Did Jane Austen really worry that Emma was “overwritten”? Of course not!

What did Jane Austen mean when she wrote, at the end of her letter to Countess Morley, the following seemingly self-deprecating comments about the writing in Emma?:

“In my present State of Doubt as to [Emma’s] reception in the World, it is particularly gratifying to me to receive so early an assurance of your Ladyship’s approbation. – It encourages me to depend on the same share of general good opinion which Emma’s Predecessors have experienced, & to beleive that I have not yet – as almost every Writer of Fancy does sooner or later – overwritten myself.”

In her post this morning in Austen L and Janeites, Ellen Moody interpreted this language as Jane Austen’s anxiously worrying out loud, in total sincerity and without irony, that she was written out, i.e., that while writing Emma perhaps she had run out of fresh ideas, invention, and imagination.

Given that I read this passage in a completely opposite way, as I will explain later in this post, I wondered to myself whether Ellen’s was the standard critical reading of that letter passage. I quickly found out that it was not only standard, it was actually the universal view (with one exception, which I will also mention, with due praise, in a moment).

Here then, in reverse chronological order, is the parade of Austen scholars who have during the past few decades taken Jane Austen literally, as writing in total sincerity and without irony about having possibly “overwritten” herself:

Claire Harman, in Jane’s Fame: “Jane’s letter of thanks to Countess Morley contains a similarly lonely, self-reflective comment…The idea of having ”overwritten herself”  was not the only thing preying on Austen’s mind early in 1816.”

Emily Auerbach in Searching for Jane Austen, saw it as JA claiming she has not yet exhausted her imagination as a fiction writer.

Valerie Grosvenor Myer in her Austen bio: “Like every creative artist she was afraid of drying up.”

David Nokes in his Austen bio: “She was, as she confessed to Lady M., still greatly fearful about the success of this latest work and filled with apprehensions that she might…have already ‘overwritten herself.’ “

Josephine Ross also took JA literally.

P. Barry referred to “Jane Austen's own copy of her letter to the Countess of Morley, thanking her (in perhaps surprisingly deferential tones) for her praise of Emma, and taking it gratefully as proof that she had not yet, 'as every Writer of fancy does sooner or later – overwritten myself.”

Margaret Llewellyn wrote “Another of her anxieties was expressed in a letter to the Countess of Morley who, in admiring Emma, had encouraged her 'to believe that I have not yet - as almost every Writer of Fancy does sooner or later - overwritten myself.'

So, judging from the above critical litany over several decades, it would appear to be beyond question that Jane Austen meant what she seemed to be saying to Countess Morley.

There’s only one dissenting voice I found, and that is our very own Diana Birchall, who, in her post that initiated this thread three days ago, wrote, in passing, the following bon mot:

“As if Jane Austen could ever have overwritten herself!”

I believe I am correct in inferring that Diana would agree with me that the last thing Jane Austen would have felt anxiety about, let alone expressed anxiety in a sincere, unironic way, to anyone, let alone one of her readers, was that the writing in Emma was faulty in any way.

In the remainder of this post, I will explain myself, in detail, as to why I believe that the “truth universally acknowledged” by pretty much all Austen scholars, that Jane Austen was in want of confidence about her writing in Emma, is completely in error, in the most significant way possible, both as to the meaning of “overwritten” and also as to JA’s sincerity.

First, I suggest that JA in this letter to Countess Morley is clearly engaging in exactly the same sort of

mock-self-deprecation that we find in much more exaggerated form in her flamboyantly absurd letters to James Stanier Clarke (written, as I noted yesterday, at exactly the same time and about exactly the same interrelated subjects, Emma and novel-writing); and that we also find, and not coincidentally, in Letter 79, when JA seemed to express her fears that P&P “wants shade” and is “too light, bright, and sparkling”.

I mean, really. P&P is, arguably, the most light bright and sparkling work of literature in the English language—along with the comedies of Shakespeare and Wilde and a handful of other authors, it defines the genre of witty romantic comedy with brilliant dialog and a merry romantic war of words.

And so, are we supposed to believe that JA, in her giddy exultation over the publication of P&P, is at the same moment seriously doubting her own Mozartean achievement? As if she, who knew Mozart’s music well, didn’t know that she had created a literary analog of same--the epitome of “light, bright, and sparkling” in which she had perfectly balanced those qualities with a considerable amount of subtle “shade”!

