Austen letters: 132 -133: 11, 14, 21 Dec 1815, Stanier Clarke, Haden

The entrance to Carlton House, where presumably Jane Austen first met Stanier Clarke

Dear friends and readers,

It’s been three weeks since we read and discussed Jane Austen’s two letters written in haste on 11 Dec 1815 to John Murray about the coming publication of Emma: the results of Henry’s bankruptcy were now upon them and it was necessary to move to Chawton on the 16th (her birthday as it happened). Well on that same day she wrote Stanier Clarke, and three days later an adieu to Charles Haden after she had missed him the day before, a letter intended to make sure he’d come that night, 14 Dec 1815. Ten days later Stanier Clarke replies to Jane, well aware of the cause of her leaving, telling of his life, writing, with an invitation.

A date we have neglected to mention thus far is that March 15, 1815: that is the date Henry’s bank officially failed. If we look back at the letters we have left we find there is a gap between Letter 119, dated 2 March 1815, and 120, dated 29 September 1815, precisely covering the time when the worst shocks were administered. Edward Austen lost 20,000 pounds; James Leigh-Perrot 10,000 pounds; James and Frank lost several hundred each and Frank and Henry could no longer contribute to the Austen mother and sisters’ household. Jane lost 13 pounds seven shillings (the money in her account with Henry for profits on MP); her earnings had been invested in “Navy Fives” so that was spared — as was Cassandra’s legacy and Mrs Austen’s jointure. Although there had been symptoms of exhaustion, distress before it’s in the next letter but one (October 1815) that Henry’s serious collapse into illness is recorded. He is then prevented from writing Murray, thus delaying the business dealings over Emma for another month when (in November) we read letters between Austen and Stanier Clarke and learned of the dedication and her visit to the prince’s library. The set of gay letters upon Henry’s slow recovery are all written under the Damocles’s sword of the results of this bankruptcy. There would be no money to try to publish NA or the coming Persuasion with. I would be hard put to believe Stanier Clarke and Haden did not know of the Austens’ new circumstances and Stanier Clarke’s knowledge does emerge in his letter to Jane.

Let us begin with Jane to Clarke:

The first paragraph and sentence are written in a roundabout stilted style — she is responding in kind to what she has received from Stanier Clarke: he refused we remember to let her off the hook; she must include a dedication to the Prince. She thanks him for his recommendation and assures Stanier Clarke that Murray has promised her he will send HRH his copies “three days previous to the Work being really out. — ” This is presumably the great flattery, that he gets it first. Although it’s doubtful the prince read any of Austen’s novels, the world is filled with people who would love to boast of seeing something first, even a prince is not above this.

Then a paragraph of thanks for his praise, the language now much more natural as she is confident that her book has high merit.

Then the paragraph that makes the letter valuable: Austen is not ironic here; she is expressing anxiety she has expressed less explicitly earlier: she may know that her Emma is a work of genius, but the world may not recognize this: she is worried about its reception. She wants very badly that it be thought as well of as her other books (and she too). She is “haunted by the idea that to those Readers who have preferred P&P it will appear inferior in Wit & to those who have preferred MP very inferior in good Sense.” I feel for her in this. Because people did complain it was boring (Edgeworth to whom she sent a precious copy) – nothing doing – but rejoice remembering what Scott wrote and that she did read that. Such as it is, she sends him his copy. In his letter he will tell her he has not as yet read it.

Then a famous paragraph where again I do not find her to be ironic. She may have made fun of him implicitly in her other letters slightly, but not here. We see in this paragraph her real respect for the profession of clergyman — after all her father, brother, and soon Henry too would be clergymen, all clergymen together (as Mary Crawford puts it). She is not in buoyant spirits as she was in her letters to Cassandra detailing the London life she and Fanny enjoyed (especially with Haden’s visits), as she puts before herself the high male ideals of learning for her time. She did not read science, philosophy, had no classical education if latin be required as reading (and Stanier Clarke did).

But there is a kind of back-handed boasting as she knows she has created extraordinary novels despite her being “the most unlearned & uninformed Female who ever dared to be an Authoress.” Perhaps she is echoing some language he used to her (unthinkingly) which needled and so she repeats it as it did grate. Perhaps she is trying to get him to go away — I’ve done that, please why stay with me I’m not up to you at all and put before whoever it is what you know would excite their pride so they will go away.

