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 usable scholarly resource.

Ellen

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Pierre Goubert: Jane Austen: etude psychologique de la romanciere (Part 1)

Emma Woodhouse as drawn in Isabelle Ballester’s Les nombreux mondes de Jane Austen

Dear friends and readers,

I’ve been wanting to bring together my notes in English on this useful study of Austen’s psychological and ethical ideas in her fiction. Pierre Goubert has also translated Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (La Coeur et la raison), Lady Susan and Austen’s early History of England. He is the general editor of Volume 1 of the Austen Pleiade. In his etude psychologique he studies her texts with the greatest care, beginning with the novels as coming out of her reaction to the romance heroines of her era.

The book is a successful attempt to describe the fundamental mentality of Austen. In this he succeeds even if you might disagree with that or that particular point. for myself I find the usual flaws which result from hagiography; it’s also a very conservative take on Austen (so there is the usual tendency to excuse, defend, explain away & ignore things that make him uncomfortable).

There are many good insights as he goes along: for example, in her books he finds a strong “feeling she is not completely accepted by those she’s surrounded by, and that the heroines nourish a sorrow coming out of a secret love with which the reader alone is complicit.” He also senses “La solitude et sa detresse qui donne l’atmosphere de cette reflexion. C’est encore une impression de solitude and abandon qui provoke l’elan de” her characters (p. 200).

Prologue: He sees the Juvenilia, her contributions to The Loiterer and an engagement with Grandison as the first stages in her growth as an artist as a girl. He claims, contrary to what is thought, that the Juvenilia have sources in two novels, and thus in this early work she is imitating others as well as parodying romance in general too.

This is the first blog of 2 blogs on this book. The first part of Goubert’s book is about Austen’s response to the heroines of romance which he thinks is the core of her first impulse. As a woman she was intensely bothered by this stereotype; it was what was put before her as a model, and she worked to produce a heroine she preferred and reasons why this heroine’s traits and behavior will produce happiness. The second blog will be on how she presents that heroine coping with the world and her perception of her era’s understanding of the underlying psychology of ethics: how does she see imagination, judgement, sensibility, reason.

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Chapters 1 & 2: He begins with her fierce literalist verisimilitude theory and moral doctrinal core. These , he thinks, are her way of justifying an art she was devoting her life to. They are a cover. She knew novels were despised and she had no other articulated justification. He is aware how minutely and intensely she keeps time and arranges space, but he thinks the present P&P does not show it was originally epistolary (p 38). Goubert’s idea is brilliance of her psychology stems from scrutinized use of verisimilitude; rather the two (her content) with this emerge together. She employs gradualism in time as one of her main resources.

Her style is simple, clear, natural; her vigor depends on concision. No cant, no cliches, nor pretension to culture she doesn’t have and a refusal to yield to what’s popular. She is hostile to the language of emotion and we feel in her an embarrassment when she is called upon to be emotional.

He ignores the content of the Juvenilia — and generalizes to see a parody of romance. He does not see where she does use the language of picturesque however restrainedly in NA, and gothic too, though he recognizes a change in Persuasion: pathetic lyricism becomes less singular.

Fanny Price as drawn in Isabelle Ballester’s Les nombreux mondes

Chapter 3, Her reactions to heroine of romance:

Austen from the beginning prefers to place women at the center than men, but she mocks the typical heroine of the lending library book as does Mary Brunton. He sees her books, her writing as coming out of reactions against heroines of the lending library. This was what 1818 an early reviewer reacting to when he singles Austen out for no “deep interest, uncommon characters, vehement passions.”

Center of Austen’s novels is a reaction against the heroine type: someone in distress, of strong sensibility, fragile (delicate); people whose nerves are shot (Anne Elliot’s are though). He remarks on how many hypochrondriacs we have; all abuse the patience of the other characters. This repeated protest against their egoism (Mr Woodhouse, Mary Musgrove) makes him wonder if there is a source for this in Austen’s private life. He thinks the source Mrs Austen in the letters, uses word romantic disdainfully. Also an absence of tact is intensely important to Austen (Collins has none); Darcy’s 1st proposal lacks tact. Brandon has exemplary discretion, marvelous tact.

Austen uses the word romance and romantic disdainfully. Word passion is used ironically; she does not call what Marianne feels “passion;” the word is used acidly in Sanditon. She sees people’s assertions of strong passion as hypocritical. She is not against strong emotion, but how these assertions are used to justify actions and behavior, as for example Edward Denham’s “Man’s determined pursuit of Woman in defiance of every opposition of feeling and convenience.”

Kate Winslet as Marianne Dashwood looking at Brandon reading poetry (1995 S&S)

She uses phrases for sincere feeling like “strong feeling,” “strength of feelingg,” “strong attachment”; a stability of sentiments accompanies an acuity of perception. Characters who manifest this include Brandon, Darcy, Mr Knightley; Jane Bennet; Elinor Dashwood, Fanny (who feels these things too deeply), Marianne Dashwood too; Emma does not think Harriet nature of “that superior sort” in which “feelings most acute and retentive.”

Lending library heroine an enemy of reserve, has a seductive vivacity, willed enthusiasm. Austen treats with irony these pretensions of no reserve, to act this way is to offer yourself up as a victim (Marianne). She concurs with era’s ideals of openness (ease in society), but “popular manners” like Crawford and Mr Elliot’s should put us on our guard. Goubert thinks Austen admires “good manners”; Darcy not timid but not willing to make himself appear to care so quickly. She feels for timid and reserved people and rejoices when feelings liberated. She is weary of the sympathy that attaches itself to the gay and animated person.

It’s not the ardour or warmth Austen objects to but the lack of constraint, moderation, a blindness to the “prosaic realities of existence. He quotes passages showing Austen’s delight in ardour and warmth, she “prizes” them. Marianne recognizes that she brought her griefs and near death upon herself; it’s the pose that bothers Austen. She does allow as credible Anne Elliot’s desire to stay in country and enjoy the melancholy of the season, does create in her work an atmosphere of melancholy. Across her career she moves from being against abandoning oneself to this, to finding liberation in ardour.

Catherine Morland in Isabelle Ballester’s Les Nombreux Mondes

Heroines of lending libraries make professions of friendship and these Austen repeatedly distrusts. Real friendship discriminates based on inner sincerity. Friends must be intellectually alike (p 202):, there must be reciprocation (Bingley, Darcy), but one should not use a power of age or authority over the other (Lady Russell over Anne (p 203). There is a hardly a friendship in all the works which is not weighed, balanced, judged. He does feel her interest in real friendship among women needs explanation: Mrs Weston talks of the need for solid companionship with another woman (the comfort of it).

Goubert thinks the celebration of female love/friendship the result of her solitude; he thinks critics have denied her desire for erotic love with man because she wants to found love on reason. Nothing stops us from believing JA perfectly sincere when she says Marianne learned to love Brandon.

Supposed Elizabeth Bennet, from Les nombreux mondes

Her favored characters do not fall in love because someone is sick or another falls; they appreciate qualities that make good husbands and wives. Emma very impressed with Knightley’s humanity; Darcy with Elizabeth’s concern for her sister; Henry Crawford notes Fanny’s unselfishness. They recognize the riches of another’s heart — Willoughby revealed “un homme au coeur dur” Characters evolve and change in their feelings.

While love a central preoccupation of the novels, Austen doesn’t produce romantic lovers. Love grows from gratitude; from being liked by the other, from their position in the world too. She want to provide a stable reasonable constructed love.

A French distinction at the heart of Austen’s understanding of love: there are men who respect women and men who use them as toys and objects of use (p 223); she wants to separate the egoistic passion from the generous one. But the lover who watches over and teaches the heroine (Knightly, Bertram, Tilney) belongs to Female Quixote school of novels.

Seducers in Jane Austen hurt themselves. Genlis says it’s a cruelty to try to inspire feelings in someone that you do not reciprocate. Really male coquettes. This type does bother her: Stanley, Tom Musgrave. That Frank Churchill attempted to make Emma like him on false pretenses is condemned … She seems to think such men charming.

She stays away from world of seduced women, fallen women seen onl from afar.

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Anne Elliot, again image from Les Nombreux Mondes

Goubert says Austen felt one must make quick rebound after death. (He does not say this but I’d add perhaps she did not approve of Henry’s grief after Eliza’s death and made him uncomfortable). She endorses the social duty not to stay alone and to confide in another. Se does look to find distraction in the outer world, to mix, openings to world exterior, but no more. People must struggle to overcome grief — lacks dignity for a start, you lose respect of others to show such need and vulnerability (Emma to Harriet). Cassanda’s attitudes reinforced this. Compassion a religious duty, yet Austen hardly believes it’s really possible. Her better heroines simply act to help others.

He suggests there is something abusive of individual in the accent of determination and repression that Austen insists on in all but her last two books. He excuses her on the grounds that families really had to live with one another, on one another, and her experience of not being able to break off from them at all. And we see her sympathy for Anne Elliot.

She is sympathetic to a need for interior peace. Austen herself does not like noise, especially that of children nor commotion; does not want to seek attention on the self. He feels she was a stranger to melancholy; she looked upon it as strange. I don’t know. I feel he’s wrong here. I feel he’s ignoring the depressive Fanny, Anne, Jane Fairfax, Eleanor Tilney: they control themselves. Elinor is not exactly gay and lighthearted.

She will not show full depression lest we reject the heroine; she protests against hypocrisy of showing depths of feelings, not that these do not sometimes exist. He says she is without pity for Charlotte Lucas’s lack of delicacy in marrying Collins. Later she’s more willing to grant portrayals of melancholy, sensibility, cordiality, spontaneity as valuable. How to appear before the world seems to be a question in the last two novels begun & reaching some degree of finish: Emma and Persuasion

Hattie Morahan as Elinor Dashwood (2008 S&S)

Necessary to be patient and to endure. The point is to establish the precious interior peace. Austen does not seek refuge or a rampart; she does not believe this exists in the modern sense, but reason: acceptance of the world as it is. She is aware of the importance of the qualities of the heart; a sensibility generous really concerned for the well being of another insofar as we are able, but she is drawn to characters who contain their depth of feeling; to characters ardent and spontaneous.

Ellen

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Austen’s Letters to Anna Lefroy: Letter 104, Wed-Thurs, 10-18 August 1814 & Lefroy’s Mary Hamilton

Dear friends and readers,

The third letter by Austen to Anna in Todd and Bree’s introduction (see Letter 103) is a long detailed reaction to Anna’s 6 booklets (put together just as Austen did her manuscripts) in which we can view how Austen consciously thought about her own novels.

My dear Anna

I am quite ashamed to find that I have never answered some questions of yours in a former note. — I kept the note on purpose to refer to it at a proper time, & then forgot. I like the name Which is the Heroine? very well, & I dare say shall grow to like it very much in time — but Enthusiasm was something so very superior that every common Title must appear to disadvantage. — I am not sensi­ble of any Blunders about Dawlish. The Library was particu­larly pitiful & wretched 12 years ago, & not likely to have any­body’s publication. — There is no such title as Desborough­ — either among the Dukes, Marquises, Earls, Viscounts or Barons. — These were your enquiries. — I will now thank for your Envelope, received this morning. — hope Mr W. D. will come. — I can readily imagine Mr H, D. may by very like a profligate Young Lord — I dare say the likeness will be “beyond every thing”. –Your Aunt Cass is as well pleased with St Julian as ever. I am delighted with the idea of seeing Progillian again.

Wednesday 17. — We have just finished the 1st part of the 3 books I had the pleasure of receiving yesterday; I read it aloud — & we are all very much amused, &like the work quite as well as ever. — I depend upon getting through another book before dinner, but there is really a great deal of respectable reading in your 48 Pages. I was an hour about it. — I have no doubt that 6. will make a very good sized volume. — You must be quite pleased to have accomplished so much. — I like Lord P. & his Brother very much; — I am only afraid that Lord P’s good nature will make most people like him better than he deserves. — The whole Portman Family are very good — & Lady Anne, who was your great dread, you have succeeded particularly well with. — Bell Griffin is just what she should be. — My Corrections have not been more impor­tant than before; — here & there, we have thought the sense might be expressed in fewer words-and I have scratched out Sir Thomas from walking with the other Men to the Sta­bles &c the very day after his breaking his arm — for though I find your Papa did walk out immediately after his arm was set, I think it can be so little usual as to appear unnatural in a book-& it does not seem to be material that Sir Thomas should go with them. — Lyme will not do. Lyme is towards 40 miles distance from Dawlish & would not be talked of there. — I have put Starcross indeed. If you prefer Exeter, that must be always safe. — I have also scratched out the Introduction between Lord P. & his Brother, & Mr Griffin. A Country Surgeon (don’t tell Mr C. Lyford) would not be introduced to Men of their rank. — And when Mr Portman is first brought in, he would not be introduced as the Honble­. That distinction is never mentioned at such times; — at least I beleive not.

– Now, we have finished the 2d book — or rather the 5th — I do think you had better omit Lady Helena’s postscript; — to those who are acquainted with P.&P. it will seem an Imitation. — And your Aunt C. & I both recom­mend your making a little alteration in the last scene between Devereux F. & Lady Clanmurray & her Daughter. We think they press him too much more than sensible Women or well-bred Women would do. Lady C. at least, should have discretion enough to be sooner satisfied with his determina­tion of not going with them. — I am very much pleased with Egerton as yet –. I did not expect to like him, but I do; & Susan is a very nice little animated Creature — but St Julian is the delight of one’s Life. He is quite interesting. — The whole of his Break-off with Lady H. is very well done. –

Yes — Russel Square is a very proper distance from Berke­ley St. — We are reading the last book. — They must be two days going from Dawlish to Bath; They are nearly 100 miles apart.

