The Bigamist Captain John Lindsay & the Pensacola Connection in Mansfield Park

In Janeites, Rita Lamb wrote on June 7 (and then again today,  re-posted):  "An archaeologist at West Florida, Margo Stringfield, has posted further background to John Lindsay's relationship with Belle's mother here:      http://www.progresspromise.com/blog/belle-s-pensacola-connection Apparently it was a longer relationship than the usual story suggests. If Ms Stringfield's research is correct then it wasn't confined to the West Indies or Florida either, but continued for some time in London."

Rita, I noticed when you posted the above 2 weeks ago, and read the linked article with interest for several reasons (including that I live in South Florida, the other end of the state from Pensacola in the ironically much more “Southern” Panhandle). It's very interesting how well Stringfield’s work fits with Steedman's earlier research which Ellen Moody just quoted from at length.

That Captain Lindsay conveyed the lot in Pensacola to Dido’s mother after he owned it 8 years, in 1773, fits very nicely with Steedman’s research otherwise showing the very long term and strong double family that Lindsay managed (under the patriarchal customs of the day) to create and sustain). Although… we can only wonder as to how happy either of his wives, or any of his children, really were with the arrangement. And the film Belle does indeed slide by ALL of that….

I became curious to know something about Pensacola while Captain Lindsay was there, and here, courtesy of Wikipedia, is my edited down summary, which indicate that Captain Lindsay was where the action was, as he probably was a participant in ”…Great Britain’s victory over France in the Seven Years War (the French and Indian War) and its aftermath. [I]n 1763 the British took control of Pensacola. During the British occupation, the area began to prosper. Pensacola was the capital of British West Florida.“Pensacola was becoming something more than a garrison town…There were now a number of fine houses and structures and an especially impressive Governor’s Palace while the fort had been strengthened and made more efficient. It seems likely the town had over two hundred houses made of timber. Pensacola was still, however, mainly a military and trading outpost, its principal link to the outside world being primarily by sea.”  After Spain joined the rebels of the American Revolution in 1779, Spanish forces captured East Florida and West Florida, regaining Pensacola. They held this area from 1781–1819.  Following the War of 1812 and United States victory over Britain, it negotiated with Spain to take control of Florida.

The British colony of West Florida, with its capital at Pensacola, included all of the Panhandle west of the Apalachicola River, as well as southwestern Alabama, southern Mississippi, and the Florida parishes of modern Louisiana. …In 1763, the British laid out Pensacola's modern street plan. This period included the major introduction of the slave-based cotton plantation economy and new settlement by Protestant Anglo-British-Americans and black slaves. …During the American Revolution (1775–1783), the state of Georgia revolted against the British crown, but East and West Florida, like the Canadian colonies, remained loyal to the British. Many loyal to the king relocated to Florida during this period….”.

So it appears from the above that the major introduction of slave-based cotton plantations to British West Florida occurred exactly when Captain Lindsay received his land in Pensacola.

In that regard, one thing that Steedman wrote in her email to Ellen really struck me:

“Documents show Elizabeth’s brother was still alive in 1783. What happened to him? why was he not equally favored? were there no rumors because he was a boy and thus could not have been anyone’s slave-mistress? We may infer that one reason this familiar family pattern in slave- owning families has escaped the Mansfield official histories is it is uncomfortable to people to have again to recognize that a white man is bigamously living with two women, one of which is his overt property (Elizabeth Lindsay’s mother) and the other his de facto property, Mary.”

I have since 2006 been of the opinion (which Rozema’s 1999 film points in the direction of, when we see Tom Bertram’s sketch of his father raping a slave woman) that JA means for us to discern in the shadows of MP that:

ONE: Sir Thomas has for several decades led a double life, and that he has a second family in Antigua, including black slave wife and biracial children; and

TWO: Somehow, some fuzzy way, both Henry Crawford and Mary Crawford are part of Sir Thomas’s other family, such that, in the character of Henry, we have the proverbial chicken coming home to roost---very much (and not coincidentally) like the illegitimate son Frederick coming home to (unwittingly) confront his own biological father, Baron Wildenhaim, in Lover’s Vows. Again, in a very small nutshell, it is no accident that Henry Crawford is initially described as follows, as if he were a slave on the auction block being evaluated by prospective buyers:

“Her brother was not handsome: no, when they first saw him he was absolutely plain, black and plain; but still he was the gentleman, with a pleasing address. The second meeting proved him not so very plain: he was plain, to be sure, but then he had so much countenance, and his teeth were so good, and he was so well made, that one soon forgot he was plain; and after a third interview, after dining in company with him at the Parsonage, he was no longer allowed to be called so by anybody. “  

So, till now, I had always thought Lord Mansfield was an allusive source for the character of Sir Thomas, because Lord Mansfield, like Sir T., was the patriarch of a household with a young (grand)niece who was brought to live there as a girl and then lived in limbo between being family and slave.