I suggest the exact same reasoning applies to JA’s mock self-deprecation of Emma. To imagine that JA--- having just received tangible evidence in hand, in the form of 12 copies of the newly minted and printed Emma, that she had overcome all obstacles and had managed to produce what is arguably one of the greatest novels ever written in any language—a towering masterpiece of huge proportions, in which she in effect juggles a dozen literary balls without dropping one----was worried that she had not done a very good job, is beyond absurd.

I am not the first to notice the creative fever which took hold of Jane Austen as she wrote Emma, the way the writing seems at times to boil over from prose into a brave new combination of poetry and prose, foreshadowing Joyce’s achievements a century later.

And, on top of all this, it’s not just that all Austen scholars have completely missed JA’s huge irony in her faux self-deprecation writing to Countess Morley. They’ve even misunderstood what she meant, technically, by “overwritten”!

I assert that by “overwritten”, JA did not at all mean “written out” or “tapped out as a creative writer”, but that Emma is simply too long, i.e., that it contains passages which could have been  shortened or even deleted.

But wait!—where did we read that very same critique of Emma only a few days ago? Of course, in one of the letters that Countess Morley (the recipient of JA’s above quoted letter) wrote to her sister in law, Theresa Villiers about Emma!:

“…then, surely, her talking characters talk too much. The pages filled with Miss Bates & Mrs. Elton wd. make up one of the volumes & that is more than can well be afforded.”

So, is it just a coincidence that JA writes a letter to Countess Morley, in which JA expresses apparent concern over having failed in her editing of Emma, to (in effect) “lop and crop” enough of the text; and then, within two months thereafter, Countess Morley writes to her sister in law and appears to complain about that exact same, specific defect?  Of course it’s NOT a coincidence!

Now, here’s the most interesting question, then. Was the Countess, in her letter to her sister in law, being totally sincere (and clueless)? Or was she totally in on the joke, and acting upon JA’s implicit instructions to spread the word, among the literati in the Royal Court circle, that Miss Bates and Mrs. Elton’s speeches were just dross, and therefore to be ignored by any sensible reader?

As of this moment, pending further information which could tilt me one way or the other, I am on the fence on that question. It’s really hard to know whether Countess Morley was, like JA, someone who enjoyed a dangerous put-on of powerful men, and could play her role in one with aplomb; or whether she, like James Stanier Clarke, was actually a pompous pretentious gull who would fall for such a put-on, and become its unwitting agent. I’d like to think the former, but can’t solidly commit to that reading, without some additional knowledge of Countess Morley’s personality, which I currently lack—I think I need to get hold of some of her correspondence with Sydney Smith, and pore over it, to search for clues…..

And…upon further reflection, and having reread Countess Morley’s comments about Emma over and over again, I temporarily retreat halfway from my position espoused yesterday, and confess that it’s equally hard for me to know whether Countess Morley was an active and informed participant in JA’s guerilla campaign to induce the Prince to command her to dedicate Emma to him, or if she was, also like JS Clarke, a dupe in that audacious affair.

The only thing I know for sure is that from JA’s own perspective, she never for one second really meant to deprecate her writing in Emma, especially in the over-the-top verbosity of Miss Bates. As I’ve opined countless times, Miss Bates was JA’s most bravura literary self-portrait, and the entire point of all of Miss Bates’s endless speeches was to trick the gullible reader into joining into Emma’s deeply misguided opinion that it was all so much “blah, blah, blah”, when actually Miss Bates is constantly revealing everything that really matters in the novel! 

In a nutshell, it is precisely the “overwriting” of Miss Bates (and Mrs. Elton, to a lesser extent) which is JA’s greatest literary achievement!

DEFINITION OF “OVERWRITTEN”

Before completing this post, I do want to bolster my claim that by “overwritten”, JA was specifically referring to verbose, baroquely ornate, overlong writing. Where’s my evidence?  Well, first of all, if you check online, you will see that the consensus among dictionaries is that “overwritten” means “too verbose, too ornately written” or the like.

