ASECS, Cleveland: actresses & plays, women French moralists on marriage; 18thc opera on today’s stages; poetry reading

Hubert Robert (1733-1808), The Louvre

Dear friends and readers,

A final blog on this year’s ASECS meeting in Cleveland. Two plenary lectures, one by Felicity Nussbaum defending 18th century tragedy by way of the salacious mocking epilogues associated with key actresses of the age; the other by Julie Hayes on French women moralists and marriage. Then a miscellany: a session on later 18th to early 19th century drama & novels, one on women’s attitudes towards Rousseau. Sessions on music: I went to one on 18th century opera as performed, now, in the 21st century. Tourism and art. Finally, most delightful, a session where people read aloud their favorite poems and for once revealed why they enjoyed them so much.

Elizabeth Pope Young (1735-9 – 1797), Countess Hortensia in Jephson’s Countess of Narbonne

Saturday, 11:30 to noon, In “Unaccountable Pleasures: the Subject of Tragedy,” Felicity Nussbaum began with the admission many of the plays of the era were poor; if tragedy is central to an era, how explain the aesthetic failure of tragedies when they were so popular. Radical shifts in ways of performing and the new central roles for women make for a different kind of drama: actresses made visible a new kind of bonding whose goal was to flatter and to enable their audiences to escape. She went over the careers of actresses, gave readings of several centrally popular 18th century tragic plays (not all today considered great masterpieces like Arthur Murphy’s The Grecian Daughter), read aloud numerous of the epilogues & and then explicated them and discussed how they were enacted to suggest they were meaningful as performed for their audiences.

One of the sessions, on Thursday, 9:45 am (18, “The 18th century repertoire) can be aligned with Nussbaum’s speech. All three papers were about the radical content of the plays of the 1790s; what unites them with the previous topic is on the face of it these have been seen as poor plays, rewrites of earlier plays or apparently naive recountings of earlier political events. Daniel Gustafson spoke of the rewriting of specific Restoration libertine plays (a revival where they were rewritten and famous Restoration historical figures brought before the public again, i.e, Rochester, Charles II); these manifest a preference for acting out contemporary (early 19th century) politicized ideals. Later plays have characters of lower rank; the earlier time of history is itself de-politicized. Daniell O’Quinn (quoting John Barrell) showed how plays got through the harsh repression and how performances through visuals, noise and a libretto yield comments on what is tyranny. Better plays — as Otway’s whose complexity was little appreciated — can tragically fail. Multiple complex intentions are mostly lost.

From a 2013 production of Sheridan’s Rivals (Emily Bergl and Matt Letscher) at the Vivian Beaumont in NYC

Roz Ballaster explicated the text of Sheridan’s Rivals as a prologue to looking at the interactions (so to speak) of the novel and drama. She went over plays which reworked other plays (Inchbald’s Married Man reworked Destouche’s autobiographical play of the same name); George Colman writes a play that is like an obsessed novel where no conflicts are resolved. We must not read the plays too much as imitations either. She pointed to texts which were read and not staged. The novel heroine is generally more active, more aggressive, more complex, but we get novelistic treatments of heroine in the theater (Southerne’s Isabella).

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Madame du Chatelet at her work table by an unknown French artist

Julie Chandler Hayes first looked at the work of many 17th, 18th and 19th century women moralistsm then singled out 4 individual women and their works to treat in detail and then moved back to generalization. A mordant tradition of moralizing which differ from that of males which has little to say about childbirth or marriage, which women moralists discuss, often as a kind of slavery; they were given no or little choice. Women whose works she covered include: Gabrielle Suchon (1631-1703), Madame de Lafayette (1634-93); Anne-Therese de Marguenat de Courcelles, Marquise de Lambert (1647-1733); Madeleine de Puisieux (1720-98); Madame de Verzure (?1766); Marie-Jeanne de Châtillon Bontems (1718-1768) who translated Thomson’s Seasons; Marie-Geneviève-Charlotte d’Arlus (or Darlus), married to Louis-Lazare Thiroux d’Arconville (1720-1805), and wrote scientific works, translated, whose works have been attributed to Diderot; Emilie du Chatelet (1706-49).

While Prof Hayes discussed some themes as they appear in a few individual works or are of interest for one person, I’ve given just her heads of topic and what she discussed both separately and for the women as a group. SO: they discuss celibacy, companionate marriage, adultery (this was expected, people presented as taking a lover out of boredom, but then finding themselves in a morass of jealousy and resentment). The issue of parenthood is treated abstractly: before Rousseau motherhood is not a topic. More abstractly: unequal power relationships, egalitarian feminism; the necessity of submission, a pessimistic view of humanity, marriage as a perverted institution, hardly calculated to add to happiness of either person. Loss of liberty is central to the truth of marriage, especially for women.

Girls are victims raised with care in order that they submit to this life; boys are put into armies. The moralists say there are husbands who love their wives and wives who love their husbands, but it’s the husband who knows independence; for a wife to know liberty she must be a widow first. People shipwreck themselves for desire and ambition. Bleak depictions of social customs; she must obey him and his self-interest; he can make her unhappy with impunity. We see the interior of households, happiness not common among the lower class people either. Marriage not a natural state, an ideal of an unattached life. Some deeply poignant life stories hinted at: one woman lost her child at an early age and does not get over it. Some see a double movement between ambition (so you follow convenances) and personal identity.

There is little or no emotional refuge to be found in French women’s moralist writings. Novel took on further cultural analyses with its quest to understand human motivations and interactions. these are discourses of self-regulation. They have a profound sense the world they are allowed is not enough.

Portrait of Sophie von La Roche (1730-1807), Georg Oswald May (1738-1816)

Again I attended a session that may be aligned with this general lecture: Rousseau’s Emile (Friday, 11:30 am, No. 113). There were four papers. There were no surprises: Mary Trouille showed Rousseau advised educating women to serve men’s needs absolutely; his novel, Julie, ou La Nouvelle Heloise shows the tragic results; Kristin Jennings went over how 18th century German women responded to Rousseau as seen in their writing, her specific example the work of Sophie Von La Roche whose famous novel she compared to that of another German woman writer; Karen Pagani explicated an unfinished text by Rousseau, Les Solitaires which seems to be about whether a man should forgive a woman who has transgressed. The question (to me) seemed inadequate as the women in question was probably raped. Questions include whether the person should react with personal feelings (which seemed to lead to forgiveness) or do his or her civic duty and set an example. A fourth paper came from another panel: Avi Lifschitz had to leave early so he gave his paper on Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages in this session. I thought most interesting was Rousseau’s idea that words have a natural link with reality through their signing function; that the visual holds us, that language has lost its ability to persuade as it becomes more abstract, that it’s most effective when people say less. Rousseau was frank enough to show his imagined teacher and pupil acting out some of his theories and failing.

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2013: Metropolitan Opera: Handel’s Giulio Cesare

A session I and Jim enjoyed but I probably won’t be able to convey much about was “Eighteenth Century Opera in Production” (Saturday, 9:45 am, No 169). All four presentations used power-point, computers, screens, music, DVDs. Majel A. Connery discussed a recent production of Mozart at Salzburg which appears to have been 3 plays, all intended to reflect his life, his imagination trajectory, his work: she called it “meta-theater Mozart.” The plays were controversial among other things for the way they characterized Mozart’s inner life: wild, nightmarish, when reflective sad. Money (the lack of it) tears the hero apart. Everyone in simple symbolic costumes; the stage a huge box. Annelies Andries discussed what happened when the traditional aria of an opera is replaced by anther aria part of the opera but often left out. This happened in a production of the Marriage of Figaro with Cecilia Bartoli; the audience was apparently disappointed instead of reinvigorated with the apparently new perspective.

Danielle de Niese as Ariel (Enchanted Island)

Laurel E. Zeis’s's “‘Persistent 18th century in two recent Metropolitan productions” was about elements of staging, kinds of voices, costumes, motifs, attitudes, practices, brought into the 21st century from the 18th century stage. I have a picture of some on this blog: the imitation of an 18th century stage in the recent Giulio Cesare. I wrote a blog about The Enchanted Island which was her central focus — and the use of boats on artificial water in the background appeared again in Giulio Cesare. Supernatural elements and computerized projection are found everywhere — though not Dryden and Davenant substituted for Shakespeare. Her suggestion that the “machine” for the Ring cycle was “very 18th century” because it changed the scenery in front of the audience, caused the players to come up front stage, & even dress in front of us was not all that persuasive, but her clips were fun. She talked of operas I’d not heard of (a Little Women), and pointed to unexpected 18th century elements in recently written operas like Nixon in China (a da capo aria).

Giovanni Piranesi (1720-88), Carceri V

Similarly, the strong tourism element of the four papers given in “Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations in the 18th century” (Thursday, 4:15 pm, No 71) were dependent on slides, and clips and photos, and I took few notes, just looked at lot. Suffice to say I especially enjoyed T. Barton Thurber’s talk on lasting impressions of Giovanni Battista Piranesi and British artists in Italy” and the pictures of Roman Antiquities discussed by Carole Paul. I was not able to stay for Jamie Smith’s Lady Mary Montagu and the Masks of Venice,” and unfortunately David Kennerley did not make it with his “Italian Prima Donnas and British Female Singers, 1770-1840″.

A little more on a poetry reading session and I’ve done.

Ellen

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Austen’s letter 97, 2-3, Wed-Thurs, March 1814, Henrietta St, to Cassandra, now at Chawton

Walter Launt Palmer (1854-1932), Snow and Sunshine (1909): we have several snow-y letters coming up

Dear friends and readers,

A snowy letter. So is the next.

Three months have passed, and according to LeFaye and the evidence of this letter itself Jane did visit Henry in late November after all. We will recall by early November she had been eager to go for 3 weeks, apparently she did go after all and LeFaye thinks one thing she did was contact Egerton over the coming publication of MP in May. We have no letters from this time, no sign of it anywhere, and no mention by Jane. Henry and Jane are clearly getting along but why the letters were destroyed we can only guess. At any rate she went home and did not return until spring.

In this letter Austen appears to have the proofs of Mansfield Park — or at least a copy for Henry to read. She is reading The Heroine, and presumably in the throes of early composition of Emma. She goes to the theater to see the great Kean, enacting Shylock in a new psychologically sympathetic way. She visits with Henry’s friends. She hears from Cassandra: poor Cassy stayed at Chawton after all – and was de-flea-ed. Jane discovers she is without her trunk of small clothing items so she must borrow or re-buy.

After reviewing this letter (with Diana Birchall), I attempt a comparison between Burney’s journalizing letters and Austen’s — this comes out of my reading of Burney the last month or so.

