2012 JASNA AGM in Brooklyn: Keynote Speakers Anna Quindlen & Cornel West

I just returned last night to South Florida after attending my seventh Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) Annual General Meeting (AGM) in the past eight years:

http://www.jasna.org/agms/newyork/index.html

I was in my usual state of exhilaration and exhaustion by the end of it, the result of spending absurdly large amounts of face time with a healthy cross-section of the 700+ other Janeites who attended. A JASNA AGM is a place where conversation with total strangers, as well as old friends, occurs effortlessly, as we discuss our own lives and also the lives of our special "mutual friends", being all the characters of Jane Austen's novels, and the most cherished mutual friend of all, Jane Austen herself!

Anyway, it has been my custom to give an AGM report here the past few years, and 2012 will be no exception.

I will begin in this post talking about the two charismatic speakers who gave the first two plenary addresses, who are each famous wide and far beyond the world of Jane Austen---Anna Quindlen and Cornel West--but who happen each to be hardcore Janeites!

Each of them did a spectacular job--I will not try to recreate the particulars of what they said, because what was most stirring was the way they each projected their own formidable and unique personalities to the crowd, and generated a spiritual Austenesque aura that we all bathed in--in short, both of them master storytellers.

What was most wonderful, which might be surprising to some, was that their personal styles of speechifying were so very different, and yet seemed to synergize, via that contrast,  with each other.  Quindlen's style was restrained, down-home, lowkey, while Dr. West was like the head preacher in the Church of the Holy Jane, leading a true revival meeting.  And yet both seem so organically connected to the Protean personality of Jane Austen.

What they had in common most of all was an obvious deep understanding, on every level--spiritual, psychological, and intellectual--of the enormous genius of Jane Austen. We were not hearing any of the still-heard-frequently nonsense about Jane being a miniaturist, Jane being modest in her aspirations as an artist--no, we were hearing names like Shakespeare and Joyce, Plato and Socrates, with Jane Austen's name right up there at the highest rung of the ladder with the rest of those titans. Not a great woman writer, but a great writer PERIOD.

So, while Andrew Davies's keynote speech in Ft. Worth last year was still the one and only truly electrifying "Woodstock" experience I have ever had at a JASNA AGM, Quindlen and West both did themselves and Jane Austen proud, and created an unforgettable experience for us all.

I have a specific goodie or two to toss in the mix about each of them vis a vis Jane Austen, and both, by coincidence, were addressed by me in a post in Austen L a year and a half ago, which I just re-posted here in this blog an hour ago here:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/10/jane-austens-rosetta-stone-mrs-eltons.html

First, here is what I wrote then about Anna Quindlen, before I was even aware that she would be on the AGM bill this past weekend:

"In 1995, the novelist Anna Quindlen, in her Intro to an edition of Pride & Prejudice, wrote: "For those of us who suspect all the mysteries of life are contained in the microcosm of the family, that personal relationships prefigure all else, the work of Jane Austen is the Rosetta Stone of literature. We can only hope that when she described her first novel as “rather too light and bright”, she was being ironic rather than self-deprecating.”"

That is why, when I first became aware, in early 2005, of secret answers in Emma's Chapter 9 word games, I myself began calling Chapter 9 of Emma the Rosetta Stone of Jane Austen's fiction, because these word games are perfect symbols of the novels themselves, i.e. , each novel has one "answer" (i.e., one story line) that everyone sees, and a second secret "answer" that is concealed. And, as I will explain before this post is over, the second charade in Chapter 9 of _Emma_ is also a Rosetta Stone in the sense of revealing a crucial secret within the shadow story of _Emma_."    END QUOTE

It was gratifying to read another Janeite's thinking about Jane Austen and the Rosetta Stone in the same breath, but in a different way. 

Second, as to Cornel West, he may have surprised more than a few in the audience with his repeated assertion that Jane Austen had much in common as an author with West's other hero, Anton Chekhov--another titan who appeared to be a miniaturist. 

I recollected at the time that I had during the course of my research collected a few tidbits about Chekhov vis a vis Austen, and today I had a chance to delve into my files and find them.

The first was a 2002 Austen-L post by Anubala Varikat, who claimed to see some startling resonances between Chekhov's play The Three Sisters, on the one hand, and Austen's novel Sense & Sensibility, on the other:

http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0201C&L=AUSTEN-L&P=R157&I=-3

Now, I don't know if Dr. West has also noticed those resonances, but it was clear from the way he kept coming back to Chekhov during his address that he considers Austen and Chekhov to be deeply linked in some mysterious way. So now I intend to dip my toe a bit in the Chekhov Sea, where I have barely found time to dip my toe in the past---and see what I see when i do--I am hoping there will be some more Austen surprises lurking there, which would validate the intuitions of both A. Varikat and Dr. West.

Finally....Google Desktop reminded me of the other Austen-Chekhov connection  that I myself have been making for several years now, and here is one example from that same prior post of mine:

"As my Subject Line states, I claim that Mrs. Elton's acrostic _is_ Mr. Elton's charade! I realized this a few years ago, when I revisited the question which had first occurred to me in 2005, i.e., where in Emma was Mrs. Elton's acrostic? I was convinced that JA would not have had Mrs. Elton mention receiving an acrostic on her name from an unnamed puppy, unless the text of that acrostic was hidden somewhere in Emma, and unless the identity of that puppy was somehow revealed in Emma as well. Like Chekhov's famous dictum:"

 "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

 I believe that JA adhered to that dictum, and that all the "background" details in her novels which appear to be insignificant are actually significant. In that regard, I had guessed, in 2005, for various reasons, that Frank Churchill was the puppy who gives Miss Hawkins an acrostic,. But beyond that, I was frustrated, because I could not find any hints as to the actual text of the acrostic anywhere in the text of the novel."

