Jane Austen’s Letters: Letter 44: Sun-Tues, 21-23 April 1805, Gay St

The Sydney Gardens, by the canal

Dear friends and readers,

Ten days have passed since the previous letter. We sometimes talk of whether we like Austen in this or that letter: I certainly like her in this one: what is so solid about it is she does not pretend to be happier, richer, more successful, luckier, or any of the usual ploys of false self- and social presentation. She really presents her life quietly as it is. The bravery and truth of this one struck me. The picture is of the same straitened life as letter 43, with this addition, she seems to be working at gathering acquaintances, keeping herself on an even keel, and self-deprecatory laughter to steel herself where necessary. It reminded me of Johnson’s aphorisms from the Rambler: one about resting ourselves on the stability of truth.

We can see a modus vivendi, a way of life has been envisaged but quite how to carry it off not yet seen: Cassandra, Jane and Martha were to set up a partnership among them that will bring the best conversation in the world we can imagine. I suggest from this and the last letter where Miss Sharpe is quietly seeking new employment in Bath, maybe Anne Sharpe was to be a fourth in the partnership if only she could get enough money regularly for supporting herself.
It was familiarly known that a group of bluestocking women under the aegis of Elizabeth Montagu (she and her friends) lived more or less together in Bath, even if they did not sleep under the same roofs all the time; unmarried, including most notably Sarah Scott, Elizabeth Carter, Sarah Fielding. There was respectable precedent. Everyone but has her dreams.

I am quite of your opinion as to the folly of concealing any longer our intended Partnership with Martha, & whenever there has been of late an enquiry on the subject I have always been sincere & I have sent word of it to the Mediterranean in a letter to Frank. (It’s Frank she ever tells first, Frank she confides in confidently.)

Amelia [Bickerton] is to take lessons of Miss Sharpe …

The only place she breaks down is when she is driven by her sense she must help Charles where her small effort might help and goes to visit some grand personages who first of all have directed their servants to stigmatize people by some understood code of dress, which led said servants to play them in some outermost room; then they had to endure apologies which (partly understandable) necessarily showed the snubbing but also continued the condescending lies.

Many many parallels with characters in the last three novels emerge here. P&P, S&S and NA‘s central content from the 1790s; well MP, Emma and Persuasion start unfold here. It was a Betty Bickerton who deserted Harriet Smith when the gypsies attacked them. Carol Houlihan Flynn’s essay on Austen’s letters in the Cambridge Companion argues (persuasively) that Austen’s voice and rhythms, the disposition of her sentences may be found somewhat parodied in Miss Bates’s talk.

I don’t say such a letter is enough to tell us central truths about Austen’s full feelings about Bath or behavior while there. We see that 12 days are omitted and letters missing and then again 4 months; nothing allowed through about Jane’s writing. Maybe she did that to one in the afternoon? She is aware she speaks only of her feet. Nothing of her reading (probably from the many circulating libraries) — or knowing it’s of no real interest for real to Cassandra we get nothing of this. Nothing of her intense frustration. I imagine her spirit did break down again periodically or she grew angry. All these destroyed. I would have loved to read them and see her working at reaching the plateau of this letter.

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Walking in Bath, Anne (Anne Elliot) and Admiral Croft (John Woodvine) (1995 BBC Persuasion)

The first phase of the letter is dominated by Martha’s mother’s death and Cassandra’s visit to her: everything relates back to that, even the (black) cap which Aunt Jane offered to pay for (knowing she ought to) but cannot get herself to do it.

Notable details: Austen grateful for Cassandra’s letter which was “an unexpected pleasure.” Not only is Cassandra nowhere as keen on letter writing and reading as Austen, she is with this woman friend whose mother has died and who like the Austen is not basically without a visible means of support. Martha has got to get out of Ibthorpe.

Who was Mrs Stent besides providing one basis for Miss Bates (I agree she is also partly Austen herself):

“Poor Mrs Stent! it has been her lot to be always in the way; but we must be merciful, for perhaps in time we may come to be Mrs Stents ourselves, unequal to anything and unwelcome to everybody.”

Well she is someone worse off financially and socially than Martha or the Austens. She was an aging paid companion to Mrs Lloyd, an “early friend, of rather inferior position in life, and reduced from family misfortunes, to very narrow means.” Caroline wrote this and said she reminded a very old lady lodging in a small cottage next to Mrs Criswick.

Pretty bad, desperate. Reminds me of Priscilla Stanbury in Trollope’s HKHWR: she’s a quiet lesbian spinster of Trollope’s who ends up in a hovel cultivating and desert kind of bare garden.

