Austen’s letters 76, 103 & 104, to Anna Austen — brought back

Anna Austen Lefroy

Dear friends and readers,

Although I wrote about Austen’s 16 letters to Anna last year and individually, I thought I’d write again and provide an over-view since on Austen-l and Janeites we are now up to letters 103 (mid-July, 1814, Chawton to Steventon) and 104 (10-18 August 1814, Chawton to Steventon) in our journey through all Austen’s letters. These are the 2nd and 3rd of 16, the first is letter 76 (29-31, October 1812, a burlesque of novel; see also Isobel Grundy’s essay

Lady MacLairn, The Victim of Villany by Rachel Hunter

There are left to us 16 altogether and letters 103 and 104 show Jane Austen and her mother awaiting Anna’s coming wedding and Jane responding to an novel Anna was in the midst of writing, a novel which seems to be a close imitation of her aunt’s. The real poignancy of the set is they exist and we have them only because Anna herself gave them up to her brother when he was writing his biography. Anna was one of the three children of James who tried to transmit knowledge of the aunt. It is true that Austen’s remarks on her niece’s manuscript cannot be taken as general criticism since they are meant just for Anna’s eyes, but that Austen would necessarily be kind is not so; we’ve seen by this time Austen’s hostility to her niece (growing since Anna began to have courtships) to the point that Anna would not bring her fiance over to Chawton unless both her aunts were not there.

On the 8th of November Anna would marry Ben Lefroy

An image of their marriage license

In the 16 letters we will see much hypocrisy and lack of sympathy, including one where Jane pretends to sympathize with Anna’s purchase of a piano for herself and admire her furniture, after which Austen writes to Fanny saying she expects to find in the future Anna will regret this self-indulgence and mocks the furniture. And In the these remnants Anna has to have seen how her aunt really felt about her; one of them she herself tore up and left only a remnant and yet despite the pain she helped her brother. By contrast, Fanny had about 30 and only 5 have been retrieved — by her son, Brabourne.

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Letter 103

18th century wash linen: this might be included in a trousseau

First a general account: Basically the first half of the remnant of 103 is by Mrs Austen, Jane’s mother, Anna’s grandmother. The grandmother’s letter functions as a sort of an excuse for not having made any or more wedding clothes or trousseau items (in her Notes and Queries it seems that LeFaye assumes when Anna stayed at the cottage in May the grandmother was making her trousseau, but that’s not the way the words read here and I don’t know what her evidence is), and Austen’s is a reiteration that it’s fine if Anna does not come over. I include in my first blog the full text of Caroline’s letter describing the bleak wedding ceremony, its lack of any celebration. It’s striking to see Anna’s continued dependence as she’s nonetheless sent her aunt and grandmother a manuscript piece of her novel.

This is a poignant as well as savagely cut letter (as is the fifth chosen by Todd and Bree, Letter 113). Pp. 1 and 2 are missing. In the text as we have it, Mrs Austen writes first. She asserts she is “well in health” just weak in her eyes. She says when she reads or writes it’s without glasses and since she needed glasses she had not read or written anything. Anna is about to get married and Mrs Austen is begging off making her any clothes. She did not have the spare time to do a full trousseau for the wedding. In the opening lines we see that Anna sends a MS rather than come over; the grandmother will sit and think of the niece because the niece is not coming over and she has not been there for 3 or 4 weeks. The grandmother is glad the niece has not come over sooner, for at this point she can no longer sew anything. I agree it’s not clear how much she has sewn, but there is a apology in the third line with the implication that the grandmother has indeed sewn all that is needed.

The family did not want this wedding. Anna herself was caught between a rock and a hard place. Live with the stepmother and she never gets to go anywhere; who wouldn’t escape to a man who presents himself as a figure of high integrity even it means he is unlikely to take sinecures (after all her father did not want to do it — harassed by his wife into it).

At the close of this fragment Mrs Austen suddenly assures Anna how much she, Mrs Austen, loves Anna; indeed she loves “very few bettter.” What can she talk about? fruit and flowers. Also that she has been thinking about Anna, and worried about the married life to come, Anna’s future, what her life will be like once she marries.

Ann Murray’s Mentoria (1801): google book cover; Jane Austen wrote a poem to Anna years before and placed it in this book as a gift

We then turn to Jane who provides a postscript. Jane says she is glad her niece has not come sooner — she is about to come over. So another part of the letter is about why Anna had not been coming over. Anna knew the relatives were not keen. Perhaps the front part of the letter had Jane’s doubts about the young man — or it could have been the stepmother or problems with James, the father — not a happy man as we’ve seen.

In the context of this Austen’s few remarks about Anna’s fiction are sent. Alas, the novel was destroyed by depressed Anna. Anna’s daughter, Fanny Caroline left a note to explain how her mother had destroyed the manuscript one night in a sudden fit of despair in the 1820s by throwing it in the fire.

What do we see in Austen’s comments shorn of the novel they are about: a fiction must have intense energy flowing through (“the spirit does not droop at all”); characters must be mixed not all good or all bad; verisimilitude again: a high status woman would not be introduced to a mere slip of a girl. The name Cecilia (from Burney and made popular) that Anna had made too good a heroine (too “aimable” is the tactful way of putting this), but Jane says she is still interesting. (Jane Austen had amiable heroines later on and before mid-1814.) She finds Lord Orville stiff and unnatural (unreal); her good hero, Mr Knightley (sans peur et sans reproche) is not even though very good he is natural in presentation, believable. Darcy is not so nice: and her other heroes are flawed.

In my blog I also include a brief life of Anna (her husband died young and left her with too many children and much of her later existence was spent in penury), then go on to describe and discuss Anna’s continuation of Sanditon because even if Anna destroyed this novel we do have this plus her one published romance, Mary Hamilton, a book like Persuasion in mood. Anna also much later on wrote some awful religious-didactic children’s stories.

See Diana Birchall’s paraphrase and reading. I agree the grandmother’s tone is cool and the aunt bland.

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Letter 104

One of Charles Brock’s illustrations to Jane Austen’s novels (for Pride and Prejudice, 1898, supposed Mr Collins and Charlotte, colorized for a calendar)

Like others I recognize the importance of this letter – there are a couple of others to Anna where we see Austen open up her way of thinking consciously about fiction as she wrote as well as read it; and there is one to JEAL, the nephew. Austen did recognize her older brother’s children had gifts. if she does not go in for “wild screams of praise,” that shows respect to Anna; overpraise is a sign of non-serious dismissal.

In the blog I began by reprinting the whole letter. I did that for each of the first three letters to Anna. I’ve taken to doing this for all Austen’s letters (only now I’ve begun to put the text in the “comments” part of the blog) but I wasn’t doing it at the time. Then I made real efforts by reading all the letters about this specific novel to work out something of the novel’s characters and story. Again I’m by no means the first person to try and I read some other critics’ efforts.

I agree with Diana Birchall on the general principles we can call them that the particular remarks exemplify: literal versimilitude very important in Austen’s mind, intense application of time and space to keep to a diurnal imitation of reality; psychological probability, no extravagances of phrase. Admittedly what Austen is instructing her niece on are surface elements; there are some underlying assumptions (about how necessary it is to get a reader to believe in, immerse him or herself in a fiction). Like Jane Austen herself, Anna’s characters wandered around the seacoast of southern England, the spas. Austen treats of these only as problems in verisimilitude. Anna’s female characters must not risk any untoward or too inviting behaviors. They should be above all discreet. Ireland won’t do but some of Anna’s Irish characters will.

I”ll add that it seems to me Austen also reads for suspense and thinks Anna should keep suspense up. She tells which characters she likes (whatever that means) and wants to see more of. She also likes sketches of life so to speak – the sketch of Clanmurray “and your picture of the two poor girls enjoyments is very good.” I surmize there was irony in Anna’s work here:she was exposing how little enjoyment the heroines had; Austen would enjoy wry exposures where much is left implicit.

Then Fanny Caroline, Anna’s daughter’s important note which I’ll simply reprint again:

The story to which most of these letters of Aunt Jane’s refer was never finished. It was laid aside for a season because my mother’s hands were so full she lacked the leisure to continue it. Her eldest child was born in October [1815], and her second in the Sept. following [1816] and in the longer interval that followed before the birth of the third [1818] her Aunt died and with her must have died all inclination to continue her writing. With no Aunt Jane to read, to criticise and to encourage it was no wonder the MS every word of which was so full of her, remained untouched. Her sympathy which had made the real charm of the occupation was gone and the sense of the loss made it painful to write. The story was laid by for years and then one day in a fit of despondency burnt. I remember sitting on the rug and watching its destruction amused with the flames and the sparks which kept breaking out in the blackened paper. In later years when I expressed my sorrow that she had destroyed it she said she could never have borne to finish it, but incomplete as it was Jane Austen’s criticisms would have made it valuable.’ Fanny-Caroline Lefroy, MS Family History (Hampshire Record Office, 23M93 / 85 / 2).

By these ‘later years’, however, Anna had evidently forgotten that she did make an attempt to continue with her story, for in a letter to JEAL, dated 26 October 1818, she says: ‘I am in the middle of a scene between Mrs Forrester & Mrs St. Julian — I hope I shall do it tolerably well, because it requires to be done so-I want to get a good parcel done to read to you at Christmas but you know how little time I have for any thing of that sort-’ HRO 23M93/86/3. Fanny Caroline Lefroy, MS Family HIstory (Hampshire Record Office)

I then went over Mary Hamilton the one extant romance type novel Anna did publish – beyond her continuation of Sanditon (which I reviewed with Letter 103 above). We see how intensely emotional – but not superficially so — was Anna’s romance writing, it’s very like Persuasion in feel. I summarize it.

Then I try to contextualize the letter differently: I bring in remarks about Anna (some unkind) and what is known about their relationship just then – that is clearly an influence here. How Austen seems to want a community of women and yet does not seek to make Anna part of it – the way she did Fanny, e.g., Austen does not care for Anna’s emotional character and genius and either ignores or wants to change it. Austen does worry about Anna’s future with some responsible caring words to her brother, Francis, but these are offset by words which blame Anna without taking into account why Anna makes the choices she does.

I’ll leave anyone who is interested to read the quotations. That Jane Austen was hard (I think unfairly sometimes) on her niece and her husband, Ben (when Ben did not want to do what might lead to a promotion and Anna supported him in this) is suggested by Fanny Caroline’s further note defending her mother against her great-aunt’s strictures:

My father although deeply attached to my mother was far too high-principled and conscientious to take Holy Orders for the sake of being immediately married. Possibly he had not yet quite decided on his profession, at all events he was not ordained until three years afterwards. As to my mother’s reluctance to go to Chawton, sent away as she was to mark my GodMother’s anger with him, it was not possible she should go with any other feelings.’ –Lefroy Notes.

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Another Brock illustration for Pride and Prejudice (Elizabeth teases Darcy, asking him if he admired her for her impertinence?)

After I posted the above on Austen-l and Janeites, Diana wrote:

Ellen, wonderful overview of the Anna letters. Jane Austen certainly had some mixed feelings about her. I’m now thinking that Letter 104 may be disingenuous … she doesn’t want to give Anna any real, deep, serious criticism or advice; just superfluities. And this may be because she doesn’t think that Anna has it to be a fine novelist, like herself. Yet she doesn’t want to discourage her or hurt her feelings, so she gives her some mild praise, “there, dear” pats on the head, and minor unhurtful critical comments just to make the thing smoother, close up some holes and inconsistencies. She’s not truly trying to affect, help, change, improve. Just to patch up the most egregious errors, so it can perhaps come out as a nice ladies’ novel … but she isn’t giving it the deep compliment and respect of treating it seriously, by the standards of her own.

To which I replied:

There’s a strong tendency to try to separate Jane Austen’s writing and fiction off from the writing of the rest of her family, and to insist Austen’s superiority was seen then as people see it today. The epitaph describes her gifts as strong intelligence, rather than having a strong imagination or gift for writing (not mentioning the novels as unmentionable). The family did encourage her to write during the 1790s but we do not know they did while she was in Bath. We do feel they must have known by the end, and there is Henry getting her work published (and spending his own money); there are her brother James’s and nephew’s poems to her about her work; Caroline’s awe in her life of her aunt, and all the effort both James-Edward Austen-Leigh and Anna took to memorialize her and put what had not gotten into print they had control over into print. Francis had kept all Jane’s letters and probably never would have wanted them to be destroyed. But none of this is cause enough to separate her work off. She did not, they did not, no one in her era did (even Scott does not see her as somehow different or much much better than his other women writers).

If it’s true that Austen’s letter shows condescension and dismissal, and I have half-agreed, and if we are seeming to to take a uncharitable view of Austen’s reaction, this uncharitable view is one we find Austen voicing again and again. Partly because she spent so many years unpublished, we have seen her throughout (but especially before published) trash and speak out harshly against most novels & authors she reads — the exceptions being the super-respected males (Johnson, Cowper). Understandably still (this being the one thing she has that gives her respect and yet among most people
she’s an old maid with no dowry, getting on), she will brook no sister near her throne. And it’s not that she’s not eager to recognize some quality near hers; she often genuinely reacts against qualities in novels she doesn’t like and burlesques. I suspect that Anna’s fiction is an imitation of her aunt’s but (from Mary Hamilton) much more romantic. This won’t do entirely since Jane Austen goes into oodles of praise for her nephew in a couple of years (as we’ll see, Letter 146, Mon-Tues, 16-17 December 1816), but then he is a man, and (as I suggested) watch out for people who over-praise. Trollope makes this explicit: cleverer than Southey we might say he advises a friend always overpraise a woman’s work, it’s not something you should take seriously.

So it may be her hostility is to Anna. Anna to me shows such pathos. She is trying to regain back her aunt’s respect and love. She must’ve seen how much Fanny was preferred, how better a time in life Fanny was having. No groups of suitors for Anna. Few visits to London. Good thing she got married
too: we see how her stepmother discouraged her father’s writing and sensibility proclivities (deep resentment there).

OTOH, we have no proof that Austen could write deeper criticism. The criticism we see here is just what we see her write for her own fiction. She is one of those authors unable to articulate consciously what is really valuable in what she writes. Her theory which enables her to delve reality is this literal verisimilitude, hold to it. So it could be this is her calm strong praise to talk about this novel the way she talks about her own.

We may hope it made Anna feel good. We can see that later on she may have seen the other disparaging remarks and certainly Fanny Caroline, the daughter, knew about this.

If anyone were to attempt a new edition (hard because now all sorts of copyrights have been claimed to stop you), there’s an argument for 1) printing the letters in groups, as Austen’s letters to Anna separately as a group, to Fanny, what there is to Frank, etc. 2) reprinting with them (as is done in the Burney correspondence) the Austen family letters that are
left, including (importantly) Eliza Hancock de Feuillide Austen’s and Philly’s letters to her. It would not produce huge amounts of text, but say a three volume set. With unbiased notes, set up alphabetically you might really have a deserve scholarly resource.

