Jane Austen Society of
Australia
Austen citing:
Lucasta Miller
Lucasta Miller reviewing Alethea Hayter’s book The Wreck of the
Abergavenny, in Sunday Times Culture magazine, September 8, 2002:
[In February 1805 the Abergavenny sank off Weymouth on its way to the Far East with 400 people and much cargo on board. Among the dead was the captain, John Wordsworth, younger brother of the poet,
William.]
In many ways, John is reminiscent of Jane Austen’s sailors in
Persuasion. Like her Captain Benwick he loved poetry, and like her Captain Harville he had a taste for domestic DIY …
Equally striking is the varied texture of the personal responses she [Hayter] records. A sea-captain cousin writes to console William [Wordsworth] in ceremonious sub-Augustan style: references to ‘Resignation to the Divine Dispensation’ and the Wordworth’s ‘humble but cheerful Cot’ would be almost worthy of
Pride and Prejudice’s Mr Collins, were they not underpinned by genuine grief. In contrast, Coleridge’s histrionics (he claims to have suffered a convulsive fit and been bedridden for a fortnight on hearing the news) reveal the extent to which Romanticism was an offshoot of the cult of sensibility. Hayter’s voice takes on a pleasingly tart Austenian tone when describing his tireless interest in his own emotions.
Harriet Veitch
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