Thursday. We finished it last night, after our return from drinking tea at the Gt House. — The last chapter does not please us quite so well, we do not thoroughly like the Play; perhaps from having had too much of Plays in that way lately. — And we think you had better not leave England. Let the Portmans go to Ireland, but as you know nothing of the manners there, you had better not go with them. You will be in danger of giving false representations. Stick to Bath & the Foresters. There you will be quite at home.- Your Aunt C. does not like desultory novels, &is rather fearful yours will be too much so, that there will be too frequent a change from one set of people to another, & that circumstances will be sometimes introduced of apparent consequence, which will lead to nothing. — It will not be so great an objection to me, if it does. I allow much more Latitude than she does — & think Nature & Spirit cover many sins of a wandering story — and People in general do not care so much about it-for your com­fort. I should like to have had more of Devereux. I do not feel enough acquainted with him. — You were afraid of meddling with him I dare say. — I like your sketch of Lord Clanmurray, and your picture of the two poor young girls enjoyments is very good. — I have not yet noticed St Julian’s serious con­versation with Cecilia, but I liked it exceedingly; — what he says about the madness of otherwise sensible Women, on the subject of their Daughters coming out, is worth it’s weight in gold. — I do not see that the language sinks. — Pray go on.
          Yours very affectionately J.Austen

Postscript: Twice you have put Dorsetshire for Devonshire. I have altered it. — Mr Griffth must have lived in Devonshire; Dawlish is half way down the County –

On this novel as a note Fanny Caroline Lefroy (Anna’s daughter) wrote:

‘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)

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Possibly Anna Lefroy’s house

Although Which is the Heroine no longer exists, Lefroy’s Mary Hamilton (a short novella, published 1833/34, A Winter’s Tale (1841) and Spring Tide do exist, and I was able to read the first two to get some idea beyond Anna’s continuation of Sanditon, what Anna’s fictional gifts and preoccupations might be.

This short novella is a gem of genuinely felt emotion and examined thought (on Graham’s part, not Ross’s – Ross moves by his good instincts). In comparison to Austen’s Anna’s art is indeed strongly overtly emotional. Austen’s are emotional books, but the emotion is contained and presented through sharp dry ironies. The story is simple and even seems natural until you realize a host of improbabilities are part of it. The narrator, a young man become middle aged (supposed by his early 30s) returns from India after he has inherited one of two estates he grew up on and he re-meets the people he knew 15 years before. Harry Tracey is his name and he has inherited Knightswood. He had been given this place in India to keep him away from a cousin, Julia, now still unmarried. He half-imagines he will find and marry her.

Much of the story is told by Hannah, a servant in the old household arrangements, now living in a poor cottage alone. This makes the feel of the text Bronte-like – the interface, the backward glance taking the narrator up to the present. Through Hannah’s tale, Harry does find his Julia but now in love with a clergyman whom she asks him to help find a place and he does. But he also finds others whose fates surprise him: some marry sheerly for money and to be with someone of high status — the heir to Beauchamps — but the moral lesson is she is a bully (so he’s punished) and cold. One distant cousin, Mary Hamilton, a hanger-on, a kind of Fanny Price character, was shunted off to a distant aunt, and she was probably going to be in trouble. He discovers while she has led a life of deprivation, the aunt has been all kindness and the aunt is now dying, with Mary by her side. Of course Mary is a good person and they fall in love and marry.

Mary Hamilton is not filled with action and contains conventionally idealized the characters on my farm. The educational connections with older fiction is strong, there is much easy appeal. They read Mangnall’s Numbers in the nursery and the sense of the world is that of the Austen one. Few people who stick together, only since we do have India as perspective and move through a couple of towns it is not quite so small. It’s more in the attitudes of mind, the narrow fixation upon courtship and several related themes of money, class that hark back to Austen.

On the other hand, the mood is so strikingly different from Austen’s that I wonder what was the mood of Which is the Heroine. In the letter I copied out yesterday and shared it seemed that Anna was writing an imitation of Austen: I discern complicated patterns of relationship among many characters and a comic thrust. Sixteen years later (if the book was written just before publication) Anna has moved away from this sort of texture which is found (by the way) in Hubback’s continuation of Younger Sister, first volume as well as Anna’s own continuation of Sanditon

I was filled with sorrow for Anna and a sense here was a woman who had strong gifts which were never give a real chance to flower by coming before the public in any way. But then I discovered that Anna (to coin Caroline’s phrase from her memoir about their aunt on what happened to the family after Aunt Jane died), she “lost the thread.” Anna’s A Winter’s Tale written in 1841 is embarrassingly bad, absurd. It’s a tale ostensibly meant for children, but its language is too adult; it’s a Christian parable set in the 1srt century AD just filled with anachronisms; the moral is even silly; she is worried about what children will think about how Christianity excludes so many people from being saved and comes up with resignation — at least Pilgrim’s Progress doesn’t go into laments over its cruel eschatology; it has the courage of perverse conviction. So it’s centrally lachrymose too. She has been influenced by historical novels and forgotten Austen’s conjuring her just to write of what she knows, to stay in real experience and probability.

Mary Hamilton makes a striking contrast to the book Austen describes. Which is the heroine has several groups of characrters, they are variously and comically related. Rank. ceremony, money count enormously; we have grotesque characters in Which is the Heroine, and sentimental grave ones.

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Though I cannot get back to Which is the Heroine since it’s been destroyed, I can say now that in Mary Hamilton Austen’s niece was concerned to justify and say how just fine and even better it is to be poor and deprived, to live a life of retreat such as is forced on genteel fringe women like herself (and also Austen) as long as you act generously for then you will have peace, and the fiction shows the world will reward you.

This is a laugh realistically. I remember in Dickens’s Bleak House how Mr Jarndyce tells Skimpole that the whole universe turns out to be a cruel parent to children with no kind responsible near ones right there. But it is in fact the topic Austen has at her core, only what she does is present fairy tales of rich men coming along much more persuasively and at the same time shows the vexations, poisons, distresses, and miseries of such existences stroke by stroke. In her letter to her niece she appears oblivious of any deeper theme in her niece’s (or for that matter) her own work.

Austen’s third letter then does prompt Austen’s own salutary self-appraisal in the words of Elizabeth (P&P, 3:12):

Jane: But why should you wish to persuade me that I feel more than I acknowledge?”
Elizabeth: That is a question which I hardly know how to answer. We all love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing …

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), but all of a grossly literal kind. Austen concentrates on rank and class and literal probability, and she does not at all go outside an immediate apprehension of what is happening in the scenes she alludes to. It’s a narrow perspective relatively barren about themes or content in Anna’s or her own 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.

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Steventon Parsonage (Back view)

I also studied a number of Austen’s other letters to Anna, the letters right before and after letters 76 and 104 and discovered much alienation between Austen and Anna (indeed Austen did favor Fanny Austen Knight). they were not congenial in character; 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.

Indeed she burlesques Anna’s nature in a poem Selwyn is right to say is “mock panegyric” delivering “a mild rebuke” and “gentle warning.” I wonder if the girl saw it as mild and gentle. Austen uses geographical imagery to make fun of Anna. Her judgement “sound’ is also “Thick, black, profound.” She accuses Anna of being too friendly, lending herself out easily to people — a no no for a woman. In the memoir Anna’s brother did not tell who the poem was about. This poem was written right around the time of Letter 71 (Thursday 25 April 1811 Sloane St); Letter 71 uses the same language as the poem about Anna.

The later letters of Austen are cheerful, and many even ebullient. The characterization of them one comes across in most of the biographies as crabbed, old maid jealousies, and rebellious, and the like show people tire of them and don’t go through the second half. Indeed she is reveling with the “fun” she finds with Fanny (just like in Miss Austen Regrets). Nokes may have gotten his ideas about Austen’s character by concentrating on the second half.

But this by no means ends the wry and sharp and cold remarks, the hard satire, and these later letters show an older woman willing to inflict press on Anna what was pressed on her. She wants a community of women all right, but women that are like-minded with her, and that does not include Anna at least not as yet.

Some examples,

In Letter 75 (Thurs, 6 June 1811) we find Austen (tireless in this) trying to set up a community again but failing: “I have given up all idea of Miss Sharpe traveling with You & Martha, for tho’ you are both all compliance with my scheme, yet as you knock off a week from the end of her visit, & Martha rather more from the beginning,the thing is out of the question. It begins with disappointment that Martha cannot leave town until after the 24th (it’s 6 June) and how she hoped to see Cassandra at Chawton the week before. Miss Benn has written. On the other hand she likes Cassandra and Fanny’s bonnets and think “Fanny’s particularly becoming …”

Again at end “Anna does not come home till tomorrow morning – She has written I find to Fanny – but there does not seem to be a great deal to relate of Tuesday …

But there is this: Henry has visited and we are told it was “a great distress” to Mrs Austen that “Anna should be absent, during her Uncle’s visit — a distress I could not share. — She does return from Farringdon till this evening, — and I doubt not, has had plenty of the miscellaneous, unsettled sort of happiness which seems to suit her best” (LeFaye, 4th, p 201)

She would rather not have Anna here. Austen’s individuality did not suit. Nor did her stepmother want Anna when Anna was young. Austen is repeating the behavior of her sister-in-law (rejected in The Watsons in the portrait of the nasty sister-in-law of Emma who leaves her daughter home and lies to her to get out the house).

Letter 90, to Francis Austen (Sat, 25 Sept 1813, from Godmersham):

I take it for granted that Mary has told you of Anna’s engagement to Ben Lefroy. It came upon us without much preparation; — at the same time there was that about her which kept us in a constant preparation for something.-We are anxious to have it go on well, there being as much in his favour as the Chances are likely to give her in any matrimonial connection. I beleive he is sensible, certainly very religious, well connected & with some Independence. — There is an unfortunate dissimularity of Taste between them in one respect which gives us some apprehensions, he hates company & she is very fond of it; — This, with some queerness of Temper on his side & much unsteadiness on hers, is untoward. (p. 241)

Letter 94 (To Cassandra, Tues, 26 Oct 1813, Jane at Godmersham):

“I have had a late account from Steventon, & a baddish one, as far as Ben is concerned. — He has declined a Curacy (apparently highly eligible) which he might have secured against his taking orders — & upon its’ being made rather a serious question, says he has not made up his mind as to taking orders so early — & that if her Father makes a point of it, he must give Anna up rather than do what he does not approve. He must be maddish. They are going on again, at present as before — but it cannot last. — Mary says that Anna is very unwilling to go to Chawton & will get home again as soon as she can …”

Reading this Fanny Caroline Lefroy was driven to defend her mother and father:

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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Miss Austen Regrets: Jane (Olivia Williams) and Fanny Austen (Imogen Poots) confiding in one another (movie based partly on Nokes’s reading of Austen’s letters)

Jane Austen does enjoy herself enormously with Fanny (Letters 9192, 11-12 Mon-Tues & 14-15 Oct 1813 p 245, 247, 249). There are many many references to Anna, and also to Fanny. Sixteen extant letters to Anna Austen Lefroy; 30 altogether to Fanny with only 5 surviving. They do show Austen’s loyalty to Fanny and a duplicity to Anna.

One example:

Shortly after Anna married, Austen had been to visit Anna and Anna, the newly wed, had gotten a piano and so proud showed it to her aunt. On 29 November (Letter 112) Austen writes Anna putting her off — Austen just has not one moment at all to visit Anna again. Perhaps not but I recognize something there in the overspeak she suddenly does several days before: a fragment on 24 November (111), Austen had begged off with the common excuse that you know how it is when you are in someone else’s house, not a minute your own. Really? The 30 November letter (113) which is the last of the series to Anna printed in Later anuscripts opens I now realize with Austen responding to what Anna perceived as disapproval: “I am far from finding your book an Evil I assure you.” Jane insists she read it right away and “with great pleasure.” Since we’ve not got Anna’s letter that prompted this we are left to grasp how bad Anna must’ve felt about something that got back to her. Like “why do you bother your aunt with this nonsense novel writing” — are you not satisfied with your husband so quick?

The rest of Austen’s letter seems so confidential and reassuring and goes on about Anna’s novel as if it were a budding masterpiece, but that same day she writes Fanny and betrays Anna (Letter 114). Totally other view: Fanny wanted to know what Jane thought of Anna’s house. Jane says papa will say and then we get this real niggardliness: “I was rather sorry to hear she is to have an instrument; it seems throwing money away. They will wish the 24G in the shape of Sheets & Towels six months later – and as to her playing — it can never be anything.” As if Jane’s playing was anything. One would think her own anguish when she lost her pianoforte might not have been forgotten. She goes on to
exclaim against Anna’s “purple pelisse” but of course she does not mean to “blame’ her — “nothing worse than it’s being got in secret, & not owned to anybody. She is capable of that you know …”

See Jane Austen’s Letters

Ellen

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Austen’s Letters to Anna Lefroy: Letter 103, ?mid-July 1814; & Lefroy’s life & continuation

Anna Austen Lefroy (later in life)

Sea House Inn, Worthing, 1785, Watercolor by John Nixon

Dear friends and readers,

The second letter by Austen to Anna in Todd and Sterne’s introduction (see Letter 76) is a postscript to a letter by Mrs Austen where the recipient has had to sign for it. The letter is written after the publication of S&S and P&P, and just before publication of MP (August 1814).

First a general account: Basically the first half of the remnant of 103 is by Mrs Austen, Jane’s mother, Anna’s grandmother. This is not stated in the Later Manuscripts Later Cambridge volume, nor do they situate the PS as part of a letter written just before Anna’s apparently disapproved marriage to Ben Lefroy. The letter is really an excuse for not having made any or more wedding clothes (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 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.