But now, with the combination of Steedman’s and Stringfield’s data aligning so closely, I infer that JA, working the gossip network at Godmersham for intelligence, had by 1814 learned a great deal about Dido’s father (and mother and brother). And I speculate that JA, as she often did in her novelistic subtextual allusions, blurred two generations of a real life family together (as if to say, like father like son—or in this case, nephew), such that Lord Mansfield’s nephew, Captain John Lindsay, is, I believe, ALSO an allusive source for Sir Thomas!

And she wrote all of this into MP in 1814, three years after JA’s initial engagement with the story of Dido Elizabeth Belle, in S&S, when JA, perhaps not yet aware of all the details of the real life (very) extended family of Lord Mansfield, had given the brown-skinned Marianne Dashwood an East Indian aura….

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

James Edward Austen-Leigh's Editing of Letter 157 & the April Fool's Letter to Murray: Fact and fiction

On Sunday, Rita Lamb wrote the following in Janeites re my claims that JEAL engaged in editorial fraud in his 1870 Memoir of Jane Austen, in particular re the effect of the Leigh-Perrot disinheritance in early 1817: 

"...Lets review our positions. If I understand yours, you base your accusations against JEAL (in this instance) on the single word-change of ‘legatees’ to ‘party’, plus your personal interpretation of the surrounding passage in the Memoir where he quotes from Letter 157? The first part, we have to grant you. He definitely, deliberately altered a word. And it’s reasonable to suppose he did so to avoid publicly detailing what he describes only vaguely as ‘family troubles’. "

First and most important….is that the royal we?  (just teasing, I know you were including Christy with yourself)

Rita also wrote: "But when we come to why he did that, we come to personal interpretation. Christy and I both think he was influenced by Victorian reticence on private family financial matters.  You think he did it out of a sense of personal guilt and a conscious, habitual wish to deceive. You describe his behaviour in forceful terms:
'..is there any fraud that JEAL FAILED to deploy in his editing of that passage in Letter 157? All I see is lies, lies, and more lies, all the way down.'
This is an exaggerated condemnation of a single-word edit. Then you wrote (#50574):
‘And as a result of the...evisceration of the true meaning of JA’s actual words, it appeared to all the world that JA was already very ill anyway, and the family troubles that everyone knew about already was Henry’s bankruptcy, so there you had all the cause you needed to explain JA’s death a few months later.’
This implies, in very strong terms, that JEAL not only downplayed the will’s impact but deflected suspicion on the bankruptcy.  Well if he did that, of course, then the contention that he avoided writing in detail about family financial woes out of a sense of Victorian reticence falls down. 
So does JEAL’s memoir deal with Henry’s bankruptcy, and if so, how?  If he avoids all mention, then I count that as support for Christy’s view, and mine: he covered up private family financial woes."

Rita, I was away from my desktop till today, and so could not respond efficiently to your latest skeptical comments till now. And again I repeat my mantra---ye of little faith, did you really think I had done my research so carelessly as to not have looked at all of that carefully before making my claims? As I have told you many times in similar situations, I rarely post all of my findings, because I feel a constant tug of war between giving everything I’ve got, and causing most readers to refuse to wade through my full argument, versus giving highlights, and then having the stuff I left out questioned.

So, here’s the part I left out, why I concluded that JEAL had subtly pointing the finger of blame at Henry Austen and not Uncle Leigh-Perrot. Let’s start with the verbiage with which JEAL began the Letter 157 passage, verbiage which I have repeatedly characterized as misleading and obfuscatory:

“Early in the year 1816 some family troubles disturbed the usually tranquil course of Jane Austen’s life; and it is probable that the inward malady, which was to prove ultimately fatal, was already felt by her…”

Rita, I bet you see it now….do I have to point out that Uncle Leigh Perrot died in early 1817, i.e. a year later than “early in the year 1816”? So right there, you have an out and out lie by JEAL, because he knows better than anyone in the world when he is writing those words, that the date of Letter 156 is in March 1817, not 1816, and that is the very letter he doctored to change its meaning! Now, if he thought he had successfully hidden all traces of the true nature of the “ family troubles”, why change the year, if not to point the reader to “family trouble” that happened in “ early 1816”?

But that’s only the tip of the iceberg of JEAL’s carefully staged misdirection on this point. Take a peek at what a reader of the Memoir would have read only 30 pages earlier than the Letter 157 passage:

[In the April Fool’s letter to Murray]

‘Chawton, April 1, 1816

‘Dear Sir,—I return you the “Quarterly Review” with many thanks….‘In consequence of the late event in Henrietta Street, I must request that if you should at any time have anything to communicate by letter, you will be so good as to write by the post, directing to me (Miss J. Austen), Chawton, near Alton; and that for anything of a larger bulk, you will add to the same direction, by Collier’s Southampton coach.”