Ellen

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Austen’s letter 96, Sat-Sun, 6-7 Nov 1813, Godmersham to Cassandra, in Henrietta St

Fanny (Imogen Poots) and Jane Austen (Olivia Williams) having frisks at Godmersham — drunk and running about garden (Miss Austen Regrets 2008)

Dear friends and readers,

The second of the two letters we’ve discussed this month on Austen-l (see letter 95). Very long, written within 3 days of the first, it represents the actual rhythm of exchange, and is (further typically) filled with people of whom we know nothing and LeFaye is disinclined to give away; there are many tiny vignettes, if incisive still half-formed, so to close read is quite a job. On the first week Diana Birchall took us but 1/3rd the way in.

I’d like to try as an experiment a different way of proceeding than we have been doing lo these weeks, months, and years. I will for a change do a general reading zeroing in on themes — because I feel I am ready to see larger patterns now (having gone through 95 letters just about all by Jane Austen), and get them right as I was not when we began. I will scan the whole letter and place it into the comments for reference. As Diana remained faithful to our proceeding all along, she has the last word.

Gentle reader, if you feel you can, comment on this different way of proceeding and say which you prefer.

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18th century print of Streatham

There’s Jane’s view of herself. It is clear she does not get many compliments and is inclined to think she is not valued, and is sceptical about all such utterances. Towards the end we get a strong statement about how she values Cassandra and the Bigg sisters. She likes being with them better than being at Streatham or Bookham (you can have these fancy houses you see). She says she can’t get used to seeing them in Henry’s carriage. What a view she has of herself. We saw how she couldn’t get over seeing herself in a carriage. She comes back to the weather several times. It’s apparently nice for November. She does this to say to Cassandra that she knows Cassandra is making the most of this in order to enjoy life as best she can. “I was in hopes of your seeing the illuminations and you have seen them.” It’s here an association comes which makes her remember Frank’s use of the past participle or country accent as a boy so fondly. I see an important undercurrent here, which leads me to …

Austen as reader and writer. From the standpoint of books Austen read and admired and her work as a writer: again there is the liking for Crabbe; she’s pleased that the conservative (anti-Jacobin is the phrase used) Elizabeth Hamilton admires her work sufficiently; she does not care if the people at Cheltenham really don’t like her books if they are willing to buy them (“a disagreeable duty”), still “so as they do it” makes her happy. She is working on the 2nd edition of S&S — those long mornings we’ve observed mentioned in other letters must be when it’s done. There is a reference to Madame de Sevigne which suggests that Austen had read her letters. She likens Mrs Hamilton’s relationship with her daughter to madame Sevigne’s with hers.

Cheltenham, the 18th century spa era … again highly idealized

Her brothers: She wants to visit Henry and he has been ill (she says we rejoice sincerely in his gaining ground), and she is aware that the illness is his anxiety and his state of mind for the past year or so (so since Eliza’s death), but it’s clear she is not certain he wants her around. She may see that she’s an uncomfortable person in some ways to have around (she does not like social life, is part of it only it “bits and starts” either because she’s snubbed as older, single, poorer), but she would like to go to be there. I don’t think this is ironic as she repeats the idea more than once. Note she has these plans 3 letters ago to go to Henry quickly but not stay long and has yet to leave.

She also is remembering language as a child that Frank used, with a kind of cherishing — again that strong love for him, which we’ve had some evidence comes from their childhood. The remarks people make about Frank as a boy all come from her passing phrases. He apparently would use the past tense participle when he should not and she imitates this several times even to ‘draved.” It may be she is also imitating his country accent. Poor Mary in the last part of the letter is a reference to Mary Gibson Austen. She was pregnant again. Frank is stuck in the Baltic. Jane thinks of this, and feels for Mary vicariously.

Bath, the River Avon

Edward and she have become quite companionable since Elizabeth’s death: it’s worth remarking that the sharp asides about his miserliness, possessiveness over land, egoism have stopped. She notes that he hates to be around sick people in a previous letter with respect to Lady Bridges. I remind everyone in a previous letter Lady Bridges and her doctor (Parry) and coming to Bath were mentioned and Jane said Edward won’t go to Bath now rather than be around sick people — even if Louisa is going (Edward has had a letter from her we are told at the close). The Lady B seen here is the same sick lady of the previous letter that Edward wanted to avoid, e.g., “Dr Parry does not want to keep Lady B at Bath when she can once move.”

Edward (played very well by Pip Torrens, MAR 2008)

But no sharp comments about Edward over this — earlier much earlier she made fun of his going to Bath for his health and again there is no mockery of this type of him any more. Perhaps the absence of Elizabeth made her like him better. There’s only “you may guess how Edward feels.” He wants to avoid this sick lady and will bring back Fanny Cage (who we must assume didn’t like being around the sick either.) Again I see in John and Fanny Dashwood aspects of this brother and (now dead, mercifully I expect Jane would admit to herself) sister-in-law. Lady B has money and status; as Diana remarks when Lady B wants to leave, she ups and does — unlike Jane who must wait on everyone else. (Anne Elliot’s powerless has its source here.) And Jane admires the decisiveness. I rather suspect she really was so frustrated in the time she had to waste with dullards; the irritation is not so strong as it once was.

Jane and Fanny look through window at men playing cards (MAR 2008)

Jane’s niece Fanny whom we have to accept was her favorite by this time is not too keen on the aunt just now. She favors the younger people around her and Mr Wildman. Jane enjoys running about with them outside the house, sitting in a row for fun — this is used in Miss Austen Regrets (2009) we see Olivia Williams just with Fanny drinking a lot and running about (to be scolded by Edward Bridges in the person of Hugh Bonneville). She does find companionship with Mrs Lefroy’s sister, Mrs Harrison, but note the repeated self-consciousness. She cannot resist praising people who are not eager over the concert (Lady B). She kids about Miss Lee who likes Crabbe and talks up a ball too much — perhaps the woman was pompous.

Yes Jane does not like over refined and elegant people – or laughs at them, or tries to. They irritate her probably because of her own lower status and it must have grated knowing herself to be so much more gifted and yet so undervalued for this.

Notice how she is often paired with Miss Clewes. This is the common way at Godmersham, Aunt Jane and the governess.

On people important to Austen, people who are not relatives: The Hattons (some of whom she has a relationship with) come and go and so do the Bridges. There is another mention of Edward Bridges with an enigmatic statement about why he keeps coming “for more reasons than one.” Apparently Austen did not like him by this time at all. We’ve seen this growing since the beginning of a previous visit to Godmersham. I agree with Diana that Austen at Chilham must’ve met Mr Breton (spelt here Britton), an intelligent man would make it a decent party (“the pleasantest party ever known there”) but note she does not say so. It’s curious how she represses this kind of thing — Cassandra would not like it?

Tomalin remarks how loathe Austen was to mention First Impressions in her letters. This is the same reluctance. Harman sees this as the result of her literary work not being valued by her society or her family enough — or her fear they would think she was getting too full of herself.

The Sherers are really gone — remember last week’s letter (this is the problem with taking such time over these) how she lamented they were really going. She likes Mrs Sherer especially. Perhaps this woman and Mrs Harrison valued her for real somehow the others did not — parts of her personality no one else responded to.

I think by this time she has become cool with Martha altogether. At Worthing might have been a high point for them, but life has intervened. Martha persisted in wanting to marry; is a poor dependent who must sell herself as a companion. They are apart too much and she expected too much of Martha. She expected less of Miss Sharpe and consequently the friendship stays easier — we lack many letters they apparently exchanged.

As will be seen I did this letter differently. I’ve deliberately picked out what is important here.

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A costume used in the 1995 S&S film

Now for the minutiae which make up style and tone. In her first posting on this letter, Diana admired the sweep, concision of “very snug, in my own room, lovely morning, excellent fire, fancy me” — it shows a confidence with language found and way with words like Dickens’s in Pickwick Papers, the famous passage ending “sagacious dog, very.” Austen does the same thing with Mrs Elton only then the style is to send Mrs Elton up. I agree there is a feel of bitterness in her references to the Fowles’s buying her book reluctantly.

Authorship is not paling, but she has not the same first elan and ecstasy after 30 years waiting. It’s only human when you have felt your 2nd edition staring you in the face. The truth was she was not independent, far from it, not making anywhere near enough money to effect a life change.

She is though in the same letter genuinely pleased to be older, to be out of the “rat race” of procuring partners, and looking attractive to young men: “as I must leave off being young I find many Douceurs in being a sort of Chaperon. I am put on the sofa near the Fire & can drink as much wine as I like.” she does not want to be old but as time has enforced age upon her, she finds real compensations.

She finds some of her guests dull, but some she takes real pleasure in and there’s are these strong utterances:

“We had a beautiful night for our frisks.” Like lively horses.

“Dog-tired” the next day. (Why are dogs proverbally tired?)

“The shades of evening are descending, & I resume my narrative” is an interjection between a list of people’s names who might be a “a good ball next week, as far as females go.” Maybe the local area didn’t support assemblies, book circulating libraries.

Jane Austen no longer goes to balls to find male partners. Company, good female company is what she wants — and we see this in this letter from her enjoyment of Mrs Harrison, to her gratitude to Mary Plumptre whom Jane would hardly have known but “was delighted with me, good Enthusiastic Soul!” By contrast, men are “useful” (Mr Gibbs), provide carriages (Henry) or they are “unsteady” (Mr Paget). A rare sort of proto-feminist quip Diana overlooks: “what is wrong is to be imputed to the Lady — I dare say the House likes Female Government.”

Rex Whistler (1905-1944) painting bought by Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tritton at Godmersham is now in the possession of Mrs. Sam Hood (daughter of Mrs. Tritton)

Diana picks up on the quip about Sophia as “comer” (more comments on women) and how Jane disses the Hattons — she is always dissing them, if not the women, then George. This is not the first came and sat and went about them. They were above her socially, lived in far greater luxury, with a bigger library … but now I’m looking for phrases, style, tone that matter I am struck by this:

“Dear Henry! what a turn he has for being ill! & what a thing Bile is!” This attack has probably been brought on in part by his previous confinement & anxiety.”

She hopes it is going fast and then resorts to that time-keeping one sees in her novels: she will look for a good account from Cassandra on Tuesday, but since letters come on Wednesday she can’t hope for the letter written on Tuesday to arrive before Friday. I don’t know why a letter to Wrotham would make Henry feel better. Jane is concerned. When I read this passage and think of the undercurrents about him and his living over his business since Eliza’s death, I am not surprised at his later retreat to a plain woman and quiet curacy. He’d had enough.

Cassandra (Gretta Scacchi) at Chawton (MAR, 2008)

By contrast, Cassandra’s letter is “excellent sweetness … to send me such a nice long letter — it made its appearance, with one from my Mother, son after I & my impatient feelings walked in.’

Her impatient feelings have feet too. Diana ended on something not explained, well after she mentions her mother’s letter she writes; “How glad I am that I did what I did! I was only afraid that you might think the offer superfluous, but you have set my heart at ease.” This brings her back to Henry and her determination to stay with him whether he will or not, “let it be ever so disagreeable to him.” But she has not time or “paper for half I want to say.”

We cannot know what Jane did that she was so glad about and she thought Cassandra might find superfluous except it be her offer to visit Henry. In context it feels to me to be more about her mother. I take the above to be some of the more important tones and sharp memorable turns of phrase and minutiae in this letter.

For Austen’s text and Diana’s close reading see continuation in the comments.

Ellen

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For Jane Austen’s birthday

John Everett Millais (1829-96), Walking and Talking

Dear friends and readers,

How can we remember her best this anniversary? Last year I put a poem she wrote for her birthday in 1808: it’s the only year that we have a record showing that her remembering her birthday: on December 16th, 1804 her good friend, Anna Lefroy died from a fall from a horse, and four years later, Jane wrote an elegy on the occasion of her friend’s death: “The day returns again, my natal day;/What mix’d emotions with the Thought arise!”

It’s a deeply emotional poem, a kind she wrote a few times. For example, this one to Anna Austen Lefroy, with lines like “Let not thy heart be blighted by the feeling/That presses on thy soul, of utter loneliness.” Or on her migraine headache just around the time of the publication of Sense and Sensibility: “When stretch’d out on one’s bed/With a fierce throbbing head” or the seething passion of the poem she wrote a day before she died, asserting immortality: “When once we are buried you think we are gone/But behold me immortal!”

She does not call the day her birthday but her “natal day” and a search through all her searchable texts on line (the six famous novels) showed that she never used either word in her novels, nor do I remember any reference to a birthday of a character or a birthday in her letters as a day to celebrate. In her novels she does tell us enough to work out birth years for some of her characters and for a smaller group enough to make a guess as to which part of the year or near which month, but the lacuna suggests that usually she did not think such chance happenings (it’s a chance what day one is born, to some extent a chance what day one marries) important. The coincidence of her friend’s death occurring the day she was born prompts her one birthday poem.

So, I thought a poem which puts before us felicitiously what she thought important, an attitude that shaped her writing and maybe her decisions in life would be most fitting. What is it Jane Bennet says to Elizabeth upon being told Elizabeth means to marry Mr Darcy: “Oh Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection” (P&P III:17). Emma Watson cries out to Elizabeth her sister in their first conversation: “I would rather be a teacher at a school (and I can think of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like” (The Watsons 1st section). Or Austen explaining to a niece why she had encouraged her to think of marrying someone: “tho’ I did not think you then so much in love as you thought yourself, I did consider you as being attached in a degree — quite sufficiently for happiness; and then upon the girl showing her feelings were much “cooler” than even Austen supposed and perhaps preferred someone else: “nothing can be compared to the misery of being bound to one without love, bound to one & preferring another” (JA’s Letters 109 & 114, 18-20 Nov & 30 Nov 1814).

A genuine congenial, a tenderly affectionate companionate relationship (as we might say) which includes respect, trust and constancy that is what her heroines seek, and the poem from the 18th century I know which best expresses this ideal (and in anniversary form) is Samuel Bishop’s “To his wife, on the sixteenth anniversary of her Wedding day with a Ring”

THEE, Mary, with this ring I wed,’
So sixteen years ago I said –
Behold another ring! ‘for what?’
To wed thee o’er again? — Why not?
With that first ring I married youth,
Grace, beauty, innocence, and truth;
Taste long admir’d, sense long rever’d,
And all my Molly then appear’d.
If she, by merit since disclosed,
Prove twice the woman I supposed,
I plead that double merit now,
To justify a double vow.

Here then to-day, (with faith as sure,
With ardour as intense, as pure,
As when, amidst the rites divine,
I took thy troth, and plighted mine)
To thee, sweet girl, my second ring
A token and a pledge I bring;
With this I wed, till death us part,
Thy riper virtues to my heart;
Those virtues which, before untried,
The wife has added to the bride:
Those virtues, whose progressive claim,
Endearing wedlock’s very name,
My soul enjoys, my song approves,
For conscience’ sake, as well as love’s.
And why?–They shew me every hour
Honour’s high thought, affection’s power,
Discretion’s deed, sound judgment’s sentence, –
And teach me all things — but repentance.

Samuel Bishop (1731–95), headmaster and poet, married Mary Palmer (a relative) in 1763, so this poem was written in 1779, four years after Austen was born. They had at least one daughter to whom Bishop also wrote loving poems. Mary survived him and married his biographer, Rev Thomas Clare who also published the majority of Bishop’s poems (1796). Bishop wrote prolifically but had published only a few poems before he died.