But second and far more probative even than dry dictionary proof, I give you, as Exhibit A, from Volume 8 of Sir Charles Grandison, the following textual smoking gun as to JA’s intended meaning. In the below quoted passage, the heroine, Harriet Byron, in one of the incredibly long letters which appear everywhere in Richardson’s novels, gushes to her cousin, Lucy Selby, regarding Harriet’s extreme gratitude to, and adoration of, Sir Charles & his sister.

This letter seems clearly to be among the passages in SCG, upon which JA modeled—but of course in JA’s vastly superior, understated writing style--- Lizzy Bennet’s thoughts and spoken words reflecting her identical rapture over  Darcy & Georgiana in the last volume of P&P.

But I reproduce it for you below to show you that in a literary source extremely well known to JA,  Richardson used “overwritten” in precisely the same sense as those dictionaries indicated:

“…I HAVE WRITTEN A LONG, LONG LETTER, OR RATHER FIVE LETTERS IN ONE, of my distresses, of my deliverance: and, when my heart is stronger, I will say more of the persons, as well as minds, of this excellent brother and sister. But what shall I do with my gratitude? O my dear, I am overwhelmed with my gratitude! I can only express it in silence before them. Every look, if it be honest to my heart, however, tells it: reverence mingles with my gratitude—yet there is so much ease, so much sweetness, in the behaviour of both—O my Lucy! Did I not find that my veneration of both is equal; did I not, on examination, find, that the amiable sister is as dear to me, from her experienced tenderness, as her brother from his remembered bravery, (which must needs mingle awe with my esteem); in short, that I

love the sister, and revere the brother; I should be afraid of my gratitude.

I HAVE OVER-WRITTEN MYSELF. I am tired. O my grandmamma! you have never yet, while I have been in London, sent me your ever-valued blessing under your own hand: yet, I am sure I had it; and your blessings, my dear uncle and aunt Selby; and your prayers, my Lucy, my Nancy, and all my loves;

else my deliverance had not perhaps followed my presumptuous folly, in going dressed out, like the fantastic wretch I appeared to be, at a vile, a foolish masquerade.—How often, throughout the several stages of my distress, and even in my deliverance, did I turn my eye to myself, and from myself, with the disgust that made a part, and that not a light one, of my punishment! And so much, my Lucy, for masquerades, and masquerade-dresses, for ever!”  END QUOTE

Indeed, Harriet Byron was spot-on in her assessment of the letter she was writing, it was indeed and in her own words, extremely “overwritten”!

So, JA, in writing to Countess Morley about Emma being overwritten, is not only writing satirically and with a total lack of sincerity, she is reinforcing her irony by this veiled allusion to the very famous work read by every English novel-reader—in effect, for satirical purposes, JA assumes the pathetic  persona of Harriet Byron, who DOES overwrite, constantly! JA by this covert allusion shows that she knows very well what “overwritten” looks like in fiction—but whereas Harriet Byron’s overwritten letters do not conceal a satirical subtext, Miss Bates’s speeches all do!

Now, back to Emma for one final observation. I suggest to you that anyone who actually thinks Emma is too verbose or ornately written, surely belongs in that special circle of hell where resides the Emperor Joseph II, who infamously opined to Mozart that his opera The Abduction from the Seraglio contained “too many notes”. [an anecdote from the 1780’s which I have found in print in English as early as 1817, so perhaps JA was aware of it in late 1815!]

But seriously….is it not every bit as absurd to imagine that JA thought the writing in Emma too bloated, as to imagine she thought P&P  too light, bright and sparkling? Then, how is it possible that Austen scholars have all been so utterly taken in? How has it been possible that they’ve all failed to recognize that she was KIDDING around in both cases?

I suggest to you that the power of the Myth of Jane Austen, which still largely prevails in the 21^st century as surely as it did when it was first propagated by the likes of Henry Austen and James Austen Leigh, is still extremely formidable. Because it is a “truth universally acknowledged” that Jane Austen was the kind of modest, unprovocative lady who would never have dared to engage in audacious put-ons mocking the most powerful and rich people of her era, even the most informed Austen scholars are blind to who she really was. Over and over and over again. And I don’t know if there is a better example of this community of shared blindness than this interpretation of “overwritten” Emma.

So, one more bravo to Diana for her witty insight, and I will now move on to demolish the next part of that monstrously inaccurate, pervasive and insidious Myth.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Countess Morley as Jane Austen's Secret Agent in the Royal Court

Two days ago, I wrote a post...