And now, as I look at those comments of mine in the light of Dr. West's linkages of Chekhov and Austen, I realize that this is a very significant connection between them---because it's not just Mrs. Elton's acrostic that fits in the same category as Chekhov's rifle hanging on a wall, there must be a few hundred such details lurking everywhere in Jane Austen's writing--details which, in the normative way of reading her novels--which I call the "overt story"---are trivial, mere background, which play no apparent role whatsoever in the movement of the story.  

But that's just why I consider the fact that Mrs. Elton's acrostic is, once you solve the puzzle to the end, the same as Mrs. Elton's charade, so important. Because I am the first and only Austen scholar to ever suggest that Mrs. Elton's acrostic might have any significance whatsoever in the story of Emma. So, we may say that Jane Austen religiously followed Chekhov's dictum about rifles hanging on walls, but with the humongous caveat that she often gave no overt meaning to those hanging rifles, but instead left it to the reader to discover what role they played in the shadow story of her novels!  

Or to use a biological metaphor, in the overt story, those details are junk DNA, but in the overt story, they are key DNA playing a vital role in the life of the story!  

 So, having taken a tour through Rosetta Stones, hanging rifles and junk DNA, I conclude this first post about the 2012 JASNA AGM.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Jane Austen's Rosetta Stone: Mrs. Elton's Acrostic IS Mr. Elton's Charade!

The following is the full text of a post I wrote in Austen L way back on June 15, 2011, which, by an oversight, I did not cross-post here in my blog. That was an oversight which I am correcting now, because I wish to make reference to it in my next succeeding post, in which I will begin to present my own reactions to the 2012 JASNA AGM just completed yesterday in Brooklyn.

In 1995, the novelist Anna Quindlen, in her Intro to an edition of Pride & Prejudice, wrote: "For those of us who suspect all the mysteries of life are contained in the microcosm of the family, that personal relationships prefigure all else, the work of Jane Austen is the Rosetta Stone of literature. We can only hope that when she described her first novel as “rather too light and bright”, she was being ironic rather than self-deprecating.”"

That is why, when I first became aware, in early 2005, of secret answers in Emma's Chapter 9 word games, I myself began calling Chapter 9 of Emma the Rosetta Stone of Jane Austen's fiction, because these word games are perfect symbols of the novels themselves, i.e. , each novel has one "answer" (i.e., one story line) that everyone sees, and a second secret "answer" that is concealed. And, as I will explain before this post is over, the second charade in Chapter 9 of _Emma_ is also a Rosetta Stone in the sense of revealing a crucial secret within the shadow story of _Emma_.

I began calling the second charade a Rosetta Stone in early 2005, based on the following two discoveries that had already been made by other scholars by that time, but which I only first became aware of then, when I began reading the scholarly literature about Jane Austen.

In 1999, in "Slipping into the Ha-Ha", Jill Heydt-Stevenson made a remarkable discovery re the fragment from Garrick's Riddle which Mr. Woodhouse recalls in Chapter 9 of Emma. JHS claimed that while the official answer to Garrick's Riddle was "chimney sweep", the second secret answer was about the symptoms and treatment of tertiary syphilis, which makes the official answer metaphorical in a very graphic, sexual way. And the Bates's housemaid Patty's Freudian comment about the "chimney" needing "sweeping" in Emma is one way we know that JA knew about that secret answer. And JHS also noted the disturbing implications of Mr. Woodhouse remembering Garrick's Riddle, and of Emma's responding that she had previously copied it from Elegant Extracts, which is more or less the equivalent of someone today saying that they copied the text of a graphic Richard Pryor monologue from Good Housekeeping!

In 2000, in "The Riddles of Emma", Colleen Sheehan made another remarkable discovery re the FIRST charade in Chapter 9 of Emma--Sheehan claimed that while the official answer was "woman" (which by the way does NOT appear in the novel), the second secret answer is "heartfiel", which is the love dust that Puck sprinkles on Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The "woman" charade, by the way, was NOT written by JA herself (I have my own theory about who the identity of the actual author), JA found it in a published Riddle collection, which also contained a reprint of Garrick's Riddle. And Colleen's connection of Emma to A Midsummer Night's Dream in this way is extremely synergistic with Jocelyn Harris's brilliant 1986 analysis of the complex allusion to A Midsummer Night's Dream in the plot of Emma itself.

That was great, but then things got really exciting in terms of understanding what was going on in Chapter 9 of Emma.

In the 2007 Persuasions Online, Colleen Sheehan published the second secret solution to the second charade in Chapter 9 of Emma, "Prince of Whales":

http://www.jasna.org/persuasions/on-line/vol27no1/sheehan.htm

I was privileged to have been emailing with Colleen about the Dedication of Emma to the Prince Regent, and our shared belief that it was a total put-on, when she made that spectacular discovery. It gave my own research into the shadow story of Emma a huge lift, as it is a true smoking gun, which dovetails perfectly with the two earlier discoveries of secret answers to wordgames in Chapter 9 of Emma. It made Chapter 9 even more of a Rosetta Stone (which had THREE languages on it).