Now do you see the next section of the iceberg? JEAL has obliquely slipped Henry’s bankruptcy into the Memoir by the backdoor, as if by accident! How? Because a diligent reader will say, “Hmm.. What “late event in Henrietta Street” could this be? It must be something bad that happened to or involving Henry Austen—it was, I am sure, widely known among Janeites in 1870 that JA’s London brother was Henry---which has caused JA to leave London and return to Chawton. But what could it be?”

And by the way, for any reader who was unaware that Henry was JA’s London brother, look at what that reader would have seen only twenty pages before the April Fool’s letter:

“The next letter, written in the following year, contains an account of another journey to London, with her brother Henry, and reading with him the manuscript of ‘Mansfield Park’:—

‘Henrietta Street, Wednesday, March 2 (1814).”

Hmm…so that alert reader, upon reading of the “late event in Henrietta Street”, would easily and readily infer that the trouble involved Henry.

And so then, 30 pages after the April Fool’s letter, when that same reader gets to JEAL’s doctored sentence from Letter 157, our alert reader says to herself, “Hmm.. these “family troubles” occurred “early in the year 1816”—I wonder if they are the same as the “late event in Henrietta Street”. Sounds like they are. I will see if I can ascertain what happened with Henry Austen that was so bad that it forced Henry Austen to move from his residence at Henrietta Street, and then made his sister Jane very sick to boot.” 

And that would all be enough to indict JEAL on charges of gross editorial fraud. But here’s the best (or worst) part, which is so easy to overlook. Please note that, like the dog that DOESN’T bark in The Odyssey and in the famous Sherlock Holmes story “Silver Blaze”, JEAL does NOT alter or delete the reference to “the late event in Henrietta Street”---when, upon examination, it is readily seen that JEAL could have easily deleted that entire second paragraph in the April Fool’s letter to Murray, without the slightest diminution of valuable content vis a vis the interesting parts of JA’s correspondence with Murray. In fact, the only fact worth noting in that entire paragraph is “ the late event in Henrietta Street”. What reader of the Memoir cares about JA’s giving her forwarding address to Murray, let alone the details of same?

So, Rita, why didn’t the dog bark? JEAL, had he really been so Victorian, so concerned about revealing Austen family secrets, should have “barked” away that entire paragraph! Hell, he should have swallowed it whole, like a good dog! But again, he didn’t want to delete that paragraph, precisely because it served his deeper purpose.

And by the way, I just found another editorial game that JEAL played in his transcription of the April Fool’s letter to Murray. He deleted the word “sad”! I.e., JA originally wrote to Murray “‘In consequence of the late SAD event in Henrietta Street…”!

Now, you might try to argue that such deletion was of a piece with the change of “legatees” to “party” in Letter 156, but I say to you that JEAL was very Machiavellian, because these two passages, separated by 30 pages, were intended by him to work together, and to lay a trap for the diligent reader, by creating a small textual mystery that close careful readers would uncover.

So why delete the word “sad”? I think he did it so that later, if challenged about any of his alterations and deletions from JA’s letters, he could claim that he had tried to hide unpleasant facts of all kinds, and not merely the ones that made him, his father, and his benefactors look bad!

But back to our alert reader for the last link in the chain of my argument--whether or not such a reader would have been able, in 1870, to actually find out that Henry went bankrupt in March 1816, is besides the point entirely. What was important to JEAL was that such reader, even if (s)he never went outside the Memoir itself for information about JA’s life, would be convinced that something happened with Henry Austen in early 1816 that was not good, and which made JA very ill. The goal of deflecting blame away from the Leigh-Perrots would have been achieved.

And today, as I was following up re the above, I just found at least one such curious, close reader, who DID read JEAL’s doctored version of reality as if it was indeed Henry’s bankruptcy that triggered JA’s worst attack of her soon to be fatal disease!

Sir Zachary Cope, in his famous article in the British Medical Journal of 18 July 1964, p. 140, entitled  “Jane Austen’s End”, in which Cope asserted that JA died of Addison’s Disease, wrote as follows, clearly after reading JEAL’s Memoir very UN-suspiciously (i.e., had he read the 1911 Family Record and not the 1870 Memoir, he’d have known that JA’s relapse had nothing to do with Henry’s bankruptcy):

“One further fact must be mentioned.  Henry Austen, Jane's favourite brother, whom she had nursed through a serious illness in 1815, who greatly encouraged her writing and helped to get her novels published, and who seemed to be very prosperous, went bankrupt in March 1816.  This was a terrible mental shock to Jane, and might well have precipitated any disease susceptible of being influenced by mental shock.
    Here then we have the story of an illness coming on soon after a severe mental shock…”

And here then we here in 2014 have the story of a readerly misunderstanding coming on 94 years after severe editorial shenanigans by JEAL!