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-countess-of-morley-violent.html

...in which I claimed that Countess Morley, with whom Jane Austen briefly corresponded at the time Emma was published, and to whom Jane Austen gave one of the twelve original copies of the novel, was aware of the hidden significance of the allusion in Emma to de Genlis's famous novel about female education, Adelaide & Theodore.

Today I am back with my thoughts about my claim that Countess Morley was a secret agent on behalf of Jane Austen, in the plot by Jane Austen to induce the Prince Regent, who was the secret butt of very strong satire in Emma, to command Jane Austen to dedicated the novel to him. 

The end of Jane Austen’s Letter #128 to sister Cassandra dated 11/26/15, or about a month prior to JA’s exchange of letters with Countess Morley, is as follows:

 “Thank you very much for the sight of dear Charles' [JA's brother] Letter to yourself. - How pleasantly & how naturally he writes! and how perfect a picture of his Disposition and feelings, his style conveys! - Poor dear Fellow! - not a Present! - I have a great mind to send him all the twelve copies which were to have been dispersed among my near Connections - beginning with the P.R. & ending with Countess Morley.”

 In that last sentence, JA is clearly joking as she refers to the Prince Regent and Countess Morley as being among the “near connections”  who were near enough to warrant their receiving one of the twelve precious original copies of Emma that JA, as author, was free to dispose of.

 And yet, is it all just a joke? It does not appear, from what I’ve read so far [although I’m waiting to receive a copy of Chris Viveash’s 1992 Persuasions article about Frances Talbot Parker (aka Lady Boringdon from 1809 onward and Countess Morley from 1815 onward) which I once read, but cannot now find in my files], that any Austen scholar has taken seriously the fact that JA grouped Countess Morley with the P.R. as the sole members of her short list of “near connections” from outside her family.

 I suggested in my previous posts that I suspected Countess Morley of having been a friendly co-conspirator in JA’s daring plot to induce the Prince Regent into commanding that JA dedicate Emma to him. As I’ve thought some more about how that might have come about, I’ve done some more digging on the Internet about Countess Morley and also about her husband, Lord Boringdon/Earl of Morley. Here’s what I’ve found so far--several intriguing factoids which show that Countess Morley had several of her own near connections to the Royal Court, which would have given her plenty of opportunity, being the sharp elf that she clearly was, to discreetly push multiple levers designed to prompt the Prince to issue that command to JA.

 

ONE: In 1784, 25 years before he married the (future) Countess Morley, in 1809, her future husband Lord Boringdon (who became Earl of Morley in 1815) sold a successful thoroughbred racehorse & sire (named, of course, Saltram) to…..the Prince of Wales. This transaction was apparently a big deal at the time, as it was reported in multiple books.

 

TWO: Wikipedia:  "Morley took his seat in the House of Lords on his 21st birthday in 1793. He was an active member of the House of Lords, initially supporting government policies until the death of William Pitt the Younger in 1806. After Pitt's death he supported George Canning, with whom he corresponded on political matters for many years. In 1815 he was created Viscount Boringdon, of North Molton in the County of Devon, and Earl of Morley, in the County of Devon." 
From the above, it is clear that Lord Boringon/ Earl of Morley was a political mover and a shaker on the highest level in England, who, especially from 1809 onward after marrying his second wife the (future) Countess Morley, who as we know was socially and artistically ccomplished, they both would have been in the thick of the social circle of the elite closest to the Royal Family.

THREE: As dramatic evidence of how much of an insider Countess Morley was, see the following snippet written by the editor of The Correspondence of George IV: “Theresa Villiers was the trusted confidante of Princess Amelia, who nicknamed her husband “Tant Mieux”. “

 Theresa Villiers was, of course, the very same sister in law of Countess Morley to whom the latter expressed her opinions about Emma, which I discussed in my previous posts! I don't think I need to explain how much of an opening that connection would have provided to Countess Morley.

FOUR: In Privilege and scandal: the remarkable life of Harriet Spencer by Janet Gleeson (2007) at p. 286: “[The King] had become fond of the princess, but he was a man of high moral values and had long deplored the sexual license of his eldest son. It was the princess's wantonness rather than the fact of her adultery that riled him. "Had it been one serious attachment, even with consequences, I would have screened and protected her through everything," the king had told Lord Boringdon, 'but there have been so many and mix’d with so much levity, that it proves a determined  profligacy of character.”

