Anne Hathaway as Jane Austen reading and writing outside a cottage (Becoming Jane, 2007, scripted Kevin Hood, Susan Williams, directed Julian Jarrod)
Dear friends and readers,
I have over the years written several blogs on Christmas, mentions and uses by Austen in her novels (see especially her perception of Christmas in the novels) and the films adapted from them. In brief here is a sample:
Sense and Sensibility: The Miss Steeles “were prevailed on to stay nearly two months at the park, and to assist in the due celebration of that festival which requires a more than ordinary share of private balls and large dinner parties to proclaim its importance.”
Pride and Prejudice: Caroline Bingley’s cruel letter to Jane ends: “I sincerely hope your Christmas in Hertfordshire may abound in the gaieties which that season generally brings.”
Mansfield Park: Mary Crawford : “Is it Christmas gaieties that he is staying for?” (she doesn’t believe that for a minute)
Emma (chosen from the long sequence): Mr. Weston: “At Christmas every body invites their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst weather.” (Mr Weston’s benign unsubtle view is not agreed with …)
Northanger Abbey: ‘Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim. Catherine knew all this very well; her great aunt had read her a lecture on the subject only the Christmas before; and yet she lay awake ten minutes on Wednesday night debating between her spotted and her tamboured muslin, and nothing but the shortness of the time prevented her buying a new one for the evening.’
Persuasion: “Immediately surrounding Mrs. Musgrove were the little Harvilles, whom she was sedulously guarding from the tyranny of the two children from the Cottage, expressly arrived to amuse them. On one side was a table occupied by some chattering girls, cutting up silk and gold paper … the whole completed by a roaring Christmas fire, which seemed determined to be heard, in spite of all the noise of the others. Charles and Mary also came in, of course … Mr. Musgrove made a point of paying his respects to Lady Russell, and sat down close to her for ten minutes, talking with a very raised voice, but from the clamour of the children on his knees, generally in vain …”
You may skim the whole lot swiftly here.
Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth supposed reading Jane’s letters the winter after the Christmas visit of the Gardeners (who took Jane off to cheer her up, 1995 P&P, scripted Andrew Davies, directed Simon Langton)
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Tonight I went through her letters and an overview for the first time in a couple of years brings home to me once again, how much is missing. For some years and phases of the year we see a regular rhythm to the letters, say two or three journal-style over two or three days will repeat itself, and then nothing. Major events not noted because they don’t occur on the days of the letters left to us. As to mentions of Christmas or the weather, one can conjecture that if a group of balls, dances, parties, dinners are all occurring between the last week of December and first of January they might be related to a holiday and there is a feel of regularity of occurrence at this time of year, but I found but no mention of Christmas itself (the word) and it is itself a reference to a general time when someone is expected to return to where the Austens are living (Southampton). It’s almost surprising this lack of reference to Christmas in the letters; yes a majority were destroyed, even so if you read what’s there I could find but two mentions specifically.
This is the slim matter I gleaned; there is much more matter in these letters but I pulled only that which could conceivably relate:
Anna Maxwell Martin as Cassandra reading one of Jane’s letters (2007 Becoming Jane)
No 14, Dec 18-19, 1798, Tues-Wed; Tues, Dec 18, Steventon: “I enjoyed the hard black Frosts of last week very much, & one day while they lasted walked to Deane by myself.” (4th ed, p 27)
No 15, Dec 24-26, 1798, Mon-Wed; Dec 24, Mon, Steventon: Frank is in Gibaltar, she has returned from Manydown, her mother “does not like the cold Weather, but that we cannot help,” there has been a ball, but that it was for Christmas is never said. She does write: “I wish you a merry Christmas but no compliments of the Season.” Cassandra has danced away at Ashford, there was to have been a dinner at Deane the night she is writing this sentence, “but the weather is so cold that I am not sorry to be kept at home by the appearance of Snow.” There is no other mention of the holiday or weather (4th ed, pp 31-32)
No 17, Jan 8-9, Tues-Wed, 1799; Tues, Jan 8, Steventon: “a Ball at Kempshott this evening” … she had told Cassandra that “Monday was to be the Ball Night,” but no such thing.” Elizabeth has been very cruel about my writing Music; — & as a punishment for her, I should insist upon always writing out all hers and for her in future.” “I love Martha better than ever, & I mean to go & see her if I can when she gets home.” How there was a dinner at “Harwoods on Thursday, & the party broke up the next morning,” she shall be “such a proficient in Music by the time I have got rid of my cold, that I shall be perfectly qualified in that science at least to take Mr Roope’s office at Eastwell this summer … of my Talent in Drawing I have given specimens in my letters to you, & I have nothing to do but invent a few hard names for the Stars … ” Of a party at Manydown, “There was the same kind of party as last year, & the same want of chairs. — there were more Dancers than the Room could conveniently hold, which is enough to constitute a good Ball at any time.” She was not “very much in request –. People were rather apt not to ask me till they could not help it” … But no mention any of this specifically for Christmas nor the weather (4th ed, pp 34-36)
