had been, and remained, certain that LLL was an allusive source for JA. At the time, I also wrote the following:
"In 5 minutes on Google Books, I found an 1806 edition of Shakespeare's plays with the full text of Love's Labour's Lost right there with no discussion of its being a lost play. And the 1793 multivolume set lists it as one of the plays, and if I could see all 12 volumes online, I'd bet that the full text of the play is in that one as well--which has prefaces by Johnson, Malone and other very famous Shakespeare editors."
Before I amplify on my claim of a specific allusion to LLL in _Emma_, though, I should first rebut Elissa's argument that JA would only have been interested in, and alluded to, the greatest of Shakespeare's plays, because somehow the plays which are generally critically considered to be second or even third-rate would have been beneath her.
I strenuously disagree on two counts. First, the verdict is clearly in from hundreds of scholarly books and articles, that JA alluded, in her novels, to a very very _wide_ swath of literature, from the greatest to the trashiest, and everything in between. JA never limited herself only to the great, she made allusive use of everything, high and low. Just, by the way, as did Shakespeare, Joyce and many of the other greatest allusive writers of all time.
And second, a reason unique to Shakespeare---in my opinion, JA saw Shakespeare not only as separate plays, but also as a unified whole, a dramatic "Bible" with remarkably similar (and I believe not coincidental) structural parallels to the actual Bible--the First Folio is divided into large categories, just as is the Bible, and if we include the Sonnets in the mix, we have the counterparts to the Psalms and other poetic portions of the Bible.
But, my point is that this overall unity of Shakespeare (which was most brilliantly argued 60 years ago by Harold Goddard) is not merely structural, it is also thematic, and, just as in JA's fiction, the same themes and character types are presented over and over and over again, but always distinct from each other, due to the inventive genius of Shakespeare and JA. So, I claim, JA would have considered LLL as an _integral_ part of that whole, regardless of her judgment as to the relative merits of the 37 plays.
Having made that general statement, I will now briefly illustrate why I believe JA intentionally alluded to LLL in _Emma_, by giving you the following sampler (by no means exhaustive) of _additional_ allusive elements in LLL which :
(a) the characters and actions of Costard and Don Armado in LLL were in certain interesting ways transplanted into Mr. Elton and Frank Churchill in _Emma_, including, most interestingly, the MISdelivery by a messenger of love missives to ladies.
(b) the _ending_ of LLL, in which the sudden and offstage death of the King unexpectedly puts the kibosh on officializing the romantic pairings that are on the verge of occurring at the end of the play, causing a need for an extended mourning period to elapse first. This is a kind of "deus ex machina" which is echoed distinctly by the sudden and offstage death of Mrs. Churchill, which _also_ results in a delay (which I claim is a permanent one) in the marriage of Frank and Jane.
(c) the following speech in LLL 1.1 by Dumaine as he signs the pledge of self-denial in order, as the _King_ (of Navarre) puts it, to "_BATE_ [Time's] scythe's keen edge", i.e., to gain immortality via fame, is suspiciously echoed in the second charade in _Emma_ , especially in the context of the rest of the elaborate allusion to LLL in _Emma_:
"He throws upon the gross world's baser _slaves_,
To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die,
With all these living in philosophy."
"My first displays the _wealth_ and _pomp_ of _kings_.....Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a _slave_"
(d) The following line in the charade in _Emma_: "Thy ready wit the word will soon supply, May its approval beam in that soft eye!" is suspiciously resonant of the following speech by Berowne in that same scene 1.1 in LLL, where he is the only one who is complaining that maybe the King's plan for enlightenment via self-denial is not such a great plan:
As, painfully to pore upon a book,
To seek the light of truth, while truth the while
Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look.
Light seeking light doth light of light beguile:
So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,
Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.
Study me how to please the eye indeed
By fixing it upon a _fairer eye_,
Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed
And give him light that it was blinded by.
And this is also echoed later in LLL 5.2
Berowne: (Aside to Moth) Once to behold, rogue.
Moth: Once to behold with your sun-beamed eyes,---with your sun beamed eyes---
(e) [this one is connected to the recent thread about dark skinned characters in Shakespeare, Christy's list did not include the following]
In LLL 4.3, the King of Navarre mocks Berowne's rhapsodizing praises of Rosaline's "fair cheek", saying "By heaven, thy love is black as ebony", and Dumaine then chimes in with the king with "To look like her are chimney sweepers black", triggering more raillery directed at Berowne about Rosaline. "Chimney sweeper" is the official answer to Garrick's Riddle which is partially quoted in Ch. 9 of _Emma_.
(f) In LLL 5.2, we learn that Dumaine has made a gift of a _glove_ to Katharine...
