J A N E T I L I T Y

For more than a hundred fifty years after her death, the canon of Jane Austen inspired a memoir, a few works of literary criticism and a a quarter shelf-full of sequels and adaptations of her work, but in the past fifteen years or so, Jane Austen has become a literary star, generating everything from critiques and biographies to annotated editions, sequels, adaptations, character spinoffs, modern takes, graphic novels, and mashups.  Jane Austen has outlasted popular contemporaries like Mary Brunton, Sydney Owenson and Eaton Stannard Barrett, and touched off a market for derivative work comparable only to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, and with a considerably smaller canon – talk about the six that keep on giving!

If you are thinking about writing a sequel, adaptation, or new novel featuring a minor Austen character as Austen might have done, it helps to decipher how Austen writes. It is more than a matter of knowing the period – in fact, knowing the period may be least important component. After all, Jane Austen did not write historical novels, she wrote contemporary novels, so it really is not important for an adaptive writer to explain how an entail works or the color of someone’s barouche. Writing like someone else can be tricky; if you have ever seen an impressionist, the good ones do more than getting the voice right – they get the inflection, the cadence, the body language. There is a book called What Jane Austen Ate, and What Charles Dickens Knew; to write like Austen, you have to grasp, not merely what Austen ate or knew, but what Austen did, not only regarding setting and  social order, but what techniques she employed as a narrator and wordsmith.

It helps (that is, it helped us in writing Lady Vernon and Her Daughter, and with our current project), to have a few key volumes on the Austen shelf (or shelves) in your home library. A few may be taken for granted – Deirdre LeFaye’s Jane Austen’s Letters, and perhaps something like LeFaye’s  Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels. You may pick up an annotated book, or James Edward Austen-Leigh’s A Memoir of Jane Austen or something fun like So You Think You Know Jane Austen?, and of course you have all of Austen’s fiction. Here are a few more that I think would be excellent additions to the Austen writer’s library.

I would consider Mary Lascelles’ Jane Austen and Her Art (Clarendon Press, 1939) to be an essential. Lascelles begins with a brief bio of Austen and the evolution of her literary taste, and then goes into a very clear study of Austen’s narrative style, with wonderful kernels of observation, such as Austen’s suggesting of her characters’ social variants in syntax and phrasing rather than vocabulary when they speak, or the pithy observation that a literary strategy – “What a young woman needs if she is to become a heroine of fiction is a little neglect and ill usage” – may have been extracted from experience. Of course some rules are meant to be broken and in Lady Vernon we did depart from two of Lascelles’ observations: that the marriage proposal of a lover is never verbally expressed (Mr. Collins doesn’t count; he cannot be considered an authentic lover); and a conversation exclusively between gentlemen (with a lady participating or at least being in the room), does not occur.

I had once remarked to an editor that Austen’s novels come down to two interconnected issues: marriage and money.  Except for Emma Woodhouse, none of Austen’s heroines are so well off or well connected that they can anticipate “marrying up”; a number of siblings, a neglectful or imprudent father, a reversal of fortune threaten to keep many of Austen’s heroines from that “… pleasantest preservative from want” and “…the only honorable provision” for a gentlewoman of modest means, which marriage certainly was. How a marriage was contracted, how a wife, a widow and children were provided for was as inextricably linked to material assets as to personal ones. It’s helpful to understand what Mrs. Bennet means when she exclaims “What pin money…” Lizzy will have, or how Mrs. Jennings comes by her jointure. Amy Louise Erickson’s Woman and Property in Early Modern England (Routledge, 1993) takes the reader only to the early 18^th century, but otherwise is a very clear, and clearly documented, study of women’s rights to ownership of money and property as unmarried women, as wives and as widows, and the precise meaning of terms like “dower” and “settlement”, with some interesting case studies. As a counterpart, Susan Staves’ Married Women’s Separate Property in England, 1660-1833, studies four categories of women’s property: dower; jointure; separate property and pin money; allowance for maintenance.

