Marine Pavilion, Brighton, with 1801-2 ground plan
Dear friends and readers,
We can understand these two letters most clearly by reading them as a pair, utterance and answer, antiphony. We are in danger of accepting and then justifying the lack of any sense of what makes for honest art in Clarke’s previous and this letter as “what everyone does,” unless we have before Austen’s direct rebuttal. So let’s start with the two texts in tandem and then read them as a conversation inside the conversation on Janeites about them:
138(A). From James Stanier Clarke, Wednesday 27 March 1816, Pavilion
Dear Miss Austen,
I have to return you the Thanks of His Royal Highness the Prince Regent for the handsome Copy you sent him of your last excellent Novel — pray dear Madam soon write again and again. Lord St. Helens and many of the Nobility who have been staying here, paid you the just tribute of their Praise.
The Prince Regent has just left us for London; and having been pleased to appoint me Chaplain and Private English Secretary to the Prince of Cobourg, I remain here with His Serene Highness & a select Party until the Marriage.’ Perhaps when you again appear in print you may chuse to dedicate your Volumes to Prince Leopold: any Historical Romance illustrative of the History of the august house of Cobourg, would just now be very interesting.
Believe me at all times
Dear Miss Austen
Your obliged friend
J. S. Clarke.
Miss Jane Austen
at Mr Murrays
Albemarle Street
London
38(D). To James Stanier Clarke, Monday 1 April 1816
My dear Sir
I am honoured by the Prince’s thanks, & very much obliged to yourself for the kind manner in which You mention the Work. I have also to acknowledge a former Letter, forwarded to me from Hans Place. I assure You I felt very grateful for the friendly Tenor of it,
& hope my silence will have been considered as it was truely meant, to proceed only from an unwillingness to tax your Time with idle Thanks. —Under every interesting circumstance which your own Talents & literary Labours have placed you in, or the favour of the Regent bestowed, you have my best wishes. Your recent appointments I hope are a step to something still better. In my opinion, The service of a Court can hardly be too well paid, for immense must be the sacrifice of Time & Feeling required by it.
You are very, very kind in your hints as to the sort of Composition which might recommend me at present, & I am fully sensible that an Historical Romance, founded on the House” of Saxe Cobourg might be much more to the purpose of Profit or Popularity, than such pictures of domestic Life in Country Villages as I deal in — but I could no more write a Romance than an Epic Poem. — I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my Life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first Chapter. — No — I must keep to my own style & go on in my own Way; And though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.-
I remain my dear Sir,
Your very much obliged & very sincere friend
J. Austen
Chawton near Alto,” April 1 st – 1816-
[No addressJ
Diana Birchall chose to deal with each letter separately; here she is informative about the first:
It’s a little confusing to deal with Deirdre’s numbering of the letters. Letter 138A is Rev. Clarke to Jane Austen, written on 27 March 1816, and Letter 138D is her reply, written on 1 April. Where are B and C I don’t know. But let’s look at this exchange.
James Stanier Clarke writes from the Pavilion at Brighton. Remember that the domes we associate with the Pavilion had not yet been erected at that date. The structure was still a rather grand farmhouse, with huge stables and some Eastern art, but the work of turning it into a palace was barely begun. Still, it’s where the Prince Regent’s court was at the moment. Clarke wrote to convey the Prince’s thanks for the handsome presentation volume. “Lord St Helens and many of the Nobility who have been staying here, paid you the just tribute of their Praise.” Actually the Prince had just left for London, and perhaps the real purpose of the letter was for Clarke to announce to his friend his new appointment as Chaplain and Private English Secretary to the Prince of Cobourg. This of course was Prince Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg, about to come to England to marry Princess Charlotte, the Prince Regent’s daughter, which happened on 5 May at Carlton House. Here Clarke makes his famously absurd suggestion, “Perhaps when you again appear in print you may chuse to dedicate your Volumes to Prince Leopold; any Historical Romance illustrative of the History of the august house of Cobourg, would just now be very interesting.” Finishing with an effusive flourish, he directed the letter to Jane Austen c/o Murray, and it had to be forwarded to Henrietta Street, and then Chawton.