Cheers, ARNIE
sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com
To refresh memory, last October, Elissa, in followup to a Shakespeare/Austen quiz I had just posed to the group, which she had answered......
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/10/trick-question.html
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/10/answer-to-my-trick-question-theres-rub.html
....posed a Shakespeare/Austen quiz of her own listing the following plot elements, sounding suspiciously like those of _Emma_...
Five pairs of romantic attachments including a "secret" engagement,
An elaborately planned-for picnic,
Pudding,
An elderly father,
Letters read aloud,
A musical instrument,
The education of main character through romantic errors, a character associated with representing the essence of Chivalry, a major theme of the need for women to be more independent and to look out for their own interests.
... and then giving the trick answer, LLL.
But then Elissa, to my surprise, claimed that this was _not_ an intentional allusion by JA to LLL! I disagreed at the time, pointing out that I had been, and remained, certain that LLL was an allusive source for JA. At the time, I also wrote the following:
"In 5 minutes on Google Books, I found an 1806 edition of Shakespeare's plays with the full text of Love's Labour's Lost right there with no discussion of its being a lost play. And the 1793 multivolume set lists it as one of the plays, and if I could see all 12 volumes online, I'd bet that the full text of the play is in that one as well--which has prefaces by Johnson, Malone and other very famous Shakespeare editors."
Before I amplify on my claim of a specific allusion to LLL in _Emma_, though, I should first rebut Elissa's argument that JA would only have been interested in, and alluded to, the greatest of Shakespeare's plays, because somehow the plays which are generally critically considered to be second or even third-rate would have been beneath her.
I strenuously disagree on two counts. First, the verdict is clearly in from hundreds of scholarly books and articles, that JA alluded, in her novels, to a very very _wide_ swath of literature, from the greatest to the trashiest, and everything in between. JA never limited herself only to the great, she made allusive use of everything, high and low. Just, by the way, as did Shakespeare, Joyce and many of the other greatest allusive writers of all time.
And second, a reason unique to Shakespeare---in my opinion, JA saw Shakespeare not only as separate plays, but also as a unified whole, a dramatic "Bible" with remarkably similar (and I believe not coincidental) structural parallels to the actual Bible--the First Folio is divided into large categories, just as is the Bible, and if we include the Sonnets in the mix, we have the counterparts to the Psalms and other poetic portions of the Bible.
But, my point is that this overall unity of Shakespeare (which was most brilliantly argued 60 years ago by Harold Goddard) is not merely structural, it is also thematic, and, just as in JA's fiction, the same themes and character types are presented over and over and over again, but always distinct from each other, due to the inventive genius of Shakespeare and JA. So, I claim, JA would have considered LLL as an _integral_ part of that whole, regardless of her judgment as to the relative merits of the 37 plays.
Having made that general statement, I will now briefly illustrate why I believe JA intentionally alluded to LLL in _Emma_, by giving you the following sampler (by no means exhaustive) of _additional_ allusive elements in LLL which :
(a) the characters and actions of Costard and Don Armado in LLL were in certain interesting ways transplanted into Mr. Elton and Frank Churchill in _Emma_, including, most interestingly, the MISdelivery by a messenger of love missives to ladies.
(b) the _ending_ of LLL, in which the sudden and offstage death of the King unexpectedly puts the kibosh on officializing the romantic pairings that are on the verge of occurring at the end of the play, causing a need for an extended mourning period to elapse first. This is a kind of "deus ex machina" which is echoed distinctly by the sudden and offstage death of Mrs. Churchill, which _also_ results in a delay (which I claim is a permanent one) in the marriage of Frank and Jane.
(c) the following speech in LLL 1.1 by Dumaine as he signs the pledge of self-denial in order, as the _King_ (of Navarre) puts it, to "_BATE_ [Time's] scythe's keen edge", i.e., to gain immortality via fame, is suspiciously echoed in the second charade in _Emma_ , especially in the context of the rest of the elaborate allusion to LLL in _Emma_:
"He throws upon the gross world's baser _slaves_,
To love, to wealth, to pomp, I pine and die,
With all these living in philosophy."
"My first displays the _wealth_ and _pomp_ of _kings_.....Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a _slave_"
(d) The following line in the charade in _Emma_: "Thy ready wit the word will soon supply, May its approval beam in that soft eye!" is suspiciously resonant of the following speech by Berowne in that same scene 1.1 in LLL, where he is the only one who is complaining that maybe the King's plan for enlightenment via self-denial is not such a great plan:
As, painfully to pore upon a book,
To seek the light of truth, while truth the while
Doth falsely blind the eyesight of his look.
