Jane Austen: The Parson's Daughter

by Irene Collins

In Jane Austen: The Parson’s Daughter, Irene Collins has given us new insight into the familiar details of Austen’s story by reminding us of the important, indeed central, role that religion played in her life and work. Collins sets herself two tasks, namely, to explain ‘what it was like to be a parson’s daughter in the last decades of the eighteenth century’ and to ‘interpret the evidence in the light of its historical context and thereby to give greater substance to the reader’s knowledge of Jane Austen’s early life, of the influences which formed her outlook and of the beliefs which permeate her novels’. She fulfils both these tasks admirably.

Jane Austen was not only a clergyman’s daughter, who spent the first 25 years of her life at Steventon parsonage, but she was closely related to ten other clergymen and acquainted with many more. Her father, George Austen, like many of the new breed of eighteenth century parsons, was (for economic reasons) a farmer, and a schoolmaster to his sons and the pupils he tutored, but he saw himself first and foremost as a gentleman and a scholar.

Yet he was a clergyman and he told his son Frank, when the latter was first preparing to go to sea, ‘The first and most important of all considerations to a human Being is Religion’. Collins points out that George Austen was a highly educated, cultivated man, whose humane and sensible approach to religion enabled him to give his children’s education a sound moral foundation, based on Christian principles, something that Sir Thomas Bertram signally failed to do.

At the age of 19, as part of her preparation for Confirmation, Jane Austen was given a copy of William Vickers’ Companion to the Altar. It was known for its emphasis on self-examination, and Collins tells us that Jane cherished this book and made constant use of it in her prayers and meditations. With her father’s religious training and guidance she was a deeply religious woman but, as Collins demonstrates in The Parson’s Daughter, her religion, like that of her father, was of a lively and practical kind which added greatly to her happiness and to her understanding of human nature.

In her earlier work, Jane Austen and the Clergy, and in her stimulating address to the recent JASA Conference, Irene Collins has provided for the modern reader a wealth of detail about the clergy in Jane Austen’s time. In this new book Collins has focussed on Jane Austen herself, to show what her life was like as a parson’s daughter. She also shows, with some perception, how religion sustained Jane Austen’s moral attitudes in the novels. Marianne Dashwood, for example, is brought to see how her lack of self-discipline has made her fail in her duty to others, conduct unjustifiable in God’s sight. Marianne’s contemplation of her previous behaviour, with its reference to ‘duty neglected...some failing indulged...Everybody seemed injured by me’ strongly suggests Austen’s own prayer: ‘Have we neglected any known duty, or willingly given pain to any human being? Incline our hearts to ask these questions oh! God.’ Collins identifies these as the questions asked by those of Austen’s characters ‘who grow in moral stature’.

Irene Collins’ interest in the connection between history and literature comes through clearly. She shows a detailed knowledge of the social milieu in which Jane Austen lived and, in ranging across a wide range of topics, such as education, reading, dancing, war, marriage and money, and many others, relates incidents in the books and the lives of the Austens to the contemporary scene. Austen’s experiences as the parson’s daughter are shown to have relevance to the details of her novels. Evidence for this is found in Persuasion in which Charles Hayter is portrayed as the scholar and gentleman. Mr Collins on the other hand in Pride and Prejudice is the yeoman parson.

Collins also produces some interesting ideas on the reasons for certain events in Jane Austen’s life. For example, why George Austen retired from Steventon so suddenly and withdrew to Bath (because Mrs Austen insisted on it?); and why Jane Austen wrote little from 1799, after revising Northanger Abbey, until settled at Chawton in 1809. Collins suggests that while still at Steventon Jane Austen was too busy as the parson’s daughter to have time for writing, while her life was too unsettled after her father’s death to enable her to concentrate on writing.

Anyone who is familiar with the details of Jane Austen’s last days, and with the prayers she wrote, could hardly doubt her deep religious conviction. In The Parson’s Daughter Irene Collins has shown the debt she owed to her father, and has traced the way that her faith underpinned the strong moral strain that runs through her work.

This is an excellent book displaying the qualities of the best scholarship. It is written in an easy, readable style. There is a confident use of the novels which reveals the author’s thorough familiarity with them. The book is descriptive where required, but is also a balanced mixture of biography, historical analysis and social comment.

Collins’ historical method is impeccable. There are apt quotations from the sources and the book is amply footnoted. She does not push the evidence too far and so avoids the danger of building on it more than it can bear.

Collins explores the world, mind and heart of Jane Austen. The book is a must for any serious student of Jane Austen.