A profession common to Austen’s novels was one with which she was personally familiar: the country clergyman. The church may be the profession of choice for the hero – Edmund Bertram, Henry Tilney – or it may be the comfortable resort of the self-important and the ambitious – Mr. Elton or Mr. Collins – or it may be the prospect of securing nothing better than the lowly curacy, which limits the aspirations of a young man like Charles Hayter or Edward Ferrars. If you are writing Austen, it does help to be somewhat familiar with what livings were (and when they provided enough to live on) as well as what a clergyman’s obligations were to his patron and his parish. Irene Collins’ Jane Austen and the Clergy (Hambledon and London, 2002) takes the reader through the education, obligations and living situations of the country clergyman and links what Austen must have observed: that the English clergy represented a variety of individuals, from those who were genuinely called to the vocation to those who did not have the talent or ambition to distinguish themselves in the military or the law. There is even the suggestion that those clergymen who are particularly animated – Mr. Collins and Mr. Elton – may have been so well-drawn because Austen saw them as a more accurate representation of the clergyman’s covetousness for a good living; even in Persuasion, there are schemes to oust poor Dr. Shirley, who has “zealously” discharged his duties for more than forty years, from his post in order to free up the Uppercross parish.

Among my favorite books about Austen’s work is Peter J. Leithart’s Miniatures and Morals; The Christian Novels of Jane Austen (Canon Press, 2004). (Chapter One is titled: Real Men Read Austen. What’s not to love?) Leithart describes the “miniaturist” nature of Austen’s writing, proclaiming that “…she does more with less than any other writer in English.” Like Lascelles, Leithart observes the relationship between syntax and character in Austen’s dialogue. Unlike Lascelles, Leithart defends the theory that Austen’s Christian morality is the underpinning of her narrative style; he even concludes that Austen is “a humorist because she is a moralist”, noting that, like Elizabeth Bennet, Austen “never mocks what is genuinely good.” After the initial introduction to Leithart’s analysis of Austen’s style, a chapter is devoted to each of her major novels in relation to the moral principles that determine not only the content, but literary style: morals and manners in Pride and Prejudice, charity in Emma, restraint in Sense and Sensibility and so on. Beyond Leithart’s cogent, and good-humored, analysis of Austen’s novels, is a well-organized format with each chapter beginning with a synopsis and ending with both “review questions” and “thought questions”. Not only should this be an essential on every Austen writer’s shelf, it would be an excellent text for an upper high school study of Austen’s work.

So, if you’re writing an Austenesque work, what books do you keep on the Austen section of your shelves?

I am very happy to announced that Death of a DJ, Fruitcake, and Cheat the Devil — the first three books in my mom’s Jersey Shore-based mystery series — are now available on Kindle.  Get them in a bundle for $5.99.  I can personally attest that they are well-written and wonderful and suspenseful and funny and all of the things you are secretly looking for in a book but have never found.

It is an A+++++++++++++++

A brief overview, you ask?  Certainly.

Death of a DJ:  Cat Austen, a cop’s widow with six overly-protective older brothers (five cops and one priest), takes a freelance assignment to profile a pair of shock jocks. When one of them is gunned down, Cat teams with homicide cop, Lt Victor Cardenas to track down the killer.

Fruitcake: The discovery of a corpse donned in a Santa suit draws Cat Austen into a conspiracy involving an Atlantic City casino mogul and his fashion designer wife.

Cheat the Devil: A young woman’s death interrupts Cat’s getaway with Victor when she is discovered to be the most recent of several murder victims linked to an Atlantic City parish and its priest, Cat’s brother.

Check them out on Amazon today!

My dear Cassandra

My expectation of having nothing to say to you after my last letter, if not the Truth, is very near it. I can only say that I have nothing that was of interest or pleasure to me, though you, my dear sister, may find some diversion in it.

On Sunday last, as I was leaving from church, I fell prey to the insufferable Digweeds once more, and they would not be at peace until I promised to drink tea with them this evening to watch another of their Programmes. I have found very little of merit in these Programmes, and cannot comprehend those who will sacrifice the better part of an evening to them. The Digweeds, however, would hear no refusal, and cried, “How can you not wish to see the Oscars! You must come to see the Oscars!” in such an insistent fashion, that I gave a hurried before their vociferous demands invited scenes unpleasant to more than myself.

I had, at least, the comfort of knowing that this Proposal would not lead to a weekly summons, as this particular Programme is but an annual Ceremony whereupon those who devise and put up the Playlets, of which I have spoke in my previous letters,all come together to single out some of their Profession for particular Honours. The notion of watching people who have got so accustomed to the praise of the Public coming together to praise each other is of little interest to me, but the Digweeds assured me that it was an excellent opportunity to observe all of the latest fashions, and that there would be the additional diversion of some music.