Light seeking light doth light of light beguile:
So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,
Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.
Study me how to please the eye indeed
By fixing it upon a _fairer eye_,
Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed
And give him light that it was blinded by.
And this is also echoed later in LLL 5.2
Berowne: (Aside to Moth) Once to behold, rogue.
Moth: Once to behold with your sun-beamed eyes,---with your sun beamed eyes---
(e) [this one is connected to the recent thread about dark skinned characters in Shakespeare, Christy's list did not include the following]
In LLL 4.3, the King of Navarre mocks Berowne's rhapsodizing praises of Rosaline's "fair cheek", saying "By heaven, thy love is black as ebony", and Dumaine then chimes in with the king with "To look like her are chimney sweepers black", triggering more raillery directed at Berowne about Rosaline. "Chimney sweeper" is the official answer to Garrick's Riddle which is partially quoted in Ch. 9 of _Emma_.
(f) In LLL 5.2, we learn that Dumaine has made a gift of a _glove_ to Katharine...
Cheers, ARNIE
sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com
Friday, June 24, 2011
Harriet Smith’s "Provision for the Evening of Life" PART TWO
[Diane Reynolds responded to my first post under the above subject line as follows:] "Could you point out Harriet's defiance towards Emma when announcing that her love interest is Mr. Knightley? I remember her being surprised that Emma thought she was in love with Frank, then probably protesting too much that it was all because of Emma that she even thought of Mr. Knightley--more of Harriet's over-the-top flattery than defiance, as I remember it. I see Harriet--who i see as playing and flattering Emma--seeing an opening with Mr. K (even though she must be aware that Emma is in love with Mr. K) and then blaming Emma for encouraging it--but in terms of flattery. I think Harriet knew all along that Emma was encouraging her towards Frank but pretending that she thought Emma was encouraging her toward Mr. K. "
Over the top flattery, playing Emma like a drum, that was a constant from the beginning of the novel till that climactic scene in Chapter 47, but look at the subtle but clear shift that occurs right then, which throws Emma into a state of profound shock, very much the way Lucy Steele speaks to Elinor at a _very_ similar moment in the action of S&S--and that resemblance is _not_ coincidental:
"I do not wonder, Miss Woodhouse," [Harriet] resumed, "that you should feel a great difference between the two, as to me or as to any body. You must think one five hundred million times more above me than the other. But I hope, Miss Woodhouse, that supposing—that if—strange as it may appear—. But you know they were your own words, that more wonderful things had happened, matches of greater disparity had taken place than between Mr. Frank Churchill and me; and, therefore, it seems as if such a thing even as this, may have occurred before—and if I should be so fortunate, beyond expression, as to—if Mr. Knightley should really—if he does not mind the disparity, I hope, dear Miss Woodhouse, you will not set yourself against it, and try to put difficulties in the way. But you are too good for that, I am sure."
[Translation: "You're not going to try to throw a monkey wrench into my plans, are you, Miss Woodhouse?" There is a very very subtle defiance in Harriet's tone, a momentary seismic shift in the dynamic between them, from over the top sucking-up to a calm, resoluteness that is especially shocking to Emma precisely because it is like a bolt from the blue by comparison to Harriet's former behavior toward Emma.]
Harriet was standing at one of the windows. Emma turned round to look at her in consternation, and hastily said, "Have you any idea of Mr. Knightley's returning your affection?" "Yes," replied Harriet modestly, but not fearfully—"I must say that I have."
[Note that the narrative description of Harriet speaking "modestly, but not fearfully" is, in this interpretation against the grain, how Harriet seems to _Emma_, not what Harriet actually feels. That is key to the alternative reading, to see such narration as reflections of Emma's perceptions, not of objective reality. Then, for two memorable paragraphs, Emma gets lost in her thoughts as she realizes that she wants Knightley for herself, until Harriet, having softened Emma up with a body blow, now returns to her role as the trembling waif....]
"Harriet, who had been standing in no unhappy reverie, was yet very glad to be called from it, by the now encouraging manner of such a judge, and such a friend as Miss Woodhouse, and only wanted invitation, to give the history of her hopes with great, though trembling delight.—Emma's tremblings as she asked, and as she listened, were better concealed than Harriet's, but they were not less. Her voice was not unsteady; but her mind was in all the perturbation that such a development of self, such a burst of threatening evil, such a confusion of sudden and perplexing emotions, must create.—She listened with much inward suffering, but with great outward patience, to Harriet's detail.—Methodical, or well arranged, or very well delivered, it could not be expected to be; but it contained, when separated from all the feebleness and tautology of the narration, a substance to sink her spirit—especially with the corroborating circumstances, which her own memory brought in favour of Mr. Knightley's most improved opinion of Harriet."
