Camp Austen_My Life as an Accidental Jane Austen Superfan

by Ted Scheinman

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  The play evolved into a combination of two of Austen’s teenage creations, one, Love & Freindship, parodying novels of sentiment and the other, The Beautifull [sic] Cassandra, recounting an extraordinary (and fictional) day in the life of her older sister. But the first dress rehearsal had been put off until four hours before showtime, the Blake scholar who was to deliver our prologue had yet to appear in his police uniform, and my waistcoat was making it very difficult to perform the sort of slow-breathing exercises that crisis counselors recommend in such situations.

  The preparations earlier that day had been exciting and terrifying in equal measure. Michele, as our fourteen-year-old Austen, had memorized all her lines while hastening back to town from a seaside jaunt, but the rest of us were flying by the seats of our breeches and scrambling to keep all the props in order. There was a pair of Groucho Marx spectacles for the pastry chef (a minor role), a cockney’s cap for the hackney-coach driver, quills and pens for the play’s various letter writers, and a crucial pair of coconuts that would signal the galloping of horses.

  There were also various surfaces—chairs, tables, a piano bench, a piano—on which the women were to faint, which they did frequently and with unfailing elegance. Inger’s eldest daughter, Emma, all of fifteen, had agreed to play Laura’s mother. She was aces, especially given that her bonnet resembled nothing so much as a collapsed flan.

  The final runs were anarchy.

  “Jackie, we need a beat before ‘bonnet,’ so the line reads, ‘I had chanced to fall in love with a stately … bonnet belonging to the Countess of Greater Little Pymly.’ Like, a big pause. An eight-months-pregnant pause.”

  “Where is my quill? How can I write to Isabel with no quill?”

  “Ashley, we need you to go more Ophelia-on-mescaline here. That penultimate speech needs to hit the audience like a parody of every mad scene they’ve known.”

  “Ted, are you sure you can make it to the piano in time for all these cues?”

  “Hey, time out, time out, rogue petticoat over here. Gentlemen, do avert your eyes.”

  “Please, people, when you’re fainting, remember that everyone around you is fainting. We don’t want injuries our first year.”

  This last bit of advice was important and could not be repeated enough—the script had turned into an orgy of fainting, and while I believe James and Inger had requested a “lively” performance, they had not specifically requested violence or injury. Indeed, their idea for the summer camp theatricals had been quite modest. They wanted us to re-create the simple, amateuristic glee of the plays that the Austen family staged at the Steventon rectory in the 1780s and beyond. “There are several miniature plays in the Juvenilia that might be suitable,” James suggested to Adam and me when he first asked us to take charge of dramatic matters. “Really, you can practically do some of them word-for-word. That would make your job simplest.”

  But grad students are a masochistic lot who generally do not opt for the simplest path (witness their decision to attend grad school), and Adam and I began to think more grandiose thoughts about the possibilities of the wild and antic Juvenilia. We considered, and then rejected, the idea of adapting Austen’s satirical History of England (1791; she was fifteen), not because it wasn’t funny but because we didn’t have enough Tudor outfits. Similarly, “The Visit” seemed at first a viable victim for adaptation—the young Jane composed it as a stage-play in the first volume of her juvenile notebooks—but its comedy is closely tied with the performance of boredom, and the play is concerned almost exclusively with table manners; the jokes, while good, would gain little from performance. That’s how we came to settle on a deeply abridged version of Austen’s Love & Freindship, a farcical novella that sends up the more absurd eighteenth-century romances, in which women are usually fainting, fleeing, or giving birth.