I arrived promptly at seven to find the Digweeds already assembled before their Device, and believed that I had mistook the time, but they assured me that it would be at least an hour or more before the commencement of the Programme, and that what they were watching was only a Prologue to the Occasion. This Prologue consisted of a Promenade, whereupon the Candidates for the Honours were set upon by a number of fawning Hosts and Hostesses and complimented upon their appearance and quizzed upon their finery, and importuned for the names of their dressmaker and jeweler, to which the long-suffering Candidates reply with admirable forbearance. The ladies, it seems are singled out above the gentlemen for this impertinent teazing; they for the most part, are asked little more than to introduce the mothers and grown-up daughters that they have brought to the Event. Their wives, I suppose, chuse to stay at home where they may watch the proceedings in peace and comfort.

Once all have been ushered into a great Theatre, a Master of Ceremonies appears and attempts to divert those present with a succession of quips and jests, often made at the expense of the anxious Competitors. Occasionally, one might catch a look of displeasure from one of the Objects, yet for the most part, they all affect a show of good-humour and forebearance.

There are a great many of awards to be presented, and it is the custom of the Programme to begin with a presentation to a Performer, who will step forward to triumph over his rivals with a great show of humility and a little speech of thanks to all of his acquaintance. A number of lesser awards are then presented by Performers of some renown to Candidates that nobody cares for, and the sole purpose of this seems to be to liberate Viewers at home so that they may go in quest of some light fare or pour out tea and coffee without any apprehension that something agreeable or diverting will be missed (a quest that is likewise reserved for those episodes of necessary Commerce that disrupt the Programme at frequent intervals).

 As the Digweeds had promised, there was something of music to relieve the tedium of this prolonged Affair, but these were in the form of some dancing, or a chorale or a solo Performer who rendered a great, wailing ballad. When two hours had passed with nothing more remarkable than this parade of Honours and indifferent Music, I attempted to make my excuses, and was shocked to hear from Miss Digweed that the Programme was but half finished. Indeed, only last week, I attended a ball at the Mayhews’, and danced from nine in the evening until four o’clock the next morning, and I declare that I did not feel half as weary as I did after two hours of this Programme.

 Miss Digweed assured me that the most significant Honours and the finest Speeches were saved to the last, and yet does it not display a want of sense or feeling to withhold until the end what a spectator may then be too weary to enjoy? I saw nothing at all to suggest that what was laid out in four hours could not be accomplished in one, unless it is to provide an Occasion for as many Performers as possible to air out their finery and show off their humility, generosity and other amiable qualifications.

As for the name “Oscars” given to the Occasion, I cannot satisfy your curiosity upon this point, unless it is drawn from Lord Byron’s Oscar of Alva as a subtle suggestion that, among the Performers at least, this annual rivalry is taken up in deadly earnest; or, it may be (as I am inclined to think) that it is an allusion to the volume wherein that verse is contained, that is, Hours of Idleness.

Your affectionate sister,

Etc, etc

  Here is a delightful Valentine’s Day poem, published in 1808, from the point of view of a gentleman who was “not handsome enough to tempt” his lady love.

A VALENTINE

 Sent in the name of a Gentleman to a Lady

Who ridiculed his Appearance

By

       Elizabeth Trefusis (1763-1808)

You will wonder, my dearest, how Leonard should dare

Throw his wit and his form at the feet of the fair;

That wit, at whose nod fools and caitiffs all bend,

That form, which love slights, but intenders the friend!

Now, our kind mother Nature no step-mother proves

All her children she chastens, yet all of them loves;

To some, she gives beauty, to some, she gives wealth,

To some, pride of birth, to some, labor and health’

On me, though, health, beauty and riches ne’er smiled

Yet this parent indulgent still gifted her child;

They speak from my lips! Virtue speaks in my heart!

And the world, my dear charmer, full often have said

That the faults of my face were atoned by my head!

Though defective my form, and imperfect my gait

Yet the line from my head to my heart is quite straight,

The line which fair virtue from intellect drew!

The line – O, that line which divides me from you!