Reader I give you Jane Austen, 237 years after she was born, a toast to her … What she would have said of this cult I hesitate to imagine …

John Singer Sergeant (1856-1925), Two Wineglasses (1925)

Ellen

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Austen’s Letters 85 & 86: Mon, 24 May ’13, Sloane St, to Cassandra, Chawton, Sat-Tues, 3-5 July ’13, Chawton, to Frank, HMS Elephant, Baltic

If I am a wild beast, I cannot help it, with Henry, Mon, 24 May ’13

There is another female sufferer on the occasion to be pitied … I hope you continue beautiful & brush your hair, but not all off, to Frank, Tues 6 July ’13

Huet-Villiers portrait of Mrs Quentin (as later engraved by Wm Blake, the original that Austen saw is lost)

Samantha Harker as Jane Bennet (1995 BBC P&P): probably closest in physical type of Janes thus far, in typical overt expression — and green ribbon

Dear friends and readers,

Two weeks have passed since I last wrote about Austen’s letters (see letters 81-84). Jane is still in London with Henry, both looking forward to going back to Chawton; once at Chawton, she writes at length to Frank in the Baltic, a rare letter to him to have survived.

The first, to Cassandra and mostly about Jane’s continuing distraction of and her relationship with Henry in London as he prepares to move and adjusts himself to Eliza’s death and his widower’s life, has been quoted repeated and made the centerpiece of interpretations of Austen or her characters because of two visits to two exhibitions, where Austen looks for and says she finds one image of one of her heroines from P&P; Austen’s reluctance to go to a party and socialize with people aware she has written S&S and P&P; and Austen’s self-conscious “parading about London in [Henry's, more probably Eliza's] Barouche.”

The second, to Frank, our first to him to have survived for a while (all we have left thus far are her two to him upon their father’s death, and her two poems celebrating a new marriage and new home. He is captaining a ship in the Baltic sea and she writes as companionable, reassuring, and locally descriptive letter as she can. Here attention has been paid to Jane Austen’s gathering precisely the right information for her MP, a paragraph asserting Henry seems no longer grieving at all, and a PS paragraph of her avidly keeping track of what money she has made thus far.

Taken together, the two have much to show about three of Jane Austen’s brothers: Henry, Edward (who figures in letter 86), and Frank. Austen’s life at Chawton is emerging. Yet again she identifies with a marginalized nearly homeless woman, Elizabeth Leigh-Thomas.

Ciaran Hinds as Captain Wentworth: he has a beautiful amount of hair (1995 BBC Persuasion)

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No 85, to Cassandra, Mon 24 May ’13, From Sloane Street to Chawton.

J. J. Feilds as Henry Tilney (2007 BBC Northanger Abbey)

Four days ago Jane had taken her several trips with Henry around the near-by countryside. Jane continues this mostly cheerful upbeat manner, all activity she (“I then walked into No 10 [Henrietta St], which is all dirt and confusions”) She has Cassandra in mind and her content says she is “very much obliged” to Cassandra for wrting to her because Cassandra must have “hated” this sitting down and writing. She had had a worrying morning. What this is we are never told but it’s in Jane’s mind:

I am very much obliged to you for writing to me. You must have hated it after a worrying morning.-Your Letter came just in time to save my going to Remnants, & fit me for Christian’s, where I bought Fanny’s dimity. I went the day before (Friday) to Laytons’ as I proposed, & got my Mother’s gown, 7 at 6/6. I then walked into No. 10,’ which is all dirt & confusion, but in a very promising way, & after being present at the opening of a new account to my great amusement

Cassandra’s letter did spare her some shopping. She is glad to have shopped less, not more. Now she didn’t have to go to Remnants. The day before Cassandra’s letter arrived she had gone already, to Layton’s as she had proposed. As in the last letter it is a question of buying mourning, this time for the mother.

I take her amusement at the opening paragraph to be her sense that this is absurd because she has herself so little money, has spent a life of tight budgets (for her to be opening a new account!). This connect forward to the close of the letter where in a much quoted phrase she feel a curious triumph (somehow inculcated by the very physical experience of high up in an open carriage (Fanny Dashwood and Mrs Elton understandable in their exultations)– only Jane is actually saying that this is not her, this temporary elevation is not something she “has a right” to. A curious phrase. Most people in rich cars go about in them because they have money, money they often did not make. The idea here is her lack of self-importance and this does connect back to her unwilling to be made a possible show of.

I had great amusement among the Pictures; & the Driving about, the Carriage been open, [sic] was very pleasant. — I liked my solitary elegance very much, & was ready to laugh all the time, at my being where I was. — I could not but feel that I had naturally small right to be parading about London in a Barouche. –

Then the famous passage: Jane picked Henry up from his office, and they went to an Exhibition of apparently 3rd rate pictures. The weather was bad. The collection not thought by others to be good and Austen says simply it was poor. For most people today Huet-Villier’s portrait is not exactly attractive (it was first identified by Martha Rainbolt, English Language Notes, Dec 1988, 35-42). A complacent heavy face, surprisingly not blonde, but big. Big women, large, fecund, obviously eating were admired; it was a class inflection but the type is still seen and admired (Maggie Smith, Emma Thompson, Patricia Dodge, Samantha Harker)

Henry & I went to the Exhibition in Spring Gardens. It is not thought a good collection, but I was very well pleased-particularly (pray tell Fanny) with a small portrait of M” Bingley;” excessively like her. I went in hopes of seeing one of her Sister, but there was no M” Darcy; — perhaps however, I may find her in the Great Exhibition’ which we shall go to, if we have time; — I have no chance of her in the collection of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Paintings which is now shewing in Pall Mall, & which we are also to visit. — Mrs Bingley’s is exactly herself, size, shaped face, features & sweetness; there never was a greater likeness. She is dressed in a white gown, with green ornaments, which convinces me of what I had always supposed, that green was a favourite colour with her. I dare say M” D. will be in Yellow. — Friday was our worst day as to weather, we were out in a very long & very heavy storm of hail, & there had been others before, but I heard no Thunder.

Sabrina Franklyn, the sweetest of the Janes (1979 P&P)

Rosamund Pike as Jane Bennet (Wright’s 2005 P&P), the sexiest and most knowing

I do not know why there the “no chance” of seeing Mrs Bingley in Joshua Reynolds studio: he painted many an upper class flattered icon of luxury and wealth and fecund femininity Looking at Jane’s words they are very general, no specific trait, only that the painting shows a woman in white (upper class women liked to wear white it showed their wealth and servants — Mrs Norris is resents that Fanny is in white) with green ornaments. Green a pastoral color? spring like. Perhaps that prompts yellow? I don’t know. Were brunettes through to look good in yellow — Elizabeth is said to be much smaller and traditionally taken to be darker (not dark, just darker more brown in her hair).

Note that the tone of the section make the next day just as important as well as a locket where four important words are Snipped away!

Saturday was a good deal better, dry & cold. — I gave 2/6 for the Dimity; I do not boast of any Bargains, but think both the Sarsenet & Dimity good of their sort. — I have bought your Locket, but was obliged to give 18 for it — which must be rather more than you intended; it is neat & plain, set in gold. [Four or five words cut outJ; -- We were to have gone to the Somerset house Exhibition on Saturday, but when I reached Henrietta Street Mr Hampson was wanted there, & Mrs Tilson & I were obliged to drive about Town after him, & by the time we had done, it was too late for anything but Home. -- We never found him after all.

Hampson is this tiresome Walker connection. Eliza may appreciate her Walker connections but in Jane's previous letter, no sense of this. Only that Hampson is wanted for some business reasons - a relative, and in this period bankers went where they could. She drove about with Mr Tilson seeking this guy for business reasons.

And they never found him after all.

Note Henry didn't go. He's being spared. He's enough to do, moving.

And now Jane is interrupted because Mrs Tilson comes over all excited about this party she and Mr Tilson have got up. Jane Auasten is ironic here: Jane is laughing at the Mrs Tilson's disappointment and shows us just what she thinks of this kind of ambtious social life. Just think of it, Jane's cousin Carole is now Mrs Tilson's sole dependence to go to Lady Drummonds. How low can Mrs Tilson go? So everyone should read the whole thing:

-- I have been interrupted by Mrs Tilson. -- Poor Woman! She is in danger of not being able to attend Lady Drummond Smith's Party tonight. Miss Burdett was to have taken her, & now Miss Burdett has a cough & will not go. -- My cousin Caroline is her sole dependance. -- The events of Yesterday were, our going to Belgrave Chapel in the morns, our being prevented by me rain from going to evens Service at S' James, Mr Hampson's calling, Mr Barlow & Phillips dining here; & Mt & Mrs Tilson's coming in the evenimg a l'ordinaire. -- She drank tea with us both Thursday & Saturday, he dined out each day, & on friday we were with them; & they wishus to go to them tomorrow evens to meet Miss Burdett; but I do not mow how it will end. Henry talks of a drive to Hampstead," which may :aterfere with it.-I should like to see Miss Burdett very well, but that I am rather frightened by hearing that she wishes to be introduced to me. -- I am a wild Beast/ I cannot help it. It is not my own fault. -- There is ao change in our plan of leaving London, but we shall not be with you before Tuesday. Henry thinks Monday would appear too early a day. There is no danger of our being induced to stay longer.

The big event is in a list of diary like (minutiae) events. What did they do on Sunday? well they went to Belgave Chapel, but it rains so no evens service. Finally Henry and Mr Tilson got to see Mr Hampson Whew. Now Mrs T came to tea on Thurs & Sat while Mr T dined out each day and then on Friday Jane and Henry were with them both.

They are enacting duties, business duties and it's wearing. It's expected they go with the Tilsons and she does not know how the latest suggestion will end. I note the meeting which is usually presented as set up by Henry is not set up by the Tilsons and he is clearly as reluctant to go as his sister. In the previous letter of their trip Henry says only that he "found it too warm and talked of its' being clsoe sometimes," it is Jane who enjoyed herself very much. It was his plan to go to the Exhibition the next day; he is setting up activities. Also leaving the home he and Eliza had set up as soon as possible. Without Eliza he sees no need to keep up a social residence on its own so will live above the quarters of his store (so to speak). Or maybe he wants to get away.

This social event was not set up by Henry but the Tilsons: "they wish us to go tomorrow evening to meet Miss Burdett. " Tilson was a business partner of Henry; perhaps he's networking; the Tilsons are also said to have been evangelical (but that has no play here). The person that the Tilsons suggest that one person longs to meet Jane: Miss Burdett. Not a literary lady. LeFaye tells us the woman was a member of a rich and radical family and later did not like MP as much as P&P. Does anyone at all know why Jane should find her formidable? In the letter she is characterized as someone who was to have taken Mrs Tilson to Lady Drummonds but now she is coughing and will not go. Alas, Mrs Tilson will now not be able to go. Oh dear oh dear. It's clearly insinuated that Miss Burdett she knows that Austen is an author, the novelist, and is intensely curious about this "lion" (from P&P) of the season? There is nothing in the letter to say that Henry told. Further henry's plan to drive to Hampstead would interfere with this social setting. He'd prefer Hampstead and perhaps Eliza's grave or simply another pretty trip together -- if it doesn't rain so hard and is not so warm.

Henry's next sentiment is that he feels "Monday would appear too early a day" for them to leave London. Not that he thinks it is. Says Jane of this: "there is no danger of our being induced to stay longer."

Why does Austen liken herself to a wild beast and say she can't help being one. All sorts of suggestions to have been made. Diana: "she feels she is being exhibited like an animal in a menagerie, and "it is not my own fault" means that Henry has spread the secret so that she is becoming a celebrity rather against her will."

Only there is nothing here about Henry doing this. It's the Tilsons. For my part I also feel she felt she didn't have the performance manners; she wouldn't have hacked the kinds of behaviors demanded in such a show-offy "ton-ish" setting. She is not of the ton. Fanny Burney didn't like the "ton" either. She's not polished is Jane's meaning and she's glad she's not polished. What Jane does not want is a loss of face in the immediate sense. She does not want to go down in prestige by having been treated without the usual respect accorded a gentlewoman. Someone ogling her would take away what is a class respect. It's a loss of deference to her she is intent on preventing.

Then how Henry would like to go back on Monday but it would appear to early so they must wait for the next day, but not to worry Cassandra: "there is no danger of our being induced to stay longer." Henry wants to return to Hampshire with Jane as soon as possible.

Austen turns to their travel arrangements, and Henry's moving. It's just a thicket of social nuances which are being assumed and she's trying to manipulate to her and Cassandra's credit. This intense consideration for each move in life is something I am glad I do not live by. These nuances are interspersed with again this attention to saving the smallest expense. This is what I take the references to Mrs Hill (a tradeswoman?), and the Hoblyns to party be about. Money and games of social prestige. (I'm glad I don't live this way, to avoid it you must avoid social life).

-- I have taken your gentle hint & written to Mrs Hill.- The Hoblyns want us to dine with them, but we have refused. When Henry returns he will be dining out a great deal I dare say; as he will then be alone, it will be more desirable; -- he will be more welcome at every Table, & every Invitation more welcome to him. He will not want either of us again till he is settled in Henrietta St. This is my present persuasion. -- And he will not be settled there, really settled, till late in the Autumn-"he will not be come to bide", till after September. -- There is a Gentleman in treaty for this house. Gentleman himself is in the Country, but Gentleman's friend came to see it the other day & seemed pleased on the whole. -- Gentleman would rather prefer an increased rent to parting with five hundred G at once; & if that is the only difficulty, it will not be minded: Henry is indifferent as to the which.

Perhaps Henry would prefer not to have his sisters there (as a drag? these two old maids dressed much older than they are? and his sisters): he will be more welcome without them and he will welcome the invitations more. He will not want them any more until he's settled in Henrietta Street. In part she's being realistic. My sense of the passage is that Jane also assumes that once she is gone Henry will dine out and then it's time enough for him to accept an invitation from the Hoblyns. Right now he does want to dine in and with Jane. So it's quite not that self-mortifying or saying she's nothing.

The use of Frank's phrase as a child is telling. Jane extends its original meaning now to mean the person is comfortable. This shows how she can read a subtext from a child - and Frank's again, in a loving poem to and about him. Actually the words as given us are hers, not his. The implication in the poem might be something she attributes to the child Frank. I suspect that's so. Henry will not be comfortable until autumn. Only then will he want his sisters back. He wants Jane there now as a distraction and company.

So he is in an emotional state, one which reaches down to his depths. And yet the one thing averred of him by Jane in this section is "he's indifferent"which money arrangement the new tenant goes for. It's a matter for the tenant of paying the money all at once upfront or bit by bit as increased rent. Either way says Henry. It seems to me he just wants to get out -- away from memories. But that's not what Jane says. I feel she is deliberately turning away from the man and not entering into his case -- instinctively, intuitively at a distance from what is happening in front of her.

Why should Henry move to Henrietta Street? because he too wants to save every expense and after all he is not into making a show that much. I do take it he and Eliza lived the way they did -- in upscale apartments -- because it was necessary to her self-image and to the kind of entertaining she wanted to do. She had the money from Hastings, her father now. We do see all the Austen children do not care that much about show when it comes down to it, which is at odds with this intense consideration for jockeying for position in social life.