Bertha McKenzie

Regulated Hatred and Other Essays on Jane Austen

by D. W. Harding

Regulated Hatred and Other Essays on Jane Austen is a collection of ten pieces written by the late D W Harding over a period of fifty years. Only three essays and an introduction to a Penguin edition of Persuasion had been published before. The rest, two essays and four lectures, are published here for the first time.

The title of the volume comes from Harding’s first published essay on Austen, ‘Regulated Hatred: An Aspect of the Work of Jane Austen,’ which came out in Scrutiny in 1940 and has been reprinted many times. This single essay made Harding’s reputation in Austen studies and has exerted half a century of strong influence, most recently on Austen biography as reflected in the work of John Halperin and David Nokes. The influence on biography is not so surprising when we consider that Harding was not a literary critic; he was an academic psychologist.

D W Harding held the Chair of Psychology at Bedford College, University of London, and it is very much as a psychologist that he wrote about Jane Austen. He believed she was an intelligent and sensitive woman who found it almost intolerable to live among people less acute of mind and feeling than herself. In fact, he says, she hated such inferior people, but society wouldn’t allow her to express her hatred directly. So she wrote novels as an outlet – in them she could articulate her hatred for her inferiors and for the society that protected them. This may account for a certain tension in Austen’s novels but it is nothing short of absurd to think it ‘the motive force for her writing.’

Harding locates the strongest evidence for his argument in some of the minor characters Austen created. He sees these characters as ‘caricatures’ – exaggerated, distorted and over-simplified sketches. Not real people. He maintains that Austen diminished characters in this way because she hated them and wanted to ‘exhibit’ them. In short, the motive for creating such people as Mrs. Norris, Mr. Woodhouse and Miss Bates was a kind of revenge. I am not convinced. I don’t hate these characters and I get no sense that Austen hated them. She is just to them and implicitly asks the reader to be just too. But more importantly, these so-called ‘caricatures’ are real people. Their limitations and distortions and exaggerations aren’t imposed on them by Jane Austen; real people are frequently limited, distorted and exaggerated. We meet and recognise Mrs. Norris et al. all too often!

Harding assumes that a novelist’s principal aim is to make readers like or dislike the characters. If you agree with this, you are likely to find what he says convincing. But I find this the source of the problem of his analysis. I believe Austen’s aim was far more complicated and immeasurably more difficult to achieve. She asks the reader to imagine, not simply to observe. She wanted us to experience, though perhaps unwittingly, what it is to live within the limitations of any particular individual. It is a hallmark of her genius, as it is of Shakespeare’s, that we know as completely what it is like to be a minor character as it is to be the hero or heroine, to be a Mr. Woodhouse as it is to be an Emma.

In a psychologist’s file, the dossier on Mr. Woodhouse or Mrs. Norris would be as hefty as the one on Emma or Fanny Price. Therefore, Harding seems to imply, minor characters cannot be taken seriously in their own right. They are merely puppets used to relieve Austen’s own frustrations and annoyances. But his distinction doesn’t really exist in literature. As Vladimir Nabokov remarked, ‘Fiction is the true democracy.’ All characters have the equal right to exist.

The methodology of the psychologist breaks down when applied to fictional characters. A novel isn’t a ‘case-study;’ it isn’t an accumulation of information about personalities. A novel is the creation of the illusion that every character is real. And as I’ve already suggested, Austen’s ‘caricature’ minor characters are every bit as real as her heroes and heroines.

As you read Harding’s pieces, you slowly begin to notice that his own feelings are what colours his ideas about Austen’s work. He is best on characters he likes – he adores Emma and has a playful affection for Catherine Morland. What he writes about these two heroines and their novels is always interesting and perceptive. On the other hand, he dislikes Fanny Price, and what he writes about her and Mansfield Park is a hopeless muddle.

Fanny Price is not a ‘caricature’ but Harding wants to make her one; Austen didn’t hate Fanny but Harding does. He claims he hates Fanny because Austen tries to manipulate him into liking her. He thinks Fanny’s being mousy and sickly are sympathy ploys designed by Austen. But Harding misses the point of Fanny Price, which is the same point he missed about Mrs. Norris, Miss Bates and many of the other minor characters.

Fanny is Austen’s most daring creation because Austen confounds our expectations and demands that for the space of just one novel we suspend our desire to ‘like’ the heroine. She asks us to be satisfied with a quite different experience. Harding assumed the author means for the reader to like the heroine, but Jane Austen knew perfectly well that Fanny was no Lizzy Bennet (‘the most delightful creature ever to appear in print’). She didn’t expect us to fall in love with Fanny; she wanted us to become Fanny, to experience what it is like to be Fanny Price. It is an experience most of us resist. We, like Harding, have long been conditioned to fall in love with the heroine. We are confused. Austen doesn’t ultimately care whether we like Fanny or not. She insists on nothing about Fanny Price except her right to exist – in fiction as in life.

