P.S. re Clarkson on Novels

As a followup to my last post, and, as promised, apropos Diane Reynolds’s catch of Jane Austen covertly alluding to abolitionist Thomas Clarkson re Clarkson’s sexist view of women reading novels, here is what I said at the JASNA AGM a year ago:

"Maria Jerinic, for example, has suggested that the normative interpretation of Northanger Abbey as a Gothic parody ‘ignores the importance Austen assigns to women reading, regardless of genre.. The object of Austen’s parody and the real threat to women… is not the gothic novel but it is men, particularly men who wish to dictate to women what they should and should not read….’ Jerinic argues ‘that Catherine Morland is not manipulated by her reading experience, rather she is validated by it.’ ”

I love that last line! Jerinic wrote the above as part of a chapter entitled “In Defense of the Gothic: Rereading Northanger Abbey.” in the well known book, Jane Austen and the Discourses of Feminism. Ed. Devoney Looser. New York: St. Martin’s, 1995

I strongly recommend Jerinic’s article in particular, because she quickly gets to the heart of the matter and nails it—and I am sure she’d be glad to know about JA’s sly veiled allusion to Clarkson in this regard, which supports her claim, with which I am in 100% agreement.

It seems so clear now that Clarkson is being skewered pretty strongly in P&P, on his views about music and novels, being so absurdly rendered in the person of Mr. Collins. That may seem shocking, because Clarkson after all was, on a societal level, a real hero. But it should not be surprising. I have collected a number of examples now of JA skewering even those men who are not monsters, and who do much good in the world, but who are nonetheless sexist.In a way, it was particularly galling to have such a famously good man be so publicly and vociferously wrong _only_ on issues that pertained to women.

One of JA’s core points, it seems to me, was that, yes, there certainly are really evil men out there who do atrocious things to women. But those predators are fairly obvious. JA was particularly concerned in depicting those men who seemed _ordinary_ and _good_, but who, being the majority, wound up inflicting the largest share of injuries on women, without ever being aware of doing so.

All the same, I admit I was more than a little surprised to see the face of Mr. Collins superimposed on the body of Thomas Clarkson!

Cheers, ARNIE

Clarkson's A Portraiture of Quakerism: Another Covert Jane Austen Allusion

The other day, Diane Reynolds wrote a post in Austen L and Janeites where she made a great case for Jane Austen having alluded to the chapter in Thomas Clarkson's 1806 book about Quakerism in which Clarkson frowned on women reading a certain kind of inappropriate novel:

http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind1110b&L=austen-l&T=0&F=&S=&P=5364

I responded as follows:

Diane, your zeroing in on Clarkson's chapter about Quaker concerns about novel reading is a wonderful catch by you---I am not at my desk, but will have something further to say about that when I am. For now, I would say that it is clear that JA had Clarkson's thoughts on reading on her radar screen sometime along the way while she was writing Northanger Abbey.

In the meantime, what I wanted to bring to your attention now is _another_ chapter in that same 1806 book by Clarkson, where he writes, in relevant part, the following, which I think will be an eye-opener for any Janeite familiar with Pride & Prejudice:

"...the pleasure is neither less, nor less involuntary, nor less natural, which we receive, through the organ of the ear, from a combination of sounds flowing in musical progression.

The latter pleasure, as it seems natural, so, under certain limitations, it seems innocent. The first tendency of music, I mean of instrumental, is to calm and tranquillize the passions. The ideas, which it excites, are of the social, benevolent, and pleasant kind. It leads occasionally to joy, to grief, to tenderness, to sympathy, but never to malevolence, ingratitude, anger, cruelty, or revenge. For no combination of musical sounds can be invented, by which the latter passions can be excited in the mind, without the intervention of the human voice.
But notwithstanding that music may be thus made the means both of innocent and pleasurable feeling, yet it has been the misfortune of man, as in other cases, to abuse it, and never probably more than in the present age. For the use of it, as it is at present taught, is almost inseparable from its abuse. Music has been so generally cultivated, and to such perfection, that it now ceases to delight the ear, unless it comes from the fingers of the proficient. But great proficiency cannot be obtained in this science, without great sacrifices of time. If young females are to be brought up to it, rather as to a profession, than introduced to it as a source of
occasional innocent recreation, or if their education is thought most perfect, where their musical attainments are the highest, not only hours, but even years, must be devoted to the pursuit. Such a devotion to this one object must, it is obvious, leave less time than is proper for others that are more important. The knowledge of domestic occupations, and the various sorts of knowledge, that are acquired by reading, must be abridged, in proportion as this science is cultivated to professional precision. And hence, independently of any arguments, which the Quakers
may advance against it, it must be acknowledged by the sober world to be chargeable with a criminal waste of time. And this waste of time is the more to be deprecated, because it frequently happens, that, when young females marry, music is thrown aside, after all the years that have been spent in its acquisition, as an employment, either then unnecessary, or as an employment, which, amidst the new cares of a family, they have not leisure to follow....."

I think it's clear that JA embeds a complex, ironic allusion to this chapter about music in Clarkson in the following passages in P&P:

"If I," said Mr. Collins, "were so fortunate as to be able to sing, I should have great pleasure, I am sure, in obliging the company with an air; for I consider music as a very innocent diversion, and perfectly compatible with the profession of a clergyman. -- I do not mean, however, to assert that we can be justified in devoting too much of our time to music, for there are certainly other things to be attended to...."

[Lady C] "Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight. I must have my share in the conversation if you are speaking of music. There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient. How does Georgiana get on, Darcy?" Mr. Darcy spoke with affectionate praise of his sister's proficiency.

"I am very glad to hear such a good account of her," said Lady Catherine; "and pray tell her from me, that she cannot expect to excel if she does not practise a great deal." "I assure you, madam," he replied, "that she does not need such advice. She practises very constantly."

"So much the better. It cannot be done too much; and when I next write to her, I shall charge her not to neglect it on any account. I often tell young ladies that no excellence in music is to be acquired without constant practice. I have told Miss Bennet several times that she will never play really well unless she practices more; and though Mrs. Collins has no instrument, she is very welcome, as I have often told her, to come to Rosings every day, and play on the piano forte in Mrs. Jenkinson's
room." END QUOTES

Which all means first that your catch of the allusion to Clarkson re novels receives significant validation from my catch of the allusion to Clarkson re music, and vice versa, and also that when JA wrote the following in a February 1813 letter....

"I am reading a Society octavo, an "Essay on the Military Police and Institutions of the British Empire" by Capt. Pasley of the Engineers, a book which I protested against at first, but which upon trial I find delightfully written and highly entertaining. I am as much in love with the author as I ever was with Clarkson or Buchanan, or even the two Mr. Smiths of the city."

....I think we are meant to read her so-called love for Clarkson in the same ironic way that we are meant to read the following "ever was" passage in P&P:

""And pray, may I ask -- ?" But checking himself, he added, in a gayer tone, "Is it in address that he improves? Has he deigned to add ought of civility to his ordinary style! -- for I dare not hope," he continued in a lower and more serious tone, "that he is improved in essentials."

