by Paula Byrne
On opening their copies of Lovers’ Vows, the young people of Mansfield Park would have immediately seen the prospect of staging moments of high sentiment (with body contact)
As Fanny is all too aware, the play rehearsals give the lovers freedom to express their real feelings. Scenes with Maria Bertram and Henry Crawford license, and indeed demand, flirtation and physical contact. The stage directions reveal the extent of the physical contact between the young man and woman: ‘Rising and embracing him, leans her head against his breast, he embraces her, Agatha presses him to her breast, Frederick takes her hand and places it to his heart.’39 Fanny of course is observing the action closely and even Mary Crawford quips, ‘those indefatigable rehearsers, Agatha and Frederick, should excel at their parts, for they are so often embracing. If they are not perfect, I shall be surprised.’40 Their conduct, by Georgian standards, would be risqué enough in the absence of chaperones, but the fact that Maria Bertram is engaged (to a rich fool whom she despises) makes her behaviour particularly unpleasant. Mr Rushworth is hurt and made jealous by his betrothed’s flirtation. Lovers in Jane Austen’s novels very rarely make physical contact, so when they do it is always sexually charged. When Julia makes her melodramatic announcement that the play must be stopped immediately as her father has returned, she alone notices that Henry retains Maria’s hand throughout the crisis.
It is not merely the erotic charge of the physical contact that resonates but also the racy lines spoken by the actors. Mary Crawford, the sexiest of Jane Austen’s femmes fatales, asks brazenly, ‘What gentleman among you, am I to have the pleasure of making love to?’ Edmund is unable to resist taking his part as her lover. ‘None but a woman can teach the science of herself ’ is one of Amelia/Mary’s lines, spoken to the abashed clergyman Edmund/Anhalt. Poor bemused Edmund, wholly out of his depth in the face of Mary’s overpowering sexuality, is torn, we are told, ‘between his theatrical and his real part’.41
Mary’s fondest memory of Edmund involves recalling him in a position of sexual submission to a vivacious and sexually confident woman:
‘The scene we were rehearsing was so very remarkable! The subject of it so very – very – what shall I say? He was to be describing and recommending matrimony to me. I think I see him now, trying to be as demure and composed as Anhalt ought … If I had the power of recalling any one week of my existence, it should be that week, that acting week … I never knew such exquisite happiness in any other. His sturdy spirit to bend as it did! Oh! It was sweet beyond expression.’42
Whereas the Gothic novels of the age are full of ‘demure’ heroines cowed in submission beneath the gaze or hand of villains reminiscent of Richardson’s rapist Lovelace, here it is the woman who feels the ‘exquisite happiness’ of bending a man’s ‘sturdy spirit’ to her will.
For the Crawfords, sexual conquest is the motivating force in a romantic relationship. Henry later decides with callous detachment to ‘make a hole in Miss Price’s heart’ simply because he can, or thinks that he can. When to his surprise she rejects him and he responds by falling in love with her, Mary entreats Fanny to bask in the conquest she has made over a man who has been desired by so many women: ‘the glory of fixing one who has been shot at by so many’.43
Henry is regarded by the others as an accomplished actor, with ‘more confidence than Edmund, more judgement than Tom, more talent and taste than Mr. Yates’.44 His acting style is ‘natural’ in stark contrast to that of Tom Bertram’s theatre-mad friend, the ‘ranting’ melodramatic Mr Yates. It is Mr Yates and Tom Bertram, the heir to Mansfield Park, who are responsible for bringing the theatricals to the young people. As with the real Steventon theatricals, everything is undertaken with the greatest professionalism, despite Tom’s claims that all they require is a ‘green curtain, and a little carpenter’s work’. There is to be a green room, costumes and makeup. An expensive scene painter is hired from London. Lighting is arranged. Tom gives out invitations ‘to every family who came in his way’.45 His own preference for the choice of play is The Heir at Law by George Colman, which would have given him the chance to abnegate his real role as heir to a great estate and take on instead the part of a comic Irishman.
