Nancy & Me: Text & Subtext, a Tale of Two Critics (or a Christmas Cavil)

Nancy Mayer just wrote as follows in Janeites....

 "Illegitimate children couldn't be heirs. An illegitimate child was the child of no one and so wouldn't be heir to the estate. The biological child of Lady Russell could be a boy who wouldn't go to school with Anne and who would be married and might be in the diplomatic corps or in India or the West Indies for all we know."
.
..in response to my post....

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/12/lady-russells-first-child-in-persuasion.html

...which I concluded as follows: "...The first child of Lady Russell could be Cousin Elliot, whom I am not the first to speculate might just be the illegitimate child of Sir Walter and Lady Russell, the result of a tryst early in the marriages of both the Elliots and the Russells. It would fit with the often-promulgated fiction in highborn families in those days, that referred to illegitimate children as if they were nephews or cousins instead of who they really were. And that allowed some illegitimate children, especially an only son surrounded by legitimate daughters, to inherit real property.  And there would also be karmic significance in the narrator referring to Anne as Lady Russell’s “other child” having had her happiness secured by Wentworth, when we could surely say, in the same breath, that Wentworth was also responsible for securing the misery of Cousin Elliot, by trumping the latter’s determined courtship of Anne! But…what cinches Option Four for me is that JA’s attempted alteration in Version Two would thereby be eerily parallel to the exact same sort of changes made by JA to S&S---but instead of seeing editing in a handwritten manuscript, the changes in S&S were done between the first and the second edition of the published novel! Of course I am referring to Mrs. Jennings’s references to Eliza, Jr., the “natural child” of Colonel Brandon. So as not to reinvent the wheel, I refer you now to my blog post of nearly 3 years ago…
http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/02/lady-middletons-delicacy-mrs-jenningss.html
…in which, in meticulous detail, I lay out my interpretation of how and why Jane Austen altered the text of S&S in a couple of places, so as to alter the way that the delicate and scandalous aspects of the illegitimacy of Eliza, Jr. is handled-most of all, I suggest, to alter the way that the real life Warren Hastings and his love child, Eliza Hancock Austen, were represented by the Colonel and his ward. So….isn’t it amazing to realize for the first time this compelling parallel of the publication history of JA’s first published novel, and her last published novel."   END QUOTE  FROM MY PREVIOUS POST

Now back to the present, here is my further response to Nancy:

 Nancy, in reading your response, and marveling once again on how you and I represent extreme opposite polarities of interpretation of Jane Austen's writing, I was inspired to paraphrase a famous passage S&S as a way of crystallizing this radical difference between us:

"You are seeing a subtextual hint of Cousin Elliot’s illegitimacy, then, Arnie, in the implicit reference to Lady Russell’s unnamed child at the  end of Persuasion?" said Nancy, unable to be longer silent.

"Yes, a little—not much."

After a short pause. "You have no confidence in Jane Austen’s meaning what she seems to say."

"Nay, Nancy, this reproach from YOU—you who have confidence in no one!"

"Me!" returned Nancy in some confusion; "indeed, Arnie, I have nothing to tell."

"Nor I," answered Arnie with energy, "our situations then are alike. We have neither of us any thing to tell; you, because you do not acknowledge any subtext at all, and I, because I conceal nothing about the subtext I see."

Nancy, distressed by this charge of reserve in herself, which she was not at liberty to do away, knew not how, under such circumstances, to press for greater openness in Marianne. So she went back to mending her laptop.

And what composing  the above  vignette about us, Nancy, now I’m wondering whether the ghost of Jane Austen confided all of her subtextual meanings to you privately many years ago, and swore you to absolute secrecy, like Lucy did with Elinor about Lucy’s secret engagement to Edward?

C’mon, fess up!  We all know ghosts are not real….except those subtextual “ghosts” which haunt JA’s writing, of course!

 Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Lady Russell’s First Child in Persuasion & Eliza, Jr. in S&S: “Natural” Peas in the same Pod?