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Farnham, 19th century print

Diana went over Henry and Jane’s itinerary according to the map:

“A gap in letters of three months. We left her at Godmersham in November; Christmas is long past, she has gone to see Henry, and is staying with him in Henrietta Street. She has just arrived: Cassandra was wrong to think of them at Guildford last night, they stayed at Cobham. Cobham is 20 miles
southwest of London, and 10 northeast of Guildford, which shows us their route from Kent. Earlier they went through Farnham, which gives a picture of their mode of carriage-traveling, from village to village. Everything at Cobham was comfortable, and it is pleasant to think of the party sitting down to a “very nice roast fowl.” We don’t know why she could not pay Mr. Herington (a Cobham grocer, Deirdre guesses)”

I too was happy for Henry and Jane they “had a very nice roast fowl” (she likes to eat), “very good Journey, & everything at Cobham was comfortable,” but it would seem to have detracted from the atmosphere that she could not pay her bill. What bill was this? I assume Henry paid for the food and lodging. It was over £2, the amount sent by Mrs Austen which is now returned as useless. So she’s not a rich lady, is she? Why is Cassandra to “try her luck?” Is there some dispute over the amount? So we are still in the Bath world of tiny amounts — people made fun of the 1995 S&S film for having Emma-Elinor worry over the price of sugar and meat. It was true to Austen’s continuing experience.

But they did not begin reading until later, Bentley Green not far from getting back to London. Is it a proof of MP he has? If so, how do they have it? It is improbable that it’s a copy for selling, for then it would be put on sale. A MS? not likely as the revision process would make them a mess unless this was a copied out fair copy. Sigh. (Partly over the idea that this fair copy was not saved if it was one.)

Anna Massey as the scolding Mrs Norris (1983 MP)

“Henry’s approbation hitherto is even equal to my wishes; he says it is very different from the other two [P&P and S&S], but does not appear to think it at all inferior. He has only married Mrs. R[ushworth]. I am afraid he has gone through the most entertaining part. – He took to Lady B[ertram] & Mrs. N[orris] most kindly, & gives great praise to the drawing of the Characters. He understands them all, likes Fanny & I think foresees how it will all be.”

Angela Pleasance as the self-absorbed Lady Bertram (same production)

People talk to please. Henry says he foresees how it will be to please. He sees (Austen says it was kind in him) that she labored hard over Lady Bertram and Mrs Norris — so we see how the hard comedy of the novel is what she is conscious of. For Fanny-haters, note she is pleased he “likes Fanny.”

Her doubt in herself is seen in her comment on Henry’s reading, but more than that is suggested by her her comment: “I am afraid he has gone through the most entertaining part.” If you go to my calendar, you will find the calendar of the book shows what we have falls into three distinct parts:

1) Sotherton, the play, 2) the aftermath of Henry breaking off and then Mary stuck there, he returning to fall in love with Fanny, her growing up and ball, and the proposal, with the 3) last section in Portsmouth that forms an sub-epistolary novel suddenly not fitting the 1806-1809 calendar of the rest of the novel at all, but one for 1797-98.

My calendar shows (like as several other studies before me have done) the play sequence was written at a different time from the courting, and the real result of the play, Henry and Maria’s encounter in London and elopement part of the text written at the time the play was written. So the middle section (Henry going off, return, Fanny and Mary’s difficult friendship, his courting and falling in love with Fanny, the Ball, the trip to Portsmouth) are later interwoven stories filling the book out to 3 volumes and making it into a conventional novel about a nearly coerced marriage (between Henry and Fanny) which was luckily avoided.

Austen here shows she thinks the earlier material will be much more entertaining for her reader. It’s brilliant, the play within the play, the salaciousness, the investigation into the nature of love and marriage in Inchbald’s Lovers Vows as in the speeches rehearsed by Edmund and Mary, maybe too she liked the Sotherton sequence leading into it.

Diana’s comment: “If he foresaw all that, he had the cleverness of a Frenchman or an elf, because people have been debating for two centuries about alternate endings to MP!”

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Diana: Austen adds that she finished The Heroine last night and was very much amused; she wonders James did not like it better. . This is a novel by Eaton Stannard Barrett, an Irish lawyer and poet. The subtitle at the time JA read this was “Adventures of a Fair Romance Reader,” and was changed in a later edition to Adventures of Cherubina.

My commentary: The Heroine by Barrett was an influential book on other books beyond Austen’s, Austen used the previous text from MP to help her give structure and patterning to Emma. See my Barrett’s The Heroine … . The Heroine is a deeply conservative, nay reactionary text in the tradition of Cervantes’s Don Quixote (as pointed out by Gary Kelly among others)

I’m not surprised Austen’s oldest brother, James, didn’t like it. He writes sensitive melancholy landscape poetry.

I leave those who are interested to read the plot-outline of The Heroine and how it parallels Emma’s (destructive finally) friendship with Harriet and how Cherry-Emma learns a lesson and to depend on the sensible male Stuart-Knightley.

What it’s not is a parody of Radcliffe. There are allusions to Radcliffe’s book but what is sent up is not her style rather the outlook which makes important the heroine’s sensitivity and the whole exploration of sex is dismissed. From my blog:

“The text is presented as a series of letters from Cherry to an unnamed correspondent and begins as a transparent parody of Pamela. The style is nothing like Radcliffe; the prose is simple and direct. These really could be renamed Chapters as there is little use of epistolarity, but the mode combined with the obvious caricatured presences does has the effect of ironic distance.”

Austen is ever the partisan and just cannot see what is in front of her if she is herself involved — or she refuses to (as in the case of Byron in the next letter where she seems to shut her mind, snap it goes.) She is endlessly jealous of Radcliffe as a rival. Barrett is burlesquing many books, and the kind of attack he mounts would also skewer her Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park too. He is at his funniest when at the opening when he alludes to politics of the day (as in the idea that while other characters can appear in his hell, Junius remains invisible). Again my blog:

Barrett is enormously well-read in romance; my edition by Sadleir includes pages and pages of allusions from major (Goethe’s Werther) to minor and popular books (Children of the Abbey). If anything Radcliffe is a minor presence in his book; he may be thinking of her when he writes against “impassioned sensibility … exquisite art … depicting the delicate and affecting relations between the beauties of nature and the deep emotions of the soul” that seduce female readers sexually (“voluptuous languor”), but his text is far more like Walpole’s Otranto. Barrett’s hostility to the gothic, though, is undermined by his fascination with it — though he does not go so far as to enact it quite in the way of NA.

Austen also enjoyed The Female Quixote where the heroine is similarly taught a lesson against reading women’s romances and how she must depend on sensible men. FQ is exquisitely funny when it parodies later 17th century French heroic romance, but it has nothing to do with the gothic; about a third of the way into the book Charlotte Lennox can no longer keep up the burlesque, and her text becomes a domestic courtship romance.

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A. d’Arnaud, The Sleigh. 1776. Image @Marie Antoinette’s Gossip Guide

Back to the trip where Diana enjoys the line: “I was very tired, but slept to a miracle, & am lovely today.” I agree Jane is luxuriating and the allusion to Mr Knight (rich, he left Godmersham to Edward let’s recall) is to the rich way she feels herself traveling. “Bait” means to refresh the horses. They are wiped down, allowed to rest, given water. The next passage shows us they went on with the same pair.

They arrive, the upper servant, Mr Barlowe, knows his place, Austen unpacks, sends out letters to friends with the letter P (I feel like Mrs Jennings because LeFaye is no help. She does not like the Papillons, makes fun of them. My guess is single women of the type she has been visiting and visited by in towns she stays at for years.)

It is snowing. – We had some Snowstorms yesterday, & a smart frost at night, which gave us a hard road from Cobham to Kingston; but as it was then getting dirty & heavy, Henry had a pair of leaders put on from the latter place to the bottom of Sloane Street. His own Horses therefore cannot have had hard work

I like that Jane is aware of how the horses did suffer. Though they did not change horses, he paid for two more to pull them. She remembers there is a slaughtering colonialist war going on in Portugal and Spain — though she does not use this term she does show interest in it again and again throughout the letters though her reactions are not exemplary (how wonderful we know so few who are dead, her attack on that general). For those who don’t know about this war it was deadly and had slaughter after slaughter; Goya’s paintings and famous May 2nd comes from it. (A busy year Diana puts it — so too this year in Syria and Afghanistan — the latter a real equivalent. Bigland’s book (see letter 90) read aloud by Jane by the way includes a large section on European politics; and the stuff on Paisley connects too.)

So I take the unusual explicit reference to the weather (but remember the last letter registered the cold) as part of her awareness of the world around her. Horses overworked in the wretched raw March snow, men dying still not so far away.

Her “veils” reference is not so decent. She is making fun of how lower class people are getting above their station by wearing fancy hats with veils. She watches for them and takes pleasure in the women’s attempts to get above their stations because she feels so secure in hers.

All this brings to mind some worry Cassandra had yesterday and Martha Lloyd. Not exactly rich and easy Martha’s life (as we’ve seen) — that’s the association. Austen’s letters move by association. Jane hopes Martha had a pleasant visit to them or somewhere else and thus Cassandra and Mrs Austen could sit down to their beef-pudding without too much guilt. This cold and train of thought brings on the misery of the chimney sweep to her mind. She says she will think of his cleaning the chimney in Chawton tomorrow.

About the end of the first page, she turns her attention to London. Crowds are enormous for Edmund Kean. It’s probably worth it to say a new style of acting was coming in: not so much more naturalistic, but more willing to open up the inner vulnerable psyche. That’s what Mrs Siddons and it led to Shylock being presented no longer as this comic or vengeful villain, but a sympathetic outsider. This was only the beginning, but it was important. You can see a reflection of this in Scott’s Isaac of York in his Ivanhoe.

Diana comments:

“A good play for Fanny. She cannot be much affected I think,” she comments. Fanny is now aged twenty, and I suppose Aunt Jane is looking out for her, to see that the impressionable girl won’t take in anything she shouldn’t – which is pretty rich coming from someone who’d been reading Les Liaisons Dangereuses when she was several years younger than Fanny!”

I don’t see what one text has to do with the other> Why Fanny cannot be much affected by this play and therefore it’s good for her to watch is a puzzling statement. If Austen means to suggest she is aware Fanny is not exactly a sensitive original type when she watches a play then why is it good for her to watch this one? It had not yet been interpreted to be anti-bigotry.

Mrs Perigord was Madame Bigeon’s daughter who had left her husband (probably over his abuse of her). She cannot have much money so it’s important that Austen pay this bill for a willow for hat-making and she does. Muslin was delicate material and Austen has not yet allowed it to be dyed although “promised” by others several times. She probably means she wouldn’t let them. Why are people wicked for dying cloth? It may be a joke, word play as Diana says, with the underlying idea that white is pure:

Diana:

“Now comes another quote I love, and it is rather startling to see it in context of a fairly prim and prosy paragraph; we are suddenly moved to remember that the maiden aunt is Jane Austen, capable of anything. For Mrs. Perigord has come, bringing some Willow, and she mentions that “we owe her Master for the Silk-dyeing.” Jane, however, protests that her “poor old Muslin has never been dyed yet,” despite several promises. And then she says: “What wicked People Dyers are. They begin with dying their own Souls in Scarlet Sin.” This can only be written for the pleasure of the word play, the fancy.”