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  In assigning us this little dramatic task, James and Inger had given us an opportunity for a further realm of reenactment, and I credit their foresight: here we were, reenacting the very frivolities and excitements of Austen’s early years—we were reliving her youth, through the words and characters that she wrote in that youth. The Juvenilia began, like the novels, as family performances: the family loved to read aloud to one another, and Austen’s childhood pastiches entered the family’s repertoire, alongside books of sermons and Johnsonian moral essays and selections from Shakespeare (much as in the Dashwood household in Sense & Sensibility). Later in her career, Jane would read aloud passages from her novels-in-progress. According to the critic Rachel Brownstein, as Austen read and reread her Pride & Prejudice draft aloud to her family and circle, the performance became “so much in demand among the friends she read it to that she pretended to fear that Martha Lloyd meant to memorize and publish it.”

  Janeite critics have suggested that this oral tradition within the family (a fixture among noble and genteel families of the age) is one reason Austen’s dialogue in the novels feels so alive—so “spoken.” As Claire Tomalin writes in her landmark Austen biography: “Her characters rarely fail to speak to one another like real people … There is no knowing whether the listening Austens made suggestions or criticisms; what we do know is that father, mother, and sister all had the wit to appreciate what she wrote, and to see that the promise of her early sketches was flowering into something more exceptional.” The family was similarly attentive to the younger Austens’ efforts at theater.

  And so, in this thespian diversion, as in so much else, the division of labor at the Austen summer camp came to feel more and more like a Regency house party, with the precocious younger set mounting productions for the pleasure of their elders, whom they amuse—and shock only occasionally—with the shameless intimacy of the performance. Observing the faces of the older Janeites who spied on our rehearsals, Michele and I fancied we caught a mix of disapproval and fascinated envy. James and Inger were roundly prohibited from glimpsing the script ahead of time, and we needled them with vague hints that the production would be far saucier than it was. “We shall put the Bertrams to shame,” is the most Ashley would admit to James. Once more we were stepping into the roles of a different age. There was a ghostly joy in this.

  But could we match the famous confidence of the young Austen men? By all accounts—mainly letters—James and Henry had high opinions of their skills as tragedians, and their sisters and cousins would sometimes needle them for this self-seriousness. The family was joined by friends from the neighborhood, including the Fowles brothers, and they staged the tragedies in the rectory dining room. By 1784, they were doing plays in a converted barn, where early productions included A Woman Keeps a Secret by Susanna Centlivre, and The Chances, a reboot by Garrick of a quite-old English play about a reformed womanizer. (Austen may have been geographically a provincial, but culturally—especially in the realms of literature and theater—her family was reasonably hip.) The younger set seem to have enjoyed, and the older set certainly permitted, some rather edgy material—including drinking and womanizing. One of the most consistent strains of drama was the battle of the sexes. If the verbal sparring between Darcy and Elizabeth in Pride & Prejudice recalls Shakespearean versions of these debates (most notably Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing), it also recapitulates the gender politics over which the Austen family made so merry during the children’s plays.

  These theatricals, too, would have given Jane—whether in writing or in acting—her first chances to toy with the whims and expectations of an audience. The critic Penny Gay writes that Austen thrilled to “the bustle and excitement that inevitably accompanies putting on a show.” The night of our performance, I noted a flush of triumph on Michele’s face and wondered whether Austen’s cheeks used to color like that, too. The theatricals were one more instance where Austenworld seemed to contract, to become a single living room where we were all participating in the same play—one of those peculiar magic bits of dislocation that the Janeites love so well.

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* *

  Joe Fletcher, who would deliver our prologue in anachronistic character as a modern British policeman, appeared at the dress rehearsal with a Maglite, a fake mustache, and an unaspirated English accent on loan from Terry Jones of the Pythons. He proceeded to nail the prologue that we had written in imitation of Shakespeare’s Dogberry, full of malapropism:

  SCENE: Two writing tables bookend the room. A divan rests center stage (if possible, fainting couch). The divan should be large enough that at least two adults can faint on it comfortably at the same time. At the stage-left table sits ISABEL; at the stage-right table, LAURA, wearing wedding dress. JANE AUSTEN, fidgeting like a teenager, sits on the couch in the center, bored and perhaps tomboyish. POLICEMAN enters from rear, inspecting handbags, &c. Ted at piano, playing Schubert. Cop arrives center stage.