Harding didn’t have a very keen sensibility and he lacked the flexibility of imagination to do justice to Jane Austen’s characters. He was in the final analysis a social scientist, but it is as such that he is able to tell us most about Austen’s world. When he focuses on the wider picture, gives his attention to how the organism of ‘society’ operates, how the machine is constructed and kept in running order, he is at his best. The most interesting and informative essays in the collection – ‘Jane Austen and Moral Judgment,’ ‘Family Life,’ ‘Social Habitat,’ and ‘Civil Falsehood’ – are all concerned with society and with the delicate interplay between the individual and the group. This, and not Austen’s ‘regulated hatred,’ is the real aspect of Jane Austen that is Harding’s enduring contribution to our understanding of the author and the novels.

Some readers may find a lot to disagree with in Harding’s work, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Harding is good at suggesting what we ought to think about, even when he is wrong about what we should think.

Jon Spence

A Collection of Letters by Jane Austen

Edited by Juliet McMaster & others

. ‘... I commend to your charitable Criticism this Clever Collection of Curious Comments,...’ writes Jane Austen in her dedication of A Collection of Letters. This witty, alliterative introduction sets the tone for the five letters of the latest offering from Juvenilia Press.

The comments on society contained in the letters display the humorous irony which Jane Austen honed to perfection in her adult novels. In the letters we catch glimpses of characters who feature in her later writings, the mother in Letter the first bearing some resemblance to Mrs Bennet in her desire for her daughters’ success in society, and Letter the third introducing us to Lady Greville, an early Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

Not only do some of the characters seem familiar, but after Susannah Fullerton’s paper on JA’s art of naming at the June meeting of JASA, it is interesting to read the familiar names: Dashwood, Musgrove and Willoughby.

It is not only the letters which make this volume so enjoyable. Laura Neilson’s illustrations also contribute to the reader’s pleasure by highlighting the humour of each letter. Looking at the state of Mr Musgrove’s house, one can well understand his writing ‘how ardently do I hope for the death of your villainous Uncle and his Abandoned Wife’ as his ‘Angelic Miss Henrietta’ will then come into her inheritance (p. 21, Letter the fifth).

An interesting preface and introduction increase the appeal of A Collection of Letters, a welcome addition to the growing library from Juvenilia Press. (See article by the illustrator, together with many of the illustrations, in the December 1998 issue of Sensibilities)

Judy Greenaway

Jane Austen and Eighteenth Century Courtesy Books

by Penelope Joan Fritzer

On the first page of Penelope Joan Fritzer’s book she poses the question, ‘Does Austen reflect in her work the behaviour suggested by the courtesy literature of her time?’ The following 110 pages are devoted to answering this in the affirmative.

Courtesy books of the 18th century were considered to be much more than etiquette guides, or the rules for the superficial actions which disclose the exclusivity of a particular set of people. The publications included instructions on all aspects of acceptable behaviour, including religious principles, morals, attitudes, values, conduct, the importance of good character, agreeable natures, commitment to work as well as the observance of social codes. They were intended to educate and inform and were extremely popular.

The influence and importance of courtesy books is demonstrated in Fritzer’s book. It is an interesting and useful companion for any reader of Jane Austen’s novels, with well-researched references and explanations.

Correlation between the ideals of appropriate behaviour and Austen’s characters is clearly illustrated. Austen seems to keep firmly to the rules decreed by the courtesy books, as indication of her characters and their worth. Her admired characters generally reflect their recommendations and admired qualities. The ‘villains’ breach the many rules, often in a subtle manner, indicating their lack of worthiness.

In regard to keeping secrets, for example, The Lady’s Preceptor, a popular courtesy book, advises that ‘There is no greater Mark, both of politeness and Good-sense, than the Talent of preserving both our own secrets and those of our Friends’. This quality distinguishes Elinor Dashwood from Lucy Steele, contrasts Frank Churchill’s behaviour with that of Jane Fairfax, and allows Elizabeth Bennet to discriminate between Wickham and Darcy. Fanny Price is able to keep her feelings for Edmund secret while Mary Crawford is openly interested in him. Maria Bertram shows her interest in Henry Crawford and Julia her disappointment. Lydia Bennet thoughtlessly betrays Darcy’s secret; Elizabeth only speaks of it in her desire to speak well of him to her father, and to thank him. Those who treat secrets responsibly are admired for this quality. Those who do not are shown to be lacking in the capacity to think and act well.