So Austen identifies here and compassionate. There but for the grace … will go we … (Cassandra too perhaps)

But not Emma:

Miss Bates (Tamsin Grieg) realizing she has been mocked (2009 BBC Emma)

Cassandra has said she will be back soon — maybe eager too — but Austen says they know better and will not expect her for another 17 or 18 days (May 10 or 11).

Cassandra as we (and Jane) expected send a “comfortable account” of Martha. I imagine if the women howled Cassandra would not say even to the beloved intimate sister Jane. Jane though also acknowledges that Cassandra’s account was true enough, close enough to the bone of grief: “we shall be in no fear of receiving a worse.” She agrees going to church was a trial of her feelings. I’ll bet. And now a reference to James Austen having left his early allegiance to literature: he is after all no great shakes as a man of business (neither come to think of it was Henry); it’s not a sermon or poem, but rather he has access to the post (perhaps he has a horse that can get to a post office?) and can send a letter.

This is a quietly biting sarcasm. James took Steventon from them.

And then that Cassandra is right to suppose Austen wore mourning to the concert. That costs and thus the price of the cap and the Aunt’s niggardliness and how her hypocrisy makes Austen have to decline a small pleasure rather than end up paying for herself what she cannot afford (a concert besides the black cap).

Mrs Norris: My Aunt is in a great hurry to pay me for my Cap, but cannot find in her heart to give me good money.”

Aunt Jane recognizes how much every sum matters and yet she can’t get herself to cough up the money. Meanwhile her hypocritical charities force Jane to decline to go to what she would actually enjoy:

“all the service she will render me therefore, is to put it out of my power to go at all …”

Sunday’s text now takes a turn to another subject, by now by no means new. A very long monologue — not a break for a paragraph — about their present social life, that day and in general.

This account of their social doings carries until the mention of Mr Hampson being there brings Martha back to mind. It appears that Martha did yearn to marry, for a partner, for this is the second time in the letters Austen refers to Martha’s “interest” in a given man; where Austen met him gives rise to memories of Green Park buildings, escapes for summer jaunts and before you know it the plan to live together with Martha and their relatives’ response to this (perhaps uncomfortable, but not adamently opposed). The letters move associatively.

And the last section until Monday tells of the grating snubbing Austen and her mother endured at Lady Leven’s (on Charles’s behalf they told themselves).

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Their present social life: What a tissue of dense detail with many nuances. As I wrote the long morning’s not accounted for so perhaps Jane wrote from early morning to 1 (with time out for breakfast and trip to the post). her facing the inexorableness of time through the boy who is not 14: “what are we to do?”.

She is aware that somehow she is valued — “my notice should be of such consequence” but admits her social inability to cope with this: “my Manners are so bad.”

On Saturday she just walked and walked.

“Yesterday was a busy day with me, at least with my feet, & my stockings; I was walking all day long; I went to Sydney Gardens soon after one, & I did not return until four, & after dinner I walked to Weston.”

Sunday morning she did have an engagement: the Cooks again, Miss Bendish, the young Miss Whitby. Not Julia; they’d done with her. I worried a fleet second about that one but no Julia not actually dead or snubbed but “very ill” so a sister, Mary, now grown up took Julia’s place with “fine complexion & wear[ing] great square muslin shawls”

Sounds lovely that — great square muslin shawl. It was April and stil very chilly in the UK.

Austen says though she has not mentioned herself she was there and (interesting) George Whitby “was very kind and talked sense to me every now & then in the intervals of his animated fooleries with Miss Bendish.” No entry for Miss Bendish but one for clergymen family of Whitbys. I’m sorry there’s not for Austen likens her to Lucy Lefroy her supposed great friend.

As opposed to Lucy Lefroys and Miss Bendish most of the talk around Austen is “monstrous deal of stupid quizzing, & commmon place nonsense . . . Scarcely any Wit”

I like the sense of Austen as a more serious person and am drawn to Austen because of the implication she was in need of intelligent companionship and serious conversation, and he saw this and took pity on her as they say.

I feel the oft-cited quotations about Austen being such a stiff poker when she grew older are suspect because it’s uttered by rather stupid, narrow people. Of course they would not like someone sitting there not frivlously fatuous, chattering away.

Vacuous empty minds around her: Mr Bendish, summed up fully as tall, Mr F Bonham can do nothing but an well duh commonplace: “So Miss Austen your cousin is come.”

In the last letter we saw that a few friends/acquaintances in this milieu actually seemed to Austen actually to value her and her relatives for company. Well so too Miss Armstrong. What Austen needs to forgive Miss Armstrong for? perhaps ironically valuing Austen’s presence (how could she be so foolish, so desperate): “well disposed” “reasonable” “really an agreeable girl and it’s she who gives rise to a line that anticipates Jane Fairfax:

“her great want of companion at home which may well make any tolerable acquaintance important to her, gives her another claim on my attention”

Who does this anticipate but Jane Fairfax?