[And Harriet now proceeds to consolidate her newfound power over Emma, by carefully leading Emma through her paces, giving Emma exactly the pathetic narrative that will reinforce Emma's terrified but growing conviction that Harriet really does have a firm hold Knightley's affections. Except that Emma is not that stupid, and, under the tremendous pressure of that moment, Emma comes up with something very close to the reality of the situation] :
On the subject of the first of the two circumstances, she did, after a little reflection, venture the following question. "Might he not?—Is not it possible, that when enquiring, as you thought, into the state of your affections, he might be alluding to Mr. Martin—he might have Mr. Martin's interest in view? But Harriet rejected the suspicion with spirit. "Mr. Martin! No indeed!—There was not a hint of Mr. Martin. I hope I know better now, than to care for Mr. Martin, or to be suspected of it."
[As occurs several other times during the course of the novel, Emma actually gueses _right_ but let's herself be talked out of it by a very clever manipulator! And now Harriet, just like Lucy Steele, sticks in the needle and twists it, by making Emma believe that it all happened only because of Emma!]
When Harriet had closed her evidence, she appealed to her dear Miss Woodhouse, to say whether she had not good ground for hope. "I never should have presumed to think of it at first," said she, "but for you. You told me to observe him carefully, and let his behaviour be the rule of mine—and so I have. But now I seem to feel that I may deserve him; and that if he does chuse me, it will not be any thing so very wonderful." The bitter feelings occasioned by this speech, the many bitter feelings, made the utmost exertion necessary on Emma's side, to enable her to say on reply, "Harriet, I will only venture to declare, that Mr. Knightley is the last man in the world, who would intentionally give any woman the idea of his feeling for her more than he really does." Harriet seemed ready to worship her friend for a sentence so satisfactory; and Emma was only saved from raptures and fondness, which at that moment would have been dreadful penance, by the sound of her father's footsteps. He was coming through the hall. Harriet was too much agitated to encounter him. "She could not compose herself— Mr. Woodhouse would be alarmed—she had better go;"—with most ready encouragement from her friend, therefore, she passed off through another door—and the moment she was gone, this was the spontaneous burst of Emma's feelings: "Oh God! that I had never seen her!"
[And there Harriet, the consummate actress, gives herself her own cue to exit, pursued neither by a bear nor by any suspicion by Emma of how thoroughly she has been gulled by Harriet!
Cheers, ARNIE
Over the top flattery, playing Emma like a drum, that was a constant from the beginning of the novel till that climactic scene in Chapter 47, but look at the subtle but clear shift that occurs right then, which throws Emma into a state of profound shock, very much the way Lucy Steele speaks to Elinor at a _very_ similar moment in the action of S&S--and that resemblance is _not_ coincidental:
"I do not wonder, Miss Woodhouse," [Harriet] resumed, "that you should feel a great difference between the two, as to me or as to any body. You must think one five hundred million times more above me than the other. But I hope, Miss Woodhouse, that supposing—that if—strange as it may appear—. But you know they were your own words, that more wonderful things had happened, matches of greater disparity had taken place than between Mr. Frank Churchill and me; and, therefore, it seems as if such a thing even as this, may have occurred before—and if I should be so fortunate, beyond expression, as to—if Mr. Knightley should really—if he does not mind the disparity, I hope, dear Miss Woodhouse, you will not set yourself against it, and try to put difficulties in the way. But you are too good for that, I am sure."
[Translation: "You're not going to try to throw a monkey wrench into my plans, are you, Miss Woodhouse?" There is a very very subtle defiance in Harriet's tone, a momentary seismic shift in the dynamic between them, from over the top sucking-up to a calm, resoluteness that is especially shocking to Emma precisely because it is like a bolt from the blue by comparison to Harriet's former behavior toward Emma.]
Harriet was standing at one of the windows. Emma turned round to look at her in consternation, and hastily said, "Have you any idea of Mr. Knightley's returning your affection?" "Yes," replied Harriet modestly, but not fearfully—"I must say that I have."
[Note that the narrative description of Harriet speaking "modestly, but not fearfully" is, in this interpretation against the grain, how Harriet seems to _Emma_, not what Harriet actually feels. That is key to the alternative reading, to see such narration as reflections of Emma's perceptions, not of objective reality. Then, for two memorable paragraphs, Emma gets lost in her thoughts as she realizes that she wants Knightley for herself, until Harriet, having softened Emma up with a body blow, now returns to her role as the trembling waif....]