From you, the sweet daughter of fashion and whim,

With beautiful bosom and ankle so slim;

With bosom display’d, and with ankle protruded,

With Nature’s allurements too vainly obtruded.

While I, the enchantments of science conceal,

And my soul’s dearest charities shrink to reveal,

Unless by the lash of kind satire I dare

Call the man back to honor, to virtue the fair!

Yet to virtue, my dearest, you never were wanting

Great favors refusing, frivolities granting!

Then check these frivolities, seem what you are,

And the world shall allow that you’re good as you’re fair!

I have heard, and believe it, that opposites prove

The sweetest incitements to friendship and love;

If you then are noble and wealthy and pretty,

Your Leonard is worthy, wise, learned and witty;

Your frolic and sweetness his moments shall cheer

His gentle philippics your conduct shall steer:

Then take him, fair nymph, and let friendship’s warm ray

Greet the sun which enlivens our Valentine’s Day.

Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) is mentioned twice in Jane Austen’s letters. In a letter to Cassandra, written in 1813, Austen writes at rather dismissive, “The Clements are at home and are reduced to read. They have got Miss Edgeworth”, but writing to her niece, Anna, the following year, Austen declares that “I have made up my mind to like no novels, really, but Miss Edgeworth’s, yours and my own.”

Had Austen made up her mind to dislike Edgeworth, she would have been in a decided minority. The novels of Maria Edgeworth (who, unlike Austen, did not publish anonymously), were critical, popular and financial successes. Unlike Austen, Edgeworth enjoyed a long career: her first work of fiction (a collection of short stories) was published in 1796, and her last, the novel Orlandino, was published in 1848.

Maria Edgeworth

Edgeworth’s first novel was an immediate success. Castle Rackrent (1800) both satirizes and indicts property neglect and landlord absenteeism, problems that invited the exploitive practice of “rack-renting”, where a middle-man would lease a large tract of estate property from the landlord on reasonable terms and then sub-let it to tenant farmers at exorbitant rates.

Jane Austen

Inspired by the registers of the Edgeworth family’s Irish property, the novel is the narrative of Thady Quirk, the steward of Castle Rackrent for four of its masters. The first master, Sir Patrick is a convivial squanderer who has left his estate in such debt that his creditors seize corpse to hold it hostage until they are paid.

    His successor, the litigious Sir Murtaugh Rackrent, maintains that the insult to Sir Patrick’s body acquits him of the debts, and funds a succession of lawsuits by selling parcels of land and from draconian fines imposed upon his tenants. (The proverbial chicken that crosses the road is guilty of “trespass”). His wife, “…of the family of Skinflints…” provisions her household by claiming “duty fowls and duty turkies and duty geese…eggs – honey – butter …” from by charging a fee to intercede with Sir Murtaugh on behalf of his oppressed tenants.

    Sir Murtaugh is succeeded by his younger brother, the spendthrift Sir Kit, who shows up at the estate only for some hunting and to run up debts, flees to Bath where he carelessly signs off on bills forwarded to him by his agent. Having brought his debts to critical mass, he attempts to remedy the situation by marrying a Jewish heiress, who foils his attempt to get hold of her fortune by converting it, before their marriage, into inalienable property in the form of a diamond necklace. (Edgeworth, received a letter from a Jewish-American reader who rebuked her for her stereotypical treatment of Jews; she attempted to make amends in a later novel, Harrington).

    The last heir, the distant relation, Sir Condy, is a free-spending schemer; having squandered his money, he elopes with an heiress whose family promptly disinherits her. Debts mount to the point of Sir Condy’s arrest, a disgrace postponed by his election to Parliament. At the end of his debt-ridden stint as an MP, Sir Condy returns to a neglected Castle Rackrent that has fallen into disrepair, is abandoned by his wife, swindled out of the remains of his estate by Quirk’s conniving son, Jason, and dies poor and friendless.

    Edgeworth’s observations on the potential for ruin and disgrace brought on by neglect were renewed in her later novel The Absentee (1812), and appear to have been views that Austen shared. Embedded in all of Austen’s novels is some example of the consequence of the interrelated neglect of duty, family and property.