Mrs Weston (Samanthan Bond) telling Emma (Kate Beckinsale) that Jane Fairfax stays with Mrs Elton because she has no one else

Then Mr Knightley (Mark Strong): does not Jane have some claim on your attention?

IN the next line Austen assures Cassandra she will not go overboard — what snobbery and social insecurities are here in this. It also shows Austen compartmentalizing people:

I shall endeavour as much as possible to keep my Intimacies in their proper place, & prevent their clashing”

Austen’s afraid people from different classes will be affronted at one another.

Then another lady friend she’s taken up mentioned (by associated) Miss Irvine. Austen visits her in the morning; she hasn’t the power to visit her at night. She must pay her visit when she can. Shades of Anne Elliot visiting Mrs Smith in Bath.

Anne Elliot (Amanda Root) visiting Mrs Smith (Helen Scheslinger) and Nurse Rooke (Jane Wood) in Bath (1995 BBC Persuasion)

Then the plan for a party for the mother which to do Austen credit she means to invite Miss Irvine — though Miss Irvine apparently a sensitive type declined, preferring quiet. I am tempted to paraphrase Emma here on being accused of a hectic social life: this does not seem a party of hard abrasiveness or noise. But too much for Miss Irvine; her mother though was up to it.

Apparently Mrs Austen would not go out in the evening so Austen says she’ll invite people to come to them. (They can’t afford a carriage and perhaps nighttime in Bath made her nervous — gamblers, street women …) So Austen invites the faithful Chamberlaynes too, people she can count on to come.

Austen doesn’t herself want to be snubbed.

Why this evening Tuesday party (showing by the way Tuesday outside the novels was not to be feared — Austen not superstitious) brings the young boy Bickerton to mind I don’t know. Maybe because he was lively, and came (?). He was a relation of an admiral. She finds him sweet “both in manner and conversation” — likens him to Fulwar-William who we remember she played cards with at Steventon years ago. Then how time flies and how old she’s getting: “who by the bey is actually fourteen – -what are we to do?” He never sees Jane without (kindly) enquiring after Cassandra; his family really like Bath (not phonies) and the two youngsters go on with their teachers (masters and mistresses). And now the reference to Anne Sharpe.

For me this almost (not quite) clinches the case for Anne Sharpe to be the mentioned Anne in the last letter. “Amelia is to take lessons of Miss Sharpe”

How many Anne Sharpes can we have? three?

Well says Austen among so many friends (Irvine, Armstrong, Miss Sharpe, the Bickerton childen) she must get into a scrape. By which I guess she means offend someone by doing something satiric or tactless. Austen was awkward in company – perhaps that’s why the overreaction of egregious flirting when young and the quiet when old.

Miss Blachford back and Austen says she’d have gone mad at another day of the Bullers. He so sick (bilious) and she with no one to appreciate her or give her any meaning in life but her countless children who are not there anyway.

I’d go distracted too.

Now general news, not her social life is taking us to Mr Hampson and Martha. Cooks leave Bath next week, the cousin going earlier and the marriage of Mr Edward Barber of some place in Shropshire to a Miss Emma Halifax.

Why is Mr Barber a wretch who does not deserve an Emma Halifax’s maid you ask? And no answer comes back. LeFaye knows nothing or if she does, says nothing (likely knows nothing). I note the name Emma who might be part of a brief draft novel towards Emma done in 1802? Does the man’s name bother Austen?

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The last parts of Sunday’s text is a lead-in to Austen’s looking forward with Cassandra to partnership with Martha Lloyd: all three will live together: it’s about people flitting from their rental places in order (one assumes) to avoid higher rents in summer, gain money from others who rent for the summer, and travel, just a little. Then the stout insistence they will not hide themselves or their lives and none of their relatives could be unprepared for this. And lastly the stigmatizing treatment meted out to the Austens when they (were fools enough to) curry favor for Charles Austen with people who seemed to be his friends and admirers.

Mr Hampson is someone to whom Martha had been attracted. Clearly Austen is not keen on him: She “trusted to his forgetting our number in Gay St ….” and since he has not called, she assumes he never intended to visit.

The usual social lies are pointed out here and Austen’s distaste for them comes out — especially it must be admitted since she is on the receiving end. Lefaye thinks the “famous Saunders” who left letters unpublished is a figmen tof Austen’s satiric take.

Then the core: I am quite of your opinion as to the folly of concealing any longer our intended Partnership with Martha, & whenever there has been of late an enquiry on the subject I have always been sincere & I have sent word of it to the Mediterranean in a letter to Frank. (It’s Frank she ever tells first, Frank she confides in confidently.) — None of our nearest Connections I think will be unprepared for it; I do not suppose that Martha’s have not foreseen it.”