"Harriet, who had been standing in no unhappy reverie, was yet very glad to be called from it, by the now encouraging manner of such a judge, and such a friend as Miss Woodhouse, and only wanted invitation, to give the history of her hopes with great, though trembling delight.—Emma's tremblings as she asked, and as she listened, were better concealed than Harriet's, but they were not less. Her voice was not unsteady; but her mind was in all the perturbation that such a development of self, such a burst of threatening evil, such a confusion of sudden and perplexing emotions, must create.—She listened with much inward suffering, but with great outward patience, to Harriet's detail.—Methodical, or well arranged, or very well delivered, it could not be expected to be; but it contained, when separated from all the feebleness and tautology of the narration, a substance to sink her spirit—especially with the corroborating circumstances, which her own memory brought in favour of Mr. Knightley's most improved opinion of Harriet."
[And Harriet now proceeds to consolidate her newfound power over Emma, by carefully leading Emma through her paces, giving Emma exactly the pathetic narrative that will reinforce Emma's terrified but growing conviction that Harriet really does have a firm hold Knightley's affections. Except that Emma is not that stupid, and, under the tremendous pressure of that moment, Emma comes up with something very close to the reality of the situation] :
On the subject of the first of the two circumstances, she did, after a little reflection, venture the following question. "Might he not?—Is not it possible, that when enquiring, as you thought, into the state of your affections, he might be alluding to Mr. Martin—he might have Mr. Martin's interest in view? But Harriet rejected the suspicion with spirit. "Mr. Martin! No indeed!—There was not a hint of Mr. Martin. I hope I know better now, than to care for Mr. Martin, or to be suspected of it."
[As occurs several other times during the course of the novel, Emma actually gueses _right_ but let's herself be talked out of it by a very clever manipulator! And now Harriet, just like Lucy Steele, sticks in the needle and twists it, by making Emma believe that it all happened only because of Emma!]
When Harriet had closed her evidence, she appealed to her dear Miss Woodhouse, to say whether she had not good ground for hope. "I never should have presumed to think of it at first," said she, "but for you. You told me to observe him carefully, and let his behaviour be the rule of mine—and so I have. But now I seem to feel that I may deserve him; and that if he does chuse me, it will not be any thing so very wonderful." The bitter feelings occasioned by this speech, the many bitter feelings, made the utmost exertion necessary on Emma's side, to enable her to say on reply, "Harriet, I will only venture to declare, that Mr. Knightley is the last man in the world, who would intentionally give any woman the idea of his feeling for her more than he really does." Harriet seemed ready to worship her friend for a sentence so satisfactory; and Emma was only saved from raptures and fondness, which at that moment would have been dreadful penance, by the sound of her father's footsteps. He was coming through the hall. Harriet was too much agitated to encounter him. "She could not compose herself— Mr. Woodhouse would be alarmed—she had better go;"—with most ready encouragement from her friend, therefore, she passed off through another door—and the moment she was gone, this was the spontaneous burst of Emma's feelings: "Oh God! that I had never seen her!"
[And there Harriet, the consummate actress, gives herself her own cue to exit, pursued neither by a bear nor by any suspicion by Emma of how thoroughly she has been gulled by Harriet!
Cheers, ARNIE
Harriet Smith’s "Provision for the Evening of Life"
I have been claiming for over 4 years, including at my talks in Oxford in 2007 and at Chawton House in 2009, and at all my JASNA AGM talks around the country during the past 13 months, that the character of Harriet Smith may be validly interpreted as being a Shamela and not a Pamela. I.e., Harriet can fairly be read as having her eyes firmly set on Mr. Knightley from the beginning of the novel, as an alternative to the normative interpretation of Harriet as having been corrupted by receiving dangerous encouragement from Emma to think too big, and to set her sights too high.
I just found another interesting bread crumb in the text of Emma which supports this alternative view of Harriet, and I found it, as often is the case, by accident, as I reread my post earlier today about the word “uncommon” as it appears in Chapter 9 of _Emma_ in the following passage:
"...the only literary pursuit which engaged Harriet at present, the only mental provision she was making for the evening of life, was the collecting and transcribing all the riddles of every sort that she could meet with, into a thin quarto of hot-pressed paper, made up by her friend, and ornamented with ciphers and trophies. In this age of literature, such collections on a very grand scale are not uncommon. "
I was struck this time around by the phrase “for the evening of life”, and felt certain that it was an allusion that would somehow relate to the alternative view of Harriet that I just outlined.