I don’t get it as dyes come in all sorts of colors.

In the evening Austen tore through The Heroine and Henry read more of MP “admiring Henry Crawford” only “Properly” “as a clever pleasant man.” This does sound priggish — she is saying that he does not admire Henry Crawford as a rake or cad who uses women (the way a man might).

The last sentence suggests that Austen is telling only the good things that are occurring or occurred that night or over the days: we have seen many times that Cassandra wants upbeat stories and what is not upbeat given a virtuous turn or told not at all. This is the best she can produce about their evening is another way of paraphrasing this.

And now a paragraph about Henry’s friends and business associates who naturally are invited — and just as naturally may well refuse. Performative behavior is nothing new.

I suggest by-the-way that Fanny Price and Henry Crawford would not do as partners because Jane does not herself find Henry that congenial nor he her. That’s (Jane and Henry Austen’s relationship) an undercurrent in the novel. All her novels are rooted in her life-story. She is attracted to Henry, he is amusing, but her dream life declares it would never do. — unlike dear Frank.

Austen does not expect John Warren and his wife actually to come. The implication of the next sentence is that she at least (and maybe Henry) regards this socializing as an affliction. It’s said in a jok-y way: “Wyndham Knatchbull is to be asked for Sunday, & if he is cruel enough to consent, someone must be sent to meet him.” The Knatchbulls were upper class people and Wyndham a learned man from Oxford (in Arabic no less). Fanny Austen Knight would marry into this family and become a Lady.

From The Loiterer I’d say Henry was a reader and fit into Oxford so I assume this joke is for Austen’s benefit who is not keen on social life. Then Kean mentioned with a sarcastic voice, as if she’s repeating other people’s cant. I do think LeFaye guess may be right: that Henry’s friend may have played in a performance as Frederick. I think it’s the MP Frederick referred to, so it may be that the friends joked that Tilson or Chownes was a Frederick-Henry Crawford type (rakish).

At the end of the paragraph we see Austen still cannot get over being someone who moves about in her own carriage: she is to call upon Henry’s friends this way: “Funny me.”

The next fortnight tickets for all good seats gone at Drury Lane but Henry means to buy ahead for when Cassandra comes. He does seem to like Cassandra; she was his choice when he was ill.
A pathetic vignette occurs right after a mention of Sarah Mitchell who LeFaye has discovered had an illegitimate child. So a servant whom Cassandra has had to hire (and didn’t like this at all): Jane wonders what “worst thing” has been forced upon Cassandra.

Well Cassy springs to mind. Let us recall how badly Cassy did not want to be left with her Aunt Cassandra. Well she was left and is apparently treated as someone with fleas. No wonder she was not keen to stay. I feel for the child who had wanted to be with her parents. There are not many beds at Chawton we see and she got her aunt Jane’s.

Then Austen answering some joke about grotesque looking people; Austen is alive to people’s bodies and she says she has not seen anyone in London with quite Dr Syntax’s long nose or as montrous as two figures in a comic afterpiece burlesque.
The whole paragraph is to me distasteful, unfeelingly jocular.

And so the evening comes to an end.

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A still extant modest 18th century trunk

The following morning she reports her trunk has still not come. A loss of her clothes could not be a small thing to Austen. Apparently she did not bring a second set of small things with her in case the trunk was lost or stolen, and now she may have to borrow “stockings & buy Shoes & Gloves for my visit,” but she says (ironically) that by writing about it this way (berating herself for her foolishness) that will make the gods relent and it will show up. There’s nothing the gods like more than people admitting to learning lessons

There’s a decidedly irritated undercurrent here starting with the mention of the “Warrens, or maybe it goes back to where Austen admits she is not telling what happened in the evening that was not good.

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19th century drawing of a “lady writer”

I’ve been reading Burney’s diaries and journals and thought I’d end today’s offering with a comparison. Austen’s letters contrast to Burney’s journals which are far more formal, self-conscious, fictionalized in part. Austen is immersed in life and reflecting it in her words. In some ways I much prefer Austen’s though concede the general public would find Burney’s “more entertaining” to use Austen’s diplomatic phrase

It’s sometimes said that Boswell’s Life of Johnson, huge as it is, once you see all Boswell’s journals emerges as an interlude where a secondary hero takes the stage, but it is no different in feel or outlook from the rest. I suggest that Fanny Burney’s novels — huge as 3 are — and her plays too — might be considered as interludes, special episodes in the 50 volume book that was her life. It’s easy to discover there’s a preface to Cecilia not printed in the present editions, but found in the diaries and journals, a previous partial manuscript of Camilla extant in the diaries and journals; you might say the novels spill over into the journals or the novels spill out. The plays are notoriously life-writing spilling out expressionistically. Burney saved the drafts of her plays.

By contrast, Austen’s novels not interludes or continuations in a new spirit within her epistolary writing; I have (I think) demonstrated that both S&S and P&P were originally epistolary (and so have others) and think parts of MP were epistolary, but they are no longer. The novels do not spill out of the letters, anything but … at least as we now have the letters. Once her book was published, Austen did not save her drafts. Perhaps she had only one fair copy or two at most and Burney had many more. Burney appears to have been given so much more time and liberty to write.

One problem we are having reading these letters is Austen is journalizing just as surely as Burney, loving to put down her life. But Austen appears not to have had as much time to work out her vignettes, she gets them down rapid-scapid. Austen died young and when Burney’s husband died (November 1817, a few months after Austen), she worked for 23 further years elaborating her 50 volume + work.

That Austen is aiming at the sort of thing Burney was but didn’t have the time or life span to work it out expresses one we have such trouble going over these letters. It’s like we have drafts of letters. And of course our editor is not only not up to it, she doesn’t want to help us for real. I had really meant to go through this letter thematically not chronologically (section by section), but it seems to me demand the step-by-step or sentence-by-sentence approach. I will however as in the previous two letters reprint the text in the comments.

An interesting parallel: Austen has one beautiful fair copy of a text prepared as if a presentation copy; clearly she wanted Lady Susan to last. So Burney did precisely that with one of the plays her father and “Daddy Crisp” repressed (Witlings?)

Of course it might be Austen poured herself into the novels while Burney poured into the life-writing. We don’t know this for sure as we are missing the majority of the letters and all but a few drafts.

I was amused to discover in A Scribbler’s Life, a one volume excerpt from the 40 volume set (before the court journals came out and emphasizing the earlier years) that Burney as a girl would “always have the last sheet of my Journal in my pocket, & when I have wrote it half full — I join it to the rest, & take another sheet.”

These pockets are great bag-like things inside one’s skirt — no need for a handbag and reticule just for show.

The niece who described Austen at Godemersham in the visit we’ve just read about (her hair long and black) also said that she remembered Austen walking about with her writing desk at Godmersham. It is somewhere in the family papers.

A comparison: for both the life of a courtier is a death-in-life.

Ellen

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Austen’s MP: 1809 turns into 1797, original draft semi-epistolary (?);3-8 Tuesdays

1983 MP: Edmund arrives in London, visits and walks with Mary Crawford

Dear friends and readers,

I’ve some new findings on the composition of, and internal dating in, Austen’s Mansfield Park and I think them important. I’ve discovered that the movement of time of the novel where Fanny goes to Portsmouth starting just around the time Edmund returns to Mansfield and writes to Fanny to tell her of his failure with Mary in London, and we get the first inklings of the development of a genuinely adulterous liaison between Henry and Maria, makes sense only when put onto a grid of the 1797 calendar. Chapman pointed long ago that for the Portsmouth section of the novel to make sense, the date for Easter must be April 16th, the latest date during the time Austen was an adult and writing her novels and that occurs only in 1797.

What I discovered is there is a phase in the book where (probably this happened by chance but Austen used it) both 1797 and in 1809 work coherently or accurately at once: the day Maria and Henry met at long last again at Mrs Fraser’s party, March 14th, was a Tuesday in both 1797 and 1809. The next day and month we are given, a Monday in very late March, works out to March 27th and in both 1797 and 1809 that day was a Monday.

1983 MP: Henry and Maria kiss (in the 83 film Maria’s house-warming party and Mrs Fraser’s later party are conflated to become one)

In other words, for a short while in the novel both calendars work out with the dates and happenings Austen specifies. She then moves into 1797 wholly. You can see this clearly in my online calendar starting with Fanny’s receipt of Edmund’s letter from Mansfield (the sixth full or partial text of a letter in the novel. I quote just the opening entry and leave it to those readers who are interested to look at what follows:

Resumption of determinate time consistent with all that has gone on previously and fitting into both 1809 and 1797

Mar 25th-26th, Sat-Sun: *5th full text of a letter*: Edmund to Fanny: “7 weeks of the two months very nearly gone:” He was in London “3 weeks,” which in 1809 brings us back to Feburary 25th, but no sense that he saw anything untoward either at Feb 28th or Mar 14th parties in Wimpole Street. He speaks of returning after Easter which would be April 2nd in the year 1809, but April 16th in the year 1797. (Penguin MP III:13, 390-93, Ch 44)

The novel begins to be solely in 1797 (the transition made) when Fanny receives the first of Lady Bertram’s letters reporting Tom’s illness, and Edmund immediately leaves for London to nurse Tom. The weeks of phases of Tom’s illness, including Tom’s home-coming and one-week relapse, Fanny’s reading about this in Portsmouth over a few weeks, and Easter. Again I’ll just quote from my calendar where this begins:

Mar 30th-31st, Thurs-Fri: “Within a few days from the receipt of Edmund’s letter, Fanny has one from Aunt Bertram.” “An express earlier in the day apprised them: “a few hours before”: Tom is ready to allow a physician to send a letter to Mansfield.

*sixth text of a letter* Back story given by narrator. Tom from London to Newmarket, drinking, fell, a fever, left to servants alone; “disorder” increased. Edmund to leave to fetch him immediately and bring him back; “too distressing” for Lady Bertram to lose Sir Thomas (perhaps implied that if Fanny were there it would not be?). “I will write again very soon.”

1983 MP: Fanny reading with Edmund’s over-voice telling of

Tom brought home

When you follow the days closely (including named days), you then find all the stated days of the week work out precisely the way they do in the parts of the novel keyed to 1807-9 — the point that for example when Edmund, Fanny, and Susan return to Mansfield we are told it was a “Thursday” and working out the calendar carefully from the time of the newspaper article and Mary’s letters, that’s May 11th which was Thursday in 1797. “May 11th, Thursday: arrive Mansfield Park. We are told it was full three months: William and Fanny arrived Tuesday, Feb 7th, and now Edmund, Fanny, and Susan return on May 11th, the Thursday

1983 MP: Homecoming with Susan

What this means is this epistolary section was written much earlier than the final version of Mansfield Park, well before the 1807-9 phase, probably around the time she first wrote up the section on the play-acting, for Henry and Maria’s final phase is a culmination of what happened during October. Slipped in-between is this other movement about Henry’s courtship of Fanny, the ball, her refusal and ejection from the Park. J.Walton Litz was right to suggest that the play-acting and this phase of the novel belong to 1797.