Earlier today, I came across a weirdness in the text of Persuasion that I had never noticed before, and which, as far as I can tell, has never been discussed in any venue searchable on the Net. It took me a while to thoroughly analyze, but the payoff at the end made it worth the effort, as my Subject Line suggests---a shocking parallel between the overt references to illegitimacy in S&S, and what I think is a thinly veiled reference to it in Persuasion, which JA almost deleted, but then reinserted!

First, here is the relevant passage in Persuasion, which we find near the very end of the final chapter of the novel, during one of JA’s characteristic “summing up” passages, when, one by one, she gives a capsule description of the various characters’s reactions to the romantic climax and what is to come after the novel ends.

The character under the microscope in this weird excerpt, as you could have guessed from my Subject Line, is Lady Russell, and here it is: “…She loved Anne better than she loved her own abilities; and when the awkwardness of the beginning was over, found little hardship in attaching herself as a mother to the man who was securing the happiness of her other child….”

Now, I suspect that most Janeites, basking in the romantic glow of Anne and Wentworth finally coming together, read through that sentence about Lady Russell pretty fast, and so never stop to consider, who exactly is Lady Russell’s “other child”, and then, who is the first child?  

Unless I have been reading Persuasion wrong for 15 years, I find no explicit statement anywhere in the novel that mentions any biological or adoptive child of Lady Russell. But we can nonetheless immediately and accurately identify the “other child” of Lady Russell as Anne Elliot, because what we are being told is that Lady Russell had no trouble attaching herself as a mother to Wentworth, who was securing the happiness of Anne, whom Lady Russell loves. Hence Anne must be that “other child”.

But that only makes the question of who is the first child implied by the reference to Anne as the “other child”  even more intriguing. What we know for sure about Lady Russell’s past is that she was a widow, and from that we might infer that she could have had biological children. And since she is a secondary character, we would not necessarily expect to have been informed if she did have any such children—while it seems most likely to me that she had none, it is also plausible that any surviving biological children of hers were simply no longer living in Somersetshire when the novel’s action takes place, and therefore, their lives were not relevant to the action of the story.

But then again, wouldn’t any biological children of Lady Russell, even if currently living elsewhere, be relevant nonetheless? After all, any such children would have probably been close to Anne Elliot in age, and the extreme closeness of the two young mothers and neighbors, Lady Russell and Lady Elliot, would have meant that Anne would have likely been friends with any of Lady Russell’s own children, who would have been like first cousins to Anne growing up.

And…when we eventually hear about Anne having been sent away to boarding school after her mother’ dies (and Anne then meets and befriends Miss Hamilton), we don’t hear about any daughter of Lady Russell being sent to that school along with Anne.

But what’s for sure is that Anne Elliot is Lady Russell’s god-daughter, Anne is the favorite daughter of Lady Russell’s dear departed friend, Lady Elliot, and we see and hear scenes in which Lady Russell is, in practice, just like a mother to Anne, who of course has no living mother when we meet her.  

So…if Anne is indeed the “other child” whom the narrator is talking about, then what are we to make of the narrator’s mysterious implication that there is a child of Lady Russell’s whom we ought to care about?

Now, we could try to answer this question based purely on the text of Persuasion as it was finally published in 1818, after JA’s death, through the efforts of brother Henry Austen. However, that would be unwise, as it turns out that the surviving manuscript of the so-called “cancelled chapters” of Persuasion contain evidence, which makes this puzzling question even more intriguing.

As far as I can tell, only one Austen scholar, Jocelyn Harris, in A Revolution Almost Beyond Expression, has ever addressed JA’s editing of this passage at all:

ppg 66-7: “Austen fiddles about with the next sentences about Lady Russell until they satisfy her…eliding ‘sort of” before “Mother” enhances the affection between Lady Russell and Captain Wentworth. But Anne and Wentworth are not really her children, and although Austen elides ‘other’ before ‘child’ in the manuscript, the 1818 text oddly restores it.”

It was noticing that deletion that led me to Harris’s discussion, and I was glad to see that I was barking up a tree that she had also found interesting and puzzling.