No 29, Jan 3-5, Sun-Mon, 1801; Sat, Jan 3, Steventon: What is “uppermost in my mind” is “you often wore a white gown in the morning, at the time of all the gay party’s being with you.” They visited Ash Park last Wednesday, “went off in a come-ca way; we met Mr Lefroy & Tom Chute, played at cards & came home again … ” This is letter is about what is happening at home because they are moving to Bath (providing for servants) and all the plans and doings about where they will live … (4th ed, p 69)
No 61, Nov 20, Sun, 1808; Sun Nov 3, Castle Square (Southampton): Mary Jane Fowle will “return at Christmas” with her brother.” Second and last use of the word in the collection that I found (4th ed, p 161)
No 63, Dec 2-28, Tues-Wed; Tues Dec 27, Castle Square: Eliza “keeping her bed with a cold … Our Evening party on Thursday, produced nothing more remarkable than Miss Murden’s coming too …. ” she “sitting very ungracious and silent with us … The last hour, spent in yawning & shivering in a wide circle round thefirst, was dull enough — but the Tray had admirable success.” She is talking of the food they ate, which by association leads to “Black Butter do not decoy anybody to Southampton.” No mention of any of this having anything to do with Christmas (4th ed, p 166)
A truly sparse amount of references. The novels give a sense of traditional parties, dances, festivities, rituals — as if in writing to the world she had to give such references and notice. Everything we read in other documents shows there were such, and from the early 16th century on we find such descriptions in diaries, journals, verse, documentary records. In the 1790s we begin to find references to Christmas a ritual of family getting together and a feeling of deep missing out if you don’t have such, if you live far from home (see for Southey’s Written on Christmas Day, 1795), from which I quote a passage here
I do remember when I was a child
How my young heart, a stranger then to care,
With transport leap’d upon this holy-day,
As o’er the house, all gay with evergreens,
From friend to friend with joyful speed I ran,
Bidding a merry Christmas to them all.
Those years are past; their pleasures and their pains
Are now like yonder covent-crested hill
That bounds the distant prospect, indistinct,
Yet pictured upon memory’s mystic glass
In faint fair hues. A weary traveller now
I journey o’er the desert mountain tracks
Of Leon, wilds all drear and comfortless,
Where the grey lizards in the noontide sun
Sport on the rocks, and where the goatherd starts,
Roused from his sleep at midnight when he hears
The prowling wolf, and falters as he calls
On Saints to save. Here of the friends I think
Who now, I ween, remember me, and fill
The glass of votive friendship …
Thus I beguile the solitary hours
With many a day-dream, picturing scenes as fair
Of peace, and comfort, and domestic bliss
As ever to the youthful poet’s eye …
And since in her novels, Austen characteristically tells only as much as is needful for her story in her novels, except for the scenes around Christmas in Emma, which themselves occur because the Knightley family gets together at Christmas (the way people do today), what emerges is the satiric nature of her work: most of the references are half-mocking, fatuous hypocritical meretricious behavior at Christmas is what she registered first just the way she registers this for musical concerts (when people pretend to understand and be ravished by music) or romantic poetry, except this time in the few cases of characters who can really feel sincerely: Marianne for music and poetry, Elinor for drawing, Fanny for pictures, Jane Fairfax for music, Mr Knightley for sitting over a fire, Anne Elliot music and poetry, Catherine Morland reading, but nothing for Christmas. Perhaps she did have distaste for what she saw come out of the holiday customs specifically, humanely speaking.
Comparatively, to cite a few other authors, while Trollope also dislikes all the hypocrisy and commercialism arising from Christmas, he has stories where there is quiet thematic use of Christmas attaching to it true charity or kindliness of spirit when rightly observed. Because of the strong distaste for ceremonies of lies here (and elsewhere in his fiction), I have never made a Christmas blog about his work that I can recall, but perhaps this year I’ll break that non-pattern and write about the nature of what Christmas stories he gets himself to write, and the ones that work well. A 20th century novelist who wrote a famous series of novel set in the 18th century uses Christmas regularly: the close of the Poldark books show Christmas as practiced in the 18th century Cornwall had a meaning for him. Tonight I quote Tennyson from In Memoriam where he has grieved so for the loss of a beloved friend expresses feelings somewhat like mine this morning:
Again at Christmas did we weave
The holly round the Christmas hearth;
The silent snow possess’d the earth,
And calmly fell our Christmas-eve:
The yule-log sparkled keen with frost,
No wing of wind the region swept,
But over all things brooding slept
The quiet sense of something lost.