-- Get us the best weather you can for Wednesday, Thursday & Friday We are to go to Windsor in our way to Henley, which will be a great delight. We shall be leaving Sloane St about 12 --, two or three hours after Charles's party have begun their Journey. -- You will miss them, but the comfort of getting back into your own room will be great!-& then, the Tea & Sugar!-

She begins with a yet renewed-again longing for great weather to enjoy another journey. Austen loves to wander about in landscape -- it's something you find marginalized women who are given no direct daily responsibility can feel. It's natural. She satisfies a certain safe lust for seeing new things and people and in the passage her love for landscapes. She gets what she can out of life.

Mismarried to Mr Collins in the 2009 Lost In Austen, Morven Christie as Jane Bennet tells Mrs Bingley: "we must not reproach ourselves for unlived lives."

It seems that Charles is with Cassandra. Note Jane's attention to time: she and Henry will leave 2 or 3 hours after Charles and his family leaves, Cassandra will miss them but she's given up her own room for them and now she will have privacy. There's a suggestion here too that while Charles and his family were there Cassandra controlled the amount of tea and sugar meted out. This is another instance where Charles and his family hover just out of sight but Jane does not pay much attention to them in the letters we have. (My gut feeling is she was not keen on her sisters-in-law except for Eliza and now she's replaced her -- I'm being a bit brutal here but then so is Jane Austen.)

Back to Godmersham and Chawton:

I fear Miss Clewes is not better, or you vt1 have mentioned it. -- I shall not write again unless I have any unexpected communication or opportunity to tempt me. -- I enclose Mr Heringtons Bill & receipt.

Miss Clewes is another of these unfortunate governesses: "I fear Miss Clewes is not better, or you would have mentioned it." Notice how Austen repeatedly enters into the cases of other single women, especially marginalized ones and especially more governesses at Godmersham. What a misery life must have been for a such a woman there is what comes out to me. Low in status, so many children, expected to keep them in order and yet not given real authority, they disliking her for it instead of the parent who decrees it. As Jane says in The Watsons better anything than this except marrying without love -- which is the other alternative.

The second paragraph is again intensity over bits of money. Mr Herington was the man she talked to about the currants in their garden. She does like to write but will not have another opportunity

I am very much obliged to Fanny for her Letter; -- it made me laugh heartily; but I cannot pretend to answer it. Even had I more time, I should not feel at all sure" of the sort of Letter that Miss D. would write.

The letter to her from Fanny which is destroyed. We cannot know what was in it -- it may have been an awful wooden thing. Austen herself does not write letters for her characters in the present texts most of the time except to comically expose them. It shows when Austen has not personated a character that way she is not brought them alive as yet in the way of others. That's interesting because the story told of Georgiana is the lurid elopement plot. People filming the book have trouble with the character of Georgiana and make her over-sweet because she is not fully realized in the book. Austen knows this. She's not bothered. She has these caricatures and less than 3 dimensional presences. Writers of novels often do.

Miss Benn -- I had almost said Miss Bates -- not forgotten:

I hope Miss Benn is got quite well again & will have a comfortable Dinner with you today --

And finally back to these London pleasures which Austen does triumph in, carriage, pictures. His sending 3 dozen of claret and wanting Edward to know is showing off to the rich adopted brother. Austen though undermines that. It's cheap stuff. Maybe he's showing off that he does not care as much as Edward too.

We pay attention to the wisps on Elizabeth and Darcy but notice now that there is a word omitted. Some word that Cassandra felt she just has to censor. Was it a reference to sexuality? Austen seems to be complicit with male possessiveness and jealousy here and even exult in it for her heroine. I'm interested though in Austen saying apart from that she enjoyed looking at the pictures. In the previous passage she recognized the poorness of what she was seeing; here she recognizes there is really something worth seeing. Her jokes about her heroines being there or not are jokes. She intersperses herself into these prestigious shows this way but does not forget reality. I like that she has a taste that's alive to silly drek (upper class overweight women flattered by these portraits) and to something better.

We have been both to the Exhibition & Sir J. Reynolds, -- and I am disappointed, for there was nothing like Mrs D. at either. -- I can only imagine that Mr D. prizes any Picture of her too much to like it should be exposed to the public eye. -- I can imagine he have that sort [of omitted] feeling — that mixture of Love, Pride & Delicacy — Setting aside this disappointment I had great amusement among the Pictures; & the Driving about: the Carriage been open, [sic] was very pleasant. — I liked my solitary elegance very much, & was ready to laugh all the time, at my bewhere I was. — I could not but feel that I had naturally small right to be parading about London in a Barouche. — Henry desires Edward may know that he has just bought 3 dozen of Claret for him (Cheap) ordered it to be sent down to Chawton. — I should not wonder if we got no farther than Reading on Thursday even — & so, reach Steventon only to a reasonable Dinner hour the next day;-but whatever I may write or you may imagine, we [continued below address panel] know it will be something different. — I shall be quiet tomorrow morns; all my business is done, & I shall only call again upon Mrs Hoblyn &c.-Love to your much [redu]ced] Party.-Yrs affectinately,

Joe Wright’s 2005 Miramax P&P creates a Keira Knightley as an Elizabeth is who glad to make herself all Mr. Darcy’s (Matthew MacFayden)

Then her half-uncomfortable triumph in a carriage which she feels she has no right to. Reading was a central stop (a good book on The road to Reading by Diane Philips — quick recommendation here).

Finally the last line or so. I like the tone her. I don’t often really like the tone of these letters – the tone of mind is shaped by Cassandra’s presence. But here we have: ‘”I shall be quiet tomorrow morning; all my business done, & I shall only call again upon Mrs Hoblyns &c

That last phrase does detract. After all not such a quiet morning. She has to do this socializing, but she will have a little time to herself. She wrote her novels in the long mornings when she had them.

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No. 86, to Frank, Sat-Tues 3-6 July 1813, Chawton to HMS Elephant, Baltic

A map of Rugen

What a change from the letters to Cassandra — anyway for the most part. The basso continuo of this letter is an open and (as Diana Birchall says whose words are in quotation marks) “most heartfelt way that displays strong feeling” throughout. It’s been 4 months now since Eliza’s death, a full summer, and the immediate sense of continuing vital loss of the first weeks has diminished considerably.

It is indeed “a handsome letter” and shows that Austen did indeed follow politics, could effortlessly recite off names and events. Were we to have the 3 packets, it might well be that the letters to Cassandra would seem the strained, strange ones. Jane talks of what’s happening in the world today, shows real knowledge of it. Why should she not? The way she brings together three different people and then moves on to Elizabeth shows her to have been read in history and travel books. She never speaks of this to Cassandra for it’s of no interest to her and Cassandra early on let Jane know Jane should write to Cassandra what Cassandra wanted to hear — and didn’t mind making these ultra feminine letters of shopping, catty gossip, but also these indirect vibes, guarded barbed statements, and sudden (frank enough — something she does not write to Frank) of her shared outlook with Cassandra on endlessly pregnant women.

Indeed there is no need for close reading in this letter — at least most of it — except in the sense of information so that we may understand it. You need to know all the details of the Austen-Leigh inheritance and know the reality of what Aunt Jane Leigh-Perrot was like to realize “vile compromise” is our Jane mimicking, repeating the typical words of her aunt, resentful that she didn’t get that property but had to be content with a mere 24,000£ and annuity of 2000£ She wanted that property too.

You have to know from elsewhere (letters are life-writing not self-contained novels) about this time Edward took his family to from Godmersham and lived near the Austen sisters for 5-6 months. This you get if you read Margaret Wilson’s book on Fanny Austen for there are annotations in Fanny’s diary of this time living near her Aunt Jane.

It’s a loving letter, and yet she is slightly afraid to offend him. Frank was literal — as we have seen not one for landscape, at the same time sensitive, and while she used his ships allusively (Wm is partly Frank, Edmund Bertam partly Frank, but also James Austen) is willing to erase immediately upon being told it displeases him. It’s hard to say I admit if she is not this way with other relatives, as a rare early draft of Persuasion tells us how upset she was when her mother disapproved of the ending of Persuasion as somehow reflecting adversely on older women, mothers — it might be an earlier version did not have Anne so strongly justifying Lady Russell.

There is no exertion here as it’s all so direct. It makes me remember how she has her Emma (at the close of the book where she most identifies with her heroine) say how she loves openness. Even the rhythm is different, no all thing jumbled together as swift as she can do, but sitting there taking her time, luxuriating as one does when one writes a letter to a friend and pretends one has him or her right there. Bachelard talks of this in his book on reveries (the section on epistolary writing). The parallel is Austen’s Fanny Price sitting down to write to William.

Behold me going to write you as handsome a Letter as I can. Wish me good luck. — We have had the pleasure of hearing of you lately through Mary; who sent us some of the particulars of Yours of June 18th (I think) written off Rugen, & we enter into the delight of your having so good a Pilot. –

I often find the Hubbacks’ JA’s Sailor Brothers more useful for situating Frank vis-a-vis Jane than Brian Southam’s JA and the Navy because Southam organizes by theme while the Hubbacks’ do by year and by the end resort to using and then printing Jane’s letters as the core of what they seek to elucidate. So in the Hubbacks’ book (pp 229-31) we learn the details of Rugen while in Southam’s (p 116) we are taught about Sweden’s importance: Copenhagen was a place people sailed in and made money (whence Mary Wollstonecraft went to Sweden to do some business for Gilbert Imlay). I won’t copy out Frank’s entries here, as the Hubbacks do in their book and I leave it to those interested to read just a piece from them just below. The Hubbacks say Jane’s letter was spot on refreshing for Frank both because of its appropriate details of history and turn to the English countryside.

For the rest of the letter, see comments.

Ellen

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Katha Pollitt’s Rereading Jane Austen

Where the happy ending of the 1995 BBC Persuasion (by Nick Dear) corresponds to Austen’s book: Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot (Ciaran Hinds, Amanda Root) walking off alone together

Dear friends and readers,

If you’re like me, you have stashed away somewhere the poems and stanzas on Austen’s novels by sufficiently well-known authors you’ve come across (Auden, Anne Stevenson, the lesser known Richard Howard). Thanks to Katha Pollitt (who gave me permission to feature this on my blog and comment too) tonight I offer another to add to your collection. It appears in her latest collection of poetry, The Mind-Body Problem (Random House 2009), just published by Seren Press in the UK. Some may find it quietly provocative and much worth considering:

Rereading Jane Austen’s novels

by Katha Pollitt

This time round, they didn’t seem so comic.
Mama is foolish, dim or dead, Papa’s
a sort of genial, pampered lunatic.
No one thinks of anything but class.

Talk about rural idiocy! Imagine
a life of tea with Mrs and Miss Bates,
of fancy work and Mr Elton’s sermons!
No wonder lively girls get into states –

no school, no friends. A man might dash to town
just to have his hair cut in the fashion
while she can’t walk five miles on her own.
Past twenty, she conceives a modest crush on

some local stuffed shirt in a riding cloak
who’s twice her age and maybe half as bright.
At least he’s got some land and gets a joke –
but will her jokes survive the wedding night?

The happy end ends all. Beneath the blotter
the author slides her page, and shakes her head,
and goes to supper – Sunday’s joint warmed over,
followed by whist, and family prayers, and bed.

************************

An opening scene of 1995 P&P where Mr and Mrs Bennet (Benjamin Whitrow, Alison Steadman) repeat famous first dialogue of Austen’s novel

Katha says that this time round the Bennets do not seem so comic as they did to her the first time she read the book. I read P&P for the first time when I was 12 or 13 and they didn’t seem all that comic to me then. I saw them as a pastoral version of the miseries of marriage, with Mr Bennet reminding me of my father, intelligent, bored and irritated with my mother who was restless and utterly conventional, often egregiously wrong when it came to understanding with any depth of something that had happened. I knew in real life this made for intense bitterness and an Oedipal relationship with a favorite daughter, all of which was so softened in Austen.

How do others see this poem? The “local stuffed shirt,” the much older man who married one of Austen’s heroines include Brandon (35 to Marianne’s 17); Mr Knightley (who says that when he was 13 he held Emma as a baby in his arms); Mr Martin who just feels considerably older than Harriet (16) …

I objected to the last two stanzas on literal grounds: Austen does present a number of her heroines marrying an older man, but such semi-arranged marriages were the norm. It was worse in the early modern period where essentially an older man from another connected family bought himself a younger girl and age differences could be 30 years easily. You still see it in the 19th century (e.g., in a novel like North and South by Gaskell the heroine’s cousin’s mother married a man 30 years older than she and when we meet her, she still smarts from her long life of subservience and boredom though now she reaps her harvest as a rich widow.

It was also the norm for the families of this sliver of society to control who their daughters could meet and marry lest the children marry down or not marry to aggrandize the family if they could. I agree what a restricted life they led: for young gentlewomen no opportunity to meet anyone outside of the family group, its connections, its friends. Austen was indeed forced to live in the family group. There’s are lines in the letter where we see she tried to find an alternative way to live on her own without marrying, to be in a group of women friends which included Martha Lloyd and perhaps Anne Sharpe, but it was not allowed. Her brothers would not hear of it.

From Austen’s letters (and the novels too) we find she preferred reading to cards as a regular thing, but when she played cards it was speculation or brag she liked. They sewed. I see no indication they prayed at night. Maybe it’s not there because it’s so expected, but I doubt it. I remember Mary Crawford. They didn’t have tea but supper, late supper and Austen loved to eat. She leaves scenes of herself by the fire at night with a group of mostly women and servants there too eating snacks, drinking home-made liquor when they could.

Katha also responded generously:

Thanks for posting the link to the poem, Ellen. It’s the Saturday poem today in the Guardian. It comes from The Mind-Body Problem, which has just been published in the UK by Seren Press. I’m so happy!

The poem is not meant to be so literal. it’s a rather free evocation of the social world of the novels, as it affects the young women heroines: a tiny circle of acquaintances, a rather rigid social code, sexist restrictions galore. The local stuffed shirt is my own opinion of many of the male primary and secondary love interests. Perhaps you like them more!

My characterization of JA’s own life in the last verse is also not literal. it is intended to suggest the constrictions of life as a great writer who must live as an adult as the daughter in a country reverend.

*********************

Mr Knightley and Emma (John Carson, Doran Goodwin) sharing a joke together (1972 BBC Emma)

Thinking about the poem the next day, I decided Katha had read the books very much in the mode of Marilyn Butler (Jane Austen and the War of Ideas) who sees them as deeply conservative (anti-Jacobin, anti-sensibility, anti-romance). And there is much to be said for the general accuracy of this point of view. Austen exposes the vulnerability of women, their ennui, their lack of choice and liberty, their internal pain, but in the ending of the books Austen does indeed see the results of this system as a happy ending for the women. The heroines who succeed end up in the same position as their mothers and aunts. Compared to her women peers (Charlotte Smith, Maria Edgeworth, Elizabeth Inchbald and a host of French women novelists), Austen’s characters escape unscathed.