Fritzer demonstrates the skill with which Austen uses the social conventions and mores of the period to show the true nature of her characters as she reveals that manners are deeper and of far more significance than mere social compliance. Jane Austen’s cognisance of the values and impact of the courtesy books is evident in all her novels. Awareness of the rigidity and importance of the rules espoused by the courtesy books gives the reader of Austen’s novels greater insight and understanding of the behaviour of her characters, especially in regard to relationships between men and women.

Jane Austen and Eighteenth Century Courtesy Books is a delightful volume and an asset to the reader who wishes to understand a work in the light of the times in which it was written.

Audrey Keown

Jane Austen’s Lesley Castle

Edited by Jan Fergus

Illustrations by Juliet McMaster

It must have been exhilarating to be a student in English 290 at Lehigh University. They have been the fortunate collaborators of Jan Fergus and Juliet McMaster in the recent publication of Jane Austen’s Lesley Castle. This volume offers much evidence of careful scholarship, sensitive editing and good fun.

Lesley Castle is an unfinished novel by the sixteen year old Jane Austen. It consists of eleven letters and is a part of Austen’s Juvenilia, written throughout her teen years mostly for the entertainment of her family. She dedicated this manuscript to her favourite brother, ‘Henry Thomas Austen Esqre’, who pays ‘Jane Austen spinster the sum of one hundred guineas’.

Written with characteristic humour, the letters contain amusing scenes, clever characterisation and sharp wit. The voices of the letters are distinct and the purpose of their creator satiric. Sub-plots abound: an adulterous elopement, an abandoned child, divorce and remarriage, a bridegroom’s fatal riding accident just before his wedding and the problems of step-families.

The principal members of the Lesley family are Sir George Lesley of Lesley Castle in Perthshire, Scotland, who is said to be ‘fluttering about the streets of London, gay, dissipated and Thoughtless at the age of 57’, his tall daughters, Margaret and Matilda, and their new, short step-mother, Susan Fitzgerald. Miss Charlotte Lutterell, friend of both Margaret Lesley and the new Lady Lesley, corresponds with both.

The characters of the letters are swiftly and energetically portrayed. Charlotte, for example, dismayed at the riding accident of her sister, Eloise’s, fiance, is concerned that her preparations for the wedding have been in vain.

I had the mortification of finding that I had been roasting, Broiling and stewing both the meat and myself to no purpose.

Her solution is practical.

We’ll call the Surgeon to help us. I shall be able to manage the Sir-loin myself; my mother will eat the soup and You and the Doctor must finish the rest.

A budding Mrs Norris!

Jane Austen’s Lesley Castle is a delight to read and its illustrations reflect the entertainment provided in the text.

(See article by the illustrator, together with many of the illustrations, in the December 1998 issue of Sensibilities.)

Michelle Morgan

Jane Austen and Representations of Regency England

by Roger Sales

London and New York, Routledge, 1996

This is the slightly revised paperback edition of a book first published in hardback in 1994. Dr. Sales writes that he began work on the book in 1987, and expresses his gratitude for help to a number of people, including his students, and it is ‘mainly for undergraduates at all levels who are studying the literature and history of the period’ that ‘this account of Jane Austen’s later, or Regency, writings’ (xiii) is intended. The book suggests that Dr. Sales is an enterprising and stimulating teacher: he moves easily and fluently from literature to popular culture and the heritage industry. If his method is that of the historical and sociological critic of literature, he balances history and criticism very evenly, and his sympathetic approach makes his work accessible for the general reader. In the end his critical approach will serve the citizen as well as the student, the enthusiast and the dilettante.

Dr. Sales’ project which deals with the novels from Mansfield Park (1814) to Sanditon, which Austen left unfinished at her death in 1817. This is the novelist’s own true Regency period, since the Regency period begins with the crisis of 1810/1811, brought about by the illness of George III, and is only resolved by the appointment of his eldest son as head of state, first on probation and then permanently. The Prince acted as Regent until his father’s death in 1820, when he succeeded to the throne in his own right. The Regency began, then, in the midst of the Napoleonic wars and ended in the years of Peterloo and the Scottish insurrection, the years of Shelley’s England in 1819, Song to the Men of England and The Mask of Anarchy. Dr. Sales extends the Georgette Heyer sense of Regency, describing more exactly the ethos and style of the period, with clear reference to political, cultural and social manifestations to construct a rewarding context for Jane Austen’s novels. The recognisable Regency style in furniture and couture springs from and expresses a distinctive, if brief, era.