I conclude by quoting another passage near the end of JEAL’s Memoir, in which he inadvertently reveals, to the reader who has a firm grasp of all of JEAL’s editorial frauds, including most of all his complete deflection of blame away from the Leigh-Perrot disinheritance and onto to the HTA bankruptcy, how guilty JEAL really felt about inheriting Scarlets, but not guilty enough to be honest about his windfall at JA’s expense. Look at how hard he works to convince himself as well as his readers that JA did not know how serious her malady was, and did not suffer too much:

“I cannot tell how soon she was aware of the serious nature of her malady.  By God’s mercy it was not attended with much suffering; so that she was able to tell her friends as in the foregoing letter, and perhaps sometimes to persuade herself that, excepting want of strength, she was ‘otherwise very well;’ but the progress of the disease became more and more manifest as the year advanced.” 

I am just thankful that his descendants understood that true Christian charity and truthfulness required them to tell the whole, undistorted truth in 1911.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

"Galigai de Concini for ever and ever" & "The men shan't come and part us, I am determined. We want none of them; do we?"

In Janeites, Rita Lamb responded to my suggestion that Galigai de Concini may have been persecuted in part because of a public perception of a lesbian relationship between Galigai and Maria de Medicis:  "Arnie, I did as I was bid but found only modern speculation on a forum :(  Is there a reference to a contemporary source that links Galigai and rumours of lesbianism?  I get the impression that, after her execution, any possible smear was thrown at her; but I don't know that this included 'sexual deviancy' as well as witchcraft."

I replied as follows:

Well, the quote I provided the other day from an 1844 commentator DID explicitly draw a parallel between Galigai and Sarah Churchill, and went further and called that linkage "well remarked", meaning that a number of other commentators of that era must also have noted the striking parallelism of situation, so I'll repeat those 1844 remarks now:

Notice of Windsor in Olden Times by John Stoughton, at p. 222:
“No reader of English history can fail to associate with the reign of Anne the name of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, whose history is also linked to the locality of Windsor by several interesting incidents. There, in her palmy days, she gave examples of the marvellous influence which she had acquired over her royal mistress, an influence which it has been well remarked, was the same as the sorcery which Leonora Galligai avowed to her judges over Mary de Medicis— "the power of a strong upon a weak mind." She was appointed by the queen ranger of Windsor Park, an appointment which she greatly valued, and had a residence there appropriated for her use, to which she was much attached. The lodge of the park, she remarks, was a very agreeable residence; and "Anne had remembered, in the days of their friendship, that the duchess, in riding by it, had often wished for such a place." The castle was the scene of many a visit from "Queen Sarah," as she was popularly called, till her influence was undermined by the intrigues of the famous Mrs. Masham, that singular personage in English history.”

While I freely acknowledge that John Stoughton did NOT allude to lesbianism in either historical situation, I believe JA made that association as well, and, given all the lesbian subtext I and other Austen scholars have found in her novels, I think JA and Anne shared an admiration for the defiant Don Juan-like middle finger that Leonore de Concini gave to her persecutors, even when she knew she was doomed. I think JA and Anne must have spoken often of that powerful female role model, courageous in the face of imminent horrible death.

And....as I reflect further on it, there is the same feeling in JA writing "Galigai de Concini for ever and ever" in Letter 159, that I first noticed 4 years ago in the words spoken to Elizabeth Bennet by the mysterious female whisperer when Elizabeth is so busy watching Darcy's every move at Longbourn the first time he shows up there late in the novel:

""The men shan't come and part us, I am determined. We want none of them; do we?"

That rarely noticed passage may, upon examination, seem only like a rallying cry to female friendship, but I hear in it, as well, a rejection of men that is also physical and not just social.

And, by the way, 4 years ago, I concluded that the mysterious whisperer was Mary Bennet, and now I am even more sure of it, because I just noticed just how strikingly parallel the whisperer's words are to the following sentence spoken only a few pages earlier in P&P, by Mrs. Bennet:

"The subject which had been so warmly canvassed between their parents, about a twelvemonth ago, was now brought forward again.
"As soon as ever Mr. Bingley comes, my dear," said Mrs. Bennet, "you will wait on him of course."
"No, no. You forced me into visiting him last year, and promised, if I went to see him, he should marry one of my daughters. But it ended in nothing, and I will not be sent on a fool's errand again."
His wife represented to him how absolutely necessary such an attention would be from all the neighbouring gentlemen, on his returning to Netherfield.
"'Tis an etiquette I despise," said he. "If he wants our society, let him seek it. He knows where we live. I will not spend my hours in running after my neighbours every time they go away and come back again."
"Well, all I know is, that it will be abominably rude if you do not wait on him. But, however, that SHAN'T prevent my asking him to dine here, I AM DETERMINED. We must have Mrs. Long and the Gouldings soon. That will make thirteen with ourselves, so there will be just room at table for him."