"Oh no!" said Elizabeth. "In essentials, I believe, he is very much what he ever was."

While she spoke, Wickham looked as if scarcely knowing whether to rejoice over her words, or to distrust their meaning. There was a something in her countenance which made him listen with an apprehensive and anxious attention while she added --
"When I said that he improved on acquaintance, I did not mean that either his mind or manners were in a state of improvement, but that, from knowing him better, his disposition was better understood."

Cheers, ARNIE

Two more heretofore unperceived, related (& explosive) allusions in Emma to Sarah Fielding’s The Governess

Here is something that has just arisen out of my series of posts from Sept. 27-Oct. 2 on the topic of the amateur theatricals that Jane Austen staged at Godmersham in early 1806, which I argued were based on the writings of Sarah and Henry Fielding, most notably Sarah’s novella, The Governess (1749).

In those posts, I also emphasized some allusions I perceived JA making in Emma (published nearly 10 years after those theatricals) to The Governess, in particular to the inset courtship tale of Caelia, Chloe & Sempronius. I suggested that this was a disturbing allusion, because, upon closer examination, and read against the grain, the “Knightley” character, Sempronius, was, shall we say, a less than exemplary figure.

I also noted the following additional allusion in Emma to The Governess:

“We have Mrs. Teachum's boarding school transformed satirically into Mrs. Goddard's parlour boarding school, where the primary education the girls receive seems to be how to place themselves in the path of dangerous and/or mercenary young men, and/or to ingratiate themselves to rich naive girls they can manipulate to gain advantage.”

That is my brief setup for today’s post, but if you first wish to first refresh your memory as to any or all the many details in my series of posts about The Governess, feel free to begin here…

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/09/jane-austens-playlet-adaptation-of.html

…and, if you stick with it, end here…

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/10/interesting-significant-austen-fielding.html

OK, now you’re ready for the very cool and very explosive new thing that arose yesterday. I received an email from one of my private correspondents, Keiko Parker, scholar & longtime JASNA member, who became a friend over 4 years ago prior to the Vancouver AGM (about Emma). Here is the relevant text of Keiko’s email sent to me the other day, which she was happy to have me reproduce here:

[Keiko] “It seems to me that if Jane Austen owes to Sarah Fielding for various portrayals including that of Mistress Teachum in her "The Governess" (first pub'd in 1749), then Sarah Fielding herself owes to John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera" (first performed in London in 1728). Just take a look at the characters:
PEACHUM (coming from the word "impeach." He is an underworld "fence" and thief-taker. )
POLLY PEACHUM - his daughter. LUCY LOCKIT - daughter of LOCKIT, Newgate jailor in league with Peachum. See my point? “

And indeed I _did_ see Keiko’ point, and much more that it opened the door to!

First, I took a quick look online, and although I found several scholars who saw the influence of Gay on _Henry_ Fielding (both in Fielding's first play, and also in his novel Jonathan Wild), it seems as though only one other scholar has come close to seeing _Sarah_ Fielding as also having alluded to Gay's The Beggar's Opera. That was Dianne Dugaw, who in 2001, in her book, "Deep play": John Gay and the invention of modernity, wrote at p. 38:

“In The [Beggars] Opera, Gay’s mock-heroic becomes a grim anti-heroism that condemns bourgeois values and rule without qualification…the moralizing tendencies of Gay’s smug Peachum that had already received the notice of some eighteenth century readers. (For example, Sarah Fielding’s The Governess…of 1749 identifies the starched governess of her girls academy ‘in the Northern Parts’ as “Mrs. Teachum’.)” END QUOTE

But Keiko had actually gone _much_ further than Dugaw! She’d made it clear that Sarah Fielding covertly alluded to not one but _three_ _major_ characters in The Beggar's Opera with _four_ of her own characters:

Mrs. Teachum <----Mr. Peachum
Lucy Sly & Patty Lockit <---- Lucy Lockit
Polly Suckling ---- Polly Peachum

However, using Keiko’s wonderful discovery as a springboard, I immediately took it a _quantum_ leap further forward, when I quickly discerned that Sarah Fielding had _also_ used the names of _five_ _more_ of Gay's characters in The Governess----and (here’s the explosive part) _ALL_ of them are prostitutes_!

Molly Bradly (cousin of Patty Lockit) <----- Molly Brazen
Betty Ford <------ Betty Doxy
Dolly Friendly <-----Dolly Trull
Sukey Jennett <-------Sukey Tawdrey
Jenny Peace <----- Jenny Diver

Even those who are fond of claiming that my interpretations are based on coincidences will have a hard time explaining all of the above _eight_ name parallels as “coincidence”! Plus....guess how many times the word "beg" or variants of same, appears in The Governess? (twenty nine times!)

So….that all made it abundantly clear to me that Sarah Fielding was playing a very _very_ sly game in The Governess in 1749, much slyer than I, or anyone else, had previous suspected. I.e., any reader who is aware of this veiled allusion to The Beggar’s Opera must explain why Sarah Fielding would want to generate a subliminal but elaborate metaphor of Mrs. Teachum’s Little Female Academy as a London brothel?

A great deal could be written on that topic, but I will limit myself, for now, to the following brief precis-I am pretty certain that at the heart of her didactic enterprise, Sarah Fielding was suggesting that courtship and marriage in England was something disturbingly similar to the choosing of a suitable female prostitute in a brothel by the male clientele. And that girls and young women needed to be alerted to this dangerous and appalling situation, the better to find some way to protect themselves from abuse.

And that theme of the corruption of love into exploitative sex is one that does not merely resonate with The Beggar’s Opera and its sequel, Polly, which are both very cynical takes by Gay on English society in the early 18th century. It also resonates _strongly_ with Jane Austen’s novels, most notably Mansfield Park—as I have written on numerous occasions about Sir Thomas Bertram and his view of the females under his charge as metaphorical slaves on his English “plantation”, Mansfield Park, counterparts to the actual slaves on his Antigua plantation.

But…. speaking of prostitution and slavery, that should bring to mind _another_ Austen novel where these themes intersect—in Emma!

First, in my talk about Jane Fairfax (which I have given so often during the past 18 months), I always point out the well recognized slang meaning of "governess" in JA's day was _”prostitute”_ (a slang meaning connected to Emma no less than 20 years ago)! And so I argue that Jane Fairfax, in code, was passionately proclaiming her resistance to being forced into prostitution by the “friend” who wished to place her there—Mrs. Elton!

But second, and in a very similar vein, in Emma we also have Mrs. Goddard’s boarding school. As I have noted in the past, in 2006, a blogger named Mayank Soofi posted the first published suggestion I know of that in some way JA intended to convey the idea that Mrs. Goddard’s boarding school was code for a brothel:

http://desicritics.org/2006/06/08/054119.php

And since that time, Anielka has posted publicly and persuasively with a couple of her own colorful elaborations of that idea, and I too have my own interpretation of that allusion, which I too believe is intentional on JA’s part.