And then in 2009, in Janeites & Austen L, Anielka, inspired by Colleen's discovery, published a _third_ secret solution to the second charade in Chapter 9 of Emma, "Leviathan":

http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0909a&L=austen-l&T=0&F=&S=&P=2851

http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0909a&L=austen-l&T=0&F=&S=&P=3425

http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0909a&L=austen-l&T=0&F=&S=&P=3660

And that immediately inspired me to discover a _fourth_ secret solution to the second charade in Chapter 9 of Emma, "Crown of Thorns":

http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0909a&L=austen-l&T=0&F=&S=&P=3879

And now, the other day, Anielka has published yet another _fifth_ secret solution, "Church of England". And I believe her when she claims she has more secret answers in reserve as well. Nothing surprises me anymore in terms of JA's virtuosic wordgames.

And I will add one last discovery I made regarding word games in Chapter 9 of _Emma_, which I speak about at every one of my presentations about Jane Fairfax as the shadow heroine of Emma (actually, Kathy, you heard me say this at the NYC presentation 13 months ago), and which I believe to be a particularly significant and elegant extension and culmination of all of the above.

As my Subject LIne states, I claim that Mrs. Elton's acrostic _is_ Mr. Elton's charade! I realized this a few years ago, when I revisited the question which had first occurred to me in 2005, i.e., where in Emma was Mrs. Elton's acrostic? I was convinced that JA would not have had Mrs. Elton mention receiving an acrostic on her name from an unnamed puppy, unless the text of that acrostic was hidden somewhere in Emma, and unless the identity of that puppy was somehow revealed in Emma as well. Like Chekhov's famous dictum:

"If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

I believe that JA adhered to that dictum, and that all the "background" details in her novels which appear to be insignificant are actually significant. In that regard, I had guessed, in 2005, for various reasons, that Frank Churchill was the puppy who gives Miss Hawkins an acrostic,. But beyond that, I was frustrated, because I could not find any hints as to the actual text of the acrostic anywhere in the text of

the novel.

That was when I realized that the answer had been hiding right in front of my nose since 2006!---because Colleen Sheehan, in her later Persuasions Online article, had not only discovered "Prince of Whales" as a second secret answer to the second charade, she also had discovered that the second charade in Emma contains not one but _two_ anagrammed acrostics, both of them on the name "Lamb". So the second charade is _also_ a double acrostic!

In her article, Colleen made the sensible inference that the acrostic on "Lamb" was there to point to _Charles_ Lamb, the author of the satirical poem which JA was pointing to, which has as its punch line "the Prince of Whales". And that is certainly correct. But that was when I realized _another_ meaning of that acrostic, as it relates to the shadow story of _Emma_, which is Mr. Elton's charade must be the same acrostic that was given to Miss Hawkins!

I then combined that insight with my earlier guess that Frank Churchill was the puppy who gave that acrostic to Miss Hawkins, and deduced that Frank Churchill must therefore be _both_ the puppy, and also the unnamed friend of Mr. Elton who gives Mr. Elton that charade/acrostic to deliver to Emma!

So, the second charade is the acrostic, Frank is both the unnamed puppy and Mr. Elton's unnamed friend. This is Occam's Razor in duplicate---two mysteries explained by one answer! Everything ties together in an incredibly neat bow, and, more important, the implications of this discovery shed crucial light on the shadow story of Emma.

And that is why I claim that the second charade really is a Rosetta Stone for discovering the shadow story of _Emma_.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Queen Elizabeth I and Elizabeth Bennet: I would not be so fastidious as you are for a kingdom!

OK, so one step keeps leading to another, every time i catch my breath.

I just recalled that Anielka made an interesting suggestion a while back about Mary Queen of Scots being represented in Pride & Prejudice. I know she's suggested it a few times publicly, here's the one I most easily find, from 4 months ago:

"Try Antonia Fraser for a biog. if all else fails. Ms. Fraser's rendition of Mary Q. of S. and the four Maries sounds a lot like Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters."

Anielka's interpretation is interesting, and I think it dovetails nicely with my now finding, via the Jane Austen Code in Letter 81, that Elizabeth Bennet is a representation of her _namesake_ Queen Elizabeth I--who was also, of course Mary QOS's first cousin, once removed!

Here's what I come up with, on first impression, vis a vis the latter:

First and foremost, there is one obvious and significant parallel between Queen Elizabeth and Elizabeth Bennet. A central issue during much of Queen Elizabeth's reign revolved around that bunch of famous powerful noblemen who wanted to marry her! Of course they wanted to, she was Queen of England! So isn't it curious that three (count 'em, three) eligible bachelors (Darcy, Wickham and Collins) all descend on Meryton within a very short amount of time from every corner of southern England, and all three of them have a go at marrying Elizabeth Bennet? (And don't forget Colonel Fitzwilliam, who also happens to fall into Lizzy's path during the novel) . And in the end of the novel, Elizabeth becomes the "Queen" of Pemberley, which would do very nicely indeed, if you think about it, as a representation of the grandeur, beauty and glory of England itself! So, it seems that both the historical and the fictional Elizabeth's were veritable man-magnets, but who however were not too quick to say yes!