Please note the striking parallelism--both are spoken by a female, both use the archaic word "shan't", both say "I am determined"...and both are about the entry of a man into a female enclave--but whereas Mrs. Bennet is determined to ask Bingley to dine at Longbourn, I say Mary Bennet, who has heard her mother and does NOT agree but does not wish to risk speaking her disagreement openly, chooses instead the clever deception of  mimicking her mother's vulgar speech pattern to disguise her own identity, and to turn her mother's words 180 degrees upside down, to make them the voice of female solidarity and the rejection of male intrusion into a female enclave, seeking to reverse her mother's invitation for invasion.

And that was the world that JA and Anne Sharpe shared, I believe, one of female solidarity PLUS something that could only be "whispered" in code between them.

Cheers, ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Queen Galigai, Queen Sarah, & Queen Jane: the lesbian subtext of Letter 159

Ellen Moody wrote the following re Jane Austen's Letter 159 to Anne Sharp, written not long before Jane's premature death at 41:

"Galigai de Concini forever.' I used to think this a reference to a witty French philosophe's letters (very popular) suggesting a world of Enlightenment Jane and Anne shared together as girls but Chapman says it's a reference to a devastating story of a woman burned to death who asked what she had used on her mistress to "charm" her-(the mistress was getting back at this poor woman), answered the power of strong souls over weak. I wish I knew the Voltairian context: he would be telling the story with sardonic irony perhaps.. Anyway that must have been their motto: the source is as revealing as the surface content. Strength influences weakness and yet you are at high risk of destruction. Perhaps Austen believed this: the strong personality, the person with inner strength to whom in her novels (her heroines are this kind of person) she gave a romance happiness at the close of her books as that is what her readers wanted.” END QUOTE

Ellen, your wish is my command—here first is Voltaire, in French and in translation (which I know you don’t need, but others might):

“Le conseiller Courtin lui demanda de quel charme elle s’était servie pour ensorceler la reine: Galigaï, indignée contre le conseiller, et un peu mécontente de Marie de Médicis, répondit: “Mon sortilège a été le pouvoir que les âmes fortes doivent avoir sur les esprits faibles.” Cette réponse ne la sauva pas; quelques juges eurent assez de lumières et d’équité pour ne pas opiner à la mort; mais le reste, entraîné par le préjugé public, par l’ignorance, et plus encore par ceux qui voulaient recueillir les dépouilles de ces infortunés, condamnèrent à la fois le mari déjà mort et la femme, comme convaincus de sortilège, de judaïsme et de malversations. La maréchale fut exécutée (1617), et son corps brûlé.”

Counselor Courtin asked her what magic she had used to cast a spell upon the queen: Galigai, outraged against the counselor and a bit miffed with Maria de Medici, answered: “My magic spell was the power that strong spirits may have upon the weak.” This response did not save her, several judges were intelligent and just enough not to support the penalty of death, but the rest, influenced by public prejudice, by ignorance and still more by those who sought to reap the plunder of those unfortunates, sentenced both the already deceased husband and his wife to death—for sorcery, Judaism and miscreancy. The maréchale was executed (1617) and her body burned.”  Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations et sur les principaux faits de l’histoire, depuis Charlemagne jusqu’à Louis XIII, ch clxxiv, 7ème lettre (1756)

It is obvious from the above that Voltaire sympathized with Galigai, and that he didn’t buy the prosecutor’s theory of massively corrupt, even evil Rasputin-like influence that harmed many French people.

From my further consideration of, and digging beneath, JA’s cryptic meaning in alluding to “Galigai for ever and ever” in Letter 159, beyond my comments in my previous post, I not only continue to adhere to the belief that this was a mantra expressing  JA’s longstanding secret bond with Anne Sharp, as two single gentlewomen treated as less than equal to the gentlemen around them, but also as having a sexual aspect as well—i.e., it was an expression of a very romantic friendship between JA and Anne, expressed at the very moment in JA’s life when she was in effect already in her deathbed, and therefore likely to be the most truthful, uncensored expression of JA’s deepest feelings. In short, JA was pouring her heart out  to a woman she loved very deeply, more than as a purely platonic friend.