So, between Jane Fairfax not wanting to be a prostitute, and Mrs. Goddard’s boarding school as brothel, the idea was already out there, prior to my post today, that JA intended to suggest an aura of prostitution beneath the glittering small town innocence of Emma.

But now think about the impact of this latest discovery by Keiko, as expanded by me----I suggest that it is impossible to escape the inference that JA, in her reading of Sarah Fielding’s The Governess, was 100% aware of the allusion by Fielding to prostitution in Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, and mimicked it in Emma! And so that must raise the identical questions in the minds of Janeites as I posed, above, re Sarah Fielding:

First, why would Jane Austen choose The Governess (and the Virgin Unmasked), both with very risqué meanings, as sources for a playlet enacted at Godmersham in 1806, involving the ladies of Godmersham, including the 13 year old Fanny Knight?

And second, why would JA return to The Governess in writing Emma, ten years later, and, what’s more, do so in a way that unmistakably echoes the veiled sexual connotations of The Governess?

Again, both of those questions call for lengthy answers, but for now I will just say that it makes it great deal clearer that Jane Fairfax and Harriet Smith were much much more complicated characters than have ever been previously understood.

So, in conclusion, I say it is not a coincidence that The Governess uses names for its young female characters which are the same as the whores in Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, and it’s not a coincidence that Jane Austen draws on the theme of governesses and all female boarding schools to evoke the world of prostitution.

Thank you, Keiko Parker, for opening this door into the mysteries of Jane Austen!

Cheers, ARNIE

A Contrarian View of Mr. Darcy

It occurred to me the other day that I have posted at very scattered times about some of my contrarian views of Mr. Darcy. So, for those who might be interested in thinking about Mr. Darcy (even at the end of Pride & Prejudice) in other than a totally romantic, idealized way, check out the following sampler of observations of mine out from the past 18 months in that against-the-grain vein:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/04/unsettling-shades-of-charlotte-smith.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2011/03/jane-austen-radical-but-covert-feminist.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/09/miss-eliot-and-miss-bennet-regret.html

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/08/re-reading-p-mary-bennet-good-satan-of.html

And these are only the tip of a very large iceberg---and the "Titanic" on a collision course with it is the universal notion of the reformed Darcy as the ultimate Prince Charming.

Cheers, ARNIE

Rachel Hunter’s 1806 “Sentimental” Novel, Lady Maclairn, The Victim of Villainy…and What it Tells us about the shadow story of Mansfield Park!

In the end of October, 1812, Jane Austen wrote a letter [Letter 76(C) in Le Faye] to her literary niece Anna Austen, which is unique among JA’s surviving letters in that its entire (very short) content pertains to one novel by another writer:

“Miss Jane Austen begs her best thanks may be conveyed to Mrs Hunter of Norwich for the Threadpaper which she has been so kind as to send her by Mr Austen, and which will always be very valuable on account of the spirited sketches (made it is supposed by Nicholson or Glover) of the most interesting spots, Tarefield Hall, the Mill & above all the Tomb of Howard’s wife, of the faithful representation of which Miss Jane Austen is undoubtedly a good judge having spent so many summers at Tarefield Abbey the delighted guest of the worthy Mrs Wilson. [It is impossible for any likeness to be more complete.] Miss Jane Austen's tears have flowed over each sweet sketch in such a way as would do Mrs Hunter's heart good to see; if Mrs Hunter could understand all Miss Austen's interest in the subject she would certainly have the kindness to publish at least 4 vols more about the Flint family, & especially would give many fresh particulars on that part of it which Mrs H. has hitherto handled too briefly; viz the history of Mary Flint's marriage with Howard. Miss Jane Austen cannot close this small epitome of the miniature abridgement of her thanks & admiration without expressing her sincere hopes that Mrs Hunter is provided at Norwich with a more safe conveyance to London than Alton can now boast, as the Car of Falkenstein which was the pride of that Town was overturned within the last 10 days. “

The conventional wisdom about this letter, which has a complicated provenance described in Le Faye, is that it was a big joke shared by JA and Anna, in which they were both mocking Rachel Hunter’s “sentimental”, overly long, and silly 1806 novel Lady Maclairn, The Victim of Villainy. The tone for that critical reaction was set by Fanny Caroline Lefroy, Anna’s daughter, who wrote that the letter 'refers to a voluminous and most tiresome & prosy novel the Aunt & Niece had been reading & laughing over, together. It was in eight volumes and the tears of the heroine were for ever flowing' .

Le Faye leads the modern charge, in her 1985 N&Q Note: “The letter was supposed to be an expression of Jane's admiration addressed to Mrs Hunter of Norwich, the authoress of a sentimental novel which Jane and Anna had been reading together…. A reading of the work shows that the Austen family’s comments are fully justified. The heroine Rachel Cowley is sent to Tarefield Hall by her wicked guardian Mr. Flamall, and meets there the eponymous Lady Maclairn together with other members of the Maclairn/Flamall/ Flint/Howard family group, all suffering from secret griefs and guilty consciences. At Tarefield Abbey, Rachel finds the ‘worthy Mrs. Wilson’, and at the Mill she helps a virtuous yeoman family. Every new character gives a verbatim report of his or her life-story to date, a total of nearly twenty flashbacks in all. Nor is it only the heroine who is ‘always in floods of tears’—all the characters, male and female alike, are frequently found to be either weeping already or else burst into tears during conversation. Anna Lefroy’s memory of the work as being both long and silly was certainly quite correct, but if she had re-read it in the primmer atmosphere of the mid 19th century, she might by then have been shocked to realize that the moral Mrs. Hunter treated such matters as seduction, bastardy, perjury, elopements, secret marriages, bigamy, lunacy, and suicide as everyday occurrences.”

Whoa! Seems pretty straightforward, right? Well, read on to find out that just the _opposite_ is the case, and, what’s more, to find out that JA’s reaction to Hunter’s novel---not only in Letter 76(C) but also in _another_ letter she wrote to niece Anna Austen--- is actually a huge smoking gun pointing straight into the shadow story of Mansfield Park!

The key clue that enabled me to solve this heretofore undetected Austenesque mystery was the following paragraph in Letter 108 dated 9/28/1814, written by JA to Anna:

“Your Aunt Frank's nursemaid has just given her warning, but whether she is worth your having, or would take your place, I know not. She was Mrs. Webb's maid before she went to the Great House. She leaves your aunt because she cannot agree with the other servants. She is in love with the man, and her head seems rather turned. He returns her affection, but she fancies every one else is wanting him and envying her. Her previous service must have fitted her for such a place as yours, and she is very active and cleanly. She is own sister to the favourite Beatrice. “

As is often the case in my research, my discovery was serendipitous. I was looking into another issue entirely when I read this Letter 108 passage carefully for the very first time, and was struck by the strangeness _and_ suggestiveness of that last quoted sentence. At first, the syntax seemed awry, but then I learnt from Googling that “own sister” was an archaic version of “full sister” as opposed to, say, “half sister”.