And next, think about Queen Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII of course, who had six wives but very few surviving offspring---and only one of them male--Edward VI-who survived only till 16--it sounds a lot like Longbourn's entail problems. So if Longbourn is also a representation of England itself, the worry would be the same--if the Queen did not marry and conceive a male child to succeed her, who would become King upon her death? Mrs. Bennet would have made a great advisor to Elizabeth, don't you think? And by the way, any guesses as to what Mr. Bennet's Christian name was? Might it have been......Henry?

Now, consider Henry VIII's first wife Catherine of Aragon who bore him Mary. Mary, upon ascending the throne after Edward VI's death tried to turn England back to Catholicism. Cranmer annulled Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine. Of course one of the Bennet girls is named Mary, and another is named Catherine. Hmm...

Then consider Henry's second wife Ann Boleyn/Bullen, who bore him Elizabeth. Of course we have an Ann de Burgh in P&P, in addition to the "heroine" of P&P, named Elizabeth.

And then Henry's third wife Jane Seymour who died in childbirth after bearing Edward VI. Of course the eldest Bennet girl is named Jane, which also suggests that Mrs. Bennet's Christian name was _also_ Jane, right? Hmm....

Then we have the last three wives, Anne of Cleves and the two Catherines, but nothing leaps out as a parallel to P&P in their lives.

And finally, no Lydia there anywhere among the Tudors----but then, as Lydia Bennet would have been the first to announce to us all, they broke the mold when she was made.

I finish with noting the following very interesting usages of the word "kingdom" in P&P, including the one in the subject line of this message:

"I would not be so fastidious as you are," cried Mr. Bingley, "for a kingdom! Upon my honour, I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life as I have this evening; and there are several of them you see uncommonly pretty."

That has the unmistakable scent of a clue, pointing to a "kingdom" (Pemberley, Longbourn?) as to which a suitor for Lizzy's hand like Darcy might be fastidious.

And of course we have not one but two hyperbolic references to "the kingdom" of England courtesy of Mr. Collins:

"But of all the views which his garden, or which the country or kingdom could boast, none were to be compared with the prospect of Rosings, afforded by an opening in the trees that bordered the park nearly opposite the front of his house. It was a handsome modern building, well situated on rising ground."

"My dear Miss Elizabeth, I have the highest opinion in the world in your excellent judgement in all matters within the scope of your understanding; but permit me to say, that there must be a wide difference between the established forms of ceremony amongst the laity, and those which regulate the clergy; for, give me leave to observe that I consider the clerical office as equal in point of dignity with the highest rank in the kingdom—provided that a proper humility of behaviour is at the same time maintained.

And I think I'll stop there.....

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Just ONE more thing about the Pride & Prejudice subtext of Letter 82......

I knew in the back of my mind that I had left out something significant when I sent my last post about the Pride & Prejudice subtext of Letter 81, but I just couldn't tease it out of my mind, until _now_--it just came to me, so here it is, I think you'll agree it was worth the effort to bring it to awareness:

I recalled having recently posted the following Wikipedia passage as part of my response to Anielka's discovery of the veiled allusion to Cranmer's Articles in Mr. Rushworth's speeches in Mansfield Park:

"This was done following the queen’s _excommunication_ by the Pope in 1570. That act destroyed any hope of reconciliation with Rome and it was no longer necessary to fear that Article XXIX would offend Catholic sensibilities."

If you've read my last post, you know exactly why that passage is so exciting in relation to Letter 81, because in that last post, I argued that Lady Catherine de Burgh threatens to in effect _excommunicate_ Elizabeth Bennet---in order, among other things, to avoid pollution of the shades of Pemberley.

So, now I suggest to you that the attempted (but, it should be noted, totally unsuccessful) excommunication of _Elizabeth_ Bennet by "Pope Lady Catherine the One and Only" is, in part, a veiled allusion to the _historical_ excommunication of Queen _Elizabeth_ I of England by the Pope in 1570. And....this adds yet further meat to the veiled allusion to "Bell, book, and candle" in Letter 81!

What does it mean? A great deal, although it will take a while to think it all the way through. But for now I can say first that we know that Queen Elizabeth I was the centerpiece of the youthful Jane Austen's History of England--and, per Annette Upfal's brilliant sleuthing out of the Austen girls's veiled family history, a representation of the witch-like Mrs. Austen---so, in a funny way, we've come back to Diana's post about "Bell Book and Candle"---when we put together (1) JA and CEA collectively, in both word and image, portraying their mother as a kind of regal witch, with (2) JA portraying the attempted excommunication of a "bewitching" Elizabeth who becomes "Queen" of Pemberley, with (3) JA in Letter 81 joking about all of this in code, and also connecting the dots to their friend Elizabeth Bigg, it's clear that this was a Big Deal in the mind of Jane Austen on a variety of levels, in both the overt and the shadow story of P&P, and with regard to the religious and historical subtext of the novel as well. And...it fits perfectly with _other_ material I've previously excavated but _never_ made public to date.

At this point, I am hesitant to say I am done with Letter 81, because I would not at all be surprised if more aspects of this veiled allusion pop up during my routine followup procedures with discoveries like this. Somehow this one seems ripe for further excavation.