After the text and commentary, I offer a brief life of Anna, an account of her writing, and an argument that Anna’s continuation shows a real grasp of Austen’s technique and sense of what was to come in the later parts of the novel (never written by Austen herself). Also some account of two articles on Sanditon as Worthing.

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The text:

Letter 103, To Anna Austen, ? mid-July 1814?

… I am pretty well in health and work a good deal in the Garden, but for these last 3 or 4 weeks have had Weakness in my Eyes; it was well for you it did not come sooner, for I could not now make petticoats, Pockets & dressing Gowns for any Bride expectant-l can not wear my spectacles, and therefore can do hardly any work but knitting white yarn and platting white willow. I write & read without spectacles, and therefore do but little of either-We have a good appearance of Flowers in the Shrubbery and Borders, & what is still better, a very good crop of small Fruit, even your Goonsberry [sicJ Tree does better than heretofore, when the Gooseberries are ripe I shall sit upon my Bench, eat them & think of you, tho I can do that without the assistance of ripe gooseberries; indeed, my dear Anna, there is noboddy [sicJ I think of oftener, very few I love better, — My Eyes are tired so I must quit you — Farewell. yr affect. G:M:
C. Austen

My dear Anna — I am very much obliged to you for sending your MS. It has entertained me extremely, all of us indeed; I read it aloud to your P.M.-& A C.-and we were all very much pleased. — The Spirit does not droop at all. Sir Tho: — Lady Helena, & St Julian are very well done-& Cecilia continues to be interesting in spite of her being so amiable. — It was very fit that you should advance her age. I like the beginning of D. Forester very much-a great deal better than if he had been very Good or very Bad. — A few verbal corrections were all that I felt tempted to make — the principal of them is a speech of St Julians to Lady Helena — which you will see I have presume’ to alter. — As Lady H. is Cecilia’s superior, it would not be correct to talk of her being introduced; Cecilia must be the person introduced ­And I do not like a Lover’s speaking in the 3d person; it is too much like the formal part of Lord Orville, & I think is not natural. If you think differently however, you need not mind me. — I am impatient for more — & only wait for a safe conveyance to return this Book — Yours Affecty, JA

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. We need to recall Caroline’s letter describing the bleak bareness of this ceremony, not just the lack of physical decoration, but the seeming lack of any enjoyment.

My sister’s wedding was certainly in the extreme of quietness, yet not so as to be in any way remarked upon or censured, and this was the order of the day.

The bridegroom came from Ashe Rectory where he had hitherto lived with his brother; and Mr and Mrs Lefroy came with him and another brother, Mr Edward Lefroy. Anne Lefroy the eldest little girl was one of the bridesmaids and I was the other. My brother came from Winchester that morning, but was to stay only a few hours. We in the house had a slight early breakfast upstairs, and between 9 and 10 the bride, my mother, Mrs Lefroy, Anne and myself, were taken to church in our carriage. All the gentlemen walked. The weather was dull and cloudy, but it did not actually rain. The season of the year, the unfrequented road of half a mile, to the lonely old church, the grey light within of a November morning, making its way through the narrow windows, no stove to give warmth, no flowers to give colour and brightness, no friends, high or low, to offer their good wishes, and so to claim some interest in the great event of the day – all these circumstances and deficiencies must, I think, have given a gloomy air to our wedding. Mr Lefroy read the service, my father gave his daughter away. The clerk, of course, was there, though I do not particularly remember him, but I am quite sure there was no-one else in the church, nor was anyone asked to the breakfast, to which we sat down as soon as we got back.

I do not think this idea of sadness struck me at the time, the bustle in the house and all the preparations had excited me, and it seemed to me a festivity from beginning to end. The breakfast was such as best breakfasts then were: some variety of bread, hot rolls, buttered toast; tongue or ham and eggs. The addition of chocolate at one end of the table, and the wedding cake in the middle, marked the speciality of the day. I and Anne Lefroy nine and six years wore white frocks and had white ribband on our straw bonnets, which, I suppose, were new for the occasion. Soon after breakfast, the bride and bridegroom departed. They had a long day’s journey before them, to Hendon; the other Lefroys went home: and in the afternoon my mother and I went to Chawton to stay at the Great House, then occupied by my uncle Captain Austen, and his large family. My father stayed behind for a few days and then joined us. The servants had cake and wine in the evening, and Mr Digweed walked down, to keep him company. Such were the wedding festivities of Steventon in 1814! (as printed in Maggie Lane, JA’s Family, pp 173-74)

Weddings were not drab in mood, solemn affairs where no one smiled in 1814; this wedding was that way. The Austen family is mourning Anna’s wedding, letting her know how little they appreciated her decision to marry a man older than she who will not take up a curacy to support her (see the life of Anna just below). Considering the death of her mother, her stepmother’s ruthless coldness, the girl’s experience of happiness and security was much chequered and that may have turned her to romance.

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.

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.

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Colin Firth as Darcy fencing (1995 BBC P&P)

In the context of this Austen’s few remarks about Anna’s fiction are sent. Alas, the novel was destroyed by depressed Anna. Unlike LeFaye’s notes and edition of the letters, Todd and Bree inform us of how Anna destroyed the ms one night in the 1820s by throwing it in the fire. We are not old of of Anna’s “frequent pregnancies” but only the 3 live births. Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s poignant account of how her mother told Fanny she had destroyed the ms is in LeFaye including FCL’s exact words that too many children and years had gone by and when Jane Austen died, Anna had no motive for continuing, the motive was Aunt Jane reading it. The “real charm” had been presenting this material to Jane, now she’s gone and all there was was the “painful loss” for Anna Lefroy. Years later FCL expressed her regret her mother had destroyed her book because then at least they’d have had something to match with Jane’s criticisms in the letters. And now (she’s right) we don’t.

Caroline Austen in her memoir says that upon Aunt Jane’s death some thread and reality of emotion was lost from the family forever and they were much much the less for this.

So 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.

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Mary (Tessa Peake-Jones) Bennet, eager for life (1979 BBC P&P)

How did Anna’s novel relate to her life? what did the scissored off parts refer to? to Anna’s thoughts shared with Mrs Austen and her Austen aunts, who are now turning away Lefroy:

Brief. Born April 15, 1793 (Lane, JA Family p 99), her mother dies 1795; Anna crying for mother, father sends her to aunts and grandmother, and she was there while Austen writing First Impressions; thought characters real people — witness to and memories of vivid creativity (Lane, JA Family 101). Her father remarries 1797; stepmother narrow, jealous, easily irritated woman does not like her, so Anna seems to have spent a lot of time at Steventon again and seems to have been there when Austen was told the parents were giving Steventon up to her father. She cut off her hair around 1808-9; “brilliant and wayward, taste for literature” (LeFaye, JA Family 153); she rebelled again by getting engaged to Michael Terry, good looking neighbor (1809, related to Digweeds who Jane sneers at), shy in mid-30s, parents gave in but in spring 1810 she broke it off — Tomalin, 216); then an engagement to Ben LeFroy (letter 90, 25 Sept 1813, Lane, JA Family 169-70). Anna marries Ben to escape her home as much as anything and they live with Edward at Hendon, Nov 8 1814 (JA Family 173-74 — very sad wedding somehow, Caroline is not hiding a bleakness and Lane suggests that this was not an approved of marriage).

Discreetly, Austen’s comments do not approve of Ben’s stubbornness in refusing some curacy offer (that she does elsewhere and indirectly); she however suggests that Anna could not do much better anyway; Anna’s first child Anna Jemima 1815; 11 months later Sept 27, 1816 Julia Cassandra; Emma sent to Anna at time of Jemima’s birth and Austen compares them as if they were equivalent (1815, JA Family 177). When JA begins to feel the mortal illness, Anna is living at Alton, half a farmhouse, 1815, Tomalin 257). She is busy with her daughters and Austen writes in a way that assumes Anna will spend her hours disciplining and shaping her daughters’ characters to fit some preconceived self-control idea (March 1817) has miscarriages (“poor animal” Anna has not a chance of escape; her husband called here the other day, & said she was pretty well but not equal to “so long a walk; she must come in her “Donkey Carriage.”–Poor Animal, she will be worn out before she is thirty, 25 March 1817, note after Sanditon put down) and 1818 George Benjamin born (after JA’s death) and around this time Ben Lefroy accepted a curacy (Lane 190; story to the effect he got it by being Mrs Lefroy’s son and Jane’s niece’s husband — I wonder).

Fanny Caroline who had some gifts was born 1820 (lived to 1874). Georgiana Brydges (name to get connect to them), born 1822. Louise Langlois, 1824 ELizabeth Lucy, 1927.

The one piece of luck she had did not last very long. In 1823 her husband’s older brother, the heir, died, and he got the living and handsome parsonaage (Lane, 203). Lasted but 4 years; on 27 August the husband dies (a sentence which indicates by that time there was tender affection: “My irreparable loss in the death of my dear husband who died at Ashe after a slow decay — today medicine might have saved him) and of course she’s got to get out (13 November); now has a one and 6 daughters, Lane says the rest of her life a struggle against penury and ill health. First place lived with brother-in-law, Edward Lefroy near Basingstoke, village called West Ham. A chequered hard life.

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Stafford’s Maritime Library, Rebecca House, 1810 (old print)

As to her extant writing: beyond her continuation of Sanditon and the destroyed Which is the Heroine, Anna Austen Lefroy wrote a novella, Mary Hamilton (appeared in Literary Souvenir 1833), apparently available only in rare book rooms; also The Winters’ Tale (1841) Springtide (1842) and Recollections of Aunt Jane (1864). I have read the Recollections and Sanditon continuation and have Mary Hamilton and The Winter’s Tale as downloaded texts on my desktop. I will be reading them later this week.

Anna’s continuation of Sanditon is very good and seems to me to show some knowledge of what her aunt meant to go and that she herself knew her aunt’s techniques so well, she uses them as well as has phrases that in a wistful kind of vein are consonant with Austen’s own. (I recommend obtaining and reading Mary Gaither Marshall’s edition and reading her introduction and notes.)

Anna Lefroy’s Sanditon follows naturally, blends into Austen’s, and while some of the sparkle, energy, and just about all the black humor is gone, the tone at times really echoes Austen’s as well as the phraseology. The methods too: from the revision slips (one sees a paper slotted in twice), to the way of inserting curves in the plot. The last section is a flashback chapter much in the manner of the way we are told of Jane Fairfax’s history, Mr Weston’s (not so much Anne Elliot’s as that is more grief-striken and woven closely in). Her way of bringing in characters as naturally there resembles Austen’s. Much of this was learnt by studying Austen.

She adds appropriate characters who suggest a sexual sophistication not permitted Ausetn as a maiden lady: for example, Mr Tracey, Sidney Parker’s friend. Clara Brereton (the flashback chapter is about this) is to be heroine and there is a remarkable chapter about her mother, the pre-history is pathetic of parents worn down: father imprudent and bad business man, dies young, mother remarries an inferior man, violent quarrels, scattered schooling of useless type; picked up by uncle, “her business in life was to take care of, & to do the best she could for herself” (p. 86) and then this humiliating interview (interviews then as peremptory, bullying as today) and she does not get the job as she is too pretty for the little boy is pleased, then Mr Brereton hears of Lady Denham come to town.

Warwick House, 1824, owned by Edward Ogle (Trafalgar House in Sanditon)

We have three houses set up: Sanditon is fleshed out and there is a visit to Lady Denham and her shabby behavior and lack of gratitude to Hollis’s; a beautiful place not filled with beautiful people; more than one visit to Trafalgar house and one to Denham Park where Sidney Parker and Mr Tracey meet Sir Edward and his sister. Anna was gradually gathering her three or four groups in this small seaside town.

The characters feel real, including Mrs (gentle) and Mr Parker (going bankrupt Sidney sees). Scenes at beach with bathing machines. Dialogues well done with sense of reality from interchange of aware consciousnesses (pp. 41-42)

Little phrases: “another week passed, bringint to Sanditon, as to other parts of the world, it’s pleasure and it’s pains” p 45.

There is a sense of outline but my feeling is if this had been completed and published, it would genuinely be a continuation

What I’ve discovered is the few online lives talk about Anna as a sentimental person who promulgated the story of the love of Tom Lefroy and Jane Austen (see this text. She may have been right. But there is no interest and no telling of her life except as it relates to Austen’s reputation, memoirs, or her writing at all.

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Worthing Sea Front, 1810

As I expected, in her article on the continuation of Sanditon by Anna (Jane Austen’s Manuscript and Her Niece’s Continuation,” The Review of English Studies, New Series, 38:149 (Feb. 1987): 56-61), Deirdre LeFaye is not having any of these ideas that Anna Austen Lefroy’s continuation tells us anything about Austen’s intentions or is adequate to the case. She quotes Anna’s own self-deprecation and comments the novel was not far gone enough at all to tell anything. LeFaye is a literalist when she wants to prove something.

The fuller context is the question between JEAL and Anna whether to print Sanditon with the second edition of the memoir. In the event it was not printed until 1925. Anna lacks self-esteem, she is self-deprecating; that is one of the things that destroyed her. She has imbibed a low view of herself. Finally the text matters. The Sanditon text by Anna shows a real grasp of her aunt’s techniques, it really seems to develop out of the situation, even the one new character fits what we see in other of Austen’s novels (Mr Tracy, a mild sort of rake, shallow in the way of Frank but also bright).

The article by Anthony Edmonds on JA and Worthing (“Edward Ogle of Worth and Jane Austen’s Sanditon, JA Society Collected Reports 2010, pp. 116-48), is very much worth reading (one learns a lot about Ogle, his businesses, Worthing), but it does not go far enough. Had he included some of the details in Anna’s continuation that would help us to see that Anna had been told something of what was to come. We see another source for the title The Brothers in Ogle’s business dealings and connections. Janet Clarke, “Jane Austen and Worthing,” JA Society Collected Reports, 2008 (pp. 86-105) is too determined to present Austen has having enjoyed herself immensely.