But that did not satisfy my curiosity. My recent delvings into the allusions to Dante that I perceive in JA’s writings led me to wonder if JA was being poetic here, and was referring to Dante’s Beatrice. But a drama queen nursemaid did not seem to resonate to Dante’s angelic heroine—so perhaps Shakespeare’s Beatrice, from Much Ado, was the literary heroine JA was alluding to?

Or could “the favourite Beatrice” have been a real person? Le Faye’s Biographical Index entry for “Beatrice” points in that direction: “A maidservant to someone in the Chawton district?”.

But then, I already knew that Le Faye has an absolutely tin ear for JA’s wit, irony, and wordplay, as is evidenced by the funniest example of that, which I have written about before, when she wrote the following clueless Index entry for “Mr. Floor”, whom JA wrote was “_low_ in our estimation”:

“?Tradesman in Southampton—perhaps a dyer?”

Le Faye is _not_ someone you want as a guide into the “underworld” of JA’s punny wordplay! So I pressed on, hopeful that Google would lead me to the solution of this mystery—and guess where it led me? To the following passage in, of all books…..Rachel Hunter’s Lady Maclairn, The Victim of Villainy!:

Letter I. From Miss [Rachel] Cowley to Miss [Lucy] Hardcastle. Tarefield, June 24.
The short note which your father has, before this, delivered to you, and which I trust you have destroyed, my dear Lucy, as a proof unworthy to be preserved of your poor Rachel's little advancement in self-knowledge, shall, if it be possible, be rendered useful to me as a warning against presumption. But although I have been taught by experience not to think too highly of my wisdom, yet I mean not, Lucy, to give up the reins to folly. You will have no more despairing rhapsodies from me. The question has been decided, and reason tells me, that in a difficulty which admits of no other alternative but that of either laughing or crying, it is but to take that which will least disagree with my constitution. You have, my dear Lucy, called me many times a TWIN SISTER OF MY FAVOURITE BEATRICE. Whether you meant to compliment me as having a portion of her wit, or meant to repress in me the superabundance of her spirit and flippancy, remains with you to settle. I am contented with the resemblance, and I will, if I can, preserve a light heart, and her disdain of fools and knaves. I will, however, effect my purpose of breaking through the web of mischief which now entangles me, without wishing "I were a man," or "eating Mr. Flamall's heart in the market-place;" a more severe punishment will only satiate my vengeance, he shall live to feel the stings of a wounded conscience, and to see me happy….”

Talk about a smoking gun! So it _was_ Shakespeare’s Beatrice after all [with her wit, spirit, flippancy, and her famous averral to Benedick about Claudio in IV.1: “O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place.”] to whom Hunter had alluded, and then JA alluded to _both_ Hunter _and_ Shakespeare in Letter 108.

And of course it makes perfect sense that JA would allude to Lady Maclairn in two letters _both_ written to the same person, i.e., the 21 year old Anna Austen, the literary niece who obviously had also read Lady Maclairn (surely at JA’s suggestion) and would understand the allusion, in stark contrast to Le Faye’s blindness.

The Mystery of the Deleted Sentences in both Letter 76(C) and in Letter 108

Even at this early point in the arc of this thread of inquiry, I realized that this was clearly another example, in a very long list, of Le Faye trying to dismiss and minimize something in JA’s letters which actually warranted much closer attention. So I decided to push on, believing (correctly as it turned out) that the best was yet to come.

And as I examined this little mystery, the mystery expanded before my eyes. The first thing I found was that even though JEAL quoted brief excerpts from Letter 108 in his 1870 Memoir, and then Lord Brabourne purported to quote all of Letter 108 in his 1884 edition of JA’s letters, _neither_ of them included that very same suggestive sentence I’ve been discussing, “She is own sister to the favourite Beatrice”! How very odd, don’t you think?

Now, in JEAL’s case, where his quotation from Letter 108 was very short, this omission could easily have been an insignificant and inevitable byproduct of drastic editing. However, in Lord Brabourne’s case, that sentence was the _only_ omission from the version printed in Chapman and Le Faye’s editions of the Letters! It is hard to escape the conclusion that _someone_ (and if we can believe Le Faye’s provenance section, it was probably Fanny Caroline Lefroy) _deliberately_ deleted that one sentence for some reason!

It was also possible that Lord Brabourne might have been the mysterious Deleter, because, as I have posted on several occasions, he was rather prone to Bowdlerization of his great aunt’s letters (the most egregious instance being the deletion of JA’s acid joke about Mrs. Knight’s “accidental” pregnancy!).

But then I noted that in the _other_ letter to Anna, Letter 76(C), there was _also_ a single sentence (out of a long paragraph) deleted in Hill’s 1904 bio, but included in Chapman and Le Faye. Here is the context in Letter 76(C)nwith the deleted sentence in brackets:

“Miss Jane Austen begs her best thanks may be conveyed to Mrs Hunter of Norwich for the Threadpaper which she has been so kind as to send her by Mr Austen, and which will always be very valuable on account of the spirited sketches (made it is supposed by Nicholson or Glover) of the most interesting spots, Tarefield Hall, the Mill & above all the Tomb of Howard’s wife, of the faithful representation of which Miss Jane Austen is undoubtedly a good judge having spent so many summers at Tarefield Abbey the delighted guest of the worthy Mrs Wilson. [It is impossible for any likeness to be more complete.]”

What on earth could this _deletion_ signify?

Le Faye writes the following curious note: “This sentence does not appear in Anna Lefroy’s two copies, but only in those made by Fanny Caroline Lefroy. It is impossible to determine whether this was an omission by Anna or an invention by FCL.”
And by the way, don’t you wonder why Le Faye did not think it worth mentioning the deleted sentence in Letter 108, even though she mentioned it, re Letter 76(C), both of them occurring among the small handful of surviving JA letters written to Anna Austen? Could it be that Le Faye recognized the pattern, and did not want anyone else to recognize it?

But, by my usual obsession-driven serendipity, I _did_ recognize the pattern! And given my discovery of the deleted sentence in Letter 108, my vote was clearly for a deletion in Letter 76(C) as well, an attempt by someone to hide some aspect of JA’s meaning from the public—but what and why? If you read that passage carefully, and reflect on it, I think the answer is obvious.

The Parallel Between Hunter’s Fictional World & JA’s Real World

Several commentators have noted that JA in Letter 76(C) has adopted the conceit that she is actually writing to Rachel Hunter (who actually died in 1813, not long after the writing of Letter 76(C) and not long before the writing of Letter 108), a conceit that includes the notion that JA spent a lot of time at “Tarefield Abbey the delighted guest of the worthy Mrs. Wilson. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR ANY LIKENESS TO BE MORE COMPLETE.”