 I find it very curious that the King himself was quoted as saying something strikingly similar to what JA wrote to Martha Lloyd, about the sexual indiscretions of the King’s daughter in law, the Princess. Like JA, he’s saying that his heart was with the Princess, not his own son, in regard to their bitter disputes, but that the Princess had just gone too far for him to protect her.

 And I find it even more remarkable that Lord Boringdon was the King’s confidant in regard to such delicate, personal information about the Royal Family! It suggests that all JA would have needed in order to know this information long before it was eventually published in any book, was to hear it from her friend Countess Morley (who would surely have been her own beloved husband’s confidante) over a cup of tea.

 

FIVE: In Pictorial history of England:  “On the 19th of March [1812] Lord Boringdon in the House of Lords moved for an address to the prince regent, beseeching him to form an administration, so composed as to unite the confidence and good will of all classes of his majesty's subjects. This was asking the regent to do what had never been possible, and what was rendered more than ever impossible by the present state of parties: but Lord Boringdon only meant that the regent should form a Grey and Grenville administration.”

 This is clear evidence that Lord Boringdon were engaged at the highest levels of government over significant policy issues, and it seems quite plausible that, even 30 years after their equine transaction, they were surely in private communication and ftf meetings as well.

 

SIX: In Private Correspondence, 1781-1821, Volume 2   Granville, etc (1917) at P.498:  “a few Days ago the Arrangements respecting your friends, I informed His Royal Highness of your  anxiety to secure at a proper Opportunity a Peerage for Lord Granville Leveson and an Earldom for Lord Boringdon. The Prince Regent has authorized me to assure you that He will not make any Peers, on any other Ground than that of immediate Public Service without Lord Granville Leveson… “

So this letter (I can’t tell for sure from this snippet in Google Books who wrote it to whom) shows that one or more of Lord Boringdon’s highly placed friends was pushing for him to be made an earl, and of course we know that in 1815, this actually occurred.

In interim conclusion, then, I am sure you’ll agree that, in terms of my claims about Countess Morley as secret agent on behalf of JA’s satire of the Prince Regent, these seven factoids collectively demonstrate that she certainly had opportunity to act on JA’s behalf, so as to induce the Prince to command the dedication. And I think JA, in the passage of the letter to CEA that I quoted at the beginning of this post, was winking at just that role of Countess Morley when she grouped her highly-placed “near connection” with the P.R.

I will be back with more intelligence, I am sure, when I receive the Viveash article—I already know from notes I took in 2005 that Viveash claimed that Frances Talbot (still Lady Boringdon) was the subject of one of the famous Rejected Addresses that JA enjoyed, but I will wait to write about that till I have all possible information at my disposal.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

“Every Savage MUST Dance (on a Slave Ship)” —Thanks for Enlightening Us, Mr. Darcy

In Austen-L two weeks ago, Linda Thomas (coordinator of JASNA Ashland Oregon where I enjoyed giving a presentation to Linda’s small group of sharp elves a few weeks ago) posted the following about Jane Austen’s supposed admiration (in an 1813 letter to her sister) for Captain Pasley’s (then) famous book endorsing the English colonial system:

Linda: "…I read The Slave Ship: A Human History by Marcus Rediker (2007), whom I heard speak here in Ashland with Naomi Wallace for her play The Liquid Plain. After reading that the enslaved Africans aboard the slave ships were forced on deck to dance for an hour a day, as a form of exercise to keep them healthy, I have to wonder if JA knew about this from her sailor brothers, and if Mr. Darcy's "Every savage can dance" was an evocation of this practice. "

My eye was immediately caught, because earlier this year, I posted something highly resonant with Linda’s suggestion…

http://listserv.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1305b&L=austen-l&P=4800

......and in my earlier post, which I had entitled "Every Hottentot can dance", I presented two very suggestive passages in P&P where the word "slave" appears:

Chapter 24: "Elizabeth, to whom Jane very soon communicated the chief of all this, heard it in silent indignation. Her heart was divided between concern for her sister, and resentment against all others. To Caroline's assertion of her brother's being partial to Miss Darcy she paid no credit. That he was really fond of Jane, she doubted no more than she had ever done; and much as she had always been disposed to like him, she could not think without anger, hardly without contempt, on that easiness of temper, that want of proper resolution, which now MADE HIM THE SLAVE of his designing friends, and led him to SACRIFICE of his own happiness to the caprice of their inclination. Had his own happiness, however, been the only sacrifice, he might have been allowed to sport with it in whatever manner he thought best, but her sister's was involved in it, as she thought he must be sensible himself.