Google Books proved me correct, as I was led to “The Works of Alexander Hamilton…” originally published in 1793, and reprinted in 1810, where I read the following passage in a section where Hamilton is discussing the pros and cons of various ways of a government structuring its public debt instruments (i.e., its bonds) so as to makes those bonds attractive to individual investors, and thereby enable governments receive the funding they need in order to operate efficiently:
“With regard to individuals, the inducement will be sufficient at four per cent. There is no disposition of money, in private loans, making allowance for the usual delays and casualties, which would be equally beneficial as a future provision. A hundred dollars advanced upon the life of a person of eleven years old, would produce an annuity [as follows]: if commencing at 21, of $10; if at 31, of $18; if at 41, of $37, and if at 51, of $78. The same sum advanced upon the chance of the survivorship of the youngest of two lives, one of the persons being twenty-five, the other thirty years old, would produce, if the youngest of the two should survive, an annuity for the remainder of life of 23 dollars…From these instances may readily be discerned, the advantages which these deferred annuities afford for securing a _comfortable provision for the evening of life_, or for wives who survive their husbands.”
There you see almost the identical phrase, “securing a comfortable provision for the evening of life” as the narrator used to mock Harriet’s riddle collection, and it fits perfectly with the mercenary Harriet Smith whom I perceive. Emma thinks that all Harriet reads are silly riddle books, but it turns out that Harriet only plays dumb, but actually reads Alexander Hamilton (a wonderful bookend to Emma's disdain for Robert Martin _also_ having a shrewd business head and reading the Agricultural Reports), and Harriet has a very canny sense of Mr. Knightley as a shrewd investment, a man twice her age who can therefore be expected to predecease her by a period of years, leaving her, at age 45 or so, with a very tidy sort of “deferred annuity” that will make Harriet, like Lady Denham in Sanditon, a great lady!
Read Harriet’s defiant response to Emma’s stunned reaction when Harriet first tells Emma about her aspirations to marry Knightley, and you will see that it fits perfectly with the above interpretation, as you will see a Harriet who thinks (and I happen to agree) that there’s nothing wrong with an enterprising young woman (who has to contend with the prejudice of an unjust society which treats her as someone beneath even “common” people, because she is illegitimate—a society that treats her as, in Emma’s words, literally a _nobody_!) watching out for herself, and making provision for the evening of her life by pretending to be a fool in order to get something from those who were lucky enough to be born into wealth and property!
And there is (at least) one other hint which I find in the text of _Emma_, which points toward Hamilton's writing. The preface to the Hamilton 3-volume set begins with the following sentence:
"Of Alexander Hamilton, it may be said, nothing came from his pen or his lips which should not be treasured up with care….."
When I read that, I knew that it was no accident that we read the following in Chapter 40 that Harriet had been collecting the even more mercenary Mr. Elton's used bandaid and worn down pencil nub and had called them "Precious treasures"! Apparently Harriet had learned what she needed to learn from observing Elton in his pursuit of Emma, and was ready to move on to the next level, and toss her Elton memorabilia into the fire, as she was already planning to get herself _very_ cozy and warm at Donwell Abbey!
Cheers, ARNIE
I just found another interesting bread crumb in the text of Emma which supports this alternative view of Harriet, and I found it, as often is the case, by accident, as I reread my post earlier today about the word “uncommon” as it appears in Chapter 9 of _Emma_ in the following passage:
"...the only literary pursuit which engaged Harriet at present, the only mental provision she was making for the evening of life, was the collecting and transcribing all the riddles of every sort that she could meet with, into a thin quarto of hot-pressed paper, made up by her friend, and ornamented with ciphers and trophies. In this age of literature, such collections on a very grand scale are not uncommon. "
I was struck this time around by the phrase “for the evening of life”, and felt certain that it was an allusion that would somehow relate to the alternative view of Harriet that I just outlined.
Google Books proved me correct, as I was led to “The Works of Alexander Hamilton…” originally published in 1793, and reprinted in 1810, where I read the following passage in a section where Hamilton is discussing the pros and cons of various ways of a government structuring its public debt instruments (i.e., its bonds) so as to makes those bonds attractive to individual investors, and thereby enable governments receive the funding they need in order to operate efficiently:
“With regard to individuals, the inducement will be sufficient at four per cent. There is no disposition of money, in private loans, making allowance for the usual delays and casualties, which would be equally beneficial as a future provision. A hundred dollars advanced upon the life of a person of eleven years old, would produce an annuity [as follows]: if commencing at 21, of $10; if at 31, of $18; if at 41, of $37, and if at 51, of $78. The same sum advanced upon the chance of the survivorship of the youngest of two lives, one of the persons being twenty-five, the other thirty years old, would produce, if the youngest of the two should survive, an annuity for the remainder of life of 23 dollars…From these instances may readily be discerned, the advantages which these deferred annuities afford for securing a _comfortable provision for the evening of life_, or for wives who survive their husbands.”