One would have to be a very dull elf----or a very deceitful elf--- to not affirm the meaning that JA is hinting at so broadly----she is hinting that there are two _real life_ estates located very close to each other, where JA spent “so many summers”, which must be the ones which completely resemble Tarefield Hall! And of course, anyone familiar with JA’s biography knows _exactly_ which real estates I am talking about---Godmersham and Goodnestone!

But if you delete that last sentence, which functions as a giant arrow pointing back at the _previous_ sentence, then the previous sentence becomes murkier, much more likely to just be glided by as a bunch of confusing details—especially to a reader who has not read Hunter’s novel---and what reader of JA’s letters is going to even attempt to read Hunter’s novel after reading Le Faye’s demolition of it?

It would almost be laughable if it weren’t sad--when Le Faye writes “…the moral Mrs. Hunter treated such matters as seduction, bastardy, perjury, elopements, secret marriages, bigamy, lunacy, and suicide as everyday occurrences, ” I was distinctly reminded of Dorothy in Oz: “Lions and tigers….and bears???!!!!” Shocking indeed! And certainly not something for a proper Austen scholar to examine, for fear of….who knows what?!

So it seems like more than one person was determined to do everything possible (short of burning Letters 76(C) and 108 to prevent, or at least strongly discourage, anyone from asking the question: What _is_ it in Lady Mclairn that so powerfully reminded JA of the real life world at Godmersham and Goodnestone? Read on to find out. We are almost “home”. ;)

Tarefield Hall/Abbey = Godmersham/Goodnestone = Mansfield Park/Northanger & Donwell Abbey

Before myself reading Hunter’s very long novel, I checked to see if someone else might have already done so, and saved me the trouble. And fortunately, there was someone very smart who had done so, and written all about it—my friend and fellow Austen scholar, Isobel Grundy, who took the opposite tack with Hunter’s novel than did Le Faye 9 years earlier—in 1994, Isobel wrote a long, thorough, insightful, probing article analyzing Hunter’s novel as a serious work of literature, in particular as it pertained to the hot button (in 1806) subject of West Indies plantation slavery. Here is the citation, I urge those of you who are so inclined to read it:

Women's Writing, Volume 1, No. 1, 1994, ppg. 25-34, “ Rachel Hunter and the Victims of Slavery”

I am not going to reinvent the wheel by even attempting to summarize and the rich and complex argumentation and analysis that Isobel presented in the above article. The bottom line from an Austenian point of view is that Rachel Hunter’s novel may well have been verbose, but it was also a nuanced, wide ranging exploration of the world of English plantation slavery, both in England and in the West Indies, which also drew disturbing parallels between the lives of African slaves on plantations, and the lives of Englishwomen in England. And if that does not bring to mind _Mansfield Park_ most of all, but also the dark shadows of Northanger Abbey, Emma and the other Austen novels as well, then you haven’t been paying attention to the strong current of Austen scholarship in the last few decades.

As I have, of necessity, gone on a very long time already to bring you to this point, I will henceforth limit myself to a handful of quotations from Isobel’s article that are directly relevant to my post today.

The first is Isobel’s description of Hunter’s heroine, Rachel Cowley:

“Self-contradiction characterises Rachel's views on gender as well as on slavery. She likens herself to Shakespeare's Beatrice for "spirit and flippancy" (she is remarkably well-read, from Philip Sidney to Ossian…Rachel astonishes a lawyer and a doctor by her strength of character: "I shall in future blush, when I hear strength of mind called a masculine endowment' (1, p. 80; 4, p. 235). She plays with the idea of role-reversal, and plans "to draw my sword should it be necessary". She several times assents to unpleasing female stereotypes in the course of distancing herself from them: "I am not a spiritless, whining, love-sick girl"; "Let us ... aim at being something better than mere teeming animals" (1, p. 234; 4, p. 273). Yet she is resolved not to emulate Beatrice in "wishing 'I were a man,' or 'eating Mr Flamall's heart in the market-place'" (1, pp. 154, 115-116). Despite her distrust of marriage shackles, she is domesticated by the close: "the vivacity and brilliancy of her mind, appear to yield to the satisfactions of her heart. She is always amiable; but [at home] she is more placid, more affectionate ..." (4, p. 309).”

Had Isobel been aware of the deleted sentence in Letter 108 at the time she was writing her article, she would obviously have connected the dots between it and Hunter’s novel—but she was not--so that happy task fell to me.


My second quotation arises from Isobel’s awareness of the allusion by JA to Hunter’s novel in Letter 76(C):

“Jane Austen, paying Lady Maclairn the dubious compliment of ironical encomium and fantasy, pretends to believe in the existence of the characters as real-life persons….Austen directs her mockery at the sentiment surrounding Mary (Flint) Howard, and ignores the Jamaican component…It is noteworthy that critics are divided as to whether her treatment of Sir Thomas Bertram's West Indian property reflects pro- or anti-slavery views.”

Had Isobel been aware of Letter 108’s veiled allusion to Hunter’s novel, and also had Isobel had the benefit of reading the past 17 years of scholarship about the slavery subtext of MP, and had realized that the consensus has clearly turned toward seeing MP as the unified, complex _anti_ slavery (and feminist) work that it so clearly is, perhaps she might have looked past the joking tone of Letter 76(C) and perhaps might been induced to read Letter 76(C) more deeply than she did.  Isobel's article is a gold mine for an Austen scholar with my feminist, anti-slavery perspective, demonstrating in a dozen ways why JA would have been so interested in Hunter’s novel, to the point of initiating her own beloved niece Anna into these mysteries as well, so that Anna, as a budding novelist, would learn to weave allusive shadows into _her_ fiction as well! This was much more important advice than the familiar nostrums about writing about people you knew, and only about a few families in a country village, and Anna’s fiction demonstrates that she absorbed this lesson very well indeed.

My third quotation relates to the oft-drawn parallel which my work extends, between the role of slave on a plantation, and of a wife in an English marriage, in JA’s era:

“It is tempting to read a parallel between Rachel's two closing acceptances - of marriage and of slavery - but both, and the latter particularly, remain opaque. In a later novel Hunter allows herself some explicit discussion of the marriage ending. "It has been", says the narrator of Family Annals/'for a considerable length of time, my secret hope, and avowed opinion", that her heroine, still beautiful at twenty-six, and having lost her first and only lover, would enjoy "the honours and rewards of a well-spent life, under the title of The Maiden Aunt".

I think the applicability of that discussion to JA’s fiction and also to JA’s own life, is unmistakable.

