A JANE AUSTEN COMPANION

Transcription

1 A JANE AUSTEN COMPANION

2 By the same author THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE (Macmillan Critical Commentaries) A HARDY COMPANION ONE RARE FAIR WOMAN Thomas Hardy's Letters to Florence Henniker, (edited, with Evelyn Hardy)

3 Neither portrait of Jane Austen was considered completely satisfactory by the relatives who knew her best. The upper sketch (Ia) was made by Cassandra Austen. and is reproduced by courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery; from this. and notes based on recollections. the portrait below (!b) was prepared by Mr Andrews of Maidenhead for the 1870 Memoir. In this her nephew described her as a rather tall and slender brunette. animated in her whole appearance. with round cheeks. small and well formed mouth and nose. bright hazel eyes. brown hair 'forming natural curls close round her face. and a complexion of 'rich colour'. Seep. 18.

4 A JANE AUSTEN COMPANION A critical survey and reference book F. B. PINION pal grave macmillan

5 F. B. Pinion 1973 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Totten ham Court Road, London WlP OLP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1973 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin

6 Contents List of Maps and Plates List of Abbreviations Preface page vii ix xi PART I Jane Austen's Life Background Early Writing More Mature Fiction Northanger Abbey Sense and Sensibility Pride and Prejudice Mansfield Park Emma Persuasion Sanditon Some General Characteristics The Letters The Influence of Certain Writers on Jane Austen Her Literary Reputation PART II People and Places in Jane Austen's Fiction 192 Glossary of Words of Unusual or Outmoded Meaning 298 Select Bibliography 306 v

7 vi Appendixes Contents 1. Cassandra's Memorandum on the Composition Dates of Jane Austen's Novels 'Plan of a Novel' Jane Austen and The Mirror The Austen Family The Naval Careers of Francis and Charles Austen 552 Index 555

8 List of Maps 1. The country around Steventon at the end of the eighteenth century 5 2. Bath, as Jane Austen knew it at the beginning of the nineteenth century Plan of the New or Upper Assembly Rooms, Bath The London of Jane Austen's fiction and letters List of Plates 1. Two portraits of Jane Austen 2. Two views of Steventon Rectory o. Manydown 4. Ashe House and Deane House 5. Hackwood and Hurstbourne Frontispiece facing page Godmersham Bath Abbey and 'The Graveyard' The Pump Room, Bath The Upper Assembly Rooms, Bath Paragon Buildings and Camden Place View of Bath from Beechen Cliff, and of the Pump Room and colonnade from the White Hart 147 vii

9 viii List of Plates 12. 'Granny's Teeth', Lyme Regis, and the tower ofkintbury Church A view of Southampton, showing the Marquis of Lansdowne's castle, and another of Northam Bridge The Saluting Platform and entrance to Portsmouth Harbour Views of the Sally Port and Garrison Chapel, Portsmouth Chawton Cottage, and a view of Box Hill from Norbury Park Chawton House Burial Places: Winchester Cathedral and Chawton Remains of Manydown and Steventon Rectory 275 For the provision of illustrations, and permission to reproduce them, grateful acknowledgements are made to: the Bath Municipal Libraries (7, 8, 9, 10, 11); J. Butler-Kearney (2b, 6); d1e National Portrait Gallery (1a); Portsmouth City Libraries (3, 15, 17); the University Library of Southampton (13a); the Winchester Public Library (5, 13b, 14: photographs by J. Butler-Kearney). Nos. 1b and 2a originate from J. A. Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen, 1870; 3 and 17 from J. F. Prosser, Select IUustratioJZS of Hampshire, 1833; 5a and 5b from R. Mudie, Hampshire, 1838; 6 from E. Hasted, Kent, 1799; 8 to 10 inclusive from J. C. Nattes, Bath, 1806; 11 b from R. Warner, Bath, 1801; 16a from M. A. Austen-Leigh, Personal Aspects of Jane Austen, by kind permission of John Murray (Publishers) Ltd; 16b from Christopher Lloyd, Fanny Burney, Longmans, by kind permission of the author and publisher; and 18a from B. B. Woodward, History of Hampshire, Nos. 4a and b, 12a and b, 18b, and 19a and bare the author's, and the copyright in them is his.