This is written to offset pretended surprise and objections. Today I was again reading Emma Donoghue who writes in the era overt spinsterhood especially when the woman lives with someone else was understood to be a possibly lesbian arrangement.

The Elliots meet Lady Dalrymple (1995 BBC Persuasion)

As to the staged snubbings — it must be admitted Jane buys into the values behind this or seems to: Jane surmises Cassandra will think they went to Lady Roden (a Hampshire connection), but it was Lady Leven, mother of Lord Balgonie. Lord Balgonie was apparently a patron of Charles’s, and in a note LeFaye quotes someone who produces an appealing portrait of Balgonie. The Austens had heard these august personages were to visit them, of course they “thought it right to go to them” The Austen’s poverty-small lodgings were not such as these people should condescend to. Then we get how they were sat in the drawing room, how Lord Leven came in and apologized for the “mistake,” and his lie, the requisite ten minutes with him, and then Lady Leven coming out in despite of all this. It is true that Austen delivers a pleasant sentence on the Levens: “they seem very reasonable, good sort of people, very civil and full in his [Charles’s] praise (p. 105). Austen appears to be compounding for hearing praise of Charles and being herself included. Lady L encounters them on their way out I don’t know, perhaps a mistake, but then they have to return to another semi-grating number of minutes — somewhat leavened by praise of Charles and a little girl (Marianne) asking after (the now dead) Mr Austen

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Monday’s entry is much shorter. It’s interesting that Austen views the Cooks from the outlook of a servant come to be hired: Isaac. Isacc does not mind changing country, will have good soil (to grow a garden?), and good mistress and will be willing to take physic to please her. She may not write of them in her novels but life servants were not invisble to her.

Mr Mant has not yet paid Mrs Austen what he owed her, only sent a letter of apology.

Then she is mocking solemnity. Tom Chute (Austen was told) fell from his horse; Austen will not feel sorry for him until she is told more; then she will pity him – a joke on priesthood and ordination: Austen says he fell because he was planning on taking orders. Very dangerous. Here we see her in Mary Crawford’s role, making fun of the church in effect. Lightly, but there.

Tuesday nothing much to add but that against her own better judgment and irritated instinct, she invites the (fatuous) uncle and (sponging miserly) aunt. Despite her resolution she invites them and says: “I thought it was of first consequence to avoid anything that might seem a slight to them.”

This reminded again of what Mrs Smith told Anne Elliot about maintaining a relationship with relatives: “Even the smooth surface of family union seems worth preserving, though there may be nothing durable beneath”. Austen will be “glad” when this social occasion is over and vows using irony: “[I] hope to have no necessity for having so many dear friends at once again.”

Anne Elliot (Sally Hawkins) holding serious conversation with Mrs Smith (Maisie Dimbleby) with Nurse Rooke (Sarah Buckland) listening (2007 ITV Persuasion)

She shall write Charles in the next packet (presumably specifics gleaned from the Levens) unless Cassandra means to. Austen would just as soon Cassandra do this task.

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And so this ends, no where as cheerfully as it began.

Many other details which put me in mind of a couple of favorite aphorism:

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” Samuel Beckett.

“There is indeed one element in human destiny that not blindness itself can controvert. Whatever else we are intended to do, we are not intended to succeed; failure is the fate allotted. Our business is to continue to fail in good spirits.
–Robert Louis Stevenson”

Austen could not foresee that she would ever publish her marvelous books; indeed she had by then grown used to the reality she was framed for others by her social position, and most people would not recognize their quality unless persisted in by others. She could not foresee how she and Martha and Cassandra would set up life beyond the one they had — I suppose they thought Martha would join them in their lodgings with whatever tiny sum she might have. We see her in mid-life here forced to waste time she could have been spending writing her novels. We indeed should be glad that finally Frank found them a place in Southampton and then Edward offered his Chawton cottage.

When I say, Jane Austen is about as far from Madame de Genlis (the ultimate producer of happiness and bright surface epistles) as one could get, I mean to allude to Mrs Dashwood remarking of Elinor’s comment that Edward was most unlike his sister, Fanny: “It is enough .. to say that he is unlike Fanny [Genlis in my paraphrase] is enough. It implied everything that is amiable …”

I also note: I had not thought why Miss Austen Regrets jumps from 1802 the marriage proposal to 1813 and then 1816. The film-makers did not want to show us the straitened maiden lady in furnished lodgings. What would that do to the heritage industry? They did not want to show us how the brothers reacted. They did not want to have to cope with what she wrote in this time and what she was. Becoming Jane also jumps from 1790s to later in Jane’s life, skipping this formative time of uncertainty and doing without in Bath.

See Letters 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 and 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40-42, 43.

Ellen