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

The Fictional Excommunication That JA Playfully Alluded to in Letter 81

"Remember---JA is writing Letter 81 still flushed with the euphoria of the publication of P&P---so it is no surprise at all that she would giddily and covertly allude to not one but _two_ absurdist passages in P&P in Letter 81--and the crowning glory of the in-joke with CEA is the linkage between the real life _Elizabeth_ Bigg and the fictional _Elizabeth_ Bennet---aka "my little Lizzy"----and I long ago wondered whether the fictional name "Bingley" was connected to the real name "Bigg"! Which also makes me wonder whether there is not some sharp satire of the ill-fated proposal to JA by the unattractive Harris Bigg-Wither in the ill-fated proposal to Elizabeth Bennet by the unattractive Mr. Collins! So it is no surprise at all that the Bigg family are the "stars" of Letter 81! And that's what takes us _right_ back to "bell, book, and candle"---Alethea and Elizabeth Bigg are those very same Manydown ladies with their "enormous great stupid thick quarto volumes" who supposedly would have been experts on the Catholic excommunication curse!"


I had barely hit the "Send" button in my previous (second) message about Letter 81 (containing the above conclusory paragraph), when it suddenly dawned on me that there was yet _another_ passage in P&P which JA was veiledly alluding to in Letter 81, an allusion which explains, I believe, _exactly_ why JA mentioned the excommunication curse of the Catholic Church, in particular, in the same breath with the Bigg sisters of Manydown--and an allusion which, as you will see, makes it even more obvious that the real life Bigg family was indeed, as I have long suspected, an allusive source for P&P itself--but now I see just how central an allusion it is!

Go with me on this for a minute, I bet I can make you see it, too, with just a few "clues"---and it won't take ten years for you to see, but ten _seconds_!

Just think, what passage in P&P (indeed in all of JA's fiction) most strongly comes to mind when I say the word "excommunication"? I.e., which character assumes a truly Pope-like imperiousness, and, after a trial so fierce it would remind us of the trial of Joan of Arc, blithely threatens to cast another character into a social oblivion equivalent of excommunication?

I'll start the timer......




One.....two......





three.....four......





five.....six......




seven....eight.....




nine....................






TEN!!!!! Time's up--I am willing to bet that a number of you realized exactly who and what I was referring to, and the best way to illustrate that answer is to first present the text of that mid-18th century excommunication curse to you, followed immediately by relevant excerpts from the speech of the "Pope" character in that Austen novel:

"The Pope's Curse, by Bell, Book, and Candle, on a Heretic of Hampreston. By authority of the blessed Virgin Mary, of St. Peter and Paul, and of the Holy Saints, we excommunicate, we utterly curse and banish, commit and deliver to the Devil of Hell, Henry Goldney, of Hampreston, in the county of Dorset, an infamous heretic, that hath, in spite of God and St. Peter (whose church this is), in spite of all holy Saints, and in spite of our holy father, the Pope, (God's vicar here on earth), and of the reverend and worshipful the canons, masters, priests, Jesuits, and clerks of our holy church, committed the heinous crimes of sacrilege1, with the images of our holy Saints, and forsaken our most holy religion, and continues in heresy, blasphemy and corrupt lust; excommunicate be he finally, and delivered over to the Devil as a perpetual malefactor and schismatic; accursed be he, and given soul and body to the Devil, to be buffeted; cursed be he in all holy cities and towns, in fields and ways, in houses and out of houses, and in all ether places, standing, lying, Or rising — walking, running, waking, sleeping, eating, drinking, and whatsoever he does besides. We separate him from the threshold, from all the good prayers of the church, from the participation of holy mass, from all sacraments, chapels, and altars, from holy bread and from holy water, from all the merits of our holy priests and religious men, and from all their cloisters, from all their pardons, privileges, grants, and immunities, all the holy fathers (Popes of Rome) have granted to them, and we give him over utterly to the power of the Devil; and we pray to oar Lady, to St. Peter and Paul, and all holy Saints, that all the senses of his body may fail him, and that he may have no feeling except he come openly to our beloved priest at Stapehill in time of mass, within thirty days from the 3d time of pronouncing hereof by our dear Priest there, and confesses his heinous, heretical, and blasphemous crimes, and by true repentance make satisfaction to our lady, St. Peter, and the worshipful company of the Church of Rome, and suffer himself to be buffeted, scourged, and spit upon, as our said dear Priest, in his goodness, holiness, and sanctity, shall direct and prescribe."

And now consider Chapter 56 of P&P, Lady Catherine's encounter with Elizabeth in the Longbourn Wilderness. First we have a lengthy "trial" section (note that at the end, she actually says "I came to _try_ you"), during which Lady Catherine demands, repeatedly and in a variety of ways, like a skilled prosecutor, that Lizzy confess and recant from her supposed engagement with Darcy-- a passage which is saturated with all sorts of quasi-religious rhetoric, including the most famous reference to the shades of Pemberley being polluted.

But Lizzy stands her ground, like a veritable Clarence Darrow, dodging every rhetorical, legalistic bullet shot at her by Lady Catherine, including the latter's warning to Elizabeth: ".....do not expect to be noticed by his family or friends, if you wilfully act against the inclinations of all. You will be censured, slighted, and despised, by everyone connected with him. Your alliance will be a disgrace; your name will never even be mentioned by any of us."