And finally, I quote the following because I believe JA found Hunter’s novel interesting in a variety of important ways, but most of all, perhaps in JA’s _emulation_ of Hunter in depicting her _own_ family and friend circle in her novels, exactly as Hunter, apparently, did—and JA’s conceit about writing directly to Rachel Hunter is exactly the clever way that JA showed this:

“We have already heard that Mr Cowley's dead wife was nee Marian Dawson, and that the novel's protagonist is Rachel Marian Cowley. It must be the case, though it is not made explicit, that Mrs Cowley gave her Christian name both to her daughter and a slave. (The novelist's bestowal of her own first name on the protagonist of this work, with its inevitable suggestion of possible autobiographical content, is another issue.)”

There’s much more, but that is the essential detail that lands the plane, and demonstrates that the attempt to conceal JA’s true attitude toward Hunter’s Lady of Maclairn, The Victim of Villainy, was motivated by a desire to conceal the slavery and feminist subtext of JA’s novels, and to substitute for same the notion of JA being amused by a silly, prosy novel by another female writer.

But now finally, that wrong has been righted, after nearly 200 years.

Cheers, ARNIE

Jane Fairfax's (and Jane Austen's) Independence Day

Purely by happenstance this morning, while revisiting some of my prior posts about _Emma_ for an entirely different reason, I was led to see some interconnections I had not previously noticed, which I wish to elaborate for you, as they represent, in a way, a crystallization of themes I have been working on for the entire duration of my writing project, and which, more and more, have been coming together for me in this final stage of my research:

To wit, three months ago (less a day), on July 4, 2011, I posted the following here and at my blog:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/search?q=Declaration+of+Independence

In a nutshell, I claimed then that the "courtship" charade in _Emma_ , in addition to all the other covert meanings hidden in it by JA which had previously been brought forward by various Janeites including myself, was also a parody of the American Declaration of Independence itself!

Now I see the connection of that argument to other key points in the Jane Austen Matrix I have been constructing all these years, and the added value from those connections gives me great pleasure and satisfaction. Read on to see why.


Not quite one year ago, I posted a second, secret solution to the "patriot" charade attributed to Henry Austen:

http://sharpelvessociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/answer-to-my-best-quiz-ever.html

My second secret solution was the name "Hancock" (I speak about this at each of my Jane Fairfax presentations, I urge you to read the way I arrived at my solution, it is, to say the least, surprising), and the connection I saw today for the first time was that, of course, John Hancock was the _American_ patriot who famously signed the Declaration of Independence with a huge signature, putting himself, in effect, at the front of the line for the firing squad if the British had squelched the American Revolution.


So is it a coincidence that there would be a secret answer ("Declaration of Independence") to the "courtship" charade in Emma that would be so directly connected to a secret answer ("Hancock") to the "patriot" charade in the Austen family charade album?

Of course not! And what is most compelling to me is how well _all_ four of these answers, as well as the "Prince of Whales" answer that Colleen Sheehan first discovered in 2006, and the "Leviathan" answer discovered by Anielka in 2009, seamlessly fit with _each other_.


First, as to the "courtship' charade, we can fairly say that the American Revolution was, according to the American Declaration of Independence, the result of egregiously bad "courtship":

1. In terms of the bungling operations of the English royal "court", which at times must have resembled Hartfield, a kind of riderless horse, with King George III acting in many ways like Mr. Woodhouse; but also

2. In terms of the unwillingness of George III to "court" the colonies with reasonable and fair governance, resulting in those colonies reacting the way that Emma did to Mr. Elton on Christmas Eve in the carriage ride back to Hartfield from Randalls.

We can also say that King George III had himself at one time early in life been the Prince of _Wales_ but he also had as his eldest son a dissipated, narcissistic "gentleman" who was known as the Prince of _Whales_.

And Hobbes's "Leviathan" was about the nature of royal governance in England, in regard to an English king who lost his crown, in both senses of the word, i.e., Charles the First.


PLUS, as to the private charade, as I just wrote above, we can also fairly say that John Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence, with the result that after the successful American Revolution, the "United" States (which is symbolized by "woman lovely woman") thenceforth did indeed overthrow British despotism and thenceforth did (and still does) "reign alone"!

All of that, as we Jews say at the Seder (a holiday about the most famous uprising of all an oppressed people against royal tyranny) would have been enough, but there's another layer that is even more spectacular than that. I.e., this consolidated interpretation of secret and overt answers relative to the theme of revolution and independence seamlessly works in concert with the level of the radical feminism that I ascribe to Jane Austen, and which receives special emphasis in _Emma_ as a novel.

I.e., I read Jane Fairfax as symbolizing the American colonies, and I see her as achieving, at the end of the novel, true independence---I believe that, having survived her harrowing ordeal of concealed pregnancy, attempts to find a husband, and finding a good placement for her baby, Jane F. never actually does marry the unworthy Frank Churchill (just as the young United States did not "marry" itself to "Frankish" France, but stood on its own completely independent feet), but instead takes the Churchill family jewels (symbolized as economic wealth) and establishes herself as an independent woman in London, free from domination by, or indebtedness to, any man--whether that man be named Campbell, Knightley or Churchill.

And how poignant and tragic is the historical fact that Jane Austen, the alter ego of Jane Fairfax, believed in early 1816 that _Emma_ was her own declaration of artistic independence, which would mark the dawn of a completely new epoch in her own life, in which she would live in economic prosperity using money she herself earned as an author, without the need for any of the Chawton Cottage ladies to "depend" upon help from unreliable brothers. And she also would have anticipated spending the next few decades writing more and more groundbreaking novels, which eventually would bring her the power to assume the public mantle once worn by Mary Wollstonecraft, and lead English womankind into a new era of pragmatic independence.

The tragedy is that less than 18 months later, JA lay in her fresh grave in Winchester Cathedral, and her dreams of female independence were as quickly covered over with cement (or whatever they used in those days) by her brother Henry in his Biographical Notice, and brother James with his hokey Venta poem, and it has taken nearly 200 years to exhume the "body" of her literary productions and to show the world that her ideas and dreams have never actually died, even if her mortal body did.

Cheers, ARNIE

P.S.: I got so carried away with all of the above that I almost forgot the _OTHER_ connection to the Declaration of Independence that I saw earlier today. Want to guess what date the secret of Jane and Frank's engagement was announced to Emma by Mrs. Weston? Which also happens to be the date on which, in the shadow story, Jane Fairfax was finally freed from the torment of her concealed pregnancy, having just given birth to her baby to deliver her into the safe hands of the wonderful Mrs. Weston, the beginning of the rest of Jane Fairfax's life (and don't believe for a second the fable that JA told her family that Jane F would die within three years)?