It is true that I like the men in the novels better than Katha seems to. Even before I saw the 1981 BBC and 1995 Miramax S&Ses I saw Brandon as a man of sensibility who had been badly hurt and saw in Marianne a revenante of Eliza Brandon, Edward as sweet and shy, and before the 1996 Emma (Andrew Davies’s) Mr Knightly as saturnine in temperament, withdrawn but tolerant, not expecting much of others. I like that they are not macho male, like that the rakes are not glamorized and firmly rejected as cads. I’m very fond of Henry Tilney. Austen herself did not want to marry and Charlotte Lucas voices something of her view: since you cannot tell how it will be with you after time and chance, the man’s income, house, and disposition for courteous behavior is what counts. But Austen does make her pairs of people who are happy at the end psychologically and ethically congenial.

More of the three other I know, Katha’s take stands up as a whole, is consistent and I admit to me compared with my life and opportunities and expectations Austen presents a frustrating limited prison, no matter how green. It’s honester than Auden’s: there is nothing shocking in Austen’s understanding that the basis for social interaction is money and status (he’s pretending to startle us); Stevenson’s poem falls off in the last stanza and fails on the level of general statement, she punts at its end; and Howard’s is a muddle. What I particularly like about Katha’s is it’s not adulatory.

Ellen

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Austen’s Letters: 77, 29-30 Sun-Mon, Nov 1812, 3rd to Martha,Chawton to Barton

First (1813) edition, title page

Dear friends and readers,

This is an important letter. For two reasons: it is the first mention of P&P as P&P, and the only one Austen left of her arduous whole-scale rewriting and cutting down of First Impressions in her determination to somehow get someone to publish it. It is sold.

And it is her third letter to her beloved friend, perhaps near-lover, Martha Lloyd.

P&P: As Diana B suggests, the language suggests that either Henry let her know his hassle had been too much for him or she felt it had — and it cost him. I read a couple of articles recently about self-publishing in this era: in fact what happened is the publisher paid for the materials and distribution and the author refunded the money, and so S&S had cost Henry beyond what she had put in. Note she won’t see the £110 for another year.

P.&P. is sold. — Egerton gives £110 for it.-I would rather have had £150, but we could not both be pleased, & I am not at all surprised that he should not chuse to hazard, so much.-Its’ being sold will I hope be a great saving of Trouble to Henry, & therefore must be welcome to me. — The Money is to be paid at the end of the twelvemonth. –

From the time she first mentions this publication project and all the work she is doing on her books (Letter 71) to this, there has not been one mention of her daily work. There she does say she never has her mind off her “darling suckling child” (S&S), has two sheets to correct, has heard Mrs Knight’s flattery, tells of Henry’s brother and how when she leaves London the further proofs are to go to Eliza and finally how she’s going to alter the incomes if she can. She is enormously guarded. Here she sounds relieved.

Diane R:

Such a few cool lines. Five words to give the news:

P. & P. is sold.

How laconic, how understated Austen is even to Martha! How excited JA must be, underneath it all, to have sold a second novel! She is on her way. S&S is not a fluke. Her life’s work, after all the frustrations, is coming to fruition. Yet all we hear of is the financing and business end. A dry 110 pounds instead of 150. Overly cool. The lady doth protest too little. I imagine she and Martha getting together, acting initially cool, catching each other’s eye and then jumping up and down and squealing, locking arms: “You sold it! You sold it! You did it! Girlfriend!” But none of that here. It comes across all as business transaction, with a nonchalant sense of anti-climax. Is the sale really “welcome” because it is ‘”a great saving of Trouble to Henry?” Can we be deceived? Certainly Martha can’t be deceived.

Of course, as we know, money mattered greatly to Austen–but again she is too laconic. Even what would translate to 11,000 dollars in our (US) money would have had her jumping up and down for joy, this woman accustomed to begging carriage rides and wearing last year’s
decorations in her hat. She should have been exhibiting joy just for
the money. Or is there a little bragging in her coolness–”oh, I
wanted 15K but I settled for 11K.” By all measures, she must have
been beyond pleased: 11,000 is not 15,000 but it is better than zero.

And to wait to tell the news–the news JA must be bursting to tell
Martha from the first drop of ink on the page–until so far down in
the letter! Buried amid all the other domestic chatter–grey cloaks
being made for 10 shillings, visits. Does Austen know this letter will be shared? Is she doing her best to downplay the significance of selling her second novel to protect herself from prying eyes? Yet
would she have put what she was paid in the letter if she expected it to be passed around? Am I right to imagine the same stigma applied then as now to talking about money–especially for a lady, provided for by her brothers?

Martha Lloyd late in life

Martha. The beloved person she actually wanted to have as a partner for life and did indeed manage to live with on and off for some years and take trips with (to Worthing). It seems while Edward was in the house during this trip he had Martha’s room (“a very large Bedroom”). Was Martha given the largest to bribe her to stay with them? That’s putting it hard, but it is clear from so many mentions of disappointment in Martha over the course of the time in Southampton, the early equally reciprocated relationship and Austen’s idealizing of her is long gone.

Let us review the previous Martha letters: 26, 12-13, Wed-Thurs, Nov 1800 — read her euphoria, intense eagerness to be with her

Letter 27, 20-21, Thurs-Fri, November 1800. She is in a state of trembling intense expectation. No she’s not going to take any books. She is not going to Martha to sit next to her and read as she does in her own home. She wants to mingle her mind (and whatever else they do) with Martha — I mean walk but also physical interactions. I have wondered at the timing of Austen’s one visit. It seems to me no coincidence that this visit was allowed just before the announcement of turning Steventon over to James. One last softening intense happiness. It may just be coincidental but how often families do chose such moments to drop the beam. When the person is strong.

Letter 28, Sun 30 Nov, Mon 1 Dec, from Ibthorpe

Then the devastating upheaval, 29, 3-5, Sat-Mon, Jan 1801

Who was Mrs Dundas? She was Martha’s employer and is dying — died the next day as we eventually learn. Martha was Mrs Dundas’s nearly unpaid companion; that’s how Martha lived and now the money will surely cease. Martha’s silence over this illness is of a piece with the way that Cassandra destroys all untoward letters and Austen is indirect on family matters. This means a real loss: despite Martha’s several attempts to establish herself separately she never managed it. In one letter we had Jane determined to set up a way of life with Cassandra and Martha, and they would tell Frank and the family and then it’s only referred to much later. They were deliberately thwarted. The family was nervous about this. As I notice here so many never respond to my list of possible loves to include Martha – and Frank too.

Austen still cares so much for her. The opening (as Diana says) is unusually clumsy at moments, repetitive. Austen is just so emotionally involved and she herself cannot imagine herself doing this kind of watching over someone die — except as a stupendous heroic effort. and Martha is not just sitting there, she’s nursing this woman. At the close of the letter Austen returns to Martha to say what she can to her friend. She is sorry Martha’s nephew not well. Hopes his mother and father not uneasy. Miss Murden who she is sorry to hear is so often described as an “invalid.”

The problem with Terry Castle’s thesis about Austen’s lesbianism is she had not read Austen with care. She leapt onto the obvious (Cassandra and Jane) and then did not look to see Cassandra and Jane had separate beds. It was Martha that Austen laid on the floor with one long night of apparent real enjoyment when there were not enough beds. (Some will say Chacun a son gout, but love is blind.)

Olivia Williams and Gretta Scacchi as Jane and Cassandra Austen, now old, living marginally and Jane no longer well (2008 BBC Miss Austen Regrets)

The two threads come together when Austen writes about funeral or appropriate clothes and fringe single women on the edge of desperation. She is not going to get that 110£ for another year so she will have a moderately-priced “Grey Woollen . . . ten shillings.” So Miss Benn is there and should be given “something of the shawl kind” to wear indoors (it had better not to be too “very handsome” or she’ll never wear it) Mrs Stent will soon be out of her misery (“not much longer a distress to anybody”). Miss Murden invalided. It’s pleasant to see that like Austen Martha remembers a servant, Sally another girl with almost or really nothing. Note Sally genuflecting in front of Austen (she means to “be a good girl if I please”), and that “there is no apparent deficiency.” That’s Austen’s emphasis, translated: Let’s not think about under-clothes.

I agree with Diana B that Austen is satirizing weddings again in her commentary on Miss W’s wedding and the ditty:

Camilla good humoured & merry & small
For a Husband it happend was at her last stake;
& having in vain danced at many a ball
Is now very happy to Jump at a Wake

but it’s not out of complacency about her own publications. That’s not what her words refer to. They refer to the reality the groom is so much older than the bride. Camilla “good-humored, merry and small” is going to dance “at a wake.” He’s not far from death. She married because “it was her last stake.”

*********************

Chawton

Family matters and (dare I say this) echoes and parallels with Emma fill the rest of the letter.

It seems Edward and his “harem” were at Chawton. This word is a muted reference to Austen’s awareness of how Edward had dominated his wife in his way; he likes women – he never did re-marry though, enough children he might have thought. They did cost even then. They have arrived at Winchester and sent word of “their happiness,” but it appears they do not look forward to their next stop: Steventon. Mary Lloyd. How sorry were they to go away? “they were certainly very sorry to go away, but a little of that sorrow must be attributed to a disinclination for what was before them.”

Steventon as seen from the side with a Anne Hathaway as a young Jane Austen writing on a bench (2007 BBC Becoming Jane)

Later in the letter this tension between the Godmersham and Steventon families is brought back: “Monday. A wettish day, bad for Steventon.” Although the loss to Jane Austen of Steventon was bitter, it was no beautiful house (perhaps something like Thornton Lacey as Henry Crawford describes, not really fit for a gentleman’s residence); it was damp. Dampness did not improve Mary Lloyd or her husband’s mood. The 1870 idyllic picture of Steventon JEAL invented was a response to his memories of Steventon as a boy; with Mary Lloyd it was no harmonious place.

But Mary Deeds is with them, says Jane, and “must be liked .. so perfectly unaffected & sweet temper … as ready to be pleased as Fanny Cage, deals less in superlatives & rapture.” So maybe more believable to the sharp Mary.

For Edward something important happening: name change in order to secure the inheritance. They’ve a letter now to forward from a lawyer. (I”ll mention lawyers cost.)

There is some chitchat of a coming Tuesday evening event – no vibes here about Tuesday at all. (Again the unmarried women.) The Miss Webbs to come, Cap and Mrs Clement, Miss Benn (cannot do without her — I think of Miss Bates. Mrs Digwood but not Mr prefers to kill rabbits at Steventon. I know “shoot” is her word, but the preference is clear. They need the turkey for Christmas is coming.

Romola Garai and Johnny Lee Miller as Emma (when we first meet her all grown up), with a wry Mr Knightley (our first sight of him too) (2009 BBC Emma)

As to hints of Emma: Has there been work on a brief draft. I discern a number of parallels and contrasts between the novel and what is going on in this letter. The “Steventon edition” for the ditty — as in Emma there is a Hartford edition (of poetry, of lines about first loves)

But yes there is an Emma reference that is light mockery — making fun of herself for the way she pretends to publish all these years — consider the many copies that have survived. What’s more the mockery of Mrs Butler is pure Mrs Elton. Then the eating Turkeys – Emma filled with diurnal food. And Miss Benn (Bates). Women who don’t marry are so poor. Edward is laying out money and the “sum” passing through their hands “considerable” 20£ At any rate she didn’t have it herself. So little to vex her had Emma. So Austen would begin …

*********************

Daisy Haggard as Nancy and Anna Madeley as Lucy Steele (2008 BBC S&S)

Like others on Austen-l about this letter: I’m glad it’s survived because it’s to Martha. Everyone seems determined to ignore this; its opening, its frame, its closing, the fringe women it’s all Martha all the way.

P&P really takes a small proportion of her mind. It’s a done deal and at the moment a relief to be so. A backseat here. I just read how some TV station in Utah won’t let a situation comedy about gay people get on the air. Martha was not in a situation comedy as she sits next to her dying patron.

Martha is found in Austen’s novels. In a minor character. Nancy Steele mentions eavesdropping on her sister, Lucy.

And I am sure Lucy would have done just the same by me; for a year or two back, when Martha Sharpe and I had so many secrets together, she never made any …

When Martha Sharpe and I had so many secrets together. Jane has conflated her two favorite women, Martha Lloyd and Anne Sharpe. In this scenario, she is Nancy … More seriously, alas, we don’t know enough about Martha’s inward character accurately described to try to discern which of Austen’s characters might have some of her traits, unless aspects of Nancy Steele caricature Martha. While in Southampton Austen several times expresses irritation through humor of Martha’s chasing after men.

Ellen

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Robert Hass’s lines on Jane Austen

Dear friends and readers,

Tracy Marks has sent to Austen-l these lines from Hass’s Monticello:

Jane Austen isn’t walking in the park,
she considers that this gray crust of an horizon will not do;
she is by the fire, reading William Cowper….

Bernardo Bellotto (1721-80), Dresden

None more admires, the painter’s magic skill
Who shows me that which I shall never see
Conveys a distant country into mine
And throws Italian light on English walls
– Cowper, The Task, Bk 1

Ellen

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Claire Tomalin’s Jane Austen: A Life

The Chateau de Jourdan, near Nerac, to which Jean Francois Capot de Feuillide took Eliza Hancock & her mother in 1784

Dear friends and readers,

I finished reading Claire Tomalin’s Jane Austen: A life for the second time a couple of days ago, and wanted to record here that it seems to me the best biography of Jane Austen now available. It’s much better than is usually admitted to and (what is sometimes suggested) is by no means just an updating of Elizabeth Jenkins (whose book still has the merit of being the first serious full unbiased one which brings to bear on Austen’s life the matter we find in her novels). Tomalin is much franker than Jenkins, has found out more about Austen’s relatives, friends, milieus. As Park Honan’s book misses the inner reality of his subject, Tomalin’s chief modern rival is David Nokes who did far more original research and thinking than Tomalin, especially in his examination of Austen’s letters; yet when Tomalin treats of Austen’s novels she is much more accurate than Nokes (who perversely seems to prefer the Juvenilia), is less personally reactive to her life (Nokes dislikes the idea that Austen didn’t like Bath because he would have liked it) and thus is more accurate about Austen’s personality.

Tomalin is a gifted writer, a stylist and she writes biographies that feel like novels. Her people come alive and they make sense as interactive characters in an imagined environment, only this one is real, has recorded reality. She did go to France to ferret out the full story of Eliza de Feuillide Austen who (after making the usual bow to Deirdre LeFaye’s defensive pro-family stances) Tomalin treats as Warren Hastings’ biological daughter) Tomalin goes on to it as this explains so much that happened to Eliza in her life.

Tomalin’s retelling puts everything into place, especially de Feuillide’s real motives in marrying Eliza, and hers for marrying him. Eliza was clearly a stigmatized yet protected person (we see this in the way Jane Austen’s family describe and treat her) as the biological daughter Warren Hastings provided for and helped from time to time and yet kept, together with her apparently unperceptive somewhat incompetent mother, briefly his mistress, at a distance from him. Hastings became a source of introduction to desperatgely needed patronage for George Austen’s naval sons. The Mary Crawford character would be a direct reflection of Eliza. The Steventon theatricals lie behind Mansfield Park — Eliza did become seriously involved both with James and Henry Austen (eventually of course marrying the latter who himself pretty quickly preferred to go off to Godmersham alone. Jane Austen was not the only intelligent woman, Edward’s rich wife, Elizabeth did not like. Tomalin does seem to over-rate Jane’s connection with Eliza which from the letters was intermittent and not confidential — Jane has to maneuver her way round Eliza’s needs and assumptions in the way we see her doing Edward and Elizabeth Austen’s to say get permission to leave early to visit the woman she was really attached to, like Catherine and Alethea Bigg.