    On an income of two thousand a year, Mr. Bennet might have easily set aside a comfortable provision for his widow and daughters; neglecting to do so potentially consigns six women to poverty upon his death, unless some of the girls marry well. Unfortunately, he does not even do what he can to make them attractive marriage prospects: their education was inconsistent, left to the inclination of “…such of us as wished to learn”, while “Those who chose to be idle certainly might”, and his own antipathy toward London keeps his daughters from the sphere where many good matches were secured. Even Elizabeth’s immediate conclusion that a commotion at Hunsford was the result of the pigs raiding the garden hints at a familiarity with this occurrence that does not speak well for the maintenance of Longbourn’s fences.

    Sir Walter Elliott, while scrupulous about the state of his property, placed himself “dreadfully in debt” because his vanity has determined that his income is “…not equal to…the state required in its possessor”. To his credit, Sir Walter refuses to sell off an alienable portion of Kellynch – he will mortgage it only – out of a commitment to pass an undivided property to the heir. Unfortunately, the heir could not be less deserving of the effort; William Elliot neglects the family connection in favor of immediate gratification. He is both so greedy and so disconnected from obligation (or both) that while he mocks the Elliot name and title, he is willing to elevate a butcher’s granddaughter to the rank of Lady Elliot. One wouldn’t blame Sir Walter if he retaliated by disposing of the saleable tract of land.

    Both Sir Thomas Bertram and General Tilney fall into a similar neglect of their households, Sir Thomas by “teaching [his children] to repress their spirits in his presence”, while General Tilney was “always a check upon his children’s’ spirits”. In the former case, Sir Thomas neglects his duty by providing education without principled example; he “sacrificed the right to the expedient”, and in doing so, allows his children to fall in with associates who lead the heir into debt and near death, the eldest daughter to disgrace, while the younger elopes to avoid the “greater severity and restraint” that Sir Thomas might impose upon her following Maria’s scandalous conduct. It appears that only the prudence of one parent can counteract the faults in the other; one wonders if Henry and Elinor Tilney would have turned out so well if they had been left to the apathetic Lady Bertram and the enabling Mrs. Norris, or whether, under the influence of Mrs. Tilney, Maria and Julia might have turned out better.

    And while one criticizes Darcy at risk, the reader is told, rather than impressed with, his attention to Pemberley. While he “…cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these”, a remark that Caroline endorses with, “I am sure you neglect nothing that can add to the beauties of that noble place”, he is pretty much an absentee landlord. A wealthy gentleman might visit somewhere for the shooting in the fall, and pass a couple months in town in the winter; Darcy, on the other hand, comes from London with Bingley’s family in September, stays until the end of November, returns with the Bingleys to town until he visits Rosings in the spring. While, according to Mrs. Reynolds, Darcy spends “half his time” at Pemberley, it doesn’t appear that he finally shows up until he encounters the Gardiners and Elizabeth in July; nearly eleven months pass without his spending any substantial amount of time at “that noble place”.

    Perhaps if Darcy had been more attentive to household matters, he would not have been so “unhappily deceived” in Mrs. Younge’s character, nor would his sister’s honor and happiness been salvaged by his premature arrival at Ramsgate.

          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.

     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.

“We have tried to get Self-Control, but in vain. I should like to know what her Estimate is, but am always afraid of finding a clever novel too clever and of finding my own story and my own people all forestalled.” So wrote Jane Austen to Cassandra on the last day of April, 1811.

“I should like to know what her Estimate is…”

Is Austen’s “I should like to know what her Estimate [i.e., reception and readership] is” disingenuous? Self-Control, the first novel of Scottish author Mary Brunton, had been published in early 1811 and was an immediate success. At the time that Austen wrote her letter, Brunton was correcting proofs for the novel’s second printing; Austen could not have been unaware of Brunton’s very favorable “Estimate”.

Self-Control is a rambling part-romance/part-morality tale. Seventeen-year-old Laura Montreville, raised in rural Scotland, possesses “…an active mind, a strong sense of duty and the habit of meeting and overcoming adverse circumstances.” She has become infatuated with the most eligible of her suitors, the wealthy Colonel Villiers Hargrave. Unfortunately for Laura, the Hargrave she admires “…was a creature of her imagination”. When he attempts to seduce her, she innocently assumes he is proposing marriage. Her disgust and his remorse effect an agreement: if Hargrave will demonstrate his contrition by living a scrupulously honorable life for two years, Laura will marry him at the end of them.