Dr. Sales’ book falls into four main parts, the first of which, consisting of a single chapter, gives an historical account of ‘the origins and growth of the Austen industry’. (xiii) This chapter is called ‘Rewriting the Regency’ and suggests that much biography of Jane Austen, criticism of her work and inscription of her name and characters on the geographical and cultural imagery of England has served to promote an understanding of Regency which has re-processed that harsh and angular period into the utopic landscape of ‘Merry England’. Section Two, which consists of two chapters, is called ‘Rediscovering the Regency’, in which Dr. Sales succeeds in removing some of the layers of sentiment which, he argues, cloud our understanding of Jane Austen and her times. He does this, in some of the best passages of his book, first by a close reading of Jane Austen’s letters in Chapter Two, under the title ‘The letters: Keeping and losing countenance’. Chapter Three (‘The Prince, the dandy and the crisis’) offers a historical narrative of the period (for readers who may not be familiar with it) with the more ambitious aim of developing a sense of ‘moods and mentalities’ (56) by exploring topics such as scandal and dandyism, suggesting how such references may locate and energise the novels.

Dr. Sales quotes from a letter, written from Godmersham in October 1813, in which Jane shares a joke with her sister Cassandra about a visit to a Mrs. Milles and her daughter Molly:

Miss Milles was queer as usual, and provided us with plenty to laugh at. She undertook in three words to give us the history of Mrs. Scudamore’s reconciliation, and then talked on about it for half-an-hour, using such odd expressions, and so foolishly minute, that I could hardly keep my countenance. (32)

At a high moment of Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part One, Falstaff undertakes to play the King and examine Hal upon the particulars of his life. The fat knight’s histrionics quite captivate the Hostess: ‘O, the father, how he holds his countenance!’ (2,4,381) Dr. Sales shows how this sense of having to act a social part, of keeping face is a recurrent theme of the letters and of the novels. Writing both offers an opportunity to let go of countenance while also carrying the responsibility to hold on to it. In this respect the letters and the novels show interesting similarities and differences. Since Jane Austen is characteristically a worker in the genre or mode of comedy, one could argue that the bedroom door that closes symbolically on the newly-weds at the end of a novel releases from the world of society into a private world in which they may drop their guard, since before each other there is no need to ‘keep countenance’. Something of Jane Austen’s pre-figurative quality may lie in her sense that her heroines do have ‘private lives’, which are denied to some of the other characters. Both dandyism and scandal are related to keeping countenance. Dandyism is the extreme example of outfacing convention: scandal is the social nemesis that follows on the losing of face. Beau Brummell lived almost entirely on credit and face, ‘hovering on the verge of insolence’ in Dr. Sales’ account of that archetypal dandy, whose career had run its course by the time he fled his creditors in 1816, only a year after Waterloo. Dandyism is a running theme of Jane Austen’s later novels, contributing in different measures to the characterization of Henry Crawford, Mr. Yates, Sir Walter Elliot and Frank Churchill.

Mansfield Park is the focus of the third part of the book, a single long chapter which re-reads the novel in connecting it with events and issues that constituted the Regency crisis. The absence of Sir Thomas Bertram and Tom in Antigua leaves Edmund as the ‘regent’ of Mansfield Park. He is succeeded by his elder brother, whose disastrous misrule proves the younger brother the better regent, although there is also some rich speculation on Fanny Price and Mrs. Norris as candidates for the regency. The most radical manifestation of Tom’s regency is Lovers’ Vows and here Dr. Sales unravels the complex details of the play’s plot and how at various stages of the Mansfield Park revival they comment on the internal and external relations of the novel. I am among those who have been influenced in our reading of Mansfield Park by Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism, a work which Dr. Sales engages with in a characteristically even-handed way, correcting an impression shared by many readers that Fanny succeeds to Mansfield Park. The substance and richness of Dr. Sales’ reading of the novel is suggested by the title of this third section of his book: ‘The political condition of Regency England’.

Part Four of Jane Austen and Representations of Regency England consists of three chapters, one each on Emma, Persuasion and Sanditon. The recurring theme here is invalidism, from Mr. Woodhouse’s cranky immobility to the imaginary invalids who are the patrons of Lady Denham’s gimcrack resort. But there is clearly more to Dr. Sales’ readings, as the sub-titles of these three chapters suggest: ‘The village and the watering place’, ‘The war and the peace’, The madhouse and the greenhouse’. I think any reader’s enjoyment of the novels will be enriched by Dr. Sales’ criticism: by his precise location of the apothecary Mr. Perry in Emma, with reference to the Apothecaries’ Act of 1815: of the male characters in Persuasion, with reference to naval history and ideas of masculinity: and of the ‘professional patients’ of Sanditon, for example, can only increase our appreciation of Jane Austen, of her skill in character and narrative and of her sensitivity to the social pressures, both subtle and obvious, of her own age.