Now, let me explain one important point which is often misunderstood when analyzing the last chapters of Persuasion. I.e., even though we have the published text, and we have the manuscript of the cancelled chapters, there are really three relevant stages of the last chapters of Persuasion:

VERSION ONE: The version JA finished on July 8, 1816, which is still mostly decodable beneath JA’s extensive hand written editing (cross-outs, insertions, etc);

VERSION TWO: The version JA finished on July 16, 1816, consisting of the original text as edited by JA, which is what is called the “cancelled chapters”; and

VERSION THREE: The version that got published in 1818, which has significant differences from the edited cancelled chapters-most significantly the addition of the White Hart Inn scene with “you pierce my soul”, etc etc.

So, what you can see here in the facsimile of the relevant page in the cancelled chapters manuscript….

http://www.janeausten.ac.uk/search/blpers/22.html?hl=

…and as Jocelyn Harris has explained, is that this sentence is as follows in the three versions:

VERSION ONE:  She loved Anne better than she loved her own abilities—and when the first awkwardness of Novelty was over, found little hardship in attaching herself as a sort of Mother to the Man whom she was continually seeing securing that happiness of her other Child.

VERSION TWO:  She loved Anne better than she loved her own abilities—and when the awkwardness of the Beginning was over, found little hardship in attaching herself as a Mother to the Man who was securing the happiness of her Child.

VERSION THREE: She loved Anne better than she loved her own abilities; and when the awkwardness of the beginning was over, found little hardship in attaching herself as a mother to the man who was securing the happiness of her other child.

Several little changes between Version One and Version Two—but notice that there’s only one word altered between Version Two and Version Three—as Harris points out, the curious RE-insertion of the word “other”, that JA (or so one would think it was her) had deleted from Version One to arrive at Version Two.

Now, wuzzup with all of that? Any ideas? Why would JA delete “other” and then reinsert it?

Well, think about it. Without the word “other”, there is no implication of any other child of Lady Russell, and so we would not even be talking about this passage if that were all we saw in the text. But the text does contain the word “other”, which surely suggests that JA at first decided she wanted to tease and puzzle her readers on this point, then thought better of it, then returned to her initial desire to tease!

And so let’s run through some possibilities that occur to me for the identity of the mysterious first child of Lady Russell:

OPTION ONE: It could be some very dry sarcastic humor of the narrator, referring to the overgrown spoiled “child”  whose petty whims and caprices have to be catered to for fear of a tantrum if thwarted—of course I am referring to Sir Walter Elliot!  In some ways, Sir Walter really is like a child to Lady Russell, even as he is also very much of an eligible (at least in some respects) bachelor for her as well.

It’s a witty possibility, but somehow just a little too buried to satisfy as THE likely choice.

OPTION TWO: It could be the one and only suggestion in the novel text that Lady Russell had a single biological child, who, as I suggested earlier, might be utterly removed from the Kellynch and Bath scene inhabited by Lady Russell. But, as discussed earlier, that wouldn’t change anything, and would feel jarring, as if we should suddenly care about characters we know nothing about and who only make it in by the back door in the final paragraphs of the entire novel. No, it can’t be that.

OPTION THREE: It could be Mary Musgrove, who was younger than Anne, and therefore was just as much, if not more, in need of a surrogate mother as Anne when Lady Elliot died. And that attribution would fit nicely with the passage that immediately follows the reference to that “other child”, which just happens to be all about….Mary!:

“Of all the family, Mary was probably the one most immediately gratified by the circumstance. It was creditable to have a sister married, and she might flatter herself with having been greatly instrumental to the connexion, by keeping Anne with her in the autumn; and as her own sister must be better than her husband's sisters, it was very agreeable that Captain Wentworth should be a richer man than either Captain Benwick or Charles Hayter…..”  

And…the above passage about Mary was there in Version One, and the modifications thereof in Versions Two and Three do not deflect attention from Mary. So maybe JA was suggesting that Mary was so much more in the shadow of Lady Russell’s field of vision that she had to, in effect, grab the microphone out of the narrator’s hands, and insert an entire paragraph about what made her happy!

But…it still doesn’t ring true for me, because why would JA delete and then reinsert “other”, if she was going to leave Mary’s paragraph in there anyway in Version Three?