I would think you have by now guessed what date that all takes place, in Chapter 46 of _Emma_, but if not, I will save you the trouble of taking a peek at Ellen Moody's calendar for Emma, where she provides the following description for the date I am hinting at:

""By counting June 26 and the Monday as full days", "about ten days after Mrs Churchill's decease, Frank's ride from Windsor to Jane to make-up and then to Randalls to announce engagement ("he had not time to enter into much explanation. Jane looked "wan, sick", Frank thinks he persuaded it all away. He was here only a quarter of an hour") also occurs day after he and Mr Churchill received letters and he has time to tell his adopted stepfather; on same day, but "he cannot stay five minutes" and she "must come this morning" Mr Weston brings Emma to Mrs Weston; as they walk Frank "half way to Windsor by this time"; Emma tells Mrs Weston that "for at least three months" (from May, time of second visit) she has "cared nothing for him"; now that afternoon Emma and Harriet first understand one another. Time mentioned twice: Emma withdraws eyes from Harriet and meditates "for a few minutes. A few minutes ...", and she sees "Mr Knightley must marry no one but herself" ... her own conduct ... her own heart ... before her in the same few minutes. Harriet's story of Mr Knightley's growth of love for her are described as "Circumstances that might swell to half an hour's relation ...": Harriet measures strength of Mr Knightley's attachment by how much time he spends with her: "they had been walking some time before Emma came ... his having sat talking with her nearly half an hour ... when he first came in, he said he could not stay five minutes ... " The rest of the day; the following night, were hardly enough for her thoughts. 46:384, 387, 389; 47:396, 399"

http://www.jimandellen.org/austen/emma.calendar.html

For those of you who don't like to follow links, and who don't take broad hints, that date is.......................... July 4th!

Which makes me wonder, what happened in JA's personal life on July 4, 1814?

Well, that is the time period not long before Anna Austen's marriage to Benjamin Lefroy, when Anna, then 21 (the same age as Emma and Jane F, and also as Fanny Knight in real life) was writing her novel-that-she-never-completed under Aunt Jane's loving tutelage. It does not take a rocket scientist to read those famous letters JA wrote to Anna during that time period--letters which Anna obviously saved as precious remembrances of JA---and to realize that this was a period of exhilaration for JA, as she wrote her own masterpiece simultaneously with her beloved niece beginning her own literary career, walking in her aunt's footsteps.

And in JA's Letter 102, dated 6/23/1814, we read of JA's intent to spend up to a fortnight in London during July, as she writes:

"I certainly do not wish that Henry should think again of getting me to Town. I would rather return straight from Bookham; but if he really does propose it, I cannot say No, to what will be so kindly intended."

What comes through loud and clear to me from this passage is that the eternal rigamarole of having to depend on brothers to transport JA here and there has gotten intolerably old at this stage of her life. JA is dreaming of the day, hopefully not far off, when she will finally be independent in the precious liberty to travel when, where and how she might choose. Another dream ultimately shattered by harsh reality.

An Interesting & Significant Austen-Fielding PERSONAL Connection

My recent string of posts about the 1806 Godmersham amateur theatricals (which I claim were JA's dramatized adaptations of fiction written by both Sarah Fielding and her much more famous brother, Henry, fictions which JA later also alluded to in her own novels) led me to revisit all of my prior research about JA's literary allusions to the Fieldings, which I had accumulated over the past 6 years. However, what I am writing about today is a _biographical_ discovery that my revisiting took me to, an entirely unexpected bonus that arose when two files I had generated years ago on seemingly completely unrelated subjects turned out to have a point of crucial intersection.

I have discovered an Austen-Fielding _personal_ connection which, as best as I can tell online, has never been mentioned by any Austen biographer prior to me, in no small part because members of the Austen family did _not_ wish this connection to be noticed. Read on and see what _you_ think.

First, using Google Desktop, I searched through all my files which included both "Fielding" and "Austen"--a large number of files, but most of them pertained to Jane Austen's fiction vis a vis Tom Jones, which I had last exhaustively researched over a year ago, and which were not the tree I was barking up, so I quickly skimmed past them.

The point of intersection that serendipitously led to my latest discovery was the name "Denbigh". It showed up in a file describing Henry Fielding's ancestry, mentioning that Henry Fielding was born into a junior branch of an ancient noble family, the Earls of Denbigh. No big deal so far. You probably never heard of it in connection with Jane Austen, nor had I noticed it before, and it only rang a bell for me at all, because it was a character name in James Fenimore Cooper's 1820 Austen homage, entitled Precaution---but that appeared to me to be coincidental and insignificant.

But then, a short time later, another of the files I had retrieved _also_ mentioned the Earls of Denbigh--and what electrified me was that this latter file did not mention Henry (or Sarah) Fielding at all, but instead had mentioned the Earls of Denbigh in connection with the Bridges family at Goodnestone!

I had never previously paid attention to, or taken note of, the name "Denbigh" in either of those files, but I quickly realized why this intersection was so interesting--I recalled another factoid that I _had_ taken note of, in passing, round about 2005, which was that there were two female Fieldings who were part of the Bridges/Knight family matrix in Kent!

At that earlier time, as I now recalled, it was during my initial forays into Le Faye's edition of JA's letters, and the question had popped into my head, wondering if those Kentish female Fieldings (some of you might have noticed it, too, because one of them was known by the colorful nickname "Aunt Fatty") might have been family relations of _the_ Henry Fielding. But I also recalled that my curiosity in 2005 was quickly quenched when I read Le Faye's Bio Index entry for the Fielding family, which made _NO_ mention whatsoever of Henry Fielding. In 2005, although I was already neck deep in sleuthing out the shadow story of _Emma_, I was much much less suspicious and inquisitive, and much more passive, than I am today about the standard understanding of JA's biography. So, in 2005, I took Le Faye's Index at face value and assumed that if there _had_ been a personal connection of part of the Austen family to the famous Henry Fielding, of course it would have been discovered long ago.

WRONG! Today, with my policy of questioning every part of the received wisdom about JA, I would have immediately sleuthed out an answer to that question--but better late than never, because this one is significant. Anyone who wishes can use Google and other online resources to verify the following essential genealogical connections:

ONE JUNIOR LINE:

Henry and Sarah Fielding were some of the children of Edmund Fielding (1681-1741), the 3rd son of John Feilding (1650-77), who was in turn the youngest son of George Feilding (1614-65), the 1st Earl of Desmond (and also younger brother of the 2nd Earl of Denbigh and also uncle of the 3rd Earl of Denbigh and great uncle of the 4th Earl of Denbigh)-or, stated in another way, Henry and Sarah Fielding were great grandchildren of the 1st Earl of Denbigh. (Wikipedia is wrong on this point, by the way)

A SECOND JUNIOR LINE:

Colonel Charles Fielding was the son of another Charles Fielding, the 3rd son (therefore the grandson) of the 4th Earl of Denbigh. And he also married Sophia, the niece of the 8th Earl of Winchilsea, but he died of war wounds in 1783. Aunt Fatty, Isabella Fielding, was the spinster sister of that same younger Colonel Charles Fielding! So this means that JA personally knew a 4th cousin (i.e., sharing the 1st Earl of Denbigh as an ancestor) of Henry and Sarah Fielding, and also the widow of a 3rd cousin of Henry Fielding.

So we have one junior line associated with the Goodnestone Bridges family, and a second junior line leading to Henry and Sarah Fielding.