  PROLOGUE/POLICEMAN: [stern] Ladies & gentlemen, if you would please befavor me with your silence—I am here incapacitated as a prologue, though in the imminent dramatical dispopulations, I shall be called “policeman.” The playwright has asked that I read this brief apostle: [unfolds paper & reads]

  “Kind audience, we pray you refrain from the taking of snuff, the making of love, the adjusting of bonnets, the locking-up of daughters, elopements of any kind—and that you silence any pet birds or … [puzzled, then proud] … noble telephones!”

  The playwright also desires me to complain that the following scenes of excitement, intrigue, and monstrous sensibility are all deprived from the Juvenilia of one Miss Jane Austen, in particular a short novel called Love & Freindship and an even shorter novel called The Beautifull Cassandra. These two tales will compete for your attention while charming your eyes, chafing your ears, and fickling your tummy bone. The playwright conforms me that the fourth wall will be broken numerous times, but that no damage will be conflicted on the building. And so, without further askew, I present: THE PLAYERS!

  By the time Joe had begun his prologue, our tweedy fan in her “plum seat” had been joined by dozens of comrades, most of whom found seats of similar plumness. (The chairs were plastic; Drury Lane, this was not.) The play unfolded with very few hiccups, everyone overacting in the proper melodramatic register, and even the throwaway jokes landed as on some Richard Pryor DVD. The lines, with very few exceptions, came directly from Austen’s teenage notebooks:

  ISABEL: [as though delivering a dark prophecy, or a ghost story] Beware of the insipid vanities and idle dissipations of London, of the unmeaning luxuries of Bath and of the stinking fish of Southampton!

  [JANE holds her nose for the amusement of CASSANDRA, who giggles.]

  LAURA: But Alas! How was I to avoid those evils I should never be exposed to? What probability was there of my ever tasting the dissipations of London or the stinking fish of Southampton?

  (Soon, an opportunity presents itself to Laura, in the shape of a “noble youth” named Edward and played by me.)

  EDWARD: My father, you see, is a mean and mercenary wretch. Seduced by the false glare of title and fortune, this stubborn man insisted I marry Lady Dorothea. “Nay, never!” cried I. “I grant you, Lady Dorothea is lovely and engaging, and I prefer no woman to her; but know, sir, that I scorn to marry her in compliance with your wishes—[stands up, with great piety, hand over heart] No! Never shall it be said that I obliged my father.”

  [The family applauds, earnestly. EDWARD bows and pivots abruptly to LAURA.]

  EDWARD: But O my Laura, whom I have loved these past four minutes beyond all strength of reason—or probability—when will you reward me with yourself?

  [Parents beam with pride.]

  LAURA: O, this very instant, my dear and amiable Edward! [winks at JANE]

  EDWARD: Well, that’s dashed convenient—your being in a wedding dress and all, I mean. [LAURA curtsies as he kisses her hand.]

  LAURA: We were immediately united by my father … [It happens quickly onstage; CASSANDRA throws her shredded letters like confetti. FATHER turns to audience with pride.]

  FATHER: For true, I had never taken orders—but [crossing self; drawing self up] I had been bred for the church!

  Later, when Edward dies (I won’t tell you the cause, but the coconuts came in handy), Laura delivers that wonderful madcap soliloquy, a fourteen-year-old Jane Austen’s parody of Ophelia:

  LAURA: Talk not to me of phaetons—Give me a violin. I’ll play to him and soothe him in his melancholy hours—Beware ye gentle nymphs of Cupid’s thunderbolts, avoid the piercing shafts of Jupiter—Look at that grove of firs—I see a leg of mutton—They told me Edward was not dead; but they deceived me—they took him for a cucumber.