OPTION FOUR: No…I knew there was something else tickling my brain, and then it hit me—of course! The first child of Lady Russell could be Cousin Elliot, whom I am not the first to speculate might just be the illegitimate child of Sir Walter and Lady Russell, the result of a tryst early in the marriages of both the Elliots and the Russells. It would fit with the often-promulgated fiction in highborn families in those days, that referred to illegitimate children as if they were nephews or cousins instead of who they really were. And that allowed some illegitimate children, especially an only son surrounded by legitimate daughters, to inherit real property.  

And there would also be karmic significance in the narrator referring to Anne as Lady Russell’s “other child” having had her happiness secured by Wentworth, when we could surely say, in the same breath, that Wentworth was also responsible for securing the misery of Cousin Elliot, by trumping the latter’s determined courtship of Anne!

But…what cinches Option Four for me is that JA’s attempted alteration in Version Two would thereby be eerily parallel to the exact same sort of changes made by JA to S&S---but instead of seeing editing in a handwritten manuscript, the changes in S&S were done between the first and the second edition of the published novel!

Of course I am referring to Mrs. Jennings’s references to Eliza, Jr., the “natural child” of Colonel Brandon. So as not to reinvent the wheel, I refer you now to my blog post of nearly 3 years ago…

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/02/lady-middletons-delicacy-mrs-jenningss.html

…in which, in meticulous detail, I lay out my interpretation of how and why Jane Austen altered the text of S&S in a couple of places, so as to alter the way that the delicate and scandalous aspects of the illegitimacy of Eliza, Jr. is handled-most of all, I suggest, to alter the way that the real life Warren Hastings and his love child, Eliza Hancock Austen, were represented by the Colonel and his ward.

So….isn’t it amazing to realize for the first time this compelling parallel of the publication history of JA’s first published novel, and her last published novel.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

More re the Core Secret of Pride & Prejudice & its Heroine/Orphan/Heiress, Elizabeth Bennet

In Austen L and Janeites today, Diane Reynolds responded in her usual interesting way to my post yesterday….

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2013/12/you-cannot-have-been-always-at.html

…about the above.

Diane wrote: "Arnie, I find it fascinating to think of Elizabeth as an illegitimate Darcy farmed out to the Bennets..."

Yes, I find it fascinating too, but the best part of it, I think, is that, in one fell swoop, it provides a naturalistic, plausible, even probable explanation for why these three young men who are all
connected to each other (Darcy, Wickham, and Mr. Collins) converge on Meryton---all three appearing, as it were, out of the mist like mythical creatures sprung to life at the whim of a god---who are, each in their own way, zeroed in on Elizabeth Bennet. And then we have a fourth person, Mrs. Gardiner, who is so strongly connected to both Darcy and Wickham from the past, who ends up playing a critical role in bringing Darcy and Lizzy together.

It reminds me of the movie /Love Potion No. 9/.....
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102343/?ref_=nv_sr_1

...in which the central conceit is that imbibing even a drop of the gypsy's potent love potion makes a person irresistible to members of the opposite sex, just by speaking.

And in a climactic moment, the villainess of the story cluelessly swallows a whole mouthful of the stuff, as a result of which she winds up being pursued...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHkcYCRjr2Y   

[go to exactly 1:24:38 on this YouTube video of the entire film, and watch the next 5 minutes or so]
...by about 200 men like lemmings racing after her!

That's an extreme exaggeration of what I see happening in P&P, utterly beyond Elizabeth's awareness. From her point of view, she never once questions these coincidences, and so, neither do 99 readers of P&P out of 100.

Now, either this colossal coincidence is the hackwork of an unimaginative novelist who could not find a better way of moving her story forward, or....it's the genius-level inspiration of a master novelist who realized she could pull off not one but two amazing authorial stunts in the same breath:

1. To so cleverly weave that quadruple coincidence into her story that not one reader in a hundred even notices the extent of that quadruple coincidence, and those that do notice don't mind, because the plot
hurtles forward in such a complex yet seamlessly coordinated fashion, like one of those flabbergasting domino arrangements people create nowadays....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E7Ep3U06Nc

AND

2. To so entrance her readers with the overt or apparent story, that they don't realize that there's an entire alternative story poking its head out of a few hundred wormholes scattered through the novel, and the
heart of that alternative story is that it's no coincidence at all, because each of those three suitors, as well as Mrs. Gardiner, are all aware of what Lizzy is clueless about, i.e., that she is an heiress about to inherit.
In its own way, what JA has done is more flabbergasting than even the domino arrangement I linked to, above. It's as if there was a second domino arrangement behind a curtain where those same 128,000 dominos are run through a different sequence at the same time!