Tom is one of the most intriguing characters in Austen’s fictional world: he loves theatre and dressing up, he is very close to the dandyish Yates, he is not very good at understanding women and the social customs of courtship, and he never marries, with the result, we may assume, that a future son of Edmund and Fanny may well inherit Mansfield. Jane Austen was well aware of several high-profile homosexual scandals, including one involving the writer William Beckford, to whom she seems to have been distantly related. The association between theatre and homosexuality had a very long history. If there is a homosexual character in Austen’s novels, it is surely Tom Bertram.
What with Tom’s behaviour, the impertinence of Mr Yates, the illicit love-play of Maria and Henry, and the general disruption to the household – especially to Sir Thomas’s study – it is hardly surprising that the master explodes with anger on his return to Mansfield Park. As the Austen family’s theatrical scenes were disposed of in the Steventon auction, so the Mansfield theatricals are halted, all copies of Lovers’ Vows are burned, and ‘The scene painter was gone, having spoilt only the floor of one room, ruined all the coachman’s sponges and made five of the under-servants idle and dissatisfied.’46
9
The Card of Lace
Early one September morning in 1813, while staying with her brother Henry in London, the ‘Metropolis of England’, Jane Austen bought some ‘very nice plaiting Lace’. It would have been kept by the draper on a card. The required length would have been rolled out and snipped off. Domestically produced bobbin lace, typically from the English midlands, used patterns copied from Flemish Mechlin lace worked with a simple twist-net ground or from strong French Valenciennes lace, which consisted of four threads braided together with eight threads at the crosses, as illustrated on the card shown here, which still retains its nineteenth-century manufacturer’s label.1
There are some characters in Jane Austen’s novels who live to shop. Kitty and Lydia, the youngest Bennet sisters in Pride and Prejudice, are ‘tempted three or four times a week’ into the nearby town of Meryton ‘to pay their duty to their aunt and to a milliner’s shop just over the way’.2 For Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey, the shops are among the principal delights of Bath: ‘Do you know, I saw the prettiest hat you can imagine, in a shop window in Milsom-street just now – very like yours, only with coquelicot ribbons instead of green; I quite longed for it.’3 Her new best friend Catherine Morland, ever the ingénue, catches the shopping bug: ‘Towards the end of the morning, however, Catherine, having occasion for some indispensable yard of ribbon which must be bought without a moment’s delay, walked out into the town.’4
Men, more often than not those of dubious character, can also be shopping addicts: the first we see of Robert Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility is a man causing a long delay in Gray’s, a real shop in London, ‘examining and debating for a quarter of an hour over every toothpick-case in the shop’.5 Caring too much about consumer goods is a bad mark, as is made clear in the wonderful closing paragraph of Emma:
The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade; and Mrs. Elton, from the particulars detailed by her husband, thought it all extremely shabby, and very inferior to her own. – ‘Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business! – Selina would stare when she heard of it.’ – But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.6
(It is neat that Mr Elton does get to marry Emma after all, though not in the sense he desired, and it is pointed that Mrs Elton has to rely on him for a fashion report – she is not among the ‘small band of true friends’ who are present.)