And in that same vein, I believe, after reading up a good deal today about the relationship between Maria de Medicis and Eleonora Galigai de Concini, that at least a part of the widespread hatred & demonization of Galigai—the horrible cry of “Burn the witch!” repeated in countless varied ways a thousand times, over millennia, all over the world, against women who in any way transgressed, or seemed to transgress, against the cruelly unfair restrictions imposed on their gender--was due to the perception that Galigai was not merely manipulating Maria, who was after all mother of the King of France, for gain and power, but the added extra inciting factor that her manipulation was believed to be at least partly based on a lesbian relationship between them.

And that would be strikingly similar to another royal scenario that played out in England less than a century after Galigai was put to death, and, in that regard, I leave it to an 1844 commentator to give you part one of the explanation of that connection….

Notice of Windsor in Olden Times by John Stoughton, at p. 222:

“No reader of English history can fail to associate with the reign of Anne the name of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, whose history is also linked to the locality of Windsor by several interesting incidents. There, in her palmy days, she gave examples of the marvellous influence which she had acquired over her royal mistress, an influence which it has been well remarked, was the same as the sorcery which Leonora Galligai avowed to her judges over Mary de Medicis— "the power of a strong upon a weak mind." She was appointed by the queen ranger of Windsor Park, an appointment which she greatly valued, and had a residence there appropriated for her use, to which she was much attached. The lodge of the park, she remarks, was a very agreeable residence; and "Anne had remembered, in the days of their friendship, that the duchess, in riding by it, had often wished for such a place." The castle was the scene of many a visit from "Queen Sarah," as she was popularly called, till her influence was undermined by the intrigues of the famous Mrs. Masham, that singular personage in English history.”

…and the Booklist synopsis for the recent biography of “Queen Sarah” by Ophelia Field to give you part two:

“Though the life of Sarah Churchill (1660-1744), first duchess of Marlborough and original matriarch of a still-thriving dynasty, has been well chronicled through the centuries, Field still manages to provide new insight. Sarah's intimate relationship with Queen Anne serves as the natural centerpiece of this biography. One of the queen's most favored companions for a great number of years, Sarah eventually blackmailed Anne, whom she believed to have unceremoniously dumped her for another female friend. Intriguingly, Sarah threatened to expose Anne as a lesbian, an accusation that would have implicated Sarah in her own attempted slander of the queen. Such a gutsy power play was par for the course for a savvy operator who used any backdoor source available to her as a woman to wield social, political, and economic power in a man's world. Married to one of England's greatest generals, she exploited whatever and whomever possible in order to advance the Whig party or to increase her already immense fortune.”

I think JA was well aware of both of these very famous royal power plays, including their sexual aspects, and included them not only in that brief code in Letter 159, but also in various of her novels—but that last point is a topic for another day.

Cheers, ARNIE

@JaneAustenCode on Twitter

Letter 159 to Anne Sharp, Part Two: the Dying JA’s Alter Egos: Galigai de Concini & St. Swithin!

“…But how you are worried! Wherever Distress falls, you are expected to supply Comfort. Lady P. writing to you even from Paris for advice! It is the Influence of Strength over Weakness indeed. Galigai de Concini for ever & ever.-Adeiu.”

Le Faye’s footnote re Galigai de Concini reads as follows: “RWC gives the explanation: Eleonore Galigai, a maid of honour to Maria de Medicis, married Concino Concini, and was burned as a sorceress in 1617. When one of her judges asked her what charm she had put on her mistress, she replied: ‘Mon sortilege a ete le pouvoir que les ames fortes doivent avoir sur les esprits faibles.’ [“My sorcery was the power that strong souls must have over weak spirits.”] Voltaire, Essai  sur les Moeurs, Ch. 175. JA may have owed her knowledge to Lord Chesterfield (see his letter of 30 April 1752; or to Edgeworth’s The Absentee, Ch. 3”  END QUOTE FROM LE FAYE/CHAPMAN

From my research today, I believe JA and Anne Sharpe knew all about Galligai de Concini from several different sources, and not just the Chesterfield and Edgeworth. Let’s look at each of them now:

First, here is the passage in Lord Chesterfield’s Letter that Chapman cited, in which the worldly wise Lord eloquently touts the value of practical life experience over purely intellectual knowledge, when it comes to human nature. When I read this passage, I think of Jane Austen herself as a writer, and I think of strong-minded characters like the Luciferian Charlotte LUC-as and LUC-y FERrars!:

“The man 'qui a du monde' knows all this from his own experience and observation: the conceited, cloistered philosopher knows nothing of it from his own theory; his practice is absurd and improper, and he acts as awkwardly as a man would dance, who had never seen others dance, nor learned of a dancing-master; but who had only studied the notes by which dances are now pricked down as well as tunes. Observe and imitate, then, the address, the arts, and the manners of those 'qui ont du monde': see by what methods they first make, and afterward improve impressions in their favor. Those impressions are much oftener owing to little causes than to intrinsic merit; which is less volatile, and hath not so sudden an effect. Strong minds have undoubtedly an ascendant over weak ones, as GALIGAI Marachale d'Ancre very justly observed, when, to the disgrace and reproach of those times, she was executed for having governed Mary of Medicis by the arts of witchcraft and magic. But then ascendant is to be gained by degrees, and by those arts only which experience and the knowledge of the world teaches; for few are mean enough to be bullied, though most are weak enough to be bubbled. I have often seen people of superior, governed by people of much inferior parts, without knowing or even suspecting that they were so governed.”

Next, we have the passage from Edgeworth’s The Absentee,which is a lighter, comic version of the archetype, in which the quick-witted Mrs. Dareville repeatedly “dares” to tweak the vanity of the slow-witted society snob Lady Clonbrony. Here’s the end of that scene, where Galigai is referred to:

“Having with great difficulty got the malicious wit out of the pagoda and into the Turkish tent, Lady Clonbrony began to breathe more freely; for here she thought she was upon safe ground: 'Everything, I flatter myself' said she, 'is correct and appropriate, and quite picturesque.' The company, dispersed in happy groups, or reposing on seraglio ottomans, drinking lemonade and sherbet beautiful Fatimas admiring, or being admired—'Everything here quite correct, appropriate, and picturesque,' repeated Mrs. Dareville.

This lady's powers as a mimic were extraordinary, and she found them irresistible. Hitherto she had imitated Lady Clonbrony's air and accent only behind her back; but, bolder grown, she now ventured, in spite of Lady Langdale's warning pinches, to mimic her kind hostess before her face, and to her face.

[More examples of Mrs. Dareville’s mockery of Lady Clonbrony, then…]

'Salisbury!—explain this to me,' said a lady, drawing Mr. Salisbury aside. 'If you are in the secret, do explain this to me; for unless I had seen it, I could not have believed it. Nay, though I have seen it, I do not believe it. How was that daring spirit laid? By what spell?'

'By the spell which superior minds always cast on inferior spirits.'

'Very fine,' said the lady, laughing, 'but as old as the days of Leonora de GALIGAI, quoted a million times. Now tell me something new and to the purpose, and better suited to modern days.'

'Well, then, since you will not allow me to talk of superior minds in the present days, let me ask you if you have never observed that a wit, once conquered in company by a wit of a higher order, is thenceforward in complete subjection to the conqueror, whenever and wherever they meet.'

'You would not persuade me that yonder gentle-looking could ever be a match for the veteran Mrs. Dareville? She may have the wit, but has she the courage?'

'Yes; no one has more courage, more civil courage, where her own dignity, or the interests of her friends are concerned. I will tell you an instance or two to-morrow.”

Even though I believe JA did indeed read both Lord Chesterfield’s letters AND The Absentee, I believe JA was also very familiar with Mary Hays’s 1807 biographical sketch of Galigai, which itself was a condensation of a much longer bio published by Bayle a half  century earlier:

LEONORA GALLIGAI, a Florentine, the daughter of a joiner, and the nurse of Mary de Medicis, by whom she was greatly beloved, accompanied Mary into France on her marriage with Henry IV in 1606. Leonora, plain in her person, but possessed of wit and talents, wholly governed the queen her mistress, whom she attended as woman of the bed-chamber. She gave her hand to Concino Conceni, afterwards marshal d'Ancre, who was also a native of Florence, and who came into France with the queen. Conceni, through the influence of his wife, rapidly obtained wealth and employments. The domestic jars which embittered the life of Henry IV are attributed to the machinations of this Florentine pair, who found their account in abusing the confidence of their mistress.

After the death of Henry, the Concernis, by their ascendency over the queen, obtained yet greater powers; and, by their rapacity and insolence, offended the nobles, and disgusted the nation. The marquisate of Ancre in Picardy was purchased by Conceni; who was also made governor of Amiens, Peronne, Roie, and Montdidier. He was afterwards created a marshal of France, and first gentleman of the bedchamber to the young king. Two hundred gentlemen attended him when he appeared in public, beside the servants to whom he allowed wages, and whom he was accustomed to call his ' thousandlivre poltroons.' He removed at pleasure the counsellors of the king, whom he replaced with his own creatures; disposed of the finances, distributed the offices of state, and by terror crushed all who opposed him.