Ellen

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Austen’s unpublished writing in context; or, Jane Austen her own Vanity Press

I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth. I have been talking to you almost as fast as I could the whole of this letter” — (Jane Austen Letter 29, Sat-Mon, 3-5 Jan 1801)

An image of Lady Susan in Austen’s fair copy

Dear friends and readers,

In middle March I wrote a blog-essay where I tried to work out what state I thought Austen’s different ms’s were in, some chronology for them, and then tried to ascertain what might have been the divisions of her novels in manuscript before her publishers’ printers got hold of them and either followed her or changed what she had sent in order to make her writing conform to published criteria set up to make money or be conventionally attractive to a wider readership.

At that time I queried a couple of lists asking for books or essays which studied manuscripts and tried to explain underlying principles in the different types of ms’s. I got no texts that were useful, but a couple of the texts I was told of had in their bibliography lists of others texts and among these lists I found Donald Reiman’s The Study of Modern Manuscripts: Public, Confidential and Private, which was described in the body of the text as a rare study which differentiated between pre-modern (pre-1790s or pre-long 18th century) and modern (post French revolution) manuscripts. I obtained this book, have read and tonight want to recommend it and discuss Austen’s ms’s in the light of Reiman’s study.

Reiman’s book covers all authors who left work in manuscript. I would not call this blog-posting Austen’s unpublished writing in context, except that I read Reiman’s book with an eye to understanding and finding some theory to explain my instinct that the way Austen’s ms’s are presented is, even with (a hero in Reiman’s book) often fall into misrepresentation because they are not printed to enable the reader to study them as ms’s. As the reader who goes over to glance at my middle March blog will see, I began this new project when I was asked to review The Later Manuscripts in the series called The Cambridge Edition of Jane Austen, this one edited by Janet Todd and Linda Bree, and it has set me thinking, returning to my project on Austen’s calendars where I tried to reach her work in ways so fundamental that I would enter her process of writing itself.

What follows is my response to Reiman’s book: I summarize him in the light of what I know about manuscripts and Austen. I have studied early modern manuscripts: of Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Gambara’s poetry, of Anne Murray Halkett’s life-writing, of Anne Finch’s poems, and now I’m adding Jane Austen’s ms’s. I have had occasion to read about what’s left of Trollope. He did save some of his manuscripts even after they were published as book, and in particular (blest man) the complete untruncated version of The Duke’s Children, now about to be published by Stephen Amarnick. John Sutherland has studied some of these, most notably the ms for The Way We Live Now.

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An image of the original ms of Canto 7 of Byron’s Don Juan

Reiman is a well-known respected Romantic scholar, his specialty is PBShelley and he has studied the manuscripts left by PBShelley, Mary Shelley, Byron and their friends and associates. His The Study of Modern Manuscripts contains about 5 pages on Austen’s ms’s in one place and a couple of references in another. Basically he discusses the difference between pre-modern ms’s — medieval and Renaissance through early modern into the 18th century; with the modern period beginning right around Austen’s time. First of all, Reiman makes the important distinction of private, confidential and public manuscripts (as his subtitle suggests): who was the audience the writer thought of for his or her writing. He looks at the state of ms’s.

Private ms: these are addressed to specific people, selected in advance, sometimes they are not intended for anyone but the writer. Marginalia. Personal communications. Diagnoses. Lawyer’s opinions to clients.

Confidential or corporate ms: addressed to specific group of individuals all of whom are known to the writer or belong to pre-defined group who share communal values. You may expect the immediate recipient to show ms to others. Memos to partners in law firms, business, departments, readers’ reports. They may be written without regard to author’s reputation.

Public ms’s: intended for dissemination among people we don’t know. (As the circulating manuscripts of poems in the Renaissance.) There seems to be a slide from confidential to public. You want a public record. I’d say anything on the Net not specifically defined as going to a single person and not to be spread further is automatically at risk of being public or simply is public upon being put into cyberspace packets (including supposedly closed listservs and webrings.)

It’s the social intentions of the writer that matter.

The important difference between pre- and post-1790s ms’s in general is that after 1790 we find many more manuscripts of books which are published. Authors and their executors begin to save their ms’s, to value them, and there is suddenly a huge expansion of private and confidential ms’s. By private and confidential Reiman means autobiographical writing: letters, memoirs, life-writing of all sorts (autobiography, travel books). Before the eighteenth century many authors we now read did not publish their work by print at all; they allowed it to circulate in public manuscripts; it was not done to attribute the work to yourself, especially for a woman and aristocrats. When a work was published that showed you were trying to make money (that would be after the early modern period when the literary marketplace started to exist and expand) or gain fame (unseemly) or produce propaganda. People just did not have a positive view of writing or writers as wise people trying to help others. In the later 18th century still, when people did publish their works, they did not value the ms’s; the ms was regarded as say one would orange peels or something to discard and even when the author made a fair copy apart from the copy sent to the publisher, most of the time the ms’s does not survive.

There are no specific pages on Austen in the section of Reiman’s book on ms’s before the later 18th century, but there are specific in the long section on confidential ms’s. Confidential ms’s are ms’s meant for a small audience, not just oneself (Boswell’s diaries and Fanny Burney’s) but much of iot not meant for a vast impersonal public.

An Image of the so-called cancelled chapter of Persuasion

Mary Shelley becomes the first of a typical kind of person familiar to us today: she saved every scrap PBS ever wrote, whether she published it or not. So too Teresa Guiccioloi, Byron’s papers. This preservation of ms’s began in the 17th century but only spreads in the 19th; at the same time starting in the later 17th century published autobiography, books of letters, the invention of modern biography begins, the popularity of travel writing.

In general Austen seems to belongs to the pre-1790s period in attitude. She often reflects the era before the romantic one; she is anti-romantic. The puzzling lack of any manuscripts of books which were published except the case of the two chapters of Persuasion is then explained by Reiman’s book. If we remember that in fact both Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were not published by Austen, and may represent an un-, or hastily finished truncated works (Persuasion), and or a work she was not satisfied with (NA), both of which were as yet not even titled for sure, the left over chapters of Persuasion don’t seem such an anomaly. Especially chapter 10, the where Anna visits the Crofts, is welcomed by the Admiral and Mrs Crofts, and finds herself in a room with Wentworth who then proceeds to propose marriage, be accepted and we get a kind of enigmatic response from Wentworth’s sister and brother-in-law which could suggest they knew for some time that Anne had been engaged to Wentworth previously. It’s a draft meant to be worked into some imagined final version of Persuasion which death cut Austen off from.

An image of one of Jane Austen’s letters to Anna: it is unusually “fair:” it looks like she copied it out

So Austen is on the cusp. She was alive at the time of the the early years of the romantics and was writing personally every day it seems, and every 3-4 days sending off missives to Cassandra and others. This kind of life-writing was not done in the pre-1790s period in this way. Reiman describes the growth in interest in the personal and valuing the individual’s inner life. He says that over the course of the 18th century you get people no longer deriving their identities from their status in the community, which remained unchanged, and was the result of who their family were. Now people were creating an identity for themselves which could change depending on what they achieved in life.

Consciously Austen’s letters are of the confidential and private type but they also witness a real valuing of the individual and personal; that’s why they exist in the first place, why she wrote so copiously.

Further, she has a kind of confidential ms’s that is a substitute for public you can find by women in the early modern period; the polished fair copy. (Reiman does not think like a feminist and so doesn’t mention this at all). This is an ms by a woman of a book prepared to look like a published book, one in which the author really works hard as if she (or he) were publishing it because it will not be published, but the author does value the book and wants it to circulate. This is the state of Lady Susan and the Juvenilia. This is how I see the fair copy of Lady Susan and perhaps too the Juvenilia (less so because she carried on correcting them).

Women did this because often they were not permitted to publish this or that particular work. Their writing was not valued. One of Anne Finch’s ms’s books begins as a polished confidential book which she later starts to use just as a another copy book into which she puts more poems as if the book were not polished, were partly private partly confidential. This is the ms today known as the Folger book (because it’s owned by the Folger Shakespeare library). It’s mostly in her husband Heneage’s hand. It has a preface, table of contents, is paginated and the first part beautifully copied out.

Austen’s letters would be private and/or confidential; she did not mean them to circulate beyond her family and if she had yearnings to reach more people, this never surfaced consciously. Perhaps she was ambivalent too — and that can be seen in the way her brother, Frank, saved his 3 packets of letters, never destroyed them, kept them by him until his death and they were destroyed not by his generation or his youngest spinster daughter. Burney’s equivalent grand-niece published hers — to whom we are enormously grateful, for she also did not destroy the ms’s after she published her tiny selection of 6 volumes.

Such books when they survive are today published in corrected polished forms — Chapman and then LeFaye’s edition of the letters; before them Brabourne (Austen’s great-nephew) who still regards them as owned by the family and reflective of the family status, not just Jane Austen’s. LeFaye seems to regard them as still belonging to and reflecting on Austen’s family.

From Austen’s time we get many books by women intended for publication, half-written with the larger audience in mind: Anne Grant, Madame du Deffand, Graffigny, Lespinasse (so too the men like Pope’s letters). Yes they are doctored with the public in mind but then so are their fictional works or poems when they write them.

Reiman thinks the way we should talk of the life-writing private and confidential works that we now publish is as as works reflective of the individual in his or her circle. We must take into account what they were meant to be, who for, what state they are in.

What I like about all Reiman’s distinctions here, is he shows where Todd and Bree went wrong in their edition. The letters they present as being a theory of Austen’s writing are confidential writing meant for Anna’s eyes or private writing just meant for Anna (see letter 76, a parody of a novel by Rachel Hunter, one of the authors published by Minerva Press, among whom Austen could not count herself). Thus whatever Austen said about Anna’s novel is shaped by Austen’s relationship with Anna and might not be what she would say about Anna’s novel were she to discuss it with a larger public or even the other relatives. She might not have thought as highly of it as she appears to. She is not on oath and we have the case of a letter to Anna where she appears to think so well of Anna just around Anna’s marriage, and Anna’s early housekeeping and in the next letter to Fanny we see this is not so; she does not want to visit Anna for real, she thinks Anna’s desires to fulfill herself in owning a playing a piano absurd or is out of sympathy with the very impulses that when she, Austen, had them she approved of.

They do not separate the fair copy of Lady Susan from the worked upon papers of The Watsons & Sanditon; the three sets of ms’s are presented as a coherent group as if they amount to the same sort of thing. They do not. The two chapters of Persuasion are not included in the Later ms’s — as they should have been — and with the ms’s of The Watsons and Sanditon. Lady Susan should have been published with the Juvenilia not as Juvenili, but as a book Jane Austen valued and prepared for a version of public dissemination. She half-wished she could publish them more widely but knew no one would(and her relatives would be horrified by any publication of the amoral witty monster-mother Lady Susan).

The attitude towards the Juvenilia which publishes them as Jane Austen’s “handbasket” is wrong; she did value them but knew no one in her time would publish them so she did in this fair copy form. Right the paper and books are cheap stuff, but she was poor herself and it was all she had to put them in. Her relatives would not spend money for her to keep her books as fair copies as they had limited value for them. But the first work after James Edward Austen-Leigh published his memoir that he published was the untitled Lady Susan because instinctively he (and his sisters) recognized it as a ripe and ready work all set to show to others — I’d call it privately published, Jane Austen her own Vanity Press.

An image of a gothic-historical novel published by the Minerva press, a press that would not have accepted Northanger Abbey

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I strongly recommend Reiman’s book. His final chapter is an angry one in a way: he inveighs against editors who do not at all think about what the ms’s they are publishing represents. Some become doctors of the works and try to improve them; others decide which version of a work they think is the best and publish that as the only or final one, sometimes an early ms. I am “guilty” of this in the case of Anne Finch for, like others, I think her earlier versions of her poems better than the later ones where she began to censor and modify what she wrote in terms of conventional ideas; in my section on her poems where I publish texts I consistently prefer the earlier text.

Lord Brabourne’s edition of his great-aunt’s letters is an openly family edition

Or editors become family friends — Deirdre LeFaye exemplifies this. The editor conceives of his or herself as an advocate of the family and produces an edition of the poetry which presents the family’s view of the poet. This is just how LeFaye sees herself, down to the notes she provides for the letters. Mary Shelley broke with this entirely in her edition of Shelley; if she had not, she would have destroyed many of his poems, censored others, and presented those that survived with very different prefaces.

Reiman’s book would cover all authors and his opening section on pre-modern, pre-18th century is valuable even if short. If it’s added to Margaret Ezell’s Social Authorship and the Advent of print, it becomes an important brief primer on ms’s in the early period of European writing. Ezell brings the woman’s perspective I have in on this. Women’s ms’s differ from men’s as generally they were not allowed to publish at all and have been published by later generations with different perspectives than the individual’s, often in pathetically truncated forms.

Another useful and informative book, an anthology on the early modern into 17th century world of ms’s: Arthur E. Marotti and Michael D. Bristol, Print, Manuscript, Performance: The changing relations of the media in early modern England. This last one is wonderful for bringing in the perspective of the net, and publication on websites, listservs and (dare I say?) blogs. I know about it because there’s an essay on Anne Murray Halket’s autobiography, a fragment of which survives and I made an etext of and have written two papers about which I published on the Net. Halkett represents a highly ambivalent woman: she writes a memoir in vindication of herself which she really wants to reach many people, but consciously it’s somewhere between private and confidential for she knows if it reached others it would be regarded as scandalous and all we now have is a fragment because some relative did find and destroy most of what she wrote.

See Jane Austen letters archive; also my study of the timelines in Austen and chronology of the novels: Time in Jane Austen.