There you see almost the identical phrase, “securing a comfortable provision for the evening of life” as the narrator used to mock Harriet’s riddle collection, and it fits perfectly with the mercenary Harriet Smith whom I perceive. Emma thinks that all Harriet reads are silly riddle books, but it turns out that Harriet only plays dumb, but actually reads Alexander Hamilton (a wonderful bookend to Emma's disdain for Robert Martin _also_ having a shrewd business head and reading the Agricultural Reports), and Harriet has a very canny sense of Mr. Knightley as a shrewd investment, a man twice her age who can therefore be expected to predecease her by a period of years, leaving her, at age 45 or so, with a very tidy sort of “deferred annuity” that will make Harriet, like Lady Denham in Sanditon, a great lady!
Read Harriet’s defiant response to Emma’s stunned reaction when Harriet first tells Emma about her aspirations to marry Knightley, and you will see that it fits perfectly with the above interpretation, as you will see a Harriet who thinks (and I happen to agree) that there’s nothing wrong with an enterprising young woman (who has to contend with the prejudice of an unjust society which treats her as someone beneath even “common” people, because she is illegitimate—a society that treats her as, in Emma’s words, literally a _nobody_!) watching out for herself, and making provision for the evening of her life by pretending to be a fool in order to get something from those who were lucky enough to be born into wealth and property!
And there is (at least) one other hint which I find in the text of _Emma_, which points toward Hamilton's writing. The preface to the Hamilton 3-volume set begins with the following sentence:
"Of Alexander Hamilton, it may be said, nothing came from his pen or his lips which should not be treasured up with care….."
When I read that, I knew that it was no accident that we read the following in Chapter 40 that Harriet had been collecting the even more mercenary Mr. Elton's used bandaid and worn down pencil nub and had called them "Precious treasures"! Apparently Harriet had learned what she needed to learn from observing Elton in his pursuit of Emma, and was ready to move on to the next level, and toss her Elton memorabilia into the fire, as she was already planning to get herself _very_ cozy and warm at Donwell Abbey!
Cheers, ARNIE
The Remarkable Veiled Meaning of the Latin epigraph to Loiterer #45
Two weeks ago, I posted the last of a series of messages giving my interpretation of Loiterer #45 as having been ghostwritten by the 13 year old Jane Austen:
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/06/very-famous-literary-source-for-almost.html
To recap, the essence of my claim is that Loiterer #45 was a covert satire by JA of the Revd. Benjamin William Portal, Oxford and Hampshire friend of James Austen, and in particular was closely modeled on an early chapter in Swift's Tale of a Tub, both of them being, among other things, a very elaborate veiled joke about what we politely call "flatulation". Loiterer #45 goes into extraordinary detail describing the movement of vast quantities of air and of a fantastical machine somehow connected to same. Enough said, you have to read Loiterer #45 to see what JA makes of that conceit there, it is like a previously undiscovered especially fanciful additional Juvenilia of hers (which of course, I claim, it _is_!)
After sending my last message on that topic, it occurred to me that I ought to take a look at the epigraph for Loiterer #45, because my experience interpreting other Loiterer issues which I believe JA ghostwrote, was the the Latin epigraphs are not only not random, they actually go to the heart of the satire in the issue itself. But the Loiterer itself did not deign to translate any of its Latin epigraphs, and I already had in mind just the person to contact to ask for a good translation.
I called on my friend, Mary DeForest, classicist/Janeite par excellence, to translate the epigraph from the Aeneid, which of course was authored by Vergilius (or Virgil, as he is known today) without telling Mary where I had found it, or why I was asking for it, so as not to in any way influence her answer:
"Nimborum in Patriam, Loca fæta furentibus Austris
Æoliam venit. Hic vasto rex Æolus antro
Luctantes Ventos tempestatesque sonoras
Imperio premit, ac Vinclis et Carcere frenat.
Illi indignantes magno cam murmure Montis
Circum Claustra fremunt."
Turns out Mary was on vacation, and so she only responded to me today, two weeks later, and for a moment I was in a panic, not remembering at first why I asked for the translation. But then I did read her translation and that made me recall why, and it also made me ecstatic. Here it is, and then, if you can't guess why it made me so happy from my underlinings in the translation itself, I will explain why, immediately following same:
"She came into the fatherland of the storm clouds, Aeolia, places teeming with raging _South Winds_. Here King Aeolus in a _vast cave_ controls the _struggling winds_ and the _loud storms_ with his sovereignty, and bridles them with chains and prison. They _offended_ with a _great murmur_ rage around the confines of _the mountain._]
Further translation into Swiftian scatalogese, for those not fluent in same:
"raging South Winds" refers to the kind of air that escapes from the "southern" portion of the human body; the "vast cave" is the part of the human body whence issue those "South or struggling winds"; the "loud storms" and the "great murmur" are the sounds blared out to the world announcing the arrival of those "south winds", "the mountain" is the part of the body that resembles two twin mountains side by side, and all of the above are generally considered to be quite "offensive"!