Will look at Jane Austen’s reply later –
Diana
Then my commentary: Austen’s response to Stanier Clarke’s letter shows that if his suggestion is not to the ambitious author who can churn out what’s wanted for money and fame “what everyone would do if they could,” it is wholly intolerable to Austen — which he should know. He has spent time with her, she has said in a previous letter and perhaps face-to-face, my dear Sir, these themes are not themes I can write on nor am I comfortable with, he has presumably read the passages on how justifying the church as a career requires real work awakening moral and social consciences alike.
Imagine your self with a friend and a friend makes plain some attitude she has: do you blithely ignore it and repeat your urgent suggestion as if she had never spoke.
I hope not. If you do, you in effect (unless you’re a parent and moralizing or think you have the authority to urge something which goes against your child’s character because the child cannot break off relations, is younger, possibly dependent) are careless of your friend’s feelings or whether you irritate him or her. It does not make me doubt the sincerity of Clarke’s friendship in the sense that he really thinks one can churn out novels: it makes me wonder if he paid any attention to Emma , which it is right to point out he does not even name. In his previous he admitted he had not begun to read it or read very little thus far. His descriptions of her novels show some understanding of their value: he anticipates Scott’s main praise — “there is so much Nature — and excellent Description of character in everything you describe.” But his likening MP to slightly idiotic or vacuous descriptions of his own of clergyman makes one wonder if he really thought these were serious books — or just woman’s romances.
So to his suggestion:
Perhaps when you again appear in print you may chuse to dedicate your Volumes to Prince Leopold: any Historical Romance illustrative of the History of the august house of
Cobourg, would just now be very interesting.
Austen replies (and the honesty plainness and fullness of the reply is poignant since she so rarely does give herself away like this: she has it seems given him the respect of a friend:
You are very, very kind in your hints as to the sort of Composition which might recommend me at present, & I am fully sensible that an Historical Romance, founded on the House of Saxe- Cobourg might be much more to the purpose of Profit or Popularity, than such pictures of domestic Life in Country Villages as I deal in – -but I could no more write a Romance than an Epic Poem. — I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my Life, & if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first Chapter. –No — I must keep to my own style & go on in my own Way;5 And though I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.-
Austen is not treating him the way she does the Countess of Morley; in her “your Ladiship’s,” she shows she regards herself as of a much lower rank and does not expect the countess really to regard her as an equal. She apparently did expect Stanier Clarke to listen to her. She here gives one of the most valuable of all her statements about her fiction.
Why doesn’t he? I suggested to a man like him the life of sincerity and integrity is unreal; he can’t conceive of it. I now suggest on top of his maybe finally he didn’t respect her art. We must return to his first paragraph: He may have been the kind of person who respond intensely to his surroundings so we have to remember (as we shall see Jane does) he is in this courtier like place where for a person like himself (in effect a sort of upper servant, equivalent of a governess), who has just achieved a post and salary and place with Leopold of Cobourg, the man who was to be married to Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales, the girl who it was thought would be queen, and so father of the next royal set. In the event she died from a horrible childbed experience. He is just full of pride, and has been puffed up as he has puffed others up for several days. I’ve no doubt one of his purposes was to boast about his new place – which as we shall see she tells him point blank she regards as one demanding such a sacrifice of thought and feelings that (it’s implied) barely worth it.
Here again is his boasting intended to make Austen feel all is not over with the list-servs (though a friend of hers has just died):
Lord St. Helens and many of the Nobility who have been staying here, paid you the just tribute of their Praise. The Prince Regent has just left us for London; and having been pleased to appoint me Chaplain and Private English Secretary to the Prince of Cobourg.