An error that has delayed the payment of the Montrevilles’ annuity requires Laura’s widowed father to meet with agents in London. He is accompanied by Laura, and there they are introduced to the son of a former acquaintance, Montague DeCourcy. DeCourcy becomes Laura’s admirer and her anonymous patron, when she attempts to meet their expenses by selling her paintings. Hargrave pursues Laura to town, but even as Laura’s father encourages her to accept his proposals, she learns that he has not kept to his pledge, but has become involved in a sordid affair with a married woman.

Laura’s father dies, and the scene shifts to the household of the wealthy Lady Pelham, the estranged maternal aunt to whom Laura appeals for help. This lady’s country residence is in the neighborhood of the DeCourcy manor and Laura and DeCourcy become more attached to one another, while evidence of Hargrave’s depravity mounts. Lady Pelham allies herself with Hargrave for the wealth and station that marriage to him would confer upon Laura (and, by extension, herself) and collaborates with him to trick Laura into an elopement.

From here, the plot takes an improbable course. Hargrave has Laura spirited off to North America, and detained in an isolated cabin. Laura escapes, makes her way through the woods, finds a canoe along a riverbank, navigates it down the river, through rapids and over a waterfall, is rescued by settlers who help her arrange passage back to Scotland, where she is reunited with DeCourcy.

When Austen again mentions the novel, about a week before the release of Sense and Sensibility, she is less apprehensive about it’s being “too clever”. While she concedes that it is “…an excellently-meant, elegantly written work”, she adds that it lacks “nature or probability”, and that “I do not know whether Laura’s passage down the American river is not the most natural, possible, every-day thing she ever does.”

It is difficult to detect any relief from Austen’s moderately generous remark, but upon finally getting her hands on a copy of Self-Control, complacency would have been “the most natural, possible, every-day” response. She would have been too modest to boast of her superiority as a novelist, but the differences in style, humor, characterization, plotting were obvious. Self-Control is exposition without “voice”, behavior without insight, contrivance without humor, essentially a 300 page plot squeezed into 500 wordy pages that calls up a remark of Sherlock Holmes: “…he had not that supreme gift of the artist, the knowledge of when to stop.”

Still, Austen may have seen hints of “my own story and my own people” in Brunton’s work. In the incompatible match between Montreville and his wife, there are shades of the Palmers, the Bertrams or the Bennets. The garrulous, well-meaning landlady, Mrs. Dawkins, with her dissimilar daughters calls up Mrs. Jennings, Lady Middleton and Charlotte Palmer. In the presumption of Montreville’s business associate toward Laura, we see something of John Thorpe or Mr. Elton. Like Mr. Collins, Miss DeCourcy’s placid suitor, Mr. Bolingbroke “…was resolved to marry, for he considered marriage as one of the duties of his station.” When Hargrave confides his intentions to Lady Pelham, her imagination jumps from the wedding announcement, to herself riding around in her married niece’s barouche and four, to public acclaim for her bringing about the match as rapidly as Caroline Bingley’s imagination progresses from admiration to love to marriage; and when Lady Pelham chastises Laura for refusing Hargrave, we hear in her “…you will never have it in your power to throw away such another offer. You need hardly expect to awaken such another passion”, a reproof similar to Mr. Collins’ reaction to Lizzy’s refusal.

“I should like to know what HER estimate is…”

Self-Control certainly forestalls Sense and Sensibility in Laura’s “Team Elinor” conviction that “Her own sensibility she had been taught to consider as a weakness to be subdued, not as an ornament to be gloried in”, and there is a frankness about the inequity of consequence in extra-marital relationships; i.e., that men can retain their social footing, while women are permanently disgraced.

There are a few pioneering plot elements as well: at one point, Laura decides to earn a living as a painter, with some success; later she decides to study the male-dominated field of mathematics, and shows some aptitude for it. A heroine who is intellectually curious and who is able and willing to be self-supporting is noteworthy, but both subplots are undeveloped and short-lived.