Ellen

P.S. Some people online regard writing to small listservs as confidential communication. As a list-moderator I’ve been asked more than once to make sure the listserv postings are kept closed except to members. I do not think this is useful. Anyone can join the listserv at any time. I regard blogs as a form of listserv where I put postings I mean as confidential as well as public.

Often people look at me as strange because I just put my polished work I could try to publish in conventional books on the Net; I must have some ultimate motive beyond trying to reach people. I suppose I do but it’s not money or promotion. I did hope at one time someone might be attracted to the Colonna poetry and want to publish it in a book, but I’ve learnt that that was very naive of me, showing that I had no idea why and how most books are published, usually the result of social relationships combining with desire for money or prestige of some sort when not promotion and advancement.

My putting my writing on the Net the way I do, on my website particularly is the equivalent of Austen’s writing out a fair copy of Lady Susan and letting it circulate that way as far as she was allowed. I am circulating my work as far as I am able and putting into print (as in facebook where friends of friends read one another’s writing) the context too.

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Jane Austen’s Letters to Anna Austen Lefroy: Letter 76, between Thurs & Sat, 29-31 Oct 1812

Anna Austen, later Lefroy (1793-1872)

John Glover ( (1767-1849) ( (one of the two artists who popular engraved prints Austen was familiar with, possibly one like this of local English countryside is intended)

Dear friends and readers,

I’m breaking strict chronology at this point (see letter 70) because I’ve been asked to review The Later Manuscripts, ed. Janet Todd and Linda Bree, a final volume of Austen’s texts in the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen, gen. ed. Janet Todd, and have come to that part of the volume where the editors print five and the postscript to a sixth letter (Letter 103) from Jane Austen to one of her two closest nieces, Anna Austen Lefroy (oldest daughter of Austen’s older brother, James, by his first wife, Anne Matthew [died 1795]). There are altogether sixteen extant letters from Austen to Anna, and of the five “whole” selections Todd and Bree make (where they take the complete text as far as we can guess), one is a letter cut off after an initial single paragraph (Letter 113).

This is, in other words, a series of scraps taken from a remnant of censored letters, on the supposition they give Jane Austen’s “theory of fiction.” They do not because 1) Jane Austen had no consistent worked-out theory of fiction: she talks only of her attitudes towards her heroines (usually some version of qualified fondness), strict literal verisimilitude and the actual literal situations she likes to delve (“3 or 4 Families in a Country Village”); and 2) if you want to argue she did have one, no matter how unconscious, what you need to do is bring all her letters together which bring up or discuss fiction, especially her own; these are many and must include the one to her nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh (Letter 142).

This section of their book may best be read as a half-hearted attempt to present Jane Austen’s relationship with her niece who was possibly potentially as gifted as she but never developed these gifts. Letter 76, which I begin with here, is a parody ridiculing a minor novel Austen, her sister, and Anna, had been reading aloud to one another, Rachel Hunter’s Margiana; or, Widdrington Tower (1808, Minerva Head Press). See later correction and blog: the novel in question was Lady Maclairn, or The Victim of Villany.

The others are about the first novel Anna attempted, which she first called Enthusiasm, but changed to Which is the Heroine, and destroyed one night by casting it into the fire on her hearth in the later 1820s. In their notes they include (as LeFaye does not) all the comments of Anna’s third daughter, Fanny Caroline Lefroy about how much the novel meant to her mother, how she tried to finish Sanditon, Anna’s intense depression in the her later 20s and her destruction of her this item she had been so proud of, cherished. Proud because Jane Austen had taken it seriously, liked it. As her daughter, Fanny Caroline Lefroy laments, if her mother had not destroyed what she had written in a moment of self-rejecting despair (and loneliness for her aunt too), Jane Austen’s letters would mean more and we would have a much better understanding of Anna’s talents (perhaps a novel worth reading). The section is followed by the playlet, Sir Charles Grandison, which was probably written by Anna in her girlhood and corrected (polished, improved) by her aunt.

Since their book includes both a modern printing of Sanditon, and a diplomatic transcript of the manuscript, all one needs to do is read the other 9 letters, Mary Gaither Marshall’s edition of Anna’s continuation of Sanditon, which includes Anna’s Reminiscences of her aunt, and Anna’s three extant novellas, Mary Hamilton (1833), The Winter’s Tale (1841) and Springtide (1842), and cobble together from the various Jane Austen biographical books what is known of Anna’s life and documents by and about her (including her sister, Caroline’s truthful account of Anna’s bleak sad wedding to Benjamin Lefroy), and a relevant life and person to Jane Austen’s oeuvre is before you. I am not in a position to reach the three novellas (though I will try what I can do in my local Library Of Congress and Folger Library and through interlibrary loan), but I will here in the next few blogs present the rest.

This first blog is presents and reads first of the letters as printed by LeFaye, the ridiculing “fun” of Rachel Hunter’s historical fiction, apparently a cross between a gothic and sentimental text. I’ll then go on to offer a brief life of Anna, and then the five other texts in Todd and Bree, with an account of the nine further texts in LeFaye’s fourth edition of the letters. These can form a preface to the second half of the remnant of Jane Austen’s letter that is left to us, those which contain what is left of her explicit comments on her novels while preparing them for publication, writing and revising the best known six.

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Francis Nicolson (1753-1844) (the other painter whose popular more feeble work is alluded to)

76(C). To Anna Austen. ?Between Thursday 29 and Saturday 31 October 1812

Miss Jane Austen begs her best thanks may be conveyed to Mrs Hunter of Norwich for the Threadpaper which she has been so kind as to send her by Mr Austen, & which will be always very valuable on account of the spirited sketches (made it is supposed by Nicholson or Glover) of the most interesting spots, Tarefield Hall, the Mill, & above all the Tomb of Howard’s wife, of the faithful representation of which Miss Jane Austen is undoubtedly a good judge having spent so many summers at Tarefield Abbei the delighted guest of the worthy Mrs Wilson. [It is impossible for any likeness to be more complete. Miss Jane Austen’s tears have flowed over each sweet sketch in such a way as would do Mrs Hunter’s heart good to see; if Mrs Hunter could understand all Miss Jane Austen’s interest in the subject she would certainly have the kindness to publish at least 4 vols more about the Flint family, & especially would give many fresh particulars on that part of it which Mr, H. has hitherto handled too briefly; viz, the history of Mary Flint’s marriage with Howard.

Miss Jane Austen cannot close this small epitome of the miniature abridgment of her thanks & admiration without expressing her sincere hope that Mrs Hunter is provided at Norwich with a more safe conveyance to London than Alton can now boast, as the Car of Frankenstein which was the pride of that Town was overturned in the last 10 days.

Miss Austen
Steventon

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John Glover ( (1767-1849), Rhiadr Ddu, North Wales (this is more like the paintings Glover is famous for today)

There is a brief but descriptive enough account of either this novel or one very like it in M. H. Dobbs, “Margian: Name of Author Wanted,” Notes and Queries, 7, Series 11 (1913):233-34. A brief account of the major characters, plot-turns and quality — it’s a historical novel which grounds history in Shakespeare, with gothic motifs and a sentimental courtship plot. Dobbs is someone who appears prima facie to think little of women’s novels; he (or she writing from a man’s point of view which she’s imbibed) he opens by assuming this one is by a woman and yet Dobbs grants the novel is a semi-serious attempt to write historical fiction and says there is genuine feeling in it. In her account of this novel in her Reminiscences, Anna says Hunter repeated the same story of the character several times: perhaps this was done from the different characters’ point of view.

Anna also tells Edward that the letter shows their aunt’s tendency to “ridicule:” thus she alludes two landscape artists in ways meant to stigmatize Hunter’s Abbey pictures: they are, Jane implies, verbal recreations of images such as Mrs Hunter might have seen in local books or places she visited. Austen is not only up on what is popular; she here distinguishes between what’s high status, prestigious (say an original oil or watercolor by a famous name you’d have to pay a good deal of money to if you wanted one of his or her pictures) and what’s popular, readily available to anyone who can get to the circulating library. In an earlier letter (55, 30 Jun-1 July 1808) we saw her half-mock William Hodges’s painting of Hasting’s second wife (only half, because it was Hastings, Eliza’s biological father, an important possible dispenser of patronage to the Austen family). Hodges are similar works: very pleasing Anglo-picturesque landscapes.

William Hodges (1744-97), A View of Matavai Bay in the Island of Otaheite (1776)

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Fanny Austen Knight, later Knatchbull (1793-1882) writing a letter when young (watercolor by Cassandra Austen)

The letter is undated but after a careful study of the group of letters to Anna, especially those just before and around Anna’s wedding, LeFaye concluded these are the closest dates we have. Anna’s letters are in a parlous state, in versions she herself may have censored, I suggest because it was too painful to her later in life to realize her aunt had sometimes made fun of her or talked of her desires for say a pianoforte just after she married in hostile terms to her cousin, Fanny, very different from the way Austen had talked to her. (See LeFaye, “Jane Austen: Some Letters Redated,” Notes and Queries, 34:4 n.s. (1987):478-81.

It’s significant this is the first letter to Anna that has survived. Anna was someone with brains enough if not quite to understand explicitly the basis of the ridicule, at least someone who would sympathize with the desire to take the fiction sufficiently seriously to write up a parody. She opens with a mild sneer: Rachel Hunter’s book is so much threadpaper. The literal definition is a strip of folded paper serving to hold skeins of thread in its divisions. But the use is continually pejorative once that meaning is extrapolated out from, e.g., “No matter — as an appendage to a seamstress, the thread-paper might be of some consequence to my mother — of none to my father, as a mark in Slawkenbergius. (Tristram Shandy, Sterne). Again: “Sedley said he feared poor Desdemona had lost the thread-paper from which she was to mend her gown, and recommended to the two young ladies to have the charity to go and assist her” (Camilla, Burney). Also metonymic use it’s equivalent is a a woman: someone who uses this sort of thing: “A thread-paper, a doll, a toy – a girl, in short. ” (Bronte, Shirley)

Jane Austen’s most common reaction to most of those novels she mentions in her letters is hostile ridicule: to put the matter plainly. In part all these inferior texts get into print and hers has not, or in this case, gotten into print after ceaseless revision and paying for it. The exceptions are writers with strong prestige (Scott), who write didactically (Edgeworth, Genlis most of the time) or whose fictions resemble hers (but only if they have a name, so Burney is respected even if mocked, but Mary Brunton is not).

Still since the letter is dated dated October 1812, after the publication of Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen has had a real success d’estime — though the transcendent success of her archetypal romance (as it emerged from her cutting), Pride and Prejudice was not to come until after Jan 1813 (date of publication).

Austen specifically mocks the sentimental presentation of the servants in the novel, Mr and Mrs Wilson. I note that she had a hero named Howard who was a relatively poor tutor and we are told managed to escape the pursuit of Lady Osborne (suggesting a kind of Joseph Andrews plot unless a mistake was made in transmission and Jane told Cassandra Miss Osborne was to pursue Mr Howard). The connection of the names, Hunter having used the same one, may suggest why Miss Austen has this special interest in Mr Howard. Proprietary. The interest here is this suggests that Austen had not given up on The Watsons; she still considered the characters in that novel living creations that were hers and she intended to return to.

The reference to the Car of Frankenstein and number of miles between Alton and Norwich is not entirely nonsense — as the family liked to call much that Austen kidded about. In fact in one of Austen’s letters to Anna Austen (as we shall see) reveals an important part of her conscious method was to make sure she stayed within calendar and time and space limitations that exist in real life.

From Dobbs’s account and Austen’s reaction, it’s plain Hunter does not go carefully into such minutiae; Hunter does not care if she actually saw something happen or was in a place: one cannot be after all in a historical novel. Nor does she realize how important such control of time (slowing down) and felt space are in creating subjective time that draws the reader in — and thus instinctively, intuitively important to Austen. Austen herself thinks of this only as probability, a guard to make sure novels are not made fun of; we must turn to Anna Barbauld for a realization of a novel’s creation of a subjective consciousness.

Austen had been regaling her sister and Anna with stories she invented for the Car of Frankenstein. It had been overturned 10 days ago. Now this anticipates Sanditon which begins with an overturned carriage — so perhaps it already existed in some draft form. In Arthur Axelrod’s Jane Austen Caught in the Act of Greatness, a thorough careful diplomatic display of the manuscripts of the cancelled chapters of Persuasion and Sanditon, he notes hat on October 11/12, 1813, Jane wrote Cassandra:

I admire the Sagacity & Taste of Charlotte Williams. Those dark eyes always judge well. — I will compliment her, by naming a heroine after her.

It’s interesting that the name Frankenstein was perhaps already a stereotypoc name for gothic well before Mary Shelley’s book — or is this name prophetic?

Francis Nicolson, Pont Aberlaslyn, Wales (1809) — like Glover Nicolson did some fine painting (we need not adopt Austen’s attitudes here at all)

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Catherine Anne Hubback, nee Austen (1818-77), Frank Austen’s 5th daughter by his first wife

The tendency is to think of Austen has having two nieces, and to put all the emphasis and interest on Fanny Austen Knight. It does seem as if for a time Jane Austen much preferred Fanny to Anna; but the letters to Fanny about marriage (often discussed and reprinted) show Jane at a distance looking at Fanny clinically (as we shall see when we get there). Alas, the movie Gweneth Hughes and Anne Pivcevic’s Miss Austen Regrets will solidify this erasure. Anna it was who grew up with the aunts when her father remarried, Anna was there to witness the first writing of Pride and Prejudice, Anna again lived near Austen at Chawton: Unlike Fanny, Anna had the brains, sensitivity, interest in her aunt’s fiction; she and her half-brother and half-sister, Caroline, inherited much from James the father and were responnsible for the important (even if wrong-headed) indispensable first memoir.