Her reply was originally from a religious perspective much harsher than the one she sent.
She sent this:
Under every interesting circumstance which your own Talents & literary Labours have placed you in, or the favour of the Regent bestowed, you have my best wishes. Your recent appointments I hope are a step to something still better. In my opinion, The service of a Court can hardly be too well paid, for immense must be the sacrifice of Time & Feeling required by it.
Given that Clarke’s a literary man (who wants to be published) to get the favor of such a person is a guarantee of it, so good. She hopes he will get something better — which if he read her words carefully (which I doubt he did) would seem strange to him. How could he get anything better than the prospective husband of a queen. Maybe she thinks chaplain is not that respected an office really (remember how Mary Crawford looks at it and says others do), but also it’s not likely to further a writing career. Finally that last line – I take it to mean that like Fanny Burney she regarded time at court as a death in life, preventing her from doing what makes life worth while
The original version points to the continual hypocrisy these positions required: For once LeFaye tells us something to the point:
In my opinion not more surely should They who preach Gospel, live by the Gospel, than they who live by a Court, live by it – & live well by it too; for the sacrifices of Time & Feeling they must be immense.
In other words, at a court the central of religion to be truthful and moral is not possible because you must continually be lying in some way or other so outside the court they had better live by the gospel for real to make up for the Immense sacrifices of time and feeling.
Time shows this is a literary thought for the Bible emphasizes truthful feeling not time. Austen would hate to give up her writing time to be living at that Pavilion.
Austen is aware of how much she disliked his letter and how hers contradicts his at every point and sometimes deeply so her opening is very courteous, courtier-like one might say, but not untruthful. In her opening she excuses herself for putting off writing back — she thinks that to him this several month interval between his letter of December (still unanswered) would be slightly insulting: after all is he not chaplain to … living with these big shots, did he not tell these great people paid tribute to her book. (I am not so convinced as others appear to be that the court group liked Emma — would they really? come now, a book where nothing happens but an old man eats his gruel and his daughter copes with him — would they even grasp the satire on her snobbery? her use of Harriet would seem to them nothing wrong at all. So what does she say? does she believe it. Not quite. She thanks him “for the kind manner in which you mention the Work.” She is aware she never answered his previous much more decent letter where he offered her a place to visit at the library; now 5-6 days have gone by since this last one and she just forces herself.
I assure You I felt very grateful for the friendly Tenor of it, & hope my silence will have been considered as it was truely meant, to proceed only from an unwillingness to tax your Time with idle Thanks. —
She is not lying in the sense that he did praise her and repeat praise of her. She was grateful for his stance of friendliness but knows better than to listen to him literally. He meant well, he means well by his materialistic point of view to her. But all she can offer are “idle Thanks” of a woman who can do nothing for him (that’s why her thanks are idle).
It matters not if the average ambitious person would understand Stanier Clarke’s offer, Jane Austen is not such a person, her books do not come out of such outlooks and she realizes he can’t get that. Yet she does forgive him as she knows there are far worse fools and meaner people. He has after all paid her the compliment of using her to flatter the Prince Regent by connecting him to an author who was being recognized however slowly as having something fine in her books – that’s why Murray took her and keep the relationship up as best a busy publisher could.
From Diane Reynolds’s reading of the first and second letter:
The ostensible reason for this letter is to thank JA for the advance copy of Emma sent to the PR. Oddly, he refers to it not by name, but with the generic boilerplate, “your last excellent novel.” Does he even remember it’s called Emma?
All through the letter, Clarke’s worldview shines through, leading to the question: how sincere is he in his “friendship" towards Austen? Does he really admire her works or does he sense, with the instinct or calibration of a professional courtier (or in our world, marketer) that the wind is blowing in her favor, and he wants to be on board with a rising star? Or is it both admiration and calculation? … Clarke does sound uncomfortably like Mr. Collins in this letter in his language towards higher-ups …
I couldn’t agree more with what Ellen’s interpretation says, which certainly echoes my own: that regarding her vocation (what she was supposed to do with her life) Austen had a rare integrity, a singleness of purpose. She knew what she was meant to be–a writer– and what kind of writer she was meant to be … When she says she could only begin such a romance if her life depended on it and even then probably not get beyond the first chapter, she is not joking.