Austen’s recollections of Self-Control were not short-lived. Three years later, Mansfield Park was published (and comparisons can certainly be drawn between the Fanny/Henry Crawford and Laura/Hargrave relationships), and Austen tallied the opinions of friends and family; they were generally complimentary, but many expressed a preference for her previous publication, Pride and Prejudice. In a letter to Anna Lefroy, she addresses Brunton’s novel more satirically: “I will redeem my credit…by writing a close imitation of Self-Control as soon as I can. I will improve upon it; my Heroine shall not merely be wafted down an American river in a boat by herself, she shall cross the Atlantic in the same way.”

Not long ago, Nicholas Meyer – producer, director, screenwriter, and author of the Sherlockian pastiches The Seven Percent Solution, The West End Horror and The Canary Trainer– wrote a very thought-provoking article titled “Whither Holmes” for the Los Angeles Review of Books. The article addressed the dilemma of adapting a classical work or character – specifically, Sherlock Holmes – for what he called the “postliterate” audience. Mind you, I don’t think that Meyer meant “illiterate”, but rather an audience whose predominant (or only) exposure to a classical work comes by way of a derivative work. Meyer observes that: “In my years as a filmmaker in Hollywood, I’ve attended numerous meetings devoted to making Sherlock Holmes movies; invariably none of the producers in the room have ever actually read Doyle.”

How far does parsley sink into butter on a hot day?

 In an earlier blog, “Do Whatever You Like With Him” (http://janetility.com/?p=648), I had suggested that a bona fide adaptation (or pastiche, sequel, illustration) is one that correctly  identifies the source of Holmes’s timeless appeal, era and environment notwithstanding. You can discard the trappings – the dressing gowns, the gasogene, the bullet-pocked wall  – but if you want to ensure that the audience, particularly the “postliterate” are getting the genuine Sherlock, you can’t reduce the essence of what makes Holmes Holmes to quirks and conduct derived from something other than Conan Doyle.

Watson, don’t you think the peas tasted a bit off?

 Which calls to mind the 19^thcentury “Butter Wars.” In the 1880s, the growing “butter substitute” (oleomargarine) industry came up against the dairy industry. In some cases, the consumer opted for the substitute because it was cheaper and tasted okay, but in other cases, an imitation product was passed off as butter to “the great unobservant public.” By 1886, a number of “margarine acts” attempted to eliminate any possibility that imitation butter might be mistaken for, or labeled as, the legitimate product. In New Jersey, these laws stipulated that “No oleomargarine, butterine or suine, or any substance or compound or mixture in imitation or semblance of natural butter or cheese, or any substance that is rendered, made, manufactured or compounded out of animal or vegetable or mineral fat or oil not the product of pure milk or cream from pure milk shall be sold…except when contained in tubs, pails, boxes, firkins, vessels or other packages that are marked or labeled as follows: … on the outside thereof and midway between the top and bottom thereof a stripe or band at least three inches wide and extending completely around said vessel or package and said stripe or band shall be painted with black paint [and] have legibly branded and burnt in ..in two places as nearly opposite each other as possible the words ‘oleomargarine’, ‘butterine’, ‘suine’ or ‘imitation butter’.

I believe I detected the merest trace of caul fat.

 This may sound excessive until you learn that only a year or two earlier, half of what was sold as butter was reported to be an imitation product made from tinted caul fat derived from hogs. An ingenuous consumer might conclude that because the substance that they were spreading on their toast was pale yellow or lightly salted or tasty or oleaginous, or was labeled in a manner evoked butter (butterine) or was even combined with some butter, it was the real deal.

How far does parsley sink into margarine on a hot day?

 Unfortunately, there is little to prevent Meyer’s postliterate producers from passing off any substance or compound or mixture in imitation or semblance of Sherlock Holmes as the authentic character, and no requirement that the end product be labeled “imitation Sherlock”. The result is that the postliterate viewer may never appreciate how radically different Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes – the “chivalrous opponent” with his “cat-like love of personal cleanliness”, his fine balance of instinct with impartiality, and his embodiment of a great heart as well as a great brain – is from a spurious Holmes who presents as an ill-groomed, petty, socially inept vulgarian hopelessly afflicted with tachyphrasia.

 The success of any adulterated product, whether it is dairy or Doyle, will always be determined by what the consumer can be persuaded to swallow. There may be nothing at all wrong with suilline caul fat, unless you’re attempting to persuade people that it’s butter.

And don’t call me “Shirley.”

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.