Not only that but there were three nieces and one who really did have career: Catherine Anne Hubback. Arguably it was Anna’s jealousy of her younger cousin, Catherine, and desire to forestall any publications by Catherine about their aunt, that led Anna to encourage and help James Edward Austen-Leigh in his biography of their aunt — Anna mentions more than once in irritated resentful terms that Catherine wrote The Younger Sister from a manuscript (it’s actually rather from memory). Catherine Anne Hubback helped support herself and family by writing (Victorian) novels when her husband had a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized; she published nine more novels after The Younger Sister (important for what it reveals about Austen’s The Watsons), among them the readable The Wife’s Sister, The Rival Suitors, and Agnes Milbourne, a story dealing with a young girl’s dilemma over the conflicting claims of the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian church and her most popular work of fiction. I hope to write blogs on Catherine Hubback’s Younger Sister as well as Fanny Austen Knight when the appropriate time in the letters provides.

Next up, the second letter to Anna printed in Todd and Bree’s Later Manuscripts.

See Jane Austen’s Letters

Ellen

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Austen’s unpublished writing: the manuscripts

The 2nd volume is shorter than I cd wish — but the difference is not so much in reality as in look, there being a larger proportion of Narrative in that Part. (Austen, 29 January 1813)

An attempt to present the manuscripts consistently to be read as works in their own right to a popular audience

Dear friends and readers,

I’ve been asked to review a volume called The Later Manuscripts in the series called The Cambridge Edition of Jane Austen, this one edited by Janet Todd and Linda Bree, and it has set me thinking, returning to my project on Austen’s calendars where I tried to reach her work in ways so fundamental that I would enter her process of writing itself.

The first aspect of this is to try to decide when a particular text was written and how valuable it is. You cannot avoid this, and if you try, you end up with a book that doesn’t make much sense. The problem is the evidence is so contradictory, even for the Juvenilia where we have dated fair copies in Austen’s hand copied into books by 1793 and then revised a little and annotated at a much later time than they were originally written (25 years). One problem is they are over-framed by Cassandra who for example took Volume I dedicated to Martha, and wrote on the first page it was for Frank; or the two dedicated to Eliza de Feuillide (the last name dates the inscription) and wrote this was for Charles.

Despite concerted efforts too, these are not popular works — or publishers don’t believe they would be and the editions of all of them in partial and different configurations are still not that uncommon. Books of criticism on them fall out of print too. As to studying Austen’s revision technique, the ones that tells a lot are the ones with corrections (foul copies): The Watsons, Sanditon, the cancelled chapters of Persuasion.

Unpublished writing includes her letters. I’d exempt NA and Persuasion even if not published by her, as they are so clearly written for publication and were published almost immediately after her death — though there too we have the problem of the title. Titles tell a lot and if these were not the titles Austen would really have chosen, they mis-frame the book. There is no reason to call The Watsons The Watsons; family tradition had it as The Younger Sister (Austen was a younger sister), Sanditon is similarly said to have been meant to become The Brothers. Lady Susan remained (resolutely?) untitled.

That Austen was immanent, not a planner is a central point made by Sutherland (and others before) to be kept in mind.

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A rare attempt to study the revisions thoroughly and bring together the last writing Austen left unpublished, ms’s where the writing resembles one another

Another question: how are we to understand the survival of the two cancelled chapters of Persuasion.

There were three large manuscripts in 1799 – First Impressions, Elinor and Marianne (or Sense and Sensibility) and Susan (?). There were also manuscripts of the juvenilia which include Catherine or the Bower.

All that survives are fair copies of the Juvenilia in three volumes, copied out by 1793 and added to and revised slightly many years later; there is writing in it from 1811 and (by JEAL) 1817. There is the “foul” copy of a remarkably frank, bleak novel very much reflecting the milieus Austen was experiencing in Bath and her father had experienced as a boy (now called The Watsons but a tradition has it it was The Younger Sister). A worked on copy suddenly given up and not copied out into a fair copy but not destroyed; it cannot have been written before 1803 as that is the watermark of the paper and was probably set aside 1805-7. A fully detailed and worked out story, almost as full in implication as Persuasion. There is a fair copy of an untitled epistolary novel (Lady Susan) of the type we have for Juvenilia, but by a mature hand. 1805-9. It reminds me of how Renaissance women sometimes copied out their letters and life-writing as pretend books. They could not publish them so they did the next best thing; they made a private book that they could circulate among a small group of people and this untitled epistolary novel did so circulate. There is another worked on draft that feels like wild as if it were a first time through, but it has chapter divisions and careful study shows it must have been revised while she went along (little by little, sticking in new cut out papers and discarding previous using pins to do this; and this ms is dated, Jan through March 1817.

And these cancelled chapters — foul papers.

Ms’s of poems, of Sir Charles Grandison (attribution questioned), of two prayers (attribution questioned) and various letters.

We should not forget that NA & Persuasion were not published in JA’s lifetime. She put NA on the shelf as not satisfactory and Persuasion is unfinished, a truncated hastily ended book. I believe she was sick by the time she started it and knew it — had a deep hunch about this illness even if this only came to the surface around the time of Henry’s bankruptcy. But since they exist only in published copies and were published so soon after, we have to go with tradition. Their anomalous state though is indicative and common in womens’ writing.

An online digital edition of Austen’s manuscripts, all but Chapter 11 (alas, a real loss from the cancelled chapters) are printed in facsimile and then typed out — this shows what may be done when the money-making profit motive is excluded

The question that puzzles me is what happened to the fair copies of the first three: FI which Cassandra and Martha had by heart; if E&M was revised into S&S from the letter to Crosby I do find that each time a fair copy would be made. Why throw out the original? She had a foul copy of Susan when she wrote to Crosby and was prepared to make another fair one.

Is it that people really didn’t value these things? I know any copy in the later 17th and early 18th century that went to a printer was usually destroyed in the process, but about a hundred years later Trollope saved the foul copies and fair copies of several of his novels. We are going to have another Duke’s Children, more than a 1/4 more long because Trollope saved the original Duke’s Children. We have a whole The Way We Live Nwo and (even if others ignore it) it tells a tale expected to me: of revision, of uses of a calendar, of a only partly planned novel: he was partly immanent in the way of Austen. Tradition has it Rose, his wife, prepared the fair copies but we do not know that by anyhing either of them said or wrote down. We assume it from hearsay.

Is it that in revising the three Steventon (P&P, S&S, NA) novels, Austen so used up the writing in the fair copies re-arranged, crossed-out, changed, and then sent a fair copy just to the printer so had nothing left? would she have trusted to that?

I do think the way Austen’s ms’s are printed shows we don’t value them much either as they are scattered with cancelled chapters of Persuasion going with Persuasion (and no diplomatic transcript).

*Really one should have one or two volumes of the unpublished papers put in a conjectured chronological order. That is what Cambridge should have had the courage to do.*

I value ms’s from my studies of the Renaissance and Anne Finch: before the later 17th century much that is studied was unpublished and the reality is that when publication started again and women were left out, it was a deliberate choice by 20th century scholars as neither Mary Lady Wroth or Donne were published in their lifetimes.

Also from my studies of women’s life writings and poetry I know how much is destroyed before it’s put into print and how precious it can be to see the ms’s, how much really can be gleaned if you have corrections, torn pages, watermarks or simply a huge books (Elizabeth Grant Smith as Highland Lady is only now seen to be the masterpiece it is). Actress’s memoirs come in here — though from what I gather ms’s didn’t survive; what was written really was meant to be published as opposed to Renaissance and 17th century women who could revel in non-publishing. That is not gone. Burney would not have begun to write what she did had she thought her journals would be published for sure or in her lifetime. Ditto Boswell.

I couldn’t find anyone to give me citations of essays on Scott’s way of saving ms’s — but then maybe he hired amanuenses to keep copies of the stages of his creations. It gets me that questions one really might want to know for real as so basic to literary creation are often not written about. (Finally one person answered; see comments.)

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If we exclude Persuasion, the best edition of the mature unfinished novels we have

Last for tonight: the question of the actual shape of Austen’s texts as she conceived them.

From my study of Trollope I know this matters, an established author like Trollope could and did insist the shape he intended for his novels be observed by his publishers for the first editions. After that he gave up. He knew it was hopeless; that’s one reason why he took a fee outright and didn’t try to keep his copyrights to make more money later. He just commanded as large a fee as he could wrest, and then after seeing through the first edition (with its illustrations) really did dismiss the forms his novels appeared in from his mind. He understood he had yielded control.

Since the purpose of printing Austen’s novels from the publisher’s point of view was to make money from them, and the price of such books in this period rather high (something like 5 to 8 shillings a volume), the publishers early on wanted 3 to 5 volume books. The formula which made Mudie’s so rich and thus its authors, was the renting of 3 volume sets for a couple of years before the cheap one volume editions came out.

Marilyn Butler in what I think is a poorly thought out address to the British Jane Austen Society brings up this issue and comes up with divisions she says Austen meant for which she has no proof, but worse yet (as there is no criticism from Austen discussing this except in the case of P&P — see below) is impressionistic; however, her address is useful because she brings up the issue.

How do the novels as we see them relate to underlying structures in the books. Did Austen have a 2 volume design in mind or a 3 volume one? With no evidence, Butler has Austen as lady-like wanting a 2 volume structure (she is ever determined to present Austen as elite and obeying whatever conventions Butler sees) and not caring about the money. We know from Austen’s letters in Bath, she cared about money intensely; she may not have been the businesswoman Jan Fergus imagines (Her letter to Crosby is not well thought out and by being so abrupt and open she leaves him the opportunity to bite back – she has not learned negotiation means obfuscation.) But she wanted to make money from her books if she could. On the other hand, as an immanent writer, she did let them become themselves. My sense is she had both divisions in mind: two volumes with two parts (the way Inchbald’s novels work) or three as that was a growing convention (you see this in Romance of the Forest) with Austen showing her awareness of his when she makes fun of the 276 page volume (and many were, the Romance of the Forest in the 1797 edition is 276 pages for the first volume).

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I went over the divisions as I think this too is way to try to reach the novels before publication. The thinking here is akin to what I did for my calendars: geologizing I call it.

An imaginary (imagined) First Impressions (Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet filmed reading it, from the opening of Wright’s 2005 P&P, unusual witty moment)

This is what I came up with: What Austen published:

S&S

If you divided Sense and Sensibility into 2 volumes, the second at Chapter 25, would begin with Elinor and Marianne with Mrs Jennings on their way to London. Nevertheless, I’ve thought that the present volume 1 ending with Elinor’s great shock at Lucy’s revelation and Volume 2 ending with Lucy’s triumphant invitation to stay with Fanny and John Dashwood and opening with the revelation of the engagement is the right turn — are correct (so to speak). I like both, both seem shapely, and could be codas in the films.

P&P:

We have it in a letter Austen was dissatisfied w/the divisions of P&P as printed (after she lopped and chopped remember so she had ruined her own desig)n. She writes “The 2nd volume is shorter than I cd wish — but the difference is not so much in reality as in look, there being a larger proportion of Narrative in that Part” (letter 29 January 1813) I’ve always thought that the third volume begins at the right spot: Elizabeth on her way in the carriage to Pemberley with Mr and Mrs Gardiner, Chapter 43.

Remarkable numbers of symmetries in this book. A thoroughly worked up book and has lost little of its original richness, just the ironies of juxtaposition (I use just ironically here).

Now the present P&P is 61 chapters but noticeably the opening chapters are often very short — that’s where she cut, my calendar shows talk of more balls, assemblies, meetings and I assume there might have been a scene or scenes between Jane and Bingley excised. But volume 2 begins at present at Chapter 24. So we have 23 chapters for Vol 1, 19 chapters for Volume 3, leaving 18 for Volume 2. It is the shortest as to chapters. Volume 1 also ends with Mr Bennet choosing Elizabeth’s side, with Volume 2 opening with letter from Caroline showing Mr Bingley will not be back and then moving on to Charlotte’s betrayal (a strong word I know but arguably it may be used, Charlotte betrays herself as well as Elizabeth to secure a house, food, the independence one gets as a wife)

Davies follows the three volume division of Austen in his breaks in his 1995 adaptation.

MP:

MP (also rich awareness of social world and goes beyond the immediate and seen) and Emma (ditto though it does not go beyond immediate and seen) virtuoso performances. So how does their present division into 3 stand up?

Butler argues that MP intended to be 2 volumes, the first ending with Maria’s wedding, so Chapter 21 ends Volume I; but that makes top heavy Volume 2 (of 25 chapters), and using 18 as the end of Volume I gives us the climactic coming of Sir thomas and break-up of the play; the present opening of Volume 3 doesn’t make a lot of sense as it’s in the midst of Mr Crawford’s courtship, Chapter 32 though it must be admitted then Volume 2 ends on Mary Crawford’s note to Fanny to take Henry seriously and welcome to Fanny as a sister-in-law. Half way simply done would be 24 and that makes sense too as it ends on Wm being promoted and the beginning of a new phase of existence at Northamptonshire with Fanny and Sir Thomas as guiding spirits. I rather think the book may be divided many ways as it’s so strong in its phases.

There are subdivisions, as the sequence at Sotherton, the sequence about the play, and at the end the semi-epistolary novel.

Emma:

Emma is a 3 volume book as we now have it. Unlike MP the divisions don’t work that well; not that they don’t work at all (as they don’t in Persuasion) but that the codas of the book lie elsewhere: I’d say with Mr Knightley and the chapters where we don’t see Emma (I:5, Mr Knightely and Mrs Weston talk) and where Mr Knightley is looking at Jane and Frank (III:5, the alphabet game — precisely parallel spot in volumes). (The film adaptations are all over the place where to divide and inventing a back story as Welch’s 2009 film or a harvest festival the way Davies does doesn’t help.)