Chapter 29: "No governess! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home without a governess! I never heard of such a thing. Your mother MUST HAVE BEEN QUITE A SLAVE to your education." Elizabeth could hardly help smiling as she assured her that had not been the case. "Then, who taught you? who attended to you? Without a governess, you must have been neglected." "Compared with some families, I believe we were; but such of us as wished to learn never wanted the means. We were always encouraged to read, and had ALL THE MASTERS THAT WERE NECESSARY. Those who chose to be idle, certainly might."  "  END QUOTE

So, Linda’s brilliant catch seems to me to be fully in keeping with my earlier suggestion, and adds to the subtle portrayal by Jane Austen of the not-so-pleasing side of Darcy's personality. His bon mot to Sir William Lucas is actually quite witty, in a very dry way---but if my and Linda’s speculations are correct, that would make it a very amoral wit, as well.  

And…there are those who wonder what "trade" Bingley's family made its fortune in, and whether that is how Darcy and Bingley gravitated together. And...if Jane Austen did have this in mind, that is consistent with my view of her that she did not in any way approve of colonial slavery or the Royal Navy's supporting role in same. The portrait of the banal evil of Sir Thomas Bertram in Mansfield Park, as Rozema depicted in her 1999 adaptation, and as I have blogged on numerous occasions, is of course the most dramatic evidence of how JA felt about slavery.

Linda’s suggestion supports the implication that Darcy must callously supports English colonialism and the inhuman mass slavery that was its foundation, or else he would not joke about one of its barbarous practices so cavalierly.

By the way, here is the discussion in Rediker’s book that Linda was recalling:

“How did relations between captain and crew change once the enslaved came aboard?...the sailors carried out [the captain’s] orders to bring the enslaved onboard, to stow them below decks, to feed them, compel them to exercise (“dance”),…slowly transform them into commodities for the international labor market….the arrangement of decks on a slave ship—the hold, the lower deck, the main deck; how male slaves were chained together; how the enslaved were stowed below decks; how they were fed, guarded, and forced to ‘dance’ for exercise ..Sailors told Clarkson that the slave trade was not a ‘nursery’ for sailors, as its advocated insisted, but rather a cemetery….every single fact…can be found in the interviews Clarkson conducted with sailors…Physicians and slave traders alike believed that exercise would help to maintain the health of the enslaved. Therefore each afternoon the Africans would be required to dance (and also to sing, on many ships). This could take many forms, from something more or less freely chosen, accompanied by African instruments (more common among the women), to the dreary, forced clanking of chains (more common among the men)….”  END QUOTE

Rediker relies a great deal on Clarkson’s writing about slavery (which JA was very familiar with)- I wondered whether the famous abolitionist Clarkson’s books might have been Rediker’s primary source for the “dancing” on slave ships—if so, that would have been very strong evidence of JA’s familiarity with same.

Well, it turned out it was not just Clarkson who wrote about this “dancing”, it was also several other authors of anti-slavery writing at that time, many of which harked back to the published minutes from the 1788 session of Parliament, in which a bill to regulate slave ship practices was debated, and which I reproduce in full at the end of this post.

The most awful and relevant part of those Parliamentary minutes is the following sentence:

“After meals THEY WERE COMPELLED BY THE WHIP TO JUMP IN THEIR IRONS, WHICH

BY THE SLAVE-DEALERS WAS CALLED DANCING.”

The treble horror of whipping heavily shackled captives and calling it “dancing” is far beyond the pale of “normal” barbarity—it’s as bad as it ever gets.

So…if Darcy is actually joking about this practice-and I believe he is-it either suggests a callous endorsement of this practice by Darcy, OR….there is another possible alternative, which just occurred to me—what if the unspecified “trade” in which Sir William Lucas has made his fortune is in fact the “slave trade”? If so, this “joke”, unfunny as it is, could be Darcy discreetly alerting Sir William that Darcy knows this sordid fact about how his genial host got rich, and so he is not fooled by Sir William’s excessive show of courtesy and good manners.