Leonora, thus arrived at the pinnacle of fortune, affected the most ridiculous fastidiousness. The princes, princesses, and first personages of the kingdom, were prohibited from coming to her apartments, while it was accounted a crime to look at her. The people terrified her, she declared, and made her dread lest they should bewitch her by gazing in her face. Wearied at length by the complaints of his courtiers, and the exactions and caprices of the Italian favourites, Lewis XIII determined to rid himself of their usurpations; for which purpose he gave a commission to Vitri, a captain of the guards, who received orders to dispatch Conceni, by pistols, on the drawbridge of the Louvre. This sentence was accordingly executed April 24, 1617. The body of the unfortunate favourite suffered, after his death, the vilest indignities [gory details, followed by…] Leonora heard of the fate of her husband with little concern, except for her own interest. Without shedding a tear, or expressing a regret, she appeared solicitous only for the preservation of her jewels. Having enclosed them in her bed, she caused herself to be undressed and placed in it; but the officers of the provost, sent to search her chamber, compelled her to arise, and discovered the treasure. 'You have killed my husband,' said she, 'does not that satisfy you? Let me be permitted to leave the kingdom.' When informed of the indignities practised on the body of Conceni, she appeared somewhat moved, yet she shed no tears. After a pause, she declared that her husband had been a presumptuous insolent man, who had deserved his fate. It was three years, she added, since they had separate apartments; that Conceni was a bad man, and that, to rid herself of him, she had determined, to retire into Italy, and had prepared every thing for her journey. This assertion she offered to prove. She behaved with great confidence, as if she had nothing to apprehend, and even expressed a hope of being taken again into favour.

She was first carried to the Bastile, and afterwards committed to the Conciergerie, or prison of the parliament, by which she was tried. Having been condemned to lose her head, and have her body consumed to ashes, she pleaded pregnancy; a plea which was over-ruled by her own confession, that she had lived apart from her husband for three years. Convicted of high treason against God and the king, she suffered her sentence with firmness and courage, July 8th, 1617.

She was accused, with her husband, of having judaized, and practised magic arts; which, with judicial astrology, were, in those times, seriously professed. On being questioned by counsellor Courtin, respecting the kind of sorcery which, she had employed to gain an ascendency over Mary de Medicis, she sensibly replied, 'That she had used no other magic, than that power which strong minds possess over those that are weak.'

With that background, I now express my agreement with Claire Tomalin’s 1999 assessment of this allusion in Letter 159, which is that JA saw herself as a strong minded woman condemned by society as a “sorceress”:  “Suddenly, surprisingly, she invokes the 17^th century French ‘sorceress’ Eleonore Galigai de Concini, who, according to Voltaire, told her judges before she was burned that her magic was simply the force that strong spirits exert over weak ones…Was it Eliza who read Voltaire and told her about Eleonore? Whoever it was, “Galigai de Concini for ever & ever’ wrote Jane, her own spirit strong enough for a sorceress.” And in a 2013 book chapter entitled “Getting to Know Miss Jane Austen: Images of an Author”, Rana Tekcan, a Turkish scholar, strongly endorsed Tomalin’s reading:  “Tomalin…connects the strong spirit of the sorceress not with Anne Sharpe but with JA herself about to face death. Tomalin entitles the chapter “The Sorceress’ and surrounds the quotation with details of her illness and her last attempt at composition.”

But the still bigger picture I see, is that JA writes this to Anne Sharp as a code already so familiar between the two of them from past interactions, that it needs no explanation, beyond stating the mantra. I believe JA is indeed speaking about herself and Anne, as two persecuted co-conspirators in the heresy that two women without formal education could be wiser and (by deception) more powerful even than those invested with real power in their world, mostly men.

And…there is also in Galigai the idea of a smart woman who gains power not through her physical attractiveness, but through her sharp mind. We are reminded of Lady Susan, Lucy Ferrars, Mary Bennet, Charlotte Lucas, Mrs. Smith and (yes) Harriet Smith—who use their wits to gain what they seek. And also such women are viewed as dangerous by the patriarchy, and so are demonized as witches and often violently disposed of—that persecution is as much part of why JA mentions Galigai to Anne Sharp as the powerfully sharp female mind.

And that’s when I connected the dots I show in my Subject Line—of course JA wrote Letter 159 only 6 weeks or so before she wrote her final poem, Winchester Races, which I have written about many times as JA’s swan song of defiant, indomitable spirit. She will not be silenced, she may even have been quietly put  to death (Ashford’s novel is not a ridiculous flight of fancy, it is grounded in Letter 159, Winchester Races, and the references to poison in Sanditon and Emma). But JA’s strong spirit, and her writings, will survive!

No wonder Anne Sharp kept this one letter so sacred, and passed it on (as Le Faye describes its provenance) so that it would eventually (in 1926) emerge into the light of day for the world to see.

Cheers, ARNIE

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