As in the winters left behind,
Again our ancient games had place,
The mimic picture’s breathing grace,
And dance and song and hoodman-blind.
Who show’d a token of distress?
No single tear, no mark of pain:
O sorrow, then can sorrow wane?
O grief, can grief be changed to less?
O last regret, regret can die!
No -– mixt with all this mystic frame,
Her deep relations are the same,
But with long use her tears are dry.
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In going over Austen’s letters and then my blogs on the novels, and in context of the eras nearby, what I am again impressed with, is what is easy to find in the novels registered through many pictures in the films is Austen writing of letters, reading, writing, and dramatic uses of letters (far more than books). As my four stills chosen quickly and somewhat at random revealed — from a supposed biographical movie I have discussed hardly at all here.
Olivia Williams as a mature Austen writing Persuasion (Miss Austen Regrets, 2009, scripted Gweneth Hughes, directed Jeremy Lovering)
Ellen
The whole lot, concisely laid out and their place in the novel texts, from the Republic of Pemberley — still going as of this morning:
Sense and Sensibility
…of fellow, I believe, as ever lived,” repeated Sir John. “I remember last Christmas, at a little hop at the Park, he danced from eight o’clock till four,… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/SandS/chapter9.htm
…you and your sister. Will you come and spend some time at Cleveland this Christmas? Now, pray do — and come while the Westons are with us. You cannot… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/SandS/chapter20.htm
Pride and Prejudice
…of making one in the croud — but of that I despair. I sincerely hope your Christmas in Hertfordshire may abound in the gaieties which that season… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/PandP/chapter21.htm
…of receiving her brother and his wife, who came as usual to spend the Christmas at Longbourn. Mr. Gardiner was a sensible, gentlemanlike man, greatly… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/PandP/chapter25.htm
…and the prudent motive? Where does discretion end, and avarice begin? Last Christmas you were afraid of his marrying me, because it would be imprudent;… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/PandP/chapter27.htm
…of such happy promise as to make Elizabeth hope that by the following Christmas she might be so tolerably reasonable as not to mention an officer above… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/PandP/chapter42.htm
…”Yes, she will remain there till Christmas.” “And quite alone? Have all her friends left her?” “Mrs. Annesley is with her. The others have been gone… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/PandP/chapter54.htm
…the world that he can spare from me. You are all to come to Pemberley at Christmas. — Yours, etc.” Mr. Darcy’s letter to Lady Catherine, was in a… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/PandP/chapter60.htm
Mansfield Park
…the misery of the girl when he left her. Luckily the visit happened in the Christmas holidays, when she could directly look for comfort to her cousin… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/MP/chapter2.htm
… Yes; I shall take orders soon after my father s return probably at Christmas. Miss Crawford, rallying her spirits, and recovering her complexion,… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/MP/chapter9.htm
…And I am sure, my name was Norval, every evening of my life through one Christmas holidays. It was a very different thing. You must see the… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/MP/chapter13.htm
…still live at home, it will be all for his menus plaisirs; and a sermon at Christmas and Easter, I suppose, will be the sum total of sacrifice. His… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/MP/chapter23.htm
…If they were at home to grace the ball, a ball you would have this very Christmas. Thank your uncle, William, thank your uncle! My daughters, … …as himself, and they were to receive ordination in the course of the Christmas week. Half his destiny would then be determined, but the other half might… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/MP/chapter26.htm
…a long one? Does he give you much account of what he is doing? Is it Christmas gaieties that he is staying for? I only heard a part of the letter; it… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/MP/chapter29.htm
…into no hands more deserving of them. It was a foolish precipitation last Christmas, but the evil of a few days may be blotted out in part. Varnish and… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/MP/chapter45.htm
Emma
…and November evening must be struggled through at Hartfield, before Christmas brought the next visit from Isabella and her husband and their little… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/Emma/chapter1.htm
…any more. Emma shall be an angel, and I will keep my spleen to myself till Christmas brings John and Isabella. John loves Emma with a reasonable and… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/Emma/chapter5.htm
…taken out for the Abbey. Mr. Knightley promises to give up his claim this Christmas — though you know it is longer since they were with him, than with… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/Emma/chapter9.htm
…engagement, and out of the house too, there was no avoiding, though at Christmas. Mr. Weston would take no denial; they must all dine at Randalls one… …”Christmas weather,” observed Mr. Elton. “Quite seasonable; and extremely fortunate we may think ourselves that it did not begin yesterday, and prevent… …no consequence. This is quite the season indeed for friendly meetings. At Christmas every body invites their friends about them, and people think little… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/Emma/chapter13.htm