In either event, if Darcy has indeed covertly alluded to this practice on slave ships, it puts the immediately succeeding dialog among Sir William, Darcy and Elizabeth, as to whether Lizzy will “dance” with Darcy, in a whole different light, at least in the minds of Darcy and Sir William, as

Lizzy seems totally oblivious to this slavery subtext.

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

1788 PARLIAMENTARY MINUTES RE BILL TO REGULATE SLAVE SHIP PRACTICES

“The last business of importance which engaged the attention of parliament, was a bill brought into the house by Sir William Dolben, member for the University of Oxford, a man of the highest integrity and respectability, to regulate the transportation of slaves from the coast of Africa to the West Indies. At the beginning of the year, a multitude of petitions had been presented from the different towns, cities, and counties of the kingdom, imploring in earnest and affecting terms the abolition of that superlatively nefarious and detestable traffic. A motion on the subject of these petitions was expected to be made by Mr. Wilberforce, member for Yorkshire; but in consequence of the long-protracted and unfortunate indisposition of that gentleman, Mr. Pitt on the _th of May moved a resolution, importing that the house would early in the next session proceed to take into consideration the state of the slave trade. The bill of Sir William Dolben, which was intended merely to establish a certain reasonable proportion between the number of slaves and the tonnage of the ships, was violently and obstinately opposed by petitions from the merchants of London and Liverpool concerned in the African trade. Counsel being therefore engaged, and witnesses examined, it appeared in evidence at the bar of the house, that five feet six inches in length, and sixteen inches in breadth, was the average space allotted to each slave. The lower deck of the vessel was entirely covered with bodies. The space between the floor of that deck and the roof above, in height about five feet eight inches, was divided by a platform, also covered with human bodies. The slaves were chained two and two by their hands and feet, and by means of ring-bolts fastened to the deck. In that sultry climate, their allowance was a pint of water each, per diem; and they were usually fed twice a day with yams and horse-beans.

After meals THEY WERE COMPELLED BY THE WHIP TO JUMP IN THEIR IRONS, WHICH

BY THE SLAVE-DEALERS WAS CALLED DANCING.

They had nor, as was emphatically stated, when stowed together, so much room as a man in his coffin, either in length or breadth. They drew their breath with laborious and anxious efforts, and many died of mere suffocation. The customary mortality of the voyage exceeded seventeen times the usual estimate of human life. A slave ship, when sull fraught with this cargo of wretchedness and abomination, exhibited at once the extremes of human depravity and human misery.

Mr. Pitt, who on various occasions has dropped the statesman to assume the nobler character of the philanthropist, declared with indignant eloquence, that "if, as had been asserted by the members for Liverpool, the trade could not be carried on in any other manner, he would retract what he had said on a former day, and, waving every farther discussion, give his instant vote for the annihilation of a traffic thus shocking to humanity. He trusted that the house, being now in possession of such evidence as was never before exhibited, would endeavour to extricate themselves from the guilt and remorse which every man ought to feel for having so long over-looked such cruelly and oppression." The bill was carried up June 18th to the House of Lords, where it was fated to encounter the determined opposition of Lord Thurlow. His lordship said, that the bill was full of inconsistency and nonsense. The French had lately offered premiums to encourage the African trade, and the natural presumption was, that we ought to do the same. This measure appeared to him very like a breach of parliamentary faith. As to himself, he scrupled not to say, "that if the fit of philanthropy which had slept so many years had been suffered to sleep one summer longer, it would have appeared to him more wise than to take up the subject in this disjointed manner." The Duke of Chandos ventured to predict a general insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies in consequence of the agitation of the present question. And Lord Sydney, who had once ranked amongst the friends of liberty, expressed in warm terms his admiration of the system of the slave laws established in Jamaica, and saw no room for any improvement. The bill was defended by the Duke of Richmond and Marquis Townshend in a manner which did honor to their understanding and feelings: and it finally passed by a considerable majority.

The king put an end to the session July 11, 1788, by a speech from the throne, in which he complimented the two houses on their attention and liberality.”