Present Vol 1 Chapter 18 ends with Knightley and Emma’s clash over
Frank Churchill but he has not yet arrived; the real ending of this volume is 17 when Emma goes to tell Harriet that Mr Elton loves her, the Knightley brother and sister (John and Isabella) and Mr Elton all leave but then the point of chapter 17 is that Frank did not come. Volume 2 presently ends with Chapter 36, with news of Frank Churchill’s return and amused dialogue of Mr Knightley and Emma where Emma demands to know what exactly has her dissipation been. I do not doubt the division here is just like Henry’s of NA; Jane or the publisher divided the manuscript into 3 equal parts, 18, 35 with the conclusion Chapter 61.

Instead divisions can be made with seasonal calendar and punctuated high points (Tuesdays at work here). Davies’s idea does cohere with seasonal calendar in the book. Book has back story told by narrator: I:2 the history of the Churchills; 3:2, opening poignant romance of Fairfax family [very like Chapter 4 of Persuasion, the poignant story of the failed engagement of Francis Wentworth and Anne Elliot). This reminds me of the way Anna Austen Lefroy wrote out an unattached history of Clara Brereton for Sanditon. Maybe she saw Austen’s manuscripts in stages where these separated back stories were still not woven (pinned?) in.

Posthumous books:

If you divided Northanger Abbey into three equal parts, it would make more sense: Vol 1, chs-10. Chapter 11 has Catherine getting seriously involved and stood up by Thorpes and slowly choosing Tilneys, at the end of which the climax is Isabella’s gross behavior at the assembly ball; Ch 20, begins the trip to Northanger. The present arrangement has several chapters in Bath hanging on as an afterthought when a new volume begins and Northanger visit starts at Chapter 20.

Persuasion as presently divided doesn’t make sense either. This suggests how unfinished it is. The present text is 24 chapters and half way is 12. Henry did the simplest thing: divided it in 2. But 12 is the middle of Anne’s time at Upper Cross — though against that it is the moment that Captain Wentworth returns to Lyme. Chapter 9 (after Anne’s tremendous anxiety, the first meeting of 8, the heart break of his coldness) of Wentworth come to stay, and 16 and 17 are simply in the middle of the Bath time. That there is no good division into a shapely narrative is due to its originally planned for 3 and the size of S&S or P&P.

Much more sense of Bath as a general place from adult point of view in Persuasion. NA reveals some of its narrow child-like origins — though because of revisions must be seen as a novel in-between Emma and Persuasion, and its use of irony with suspense reminds me of Emma. Persuasion as rapid intensity of spirit going out (dying to be precise) connects to Sanditon

The evidence of the ms’s that we do have for the later novels:

There is no division in the hard-worked thoroughly detailed The Watsons, yet the impulsive draft (not a first draft I now think but not worked out in the detail of The Watsons), she is dividing into chapters as she goes. So too the foul papers type draft of the cancelled chapters of Persuasion. So there was no consistency.

The fair copies of Love and Freindship and Lady Susan don’t help us here as they are epistolary and epistolary novels when not just chunks of 1st person narratives cut up have to have beginnings and ends in order to interact with the other letters ironically and as to time.

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The best edition of the Juvenilia, and first attempt at serious (grave realistic) writing by Austen (Catherine, or the Bower)

If authors could, they would control the shaping of their books in the last phases of revision and presentation to the editor and/or publisher. I am trying to get beneath or beyond the printed phases which fit publisher’s needs for profits (so much a volume for example) to what the author intended or wrote at any rate. I am trying to understand what the manuscripts were.

Ellen

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Jane Austen’s Letters: Letter 67, Mon, 30 Jan 1809, from Castle Square

James Barry (1741-1806), The Progress of Human Culture and Knowledge, from the series The Distribution of Premiums in the Society of Arts (ca. 1777-84)

Dear friends and readers,

Jane Austen’s last letter from Castle Square. A vexed one. Besides the content: blow-y month, 3 of Edward’s children off to school, yet more marginalized women friends’ troubles, especially Martha’s, servants, flooding closet, comments on brothers, Sir John Moore, gossip, she’s being nagged to read More’s Coelebs, I bring in an essay by Betty Rizzo outlining a group of women in Bath who gathered around Sarah Scott & Lady Barbara Montagu whose circumstances & attitudes (Bath bluestocking feminists?) presents parallels to those of Austen and her women friends.

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Juvenilia, Volume I: in Jane’s handwriting, dedicated to Martha Lloyd

While away (I was at a conference of the South Central group of ASECS, the American Eighteenth Century Studies society where I gave a paper), I thought about the currents of the past few letters. All cold, illness, marginalized women, the problem of flooding closets, the unexpected and problematic visitor Miss Curling, maiming from getting caught outside in the weather, and continual and on and off bulletins about the Peninsular war and her brothers’ acts of high violence at sea to secure for themselves influxes of needed money — much is repeated over and over.

I know it’s impossible to know why for sure Jane Austen’s unpleasant tone persists, but looking back the one item that turns up of personal import (and I think what influenced us most is what hits us personally — as Jane herself acknowledges when she is glad she knows no one who died so she need not really care) is Martha: Martha discomfort, her running after this or that man, her seeking a place and continual defensive assertions about her gratitude and apologies to the Austen lest they take offence. I looked back at that letter just before she was told the family must leave Steventon and was visting Martha, so fulfilled in comparionship — that I put down the bile to her disappointment over Martha’s loss. She is losing Martha — people notice how Austen says someone had got First Impressions by heart, she had read it so often, but do not notice it was Martha this was said of. From that high point to this embarrassing desperation, Nancy Steele like.

My view is the biopics which connect Austen to Lefroy as deeply tragic loss to Austen and Edward Bridges (ditto) have engaged with the wrong relationship: a movie ought to be made called Jane and Martha. to be about this failed relationships is to be central to Austen’s life and therefore books. Elizabeth and Charlotte are our distorted mirrors of this, Emma having lost Miss Taylor.

I came across a good essay by Betty Rizzo in Nicole Pohl and Betty Schellenberg’s Reconsidering the Bluestockings, “Two Versions of Community,” where Rizzo argues one of two versions of women’s communities is found in Sarah Scott and Lady Barbara Montagu’s circles in Bath: these are women who

thought well-born and well-educated, had become irrelevant to soicety from the perspective of those to whom the major purposes of women were the procreation of children and the transmissions of possession. There were many such women relegated to the sidelines in places such as Bath or Tunbridge, women whose slender provisions were often grudgingly seen as detracting from the family fortunes. Their fathers and brothers were usually content, though, to countenance and even enable their separate lives with funds just sufficient to prevent their disgracing their connections. They clustered here and there,

living where it was cheap. In London one needed £1000 to keep a carriage, footman, but in Bath one could live on £200 as did Lady Barbara who disdained both dependence and grandeur (with her brother it was what she’d have had). They were not overtly lesbian but they preferred the companionship of another woman. Scott and Montagu even had a woman in their group like Mary Lloyd Austen who was narrow-minded, vulgar, mean; a Miss Arnold, illegitimate, the niece of one of the brothers of one of these (Elizabeth Cutts), another was divorced or separated from her husband; a key here was the woman is deracinated, women who lack any conventional open claim on other family members. All became close and found modus vivendi in a choice of an unmarried state.

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A modern photo of a flooded gutter: by the end of the letter the Austens have discovered their flooded basement and ruined things are the result of choked gutters

A general summary:

This is the last from Castle Square (see Letter 66). By having a series of apparently uncensored letters with no gaps we can see better what the rhythms of these letters were and how closely interwoven the content with their interlocutor. I am wondering if this is the way of other of Austen’s letters.

For example, Cassandra has written earlier than usual — to say her finger is better again. And then the litany of the bad weather (milder today), again she is nagged to read Caleb and this time her defense is its pretentiousness, phony affectation, illness. A way of summarizing young Edward’s progress that is fundamentally distancing, satiric (“from raw school boy … [to] … pompous sermon writer & domineering Brother. The real boy is probably not before her mind.

Then the litany of the miseries of these poor women — what a miracle change just one job with a decent salary might do them. But of course this will not be allowed until later in the 19th century and then only through office work and then in the 20th retail. Caroline nearly burnt to death, Miss Murden after all chucked out, Martha (Austen says she will be discreet and then is not) to be off soon after her paid companion position The only one to get a word of real empathy is Miss Sharpe: “born, poor thing! to struggle with Evil .. she is continuing with another woman she did not have to kowtow to so very badly.

Men too: Cholles endlessly drunk. Servants: Jenny’s marriage — a narrow attitude visible: Austen hopes she will not become un-respectable. Why? not controlled in service ?

we get a sharp comment about the hypocrisy of hospitalities: Miss Curling’s visit was apparntly not enjoyed; Mary Lloyd Austen is “of just the kind to enjoy such a visitor.” Did Miss Curling want phoniness and pretense?

News of Charles and Frank’s shipping worlds: Sir Thomas Williams return (Charles’s patron); and of the peninsular war. John Moore now dead in battle, and the words in bad taste — these deaths were in great pain and his was as horrible as any. Austen says even if he’s such a hero, maybe his mother won’t miss him and he did not die in Christian enough ways. One ordinary Morrell is more to another than John to his mother. What this sudden animosity stems from is not in the passage. Then on Maitland surviving, but the same cool reaction: she’s not going to enter in to the cares of that family.

Who wants her to? Maybe thinking on the miseries of women is part of the context for this kind of iron obtuseness

Then her attention returns to her concerns overtly: her mother can’t get out, her mother wants Cassandra to “beg” (begging is the verb used Mrs Seward to crop the garden at Chawton. Is it a case of sponging here? Austen is sure Cassandra will forget nothing, and then again the nasty narrow mindedness crops up about Lady Sondes. I’d number Austen in a letter like this as among the neighbor gossips that make other people so anxious lest anyone talk about them.

Back to the flooding floor, how it was the fault of choked gutters, glad that Frank and Mary’s child not sleeping there just now. She’s been consoled with similar disasters — others in just as wretched substandard (we’d call it) housing.

Ends on how patient they are in waiting for news from Frank – is it another pregnancy and childbirth? and then a recording of how Mrs Charles Fowles wanted to be remembered and the way of saying it is again distanced.

A vexed, irritated letter.

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And now to details:

A school slate and pen from the 18th century — Edward was sending two of his adolescent daughters and his heir, Edward, away to school

Austen begins:

I was not much surprised yesterday by the agreable surprise of your letter, & extremely glad to receive the assurance of your finger being well again

I suggest that Austen is not much surprised at the Cassandra having much to write about: it’s all the various activities Cassandra has in hand: Cassandra is now a mother to 11 children; Fanny is said to be in charge but that is partly a polite fiction; three are being sent away to school; the arrangements for Chawton to be made.

Here is such a wet Day as never was seen! — I wish the poor little girls had better weather for their Journey;they must amuse themselves with watching the raindrops down the Windows. Sackree I suppose feels quite broken-hearted I cannot have done with the weather without observing how delightfully mild it is; I am sure Fanny must enjoy it with us. –

A little picture of quiet ordinary life. Sackree the aging nursemaid who took care of these children before they grew older. Since 1793. I note the two girls are sent the way Jane and Cassandra were: before they are in any danger of sexual interaction they will be brought home.

Yesterday was a very blowing day; we got to Church however, which we had not been able to do for two Sundays

This is an unusual reference to going to church and it’s brought up as
a way of expressing how difficult the weather has been. One of the new
French revolution terms for the months of the year was Blow-y month. (This was for spring, March to be specific). It’s interesting how rarely she does mention church. It’s now thought that the two prayers attributed to her are not hers, and perhaps Charles’s. (By contrast, Radcliffe likes to tell of when her heroine Emily goes to church.)

And again Cassandra has been pressuring her to borrow and read Hannah More’s Coelebs in Search of a Wife (see letter 66).

I am not at all ashamed about the name of the Novel, having been guilty of no insult towards your handwriting; the Dipthong I always saw, but knowing how fond you were of adding a vowel wherever you could, I attributed it to that alone — & the knowledge of the truth does the book no service; — the only merit it could have, was in the name of Caleb, which has an honest, unpretending sound, but in Coelebs, there is pedantry & affectation. — Is it written only to Classical Scholars? — I shall now try to say only what is necessary, I am weary of meandering — so expect a vast deal of small matter concisely told, in the next two pages. —

The talk about the dipthong is defensive. Cassandra has been needling
Jane to read More’s novel by suggesting she is embarrassed by the title (“in search of a wife”?). I like how stubborn Jane is at this point; when she was younger she was unwilling to struggle for her point of view, and now she will not give it up. I don’t see this as about Austen’s interest in language and the sentence: “I shall now try to say only what is necessary” is an expression of weariness. In fact Cassandra did succeed in forcing this book on Jane. I’ve read some of Hannah More, and suggest the difference here is this: Cassandra is insistent because Cassandra likes the religious message and is attuned to the reactionary point of view.

Another reason for Cassandra’s pressure about More’s book is it’s a form of pressure on Jane to think of marrying, to admit many women want to and go in search of it – that’s the “truth” Jane acknowledges is in the book, dislike it though she personally may (and is obliged to watch this in Martha).

But my guess is fundamentally Jane does not like the woman’s tone, her stance, and I’ve read some of Hannah More myself. I started Coelebs. As a woman she is shamelessly sycophantic (Johnson was openly embarrassed by her); her tone in her religious tracts is overbearingly didactic, priggish and solemn, pontificating. I’ve just been reading a quarrel she had with Hannah Cowley where she (Hannah) was really insufferable (to use the old-fashioned word). More was accused of plagiarism and her ploy was to counter-accuse and insist on her own great learning. We know classical learning and phony boasts about accomplishments irritated Austen — as she dislikes lies, phony ceremonies and wants to tell the truth about herself. But it’s no fun to be showed off to. (I really dislike when someone tries to force a TV program on me or a movie. No book has been forced on me for years. I don’t remember any being forbidden but then I was not terribly adventurous and loved 19th century novels as a girl.)