…The weather was most favourable for her; though Christmas-day, she could not go to church. Mr. Woodhouse would have been miserable had his daughter… …Harriet possible but by note; no church for her on Sunday any more than on Christmas-day; and no need to find excuses for Mr. Elton’s absenting himself…. http://www.pemberley.com/etext/Emma/chapter16.htm
…would be so. If he had come at Christmas he could not have staid three days; I was always glad he did not come at Christmas; now we are going to have… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/Emma/chapter23.htm
…who I mean (nodding to her husband). These kind of things are very well at Christmas, when one is sitting round the fire; but quite out of place, in my… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/Emma/chapter43.htm
Northanger Abbey
…college, of the name of Thorpe; and that he had spent the last week of the Christmas vacation with his family, near London. The whole being explained,… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/NA/chapter4.htm
…very well; her great aunt had read her a lecture on the subject only the Christmas before; and yet she lay awake ten minutes on Wednesday night debating… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/NA/chapter10.htm
…moment settles everything. The very first day that Morland came to us last Christmas the very first moment I beheld him my heart was irrecoverably… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/NA/chapter15.htm
Persuasion
…for her to stay behind, till she might convey her to Bath herself after Christmas; but having engagements of her own, which must take her from Kellynch… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/Persuasion/chapter5.htm
…mother, who must return in time to receive their younger children for the Christmas holidays, had hardly a hope of being allowed to bring her with them…. …riotous boys were holding high revel; the whole completed by a roaring Christmas fire, which seemed determined to he heard in spite of all the noise of… …as they were reseated in the carriage, “not to call at Uppercross in the Christmas holidays.” Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/Persuasion/chapter14.htm
…as you well know, affords little to write about. We have had a very dull Christmas; Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove have not had one dinner-party all the holidays…. http://www.pemberley.com/etext/Persuasion/chapter18.htm
…Elliot came to Bath for a day or two, as he happened to do a little before Christmas, Colonel Wallis made him acquainted with the appearance of things,… http://www.pemberley.com/etext/Persuasion/chapter21.htm
NB: I didn’t use a computer, only my pair of human eyes so if anyone spots another citation (I did not work on this the way I have my Tuesday references in the novels) I would be grateful. My general findings would stay the same but I’d be able to be complete on what we have. I made what conclusions I could.
Dorothy Gannon:
Ellen wrote: ‘It is a shame we don’t have any emphasis on Christmas or the winter holiday in Austen — I’ve discovered this is so in Charlotte Smith; if anything, she never (in Mary Crawford’s send of hardly ever) mentions Christmas. But there are movies which take it up with license (the recent Emma ones, 1996 and 2009) and appropriations like Metropolitan and Bridget Jones’s Diary. ‘
Funny, I have always thought of *Emma* as Austen’s Christmas novel, as the holiday figures at several key moments and pivotal scenes – Mr Elton’s proposal; Mr Knightly’s consultation with Emma about whether to stay or leave the Weston’s Christmas gathering (a sure sign in Austen of existing respect and friendship); the thawing of Emma and Mr Knightly’s relations after their big tiff. The holiday is even mentioned within the first pages of the novel, even setting us up for the regular Christmas visit of the Knightlys.
I suspect later adaptations place more emphasis on Christmas celebrations in the story because we ourselves do; it’s a much bigger holiday today than it was in the early 19th century, and, of course, modern adaptations also know that Christmas sells.”
Thank you for the compilation. An excellent job.
Merry Christmas, Nancy.
Rory O’Farrell:
“One matter that may be important is that “distance” visiting in Austen’s time was dependent on the moon to give visibility at night. An example of this is in S&S where Sir John Middleton wants to get up an ad hoc dinner, extended beyond his family, on the arrival of the Dashwoods, but those he invites are already engaged because of other arrangements having been made: “He had been to several families that morning in hopes of procuring some addition to their number, but it was moonlight and every body was full of engagements.”
I suspect that linking your P&P time-line to the actual lunar calendar of the 1811/12 period might prove difficult, if not impossible, as the double revision of fitting the 1811 dateline _AND_ 1811 lunar calendar to the earlier 1797 dateline is perhaps an unnecessary sophistication; had P&P hinged on (say) smugglers in Cornwall then the night-light might have been of considerable importance! Although, now that I think of it, if the time-lines of any of JA’s revised works are considered without meticulous adherence to the revised actual calendar dates, evening events might line up with the lunar calendars of the suspected original time-line year, and help establish that suspected original without a doubt.