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

1983 MP: one of several sequences where we have flashbacks and incidents in present time told through voice-over of Fanny writing

Q. D. Leavis suggests the novel’s first draft was originally written as an epistolary novel. My careful study of the 1983 film showed me it uses more filmic epistolarity than any other Austen film until Andrew Davies’ 1995 P&P; it may have as much filmic epistolarity as this later film but it’s not that noticeable since it’s dispersed through the film. These filmic flashbacks reflect the meditative feel of the novel, its interest in memory and the past. Certainly one can’t dismiss Q. D. Leavis’s argument.

The Portsmouth section is itself rich in epistolarity features. What’s more it shows all the jagged edges and re-combinations we see in some of the P&P chapters: where we are given redactions of letters, summaries and paraphrases connected by the narrator. One can’t count all the letters as there are so many mentioned, and full correspondences, but we are given the same variety we find in P&P: some whole (it’s telling most of these are Edmund and Mary to Fanny as the thwarted lovers), some partial, some paraphrase, sections quoted. The reportage of events (like Henry and Maria’s love affair) are held off, and several skeins of narrative occur concurrently.

That there are so many women narrators in the Austen films, both free and faithful adaptation suggests the underlying epistolary foundation of Austen’s art.

Bridget Jones writing in her diary (near opening, Bridget Jones’s Diary, 2001)

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

As to Tuesdays, it depends on how one counts them. There are none, none until after the Mansfield Park Ball, and they don’t begin to mount up until we reach the Portsmouth section where they increase quickly up if you include all certain Tuesdays, not just the days that are named Tuesday.

Here they are, thus far:

1st Tuesday: is January 3rd, the day after Henry comes back from London with the three letters he has procured (he himself tells us it was a Monday), showing that he has gotten William his promotion. What’s special about this day? it’s the day he meant just to go and see Fanny and Lady Bertram for 10 minutes, and stayed an hour an one half, and returned to Mary to announce his astonishing determination actually to marry Fanny Price. Henry names Monday the day he left London for Mansfield (Penguin MP II:13, 276, Ch 31)

2nd Tuesday, January 10th: the day Edmund returns home unexpectedly to find and meet Mary at the Parsonage still (he had hoped to miss her) and admits to himself that he is still irresistibly in love with Mary: “I was within a trifle of staying at Lessingby [another] five or six days more.” (Penguin MP III, 3, 309, Ch 34).

3rd Tuesday, February 7, 1809, a Tuesday evening when Fanny and Wm come to Portsmouth: Four weeks later Fanny tells Crawford “I did not arrive here until Tuesday evening” (Penguin MP: III, 11, Ch 42) On this same Tuesday also Crawford traveled to Everingham — in order to be traveling the same day as Fanny Mary said

1983 MP: Mrs Price greets Fanny, Wm just behind (Part 5)

4th Tuesday, February 14th, Tuesday: her immense disillusionment complete at end of a week (Penguin MP III:8, 360-64, Ch 39) Fanny’s assessment of her home given as under this date. Even if not named Tuesday, it’s not a conjectured day. At this point in the novel it is operating day by day and sometimes half hour by hour, tick tock, tick tock

5th Tuesday, February 21, 2012: end of fortnight when Fanny realizes truth about Susan and resolves to buy a silver knife, has the open conversation with Susan, and after that joins a circulating libary — week reckoned as a fortnight from the time Fanny arrived, their relationship takes off — becomes very good.]

6th Tuesday, February 28, 1809: Tuesday, the night of Mrs Rushworth’s first party Feb 28th, “Tuesday”: Mrs Rushworth throws her lavish party, discussed in Mary’s letter letter above We have been told that Henry left for Evringham and that Edmund has arrived sometime before. Feb 16th, Thursday: Contains the *third text of a letter* 16th (Penguin MP III:9, 365-66, Ch 40)

7th Tuesday March 14th, 1797 the night of Henry and Maria’s first meeting once again at Mrs Fraser’s! (p. 386, told about on March 7th, Mary’s letter to Fanny after Henry returns

8th Tuesday, May 8th: “Nothing happened the next day, or the next, to weaken her terrors … Two posts came in … no refutation, public or private … no second letter to explain away the first … when the third day did bring the sickening knock, and a letter was again put into her hands … ” Edmund’s letter says he and father arrived in London two days ago, so May 7th. We are told they arrive at the park on Thursday, talk Sunday and those days are the 11th and 14th, so this is a Tuesday but cannot be said to be worse than the other days, the way it must be admitted the two Thursdays (the day of the ball and the day Sir Thomas berates Fanny after she says she means to refuse Mr Crawford) are as important as the day Henry determines finally he will ask Fanny to marry him.

This also seems to be day of Edmund and Mary’s final interview which makes him distraught. (sometime between arrival on Sunday and Tuesday evening letter): Edmund goes to see Mary; “a note from Mrs Stornaway to beg him to call.” Sir Thomas’s scheme for sending Fanny home via Edmund: “he had seen or conjectured his feelings, and having reason to think that one interview with Mrs Crawford had taken place … Edmund’s letter afterward; so too his distraught state: “He looked very ill; evidently suffering under violent emotions” (Penguin MP III:15, 413; Ch 46). He tells Fanny on Sunday, May 14th. (Penguin MP III:16, 421-26, Ch 47)

A narrow definition gives us three to five important Tuesdays — I’ve italicized these. More flexibility yields more Tuesdays but it must be admitted other days are as important or bad.

Ellen

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Peter Grimes: Crabbe’s Borough & Britten’s Opera

I did not often see my Aunt with a book in her hand, but I beleive she was fond of reading and that she had read and did read a good deal. I doubt whether she ever much cared for poetry in general but she was a great admirer of Crabbe. She thoroughly enjoyed Crabbe … and would sometimes say, in jest, that if she ever married at all, she could fancy being Mrs Crabbe … — Caroline Austen, My Aunt Jane Austen

No. I have not seen the death of Mrs Crabbe. I have only just been making out from one of his prefaces that he probably was married. It was almost ridiculous. Poor woman! I will comfort him as well as I can, but I do not undertake to be good to her children. She had better not leave any . . . — Jane Austen, Thurs, 21 October 1813

The set for the Teatro alla Scala Peter Grimes — the rooms in which the actions take place are all inside trailers in a sort of car park, in front is the crashing dangerous sea and cliffs; to the back tenement apartment houses

Dear friends and readers,

I’ve been thinking about writing about George Crabbe’s poetry here, and possible sources for Austen’s deep affinity with his spirit as seen in his poetry, partly because a while back now (more than two years) a couple of us on EighteenthCenturyWorlds @Yahoo read a number of his poems in The Borough and Tales 1812, and found them compelling in their grim realism. Since then I’ve read his son’s biography of him, and my good friend, Nick, has carried on reading Crabbe and books on his verse and every once in a while sends me a specimen of verse with his comments.

Then today Jim and I went to see an HD version of Richard Jones’s brilliant production at Teatro alla Scala (Milan, Italy) in the beautiful theater of the American Film Institute in Silver Springs. If the film is shown anywhere near it (or you are lucky enough to be in the vicinity where this is being performed live), rush out to see and hear it. Like other of the Britten operas I’ve seen, the perspective of Peter Grimes comes out of a mind imbued with the finest of humane values as he puts before us the dense unexamined needs, desires, angers, conscious and unconscious of people in and pushed outside of communities. Britten’s Peter Grimes is rightly sometimes called the greatest opera written in the 20th century and this is a production which makes all its parts understandable.

The daring Britten story and characters: Britten makes a victim and community scapegoat of a man who is violent, has cruelly driven one boy and drives another by relentless hard work in unameliorated circumstances to their deaths. He had not meant to kill them, but he had not taken care of them, and he was not adverse to roughing them up, beating them to get them to obey him and work harder, and we see him take out his resentments on the second. He certainly shows them no affection. The community is right to condemn him (in the opening scene, a court room in a trailer), but we are made to see that in their better circumstances they behave not much better than he does in his worse ones. His perverse (given their real indifference to him) need to prove himself better than them by growing rich and building himself a house (which paradoxically he says will enable him to stay apart from them) has been picked up by the town’s spinster-librarian, Ellen Orford, who sees in his character and goals an opportunity to marry and find a place for herself to thrive. When the community refuses to enable Grimes to hire another apprentice after the death of the first, she steps in to promise she will soften the boy’s life and make sure he is treated decently. And so a second boy is bought.

Peter Grimes (John Graham-Hall) and Ellen Orford (Susan Gritton)

But Ellen does not protect the boy sufficiently at all. She cannot control Grimes. He works the boy very hard all week and will not give the boy off on Sunday. She has tried to pretend to make friends with the boy (her caring for him is certainly limited as we watch her complacently embroider while she asks him to talk to her, confide in her), but the boy (rightly) will not speak. He is a bought slave. We see other boys his age jeer at him, and seem to threaten him. The citizens are not prepared to befriend Grimes in any way, nor take the one help he has, the boy, away from him until they see proof of beating; their laws and customs (making profits from such sales included) invite Grimes to act out his worst self. They include types: Mr Swallow, a libidinous lawyer, a judge, Rev. Adams, a hypocritically pious priest, Mrs Sedley, a female nosy-neighbor who is thrilled by the notion of violence and fueled by the excitement of relating slander (how true she doesn’t care); there is a tavern owner, Auntie, at which dances are held (very modern club like), her two nieces who are presented as over-sexed cock-teasers, the very quintessence of sick heterosexuality (some of the male dancers have shaved heads and dance with these sopranos). We see them “service” Mr Swallow and how he despises them, and enjoys the experience all the more for the triumph over them.