Plan of Sloane Street, London, where Austen stayed with Henry and Eliza (from 1900 mapping)

Tomalin is particularly good on the De Feuillide connection. This fringe bourgeois hoped for huge sums to conduct a drainage project over lands he actually had little right to enclose: in effect he tried to sluice the money Hastings wrenched from Indian peasants to take over this land (through bribes) and then enrichen himself in developing it. In the event the French revolution put an end to that. Tomalin brings out how Philadelphia Hancock had probably formed a second liaison outside marriage, with Lambert who was the conduit for this marriage, which Hasting’s businessman, Woodcock and George Austen, Philadelphia’s brother, saw in its true light. Both parties (Feuillide and Eliza) presented themselves somewhat falsely to one another. de Feuillide was no count and Eliza knew it some time after marrying him; her lien on Hastings was limited. Hence they did not last.: marriage was indeed a take-in from her experience. At the same time Tomalin does full justice to Eliza’s behavior as the mother of a disabled son, mentally and physically dependent and defective, epileptic. No Lady Susan she. She also clung to her mother as the one person she could count on to be there whose relationship with her was not on some level unaccountable (Hancock’s letters are pathetic attempts to control his wife, Hastings would not acnknowledge actual obligation). She seems to have found the Steventon family a comfort she did not quite belong to either.

The importance of this is the woman was part of Austen’s central growing up experience and as a comparative woman’s life. Tomalin provides a similarly rich portrait of Eliza Chute who is another perceptive sensitive unconventional type to some extent whom we might wish Austen had formed a close relationship, who we feel she ought to have (like Emma with Jane Fairfax), but whom Austen makes nasty cracks about: when Eliza proposes to visit, Austen says she knows ‘a trick or two of that’ as if the visit is meant aggressively. Austen seems to be jealous of, and avoid Chute; I suggest a deeper look and thought tells us that like Anna Austen but not Fanny Austen Knight, and and perhaps like Henry or James in certain moods, but not Frank, Chute threatened the older Austen’s conventional carapace thickened to protect her from hurt (from the mother? Cassandra even).

Here is one example of what Tomalin intuitively does quickly so well again and again in detailed expositions that other biographers do not. Two poems Austen wrote to Catherine Bigg on the occasion of Bigg’s marriage have been printed numerous times. In the Todd and Bree Cambridge edition (Later Manuscripts), while they begin with the disparity in age between bride and prospective bridegroom (she 33, he in his sixties) and quote Austen’s line to Cassandra on the day before this wedding; “tomorrow we must think of poor Caroline” (25 Oct 1808) and then four years later when Catherine was pregnant for the 4th (!) time, “there is a melancholy disproportion between the Papa and the little Children” (2 Sept 1814), the latent insight about the tone and mood of the poem that could have arisen and explanation for the imagery is lost amid a welter of detail on Austen’s great skill as needlewoman, talk about hand-embroidered handkerchiefs, because Austen sent such a memento to Bigg with the poem. Southam resembles Chapman in just saying the poem was part of a wedding gift and leavimg it at that (nothing about the man Bigg married, her pregnancies, the beautiful house she got), and implying Catherine was a not-so-close friend who happened to live at Manydown Park, the very place where Austen almost married Catherine’s brother.

Jane too could have been mistress of Manydowne, and she saw the price that Catherine Bigg had to pay for this

Tomalin’s way of telling this calls our attention to the disparity in age and Austen’s feeling of real distaste and pity for her friend. The embroidered square of cloth is secondary. Tomalin places the incident of Catherine’s marriage in immediate context: it occurred in time just after Austen saw herself defeated in one of her many plans to gather women friends together, and was trying to retrieve the plan by uncharacteristically begging Edward to provide the needed carriage. He yielded after she gave him and Elizabeth (still alive then) a “private reason” for wanting this and then did it grudgingly.

(Digressive. Tomalin also tells us in another place how when Edward would come home at 11 in the night, he would demand Fanny get out of Elizabeth’s bed so he could get in. Asserting his rights over this perpetually pregnant woman. I rather think that her keeping Eliza out of the house (Eliza may not have wanted to visit, but Henry did a lot – theirs was not exactly a close marriage it emerges in this book) and Jane and sister and mother no offer of a place to live might have seemed to her a small enough thing not to endure these smart women.)

Back to Catherine Bigg’s Charlotte Lucas-like selling of herself. Tomalin then shows from a couple more of Austen’s passages from letters in in 1808-09 (written in Southampton) that Austen had become more explicit (less indirect) about describing her spinsterhood as freedom and liberty. Austen was no longer hurling bitter filips against births, marriages, but rather openly feels sorry for women getting married (this is the tone of her “poor animal” about Anna after a few years, a couple of births and miscarriages), identifying with some of the servants around her (eating together before the fire) and intensely aware of how other women were coping or failing to cope with their dependent marginalized status.

Then Tomalin goes over the imagery and tone of the poems:

Cambrick! thou’st been to me a good,
And I would bless thee if I could.
Go, serve thy mistress with delight,
Be small in compass, soft and white;
Enjoy thy fortune, honour’d much
To bear her name and feel her touch;
And that thy worth may last for years,
Slight be her colds, and few her tears.

Tomalin points out as no one else does that this one was not sent, but rather a weakened self-censored second version:

Cambrick! with grateful blessings would I pay
The pleasure given me in sweet employ! –
Long may’st thou serve my Friend without decay,
And have no tears to wipe, but tears of joy!-

There are no tears of joy to be expected in the first version. Because Tomalin situated the poem so, I for the first time took a look. I noticed for the first time that the poem has intimate imagery. The handkerchief will be against her friend’s skin, feel her “touch” live in close proximity, physical. This reminds me of other poems — by Anne Finch and Katherine Philips — to other women which have a strong erotic component. In other words it’s the lesbian impulse coming out. Suddenly this is not some vacuous stuff sent with a pretty nothing but a statement as genuinely felt as her poems to Anna, to Mrs Lefroy, on her headache and on the frivolous happenings in Winchester as she lay dying but had (she hoped) made herself immortal in her writing however overlooked for such a long then and then undersold.

You could read Austen’s to Catherine Bigg in the three editions and dismiss them as empty nothings pinned to an overwrought gift (a waste of time better spent writing or reading or walking with a friend), but not in Tomalin is my point. Suddenly they come alive.

I am a therefore little nonplussed at how Tomalin does not pick up on Martha Lloyd. She will remark as an afterthought that Martha was there living with them, traveling with them, but never seems to click in her mind – or did it not. She sees it was Martha who had First Impressions by heart. Tellingly she takes out time to deny that when Jane and Cassandra might have slept together it meant “anything” more than forced sleeping arrangements. She does see that once Martha and Jane threw a housemaid out of a bed and got in together and read (we are told) and another time spent the night on the floor together. Probably an urge to stay away from GBLT and also a preconceived idea it was Cassandra who was everything all the while she does see how often they are apart, and brings forward Anne Sharp as an important (in the literature) underrated friend. Here it’s her liberal leftism wanting to find Jane preferring the governess to everyone else in Godmersham. so she sees the importance of the governess at Godmersham (the one Austen had her most real relationship with), Anne Sharpe.

Still she is otherwise alert to discomfort, misery, lies in heterosexual sex. Similarly, she does see how Frank was apparently the most valued and least uncomfortable relationship with her brothers for Austen. She suggests Henry may be seen in Henry Crawford. There’s a good sum up of Jane’s ambivalent relationships with Henry and Edward (pp. 195-98), but again she does not go far enough on what her evidence is showing. I have not myself mentioned how Frank tried to impose his will and control her traveling (not simply himself not take her), just the sort of thing a possessive male lover might do.

Again and again an instinct made Tomalin stay away from material that would be explosive if emphasized to her wider audience. The way her books sell is she has a sliding upbeat sort of take on things (candid in the sense of Jane Bennet), only at turns now and again showing the bleakness of what she says. What she does in this book (as in others) is to go up to a threshold of where disquiet begins, comment briefly and then move on.

Where Tomalin falls down is her perfunctoriness. I really felt her tone that of someone writing this biography because it’s in her way, as someone who knows this era very well, as a famous biographer of women’s lives and as a money-maker. She is getting Austen out the way, punching her ticket, and moving on. She does not regard Austen as writing sufficiently centrally wide-reaching major books. This leads to not to investigate some stereotypes about Austen used to cover over aspects of her life that would make people uncomfortable: Tomalin’s analyses of the novels which like some of her analyses of aspects of Austen’s innermost creative life misses Austen’s continual obsessive composition and revision, and minuteness; her really meaningful relationships outside her immediate family beyond her friendships with women who were in effect servants: Tomalin overlooks the curious asociality which made her briefly confide in Stanier Clarke as a rare chance to talk to a professional literary person. She also misses out on Austen’s real relationship with Edward Bridges — to Tomalin the love of Austen’s life remains Tom Lefroy; Southam sees that the later books show her intense love for Frank Austen and emotional investment with her brothers.

One of Jane’s poems to Frank

She misdates Lady Susan (again really simply accepting Southam’s prejudice against this book), but she does then make it fit into her trajectory of Austen’s development. There is a very modern turn she gives it, especially the idea that it’s the study of a character “who knows herself to be wasted on the dull world she is obliged to live in” — that is Tomalin’s take on Austen transposed to the character. In fact the character is mean and awful and not from Merteuil of LaClos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses but rather a Madame de Vernon of Delphine (1804) much closer to the novel as Madame de Vernon succeeds in coercing her daughter into a miserable marriage. For someone who goes so thoroughly into the French sources for Eliza, she is very weak on Austen’s French reading.

Tomalin has explored Jane Austen’s library, and discovers various books in French, including presents of the multi-volume L’ami des enfants by Arnaud Berquin

Not one mention of Genlis. She has read Brunton, Smith and Radcliffe, but the political and travel books Austen devoured. No sign of knowledge of Grandison or Clarissa. Perfunctory mentions of Rousseau. Tomalin prefers the Fielding line of novels more, the ones that lead to Dickens and Hardy whom she writes so well on in other books.

Not to overdo where Tomalin has gaps. I loved how she brought home where we find Jane Austen loathing when she is coerced (gently but firmly) into having that long ludicrous dedication to the Prince Regent. She has evidence to suggest the Prince regent never read Austen’s novels. They went quickly into his library for show. In the last chapter of Tomalin’s book. Tomalin points out how Jane left a sum to Madame Bigeon to whom she was not at all related and who had no status whatsoever, and that Cassandra kept up small payments as far as she could throughout the life of Bigeon’s daughter, “Mrs Perigord.” Tomalin liked that the origin of the British Jane Austen society was a single woman, Miss Darnell who wanted to preserve Chawton cottage which by 1940 was knocked up into wretched flats and on the way to being torn down.

I recommend reading both Nokes and Tomalin as a kind of diptych.

Ellen

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Suspending going through Austen’s letters chronologically for a while

A photo of an autograph; Jane Austen’s “When stretched out …,” her poem about a mirgraine headache she endured just as Sense and Sensibility was published for the first time. She had self-published using money she could ill afford to save up and now pay, and with Henry Austen, her brother’s help

Dear friends and readers,

I’m suspending my project for going through Austen’s letter chronologically; I will try to finish all the letters in the sense of reading and accounting for them, but not in the same way. I did what I did partly because it fit my schedule of interstices of time; as a teacher I often did not have enough stretches of time to get into a book or project which demanded many hours in a row. Now with summer here and my going down to one section a term for the coming fall and spring, now I’ll have more hours in a row. I also feel I’ve gotten somewhere and need to read more of the background letters by others at the same time and books and articles on her family members and era than I’ve been doing. I’m going to read some of the books she comments on too — which I’ve not done before because I’ve not had the time.

Time and again whether directly or indirectly I’ve been challenged on Austen-l by people who persist in assuming it’s a waste of time to go through Austen’s letters because 1) they are just a remnant; 2) they are not to be taken seriously — they are jokes, nonsense; and 3) the most serious charge, she herself is not articulate about her art and is hidden about her life (or her sister on her behalf). My response: the remnant combined with her novels and the relevant contemporary and near- contemporary documents (her nephew’s memoir of her) tell a great deal; 2) many a truth said in jest, and often Austen is not jesting: irony is nowadays used as a way of dismissing what she says’ and 3) if she’s not an artist who can reach or articulate clearly the complexity of her vision of life, some articulation is there and paying alert attention to these tidbits helps to enable us to see what she saw consciously — and sub- or unconsciously too. Especially when she gets anxious or feel resentful or upset about a book, when she is filled with rare enthusiasms (Crabbe) we have suggestive utterances to work with.

I have been confirmed in older beliefs I had, dismissed some wrong-headed assumptions or conclusions I had; and 3) learned some totally new things about her unexpectedly. I will be writing about some of these in the next days and weeks.

A different perspective helps. Such as looking at her letters to a specific correspondent. That’s what I was thinking. Looking at her letters just to Anna taught me something. It’s true most of her letters are to Cassandra, but there are other correspondents. There are two to Frank extant and the two verse letters and one text recorded (though the text resolutely gotten rid of but for the salutations). Looking at them from the standpoint of the other documents of the other relatives. Reading more of the biographies now.

And reviewing the later manuscripts has helped enormously.

So I’ll keep up this study but in a different way, more consonant with my new freer schedule. I think there are none to Charles, none to Henry, none to James, none to Edward. That does say something; she never wrote as much to any of these and so proportionately nothing survived.

I do not mean to give up . I feel I have gotten behind the biographies up to 1811. Now when I read them I have something for real by which I can judge them — my knowledge of their major central source. Letters by the subject are the lifeblood of biography (as Austen knew in a comment she makes in MP about Fanny getting a letter). And in her case as in so many authors, the novels, the memoirs. Austen’s novels are what make her letters speak to us and a little vice versa. I will probably return and go through the later letters more thematically so as to judge the later parts of Austen’s life, for its own sake and for reading the biographies and criticism.

Beyond any and all Austen matters, I’ll also try to post every three or four days on “long” 18th century matters, authors, art, women writers, women artists, and women poets. I’ll try for women writers whose purview and art seems 20th and 21st century versions of Austen’s ironic domestic novels. As I say I’ll be reading books on Austen which are nowadays defined so generously that anything and everything having to be with the 18th century is my home landscape.

I did send off my review of The Later Manuscripts of Jane Austen for the Cambridge edition by Janet Todd and Linda Bree for ECCB. If anyone is interested, I’m willing to send a copy … Just ask.

Ellen

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Austen’s letters: Letter 71, Thurs 25 April 1811 Sloane Street, London, to Cassandra at Godmersham

1971 BBC S&S: our first shot of Elinor (Joanna David) confronted with John and Fanny Dashwood (Milton Johns and Kay Gallie) at Norland

Dear friends and readers,

She’s in London attending to her “suckling child” (the proofs of S&S): a party upon which much effort was expended,a museum trip, theater, visits with worldly political and cultured French friends of Eliza. An overturned carriage. The hard burlesque poem to Anna reflected in this letter. Austen has not changed much; by the end she seems eager to return to the country.