In an appendix Dr. Sales gives a full summary of the plot of Lovers’ Vows, and an Afterword, Austenmania (written for this paperback edition) gives an account of the 1995 television series of Pride and Prejudice and its critical and popular reception. One has a sense throughout one’s reading of this judicious book of an integrated approach to literature and culture.

Anthony Voss

Fair Maid of Kent (the Rice portrait revisited)

Claudia Johnson

Times Literary Supplement, 13 March 1998.

JASA takes the rare step of reviewing an article in its Book Reviews.

If you have ever taken part in the Fanny Wars, or been offended by Charlotte Brontė’s assessment of Jane Austen, you will understand the passion which the argument surrounding the Rice Portrait of a child of about 14 years excites.

In March and April this year, The Times Literary Supplement was the setting for the latest battle about this portrait. The front page (TLS, 13 March, 1998) features it and asks, ‘Is this Jane Austen?’ Claudia Johnson’s article inside (‘Fair Maid of Kent’) outlines the debate surrounding a portrait many have believed to be that of a young Jane Austen, possibly painted at Sevenoaks when Jane and her family visited her great Uncle, the wealthy Francis Austen, who is supposed to have commissioned the artist Ozias Humphry to paint it. The portrait is actually unsigned and undated.

Strong present day advocates of its authenticity include Richard Wheeler and Margaret Hammond who, in the 1996 and 1997 publications, The Rice Portrait of Jane Austen: The ill-conceived controversy and The Rice Portrait of Jane Austen: A summary of conclusive evidence, trace the portrait’s ownership from Francis Austen, to Jane’s cousin, Thomas, to his friend, Thomas Harding Newman and his bride-to-be, Elizabeth Hall, both admirers of Austen. In 1883 it was restored to the Austen family when it was given to John Morland Rice, grandson of Edward Austen Knight. Rice showed it to Fanny-Caroline Lefroy who dated the portrait to ‘1788 or 9’. It was used in Lord Brabourne’s edition of Jane Austen’s Letters in 1884. He was obviously happy to accept that the origin and history of the portrait pointed towards its being genuine. For many years it remained unchallenged.

Wheeler and Hammond’s assertions are given more weight with the application of modern technology: E-fit computer comparisons of this portrait with other images of Austen (Cassandra’s portrait and the later 19th century ‘improvements’), they claim, demonstrate the compatibility of all these images. Throughout the article, it is evident that Johnson, although she sets out to give the ‘arguments for (and against) the Rice portrait’, is captivated by the arguments ‘for’.

Those who oppose the portrait’s authenticity side with R.W. Chapman who, in 1948, argued his case against it. Today, Deirdre Le Faye of the British Museum disputes that the portrait is of Jane Austen. She believes it to be of Mary Anne Campion, Jane Austen’s distant cousin. Her argument is supported by the historian of costume, Dr Aileen Ribiera, who dates the style and costume of the painting to the early 19th century, rather than to the later 18th. Le Faye also finds Cassandra’s silence regarding the existence of the portrait as a strong indication that it is not of her sister, and that Fanny-Caroline Lefroy had not known of the portrait’s existence before it was shown to her in 1884.

Johnson condemns ‘the argument from silence’ approach. While admitting that the Rice portrait presents ‘a complicated story’ and that ‘doubt is a reasonable attitude’, Johnson is ultimately dismissive of Le Faye’s argument. The portrait ‘ought to be restored to the same status as Cassandra’s portrait’, she asserts.

Stung into replying, Le Faye (Letters, 20 March) and Ribiera (Letters, 27 March) strongly defended their positions, with Le Faye regarding Johnson’s account as ‘garbled and selective’. It was no surprise then to read Wheeler’s response (Letters, 3rd April), with his energetic defence of the portrait and equally energetic attack on Ribiera’s ‘penchant for contradicting herself’. An attack on the National Portrait Gallery and its ‘cotton-wool wall of institutional inertia’ follows. Word processors at twenty paces! Not even the Jane Austen Society escapes criticism.

The evidence for the portrait’s subject being Jane Austen, however, ‘does not stand up to scrutiny’, according to Jacob Simon of the Gallery (Letters, 3 April). His plea for ‘a search for truth based on sound evidence rather than wishful thinking’ will not placate many of the antagonists.