From another production which did emphasize the connection with Crabbe (older costumes, at the Royal Opera House, London)

How does this opera relate to Crabbe’s Borough, especially the two poems most central: “The Poor of the Borough: Peter Grimes” and “Ellen Orford.” Crabbe’s The Borough is a narrow-minded repressive culture which makes an already hard-scrabble life much harder to endure. In Britten’s play Grimes has not deliberately murdered the boys; he didn’t take care of them properly but the final deaths are accidental (if clearly being slowly engendered). Crabbe’s central figure hated his father who hated him. Old Peter Grimes was a religious hypocrite who made his wife and son pray while he also made their lives a misery and when he dies, they are at least free of his tyrannies. The son, Peter however has been taught to be violent and longs to hurt others as he has been hurt; he is gleeful when he gets his first boy and really enjoys subjecting the boys to his blows. Britten’s Grimes wants to make the boy work harder. Crabbe’s central Peter despises the second boy who becomes lame under the terrible treatment; the town sneaks him fire, food, and comfort, but he drowns after beatings with a knotted rope because he can’t hold on during a storm. The town then will not allow Grimes another boy, and we see him living alone, struggling to keep up his fishing trade. He is haunted by his father’s ghost and the ghost of the two boys, left in isolation and slowly goes mad. One of the epigraphs to Crabbe’s poem comes from Macbeth: “The times have been,/That when the brains were out, the man would die …” The poem ends with a long soliloquy from Grimes begging his father’s ghost for mercy, imagining demons (the boys?) around his bed.

There is no Ellen Orford in the original tale. Instead she is the focus of a tale just as hard and grim. She is also one of the poor of the borough. Crabbe opens by bitterly regaling the reader with typical sentimental romances and then says he will show you what real life is like, real tragedy. Ellen was the daughter of a woman who when widowed remarried a violent angry husband who mistreated her and her children; a young upper class man took advantage of her need for affection and friendship and when she became pregnant deserted her; her baby-daughter was born an idiot. After many years of isolation and menial work, a tradesman takes pity on her, marries her, but their hard life sours the husband, and all her children but two die, her one son is corrupted away from her (like the son in Wordsworth’s poignant “Michael”), another son a seaman drowns. Her retarded daughter had the same fate as she, worse, she dies too. Now Ellen is blind and lives alone, and is imagined telling this tale to show how she survives still, loving mankind and thankful to God (“my friend”).

These are typical tales for Crabbe. My friend, Nick and I have mused over their ambivalent meanings. The director did not indicate why Britten turned to this kind of material, nor did anyone else in the intermission of the opera (where there were interviews played as in the Met broadcasts). Britten did spend the last part of his life in East Anglia (Aldeburgh, Suffolk) where Crabbe was born and lived. It is a place which has fishing communities, probably narrow-minded villages where people live out a hard life. Crabbe would have been a well-known local poet-hero. The sea is central to the opera: a dangerous realm where people have to wrest a living and where they can die doing it.

You might say this is a homosexual take on Crabbe’s original story. He shows no desire for Ellen Orford. It’s a social bargain. The conductor, Robin Ticciati, mentioned this and from the production it’s clear this was in Ticciati and Jones’s perspective. the costume designer suggested the way she designed the nieces’ clothing took this perspective in mind too.

Ticciati said the play and music were written by Britten in the 1950s (correction: actually 1942-45) when he and his partner, tenor Peter Pears, returned from the US where they had waited out WW2 as conscientious objectors. Britten was an outsider at risk from overt hatred as someone who was a pacificist, an open homosexual, regarded as something of a traitor. He is in danger from the small town people. At some level especially in the last scenes when Grimes shows intense remorse and fear as well as frantic anger and a sense of alienation and loss, Britten is identifying with this man, the lowest of the low. He deserves punishment; he ought to be controlled, but he is nonetheless not a monster; he cries, deranged. The one person who shows some disinterested concern for him is Captain Balstrode (Christopher Purves) and at the play’s close, Balstrode tells him there is nothing left but to sink himself in his boat into the sea. Grimes leaves the stage quietly and a messenger reports drowned himself. Meanwhile the citizens have reconstituted the court the opera opened with and Ellen is about to swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The opera was sung and acted beautifully. There were only some 17 people watching it on Thursday afternoon, but just about all looked very moved. We were taught some lessons about life. Were we any of those people or Ellen Orford? did we recognize aspects of our own experience as we watched and listened to Grimes going through his. My only qualification or objection to the show was at the end the young boy who had played the apprentice was not singled out for special applause. He looked around 14 at most and he was directed to be depressed, frightened, attempting to get out of a beating, accept hitting, lay down and cry, and finally slip over a cliff to his death. Not easy for any youngster to enact. The company’s nonchalance towards him during the bowing time (except for one man who seemed to encourage the boy to smile) paralleled the way the community in the play had not looked out for Grimes’s apprentice.

The Crabbe poems are are not poems we might expect Austen to feel deep congeniality with, though since she loved Samuel Johnson’s dark work and he promoted and thought very well of Crabbe’s early poems, we can see a direct line or connection or parallel here. She also loved the tragic book, Richardson’s Clarissa. Fanny Price, her character, has a direct parallel character in one of Crabbe’s poems, “The Parish Register” (see Selwyn, JA and Leisure, pp 204-7). I’ve discovered parallels with Anne Elliot’s story where characters are pressured to wait until a seaman makes good and the lives of both are ruined (see Sarah Raff’s “‘Procrastination, Melancholia, and the Prehistory of Persuasion, Persuasions, 29 (2007):174-180). Crabbe’s milieu was her own: clergymen, well-educated, connected to richer relatives, but themselves fringe people. Austen spent a few years in Southampton, her brothers were sailors, and she experienced a meager genteel poverty existence from 1805, the time of her father’s death, moving about on a precarious income until her brother took her and her mother and sister, and the beloved friend, Martha Lloyd in permanently in 1809 in Chawton. Frank had tried to provide in 1807 at Southampton but the arrangement did not work out: he was away a lot and his first wife, Mary, uncomfortable, fled the Austens to nearby friends, and would not return. Austen had eyes for what she saw around her, even if she did not put it too often into her book. The most consistent treatment is The Watsons

Emma Watson … “I would rather be a teacher at a school (and I can think of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like.” Elizabeth, her sister, “I would rather do anything than be a teacher at a school … I have been at aschool,and I know what a life they lead …” — The Watsons

But Jane Fairfax similarly dreads becoming a governess, a form of slavery she calls it.

Jane Fairfax (Ania Marston) in a bad moment, the anxious Miss Bates (Constance Chapman) standing helplessly by (1972 BBC Emma)

Perhaps it’s well to end on Crabbe’s compassion for his characters, for he does have that. These lines by Crabbe bring very vividly to life the world of the dependent woman in the later 18th, early 19th century: they are from Tale 16 (Tales, 1812) “The Confidant”….

Now Anna’s station frequent terrors wrought,
In one whose looks were with such meaning fraught,
For on a Lady, as an humble friend,
It was her painful office to attend.
Her duties here were of the usual kind -
And some the body harass’d, some the mind:
Billets she wrote, and tender stories read,
To make the Lady sleepy in her bed;
She play’d at whist, but with inferior skill,
And heard the summons as a call to drill;
Music was ever pleasant till she play’d
At a request that no request convey’d;
The Lady’s tales with anxious looks she heard,
For she must witness what her Friend averr’d;
The Lady’s taste she must in all approve,
Hate whom she hated, whom she lov’d must love;
These, with the various duties of her place,
With care she studied, and perform’d with grace:
She veil’d her troubles in a mask of ease,
And show’d her pleasure was a power to please.
Such were the damsel’s duties: she was poor -
Above a servant, but with service more:
Men on her face with careless freedom gaz’d,
Nor thought how painful was the glow they raised.
A wealthy few to gain her favour tried,
But not the favour of a grateful bride;
They spoke their purpose with an easy air,
That shamed and frighten’d the dependent fair;
Past time she view’d, the passing time to cheat,
But nothing found to make the present sweet:
With pensive soul she read life’s future page,
And saw dependent, poor, repining age.

Let us recall what Austen and many another woman of this era who remained unmarried and threatened by her inability to get a decent job of what is written of governesses etc. – are these lines not brilliant descriptions of the horrors of a woman dependent? But also the lines about the male gaze – quite extraordinarily modern really? the very use of the verb. And those great last 4 lines – nothing to console in past, present or future …

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

Miss Austen Regrets: Jane Austen (Olivia Williams) meets a Member of Parliament who quotes lines from Crabbe at her, and she acknowledges she often carries Crabbe in her pocket (probably ironic).

The lines: With awe, around these silent walks I tread
These are the lasting mansions of the dead … The Library

In Austen, Crabbe and now Britten we can see how in a particular group we are led to feel ourselves an outsider and alien when we don’t share the views of all and are often silenced and depressed by the experience … (Marianne Dashwood anyone?). We see also the theme of the outrages of social life so pervasive in Crabbe. A central motif of the opportunity once lost never gotten again swirls around this: the person doesn’t take the opportunity because they are persuaded out of it … (in all the novels, but especially S&S, P&P, MP). All three can empathize and recognize that crass, stupid, narrow, mean, bigoted people have inner lives too, suffer too.

I recommend Terence Bareham’s Twayne George Crabbe. He opens with a fair and concise resume of Crabbe’s life and then prints a long letter someone wrote after the person visited Crabbe late in life. Much of what’s known of Crabbe’s inner life emerges from this letter as well as what an
innately cordial man (when given the rare opportunity of a like-minded
intelligent person to talk to) he was, someone (not uncommon) who in
effect lived in and upon himself.

Ellen

P.S. For discussions of other operas, HD and live, see Opera archive at Ellen and Jim Have a Blog Two and further operas in Austen Reveries.

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Still reading about actresses … and Ann Radcliffe

John Singer Sergeant’s portrait of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth

Dear friends and readers,

I’m now into Sandra Richards’s important The Rise of the English Actress, and am chuffed to be able to say at long last I’ve discovered it was in the mid-19th century that the tide began to turn for actresses and they became socially acceptable outside the stage and achieved respectability for some on it. A key figure was Fanny Kemble, and a central instrument, the writing of memoirs. My guess had been it was the later 19th century. I was wrong.

It’s worth saying that when I’ve asked this question not only do I not get an answer; people in academic conferences in sessions on actresses shrug. They couldn’t care less when the kind of lying half-slanderous memoirs ceased nor when actresses were able to tell their lives more truthfully and as adults. They seemed not to value the truth nor serious sober life-writing as such at all. Well I do and I’ve been vindicated.

Helen Mirren as Prospera in a recent adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest by Julie Taymor

But I’ve no time to present this book; it will have to wait until I return — as it is well past one in the morning until I return — for I’ll have a time away for a few days at the South Central 18th century regional conference on landscapes and vistas at Asheville, N. Carolina where I’ll give my paper on Ann Radcliffe’s landscapes.

And though it is no longer December, but as it has been a very cold night, I’ll share a poem by Radcliffe I had not come across before embarking on this new paper (and reading Clara McIntyre’s Ann Radcliffe in Relation to her Time where it is printed), but loved upon reading: her winter evening with pleasant accompaniments of light, music, congenial companionship, favorite dog

Welcome December’s cheerful night,
When the taper-lights appear;
When the piled hearth blazes bright,
And those we love are circled there

And on the soft rug basking lies,
Outstretched at ease, the spotted friend,
With glowing coat and half-shut eyes,
Where watchfulness and slumber blend.