10 List of Abbreviations References to the novels are based on the continuous numbering of chapters which is found in most editions. For the assistance of those with editions in which the volume divisions have been preserved, the number of chapters in each volume is given below after each title. On the assumption that Jane Austen worked on Northanger.Abbey after writing The Watsons, the list of abbreviations follows an order which is as chronological as possible: MW. Jane Austen, Minor Works, ed. R. W. Chapman, Vol. VI of the Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen, revised by B. C. Southam, 1969 Cath. Catharine Su. Lady Susan Wat. The Watsons N. Northanger.Abbey (XV, XVI) SS. Sense and Sensibility (XXII, XIV, XIV) PP. Pride and Prejudice (XXIII, XIX, XIX) MP. Mansfzeld Park (XVIII, XIII, XVII) E. Emma (XVIII, XVIII, XIX) P. Persuasion (XII, XII) San. Sanditon Memoir James Edward Austen-Leigh,.A Memoir of Jane.Austen, 2nd ed., 1871; ed. R. W. Chapman, London, Life W. and R. A. Austen-Leigh, Jane.Austen, Her Life and Letters, London, ix

11 X List of Abbreviations Letters Jane Austen's Letters, ed. R. W. Chapman, 2nd ed., corrected It should be noted that, unless otherwise indicated, the references are to pages. When the names of authors are given in footnotes without bibliographical information, this implies that full details of the relevant works are to be found in the Select Bibliography, pp

12 Preface THIS book has developed primarily from a close study of Jane Austen's minor works, novels, and letters. Only in its later stages did I venture to read, or re-read, for the purpose of evaluation, the numerous critical works and articles from which the Select Bibliography was drawn. One incidental result was that I gleaned many details, to which reference is made in the footnotes. In retrospect, however, it seems that there are three writers to whom I owe a special debt for their contribution to my critical assessments. The first is Howard S. Babb, whose illuminating interpretation of a key passage, and its overtones, in Pride and Prejudice has never been in doubt. The second is Mrs F. L. Ebden, who kindly offered me a copy of her unpublished M.A. thesis on the fictional relationship between Jane Austen and her predecessors; this wide-ranging study1 prompted me to consider Maria Edgeworth's 'Vivian' in conjunction with Mansfield Park. Lastly, at a late stage in this work, when I was re-reading Jane Austen's letters, I was completely convinced that the true interpretation of the well-known 'ordination' passage with reference to Manifzeld Park had been demonstrated by Charles E. Edge in 1961, in a letter to which I refer later, but which seems to have received little attention from critics, some of whom quote the passage and discuss it without due regard to the compositional chronology of Jane Austen's fiction. My principal indebtedness is, of course, to R. W. Chapman's researches and scholarly works. The indexes of his edition of Jane 1 F. L. Jones, University of London, April1935. xi

13 xii Preface Austen's letters have been invaluable for biographical and background detail; and some of his appendixes to the Oxford Illustrated Jane Austen, especially those on 'The Manners of the Age' and 'Carriages and Travel' have been very helpful. The chronologies which he has adopted seem ultimately, however, to prove very little except that Jane Austen very sensibly used calendars to ensure vraisemblance in the sequence of events rather than accuracy for particular years. Topographical questions have arisen concerning the rectories at Ashe and Steven ton. The 'Plan of the Neighbourhood of Steven ton' in R. W. Chapman's edition of the letters must relate to a post Austen era, for the 1791 map of Hampshire by T. Milne explicitly supports local tradition that the 'Rev. Mr Lefroy' lived at Ashe House. A study of the 1870 Memoir can leave no doubt about the site of Steventon Rectory, and there are many landscape features (besides the pump) which make it easily recognisable today. A more teasing problem 1 elates to the front view of Steven ton Rectory; the drawing by Anna Lefroy prepared for the Memoir shows a more substantial building than the sketch she marked 'Steventon' in 1820, and the impression created by 'Back of Steventon Rectory', which she sketched in 1814, supports the view that the Memoir illustration is the more probable. Perhaps the most significant characteristic of Jane Austen as a novelist is her insistence on the fallibility of judgment in human relationships. Whether this sobering reflection was more obvious to a reader of moral and philosophical essays at the end of the eighteenth century than it is today poses an interesting question, but it constitutes, I suspect, a 'criticism of life' which provides the key to much in Jane Austen's art and its appreciation by the reader. I am very grateful to the following: the Oxford University Press for generously allowing me to quote from R. W. Chapman's edition of Jane Austen's minor works; Jonathan Cape Ltd for the extract from The Strange Necessity by Dame Rebecca West; Mrs Henry C. Burke for permission to include Cassandra's memorandum; the municipal libraries of Bath, Portsmouth, and Winchester, and Mr J. Butler-Kearney, for their ready co-operation in the provision of illustrations; the Bath Municipal Library, the University Library of Cambridge, and Mr R. H. Fairclough, for copies of contemporary maps; the University Library of Sheffield for the

14 Preface provision of many books and periodicals; Miss Elizabeth Jenkins and the National Portrait Gallery for notes on the Jane Austen portraits; the proprietors of Ashe House and Deane House for kindly allowing me to take and publish photographs; MrS. E. D. Fortescue for information on 'Highbury'; Mr W. S. Haugh, City Librarian, Bristol, for a note on the York Hotel, Clifton; Mr T. M. Farmiloe for his unfailing help and courtesy on behalf of the publishers; and my wife for advice on the text at various stages in its preparation, and also for assistance in proof-reading. Other acknowledgements are made under 'Plates' on p. viii, and at various points throughout the work. xiii