  Cassandra, meanwhile, gets her own subplot:

  JANE AUSTEN: [taking pen in hand] O noble Cassandra, you are a phoenix. Your taste is refined, your sentiments are noble, and your virtues [counts on fingers; gives up] innumerable, your appearance … singular. [CASSANDRA frowns.] If the following tale afford one moment’s amusement to you, every wish will be gratified of your most obedient & humble servant … [grins in CASS’s face]—moi!

  … only to wind up in the wrong story line and perish from an excess of faintings:

  CASSANDRA: [still coughing] Take warning from my unhappy end … Beware of fainting-fits … Run mad as often as you chuse, but do not faint … [dies]

  By the end of the proceedings, it became clear that certain males in the audience were now in love with every woman in the cast. A film of the performance would soon appear on YouTube, where it now rubs shoulders with The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, The Real Housewives of Jane Austen, and The Jane Austen Fight Club, among many other instances of multimedia fan-fic. Someone even filmed the Q&A session. “Is this what you thought you’d be doing when you went to graduate school?” one lady asked.

  “I don’t know why else you’d go to grad school,” Adam said simply.

  “In what form do you propose entering this on your CV?”

  “‘Surreptitiously,’ I think is the answer,” I said.

  Adam jumped in. “You won’t believe this, but I have a whole section on my CV devoted to period adaptations.” (It’s true; I’m told his Koko in the 2005 Wheaton College Mikado moistened every eye in the county.)

  Miss Sprayberry cleared her throat: “Does the character of the policeman owe more to Shakespeare or to Monty Python?”

  “Absolutely Shakespeare,” I said. “He’s a complete rip-off of Dogberry, though you will notice that we did not steal any of Shakespeare’s lines. Very fun to write in that sort of … dyspeptic style.”

  After the Q&A, I unbuttoned my waistcoat and tasted oxygen for what felt like the first time in forty-five minutes. Several older ladies, including Tweed-and-Plum, approached me with questions, offered thanks, and informed me that I had reminded them variously of Hugh Grant and David Niven. This moment marked the climax of my fast-dwindling academic career.

  * * *

  The next morning, after a genial panel about Austen’s novels on-screen, at which I appeared as a “guest film critic,” the Janeites enjoyed a break of welcome refreshment called “Elevenses,” a hearty spread that included scones, coffee cakes, teas, juices, fresh fruit, and several buckets’ worth of clotted cream. One’s impulse was to apply a straw to the clotted cream and never look back, but decorum prevailed, and we found ourselves chatting about the films, which began, of course, with the plays.

  The first blockbuster stage version of Pride & Prejudice was the 1935 adaptation by Helen Jerome, an Australian author and critic who also had success with her dramatization of Jane Eyre. Jerome’s Pride & Prejudice enjoyed sensational buzz even before its Broadway debut; during previews in Philadelphia, the play’s arch dialogue caught the admiration of one audience member in particular, a man best known for never speaking a word: Harpo Marx, then forty-six years old, who saw the show two weeks before he and his brothers, with the usual assist from Margaret Dumont, premiered A Night at the Opera. Deeply impressed by Jerome’s play, Harpo sent a telegram to his friend Irving Thalberg, head of production unde
r Louis B. Mayer at MGM, whose wife, the actress Norma Shearer, was seeking her next project: “Just saw Pride & Prejudice. Stop. Swell Show. Stop. Would be wonderful for Norma. Stop.”

  According to one popular Janeite legend, Harpo’s telegram set in motion a train of events that would lead to the iconic 1940 film adaptation; in fact, MGM was already plotting a Pride & Prejudice movie, though it’s possible that Harpo’s telegram inspired Thalberg to champion the project, and to cast Shearer in the main role. Still, there were various casting hiccups along the way. Thalberg died, Shearer lost the role of Lizzy—Greer Garson eventually won the part—and while Laurence Olivier now seems an inevitable choice for Darcy, the original cast in 1939 had Shearer opposite Clark Gable as the presumptive Darcy.

  “How very different a Darcy he would have made,” one lady said at Elevenses, referring to Gable.