Welcome December’s cheerful hour,
When books, with converse sweet combined,
And music’s many-gifted power
Exalt, or soothe th’ awakened mind.

Then, let the snow-wind shriek aloud,
And menace oft the guarded sash,
And all his diapason crowd.
As o’er the frame his white wings dash.

He sings of darkness and of storm,
Of icy cold and lonely ways;
But, gay the room, the hearth more warm,
And brighter is the taper’s blaze.

Then, let the merry tale go round.
And airy songs the hours deceive;
And let our heart-felt laughs resound,
In welcome to December’s Eve

Of course the last thing Radcliffe would have wanted was to be an actress.

Helen Allingham (1848-1926), Coming Events

And so to bed,
Ellen

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The sexually ambiguous Robert Ferrars: a note on the “beaux” of Austen’s S&S

Philip Bowen as Robert Ferrars preening himself as quite the fashion plate before Donald Douglas as Sir John Middletom (1981 BBC S&S)

Dear friends and readers,

As I wrote yesterday on Ellen and Jim have a blog, two (Margaret Woffington and Francis Abingdon), I’ve been reading a lot about the 18th century theater, its plays and its character types in an effort to understand specific actresses and the function of actresses in this era. I now believe I’ve come across another instance of Austen’s use of sexual and/or salacious innuendo which I at first thought no one had noticed (in fact Jill Heydt-Stevenson noticed the usage and discussed it before me in her Unbecoming Conjunctions — see comment).

To put it succinctly, I know think that we are to understand that Robert Ferrars is sexually effeminate, not just a fop, but someone with a transgressive sexual orientation. Today we’d call him bisexual, perhaps gay.

As part of my effort to understand how Peg Woffington’s cross-dressing and transvestism (she really did perform masculinity) was seen — and is being used in what passes for literary criticism about the theater today — I’ve read a good deal about fops and beaus (or beaux), cross-dressing, travesty parts, transvestism in the plays and theater of the era. The best essay of all those I’ve read (written in clear English) rehearses some of the controversies: Beth H. Friedman-Romell, “Breaking the code: Towards a reception theory of theatrical Cross dressing in 18th century London,” Theater Journal (1995): 459-79. Questions asked include: when did a specifically homosexual lifestyle and identity emerge? What were the signals and kinds of talk that told the viewer we were having parodies of transgressive sex, references to sodomy, fellatio, irrumation. One problem is in the 18th century and persisting until today here is this strong tendency to want to define homosexuality as simply sodomy, concentrate on that. (I find that very puzzling as again and again surveys show heterosexual people do sodomy, sometimes figures like 80% are cited, and men in war rape women anally and not just to punish them.)

Well they were things like over-dressing, fantastical fashions, obsessive pointed talk about sex, gestures, puns on promiscuity. Far from having become more innocent at mid-century some plays are curiosities of almost obsessive cross-dressing. Friedman-Romell includes a print of Garrick dressed to the nines as Sir John Brute dressed as a lady. It is supposed to be Sir John, but he looks so female. Garrick was short let us recall, slight.

So, to the Austen connection: I now think the odd emphasis given on the word “beau”, which I’ve always wondered about, Nancy’s insistence on it, how many have the Dashwood girls seen, and Lucy’s embarrassment is supposed to signal to us that the milieu Edward has been hanging around in includes transgressive, not to put too fine a point on it, homosexual sex and this is embodied most strikingly in Edward’s brother Robert Ferrars. There are five scenes of innuendo. The scene over Ferrars’s bejewelled toothpick case (S&S, Vol 2, Chapter 11) is perhaps the most striking dramatization in the novel of this skein of imagery and talk (the stranger’s taste is ever so “delicate”; he is “adorned in the first style of fashion”, he is utterly self-involved), which is intended to condemn this milieu as sordid, salacious, amoral, not what Edward ought to have involved himself with.

Then there are the two meetings between Nancy and Lucy and Elinor. The way we later find Nancy is a voyeur watching Lucy and Edward talk through a keyhole in the door is anticipated by her titillation over the “presence” of “beaux” among her and Lucy’s male flirting acquaintance in Exeter and hope to meet more in London. Nancy is eager to show off her fun games to Elinor because “beaux” are gay men or males doing masculinity badly (so she can laugh at them) — or we may be meant to take it she is attracted to this kind of male.

Are there any in London is the question she asks Elinor eagerly. She has seen so many in Exeter and elsewhere. Much of the language is caught up in the first encounter or meeting of Nancy and Lucy with Elinor (S&S, Vol 1, Chapter 21):

Nancy asks Elinor Dashwood if her brother is “quite a beau.”

Elinor replies “Upon my word … I cannot tell you, for I do not perfectly comprehend the meaning of the word.” She says if he was a beau before he married he is one still for he has not changed at all.

Then this one: “Oh! dear! one never thinks of married men beings beaux – they have something else to do!’

Then Lucy hurriedly shuts her up.

What does she mean by something else to do?

Of course Elinor appears not to notice and says she is not sure how the term is being defined; Austen here alludes to the suggestive and unexplicit use of the terms “beaux” and fops in the plays and verse of the era.

At their second meeting in the next chapter (after Elinor has been shocked to learn that Lucy and Edward have been engaged for 4 years), Nancy is again at it: she is openly longing to “see one.” Why? “They are vastly agreeable, provided they dress smart and behave civil. But I can’t bear to see them dirty and nasty” (Vol 1, Chapter 22)

In Austen’s S&S, Nancy does not refer to beaux again but does say with leering innuendo that her doctor’s favorite ribbon color is pink (S&S Vol 3, Chapter 2), perhaps then an effeminate color.

Finally, Robert Ferrars in the novel talks with campy reference to his love for ornate cottages and the mistake his mother made in sending Edward to a private home to be taught. Edward should have been sent away to school like him; then he would have become like him (i.e., sexually ambiguous, transgressive). This comes from a fifth scene of innuendo where at a dinner party Robert Ferrars regales Elinor with his friendship with “dear” Lady Elliot, her plans for holding balls in small places, and his favorite architect (S&S Vol 2, Chapter 14).

Two of the film adaptations use the undercurrents of gay innuendo in the novel. Denis Constanduros and Alexander Baron’s script for the 1981 S&S has Ferrars as an absurd fop when we meet him and he talks to Sir John Middleton (see the still which prefaces this blog), and when he goes to sit down with the Dashwood girls at the ball, and then converses superciliously, snobbishly he repeats the conversation from Vol 2, Chapter 14.

Tracy Childs as Marianne and Irene Richards as Elinor

In the 2008 BBC S&S Davies (as one might expect given his sympathetic interest in homoeroticism and love of playing with transgressive sex) makes his Ferrars explicitly salacious and has his Nancy repeat the language Austen plants in Vol 1, Chapters 21 and 22 twice: once at first encounter with Elinor:

Daisy Haggard as Lucy Steele wagging her finger with Lucy Maddeley as Lucy not against it at first

and again when he meets Lucy and Nancy with Elinor and leers at the women’s breasts openly:

Leo Bill as Robert Ferrars

Davies has probably has read a great deal of 18th century theater, gay criticism of it, and understand there was something going in with Austen’s use of language here. He uses the language rightly for we are to condemn Robert for his nasty put down (with Claire Skiner as his sister, Fanny) of Marianne as “damaged goods.”

The 1971 BBC S&S has Ferrars appear too briefly for us to know if the film adapters wanted us to understand the character (once for a moment to be snobbish at the ball), and the 1995 Miramax S&S is content to present Robert Lumsden as Robert as merely effeminate, ineffectual, an obvious prey for Imogen Stubbs as Lucy (Nancy is altogether eliminated):

We see her eying him intently, and like a lemming he is pulled in

During his dance with Elinor he goes on about cottages, showing himself to be an awkward ass and later sitting at a fancy restaurant he is under the thumb of Harriet Walters as his sister, Fanny just as her husband, James Fleet as John Dashwood is.

Unlike Jill Heydt-Stevenson I do not think that Austen is morally indifferent to or simply playing with Robert Ferrars’s transgressions nor the possibility of Lucy and Nancy’s pre-marital pleasures.

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Hugh Grant as Edward stuck hard by Emilie Francois as Margaret (1995 Miramax S&S)

One play which is particularly revealing of 18th century presentations of gay men (as well as lesbian and bisexual) is Charles Shadwell’s Humour of the Army in its 1713 version. I didn’t read it to shed light on Austen’s S&S but I do think it does. Once upon a time, this would be Notes and Query entry, only at that time (early to mid-20th century) people didn’t discuss homosexuality.

Basically the play resembles modern movies: it is set in Portugal and seems to be a critique of that corrupt savage colonialist war but the text continually trivializes and does not set forth the real issues at all. There is a secondary male, Wilmot, who is very like Edward Ferrars: stiff, awkward and has made the mistake of falling among lower class types. These include in the play women who are played by male actors who would have been seen as the kind of “whore” who chases after armies. These women embarrass and distress Wilmot. This is as much a class issue as sex: he is taught not to go among lower class vulgar people.

The Steele sisters are lower class vulgar women and Nancy does not know how to hide it. She leers and tee hees.

There is a beau type, Bisket, who is bad at performing masculinity — is the way it would be phrased by modern critics. He is effeminate too. Played by Pinkethman, an 18th century actor, who when younger did play women (as a boy), it’s rather nasty, actually nastier than Austen who does not laugh at Ferrars for his sexuality but his lousy selfish stupidity. IN Shadwell we are invited to laugh at and dismiss Bisket because he’s a beau, not because he has behaved badly to others and is punished for it by being taken in himself. That’s what happens to Robert Ferrars.

Now look at more of Nancy’s words in S&S, I:21. She gets a great kick out of the beaus as long as “they dress smart and behave civil.” It’s said there was a homosexual culture beginning in the early 18th century and they over-dressed and travestied women, burlesqued them. So that’s Mr Rose (a flower name) (“prodigious smart” says Nancy) and Mr Simpson (low class name like Smith but also simpleton). Nancy is likening Edward to these beaux; identifying him with them.

Elinor does know the meaning of these innuendos and refuses to see it. Lucy realizes Nancy is giving away the way she and her sister spend time — in mindless salacious stupidities.

In Austen I see no sympathy for this molly culture, nor in Humors of the Army.

A great deal is made by critics because Belvedere in this play is a woman dressed as a man and played by Susannah Mountford who men liked their lips over in cross-dressing and it was the role Peg Woffington made her debut in. It does allow for real acting out of masculinity but also if you want to play it this way equally it could emphasize the distance between a woman (with no penis) and men. The story in the play has Belevedere almost leading to court martial of the man she loves, Wilmot himself — we might say he like Edward can hardly get along in the world he is such a clutz and inadequate in some of this.