Diane also wrote: "..but then she would have married her half brother! Even in those days ... "

Well, that's one of the reasons why the novel ends when it does, and why we don't get to watch the marriage of Darcy and Elizabeth--maybe we wouldn't be so happy with what we'd see....but then again, maybe Darcy's secretly illegitimate too, and he and Elizabeth don't share a biological parent after all! --- and doesn't that scenario remind you of some other novels of the late 18th century????? ;)

Diane also wrote: "And if she is to be a heiress at 21, why not marry Willoughby? He's the one she really wants. Like Marianne, she has to talk herself into the B choice, and as we've all noted, a visual of
Pemberley smooths the path."

You mean, Wickham of course, but your error is true on a higher level, because Wickham is a reboot of Willloughby.

Well...if there hadn't been offstage interference, I believe she would have married Wickham, and perhaps would have been happy with him.

We'll never know.....

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

“I am in a humour to play the fool with my pen…” : Jane Austen’s Spicy Falstaffian, Lovelacian Riffing On Mr. Haden, Mansfield Park, Clarissa, and Shakespeare in Letters 127-129

I doubt that Jane Austen was romantically (or sexually) interested in Mr. Haden, not because he was beneath her socially, or because her much younger niece Fanny’s physical charms were also alluring to him, but simply because the intense pleasure JA took in Haden’s company was neither romantic or sexual. Rather, he was providing something to JA that was the most exotic spice in the world for her--the meanest high she could savor---which was a deep literary, verbal and intellectual camaraderie with a truly kindred spirit, who could really see her genius, and reflect it back to her. It seems to me, i.e., that Mr. Haden was, during their very brief acquaintance, a special muse to Jane Austen’s literary genius, and she seized the moment, and drank deeply from his cup during that all too brief interlude—like Bottom in fairyland being tended to by Titania and her helpers, she could just enjoy a short midwinter night’s dream while it lasted.

Let me briefly set the scene, and you’ll see what I mean. Letters 127-129, the three letters which contain snippets about Mr. Haden, are all written within a period of only eight days in late 1815, as JA is off the charts giddy with the prospect of the imminent publication of her crowning achievement--Emma. Not even brother Henry’s serious illness, or his impending bankruptcy, can dampen her spirits. JA enjoys the serendipity of Henry’s apothecary being a true connoisseur of literature and a man with a razor sharp wit to match his erudition.

As Anne Elliot put it, "My idea of good company, Mr Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company." The best evidence I can give for my assertion that Letters 127-9 reflect JA’s joy at having found the best company for her in Mr. Haden, is to just give you the relevant excerpts from those letters, a short speech by Henry Crawford (of course from Mansfield Park, which, as she informs CEA, Mr. Haden is reading), and excerpts from Richardson’s Clarissa.

With the prompt of the ALL CAPS verbiage, it should be apparent to you, as it is to me, that a great deal of the conversation between JA and Mr. Haden riffed off mutually beloved (and allusively linked) texts like Mansfield Park and Clarissa, with generous doses of Shakespeare sprinkled all the way through—and Mr. Haden not only gets the connections without being prompted, he is an active and equal participant with JA in repartee celebrating those connections!

To take what JA writes literally, as if she and Mr. Haden had actually been debating seriously as to whether a person who did not love music could do wrong, and as if JA really wished she could have argued the other side more ably, would actually be the most dreadful sort of silliness—like reading Shakespeare as if one were reading solemn history.

It is clear that JA and Haden have spent a fair amount of their time together playing a sophisticated game of Dueling Veiled Allusions, sharing with each other a deep love and understanding of literature. This was a game in which niece Fanny would not only have not been a participant, but one which poor Fanny would not even have realized was being played at all, because it all went straight over her head-she was in that sense exactly like the literary character whom JA had modeled, in part, on Fanny—Emma. A girl with some education, with some native intelligence, but without real passion for knowledge or art (just think about the letter Fanny wrote to her sister near the end of her life about JA and CEA, and ask yourself whether the person who rendered those judgments on JA could ever have had any idea of who her by then long-dead aunt really was).