Three days later she wrote the briefest of notes to Haden:

I find I must do what I sometimes critique others for: the very concision and lack of content about feelings in comparison to the other three written just before leaving to me suggests strong feelings she does not want to show. Doubtless Cassandra saved it because it gives away so little. But what is here is straightforward. She returns all the books he lent them “with many Thanks.” Since they were out last night (13 Dec) she is glad he did not come, but “depends upon” his giving them some of his time “this Even.’ She [must] leave Town on early Saturday, & must say ‘Goodbye’ to you.” No more than that with a “obliged & faithful J.Austen” to end her last apparently satisfying relationship insofar as it went with a man her peer in character and intellect (and probably money) if not class. As we said earlier, he was to die young too.

And to do a little justice to Stanier Clarke: note how he’s informing her of what his life’s experiences are:

He has returned to his Kent home where he is over-writing his life of James II: to write this man’s life is an act of overt Toryism. He is dreading, anticipating the political criticisms he expects to receive; in fact it was the pompous style that doomedhis book. The courtier of course would be eager to go to a Petworth, a perpetually “open house” owned by Lord Egremont, wealthy, well connected likely to have the contacts a man like Stanier Clarke made his life by cultivating. He then goes to the Pavilion where the prince is at Brighton.

The paragraphs bring home how unlike these two correspondents area: what he is eager to do, she would avoid – she does say in a later letter (April from Chawton): “The service of a Court can hardly be too well paid, for immense must be the sacrifice of Time & Feeling required by it.” It’s not that the man is obtuse; it’s rather that like a lot of people he can’t recognize what he is doing as a sacrifice of anything he values.

He then thanks her sincerely enough for the copy of Emma sent him. He is aware you see it’s worth money to her. He admits he’s read very little of Emma: “I have read only a few Pages which I very much admired – there is so much nature – and excellent description of Character in every thing you describe.” This is what Scott valued her novel for.

He then encourages her to write – what’s most quoted is the silly egotism of repeating his ideas how she should write his life up as an ideal clergyman’s life including the his dislike of having to collect tithes (I feel for him and see this as analogous to the idea occasionally voiced by braver waitors that a decent salary would beat tips any time), how he had to pay for his mother’s burial, a ceremony where he felt she was not respected in the way she ought to have been (maybe he didn’t fork out enough). Then he alludes to his history: he did go to sea with a well-known navy man, Captain John Willett Payne: a full portrait of this ruthless adventurous military man may be found in Chris Viveash — Clarke did experience some of the violence and inter-boat stealing of the period. James’s connection here helped his brother to a promotion. LeSage’s adventures are not out of place.

There’s an odd real feeling in the next paragraph: Clarke suddenly asks Austen to forgive him for trespassing. He does know she is a genius and has shown real patience and good nature in the way she had endured what maybe somewhere obscurely in him he knows is his own inability not to talk about what he knows is not to his materialistic/prestige advanture (like the stuff about tithes and his mother’s burial).

He has asked Murray to send Austen two sermons he wrote while at sea and an edition about a famous shipwreck at the time. This is meaning well and also the invitation in the next that if she has nowhere to stay, she is welcome to come to his library as a half-way house on the way to town. There is a maid there all the time who will serve her. This does not seem to be an invitation to sleep over but merely to spend time which is not practically useful but extended out. He knows if she comes to London again she will have a problem of where she stays or visits as at the close of his letter he talks of a small house besides the Carlton one “where I often hide myself” and invites her to come to his small library there “as a sort of half-way House, when you come to Town. He assures her the house is open to her and it always has a maid servant on the premises. This is decent and feels well meant.

He will send her a copy of his book of James II when it reaches a 2nd edition. I admit to finding this clumsy: either send a gift or don’t; if you don’t mean to, don’t promise the gift in the future dependent on something else happening (a 2nd edition). But possibly a lot of people promise gifts this way, but before Austen’s own austere integrity (as I have felt it through the letters when it comes to this sort of complimentary ceremonial behavior) it reveals his inadequate (or the world’s) understanding of what constitutes what can be respected as a gift-offering.

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2009 Miss Austen Regrets: Olivia Williams as Jane Austen is depicted as frustrated upon coming home from London, she sets to work on Persuasion, but the first signs of illness appear

We’ve covered the three between the Countess of Morley and Austen (all numbers 134). Next week we began the ominous year of 1816: critics date the first signs of her fatal illness from this year.

For Diane Reynolds’s reading and Diana Birchall’s see comments.

Ellen