Another voice in this conversation (written earlier) appeared on WWTTA: Fran to whom we may give almost the last word:
I can’t help feeling the fact that she wrote this letter on All Fools’ Day may have been an example of her warped sense of humour as well. She’d gone as far as dedicating Emma to the Prince that year, but I’m rather glad she finished Persuasion before her untimely death, rather than attempting the kind of sycophantic potboiler Clarke suggested.
To be fair, Austen did write a parody version of the sycophantic potboiler, which has been typed out on Republic of Pemberley and includes a father modeled on Stanier Clarke whose adventures
comprehend his going to sea as Chaplain to a distinguished naval character about the Court, his going afterwards to Court himself, which introduced him to a great variety of Characters and involved him in many interesting situations, concluding with his opinions on the Benefits to result from Tithes being done away, and his having buried his own Mother (Heroine’s lamented Grandmother) in consequence of the High Priest of the Parish in which she died refusing to pay her Remains the respect due to them. The Father to be of a very literary turn, an Enthusiast in Literature, nobody’s Enemy but his own …
As Chapman’s notes show (interestingly, from Austen’s own marginalia), Stanier Clarke is not the only acquaintance and friend Austen burlesques in this parody
Ellen
Reveries Under the Sign of Austen, Two 
For Diana’s separate reading of the second letter (Jane’s):
Now, though late and last, for my reading of the second part of these paired letters. Shall I forbear to say, but leave it to Arnie, perhaps? that this is an April Fool letter. Did they have April Fool in Jane Austen’s day? Indeed they did, and an enjoyable google-ramble shows various explanations of the origin of the holiday, from the Gregorian calendar change to some murky reference in Chaucer. Nothing specifically 18th century, but I did find this contemporary illustration, which should be proof enough:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080328-april-fools/
Although Jane Austen can’t be seen as intending any sort of April’s Fool joke or reference in her letter, there is something pleasantly felicitous about her writing her famous description of her own work, one of the few times where she ever classifies or categorizes it, to James Stanier Clarke, who certainly is asking her to do something foolish – at least, what would be foolish for her. Nancy and Diane make a very good point in describing it as his giving her kindly meant “career advice,” it is indeed so exactly like what a literary agent or promoter would tell an ambitious author today: “Can’t you write a vampire novel and put Jane Austen in? That would get a lot of attention nowadays.” Same thing…and how many of those ideas DO deserve the April Fool Cap!
Her description of her work is so famous, it makes you smile with recognition to come across it in this letter: “Pictures of domestic Life in Country Villages as I deal in – but I could no more write a Romance than an Epic Poem.”
And, “if it were indispensable for me to keep it up & never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first Chapter. – No – I must keep to my own style & go on in my own Way; And although I may never succeed again in that, I am convinced that I should totally fail in any other.”
Ellen and Diane have commented on both letters so admirably, there is little for me to add, except to say that I was fascinated by Le Faye’s footnote about the much stronger, religious comment Jane Austen made, and then softened; and also that I could not agree more that not only does Clarke seem alarmingly vaguely familiar with the kind of work she does, but that it is highly unlikely that the Court had much to say about it. When he writes:
“Lord St. Helens and many of the Nobility who have been staying here, paid you the just tribute of their Praise,” it sounds suspicious. They could not have read Emma, which wasn’t out yet, and although Clarke may have read (some of) the presentation copy intended for the Prince Regent, would it be likely, and could there have been time, for it to be passed around among the Court? Almost certainly not. More likely, the subject of the presentation came up and was talked about, and one or two people, to make themselves sound knowing, may have remarked that they enjoyed Pride and Prejudice. That's possible, and very much along the lines of Diane's amusing "Buzz in Brighton" comment!