But now, let the texts speak for themselves:

Letter 127: I have been listening to dreadful INSANITY. It is Mr. Haden's firm belief that a person not musical is fit for every sort of WICKEDNESS. I ventured to assert a little on the other side, but wished the cause in abler hands.

Letter 128: So much for the morning. Then came the dinner and Mr. Haden, who brought good manners and clever conversation. From 7 to 8 the harp; at 8 Mrs. L. and Miss E. arrived, and for the rest of the evening the drawing-room was thus arranged: on the sofa side the two ladies, Henry, and myself, making the best of it; on the opposite side Fanny and Mr. Haden, in two chairs (I believe, at least, they had two chairs), talking together uninterruptedly. FANCY THE SCENE! And what is to be FANCIED next? Why, that Mr. H. dines here again to-morrow. Today we are to have Mr. Barlow. Mr. H. is reading "Mansfield Park" for the first time, and prefers it to P. and P.

Letter 129: But you seem to be under a mistake as to Mr. H. You call him an APOTHECARY. He is no APOTHECARY; he has never been an APOTHECARY; there is not an APOTHECARY in this neighbourhood -- the only inconvenience of the situation perhaps -- but so it is; we have not a medical man within reach. He is a Haden, nothing but a Haden, a sort of wonderful nondescript creature on two legs, something BETWEEN A MAN AND AN ANGEL, but without THE LEAST SPICE OF AN APOTHECARY. He is, perhaps, the only person not an APOTHECARY hereabouts. He has NEVER SUNG to us. He will not sing without a pianoforte accompaniment.

… The mistake of the DOGS rather vexed him for a moment, but he has not thought of it since.

Henry Crawford, Chapter 13, Mansfield Park:

"I really believe," said he, "I could be FOOL ENOUGH at this moment to undertake any character that ever was written, from Shylock or Richard III down to the singing hero of a farce in his scarlet coat and cocked hat. I feel as if I could be anything or everything; as if I could rant and storm, or sigh or cut capers, in any tragedy or comedy in the English language. Let us be doing something. Be it only half a play, an act, a scene; what should prevent us?...”

Clarissa, Letter 9, Volume 4, Lovelace to Belford:  I am in a humour to PLAY THE FOOL with my pen…

…Come, come, Belford, let people RUN AWAY WITH NOTIONS as they will, I am comparatively a very innocent man. And if by these, and other like reasonings, I have quieted my own conscience, a great end is answered. What have 1 to do with the world? And now I sit me peaceably down to consider thy letters.

…Martin [Luther] was then but a linseywolsey reformer. He retained some dogmas, which, by natural consequence, made others, that he held, untenable: so that Eckius, in some points, had the better of him. But, from that time, he made clear work, renouncing all that stood in his way: and then his doctrines ran upon all fours. He was never puzzled afterwards; and could boldly declare, that he would defend them IN THE FACE OF ANGELS AND MEN; and to his friends, who would have dissuaded him from venturing to appear before the Emperor Charles the Fifth at Spires, that were there as many devils at Spires, as tiles upon the houses, he would go. An answer that is admired by every Protestant Saxon to this day.

…All my vice is women, and the love of plots and intrigues; and I cannot but wonder how I fell into those shocking freedoms of speech; since, generally speaking, they are far from helping forward my main end…But what must the women be, who can be attracted by such empty souled profligates! Since WICKEDNESS with wit is hardly tolerable! But without it, is equally shocking and contemptible!”

…At such a time every one in a heavy grief thinks the same: but as enthusiasts do by scripture, so dost thou by the poets thou hast read: any thing that carries the most distant allusion from either to the case in hand, is put down by both for gospel, however incongruous to the general scope of either, and to that case. So once, in a pulpit, I heard one of the former very vehemently declare himself to be a DEAD DOG; when every man, woman, and child, were convinced to the contrary by his howling.