In the 1971 BCC S&S, Robin Ellis as Edward does at one point menace his sister when she attempts emotional blackmail

But this is slid over in the way Austen slides over Edward’s inadequacies — and later (as published in 1812) Bingley’s — if we wanted to stretch this we could ask how masculine is Bingley, but honestly I think that would be to lean too hard on the punning in S&S.

As with Mary Crawford’s punning reference to “vices and rears” in Mansfield Park, the “beaux” thread is not a central vein in S&S, but a momentary thread. It sheds light on how and why Emma Thompson has tried to change Austen’s conception of the male Ferrars, and why Andrew Davies went even further and keeps a wide separation of Dan Steevens as Edward and Leo Bill as Robert.

We can, though, see that Austen knew the innuendos and perhaps about this world of transgressive sexuality, but it was what she seems to disdain. She does not invite us to laugh at Edward but to like his not being the traditional bullying male. I venture to say that were we to ask her she might have said she preferred Wilmot to Shadwell’s hero, the gay-ish (in the sense of gaiety) rakish (very mild, only in jokes) type, Fox (played by the leading man of the era, the said to be very handsome, Wilks — Hugh Grant’s role too) whom the play’s gay heroine, Victoria who defeats her parents plans to marry her off to a rich man, Bisket, and gets Fox.

If Emma Thompson at all recognized this punning, she erased it. Davies did recognize it and had some fun at the ball and with Nancy but knows it is not what is central to Austen’s world. Davies when he puts homoeroticism and lesbians and homosexual men at the center of his film adapations, he makes them deeply sympathetic character (Line of Beauty — Dan Steevens, and Tipping the Velvet, Jodhi May).

The real descendent of the “good heroes” of the early 18th century plays, the heroes say Farquhar has at the head of his (good)play, Recruiting Officer, Captain Wildish, actually has nothing to do in this play. It is true this centrally conventional heterosexual man is pushed to the side — and he does not at all appear in Austen’s typologies except perhaps say Frank Churchill. Darcy is the wholesome serious grave hero as is Mr Knightly, who comes from Richardson’s Grandison, another species of typology altogether. The kinky male (so to speak) is found in Wickham in Davies’s 1995 BB P&P and the 2008 Australian Lost in Austen.

Tom Riley as Wickham about to dress Jemima Rooper as Amanda Price in fashionable 18th century style (Lost in Austen)

I’ll add the later 18th century version that held the stage was as cut down version of Shadwell’s play where the “trulls” (men dressed as women and perhaps mollies) are cut as are the salacious lower class roughhouse slaptick scenes. it was called The Female Volunteer and all Belvedere’s lines were kept and consequently Wilmot becomes more central. Yet Wildish remains, not cut out. What was done was really to make Woffington the center. It’s said she was tall, masculine looking and (without wanting here on Austen-l to go into her story) it does seem to me there is enough there to suggest bisexuality.

Ellen

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Foremother Actress, Writer, Poet: Catherine Clive (1711-85)

Catherine Clive’s house late in life, at Twickenham

Dear friends,

Not known as a poet, but (where she’s remembered) as an actress, Catherine Raftor Clive (1711-85) nonetheless did write verse burlesques and some of the mocking epilogues she was once famous for speaking. Like her polemics on her own behalf, and some of the memoirs of other actresses of the 18th century, some of these were said to be by “anonymous” [men], or rewritten by an “anonymous” [male]. Not so, or at least I do not believe this. In “the case of Catherine Clive” I certainly hear her voice, and the stance is unmistakably one only she as the person cheated, stigmatized, snubbed, would write; it’s also uncannily like like teachers today defending themselves against public demands they should take less money and knuckle under to unjust monopolies and bad treatment (for the same kind of envy was manipulated by the stage managers, claiming they had a “deficit” and couldn’t afford to pay these supposed extravagant wages). Among those attributed to her is the burlesque Rehearsal, 1753, performed as a benefit for her (meaning she took the profits after overhead had been accounted for).

For today I’m sharing an epilogue spoken at the end of a 1756 The Apprentice by Arthur Murphy, an after-piece for Southern’s Oroonoko. This one is attributed to a friend (as some of her pieces also were) but is by her. Note how she addresses and identifies with the milliners in the audience and the sharp hard ironies towards women spending their lives in virtuous low paid hard work:

EPILOGUE written by a Friend , spoken by Mrs. CLIVE.

[Enters reading the Play-Bill.]

A very pretty Bill,—as I’m alive!
The Part of—Nobody—by Mrs. Clive !
A paltry, scribling Fool—to leave me out—
He’ll say perhaps—he thought I could not spout .
Malice and Envy to the last Degree!
And why?—I wrote a Farce as well as He.
And fairly ventur’d it,—without the Aid
Of Prologue dress’d in black, and Face in Masquerade;
O Pit—have Pity—see how I’m dismay’d!
Poor Soul!—this canting Stuff will never do,
Unless, like Bay’s, he brings his Hangman too.
But granting that from these same Obsequies,
Some Pickings to our Bard in black arise;
Should your Applause to Joy convert his Fear,
As Pallas turns to feast— Lardella’s Bier ;
Yet ‘twould have been a better Scheme by half
T’have thrown his Weeds aside, and learn’t with me to laugh.
I could have shewn him, had he been inclin’d,
A spouting Junto of the Female Kind.
There dwells a Milliner in yonder Row,
Well-dress’d, full-voic’d, and nobly built for Shew,
Who, when in Rage, she scolds at Sue and Sarah ,
Damn’d, Damn’d Dissembler !—thinks she’s more than Zara
She has a Daughter too that deals in Lace,
And sings—O Ponder well—and Cherry Chase ,
And fain would fill the fair Ophelia’s Place.
And in her cock’t up Hat, and Gown of Camblet,
Presumes on something— touching the Lord Hamlet .
A Cousin too she has, with squinting Eyes,
With wadling Gait, and Voice like London Cries ;
Who, for the Stage too short by half a Story,
Acts Lady Townly—thus—in all her Glory.
And, while she’s traversing her scanty Room,
Cries—”Lord, my Lord, what can I do at home!”
In short, there’s Girls enough for all the Fellows,
The Ranting, Whining, Starting, and the Jealous,
The Hotspurs, Romeos, Hamlets, and Othellos.
Oh! Little do those silly People know,
What dreadful Trials—Actors undergo.
Myself—who most in Hamony delight,
Am scolding here from Morning until Night.
Then take Advice from me, ye giddy Things,
Ye Royal Milliners, ye apron’d Kings;
Young Men beware and shun our slipp’ry Ways,
Study Arithmetic, and burn your Plays;
And you, ye Girls, let not our Tinsel train
Enchant your Eyes, and turn your madd’ning Brain;
Be timely wise, for oh! be sure of this;—
A Shop with Virtue, is the Height of Bliss.

A portrait of Catherine Clive from Strawberry Hill (Horace Walpole’s house), painting by Alexander Van Haecken, engraving Joseph Van Haeken

This is not attributed to Catherine Clive, but prefaced a private performance we apparently know nothing about, only that this prologue survives and was published in one of several miscellanies of prologues and epilogues popularly read from the Restoration to the end of the 18th century. It is now attributed to Garrick, on what authority I know not.

I’ve really been impressed by how even if Clive didn’t write most of the epilogues, she spoke, they all project her personality as understood, and like Anne Oldfield, Clive was a great favorite for writing epilogues for and doing them. Here is just one:

A Prologue, upon Epilogues, Spoken at a Private Benefit:

          Enter in a black coat, closely buttoned.

Behold me in the usual prologue dress,
Though why it should be black, I cannot guess;
Custom, the law of schools — improvement’s foe,
Has long established that it shall be so:
But, say is slavish custom to control,
The active vigor of my free-born soul;
I”ll break the statute — and her laws deface

          [Unbuttoning coat and displaying gold-laced waist-coat]

Behold the glare of deviating lace;
Departing farther from custom’s dream
I bid adieu to prologue’s usual theme;
And while o’er critic rules my rivals doze
A prologue upon epilogues compose.
The epilogue, which always deck’d with smiles
In female accent, tragic care beguiles:
That when excalted thoughts, the mind impress,
A trivial jest must make the pleasure less.
Ludicrous custom, which compels to show,
The cap of folly, in the rear of woe;
Portrays a smile, emerging from a sigh,
And pleasure starting from affliction’s eye;
Makes joy’s bright beam in sorrow’s face appear,
And Quibble dry the sentimental tear.
If when a tragic tale in virtue’s cause,
The soft compassion of the tender draws;
Custom, decrees, our feeling be repressed,
By some vile pun, or some unseemly jest:
By the same rule, when comic swains give birth,
To nature’s dimples, in the cheeks of mirth;
A doleful ditty, should conclude the night,
And rob the audience of their dear delight:
E’er with improvement they can make retreat,
The purpose of the well-wrought piece defeat.
Then sons of genius, be it all your pride,
To throw the codes of prejudice aside:
By custom’s shackles be no more restrained,
Be ev’ry mental faculty unchain’d.
Our bodies freedom, we in birthright find,
Then lets assert the freedom of the mind.

*******************
I like the complicated thought and assertion on behalf of liberty; also the insightful critique of how epilogues relate to the two genres of plays and the conventions of epilogues.

The text is not in ECCO; it’s reprinted in “Garrick’s Unpublished Epilogue for Cathering Clive’s The Rehearsal; or, Bayes In Petticoats by Matthew J Kinservik, Études Anglaises, 49:3, (1996):320-26.

************
There is no modern biography in print. These distort her but they do so in 18th century ways. A dissertation by Patrick J. Crean, “The life and Times of Kitty Clive” (1933, University of London) is said to be accurate and full, and perhaps I’ll buy a copy. In the meantime a slender volume, The Life of Mrs Catherine Clive, by Percy Fitzgerald is touching brief account, very affectionate for the most part, and as far as I can tell (from comparison with the ODNB article which I quote from below) accurate. Percy lists the known works of Clive thus: “light productions, pamphlets, controversial letters, and a few “pieces of occasion. Among these were “Bayes in Petticoats,” “Every women in her petticoats” (already described), “Sketch of a Fine Lady’s returning from a Rout,” “Island of Slaves.” The reader should consult A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660–1800: v. 2, edd. Highfell, Burnim and Langhan. A chapter in Felicity Nussbaum’s Rival Queens: Actresses, Performances, and the Eighteenth-Century British Theatre contains a lot of information, other articles, but is a strong polemic which might be distorting Clive. Anyone reading this blog who would like to cite an article or book I have not, I’d be grateful; I’d read it and improve this blog (no blog is engraved in cement).