But even that threat fails to intimidate Lizzy, and so finally Lady Catherine, stymied to the point of exhaustion, pronounces her final "anathema" on Elizabeth, when contrasted with the fire and brimstone of the actual "bell, book, and candle" curse shown above, is drolly funny, delivered with the most understated Austenian irony:

"And this is your real opinion! This is your final resolve! Very well. I shall now know how to act. Do not imagine, Miss Bennet, that your ambition will ever be gratified. I came to try you. I hoped to find you reasonable; but, depend upon it, I will carry my point....I take no leave of you, Miss Bennet. I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve no such attention. I am most seriously displeased."

How perfect, that the worst curse Lady Catherine can imagine is to take no leave of Elizabeth, and to send no compliments to Mrs. Bennet--denying them the attention of the Honorable Lady Catherine de Burgh is equivalent, in Mr. Collins's and Lady Catherine's mind at least, to banishing Elizabeth to a social oblivion worse than a religious excommunication!

And the funniest line of all, when we think of Lady Catherine as an "infallible Pope" in her own mind, is the following:

"Her Ladyship was highly _incensed_"

Get it? "incensed" as in the "censers" we would find in the Vatican, or in any Catholic church, for that matter.


When you consider the above, alongside the _other_ two veiled allusions to P&P that I have previously noted in Letter 81, plus the joke on all the "missed clues", I think there is a vanishingly small chance that all of this is just the product of my own fevered imagination. And here's one final point as icing on the cake---what _else_ is going on in Letter 81 that relates to the Bigg family that resonates strongly with the action in P&P? Of course, in 1813, as the result of the death of the elder Mr. Bigg, his two unmarried daughters found themselves booted out of Manydown so that their brother Harris Bigg-Wither (aka Mr. Collins) could take possession.

Unlike Lydia Bennet, I don't think I need to put _any_ lines under those final words for you to figure out how that resonates with P&P!

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter


ADDED 12:51 EST Oct. 3, 2012:  Read the very next post in this blog for a continuation of the above:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2012/10/just-one-more-thing-about-pride.html

More re the Pride & Prejudice-tinged Absurdist Humor of Letter 81

I am still chuckling as I reread the following passage in Letter 81 about the Catholic Church's Oath of excommunication:

" I have been applied to for information as to the oath taken in former times of Bell, Book, & Candle but have none to give. Perhaps you may be able to learn something of its origin & meaning at Manydown. Ladies who read those enormous great stupid thick quarto volumes which one always sees in the Breakfast parlour there, must be acquainted with everything in the world."


Upon further research and reflection, I am not sure which is funniest among the following three aspects of the above:

1. the pitch-perfect mock seriousness of JA's request for information from CEA, including in particular the absurd equation of the sheer bulk and size of volumes in the Manydown parlor with the notion of those volumes containing information about "everything in the world". I would imagine that JA had enormous difficulty "keeping her countenance" as she wrote the above-quoted passage. And I just realized, it is in _exactly_ the same vein as the passage in P&P I pointed out recently, where Mr. Bingley exhibits his own unexpected adept facility with absurdist humor, delivered with a totally straight face in the parlour at Netherfield, by explaining his own extreme deference to Darcy's edicts as a logical consequence of Mr. Darcy's _tallness_!:

"By all means," cried Bingley; "let us hear all the particulars, not forgetting their comparative height and size; for that will have more weight in the argument, Miss Bennet, than you may be aware of. I assure you, that if Darcy were not such a great tall fellow, in comparison with myself, I should not pay him half so much deference. I declare I do not know a more awful object than Darcy, on particular occasions, and in particular places; at his own house especially, and of a Sunday evening, when he has nothing to do."

OR....

2. the way that the two reputable Austen scholars who have taken notice in print of the above passage have written about it---absolutely oblivious to the joking tone of the passage, but instead taking it completely seriously:
_
_Laura Mooneyham White: JA’s Anglicanism:
p. 119: “Writing in 1813 to Cassandra, who was visiting the Bigg-Withers at Manydown, she gives the news that she has been "applied to for information as to the Oath taken in former times of /Bell Book/& /Candle/— but have none to give. “ Her reluctance seems mostly to follow from a dislike of long scholarly reading (note the four adjectives in a row she deploys against quartos—“enormous great stupid thick”) and less from lack of interest in the Church…The phrase "bb&c" refers to the most extreme act of excommunication performed in the Catholic Church, the rite of anathema, a rite not much practiced since the Middle Ages.”

Ian Littlewood, Critical Assessments:
p.180: “Austen knew nothing, when applied to, of a medieval curse and had little interest in pursuing the matter herself….She would rather encounter play of mind than store information for its own sake. Undeniably, too, her interest in the past was severely limited…”

OR...

3. the fact that Le Faye has _no_ footnote whatsoever for the above quoted passage in Letter 81! Is there any clearer indication of her editorial bias? Isn't it clear that "Bell, Book & Candle" was crying out for an annotation? But Le Faye is no fool---she realized that JA was horsing around bigtime in a way that, if described for what it was, would strike some modern readers as sacrilegious---Jane Austen joking about excommunication? Horrors! ---so she took the path of least resistance, and just ignored it entirely (and I just double checked---it was ignored in the new 4th edition, too!).