…In short, I cannot bear the thought, that a woman whom once I had bound to me in the silken cords of love, should slip through my fingers, and be able, while my heart names out with a violent passion for her; to despise me, and to set both love and me at defiance. Thou canst not imagine how much I envy thee, and her doctor, and her APOTHECARY, and every one who I hear are admitted to her presence and conversation; and wish to be the one or the other in turn.

Letter 10, Volume 4, Lovelace to Belford: “But thou seest, Jack, by her refusal of money from him, or Miss Howe, that the dear extravagant takes a delight in oddness, choosing to part with her clothes, though FOR A SONG. Dost think she is not a little touched at times? I am afraid she is. A LITTLE SPICE OF THAT INSANITY, I doubt, runs through her, that she had in a stronger degree, in the first week of my operations. Her contempt of life; her proclamations; her refusal of matrimony; and now of money from her most intimate friends; are sprinklings of this kind, and no other way, I think, to be accounted for. Her APOTHECARY is a good honest fellow. I like him much. But the silly dear’s harping so continually upon one string, dying, dying, dying, is what I have no patience with. I hope all this melancholy jargon is owing entirely to the way I would have her to be in. And it being as new to her, as the Bible beauties to thee, now wonder she knows not what to make of her self; and so FANCIES she is breeding death, when the event will turn out quite the contrary.”

In short and in conclusion, being in company with Mr. Haden put Jane Austen in a humour to play the fool with her pen in Letters 127-129, and she ran away with that humour for all she was worth!

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

P.S.: I almost forgot to comment on the following additional bit of resonant Janefoolery in Letter 129:

“I am sorry my mother has been suffering, and am afraid this exquisite weather is too good to agree with her. I enjoy it all over me, from top to toe, from right to left, longitudinally, perpendicularly, diagonally; and I cannot but selfishly hope we are to have it last till Christmas— nice, unwholesome. unseasonable, relaxing, close, muggy weather.”

JA is in such a good mood, that even her mother’s characteristic, grotesque complaining (when there is nothing to complain about) cannot bring her down. It suddenly becomes clear that part of the inspiration for Mr. Woodhouse’s absurd concerns about the snow endangering the lives of valiant travelers between Hartfield and Randalls must have been taken straight from the real life whining parent Mrs. Austen. Here it is early December when it should be dreadfully cold, windy, snowy, etc., and instead it is unusually warm and mild, so of course Mrs. Austen is complaining about the weather when every other person in England is grateful for the delay in onset of harsh winter weather.

As absurd as Mrs. Austen’s never-ending complaints are, that is how absurd JA’s reversal of those complaints will be, to counterbalance her mother. JA is so giddy, so high on Mr. Haden’s company, so not willing to dignify her mother’s whining, that she launches into an impromptu, almost Falstaffian superabundant paean to how completely JA is enjoying the unseasonably warm weather.

And there’s also something of Edgar’s poignant and successful exaggerations to his father Gloucester, convincing the blind old man that he really has fallen a VERY great distance off the white cliffs of Dover, and yet, in spite of that, being not in the slightest bit injured:  

Hadst thou been aught but gossamer, feathers, air,
So many fadom down precipitating,
Thou'dst shiver'd like an egg; but thou dost breathe;
Hast heavy substance; bleed'st not; speak'st; art sound.
Ten masts at each make not the altitude
Which thou hast PERPENDICULARLY fell.
Thy life is a miracle. Speak yet again.

And these Austenian and Shakespearean absurdities remind me a lot of the following passage from the Firesign Theatre’s over-the-top absurdist “dreadful insanity” on their greatest album, How Can You Be in Two Places At Once, When You’re Not Anywhere At All:

JOE: Yes, Them too! A lot of Them. Mostly Them and not many of Us! And that's why we're here and they're there! So there, Mr. Monday Morning Quarterback, Mr. Wheelchair General! Are you going to turn your back on America's fighting mens when he come knock, knock, knockin' at your front door?

BABE: No!

DC: Atta boy! Can't you see it all now? As if it were almost Tomorrow? Thousands of 'em!'

BABE: Shoulder to shoulder!

DC: That's right!

BABE: Heart to heart!

EDDIE: You said it, kid.

BABE: Satchel to Paige!

JOE: You got it!

SOUND: Knock on door.

DC: You get it

SOUND: Door opening.