Since I really cannot better it and there seem to be so few undistorted sources with which to work, I’m gong to take the unusual step of quoting parts of a published article for the little life that usually accompanies these. A real problem in discussing actresses of the earlier century and are own era is how they are distorted by the media which presents them. The process I’ve learned is called specularization (from speculum, Latin for mirror). A definition I was offered by a friend “specularization refers to the process whereby the nature of an observer’s gaze shapes and defines what he or she looks at, thereby determining the discourse that ensues.” Actresses were seen as prostitutes and degraded and demeaned by the way they were presented, or, in an effort to elude this pornification, they are nowadays presented as somehow powerful and successful in ways they could not be. To avoid this I’ve decided simply to quote from the ODNB article. I’ve omitted all paragraphs and details which from what I’ve read seem to distort Clive.

My view is she was a gallant woman, multi-talented, who managed to survive with great difficulty and to fulfill her talents as an actress. I admire her for (reminding me of Anne Oldfield), not marrying in order to keep her liberty or independence. She also had a real talent for writing; this she never had a place to develop. I’ve not read her letters and long to. So I’ve presented her as writer and poet-playwright too. The list of the plays and events she participated in must be so long and varied

From the ODNB: “According to William Chetwood’s General History of the
Stage(1749), Clive was the daughter of William Raftor, a Kilkenny
lawyer of considerable estate who ruined his fortunes by aligning himself with James II during the latter’s campaign in Ireland in 1690. After a period of exile, he was pardoned and returned to London to marry a Mrs Daniel, ‘Daughter to an eminent Citizen on Fishstreethill with whom he had a handsome Fortune’
(Chetwood, 126). Chetwood further claims that the couple had numerous
children, but the names of these brothers and sisters are unknown, except
for James (*d*. 1790), who joined Kitty in a stage career, and a sister
whose married name was Mrs Mestivyer. There is evidence that Kitty Clive
supported her father once she was working, so whatever handsome fortune was in place when her parents married evidently dwindled over time.”

In 1728, “A friend of Jane Johnson, the first wife of Theophilus Cibber, Kitty was introduced to both Cibber and Chetwood. They, in turn, impressed with her ‘infinite Spirits, with a Voice and Manner in singing Songs of Pleasantry peculiar to herself’ (Chetwood, 127), recommended her to Colley Cibber, who added her to his list of performers at Drury Lane. Chetwood indicates that she had a few minor appearances in the spring of 1728, but once the full 1728–9 season opened she began appearing regularly in increasingly large and important roles. Throughout that season and those that followed she moved from supporting roles in tragedy to singing in afterpieces and playing the first-ranking characters in the farces popular in the period.

The fashion of musical comedy and burlesque suited Kitty’s vocal and comic
talents perfectly, and she shone in parts such as Nell in Charles Coffey’s The
Devil to Pay, in which she portrayed a cobbler’s wife transformed into the
lady of the manor. Henry Fielding wrote several parts for her that
highlighted her skills, including Chloe in The Lottery and Lappet in an
adaptation of Molière’s The Miser. In the summer of 1732 she was given the most sought-after female role in musical comedy, Polly in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, and received a tribute to her portrayal from the Daily Journal, which called her the ‘Darling of the Age’ (25 July 1732).

During the rebellion of the players in 1733, Kitty remained with John Highmore’s company at Drury Lane . . . Henry Fielding, who also remained loyal to Drury Lane, praised her acting talents and the alternative view of her character. In his preface to The Intriguing Chambermaid (1734), in which she played the title role, he compliments her as ‘the best Wife, the best Daughter, the best Sister, and the best Friend’ (Fielding) . . . Her best roles were particular comic types: the silly country miss, the wiser and more fashionable version of the same, and the pert and resourceful servant. These remained her strong suit for much of her career.

Few details are known about Catherine Raftor’s marriage to George Clive
(*d*. 1780), a barrister and second cousin to Robert Clive ‘of India’, but
she appeared as Mrs Clive in the bills for the first time in October 1733.
The name change suggests that the pair had just married or had done so
during the summer, when she would not have been performing regularly.
Evidence about the couple’s married life is also slight, but the two did not
live together for very long, separating some time in 1735. Chetwood,
ostensibly declining to comment on marital affairs, declares, ‘I never could
imagine she deserved ill Usage’ (Chetwood, 128), implying that was just what
she received . . .

Although Clive herself did not contribute to the pamphlet war during the theatrical rebellion of 1733, in 1736 she had reason to believe that the acting manager, Theophilus Cibber, was trying to claim some of her roles for his second wife, Susannah. Clive published her side of the controversy in the press in order to defend her position on the stage.

It is my consolation to think, that as I have always endeavor’d to please them [the town] as an Actress, to the best of my Abilities, whatever has been urged to the contrary by the Malice of my Enemies, will have no weight or Influence upon my Friends. (London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 19 Nov 1736)

When Clive’s appearance as Polly was finally presented, she addressed
herself to the house, apologizing for the disturbance and offering to play
the secondary part of Lucy instead. This apologetic tone and willingness to
appease her audience secured both her popularity and the role of Polly until
she herself was ready to bestow it on a younger actress of her own choosing
in 1745 . . . Although publicly Clive decried and apparently regretted bringing theatrical matters notoriety in the press, the lesson she learned during the Polly war served her well in 1744. After the failure of Charles Macklin and David Garrick to open a third theatre to break the monopoly held by the patentees, Clive found herself unemployed. Rather than relying on others to defend her position and livelihood, that October she printed a pamphlet, The Case of Mrs. Clive Submitted to the Publick, explaining her position and that of other performers. Particularly galling to her was the oss of her annual free benefit, a privilege she had held for nine years, and how she discovered her lack of a job—by finding other actresses listed in her roles in the bills. This ‘unprecedented Act of Injustice’ (The Case of Mrs. Clive, 14) did not allow her the time to find work in Dublin, where she had met with success during the summer of 1741.

Following the publication of her pamphlet, Clive held a benefit concert at the Haymarket on 2 November by command of Frederick, prince of Wales, and Augusta, princess of Wales. The royal couple had commanded Clive’s benefits in the past, and their continued patronage of her expressed their personal dismay at the lord chamberlain’s ruling in favour of the patentees. Theophilus Cibber confirmed that the audience at the benefit had been a notable one, by describing the affair as having ‘many Persons of the first Distinction … in the Pit and Boxes’ (Cibber, 76). The manager, John Rich, no fool, recognized Clive’s drawing power, and rehired her the next month at Drury Lane, although not at the salary level she had previously attained. As in the Polly war, Clive found that humble approaches to the theatre-going public could push theatrical management to some semblance of civility towards players . . .

David Garrick attained the patent for Drury Lane in 1747, Clive’s career settled down considerably. Printed appeals to the public were no longer
necessary, except for a skirmish with the actor Ned Shuter over benefit performances in 1761. She continued to shine in her best venue, the stage. She retained many of the parts that she had made famous, including Nell in The Devil to Pay, but moved out of *ingénue* roles into those more suited to her maturing voice and figure. Flora in Susanna Centlivre’s The Wonder, Mrs Cadwallader in Foote’s The Author, the Fine Lady in Garrick’s Lethe, and Lady Wishfort in William Congreve’s The Way of the World were typical of these later roles. Comedy remained her forte, but she also continued her facility in speaking prologues and epilogues.

A dedicated performer, and one with full appreciation for the transience of
theatrical life, Clive continued to seek new roles for herself and new ways
to supplement her income. She tried her hand at writing farces, which became a feature of her benefits. Her first, The Rehearsal, or, Bays in Petticoats, was first presented at her benefit in 1750. There were scattered additional performances, and it was eventually published in 1753. Clive wrote at least three more farces, Every Woman in her Humour, A Fine Lady’s Return from a Rout, and The Faithful Irishwoman, but none received even the limited fame that her first had done and none was published.

Throughout her long career Clive remained a London actress, and except for
the two seasons at Covent Garden (1743–5) she was loyal to Drury Lane.
However, at some point in the 1740s it is apparent that she moved her
primary residence to Twickenham and lived in lodgings in London during the
theatrical season. In that small community, she and Horace Walpole became
close friends . . . Soon afterwards she had become a visible and cheering
presence in his correspondence, and he gave her a small house on his
property. Reading through the correspondence makes it clear that Walpole and
Clive developed a strong, enduring, and almost certainly platonic
friendship . . .

In 1768 Walpole mentioned to a friend that Clive was preparing to leave the stage, and the bill for her benefit in April 1769 advertised that it would be the ‘last time of her appearing on the Stage’ (Stone, 3.1401). She performed some of her favourite roles: Flora in The Wonder and the Fine Lady in Lethe. After more than forty successful years on the stage, Clive had earned enough to support herself comfortably in her retirement. In her published Case in 1744 she revealed that she had been making £300 annually, plus her benefit, which in her most successful years could almost double that salary—in 1750, for example, her benefit brought her just over £250. In 1765, in a letter to David Garrick, she commented that her salary remained £300 a year. Although much of her income would have gone to support her professional life (she spent considerable sums on singing lessons and appropriate clothes) she had evidently managed her money wisely.

Her own correspondence, along with that of Walpole and David Garrick,
reveals Clive’s retirement to have been carefree, except for bouts of
illness and occasional trouble from footpads and tax collectors. Her brother
James and sister lived with her, and were, according to Jane Pope, supported
by her. She busied herself with ‘Routs either at home or abroad every night
[and] all the nonsense of having my hair done time enough for my parties as
I used to do for my parts with the difference that I am losing money instead of getting some’ (Highfill, Burnim & Langhans, BDA). Her periods ofillness self-described jaundice—eventually grew more frequent, and after catching a chill at the funeral of Lieutenant-General Henry Lister, she died on 6 December 1785. She was buried in Twickenham churchyard on 14 December. Horace Walpole dispersed her personal possessions among her friends and relatives.

K. A. Crouch”

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

A while back I read an essay I’ve not forgotten. By an 18th century scholar, he argued from a stadist standpoint that taking a set of criteria over several centuries in the last 30 years women have had a bad set-back. One criteria is how available women are sexually to men; the more available they are (whether or not they say they want this), one sees a set of other criteria to show them losing ground (in the area of property and money-ownership, in the area of violence inflicted, in the area of babies had, more is a bad sign).

So I take this outright demand for a return to unrestricted polygamy even if in a fanatic state to be significant.

I’ve fallen behind in my weekly close-readings of Austen’s letters, partly because I’ve been reading and studying about 18th century actresses’ lives. I’m working towards a review of Felicity Nussbaum’s Rival Queens. One of her contentions is that we are over-emphasizing the association of Actress with Prostitute in the 18th century; I don’t think she can prove that case, but it does seem to me the 18th century was an era when women achieved a measure of liberty they had not before, at the same time as their turn to “sensibility” was a way of demanding control over their bodies.

Mrs [Francis] Abington [1737-1815] as Miss Prue in Congreve’s Love for Love by Joshua Reynolds [1723-92]

This is one of the rare paintings of actresses at the time which endows them with a quiet dignity and conveys something of an individual personality — here thoughtfulness — while in costume.

I include a list of articles on Clive in the comments.

Ellen

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