I could not ascertain from the Internet whether Henry or Sarah Fielding, or any of Henry's descendants, ever met any of their cousins, the members of the junior branch of the Feilding family that included Aunt Fatty and her sister in law (JA's Mrs. Fielding). But even if such a meeting never occurred, this heretofore unrecognized family connection is still interesting, for the following reasons.

First and foremost, what the above means is that at the 1806 Godmersham theatricals, three of the participants, Harriot-Mary Bridges (who would shortly marry George Moore), her elder sister, Elizabeth Knight (Edward's wife, who had less than 3 years to live), and of course Fanny Knight, then age 13, were _all_ lineal descendants of Anne Palmer Bridges, who, after the death of her first husband, Brook Bridges II, had, 50+ years earlier, married into that junior line of the Earls of Denbigh, in the person of the aforementioned Col. Charles Fielding, 4th cousin of Henry and Sarah Fielding!

And here's where it gets even more interesting. Even though I appear to be the first Austen scholar to take note in print of this Austen-Fielding connection, I believe this connection _would_ have been well known to JA herself!

Why? Because the Bridges and Knight families would obviously have been well aware, and very proud, of their connection to a junior line of the family of the Earls of Denbigh, and also, for that matter, of their connection by marriage to the family of the Earls of Winchilsea (which included the Miss Finches of whom JA often writes in her letters). And in their pride, they'd have been sure to make JA and CEA aware of those connections, in exactly the same way Sir Walter Elliot tells the world about their connection to Lady Dalrymple.

And JA, as the _literary_ scholar she most definitely was, would have been aware that Henry and Sarah Fielding were also members of a junior line of that same family of the Earls of Denbigh. Google Books shows that several published accounts of Henry Fielding's biographical info were extant prior to 1806, and we know from JA's earliest surviving letters from 1796 of her longterm interest in Henry Fielding's Tom Jones.

So JA would most certainly have connected the "Denbigh dot" to both Aunt Fatty and Mrs. Fielding at Goodnestone, and also to Henry and Sarah Fielding, and that is why I reach the only logical conclusion, which is that JA chose to adapt Sarah's The Governess and Henry's The Virgin Unmasked for that special group of performers and audience, precisely _because_ of that connection!

In light of all the above, it is very interesting to read the following bit of biographical info in Lord Brabourne's 1884 edition of JA's letters remembering that he too was a distant cousin of Henry and Sarah Fielding. We can see Lord Brabourne's class snobbery in full bloom:

"But, in following up the Finches and Hattons, I have left Anne, the third Miss Palmer, too long alone, and must hasten back to her, with many apologies. She was the lady who, as has been already mentioned, married the second Sir Brook Bridges; but, whether the honour of the alliance, or the responsibilities of the office of High Sheriff of the county, or some other cause, brought about the catastrophe, certain it is that Sir Brook left her a widow, as has already been stated, in 1733; and, in 1737, she took to herself a second husband, in the person of Charles Fielding, second son of Basil, fourth Earl of Denbigh, by whom she had two sons and two daughters before her death in 1743. This lady's second son Charles was a commodore in the navy; he married Sophia Finch, sister of George Finch, eighth Earl of Winchilsea, and daughter of William and Lady Charlotte Finch (nee Fermor). Lady Charlotte was governess to the children of King George III., and her daughter, Mrs. Charles Fielding, lived with her at Windsor and St. James', so her children were brought up with the Royal Family. This will explain the various references to members of the Fielding family which will be found in Jane Austen's letters; and, though I feel rather ashamed of having inflicted upon my readers such a dull chapter of genealogy, those who care to do so will be able to identify by its aid many of the people who were her contemporaries, friends, and relations."

What is so juicily ironic is that I bet Brabourne was well aware of Henry Fielding's being from a junior line from the Earls of Denbigh, but that's the last thing he's going to mention--foolish status snob that he obviously was, what he wants to emphasize is the _aristocratic_ connections of his family, not the aesthetic connections, especially Henry Fielding's "vulgar" fictions!

Also, in the Appendix of his 1884 edition of JA's letters, which contained the text of three 1791 letters written to "Mrs. Fielding" by Fanny Fowler, the widow of Brook Bridges III and the Lady Bridges JA knew well, announcing the engagement of her three daughters, respectively, during that fruitful year, Lord Brabourne added the following biographical details:

"Sir Brook died before his daughters were married. ' Fatty' was Isabella, sister of Mrs. C. Fielding's husband, and daughter of ' Anne Palmer,' by her second husband Col. Fielding. She seems to have been a popular person, known all her life as ' Fatty Fielding,' and often at Goodnestone and Godmersham. She was godmother to one of Mr. E. Knight's children (Marianne), and died unmarried in 1812."

Fatty is Fanny Fowler's sister in law, in that Fatty is a half sister of Brook Bridges And Mrs. Fielding must be Sophia Finch Fielding, widow.

And think about Henry Austen's Bio Notice in light of my discovery--I believe he also knew of this connection, just as I believe all the Austen siblings knew:

"She did not rank any work of Fielding quite so high. Without the slightest affectation she recoiled from every thing gross. Neither nature, wit, nor humour, could make her amends for so very low a scale of morals. Her power of inventing characters seems to have been intuitive, and almost unlimited. She drew from nature; but, whatever may have been surmised to the contrary, never from individuals."

Talk about protesting too much, again, shame on Henry Austen for such an unseemly deception! He has to mention Fielding specifically, so as to try to snuff out the very idea that there was an unseemly Austen-Fielding family connection!

I finish with a famous example of Henry Fielding's wit, which happens to pertain to his being from the Denbigh line, and which could very well have been read by JA prior to publication of all of her novels other than S&S:

Literary anecdotes of the eighteenth century, Vol. 3, by John Nichols, Samuel Bentley, 1812: "The following anecdote has been communicated to Dr. Kippis by a friend, who had it from the present Mr. Fielding, our author's son. Henry Fielding being once in company with the Earl of Denbigh [that would have been the 5th Earl], and the conversation turning on Fielding's being of the Denbigh family, the Earl asked the reason why they spelt their names differently; the Earl's family doing it with the E first, (Feilding), and Mr. Henry Fielding with the I 'first, (Fielding.) "I cannot tell, my Lord," answered Harry*, "except it be that my branch o*f the family were the first that knew how to spell."

And how ironic that this spelling error was the very same one that JA chronically made, putting "e" before "i", even when not following "c", was it because she could not spell, or was this a little homage to Fielding's bon mot?

Cheers, ARNIE

P.S.: It has been previously noted by literary scholars that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was Henry Fielding's much younger second cousin, but that family connection is independent of the one I have outlined.

P.P.S.: Another associated factoid: Ironically, Charles Austen (and his wife) served on the Namur in 1813, LONG after Charles Fielding's command as Captain of the Namur ended in 1779, more or less when Charles Austen was born--but again, it was a factoid JA would have been aware of.