This is the third letter by Austen from the last phase of her life at Chawton (see Letter 69 and letter 70). It’s the second from London during the trip she took during the printing of Sense and Sensibility. In the previous she did not mention the book or anything about it; here for the first time since her two allusions to First Impressions (Letters 17 and 21), she names one of her books and talks about it in strikingly intimate bodily terms (“her suckling child”).

We again have a much more upbeat relatively cheerful text than we had in the early parts of the correspondence or those at Bath and Southampton, with the writer’s sense of herself now showing confidence and more openness to experience. This letter projects buoyant rhythms and outlook, but it also has a continual undercurrent of the prickly (rebarbative is now too strong a term) and muted sarcasms. Jane Austen may now be more openly be living a different kind of life apart at Chawton: her novel writing is acknowledged and understood; but she is still thwarted in fundamentals (e..g, her desire for a female community of friends at Chawton) and she still dislikes intensely all dishonesty of emotion, even when unconscious.

As in letter 70 I use stills from Sense and Sensibility to remind us this is the book she has been pouring herself into, saved enough money to publish on her own, is the reason why she is in London. There I used opening scenes of the novel in all but the Indian film; here I feature the famous second chapter in all the films, with a few of the heroines in the films.

********************

1981 BBC S&S: in this second version Elinor does not interrupt John and Fanny (Peter Gale and Amanda Boxer) in their famous duo on how little they can get away with giving his sisters in fulfillment of his promise to his father to help them

The first line of the letter shows Austen’s ideas about pleasure were in line with Samuel Johnson and George Sand: the best pleasures are the unexpected unplanned ones; Johnson and Sand go so far as to say that such are the only really felt pleasures:

I can return the compliment by thanking you for the unexpected pleasure of your Letter yesterday, & as I like unexpected pleasure, it made· me very happy; And indeed, You need not apologise for your Letter in any respect, for it is all very fine, but not too fine I hope to be written again, or something like it.

Cassandra had complimented Jane upon her letter and the unexpected pleasure it gave Cassandra. Now this refers to Letter 70 (for there are no missing letters here): this implies Cassandra did not expect pleasure necessarily from Jane’s letters. I take it Cassandra likes cheerful letters and many of Jane’s were not. Now she Jane likes unexpected pleasure as such (a different turn of meaning given this phrase here), so therefore Cassandra’s letter made her happy. Cassandra had apologized but Jane says don’t, but the “it is all very fine” then registers a note of doubt about its sincerity, a sense it’s a performance. It was not that fine though so perhaps Cassandra or she Jane may write another just like it.

Edward again complaining about bodily stuff. We remember that occasioned the trip to Bath:

I think Edward will not suffer much longer from heat; by the look of Things this morning I suspect the weather is rising into the balsamic Northeast. It has been hot here, as you may suppose, since it was so hot with you, but I have not suffered from it at all, nor felt it in such a degree as to make me imagine it would be anything in the Country. Everybody has talked of the heat, but I set it all down to London

Our sceptical Jane; everyone here talks of heat but it’s all exaggeration. The word “balsamic” signals something restorative, curative, also a lovely odor, “a balsamic fragrance.” Far from uncomfortable, it’s ripe with lovely smell and warmth. I don’t understand the connection to the northeast. Was it somewhere northeast in the UK that the herbs for balsamic vinegar came?

The boy baby that Austen celebrated in her verse letter to Frank in 1809 has been mentioned by Cassandra; either he or the new baby boy is said to be a child who will be hanged. This is meant as a joke on the Eric or little by Little) syndrome — or perhaps Jane is serious and it’s a wry comment and in full context (which we cannot know) suggested misbehavior.

I give you joy of our new nephew, & hope if he ever comes to be hanged, it will not be till we are too old to care about it. — It is a great comfort to have it so safely & speedily over. The Miss Curlings must be hard-worked in writing so many Letters, but the novelty of it may recommend it to them; –

It seems that Cassandra has had a letter. Mary has had a third child by this time: yet another little boy. Remember Jane’s poem — that was Francis William born 1809, Mary’s second baby. Two years later it’s Henry Edgar born 1811, a third. Jane says let us not fret if Francis William is hanged (or Henry Edgar), she and Cass will be long dead. This is her vein of humor and reminds me of the dead plants and laughing Mrs Palmer in S&S and in Southampton how Austen wrote Cassandra she hoped Cassandra realized all the plants were dead — as a joke and it did make me laugh. I like morbid humor. But the great comfort is not this coming hanging, but Mary’s childbirth which has happened safely and is over. Another one much easier than that hard hard first with Mary Jane.

But the great comfort is not this coming hanging, but Mary’s childbirth which has happened safely and is over. Another one much easier than that hard hard first with Mary Jane. This dialogue shows Austen and Cassandra were aware of the hideous warning lesson school of children’s literature (Eric or Little by Little was a favorite text of Orwell’s to parody aloud in dramatic way; he’d send people off in stitches of hilarity at this poor little boy who one error led to hanging):

Now we get a preening triumphant over the Miss Curlings. They are writing letters as kin of Henry Edgar. Now I see another reason for this sneer. They are related to Mary Gibson and giving themselves airs. Austen was ever ambivalent about real children, and she’s right about the absurdity of this. They have not gone through the hardship and danger of childbirth. So Jane tosses her head and preens: the novelty of writing so many letters is nothing to her now. Now she is a novelist with her own suckling child. She could not know most of her letters would be destroyed.

Jane has had a letter too:

Mine was from Miss Eliza, & she says that my Brother may arrive today.

The brother in question is Frank. Since Austen is living with Eliza Austen, this Eliza cannot be her, but here LeFaye does not tell us which Eliza wrote.

And then the reference to which we have all be thirsting, the first open mention of her writing and it’s startlingly fleshly, even unexpected — given that for half the letters just about every reference to childbirth is half- mocking and askance, and who would go on to breast-feed if the body has been wracked with pain or dead to start with. One buried metaphor here is of a text living off her, her drained by what feeds off her yet is so precious

.– No indeed, I am never too busy to think of S&S. I can no more forget it, than a mother can forget her sucking child; & I am much obliged to you for your enquiries. I have had two sheets to correct, but the last only brings us to Willoughby’s first appearance.

That would be chapter 9 when Willoughby first appears.

Then the first literary criticism of her books we have. First she deprecates the flattery of Mrs Knight. The implication of the line is it’s kindness in Mrs Knight to express her eagerness. Austen thinks it will be another 2 months (it’s now April so not until June). Henry has been at it — and Austen we will later learn felt guilty for taking up his time over this. So we see her real modesty here. And after all why would she be otherwise — after 25 years of rejection (1796, 1803, 1809 are the attempts we know about). She underlines “has.” This implies that Cassandra has been doubting that Henry has been working at it. What is to be sent to Eliza in Henry’s absence? a contract? This brings up the tricky reality that women could not sign contracts; Radcliffe’s husband signed hers. What did a maiden lady do? turn to father or brother so the printer will send the contract to Henry’s wife?

I have read about this comment over incomes. Clearly Austen has been told by her family members something is wrong with the incomes. What could it be? As of what we have everything adds up correctly so perhaps it was the extravagance of 50,000 for Miss Grey. Or could it be Brandon’s income might make someone think Austen had someone they knew in mind. Austen’s family might have worried about that (and publishers do today with the disclaimers they have at the opening of fictions). I have read various speculations about what this correction would have been.

And what is Austen’s critical comment? the usual fondness for the heroine. This is just what we will see beyond her literalism over verisimilitude and probability. “my Elinor.” It is sweet.

Mrs K. regrets in the most flattering manner that she must wait till. May, but I have scarcely a hope of its being out in June.­ — Henry does not neglect it; he has hurried the Printer, & says he will see him again today. — It will not stand still during his absence, it will be sent to Eliza. — The Incomes remain as they were, but I will get them altered if I can. — I am very much gratified by Mtr K.s interest in it; & whatever may be the event of it as to my credit with her, sincerely wish her curiosity could be satisfied sooner than is now probable. I think she will like my Elinor, but cannot build on any thing else.

For many Emma Thompson embodied Elinor Dashwood perfectly

Let us give thanks to Cassandra here for becoming restless under her sister’s silence and demanding to know what’s happening with that book production, or nothing would be in this letter about this book.

***********************

1995 Miramax S&S: John and Fanny Dashwood (James Fleet, Harriet Walter) discuss the inheritance promise well before coming to Norland.

She moves quickly on to another topic. And we get a long vignette for Austen, not jumping off associatively in the way she usually has.

Our party went off extremely well. There were many solicitudes, alarms & vexations beforehand of course, but at last everything was quite right. The rooms were dressed up with flowers &c, & looked very pretty. — A glass for the Mantlepeice was lent, by the Man who is making their own.-M’ Egerton & M’ Walter came at l/2 past 5, & the festivities began with a pof very fine Soals. Yes, Mr Walter – -for he postponed his leaving London on purpose — which did not give much pleasure at the time, any more than the circumstance from which it rose, his calling on Sunday & being asked by Henry to take the family dinner on that day, which he did, ­but it is all smooth’d over now;-& she likes him very well.-’

To me it’s telling how even the man doing well at this point (Henry) with his wife with her inherited monies, is still lending a glass mirror for over the mantelpiece. What they ate. Who came. I’m interested here to see also how even these networking gentry types or maybe I should say especially are solicitous of the least relative’s feelings. Mr Walter is related to Henry through Henry’s father’s mother and her first husband. Not that they were eager to have him for real (by which I mean any genuine feeling or friendship) for Mr Walter’s postponing his leaving gave no pleasure at the time nor why (alas we are not told about this). It seems this man’s vanity was ruffled, his amour-propre at a lack of invitation until that Sunday. Was Eliza as the known daughter (on the other side of the blanket) the cause? or the fashionable Hans Place? or just this feeling some people have of tenacious rights & a place to whatever is going however little in reality they might enjoy themselves there? Eliza now says she likes him very well. (What else could she say?) They ate fancy fish.

Then the paid entertainment and deliberately late coming upper class ones — rather like Darcy and his party who appear late in P&P and Lord and Lady Osborne who appear late in The Watsons. Austen notes these musisians come in a hackney coach so she’s bought into these values herself as she described:

At 11 past 7 arrived the Musicians in two Hackney coaches, & by 8 the lordly Company began to appear.

Then Austen’s happy time or what she enjoyed of this party: Mary Cooke was someone she wanted to be friends with we know, to bring back to Chawton. They sit in the connecting passage — reminding me of Emma (LeFaye quotes a book by Winifred Watson, JA in London which describes this Sloane Street apartment). Here she admits to the heat. The place the party was in was a small close area for 66 people.

Among the earliest were George & Mary Cooke, & I spent the greatest part of the evening very pleasantly with them. — The Drawg room being soon hotter than we liked, we placed ourselves in the connecting Passage,’ which was comparatively cool, & gave us all the advantage of the Music at a pleasant distance, as well as that of the first veiw of every new comer. — I was quite surrounded by acquaintance, especially Gentlemen; & what with Mr Hampson, M’ Seymour, M’ W. Knatchbull, M’ Guillemarde, M’ Cure, a Cap’ Simpson, brother to the Capt Simpson, besides M’ Walter & M’ Egerton, in addition to the Cookes & Miss Beckford & Miss Middleton, I had quite as much upon my hands as I could do. –

Quite the belle of the ball, no? Her description of herself surrounded by gentleman puts me in mind of Scarlett O’Hara surrounded by her beaux at the opening of GWTW.The list of men around her and her evident delight suggests I was not wrong about how she disliked assembly balls early on when she was snubbed. No snubbing now. She is the sister of the man running the party, Henry the banker, ex-military man with all his wife’s French friends: Note they are all either family, or business connections, or relatives and or maiden ladies

Not so keen on this maiden ladies though. Of Miss Beckford we are told

Poor Miss B. has been suffering again from her old complaint, & looks thinner than ever. She certainly goes to Cheltenham the beginning of June. We were all delight & cordiality of course.

Her tone acknowledges the phoniness of the moment:

Then Miss Middleton comes in for her share of the barbs:

Miss M. seems very happy, but has not beauty enough to figure in London.

No indeed.

Including everybody we were 66 — which was considerably more than Eliza had expected, & quite enough to fill the Back Drawg room, & leave a few to be scattered about in the other, & in the passage. –

Two drawing rooms full and one passage. I think Austen mentioned a figure in the 80s so that was really on the outside. Eliza had not expected about a quarter of the people she invited to come. (Interesting to me who has never given such a party and hardly ever gone to any such if at all that I can remember.)

And instead of saying how she fled the music, and was not such a hypocrite to pretend, she enters into it through her play-games with Fanny. If you think I am hard and misrepresenting the tone and undercurrents of this pay attention to those last lines: all the Performers gave great satisfaction by doing what they were paid to do.”

The Music was extremely good. It opened (tell Fanny) with “Prike pe Parp pin praise pof Prapela” -& of the other Glees I remember, “In peace Love tunes,” “Rosabelle,” ‘”The red cross Knight,” & “Poor Insect.” Between the Songs were =-.essons on the Harp, or Harp & Piano Forte together-& the Harp Player was Wiepart, whose name seems famous, tho’ new to me.­- There was one female singer, a short Miss Davis all in blue, bringing up for the Public Line, whose voice was said to be very fine indeed; & all the Performers gave great satisfaction by doing what they were paid for, & giving themselves no airs.-No Amateur could be persuaded to do anything. —

Those who suggest Austen was unqualifiedly after money should read these lines; as in other instances, what was good for the gander is not good for her goose — she can sneer at others working for money but when she works for it it’s just fine. And she does not like airs. I would agree that she would not have in public nor in these letters does she. She was very proud in the way of Elizabeth Bennet. That no one unpaid would sing is brought in. I cannot tell if this is a barb at those who do what they are paid to do with the idea they wouldn’t were they not paid or about the fear people have of performing lest others in their minds think less of them.

She concludes her description of the party which she now accounts for by implying that Cassandra wanted this — because she couldn’t be there:

he House was not clear till after 12. — If you wish to hear are of it, you must put your questions, but I seem rather to have exhausted than spared the subject.

The couple of moments of exhilaration were more than made up for by the weariness she experienced and her intensity of experiencing everything alertly through a disillusioned point of view by its end.

**********************

I Have Found It: our first view of Tabu as Sowmya (Elinor): two sisters have been bathing in their mansion-house: she does not know why her body’s obligation as a woman is any less than her intellect’s.

After accounting for the party, Austen turns to naval or political news. What was told her at the party about this is separated off:

This said Capt. Simpson told us, the authority of some other Captn just arrived from Halifax, that Charles was bringing the Cleopatra home, & that she was probably by this time in the Channel — but as Capt. S. was certainly in liquor, we must not quite depend on it. — It must give one a sort of expectation however, & will prevent my writing to him any more.-I would rather he should not reach England till I am at home, & the Steventon party gone.