In the light of the above, is it any wonder that profound misconceptions about Jane Austen's religiosity continue to widely prevail? It required the stubborn persistence of a outlier/skeptic such as myself to notice, and then bring to the attention of other Janeites, the significance of a passage which is utterly irreconcilable with the notion of JA as a pious, modest, serious High Anglican.


And finally, it occurred to me as I was writing this message that I have one additional bit of evidence to support my claim that JA was joking around about excommunication, and it is in the following passage earlier in Letter 81:

"While I think of it, give my love to Alethea (Alethea first mind, she is Mistress) & Mrs Heathcote & kind remembrances to Miss Charlotte Williams. Only think of your having at last the honour of seeing that wonder of wonders, her elder sister! We are very sorry for what you tell us of Deane. If Mrs Heathcote does not marry & comfort him now I shall think she is a Maria & has no heart. Really, either she or Alethea must marry him, or where he is to look for happiness?"

JA is of course referring to two of the Bigg sisters, the unmarried Alethea and the widowed Elizabeth, and to John Harwood VII, the poor guy whose life was ruined in 1813 by the death of his father leaving crushing debts to be paid off by his eldest son, that we heard about in earlier letters! John Harwood VII had been a suitor for the hand of the widowed Elizabeth Bigg, until his financial debacle in 1813 rendered (so we are all told) that marriage impossible.

But....does any one of you _really_ believe that JA was being serious when she writes that if Elizabeth does not marry John Harwood VII, then _Alethea_ should marry him instead? Are we supposed to think that JA seriously thought about marriage in this way? Of course not! This is more horsing around on JA's part, and, again, are we not reminded of an absurdist passage in Pride & Prejudice, this time out of the mouth of that master of the put-on, Mr. Bennet:

"You are over-scrupulous, surely. I dare say Mr. Bingley will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying whichever he chooses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy."

Remember---JA is writing Letter 81 still flushed with the euphoria of the publication of P&P---so it is no surprise at all that she would giddily and covertly allude to not one but _two_ absurdist passages in P&P in Letter 81--and the crowning glory of the in-joke with CEA is the linkage between the real life _Elizabeth_ Bigg and the fictional _Elizabeth_ Bennet---aka "my little Lizzy"----and I long ago wondered whether the fictional name "Bingley" was connected to the real name "Bigg"! Which also makes me wonder whether there is not some sharp satire of the ill-fated proposal to JA by the unattractive Harris Bigg-Wither in the ill-fated proposal to Elizabeth Bennet by the unattractive Mr. Collins! So it is no surprise at all that the Bigg family are the "stars" of Letter 81!

And that's what takes us _right_ back to "bell, book, and candle"---Alethea and Elizabeth Bigg are those very same Manydown ladies with their "enormous great stupid thick quarto volumes" who supposedly would have been experts on the Catholic excommunication curse!

In closing, then, one point that has come through clearly to me during the course of our long group read of JA's letters, is that certain letters seem to have caught JA in a particularly joking mood, and therefore are packed with one joking, mock serious passage after another. And it is clear that Letter 81 is one of those letters!

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Lady Williams’s Sickness, Bell, Bath & Candle, and Looking for Missed Clues in JA’s Letter 81

 There are no less than _three_ different tasty tidbits lurking in the shadows of Letter 81 dated 2/9/13.

LADY WILLIAMS’S SICKNESS:  First we have this:   “Lady W. has taken to her old tricks of ill-health again, & is sent for a couple of months among her friends. Perhaps she may make THEM sick.”

This Lady Williams was the second wife of Captain (later Admiral) Sir Thomas Williams, whose first wife had been born Jane Cooper. Many Janeites will recall that Jane Cooper was the brave first cousin of JA and CEA who had caused the three of them (including Jane who was very very sick) from illness at age 7 at the boarding school in Southampton, by managing to pass word to her mother about the neglect of the seriousness of the girls’s illnessese there. And then poor Jane Cooper Williams, when not long married, had died in a road accident in 1798, leaving the Captain a widower who eventually married a woman who was perhaps one of JA’s real life models for Mrs. Bennet and Mary Musgrove, her greatest female  hypochondriacs.  

If it appears that I am leaping to a conclusion based on scant evidence, it’s not so. That passage made me curious and a quick check of Le Faye’s index showed me that the second Lady Williams _really_ was not a favorite of  Jane Austen, to put it mildly, over a period of years. The above quoted passage is Exhibit B to that effect, but here are Exhibits A and C, from letters written by JA to CEA before AND after Letter 67:

First Letter 67,  Jan. 30, 1809:  “A letter from Hamstall gives us the history of Sir Tho. Williams’ return-the Admiral, whoever he might be, took a fancy to the Neptune, & having only a worn out 74 to offer in lieu of it, Sir Tho. declined such a command, & is come home Passenger. Lucky Man! to have so fair an opportunity of escape.-I hope his Wife allows herself to be happy on the occasion, & does not give all her thoughts to being nervous.”

And then last, Letter 92, Oct. 15, 1813:  “Lady Williams is living at the Rose at Sittingbourn, they called upon her Yesterday; she cannot live at Sheerness & as soon as she gets to Sittingbourn is quite well.”
 

Somehow Lady Williams lived till 1824, and perhaps part of her survival strategy was pleading hypochondria?  