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bsp; Notwithstanding the clear implication here, that ‘finery and parade’ are not the route to happiness, Jane Austen herself very much enjoyed shopping. Her best opportunities came when she stayed with Henry in London. On the day in September 1813 when she bought that ‘very nice plaiting Lace’ she went to Wilding and Kent, a busy drapery store in New Bond Street, before breakfast so as to avoid the queues and get ‘immediate attention’. The lace cost three shillings and fourpence, a not insignificant sum, the equivalent of about £10 or $15 today. She returned to Henry’s premises in Henrietta Street to fortify herself and they had scarcely finished eating when the carriage was at the door. From eleven till a quarter past three, together with Henry, his children and niece Fanny, they were ‘hard at it’. They took in Newton’s in Leicester Square (Irish linen for Fanny), Remmington’s (silk stockings for twelve shillings and cotton at four and threepence, ‘great bargains’), Crook and Besford’s for an over-priced white silk handkerchief (six shillings – she wished she’d remembered to get a cheaper one on the pre-breakfast trip), Wedgwood’s for a dinner service (‘I beleive the pattern is a small Lozenge in purple, between Lines of narrow Gold’) and Birchall’s music shop. They even managed to fit in a dental appointment for the children – the painful part of the day.7
There was nowhere else on the planet that could match London for its shops. Robert Southey, appointed Poet Laureate that year (Walter Scott had refused the post), wrote of the ‘opulence and splendor of the shops: drapers, stationers, confectioners, pastry-cooks, seal-cutters, silver-smiths, book-sellers, print-sellers, hosiers, fruiterers, china-sellers, – one close to another, without intermission, a shop to every house, street after street, and mile after mile’.8 In the interiors, the displays were the envy of the world. Before the war, a visitor from the continent, Sophie von la Roche, had noted the superiority of the art of English shopkeeping to the French:
Every article is made more attractive to the eye than in Paris or in any other town … We especially noticed a cunning device for showing women’s materials. Whether they are silks, chintzes or muslins, they hang down in folds behind the fine high windows so that the effect of this or that material, as it would be in the ordinary folds of a woman’s dress, can be studied. Amongst the muslins all colours are on view, and so one can judge how the frock would look in company with its fellows.9
‘Beware my Laura’, a young girl is warned in ‘Love and Freindship’, ‘Beware of the insipid Vanities and idle Dissipations of the Metropolis of England; Beware of the unmeaning Luxuries of Bath and of the Stinking fish of Southampton.’10 Jane Austen was no mere country mouse: she spent much of her life in the city. Five years of her life were spent in Bath and she was a frequent visitor to London, especially in the years when she became a published author.
The royal spa of Bath was second only to London for its shopping potential. In Northanger Abbey, the journey from a country village to the bustle of Bath is the heroine’s rite of passage into the world. The novel seems to have been begun soon after Jane’s first recorded visit to the city in 1797. That November, the Bath Chronicle, which was scrupulous in recording the comings and goings of the gentry, noted the arrival of ‘Mrs and 2 Miss Asten’.11 Her arrival was thus heralded by a spelling mistake. Jane, Cassandra and their mother stayed with her maternal uncle and aunt, the LeighPerrots, at the fashionable address of Paragon Buildings.
Aunt Leigh-Perrot
Mrs Austen, as was often the case, was unwell, so she would have been glad of the opportunity to ‘take the waters’. Mr Leigh-Perrot was her wealthy brother who lived in a grand house called Scarlets, but who came to Bath frequently, also to take the waters, in his case to alleviate his gout. The couple were childless and made James Austen their heir. Jane disliked her aunt, who had a reputation for being bossy, critical and stingy, but she appears to have been fond of her uncle, who gave her presents of books from his own library.
They stayed until just before Christmas, giving Jane ample time to get to know the city and conceive her first ‘Bath’ novel. She returned there in May 1799, this time to accompany her brother Edward. Suffering from ‘a nervous complaint’ and gout, he was under doctor’s orders to try the waters. Edward and his wife Elizabeth collected Jane from Steventon and they made the journey to Bath, stopping off at Devizes on the way, where they dined on asparagus, lobster and cheesecake.
Their lodgings were at the elegant 13 Queen Square. Their landlady, ‘a fat woman in mourning’, showed them their quarters, ‘two very nice-sized rooms, with dirty quilts and everything comfortable’, while a little black kitten ran around the stairs. They arrived in pouring rain, so they were unable to view the pavements due to the sea of umbrellas. But Jane was in high spirits, spotting a friend, Dr Hall, from the carriage, ‘in such very deep mourning that either his mother, his wife, or himself must be dead’.12
It would seem that she planned to work on another novel during this visit. Judging by a joking comment she made to Cassandra, she had taken the manuscript of ‘First Impressions’ with her. She pretended that the reason she kept it with her was that if left at Steventon it would have been stolen by her friend Martha Lloyd: ‘I would not let Martha read First Impressions again upon any account, and am very glad that I did not leave it in your power. – She is very cunning, but I see through her design; – she means to publish it from Memory, and one more perusal must enable her to do it.’13 The idea that Jane Austen did not want her family and friends to know of her novel-writing is belied by the information here that she had shared the draft of the book that became Pride and Prejudice not only with Cassandra but also with Martha.