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Hamstall-Ridward, Staffordshire today — a photo

After Austen has tried to fend off More’s book again and confesses
(as in “leave off” and “leave me alone about this one”) to weariness of the topic, she goes on to a series of short remarks on friends, family — Sir Thomas Williams comes to mind as a patron of the Austen’s (Charles to be specific — see Southam, JA and Navy p 106, Honan, JA, Life and Times, p 331). I had not thought about these detail laden paragraphs as ways of fending off pressure; here it seems to think about anything from family life can be used as a barrier. Probably to Cassandra who cares about this sort of diurnal reality more than anything else (as do many people).

So, the first are in response to a letter from the Cooke family. Jane seems to have the letter in front of her and going through it phrase by phrase (just as I am doing her letter):

Mrs Cooke has been very dangerously ill, but is now I hope safe. –I had a letter last week from George, Mary being too busy to write, & at that time the Disorder was called of the typhus kind, & their alarm considerable — but yesterday brought a much better account from Mary; the origin of the complaint now ascertained to be Billious, & the strong medicines requisite, promising to be effectual. — Mrs E.L. is so much recovered as to get into the Dressing-room every day.

Thomas Williams’s return as information from Hamstall given half undigested (by the correspondent — this is the Cooper family writing from Hamstall. We have a vignette of Mrs Cooke who her relatives thought had a illness of the typhus kind — damp is associated with typhus and it was often fatal — bilious illness means too much bile; something wrong with her stomach and digestive system. Perhaps when her fever went off that’s what could be seen. Cassandra’s godmother getting into the dressing room anticipates Sanditon.

(There’s a good deal of information about the brothers in Honan – he is really as interested in them as Jane Austen, and personally often more sympathetic. So it’s a third book for mining for information as well as Kaplan’s articles on Charles and his wife’s troubles.)

A letter from Hamstall gives us the history of Sir Tho. Williams’ return; — the Admiral, whoever he might be, took a fancy to the Neptune, & having only a worn-out 74 [man of war carrying 74 guns, too worn-out to be sea-worthy] to offer in lieu of it, Sir Tho. declined such a command, & is come home Passenger. Lucky Man! to have so fair an opportunity of escape. — I hope his Wife allows herself to be happy on the occasion, & does not give all her thoughts to being nervous. -

Jane provides an amusing sarcastic vignette. How resentful Austen sometimes is of other women; she stabs them for no reason. (I admit this kind of remark about nervousness rather makes my theory Jane Austen had a breakdown look less probable; but I’ve heard people inveigh against say “[gov't program] cheaters” who then themselves do all they can to get any money or help they can even if not according to the rules. Then cheating becomes “understandable” given draconian rules set up to not give people help.) Perhaps this frequent disdain is partly a coverup in her own mind. Certainly she does not make fun of Jane Bennet, Jane Fairfax, Fanny Price. In Persuasion when Wentworth talks of being sent to sea in a boat about to sink, the Admiral mocks him, but his sister does not. Nor Anne Elliot.

But in this non-fiction, real world, Jane is again confronted with someone’s wife, marriage (and in her mind might be a carryover of Cassandra’s comment that Jane does not like the title of More’s novel, Jane not wanting to hear about how others are in search of husbands.) Why shouldn’t the woman be nervous (she’d be broke and dependent), rejoice and the man be relieved. Austen has herself at least alluded to the savage horrors of battle at sea and on the peninsular in the last four letters.

A great event happens this week at Hamstall, in young Edward’s removal to school; he is going to Rugby & is very happy in the idea of it. — I wish his happiness may last, but it will be a great change, to become a raw school boy from being a pompous Sermon-Writer, & a domineering Brother. –

The Hamstall relatives and friends also write about the young Edward’s returing to school (the heir you see). Again acrimonious view erupts. This is the Edward she liked as a child who liked her. Has he disappointed by at long last succumbing to the ideals and norms of macho male forced on him (which early on he struggled against when as a child he instinctively didn’t like the rituals he was forced to take part of & Jane sympathized). It may be that she is just not thinking of this particular boy or that he is turning out awful, but rather she knows what Rugby is about (as well as the hypocritical muscular Christianity of such places) and loathes that He has been spoiled as heir and now will be turned into something worse. I remember her hero Edward Ferrars does not go to a public school.

Caroline has had a great escape from being burnt to death lately; — as her Husband gives the account, we must beleive [sic] it true …

A joke in poor taste. Mrs Longfellow literally burnt herself to death
with her iron.

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Mid-20th century imagined sketch of Yarmouth street, circa 18th century

Back at home, looking around her and in her memory:

– Miss Murden is gone — called away by the critical state of Mrs Pottinger, who has had another severe stroke, & is without Sense or Speech. Miss Murden wishes to return to Southampton if circumstances suit, but it must be very doubtful. –

The saga of Miss Murden’s life continues. It’s a wonder the woman
doesn’t take arsenic. One needs to read Betty Rizzo’s Companions without Vows — “toadies” was the term openly used for such women, even to their faces. At least here there is no mockery. The state of life Miss Murden found barely endurable in Southampton now seems desirable to her now, but it looks like this is now beyond her. She didn’t suit that pharmacist’s widow.

We have been obliged to turn away Cholles, he grew so very drunken & negligent, & we have a Man in his place called Thomas. –

They did keep on a drunken servant for as long as they could. Perhaps
he came cheap (I’d like to think Jane may have felt for him). I see no
particular sympathy caught up in the name Thomas. It’s not “a Thomas.”
The man’s name is simply Thomas (very common in this era as in ours).

Martha desires me to communicate something concerning herself which she knows will give you pleasure, as affording her very particular satisfaction; it is, that she is to be in Town this spring with Mrs Dundas. — I need not dilate on the subject-you understand enough of the whys & wherefores to enter into her feelings, & to be conscious that of all possible arrangements, it is the one most acceptable to her. — She goes to Barton on leaving us — & the Family remove to Town in April. –

The saga of Martha which really does bother Austen and is part of what lies at the core of her bile this January 1809 – the dream-relationship is over. I noticed yesterday that the first volume of Austen’s Juvenilia, copied out so carefully in her good hand is dedicated to Martha in Jane’s handwriting. First Martha who had memorized First Impressions almost so often had she read it once upon a time. Dundas is the mistress she will be toady to. The reference to the subtleties of what has happened is so tantalizing. Austen cannot ignore them to never allude to them but is too guarded to say whatever it is in print. Martha’s going there to try to find a permanent place somewhere not dependent on emotional attachments and paradoxically (think of Charlotte Lucas) that includes marriage.

What you tell me of Miss Sharpe is quite new; & surprises me a little; — I feel however as you do. She is born, poor thing! to struggle with Evil — & her continuing with Miss B[ailey] is I hope a proof that Matters are not always so very bad between them, as her Letters sometimes represent. –

Her mind associates Martha with Anne Sharpe and since Miss Sharpe is
less to blame for her reactions in Jane’s mind, she sympathizes with no irony. She is not as involved. Unfortunately, LeFaye is not really trustworthy on this one for while she has the surface journey through life this woman took and what was written down, that’s just the surface and LeFaye will not look for obvious subtexts with Austen. For LeFaye Austen never looked at anyone with any real regard but her family members and all LeFaye’s sympathies go to the employer types
Sharpe had to deal with, the establishment itself. There was an attempt in Bath to get Sharpe a job to keep her nearby; mentions now and again suggest many letters (like this one). “as her letters sometimes represent.” That means some letters do not represent this relationship as that bad. (How pernicious is Downton Abbey – the place to read some of this too is Pamela Horn’s Rise and Fall of the Victorian Servant). LeFaye knows nothing of Miss Bailey but where she (and thus Miss Sharpe) lived together.

Jenny’s marriage I had heard of, & supposed you would do so tod from Steventon, as I knew you were corresponding with Mary at the time. I hope she will not sully the respectable name she now bears. –

Another servant and this time she is less patient than she was towards Cholles: What she suggests reminds me of the nature of Lydia Wickham’s later life, how she survived in later years (quiet promiscuity which can occur for lots of reason). I remember how in Persuasion Mary Musgrove resented her maid walking out at night (with a man). So maybe this maid was in the back of Austen’s mind in Persuasion as the news comes from Mary Lloyd Austen.

Your plan for Miss Curling is uncommonly considerate & friendly, & such as she must surely jump at. Edward’s going round by Steventon, as I understand he promises to do, can be no reasonable objection, Mrs J. Austen’s hospitality is just kind to enjoy such a visitor. –

Miss Curling again: she was the one who insisted on living at Castle
Square, made the flooding closet such a problem for Jane and then came
and gave herself airs. This is the sort of person Mary appreciates. It
might rankle that Edward is willing to take her by the carriage while
he is going somewhere else. He does not even do that sometimes for
Jane, but then like the other brothers he is involved with Jane and
his sister and wants to control them instinctively (as a male
prerogative).

We were very glad to know Aunt Fatty [Fanny, Austen is using a needling nickname for her] was in the Country when we read of the Fire. — Pray give my best Compliments to the Miss Finches, if they are at Godmersham –

Another fire but this one is not turned into a joke, possibly because
the people writing about it didn’t ask for sympathy. I can see Austen
joined in mocking this woman for being overweight. Austen was
friendly with teh Finches and they kind to her during that period of
turmoil after leaving Steventon and before Castle Square. Austen
visited and was welcomed kindly enough (likewise by the Bridges partly
because of Edward’s liking for Jane).

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Sir John Moore
(1761-1809) by Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830)

And then the letter’s nadir:

I am sorry to find that Sir John Moore has a Mother living, but tho’ a very Heroick son, he might not be very necessary one to her happiness. – - Deacon Morrell may be more to Mrs Morrell. — I wish Sir John had united something of the Christian with the Hero in his death. — Thank Heaven! we have no one particularly among the Troops – no one in fact nearer to us than Sir John himself. Col Maitland is safe and well, and his Mother & sisters were of course anxious about him, but there is no entering much into the solicitudes of that family. –

Jane does loathe these battles too – the way she does much macho doings. She does not write of her detestation of war — how could she when this is the way her brothers are enriching themselves and Frank has supported her and her mother and sister at Southampton. She also dislikes false titles and pomposities and pretense at respect based sheerly on rank so she brings in the lower ranked Col Maitland who she did know at Bath but then she cannot stand to sympathize with the family who could have lost him. It is irritation all — why – - because the family or group she wanted to form has been rendered unthinkable (those why and wherefores Austen does not enter into).

On not entering into solicitudes: it may be a rebutal to Cassandra’s piety. Yet why should we enter into Anne Lady Wentworth’s in her later fiction who defied convention in marrying a sailor captain who the upper hierarchies (in the person of Sir Walter) despised but then would have not that much to fall back on were she left vulnerable. But these are stories while Martha and she, Miss Sharpe, even Miss Murden were real.

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The letter’s closing phase, the coming move to Chawton:

Chawton house, a recent photo

My Mother is well, & gets out when she can with the same enjoyment, & apparently me same strength as hitherto.-She hopes you will not omit begging Mrs Seward to get the Garden cropped for us — supposing she leaves the House too early, to make the Garden any object to herself. — We’re very desirous of receiving your account of the House — for your observations will have a motive which can leave nothing to conjecture — suffer nothing from want of Memory. — For one’s own dear Self, one ascertains & remembers everything. –

On the use of the word “begging” in context it does not sound like the
use of cliched expression to me. The woman who has been living in the
house has no reason or interest to fix the garden and probably not
much money. She does need to be begged — urged from the standpoint of
powerlessness, for the Austens have nothing they can give or withhold.

It’s touching to see Jane Austen wanting to make another garden and
shows us she valued this. The last sentence her unsentimentality.

Lady Sondes is an impudent Woman to come back into her old
Neighbourhood again; — I suppose she pretends never to have married
before — & wonders how her Father & Mother came to have her christen’d Lady Sondes. –

This is the woman about whom Austen has written before. She felt grated upon by her. But (in letter 63) Jane allows her to marry a second time for love; and allows he has strong sense and elegant manners; all that we are told is Jane does not care for the stances Lady Sondes “affects” in public, such as she was unhappy. The real excuse is probably that Jane Austen was as often (and maybe she felt more) unhappy and repressed herself. This feels like dog in the manger stuff until we realize that it could connect in an immediate sense to Martha’s leaving. Lady Sondes can have her new husband; Jane cannot have Martha.

The storecloset I hope will never do so again again — for much of the Evil is proved to have proceeded from the Gutter being being choked up, & we have had it cleared. — We had reason to rejoice in the Child’s absence at the time of the Thaw. for the Nursery was not habitable. –

Then that flooding store closet; it turns out that a minor fixing could end the floods (no big money involved): Frank’s daughter, Mary Jane, certainly would have felt it. I like to think they would not have put the child down there then. The gutter being at fault reminds me of how we had floods down one of our walls until we bought the house, and then were so scared how much it would cost us to end them; called in someone or other and it too was “just the gutters” and they did not cost that much.

We of similar disasters from almost everybody. — No news from Portsmouth. We are very patient. — Mrs Charles Fowle desires to be kindly remembered to you. She is warmly interested in my Brother;s
family. — yours very affectionately [abbreviated in letter] J. Austen.

But all have disasters. How intensely she is aware of Frank. They are
patient is ironic-dry in tone. She quietly mouths the pretenses of
Mrs Charles Fowle and so this vexed letter ends.

See Jane Austen’s Letters

Ellen

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