J A N E T I L I T Y

          One engaging feature of Austen’s novels is her technique of aligning character traits with their natural (as in nature) affinities or aversions. Elizabeth Bennet’s appreciation for talent and virtue over money and rank is reflected in her reaction to the grounds of Pemberley, i.e., that their “…natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste”; Marianne Dashwood’s propensity for dwelling upon loss is reflected in her musings upon Norland’s dead leaves. Mrs. Elton’s affectation is comically rendered in the running monologue that expresses her eroding zeal for strawberry picking. There is an allusion to Catherine Morland’s maturing in an exchange between her and Tilney; when she says that she has learned to love a hyacinth – the flower symbolizing the juvenile attributes of playfulness and sport – he asks whether she might then learn to love a rose – the flower symbolic of romantic love. The selfishness of Sir Walter Elliot and his eldest daughter corresponds to their reluctance to allow a tenant to enjoy the use of their gardens. Sir Walter is “…not fond of the idea of my shrubberies being always approachable [by a tenant]”, and Anne has been dispatched to instruct the gardener in “…which of Elizabeth’s plants are for Lady Russell” – presumably to preserve them from Kellynch’s new occupants.

Sylvestra Le Touzel, as Fanny Price

          In Mansfield Park, when Fanny Price and Mary Crawford stroll the parsonage grounds, their conversation expresses Fanny’s appreciation of nature and Mary’s indifference to it, but the particular object of Fanny’s admiration are the evergreens. “The evergreen! How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the evergreen!” Even while Mansfield Park is symbolically channeled through Fanny – her musing on how the same soil can nurture such variety of plants represents the disparate characters who occupy or pass through the Bertram estate – it is the unchanging evergreen, the manifestation of permanence, fidelity, immutability and self-renewal that embodies the character of Fanny Price.

Frances O’Connor, as Fanny Price

          Yet, every so often, Austen readers will encounter an article or a speaker whose topic is something on the order of “In Defense of Fanny Price”; “defense” implying that Fanny Price is deficient when compared to Austen’s other heroines, and therefore requires vindication. Even C. S. Lewis, in “A Note on Jane Austen” maintained that Fanny had “…nothing but rectitude of mind; neither passion, nor physical courage, nor wit, nor resource.” True, she is not as witty as Elizabeth Bennet, nor as passionate as Marianne Dashwood, and her resources are not tested in the manner that Catherine Morland’s are; moreover, Fanny is not as beautiful as Jane Bennet, nor as accomplished as Jane Fairfax; she does not even provide the comic intervals that the reader enjoys by way of Mrs. Bennet or Mrs. Elton.

Billie Piper, as Fanny Price

          Fanny Price is the only Austen heroine who is defined by intrinsic virtue and moral integrity, rather than her failures of character and objectivity. Elizabeth Bennet is susceptible to prejudice, Marianne Dashwood is emotionally indulgent, Emma is self-important and manipulative, Catherine Morland’s limited intellect is warped by popular novels and self-serving acquaintances, Anne Elliot abdicates her natural good judgment in favor of well-meaning (and not-so-well-meaning) relations and friends. As their tales advance, the mechanics of plot are linked to the flawed heroine’s self-realization and eventual contrition. “These recollections will not do at all,” concludes Elizabeth Bennet. “I assure you that I have long been most heartily ashamed [of her language].” Marianne states that, “Whenever I look towards the past I saw some duty neglected or some failing indulged.” Emma comes to hope that “…every future winter of her life…would yet find her more rational, more acquainted with herself, and leave her less to regret when it were gone.” When Catherine understands how far her imagination has offended Henry Tilney, it “…opened her eyes to the extravagance of her late fancies”. Even while the long-suffering Anne justifies her deference to Lady Russell, she concedes that “…for myself, I certainly never should in any circumstance of tolerable similarity, give such advice.”

          In contrast, Fanny is always correct. Her affection is never misplaced, her character assessments are borne out in a plot that, rather than exposing her errors of judgment, reveals where the judgment of the others has gone awry.

            Fanny experiences unhappiness, but no moral regret, unless you count those “…feelings so near akin to envy as to make her hate herself for having them.” Her uncomplaining submission to the indolence of Lady Bertram and the tyranny of Mrs. Norris may aggravate the reader; her steadiness, when compared to the spirited repartee of Elizabeth Bennet or the resolute folly of Emma or Catherine, may appear static and colorless. If Fanny does not possess the buoyancy and wit of Austen’s other heroines, she does have – without the accompanying advantages of wealth, status, accomplishment or even physical stamina – a moral intuition that is as intriguing (considering the households in which she was raised) as cleverness and charm.

          Fanny may not, as Lewis observes, have “physical courage” (though I think the same may be said for most of Austen’s heroines), but she does have to draw upon emotional reserves in a way that other heroines (with the possible exception of Elinor Dashwood) do not; Elizabeth, Anne, Catherine, Emma may face an obstacle to romance, but the obstacle does not materialize in the form of a competitor. Darcy is not attached to Anne deBourgh, nor would Knightley ever marry Harriet Smith; Wentworth dallies with Louisa and Henrietta without being serious about either, and Tilney is not in love with anyone else. Even Willoughby’s choice is a matter of fortune rather than affection. But Fanny does have a rival for Edmund’s affection in the beautiful and accomplished Mary Crawford. Unlike Darcy, Tilney, Knightley, or even Edward Ferrars or Willoughby, Edmund Bertram is the one Austen hero who falls in love with someone other than the heroine. Unlike Fanny’s response to Henry Crawford, Edmund rationalizes Mary’s impropriety, and continues to hope that she will overlook the fact that he is a second son and a clergyman, until her sentiments prove to be so corrupt that Edmund cannot continue to justify them. Fanny, on the other hand, is able to witness Henry’s newly-expressed gentleness and consideration, without weakening, and views it as sign that he may just enough of a changed character that he will “not much longer persevere in a suit so distressing to her”. She can appreciate the improvement in his conduct, but her opinion of him as a potential husband is not swayed.

          Perhaps in an era where undeserving “celebrities” reap undeserved attention there are those who consider “rectitude of mind” to be “nothing”. But Austen readers should know better.

In the rather colorful and somewhat incongruent political environment of NJ, a recent subject of public discourse has been whether the following phrase in an animal cruelty, disorderly persons and/or motor vehicle statute – “A person who shall carry, or cause to be carried, a living animal or creature in or upon a vehicle or otherwise, in a cruel or inhumane manner shall be guilty of a disorderly persons offense and punished as provided in subsection a. of R.S.4:22-17” means that drivers, by law, and furthermore to avoid the taint of cruelty or inhumanity, and finally to escape whatever punishment is spelled out in subsection a. of R.S.4:22-17, must belt, buckle or box up Fido and Mittens for that trip to the vet’s.

A spokeswoman for the Motor Vehicle Commission, formerly the Department of Motor Vehicles, explains: “You should not be driving down the road under any circumstances with a dog driving the car” (quoted in http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/lifestyle/2012/06/n-j-other-states-turn-focus-to-pets-in-fight-against-distracted-driving/). She went on to clarify: ““We don’t want dogs driving with the steering wheel, and we don’t want cats who sit on the dashboard.”

If you are inclined to think that the tally of driving dogs and dashboard cats hasn’t reached a level that calls for regulatory intervention, remember that this is New Jersey, where the legislative reach never cedes its grasp upon the taxpayer’s pocketbook, else what’s a levy for? Violators may be assessed fines as high as $1000, not only by the police, but also by officers with the NJ SPCA. (The referenced article included a link for a limited time offer of a 25% discount on pet harnesses purchased through the ASPCA’s online store.)

Sometimes, it is helpful to look at an issue from the perspective of unintended consequences. Despite (or, perhaps, due to) the efforts of animal adoption organizations and ‘no kill’ advocates, most shelters are at capacity. They receive the by-products of abuse, hoarding, neglect and abandonment, and adopt out to those who are not only pet lovers, but who have calculated the expense of pet ownership in terms of the veterinary care, food, bedding, grooming. But what is affordable, congenial and even mutually beneficial to the rescue organizations and potential pet owners, may be only one peremptory, nannified, wallet-wringing regulation (and its collateral fines, fees or taxes) away from the “It’s just not worth it” that overwhelms animal shelters and undermines the no-kill supporters.

Let’s have a look at Jane Austen’s unfinished novel, The Watsons. (I suspect that you are going, “Wha….? Wha….?” at this point). The Watsons was begun in the early 1800s and abandoned, with about 17,000 words written, some time in 1805. At one point there is an exchange between Robert Watson, an ambitious attorney and his self-important wife during a visit to his genteel-but-on-the-decline family. “You have not put any fresh powder in your hair,” Mrs. Watson chastises her husband. He replies that, as they are dining en famille, “I think there is enough powder in my hair for my wife and sisters.” Yet, when they are visited by the social-climbing houseguest of Lady Osborne, Watson hastens to remark that “I had not time even to put a little fresh powder in my hair.”

In the late Georgian era, powdering the hair, the wigs and artificial hair pieces was de rigueur for royalty, the ton, their menservants and certain professionals, and this kept wig makers, hairdressers, purveyors of hair powder and pomade in business. The passage from The Watsons is Austen’s lengthiest allusion to the fashion. There is Sir Walter Elliott’s condescending remark about a certain Admiral Baldwin’s “…nine grey hairs of a side and nothing but a dab of powder at top” (Persuasion), and Mrs. Norris’s mention of the rheumatic coachman donning his wig in preparation for an outing (Mansfield Park), and Catherine Morland’s discovery of a cleaning bill that includes hair powder (Northanger Abbey), but only Robert Watson talks about using hair powder, and, while he feels no need to dress up for his humble family, he is not above what Darcy called “an indirect boast”; i.e., promoting himself as a man of fashion by way of the offhand comment that he was too busy (rather than too poor) to powder his hair.

Before the Duty on Hair Powder Act

What did hair powder, or the absence of it, have to do with how well off one was? Well, in 1795, Parliament decided to levy a tax to offset government spending, looked to taxable items and practices in widespread use, settled on hair powder and passed the Duty on Hair Powder Act. Hair powder fanciers were now required to visit the stamp office to procure a certificate that licensed the use of the product at the cost of one guinea (21 shillings, or just over a pound) per year. Of course, as with any duty, tax or fine, there were a host of exemptions: the royal family and their staff, the military, both enlisted and volunteers, and clergymen who earned under a hundred pounds a year. The Act did not limit itself to hair powder, but included “… any powder which shall be used as hair powder with intent to evade the payment of the said duty…” and determined that “…every sort or composition of powder which shall be used or worn by any person as an article of his or her dress, by whatever name the same shall be distinguished, shall be deemed hair powder within the intent and meaning of this Act.” In other words: Do not attempt to avoid the duty by using face powder, flour, chalk, etc. as hair powder.

Rules were laid down for the licensing of family members and servants in a single household and, to thwart unauthorized pate powdering by tenants and renters, the Act placed the burden upon landlords, lessors and innkeepers of notifying their occupants of the tax, and required “occupiers” (landlords and other lessors) to list and identify all of their tenants and that any “…occupier of any dwelling house or separate apartment who shall not return such list of lodgers or inmates or shall omit any who ought to be returned therein and who, to his or her knowledge, shall have worn hair powder…” is liable to a 50 pound fine.

Fifty pounds to a Georgian era lessor is (allowing for differences in currency indexing) roughly an equivalent to that Cleveland levied on the middle income owner of a dashboard cat. Now one might argue, “Why not simply take the time to submit the list of tenants and avoid the fine”, just as one might argue “Why not simply buy a harness or carrier and avoid the fine”? The straw is always inconsequential to everyone save the camel.

What was not inconsequential to the producers and vendors of wigs and hair powder was the public’s reaction to the tax. By 1805, when Robert

After the Duty on Hair Powder Act

Watson was indirectly boasting of his ability to keep himself in hair powder, the tax had driven off all but those who were waivered by the law, or the few social climbers parading their wealth, and ushered in the more natural hair styles of the early 19th century.

Here’s hoping that pound hounds don’t go the way of the periwig.

    “Alphonsine did not do. We were disgusted in twenty pages as, independent of a bad translation, it has indelicacies which disgrace a pen hitherto so pure, and we changed it for the “Female Quixotte,” which now makes our evening amusement; to me a very high one, as I find the work quite equal to what I remembered it.”

So wrote Jane Austen to Cassandra in 1807. Austen evidently had a taste for the lively and burlesque; she had also expressed a liking for E. S. Barrett’s The Heroine, a quixotic novel about a young lady who decides that she has not been told the truth about her parentage, and who resolves to go out into the world in quest of her birthright.

     The Female Quixote, or the Adventures of Arabella, published in 1752, was the second novel of poet and novelist Charlotte Lennox, and it is no surprise that Austen liked it enough to re-read it, as her “equal to what I remembered it” suggests. In the words of author and critic Anna Barbauld, who was influential in reviving interest in the work some fifty years after its publication, The Female Quixotewas “…an agreeable and ingenious satire upon the old romances, and I really think it is written in a modern spirit…”.

Charlotte Lennox

The Female Quixote, like Northanger Abbey, satirizes the effects of popular fiction on the reader. In fact, it would not be a stretch to suppose that Lennox’s most popular novel was a direct influence on the Austen work.

The target of Lennox’s novel is romantic fiction. “Romantic” did not refer to love and courtship, but to highly imaginative, usually episodic tales of adventure, heroism and exaggerated sentiment, authored by the likes of Eliza Heywood, Henry Fielding or Mary Davys. Unlike Austen, Lennox offers up a suitable candidate for her heroine; “Nature had given [Arabella] a most charming face, a shape easy and delicate, a sweet and insinuating voice and an air so full of dignity and grace as drew the admirations of all that saw her.” Compare this to Catherine Morland: “[The Morlands] were in general very plain, and Catherine, for many years of her life, as plain as any. She had a thin, awkward figure, a sallow skin without color, dark, lank hair and strong features.”

In accomplishments, as well, Catherine is a direct contrast to Arabella, whose “…naive charms were improved with all the heightenings of art…The best masters of music and dancing were sent for from London to attend her. She soon became the perfect mistress of the French and Italian languages”, whereas Catherine “…was often inattentive and occasionally stupid” and regards one of the happiest days of her life as the day that her music master was dismissed.

Arabella “would have made a great proficiency in all useful knowledge had not her whole time been taken up by another study” (i.e., reading novels of romance). Catherine takes to books, but only when “…nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them…all story and no reflection…such works as heroines must read…”

There are other comparisons, in the two suitors – the self-important one (Arabella’s Sir George, and Catherine’s John Thorpe) and the sensible, tolerant one (Arabella’s Glanville and Catherine’s Tilney) – and in the move from relative seclusion to society where the novels’ vision of the world is tested against the social order. There is, however, a comparison to another of Austen’s early novels: Sense and Sensibility. Unlike Catherine’s mistaken notions that are corrected, at the cost of some embarrassment, by her own innate level-headedness, Arabella judgment is corrupted to the point where her behavior has life-threatening consequences; her determination to see the world in romantic terms is as indulgent as Marianne Dashwood’s emotional excess. Just as Arabella at last owns up to her errors “…my heart yields to the force of truth…I begin to perceive that I have hitherto trifled away my time”, Marianne says that, “My illness has made me think – it has given me leisure and calmness for serious recollection….Whenever I looked towards the past, I saw some duty neglected or some failing indulged.”

But back to Alphonsine, or Maternal Affection (1806) the work by prolific author Madame deGenlis, that Austen rejected. The plot presents an interesting spin on a young lady whose understanding has been distorted, not by novels but by the extreme limitations of her physical world. Alphonsine, the illegitimate daughter of a countess is born in a dungeon – the mother’s vengeful husband has imprisoned his wife, and neither he nor her attendants are aware of the child’s birth or existence – and is raised entirely in both sensory and social darkness. When, after thirteen years, they are released, Alphonsine’s introduction to the world becomes not only an expanded social experience, but a more fundamental sensory revelation. Perhaps Austen would have found something more relevant in Alphonsine if she had not succumbed to the “twenty page rule”. Her own view of epistolary integrity – “I have now attained the true art of letter-writing, which we are always told is to express on paper exactly what one would say to the same person by word of mouth” is not all that different from The Critical Review’s assessment of the rejected novel, that “[Madame deGenlis] has attained the true moral end of novel writing, that which consists not in a few pages of poetical justice, but in the general impression left upon the reader’s mind when he closes the volume.”

“My father is now reading The Midnight Bell, which he has got from the library, and mother sitting by the fire.” So wrote Jane Austen, from the Bull and George coaching inn, in October, 1798. It is an interesting portrait, the practical Reverend George Austen reading (aloud, perhaps) from one of the most popular Gothic novels of the day, the library book that he enjoyed well enough to carry while traveling.

The Midnight Bell, was published in the first half of 1798, not very long before Jane Austen began writing Northanger Abbey (then called   Susan), and Austen references that novel in her work as one of the ten or twelve Udolpho-like books that Isabella Thorpe has compiled to read with Catherine.

The author of The Midnight Bell was Francis Lathom. Like Austen, he was a precocious writer who enjoyed an early period of productivity followed by a lapse, and then a renewal of creativity in the years preceding his death. While Austen and Lathom were roughly the same age, by the late 1790s, she had, to her credit, a batch of juvenile writing and two unpublished epistolary novels: an untitled one (Lady Susan) that she later recopied and abandoned, and Elinor and Marianne, the early version of Sense and Sensibility. Lathom, on the other hand, had already churned out a number of stage plays, many of which had been produced, and published his first novel, The Castle of Ollada. Reviews of his plays were often lukewarm. The Monthly Mirror, July 1801, wrote of one: “The author possesses some vivacity and a tolerable notion of what is agreeable to the taste of a modern audience; but the interest and humor of this piece are very slight” and A Companion to the Playhouse pronounced one of his early comedies “frivolous and uninteresting” and “deservedly condemned”. On the other hand, The Cabinet wrote that Lathom was “..one of the best novelists of the modern school.”

Lathom was among the earliest novelists to incorporate historical fact with sensational fiction. Reality did not displace the Gothic staples, however: there were an abundance of exotic locations, secret passages, abductions, wretched wanderers, long lost parents, noble villains and damsels in distress. It is unlikely that Lathom’s integration of history or extravagant melodrama had appeal for Jane Austen as something to be imitated; she avoided history and– other than lampooning them in Northanger Abbey – Gothic-style histrionics. Lathom’s knack for irony and satire would not have escaped her, however, and one can imagine Jane smiling as her father read, “He threw himself upon the ground in despair; in a few minutes, however, recollecting that inactivity could add little to forward his wishes, he rose”, or, “The gates of the castle being locked might be construed into an indication either of its being inhabited or not being inhabited.” It is possible as well that when Austen crafted heroines and heroes who learned to distinguish between social rank and genuine merit, she reflected upon Lathom’s observation in Men and Manners, that “Such is the frailty of human nature, that the sneer of a fool has more power to raise its feelings than the admonitions of a wise man has to restrain them.”

In honor of the January birthday of Sherlock Holmes (b. 1/6/1854), my January film notes will concentrate on a few of the more interesting screen re-imaginings of the world’s greatest detective.

The first, in keeping with the season, will be the Granada interpretation of The Blue Carbuncle, which I think did a superior job of transposing a Holmes tale. It had the advantage of being one of the earlier programs in the series, so you have Jeremy Brett, as Holmes, in better form and health than he was in the last installments, and David Burke, the actor who gave us the most faithful Watson.

Brett & Burke

The story, which appeared in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, involves the theft of a rare gem, the Blue Carbuncle, its discovery in the crop (the gullet) of a goose, and the goose finding its way to 221 B Baker Street.

The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle begins with Watson’s visit to Holmes two days after Christmas, but the filmed version gives us a prologue, as the Blue Carbuncle- “the precious stone”- is passed from one generation to the next, falling into the possession of the Countess of Morcar. The characterization of the Countess is a departure, but an interesting one: in the Conan Doyle story, she remains off stage, but offers a thousand pound reward for the gem, and Holmes observes that the Countess would “part with half her fortune” for its recovery. In the teleplay, she is a tight-fisted miser whose tip to the hotel servants is to be divided “for the three of you”, whose Christmas tree is a limp cheerless affair, who is infuriated by the suggestion that she ought to offer a reward for her own property; actress Rosalind Knight’s rendering of this worldly, lonely miser is shrewd and on point.

Rosalind Knight (left) as the Countess of Morcar; note the sorry-looking Christmas tree in back.

In fact, the entire translation of the tale, from the development of minor characters, the different arrangements of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen supplementing the score and the inspired direction of David Carson, render a visual equivalent of Conan Doyle’s prose with remarkable fidelity. There is a gentle humanity in the details – Henry Baker(who inadvertently comes into possession of the prized goose) whose shillings have not been “so plentiful as they once were”, nonetheless stops to give a coin to a beggar; Holmes groping for a match to light his morning cigarette, just frenzied enough to hint at graver addictions; and the near-farcical episode of Holmes conning a poulterer into a wager -  suggest an understanding of the Canon that is too often lacking in many modern renditions.

David Stuart Davies, in his excellent record of the Granada series – Bending the Willow – credits Brett with certain cynical details that stave off an excess of sentimentality: the early-morning craving for a cigarette, the curt dismissal of the pathetic Henry Baker who is, after all, only “a mere unit, a factor in a problem” (as Holmes remarks in The Sign of the Four). But it is in the comic scene where Holmes finesses a skeptical poulterer  that the episode really shines.

Three degrees of Austen? Jeremy Brett (Holmes) appeared in the TV version of The Merchant of Venice with Sir Laurence Olivier who was Darcy in the 1940 Pride and Prejudice.

And who would have liked this film? Jane Bennet, always optimistic, would have sympathized with Holmes’s release of the culprit, though she might have been less cynical about his future, possibly hoping that he would “come to a right way of thinking”. A mystery involving stolen gems, a Countess, a detective and an unexpected conclusion would have appealed to Catherine Morland’s penchant for sensational fiction and perhaps Mrs. Nicholls, the Netherfield cook, employs her master’s long absence to catch up on reading and hopes for a stroke of good fortune when she rounds up “three couple of ducks, just fit to be killed.”

Hangover Square is loosely based upon the novel by Patrick Hamilton, author of the plays Rope and Gaslight and the three novels known as the Gorse trilogy – “loosely based upon” defined as “very little remains of”, because screenwriter Barre Lyndon (The Lodger) converts Hamilton’s socio-political pre-WWII tale to an fin de siècle gothic melodrama, with the principal common element being the blackouts suffered by the main character George Harvey Bone. Hangover Square is directed by John Brahm (The Lodger) and stars Laird Cregar (Bone), playing pretty much the same role he played in The Lodger,

Cregar, in The Lodger

Cregar, in Hangover Square

George Sanders playing pretty much the same role he played in The Lodger,

Sanders, in The Lodger

Sanders, in Hangover Square

Linda Darnell and Faye Marlowe playing the role Merle Oberon played in The Lodger,

Faye Marlowe

Merle Oberon

and Alan Napier, who was not in The Lodger

The beloved character actor, Alan Napier

Periodically, one of Cregar’s films shows up, and cinephiliacs are reminded what as astonishing presence he was. There was an assurance, a finish to his performances that was not only in contrast to his size (he was 6’4″ and well over 300 pounds for much of his career), but to his youth – in five years, he made sixteen films, dying prematurely at age 31; Hangover Square was his last film. Cregar’s George Harvey Bone is a tormented wretch (another variant of not only his role in The Lodger, but in I Wake Up Screaming), a struggling composer suffering from blackouts that are triggered by discordant sounds. These lapses synch up with a string of unsolved murders, and on the advice of his patron’s daughter, Bone consults with a doctor attached to Scotland Yard; the doctor dismisses Bone’s fear that he may be the killer, but suggests that the stress of his in-progress concerto may be the cause of the blackouts. His prescription is for Bone to take a break (no pun intended) from his music and amuse himself among the common folk. Cut to an inebriated Bone in a seedy dance hall where Netta (Darnell) is performing. George becomes infatuated with Netta, who plays him along in order to persuade him to put a friend’s lyrics to music, providing her with material to boost her career. Soon poor besotted George has tabled his concerto (serious art) to crank out dance hall ditties (commercial entertainment) that bring Netta to the attention of a theatrical producer, who stars her in his next production:

Yes, you read that right

There is, of course, the long-suffering lady friend who is, in turn, befriended by the doctor, the avuncular father/mentor who dispenses advice, and a really terrific use of Guy Fawkes Day as a plot device. The superbly edited climax is fashioned around George’s performance of his concerto. The concerto and score were done by Bernard Hermann whose piercing flute that accompanies George’s spells is every bit as unnerving as his shrieking violins in Psycho.

So which Austen characters would enjoy Hangover Square? Marianne Dashwood would find something of a kindred spirit in a composer who dies for his art, Mary Bennet would empathize with Bone’s conflict when her long concerto is not received with as much “praise and gratitude” as her popular Scotch and Irish airs, Captain Benwick would certainly understand that even the most determined melancholy might be relieved by a lively and frivolous young lady and Catherine Morland would have relished all of the film’s atmosphere of eerie mystery.

Three degrees of Jane Austen? Laird Cregar co-starred in Charley’s Aunt with Edmund Gwenn, who played Mr. Bennet in the 1940 Pride and Prejudice.