So, what of the portrait? Even without the benefit of E-fit, it is not hard to argue that it has some qualities at least reminiscent of the idealised version of Cassandra’s portrait commissioned by Austen-Leigh in 1869 and reworked as an engraving to be included in the Memoir. Its small mouth and wide-set eyes could, with a generous stretch of the imagination, link it to Cassandra’s portrait. It is the painting of a pretty child, with a lively and challenging expression. We may like to think that this is how Jane Austen faced the world, but the silence of the Hampshire relatives, particularly Cassandra, regarding it does alert suspicion. It continues to raise the curiosity of Austen readers today, as it did of Fanny-Caroline Lefroy in 1884. Twentieth century members of the Austen-Leigh family argue about it. The passionate quality of the debate is probably most evident in the present.

Johnson reflects that our interest in the debate is as much about our perceptions of Austen and who ‘owns her’ as it is about the portrait itself. It remains to be seen whether Richard Wheeler and Margaret Hammond’s enthusiasm signals a renewed recognition of its authenticity and leads to its being hung in the National Portrait Gallery alongside Cassandra’s portrait.

One thing is certain, however. Mr Woodhouse would have given qualified approval to the portrait. Its setting is outdoors, and its subject, whoever she is, holds, if not a shawl, at least a parasol.

Pamela Nutt

Almost Another Sister: the story of Fanny Knight, Jane Austen's favourite niece

Margaret Wilson

Margaret Wilson was a teacher of history, and has used her skills to research Jane Austen’s family for the past 15 years. Apart from articles printed by the Jane Austen Societies of England and North America, the outcome of her research is this book. Much of the material has come from manuscripts and previously unpublished sources.

Fanny Knight was born Fanny Austen, eldest child of Jane Austen’s brother Edward, and became Fanny Knight at the age of 19 when her father, who had been adopted by the wealthy and childless Knights, took their name on the death of Mrs Knight, at her request. Fanny’s reaction is recorded as ‘We are therefore all Knights instead of dear old Austens. How I hate it!!!’

Margaret Wilson traces Fanny’s long life (1793-1882), starting the story with the death of her mother after the birth of her 11th child in 1809, when Fanny was 16. This was the year that Jane Austen moved to the cottage at Chawton, though her brother’s family was not yet in residence at the Great House. As the eldest, and separated from her next sister by four brothers, Fanny was expected to, and did, take over the maternal role. Edward did not remarry, so she also became his hostess and ran his home.

The author gives a description of a happy childhood ‘rich in love’ before Fanny had to cope with her new role. Then follows the chronicle of her learning to adjust to the ‘duties which devolved on her young shoulders’. She left the schoolroom at 14 and came out some time later - there is a description of her ‘coming out’ ball gown, but no date given.

In her affairs of the heart, of which there were several, the motherless girl turned to her Aunt Jane for advice. None of these affairs ended in marriage however, until at 27, seven years after Jane Austen’s death, she married the widower Sir Edward Knatchbull. They seem to have become devoted to each other, and to have had a happy married life, despite the fact that he was 12 years her senior and that as a member of Parliament they were often apart for long periods.

After 27 years of married life, Fanny became, at the age of 56, a widow, and lived a further 19 years in that condition.

During her old age she wrote the notorious letter to one of her sisters, in which she describes Jane Austen as ‘not as refined as she ought to have been’. Margaret Wilson explains the letter in the light of changes which had taken place in society since 1817 when Jane Austen died, up till 1867 when the letter was written - a change that saw the open Regency period give way to the stiff Victorian one, the meaning of refinement changing with it.

The picture of Fanny that emerges in this book is of a conscientious, serious-minded, devout girl, who grew into the epitome of the Victorian wife and mother. Mother to her ten siblings, stepmother to her husband’s first family of six children, and mother to her own nine, her seriousness should be no cause for wonder.

Jane Austen leaves no doubt of her feelings for Fanny in her letters: ‘You are inimitable, irresistible. You are the delight of my life. Such letters, such entertaining letters as you have sent.’ And ‘Nothing could be more delicious than your letter ... the most astonishing part of your character is that with so much imagination, so much flight of mind, such unbounded fancies, you should have such excellent judgment in what you do.’

This is altogether another Fanny from the one we find in this book. It is the ‘judgment’ that comes through to us, not the delicious, imaginative side. Thus, though we have here an interesting chronicle of the life of Fanny Knight, the Fanny Knight that emerges does not reconcile easily with the Fanny Knight who was seen as ‘almost another sister’ in Jane Austen’s letters.

Nan Witherby

Tea with the Bennets of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice

Margaret Vaughan, UK996

This collection of tea-time recipes allows us to taste – literally – many of the traditional English dishes offered at the tea-hour and also to enhance our mental picture of a social visit in one of Jane Austen’s novels.