Now, whether Virgil intended this scatalogical meaning, that is a very interesting question, but I currently have no idea as to the answer, although I must admit I suspect him of a naughty pun. But what I am absolutely certain of is that Jane Austen the ghostwriter of Loiterer #45 understood these scatalogical meanings very clearly, and that is precisely why she chose that particular epigraph!
And as to my claim that JA was the ghostwriter of Loiterer #45, and that James Austen did not write this, I introduce, as further evidence, the striking parallelism between the "South winds" of the Virgilian epigraph and the veiled scatology of the argument between Mr. Woodhouse and John Knightley about the unhealthy "air" and "mud" at "South End", which shows that JA remained as enamored, and as erudite and adept in her deployment, of such sophisticated ribald humor at 40 as she was at 13!
Cheers, ARNIE
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/06/very-famous-literary-source-for-almost.html
To recap, the essence of my claim is that Loiterer #45 was a covert satire by JA of the Revd. Benjamin William Portal, Oxford and Hampshire friend of James Austen, and in particular was closely modeled on an early chapter in Swift's Tale of a Tub, both of them being, among other things, a very elaborate veiled joke about what we politely call "flatulation". Loiterer #45 goes into extraordinary detail describing the movement of vast quantities of air and of a fantastical machine somehow connected to same. Enough said, you have to read Loiterer #45 to see what JA makes of that conceit there, it is like a previously undiscovered especially fanciful additional Juvenilia of hers (which of course, I claim, it _is_!)
After sending my last message on that topic, it occurred to me that I ought to take a look at the epigraph for Loiterer #45, because my experience interpreting other Loiterer issues which I believe JA ghostwrote, was the the Latin epigraphs are not only not random, they actually go to the heart of the satire in the issue itself. But the Loiterer itself did not deign to translate any of its Latin epigraphs, and I already had in mind just the person to contact to ask for a good translation.
I called on my friend, Mary DeForest, classicist/Janeite par excellence, to translate the epigraph from the Aeneid, which of course was authored by Vergilius (or Virgil, as he is known today) without telling Mary where I had found it, or why I was asking for it, so as not to in any way influence her answer:
"Nimborum in Patriam, Loca fæta furentibus Austris
Æoliam venit. Hic vasto rex Æolus antro
Luctantes Ventos tempestatesque sonoras
Imperio premit, ac Vinclis et Carcere frenat.
Illi indignantes magno cam murmure Montis
Circum Claustra fremunt."
Turns out Mary was on vacation, and so she only responded to me today, two weeks later, and for a moment I was in a panic, not remembering at first why I asked for the translation. But then I did read her translation and that made me recall why, and it also made me ecstatic. Here it is, and then, if you can't guess why it made me so happy from my underlinings in the translation itself, I will explain why, immediately following same:
"She came into the fatherland of the storm clouds, Aeolia, places teeming with raging _South Winds_. Here King Aeolus in a _vast cave_ controls the _struggling winds_ and the _loud storms_ with his sovereignty, and bridles them with chains and prison. They _offended_ with a _great murmur_ rage around the confines of _the mountain._]
Further translation into Swiftian scatalogese, for those not fluent in same:
"raging South Winds" refers to the kind of air that escapes from the "southern" portion of the human body; the "vast cave" is the part of the human body whence issue those "South or struggling winds"; the "loud storms" and the "great murmur" are the sounds blared out to the world announcing the arrival of those "south winds", "the mountain" is the part of the body that resembles two twin mountains side by side, and all of the above are generally considered to be quite "offensive"!
Now, whether Virgil intended this scatalogical meaning, that is a very interesting question, but I currently have no idea as to the answer, although I must admit I suspect him of a naughty pun. But what I am absolutely certain of is that Jane Austen the ghostwriter of Loiterer #45 understood these scatalogical meanings very clearly, and that is precisely why she chose that particular epigraph!
And as to my claim that JA was the ghostwriter of Loiterer #45, and that James Austen did not write this, I introduce, as further evidence, the striking parallelism between the "South winds" of the Virgilian epigraph and the veiled scatology of the argument between Mr. Woodhouse and John Knightley about the unhealthy "air" and "mud" at "South End", which shows that JA remained as enamored, and as erudite and adept in her deployment, of such sophisticated ribald humor at 40 as she was at 13!
Cheers, ARNIE
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