The frequent letters between sisters/relatives are of course the equivalent of (in our youth) telephone calls and (today) text or email messages (possibly also Facebook or Twitter messages – but I have no experience of these). As with all overheard phone calls, one hears only one side of the tale!”
Me:
Dear Rory,
Thank you for this. Yes I know about Austen’s letters: their nature. I spent four years writing blogs on them. I don’t mean to add anything to my timelines any more. If I do anything it must be a paper that a journal would accept where I tell of the Important Tuesdays across the novels, for that and a few other truths about Austen’s texts are revealed when you study them so intensely. Not only do we hear only one side of a tale, Austen does not write down what is understood, and she writes to please Cassandra so they mirror Cassandra’s mind and interests, and finally Cassandra destroyed two-thirds. Still serendipitiously, aimed at a narrow-minded woman, 2/3s destroyed, they are what documentary evidence we have and they do tell much.
Ellen
Diane Fauer Fox:
“Speaking of Jane Austen, I was just listening to a narrated version of Frances Burney’s first novel, Evelina, and realized with pleasure, that Jane Austen modeled Lizzie Bennett’s first exposure to Mr. D’arcy on Evelina’s first meeting with Lord Orville at her first London assembly, where she overhears him passing some casual remarks upon her, that both interest and incense her, and sets them up as future sweethearts. I urge all who love Jane Austen to discover the wonderful novels of Frances Burney, that provided so much inspiration for the divine Jane. Austen references Burney’s greatest novel, Camilla, in her introduction to Northanger Abbey, where she chides the critics of novels as great literature, most eloquently”
Evelina in the coach harassed by Willoughby anticipates both Sense and Sensibility and Emma. So many scenes & characters in Cecilia are re-found across Austen’s novels you need an essay to record them. Camilla with its scenes of childhood and its hero and heroine anticipate Mansfield Park. Burney was an important influence on Austen and her diaries and journals are vivid and wonderful and worth reading too.
I’m not surprised Christmas isn’t referenced much in Austen’s letters. I
remember in Pride and Prejudice just a passing reference is made to it.
I’ve read elsewhere that Christmas was almost dead by Dickens’ time. He
infused new life into it and was largely inspired to do so after reading
Washington Irving’s story of Bracebridge hall in The Sketchbook which
celebrates an English squire celebrating Christmas and so Dickens wanted
to revive the Christmas tradition.
Tyler
That’s not true. I know it’s a narrative repeated which leads to say Dickens invented Christmas and the Victorian followed suit, but rather (as Southey’s poem show) it was a gradually emerging commercial and familial holiday. One can see this in the annual keepsakes albums, meant for Christmas, the obscure but perpetual enlarging of the Santa myth. That’s not really true. I know it’s a narrative repeated which leads to say Dickens invented Christmas and the Victorian followed suit, but rather (as Southey’s poem show) it was a gradually emerging commercial and familial holiday. One can see this in the annual keepsakes albums, meant for Christmas, the obscure but perpetual enlarging of the Santa myth. A good book that come to mind is Rosalind Marshall’s The Days of Duchess Anne [Hamilton]: in Scotland where everything was done to repress Christmas, stubbornly behind curtains people kept it up in the later 17th and early 18th century. Read about the early Victorian Christmas literary marketplace. Two kinds of evidence: from book history and memoirs; archival research doesn’t help a lot on the Christmas tree and Santa; they seem to have erupted together as central in the last quarter of the 19th century.
Other myths basically untrue are in your own book, Tyler — which I’ll post a bit in a minute and in the history of Bath as a spa. People want to believe it was begun by Nash and John Wood but not so at all; the Duke of Chandos and other real estate developers were the latter’s originators.
Ellen
Catherine Janofsky:
Did Jane mention 12th Night? Epiphany was a traditional time to exchange gifts, both in the Anglican and Roman Church. My family put shoes out on Sankt Nikolaus Abend, but then I’m German.
Me in reply:
I regret to say there is no mention of twelfth night or epiphany in Austen anywhere that I know of. At the opening of the 18th century, around 1717 or so Anne Finch wrote a twelfth night cake poem revealing a custom in her family and friends circle:
Here it is:
http://www.JimandEllen.org/finch/poem231.html
I did go through Charlotte Smith’s letters and all my notes and found not a trace. She did lead an unhappy life. I suggest if we went through Fanny Burney’s diaries and journals (which are going to numbrer 24 by the time they finish) we’d find rich details for many Christmas and new Year’s holidays. Her family were musicians, performers.
Ellen
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