But it is probable that she was also still thinking about and planning the Bath novel, originally to be called ‘Susan’ and eventually Northanger Abbey. Edward’s wealth and connections gave her access to assemblies, shopping, dances, pleasure gardens and theatre-visits, all of which would be transformed into fiction. Bath seems to have energized her: ‘I do not know what is the matter with me today, but I cannot write quietly; I am always wandering away into some exclamation or other.’14
Edward, in contrast, was in poor spirits, depressed and tired. Jane hoped that shopping for tea, coffee, sugar and cheese would cheer him up. He planned to take the water, try bathing and then even to try ‘electricity’. Bath had been famous for new-fangled electroanalgesia, ever since the celebrated sexologist Dr James Graham began offering electrical treatments for a spectrum of conditions ranging from modish nervous disorders and infertility to fevers, rheumatism and the gout.
Graham had begun his career in Bath. His offer of ‘Effluvia, Vapours and Applications ætherial, magnetic or electric’ attracted celebrity patients. Among the first was the redoubtable bluestocking historian Catherine Macaulay, who was so stimulated by Graham’s apparatus that she married his twenty-one-year-old brother, who was less than half her age. This propelled Dr Graham to national fame. He moved to London and in prime premises in Pall Mall set up his electromagnetic musical ‘Grand State Celestial Bed’, an exotic form of infertility treatment. The Celestial Bed had a tilting inner frame that allegedly put couples in the best position to conceive. Their movements set off music from organ pipes which breathed out ‘celestial sounds’ whose intensity increased with the ardour of the bed’s occupants. Stimulating fragrances were released into ‘the temple of Hymen’, the canopy that encircled the electrical bed. A pair of live doves fluttered above. Though Dr Graham died in 1794, electrical treatment continued to be popular in spa towns such as Bath and Bristol.
Jane was dubious about the efficacy of electricity for Edward’s jaded nerves, but a little retail therapy seemed to improve his spirits. He bought a handsome matched pair of black coach horses for sixty guineas. She was clearly delighted to be in Bath with its shopping and cultural opportunities. Bath was the queen of the spa towns. Christopher Anstey’s New Bath Guide, published that very year of 1799, extolled its virtues and set out the rules for polite company:
In the morning the re
ndezvous is at the Pump-Room; – from that time till noon in walking on the Parades, or in the different quarters of the town, visiting the shops, etc; – thence to the Pump-Room again, and after a fresh strole, to dinner; and from dinner to the Theatre (which is celebrated for an excellent company of comedians) or the Rooms, where dancing, or the card-table, concludes the evening.15
The family took advantage of the amusements on offer. At the theatre they enjoyed a performance of the comedy The Birth-Day, by August von Kotzebue, author of the German original of Lovers’ Vows. And they especially enjoyed Sydney Gardens, supposed to be the best pleasure gardens outside London.
Filled with exotic plants and trees entwined with variegated lamps, it boasted spectacular water cascades, well-rolled gravel paths for promenading and enjoying the views, a stone pavilion with seating for taking refreshments and looking out over to the well-lit orchestra below, and there were even swings for the ladies. For lovers there were intimate covered boxes or grottoes. Famously, one of the most private grottoes had been a courting spot for the dramatist Richard Sheridan and the exquisitely beautiful singer and actress Elizabeth Linley (they eloped to France, below the age of legal marriage, when she was seventeen and he was not quite twenty-one). There was also a charming maze or labyrinth, half a mile long, which could take up to six hours to traverse, at a cost of an extra three pence per person. On gala nights, in the summer, there were spectacular fireworks, illuminations and showings of transparencies.
‘There was a very long list of Arrivals here, in the Newspaper yesterday, so that we need not immediately dread absolute Solitude,’ Jane Austen reported one day in May 1799, ‘and there is a public breakfast in Sydney Gardens every morning, so that we shall not be wholly starved.’ She then told Cassandra of plans to attend a gala night: ‘There is to be a grand gala on tuesday evening in Sydney Gardens; – a Concert, with Illuminations and fireworks.’16 Jane was disappointed when it rained, but they returned to another gala evening two weeks later: ‘We did not go till nine, and then were in very good time for the Fire-works, which were really beautiful, and surpassing my expectation; – the illuminations too were very pretty.’17