Diana
Diane Reynolds’s two readings (complete texts):
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Janeites/conversations/messages/49196
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Janeites/conversations/messages/49204
Nancy Mayor’s posting on the pair:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Janeites/conversations/messages/49194
Elissa Schiff:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Janeites/conversations/messages/49195
Diane Reynolds: a second reading:
I have read and reread and reread Austen’s letter to Clarke,
especially focusing on the deleted line: “In my opinion not more
surely should They who preach Gospel, live by the
Gospel, than they who live by a Court, live by it – & live well by it
too; for the sacrifices of Time & Feeling they must be immense.” She
is saying that living by the values, ethics if you will, of the gospel
is completely different from living by the ethics of the Court,and one
cannot both be faithful to both. You cannot worship God and Mammon.
Mammon wins–you “live well it”–but it is hardly worth the price: the
sacrifice of time and feeling (and by feeling here, I believe she is
talking about conscience) are “immense.” Immense is a strong word.
The revision Austen makes is telling and gives us a hint as to her
writing process, a process of editing by which sharpness is softened
but intent not changed: “In my opinion, The service of a
Court can hardly be too well paid, for immense must be the sacrifice
of Time & Feeling required by it.” What’s most interesting to me is
the way she sublimates the overt religious sentiment she expresses in
the first rendition. No longer do we have any mention of the gospel–
its is sublimated under “in my opinion.” Her opinion is that one
shouldn’t serve God and Mammon, but you wouldn’t know that from the
second version. Yet she does not soften “immense.”
Suspecting strongly as we do that she carefully and ceaselessly
revised her novels, we can imagine a process by which initial moral
outrage and indignation is likewise softened–and a non-conformist
religious impulse in which one “possesses” or lives by the gospel
truth one professes–is hidden yet still animates her work. This
supports Austen as satirist, as a satirist is one deeply upset at the
injustices, or in the phrase going around the list, the “twistedness”
of the world. (And I agree with Arnie and Ellen that the twistedness
is not in Austen but in the world around her.)
This letter, in juxtaposition with the “scrap” just discovered, again
on the theme of people not fully comprehending the gospel message,
does point to an overt religious impulse. She is not pious, but she
does she note–sharply– the slippage in what the “gospel” lays out
and how people live.
Austen goes so far as to openly put down Clarke’s pretensions. This
indicates, along with her sincerity that she has some respect for him.
She does think it at least possible she can communicate with him. She
has let the mask slip to her sharper self–she is not disingenuous;
she is not hiding behind silliness. Of course, the April’s fools date
of the letter and her own statement that she laughs at herself may
indicate that she realizes she may be the fool in trying to
communicate thus to a courtier.
I reply:
Strong admirable analysis of this letter Diane. I particularly like how you bring out the connection — not easy for us to see today — between a genuine religious impulse and a satiric kind of perspective. Both come from her era, and both are authentically her versions of this larger cultural phenomena. In the 18th century the Anglican community was not one that was mystic — they eschewed the supernatural as partly superstition (a very bad word in the era among those who read at any rate) so they expressed their religious impulses morally, in sensible moral language.
She does respect him. Remember Elinor who wouldn’t deign to argue with Robert Ferrars on the grounds he did not “deserve the compliment of rational opposition of rational oppositon” Why soften and (to tell the truth) eliminate the religious references, for without them many will not think of religion — in this era too; and more and more people were sceptics. Maybe she thought it would hit home since he was a clergyman and he would be insulted. She drew back from outright confrontation — as do her heroines until cornered.
It shows us her writing process which alas did consist in a lot of crossing out and self-censorship after she had finally driven herself into the deeper realms of her consciousness.
And it provides more context for the scrap written during the time she was wriiting MP (probably along with her other books — endlessly writing this lady …. )
Ellen