The tea table was an important focus of much of the social life in Jane’s times. Needless to say, not too many of us are so fortunate today as to be able to hand several recipes to ‘Cook’ with instructions to produce the results at a certain hour. However, if we perforce produce these delicacies ourselves we can then accept the compliments of Mr Collins or anyone else.

Many of the recipes have special appeal because of their beautifully chosen names and their obvious association with Pride and Prejudice. One such is ‘Lady Catherine de Bourgh’s Brittle Bites or Snaps’ – which is actually a quite boring cookie with what seems to be a quite appropriate element of black treacle!

Sheila Edwards

What Killed Jane Austen?

Dr George Biro and Dr Jim Leavesley, Harper Collins Australia

If you picked up this soft-covered volume expecting it to cover, in graphic detail, the unknown, untimely and debilitating illness of our beloved Jane which eventually caused her demise at the age of 41, then you will be sadly disappointed. In fact, of the book’s 190 pages, only four (69 to 73) are devoted to its title subject.

A glance at the book’s subtitle – And other medical mysteries, marvels and mayhem – will explain why this is so. It appears that the authors have long been interested in medical history and, in addition to their Hippocratic endeavours, have turned to freelance journalism to air the results of their research and investigations.

Within its nine chapters, this volume examines the lives, medical histories and, in some cases, the addictions, obsessions and peccadilloes of about 39 well-known people. Ranging from Tutankhamen to Percy Grainger and Marie Stopes, it is a fascinating collection of interesting subjects. With this in mind, it is not surprising to find Jane Austen sandwiched between Napoleon and Oscar Wilde in a chapter which also includes Lenin, Winston Churchill, Stalin and Rudolf Hess – a rather motley collection of (sick) bedfellows, I might add!

The use of Jane Austen’s name as an attention-grabber for prospective buyers instead of any of the other 38 or so subjects is a clear indication of the pullng power of our Jane in the global publishing world, even 180 years after her death.

The section on Jane Austen does not tell us much that we didn’t already know. It describes the quick onset of the symptoms of nausea, vomiting and low backache in June 1816 and her rapid descent to chronic invalidism until her premature and tragic passing 13 months later. The authors’ conclusion is that she was suffering from what is now known as Addison’s Disease, the symptoms of which relate very closely to those Jane described in letters to her family and closest friends.

The story of Jane’s illness is told factually and sympathetically. The final paragraphs confirm the authors’ acknowledgment of her literary eminence in this way:

We know from her books that she was a consummate writer whose genius was tempered with gentle humour and a subtle insight into the moral nature of mankind. It is better we remember her thus, rather than as someone suffering from an uncommon and debilitating medical disorder.

All lovers of Jane’s writing will heartily agree.

What Killed Jane Austen? is worth buying, not just for its commentary on the title personality, but also for the somewhat amusing medically-oriented biographies of the other subjects.

Geoff Johnson

The Wit And Wisdom Of Jane Austen

Michael Kerrigan (ed), 1996

This small and consequently portable book, measuring approximately six by ten centimetres, is a ‘light, bright, and sparkling’ addition to the Jane Austen Society of Australia’s library. The cover combines Jane Austen’s handwriting (from A History of England, written when she was sixteen) with the portrait drawn by her sister, Cassandra. Its effect is charming and graceful. If you are looking for light, engaging and thoughtful selections from her writings, you will find this a refreshing book.

Major themes such as marriage, love and friendship, society, writing and human nature have their own chapters, with each excerpt being sub-titled.

The chapter Love and Friendship contains the following:

Faint friendship –

I respect Mrs Chamberlourne for doing her hair well, but cannot feel a more tender sentiment.

(Letter to her sister Cassandra, 12th May 1801)

The chapter Human Nature includes:

Moments of crisis, moments of discovery –
Every body’s heart is open, you know, when they have recently escaped from severe pain, or are recovering the blessings of health. (Persuasion)

The excerpts range from private letters, Jane Austen’s Juvenilia, and the six novels to Austen family documentation. Each chapter is illustrated with reproductions of 19th century illustrations of scenes from her novels. This is a charming book.

Annette Harman

Lackington Allen & Co, booksellers, Finsbury Square, was 'one of the curiosities of the metropolis ... on account of the vast extent of its premises, and of the immense stock of books'.

From Ackermann, R: The Repository of arts. literature, commerce, manufactures, fashion and politics (1809 - 28).

29 January 2004

FEEDBACK: info@jasa.net.au

HOME | What's New | About Jane | About JASA | JASA News | Sensibilities | Calendar | Conference | Book Reviews |  JASA Library | Writing Competition | Mrs Goddard's School | Regency Fair | LINKS