BELL, BATH & CANDLE:  Second we have this:

“I have been applied to for information as to the oath taken in former times of Bell, Book, & Candle but have none to give. Perhaps you may be able to learn something of its origin & meaning at Manydown. Ladies who read those enormous great stupid thick quarto volumes which one always sees in the Breakfast parlour there, must be acquainted with everything in the world.”

Diana commented as to the above:  “Oddly, someone has questioned her about the Oath taken as to  "Bell Book & Candle," i.e., witchcraft; she counters with some pretty strict  Phillipics about the "enormous great stupid thick Quarto Volumes" at Manydown,  which must contain all the boring information in the world.  Not like Capt.  Pasley's

writing; that paragon "condenses his Thoughts into an Octavo,"  and as she's indicated before she admires his lucid and concise prose.  Now why does she vigorously instruct Cassandra, "Kill poor Mrs. Sclater if  you like it, while you are at Manydown."  All we know about this lady is  that Le Faye tells us she was an admirer of Emma.  But of course, that lies  in the future, and the assiduous collector of opinions does not know that  yet.”

Diana, after some enjoyable sleuthing online, I am pretty sure that the business about the Oath is not about witchcraft, although I am pretty sure I know why you made that association. It turns out that “Bell, Book, and Candle” famously referred (and perhaps still refers) to the curse of excommunication under Roman Catholicism! There are famous scenes referring to this term in Shakespeare’s King John (where The Bastard, following the King’s orders, comments that he will risk excommunication for the monetary prize he hopes to earn) and in Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. And I found a remarkable publication from 1813 (i.e., close in time to when JA wrote  Letter 81), which reproduced the actual text of a mid 18^th century curse of excommunication. The Protestant advocate: or, A review of publications relating to the Roman Catholic Question is the publication and here is the first part of the curse:

The Pope's Curse, by Bell, Book, and Candle, on a Heretic of Hampreston. By  authority of the blessed Virgin Mary, of St. Peter and Paul, and of the Holy Saints, we excommunicate, we utterly curse and banish, commit and deliver to the Devil of Hell, Henry Goldney, of Hampreston, in the county of Dorset, an infamous heretic, that hath, in spite of God and St. Peter (whose church this is), in spite of all holy Saints, and in spite of our holy father, the Pope, (God's vicar here on earth), and of the reverend and worshipful the canons, masters, priests, Jesuits, and clerks of our holy church, committed the heinous crimes of sacrilege1, with the images of our holy Saints, and forsaken our most holy religion, and continues in heresy, blasphemy and corrupt lust; excommunicate be he finally, and delivered over to the Devil as a perpetual malefactor and schismatic; accursed be he, and given soul and body to the Devil, etc. etc [for another half page]…

You made the association to witchcraft, Diana, I believe, because of the famous play and film of that same title, which were very successful and acclaimed, and which was also one of the sources for the TV show Bewitched:   

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell,_Book_and_Candle

But…as far as I can tell, there was nothing in particular in JA’s day associated this phrase with witchcraft, so this would appear to be a cryptic witticism of JA’s relative to Catholicism and excommunication, for some reason lost in the mists of time, but which strikes me as purely satirical. I seriously doubt that JA was actually asked that question by someone else, as if the Manydown crowd really had some insight into that arcana. No, that request has the unmistakable scent of one of JA’s little put-ons. And what further corroborates my sense of her joking mood about this are two other passages in Letter 81.

First,  early in Letter 81: “What a day was yesterday! How many impatient grumbling spirits must have been confined!”

While the ostensible reality behind this comment appears to have been some terrible weather that confined people to home the day before, I detect a wickedly playful whiff of the damned in the image of “impatient grumbling spirits” being “confined” in some Dantean purgatory.

And, that same tone of black humor rears its head one last time right after the Bell, Book & Candle reference, when we read “Kill poor Mrs. Sclater if  you like it, while you are at Manydown."

Apparently CEA did not like to kill Mrs. Sclater—maybe she didn’t have the text for excommunication at ready reference at Manydown?--- Le Faye informs us that Mrs. Sclater lived to a ripe old age and died in 1840. But it tells me all I need to know about Mrs. Sclater that she liked _Emma_, so I detect here some fond affection expressed by JA for a clever female friend in JA’s inimitable way. 

LOOKING FOR (MISSED) CLUES:  And finally, fully in keeping with the joking tone of Letter 81, we have some more of JA’s love of puns here:

“Miss Clewes seems the very governess they have been looking for these ten years-longer coming than J. Bond's last shock of corn. If she will but only keep good & amiable & perfect! Clewes is better than Clowes. And is it not a name for Edward to pun on? Is not a clew a nail?”

The idea of looking for “missed clues” for ten years is _very_ droll! And then JA shows her love of multiple meanings when she verifies that a clew is actually a metal artifact—actually, per the dictionary, a metal loop attached to the lower corner of a sail—so  it was a meaning JA heard about long before from one of her sailor brothers, perhaps, as part of childish wordplay. And note how her instinct is also to twist the word by changing the vowel, in order to create a homophone for “close” in the form of “Clows”. Her fertile mind was always turning words in search of quibbles…..

So much material hiding just beneath the surface of an apparently throwaway letter with little content—JA was not content to just write a short letter about not much, so she invested the extra effort to make her sister smile a few times, and I bet CEA did!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter