J A N E T I L I T Y

     I have always thought that the original manuscript of Sense and Sensibility – an epistolary novel called Elinor and Marianne – would be a significant literary “get”. It would have been of particular interest to us in converting the epistolary novella Lady Susan to a narrative novel, Lady Vernon and Her Daughter but beyond that, it would have given readers another view of a transitional work, one that bridged Austen’s juvenilia and her mature work. Did Elinor and Marianne have the same raciness as Lady Susan? Was it as 18th century in its execution? How radically different was it in style, as well as form, from Sense and Sensibility?

     In a letter dated January, 1801, many years after Austen wrote Lady Susan, she wrote to her sister, “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.” Letters, in Austen’s opinion, were conversation; like conversation, these letters deliver information, explanations, news. Moreover, the letters in Austen’s novels always bear the distinct conversational style of the writer. Lydia Bennet’s “Let us talk and laugh all the way home…Have you seen any pleasant men? Have you had any flirting?” conveys the same high spirited tone as her written, “You will laugh when you know where I am gone and I cannot help laughing myself.” Lucy Steele’s parting shot in her farewell letter to Edward, “Please to destroy my scrawls, but the ring with my hair you are very welcome to keep”, delivers the same sort of saccharine jab as her remark to Elinor: “Your regard for me, next to Edward’s love, is the greatest comfort I have.” Mary Musgrove whines in her letters – “I am always out of the way when anything desirable is going on” –  and she whines in her conversation: “So you and I are to be left to shift by ourselves with this poor sick child – this is always my luck.” And when Mrs. Bennet anxiously anticipates being left a widow, Mr. Bennet’s dry, “Let us flatter ourselves that I may be the survivor”, is not unlike his pithy written advice to Mr. Collins, to “…stand by the nephew [Mr. Darcy]; he has more to give.”

    Another conversational quality of the letters in Austen’s novels is that, while personal, they are seldom secretive. Letters are routinely shared: Elizabeth reveals much of Darcy’s letter to Jane; the Westons disclose the contents of Frank Churchill’s letter to Emma; Catherine Morland allows Tilney to read her unhappy letter from James. What is disclosed in the letters inevitably becomes more widely known. There is, in fact, only one letter in Austen’s major novels that conveys secret feelings which the writer would not want shared with the world at large. In Persuasion, Mr. Elliot’s letter to Mr. Smith has been preserved by Smith’s widow. “Give me joy,” writes Elliot, “I have got rid of Sir Walter and Miss [Elizabeth Elliot]…he is worse than last year…I wish I had any name but Elliot, I am sick of it.” Still, it does not vary from his prior conversational style, as we know from Mrs. Smith that “I have often heard him declare that if baronetcies were saleable, anybody should have his for fifty pounds, arms and motto, name and livery included.” Even Mary Crawford, who brazenly imagines the upshot of Tom Bertram’s demise; i.e., that his wealth and consequence could fall into no better hands than that of his younger brother, writes that she would say the same to anyone “..with a fearless face and bold voice.”

      Austen’s gift for creating a distinct conversational style, and extending it to a character’s letters is all the more impressive when you view it in contrast to what passes for correspondence today. A typical “how r u 2day” text could come from any number of senders, without distinction, identity, style or, emoticon notwithstanding, personality.

“[Tom Lefroy] has but one fault, which time will, I trust, entirely remove – it is that his morning coat is a great deal too light. He is a very great admirer of Tom Jones, and therefore wears the same colored clothes, I imagine which he did when he was wounded.”

This observation, noted in a letter written by 20-year-old Jane Austen to her sister, suggests that Austen, as well as Lefroy, were familiar with Henry Fielding’s novel. It is she, after all, who infers that Lefroy’s morning coat is an homage to the garment worn by a wounded Tom Jones, who had been wounded in a dispute over a lady’s reputation.

There are a few references to Lefroy in Austen’s letters that were written in the early part of 1796. From Steventon, she writes of their “profligate and shocking” flirting, and that she found him to be “gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant”. Several days later, she looks forward “with great impatience to a ball at which “I rather expect to receive an offer from my friend in the course of the evening. I shall refuse him however, unless he promises to give away his white coat.” It is interesting that she writes with the same blithe self-confidence of Lady Susan Vernon, the focus of her recent novella, announcing that she “bequeaths” all of her beaux to a friend, “as I mean to confine my future to Mr. Tom Lefroy, for whom I do not care a sixpence” – yet, she cares enough that “my tears flow as I write” at the thought of his imminent departure.

Tom Lefroy

Jane Austen

There is a gap in 1797, before her correspondence resumes the following year; this is the period in which she converted her epistolary Elinor and Marianne to Sense and Sensibility, which provokes some interesting speculation about what may have influenced the character of Willoughby. There are certainly points where Lefroy’s hero and Austen’s most complex scoundrel intersect.

Tom Jones and John Willoughby both have expectations that are kept at bay, to a different degree, by the course of their own conduct. In the end, both are rewarded – again, to a different degree. Jones gets the lady and his claim to fortune; Willoughby gets a lady, who comes with a fortune. Tom Lefroy, who lived in the real world, could not hope for the serendipitous good luck of fiction. It is unlikely that the great-uncle who funded Lefroy’s education would have behaved as Jones’ benefactor who “…threatened [Tom Jones] with the entire loss of his favor”, or that Lefroy would have forfeited his uncle’s good will by the sort of conduct that had Willoughby, “…formally dismissed from [his relative’s] favor”; still, Austen’s poverty would have been viewed as an impediment, by Lefroy’s relations, to their marriage.

Jones and Willoughby have similar encounters with the charming heroine. Marianne Dashwood injures herself in a fall, and winds up in the arms of Willoughby. Sophia Western is tossed from her unruly horse into the arms of Tom Jones. When the ladies receive their farewell letters, Sophia laments that, “I have thrown away my heart on a man who hath forsaken me…He hath taken his leave of me forever in that letter”, while Marianne wails, “Willoughby, where was your heart, when you wrote those words?” In both works there is a somewhat satirical contrast between the natural and the conventional, expressed, to varying degrees, in the manner in which illegitimacy affects the course of romance.

Still, in literature and life, Austen must accept the “mortifying conviction that handsome young men must have something to live on, as well as the plain”, and her novels’ marriages do not take place until that “something to live on” is certain. Yet, in Sense and Sensibility, chronologically closest to the brief Austen/Lefroy relationship, Austen is able to propose an ideal resolution through her fiction: Willougby – as dissolute as Tom Jones and as good-looking and pleasant as Tom Lefroy – is  reinstated by the rich cousin upon whom he is dependent, not by marrying the woman he had wronged, or by marrying a wealthy woman, but by marrying a woman of good character – a rapprochement that, ironically, he might have effected by marrying Marianne.  Did Austen secretly hope that Lefroy might count on the same benevolence?

Certainly, there was no engagement between Austen and Lefroy, and she cannot claim to have been jilted, but he was not forgotten. (Perhaps this was what enabled her to write so feelingly, in her next effort, of the effect of Bingley’s absence on Jane Bennet). Two years after Lefroy’s departure, Austen writes of a visit from his aunt, that, “…of her nephew she said nothing at all…She did not once mention the name of [Lefroy] to me, and I was too proud to make any enquiries.” Only weeks later, in early 1799, Jane writes of a cold and its effect on her eyes, and describes a ball with little enthusiasm. “I do not think I was very much in request. People were rather apt not to ask me till they could not help it. One’s consequence you know, varies so much at times without any particular reason.” Yet, she retained enough consequence to be solicited – and to decline – “Lord Bolton’s eldest son” for a partner. Perhaps her “indifferent” vision is the result of tears, shed upon learning of the engagement of Tom Lefroy, who was married in March of 1799.  When she does go on to write “Whenever I fall into misfortune, how many jokes it ought to furnish my acquaintance in general…” she echoes Marianne Dashwood’s lament upon Willoughby’s desertion: “I must feel – I must be wretched – and they are welcome to enjoy the consciousness of it that can.”

Clive Francis as Willoughby (1971)

Greg Wise as Willoughby (1995)

Peter Woodward as Willoughby (1981)

“Tomorrow, I shall be just like Camilla in Mr. Dubster’s summer-house; for my Lionel will have taken away the ladder by which I came here, or at least by which I intended to get away and here I must stay till his return.”  So wrote Jane Austen to Cassandra in 1796, when her return to Steventon was delayed because none of her brothers were able to escort her. She describes her predicament by alluding to one of the most popular novels of the day, Fanny Burney’s Camilla. In one chapter, the title character and her sister climb a ladder to examine an elevated summer-house; the ladder is removed by their mischievous brother, Lionel, who rides off and leaves them stranded.

Frances "Fanny" Burney

Exclusive of Austen’s reference to Camilla, it may be inferred that Austen was a reader of Burney. Fanny Burney’s first three novels – Evelina (1778), Cecilia (1782) and Camilla (1796)– were  “coming of age” novels, which usually involved the heroine’s departure from home and her introduction to a to a society that requires her to make romantic and moral choices. You see this influence in Austen; in all of her novels, save for Emma, significant episodes occur when the heroine leaves the family home. (And, in the case of Emma, this is true of Jane Fairfax). The two authors’ works share a common element: that the vanity, ignorance, prejudices, but also the morality, which had incubated in the family circle are tested against the failings and merits of a broader environment and a new set of acquaintances.

When  Austen wrote her earliest complete works – the work later titled Lady Susan, and Elinor and Marianne, which became Sense and Sensibility - they were written in the epistolary fashion of Evelina . Moreover, when the Reverend Mr. Austen attempted to interest Burney’s publisher in his daughter’s early work (most reports state that the work was First Impressions; an auction notice offering the signed portion of Mr. Austen’s letter suggests that it was Sense and Sensibility), he makes a comparison, in length, to Evelina.

Austen followed up Elinor and Marianne with First Impressions; however, by the time of its publication, there was already a popular novel titled First Impressions, or The Portrait (by Mrs. Margaret Holford), so Austen drew upon the final chapter of Cecilia for her Plan B title, Pride and Prejudice. Cecilia’s plot revolves around a conditional bequest, wherein a young lady’s inheritance depends upon her suitor’s consent to assume her family surname. (Derived, perhaps, from the actual situation of real-life heiress Mary Eleanor Bowes). In bringing the complications to conclusion, the summation, given by the character Lyster, states: “The whole of this unfortunate business has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE…if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination.” (Yes, it is rendered in upper case in the printing).

However, one might wonder whether Austen drew upon the work of another Burney in crafting some of her characters. In 1807, she writes of re-reading the novel Clarentine (1796) by Sarah Burney (Fanny’s step-sister): “We are reading Clarentine and are surprised to find how foolish it is. I remember liking it much less on a second reading than the first, and it does not bear a third at all.” And yet, there is something very Marianne Dashwood about Clarentine’s assertion that, “It is equally impossible for me to forget, or not to feel”, and something quite Darcy-like in Sir Edgar’s “…reserve, which frequently cast a gloom over his features…appeared to denote an unsocial and contemptuous disposition in himself [which] had often displeased her extremely and led her, very naturally, to suspect him of a degree of arrogance and pride.”

If Austen’s assessment of Sarah Burney’s contrived plotting is that it is “full of unnatural conduct and forced difficulties, without striking merits of any kind”, she is good-natured enough to take such criticism to task as well in Northanger Abbey, by citing embarrassed novel-readers who confess that, “’It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda’, or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed.”

“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.”