This has several layers. Jane would rather greet her brother from the security and framework of the Chawton home — the family stronghold, the family grounds and privacy as it were – than outside it. She says she need not write to him anymore. She is not eager to, and it may be noted that whatever she wrote this younger brother has not survived. At this point Charles had been married to Fanny for about 4 years: they were married in 1807. By 1810 they have two children and (possibly) she is pregnant with the third She is at sea with him — it should be noted. (The article to read is by Kaplan, Persuasions 14 (1992):113-21) so it’s a case of her coming back with him. She is not mentioned by Austen at all and Kaplan says everyone understood he did not have the income to pay for living quarters (Later in life Francis lived at Chawton itself — on Edward’s inheritance as did his sisters and mother).

And now for the painful part of this letter.

My Mother & Martha both write with great satisfaction of Anna’s behaviour. She is quite an Anna with variations — but she cannot have reached her last, for that is always the most flourishing & shewey — she is at about her 3d or 4th which are generally simple & pretty. —

The flourishing and shewy Anna. Austen forgets her childhood, her cutting off of her hair in 1808 (age 15, a very hard year) and how the assembly balls Anna went to were nothing to hers. The language here echoes the language of the 2nd poem to Anna. The condescension is strong. Anna of course does not get to go to London (as she did not to Godmersham in 1808) For the poem see Letter 113; for more on the relationship of Anna and Jane, letters 104, 107, 108, and the collaboration of Sir Charles Grandison.

It seems just now Anna is obeying: “great satisfaction. So the couple of sentences are softened by the last two adjectives: Anna’s third and fourth variation are “generally simple and pretty.” Martha appeared as a rigid disciplinarian and older women to Catherine Anne Hubback when Frank married her (see Zoe Klippert’s An Englishwoman in Canada: Letters of Catherine Hubback, 1871-76); neither she or Anna could have any inkling of Martha as the lovely spirited young women whom her aunt’s spirits leapt out to; Martha by then had become older and behaved as a disciplinarian and probably she seemed something of this by 1811.

Your Lilacs are in leaf, ours are in bloom. — The Horse chesnuts are quite out, & the Elms almost. –I had a pleasant walk in Kensington G’ on Sunday with Henry, M’ Smith & M’Tilson — everythingwas fresh & beautiful.­

These are Henry’s friends. Austen is beating her sister out — it seems London is in bloom first. Part Three of Sense and Sensibility has Elinor walking in Kensington Gardens.

Then the lines about the plays and then the museum. The play is Isaac Bickerstaffe adapted from Cibber. Pretty bad. The distance from Moliere by this time huge — Shadwell comes close. These later adaptations were shortened and emasculated. I note that Austen goes to plays with a popular point of view. She does not pay attention to the play but the player. She does admire Siddons who was known for her projection of intensity of emotion (thats the point of the role of Constance in King John).

We did go to the play after all on Saturday, we went to the Lyceum, & saw the Hypocrite, an old play taken from Moliere’s Tartuffe, & were well entertained. Dowton & Mathews were the good actors. Mrs Edwin was the Heroine-& her performance is just what it used to be.-I have no chance of seeing Mrs Siddons. — She did act on Monday, but as Henry was told by the Boxkeeper that he did not think she would, the places, & all thought of it, were given up. I should particularly have liked seeing her in Constance, & could swear at her with little effort for disappointing me.

Lefaye notes there were two watercolor societies; the one started in 1808-9 had an exhibition for “the associated artists.” Austen did like landscapes, and among the materials on Sanditon is a comment by her about the man who might have been the source of Mr Parker, Ogle: she says he has no need of panoramas, meaning he need not go look at paintings since he owns so much shipping and spends so much time at seascapes for real – including Worthing. Miss Beaty is the sister or daughter of one of Henry’s friends, a Captain (so known from militia days); Henry’s bank also made a payment of 50 pounds to this captain in 1804.

– Henry has been to the Watercolour Exhibition, which open’d on Monday, & is to meet us there again some morn — If Eliza cannot go –( & she has a cold at present) Miss Beaty will be invited to be my companion. –

Cassandra has been asking what are Henry’s plans, but Austen puts her off. She will not herself be expansive and is aware that she might say offend were she to tell Henry’s plan. The awareness of her place as a guest comes next. She cannot send the muslim unless Cassandra really wants it because she’d have to send it by coach and that would give trouble (cost money)

Henry leaves Town on Sunday afternoon­ but he means to write soon himself to Edward – -& will tell his own plans. — The Tea is this moment setting out.-Do not have your cold muslin unless you really want it, because I am afraid I Could not send it to the Coach without giving trouble here. –

There follows the account of why Eliza is under the weather and the near accident. That she is so reactive reminds us that she did not have long to live. By this time her little son is dead 10 years. He died around the time the Austens left Steventon for Bath. A hard year for all, that.

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In I have Found It: Srinivasan and Nalli (the equivalent of John and Fanny Dashwood) discussing how little they can give their mother-in-law and her daughters

The letter ends on two vignettes and enigmatic references to family politics combined with dropped comments on Austen’s plans to leave Sloan Street for Catherine Bigg and then home to Chawton. Muted sarcasm and coolness throughout comes out again and again. A quietly apart, estranged presence. This is what this woman has grown into in maturity — guarded.

Eliza caught her cold on Sunday in our way to the D’Entraigues; — the Horses actually gibbed on this side of Hyde Park Gate — a load of fresh gravel made it a formidable Hill to them, & they refused the collar; — I beleive there was a sore shoulder to irritate. — Eliza was frightened, & we got out-& were detained in the Eveng air several minutes.- The cold is in her chest ­but she takes care of herself, & I hope it may not last long.- This engagement prevented M’ Walter’s staying late-he had his coffee & went away. –

Gibbing is pulling back. The details intuitively picked out make us feel the misery of these horses, though Austen’s words about this are not at all necessarily sympathetic. Southey in his Letters from England talks of our horses are made to work on with their skin in terrible state. Austen saw that sore shoulder being whipped or pushed and prodded on. It seems cousin Eliza (now aged what — 50?) was made nervous by this and is said to have caught cold. The relative who had forced himself on them anyway didn’t stay. Had his coffee and went away.

They did get to the D’Entraignes (see LeFaye p 514, the biographical index).

Eliza enjoyed her evening very much & means to cultivate the acquaintance — & I see nothing to dislike in them, but their taking quantities of snuff. — Monsieur the old Count, is a very fine looking man, with quiet manners, good enough for an Englishman — & I beleive is a Man of great Information & Taste. He has some fine Paintings, which delighted Henry as much as the Son’s music gratified Eliza-& among them, a Miniature of Philip 5. of Spain, Louis 14.s Grandson, which exactly suited my capacity. — Count Julien’s performance is very wonderful. We met only Mrs Latouche & Miss East — & we are just now engaged to spend next Sunday Eveng at M” L.s-& to meet the D’Entraigues; — but M. Ie Comte must do without Henry. If he would but speak English, I would take to him.-

When they got there, Eliza enjoyed it very much. She will “cultivate” this acquaintance. Austen not so enthusiastic. (She reminds me of Elinor Dashwood here). She sees nothing to dislike but their taking quantities of snuff. Which makes us aware of how physically smelly they were. Austen disgusted by this. Apparently Henry was with them (yet he’s not mentioned in the vignette of the accident). Austen shows only grudging appreciation of a highly educated man of fine taste with real art and knowledge of the world. This man or his type does not appear in any of her novels. Maybe she didn’t go to that gathering with highly intelligent well-educated people where Henry wanted to take her to meet De Stael for more reasons than she thought she would not fit in (not used to it — “wild beast” that she is). Perhaps intimidated? perhaps she does not see what the man is. What we take to be modesty and self-deprecation (as when she says she is not well read meaning the reality that she has no latin and none of the academic type learning so respected then) here emerges as an instinctive suspicio or the result of years of exclusion.

Only miniatures for her. This though could be is also the result of many years hidden injuries and exclusions. She would never have a miniature. Only Cassandra sketched her.

[Joke digression: Bryne has not picked this passage up! (She has not read the letters with alert attentiveness to what does not flatter her.) Here is Austen looking at a miniature and saying this is just my capacity! (ironic joke alert). Now naive people that we are we think she is simply looking half-resentful; no it was here she hatched that plan to have a miniature made of her in secret.]

She keeps herself apart: it was Henry who delighted in the pictures, Eliza who was gratified with the music. Perhaps Austen saw them as posturing, as not emotionally completely honest here. LeFaye in her notes does not tell us who Count Julien was. She does not single him out (LeFaye seems to think society is families period.) Perhaps one of the performers? perhaps one of the family. They did not get to meet Count Julien it seems but only another relative, Mrs Latouche and her daughter called Miss East (p 543). Why? on account of her marrying a baronet (reminds me of Bleak House and Sir Leicester Dedlock baronet), but then she’d be an honorary Lady or at least Mrs.

Now next Sunday they all will go to the lodgings of the LaTouches, but they will have to do without Henry. (Business).

And then the concession:

If he would but speak English I would take to him.

We see early on in the paragraph that there is xenophobia or anti-French feeling here. The man’s manners were “good enough for an Englishman”! what more can she say? In other passages she describes typical English men as rowdy, aggressive, domineering … I wonder what M. L’Entraignes and his wife thought of Miss Austen. Certainly they did their best to entertain her.

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2008 BBC S&S: does anyone surmise this Fanny (Claire Skinner) partakes of something of Austen?

The tone is muted sarcasm. Two sentences later she recurs to the evening and says:

Eliza has just spoken of it again. — The Benefit she has found from it in sleeping, has been very great. (Italics Austen’s)

Underlining she leaves a distance from Austen. “It” presumably refers to not drinking tea, but I’m not sure that “Eliza has spoken of it again” refers to Mrs K’s tea-drinking but rather the whole evening which benefitted Eliza so.

The whole of this last occasionally somewhat puzzling paragraph runs:

Have you ever mentioned the leaving off Tea to M” K.? — Eliza has just spoken of it again. — The Benefit she has found from it in sleeping, has been very great. I shall write soon to Catherine to fix my day, which will be Thursday.-We have no engagements but for Sunday. Eliza’s cold makes quiet adviseable. — Her party is mentioned in this morning’s paper. — I am sorry to hear of poor Fanny’s state. – -From that quarter I suppose is to be the alloy of her happiness. — I will have no more to say. —

The beloved (by both sisters, and for her generosity) Mrs Knight is an elderly elderly lady by this time. She had been so ill in a previous letter as they feared she’d die. Austen now writes in response to something Cassandra wrote (we should recall Cassandra destroyed all her own letters but two — the others that survived were out of her control). Then Austen reports she will write to Catherine Bigg to fix her day of arrival. No more engagements but that following Sunday as Eliza has a cold. We may wonder if there was some underlying condition She died two years later (aged 52). She is part of “le monde” — “her party mentioned in the paper.”

And then turning at last to Godmersham news. Fanny not in a good state? Well there must be some alloy in some lives. Austen has a hard comment to make here but refrains: “I _will_ have no more to say …” Perhaps about young men? perhaps about her position in the household — discipline pressed on her?

Austen closes with a pointed conveyance of love to her god-daughter, Louisa Austen Knight, one of Edward’s brood whom Cassandra is now caring for.

The letter is directed to Edward Austen at Godmersham.

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Irene Richards as Elinor (1981 BBC S&S): I like her in the role

This letter is another which divides into sections with vignettes that may be excerpted — this is not that common for Austen the way it is for more performative letter-writers. She still does not take the time to make a fully realized dramatic scene the way Burney does and does not work out her thoughts the way say Anne Grant or many another letter-writer does on issues I’ll call them which come up (there are opportunities here to talk of paintings, or acting, or songs). But there is more willingness to expatiate in these vignette sectioned letters. She’s an impatient letter writer as she’s an immanent novel writer.

We see the same continually sceptical frame of mind we’ve seen throughout, with the same reluctance to be pleased, as when she now has met a genuinely interesting informed perceptive man with real taste, a decent collection of paintings, a relative who actually can play, it takes several clauses before she breaks down to say to say “If he would but speak English, I would take to him …” There is also real hardness towards Anna, Eliza, the Miss Curlings. The joke about the baby boy is not pleasant. Austen (as we have before) is her taking a mean family view towards an individual’s hurt and bewilderment (Anna) and reaching out for love relationships; when Austen did this (Tom Lefroy) she would have liked sympathy but in her guarded way pretended to dismiss her emotion. Anna does not. And there’s something pettily triumphant we’ve seen before (with respect to Anna) over the Miss Curlings. She tosses her head and preens: the novelty of writing so many letters is nothing to her.

We do see some real pleasure in the party, in London environs (Kensington “everything fresh and beautiful”), a lively interest in actors, a sense of the reality of the horse, near turn over of her and Eliza’s carriage, Eliza’s anxiety
and fright (you could have a very bad accident even die from an overturn) standing on the pavement. Still in this great moment of her “suckling child” come home to her with her scarce ability to still her intense excitement as the book is in printing I did expect the more or less unqualified cheer of the previous letter to continue.

She is in herself secretive, hidden and does not want (trust) anyone to know for sure where her real allegiances lie.

So, to try a little to get beyond or beneath this: Jane Austen took on board her family’s values of conventionality; she had no other. She never went to a school where she could reach another point of view, was literally not allowed associates who had them. It was from her nature as well as circumstances unthinkable for her to break away — some women did, but often we find their family life was hard, deprived. In her (later) letters to Fanny Austen Knight there is this chilling idea that Anna Austen Lefroy must now spend hours of her existence disciplining one of her children (Jemima) to make her into what the family wants her to be. (There is a similar observation found now and again in Trollope about mothers really punishing girls until these girls are what they want, censoring all that comes near them to
do it.) So I take this presentation of social life as her conventionality (and also how she treated Anna in her poem about her) and find in Letter 71 many barbs at it too, instinctive, irresistible.

A telling aspect of Hubback’s Younger Sister (revealing sequel to The Watsons) is how Hubback combines Austen’s Emma Watson with Anne Elliot to show someone not just tortured by those around her emotionally, absolutely turning from what is in front of her with boredom, but disliking intensely their values in the spirit of Elinor Dashwood. (My next blog will be on two Austen sequels.)

A picture is worth a thousand words. There’s that portrait of Austen by Cassandra – an honest one. A worn-woman, having a bad day, but one which shows she had many bad days and bad nights (there are three poems on headaches, one on her own migraine to be specific just before the publication of Sense and Sensibility” “When stretch’d on one’s bed,” Later Manuscripts, Cambridge ed, 253-54). Tight, arms crossed, grated by the demand she sit there. The other is better because she did not have to show her face she didn’t want to.

Yes in general she is so much more fulfilled in this second half of her letters — partly because she is feeling some respect and a modicum of power at last. Not much, she’s still utterly dependent (has to smooth her way to leaving) and she is still very jealous of those whose work is valued more than her or as much when she feels so strongly her genius. She’s not a very nice person by the way (in the general way we use that word nice), not herself empathizing with others in her predicament, instead she is one of those who inflicts on others what was inflicted on her, partly softened. Maybe she did try to save Anna from the marriage to Ben (in the later comments I quoted in the commentary on the 6 letters) but not on the grounds she could have and then when the girl still sought the only escape route offered (not an escape), Austen did not help her.

The archive for Jane Austen’s letters

Ellen

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