Jane Austen

by Andrew Norman

  8.­ James E. Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen, p. 15.

  9.­ Letter from Jane Austen to Francis Austen, 25 September 1813.

  10.­ Letter from Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen, 14/15 October 1813.

  11.­ Letter from Jane Austen to Anna Austen, 9/18 September 1814.

  17

  Jane and Eliza:­ Two Opposites

  Jane had many reasons to be grateful to her cousin Eliza: for encouraging her in her music, her singing, her manners and deportment, and not least, her writing. However, there were aspects of Eliza’s character with which Jane would have neither empathised, nor approved.

  For example, when Eliza enlightened her about the goings on at the French Court – and at the English Court also – Jane may not have been particularly impressed. This was because her heart was firmly rooted at Steventon, in the depths of her beloved Hampshire countryside, and amidst those familiar faces with which she came into contact on a day-to-day basis, as one of her poems indicates:

  Happy the Lab’rer in his Sunday Cloathes! –

  In light-drab coat, smart waistcoat, well-darn’d Hose

  And hat upon his head to Church he goes;

  As oft with conscious pride he downward throws

  A glance upon the ample Cabbage rose

  Which stuck in Buttonhole regales his nose,

  He envies not the gayest London Beaux.

  In Church he takes his seat among the rows,

  Pays to the Place the reverence he owes,

  Likes best the Prayers whose meaning least he knows,

  Lists to the Sermon in a softening Doze,

  And rouses joyous at the welcome close.

  Eliza wrote many letters to her cousin Phylly Walter, and although Jane was clearly not privy to the content of these letters, they provide a useful guide as to her character, opinions and beliefs. They indicate that Eliza may not always have behaved in a manner which Jane, as the daughter of a clergyman and a devout Christian herself, would have condoned. For instance, when Eliza tells Phylly that she has been invited to the Coronation Ball (held to commemorate the coronation of King George III, which had taken place on 22 September 1761), she (Eliza)

  hesitated for some time, but at length consented, because I always find that the most effectual mode of getting rid of a temptation is to give way to it.1

  Amusing as this comment may be, there may have been more than a grain of truth in it, and not just in regard to coronation balls.

  Eliza tells Phylly that she hopes to have

  a full & particular account of all your Flirtations. Is there not a certain Clergyman some where in your neighbourhood that You contrive to flirt with a little? Adieu My aimiable Friend think of me & think of me with some affection since, not withstanding all my faults I love you most sincerely.2

  This begs the question, was Eliza herself a flirt? An (unnamed) daughter of Anna Lefroy supports the notion that yes, she was, when she states:

  I believe the ci-devant Countess [French nobility of the ancien régime], who was an extremely pretty woman, was a great flirt, and during her brief widowhood flirted with all her Steventon cousins, our Grandfather [James Austen] inclusive.3

  On the other hand, the whole tenor of Jane’s novels indicates that she herself would hardly have approved of flirting, and least of all with a gentleman of the cloth. Eliza, however, did have certain scruples. She said:

  I have made one conquest, who has between thirty & forty thousand pr. [per] Annum, but unfortunately he also has a Wife, so that I cannot even indulge myself in a little flirtation.4

  She makes another comment to Phylly that Jane would undoubtedly have considered vulgar and in poor taste had she heard it:

  I do not hear that Mrs. James Austen [Jane’s sister in law] is breeding, but I conclude it is so, for a Parson cannot fail of having a numerous Progeny.5

  In marrying the Comte de Feuillide it is evident that Eliza’s main concerns were for money and status. With the Comte, she said she was

  … mistress of an easy fortune with the prospect of a very ample one, add to these the advantages of rank & title & the numerous & brilliant acquaintance, amongst whom I can flatter myself I have some sincere friends, & you will unite with me in saying I have reason to be thankful to Providence for the lot fallen to my share …6

  When it came to assessing Henry as a prospective second husband, Eliza used the same criteria. She commented to Phylly:

  I suppose you know that our Cousin Henry is now Captain, Pay Master & Adjutant. He is a very lucky young Man and bids fair to possess a considerable Share of Riches & Honour; I believe he has now given up all thoughts of the church, and he is right for he is certainly not so fit for a parson as a soldier.7

  Clearly, Eliza could not imagine anyone wishing to marry a clergyman who depended solely on his income, as this comment to Phylly indicates:

  I heard the confirmation of our old friend Dr Thomas Woodman’s having taking orders which surprises everyone, as his Father can give him a very handsome fortune.8

  Did Eliza marry the Comte for love, also? Hardly, for as Phylly confirms:

  The Countess has many amiable qualities … [however] for her husband she professes a large share of respect, esteem and the highest opinion of his merits, but confesses that Love is not of the number on her side.9

  In fact, Eliza could not even envisage falling in love. Do not imagine, she tells Phylly, referring to Germany, Flanders and France, which she had previously visited,

  that I have left my Heart in either of those places … to tell you the Truth I don’t think either You or I very likely to lose either our gaiety or peace of mind for any male creature breathing.10

  As for the marriage ceremony itself, Eliza declared: ‘I never was but at one wedding in my life and that appeared a very stupid Business to me’.11

  Did Eliza marry Henry for love? Indeed, there is no mention of the word in the following statement to Phylly, in which she appears to view Jane’s brother with a scarcely veiled contempt. Eliza described

  the pleasure of having my own way in every thing, for Henry well knows that I have not been accustomed to controul and should probably behave rather awkwardly under it, and therefore like a wise Man he has no will but mine, which to be sure some people would call spoiling me, but [I] know is the best way of managing me.12

  In other words, everything must be on her terms. To Jane, of course, for someone to marry a person with whom they were not in love would have been absolutely anathema.

  Phylly stated that, despite everything, Eliza’s religion [i.e. the Christian faith] ‘is not changed’.13 However, the latter evidently paid the price for her ‘dissipated life’ for, as she remarked regretfully:

  Poor Eliza must be left at last friendless & alone. The gay and dissipated life she has long had so plentiful a share of has not insur’d her friends among the worthy; on the contrary many who otherwise have regarded her have blamed her conduct & will resign her acquaintance. I always felt concerned and pitied her thoughtlessness.14

  Leaving aside their common interest in music and poetry, it is difficult to imagine two people whose views were so deeply contrasting than Jane and Eliza, and not surprisingly, Jane could not resist making her cousin a character – albeit thinly disguised – in one of her novels: that novel being Mansfield Park.

  Notes

  1.­ Le Faye, Jane Austen’s ‘Outlandish Cousin’, p. 173.

  2.­ Ibid., pp. 89–90.

  3.­ Ibid., p. 169.

  4.­ Ibid., p. 143.

  5.­ Ibid., p. 141.

  6.­ Ibid., p. 53.

  7.­ Ibid., p. 139.

  8.­ Ibid., p. 145.

  9.­ Ibid., p. 80.

  10.­ Ibid., p.47.

  11.­ Ibid., p. 117.

  12.­ Ibid., pp. 152–3.

  13.­ Ibid., p. 80.

  14.­ Ibid., pp. 103–4.

  18

  ‘Mary Crawford’:­ The Reincarnation of Eliza

  A clue that Jan
e may have had Eliza in mind when she was writing her novel Mansfield Park, is given by the fact that the fictitious Lady Bertram possesses a dog by the name of ‘Pug’, whom she dotes on and spoils unutterably. Eliza also possessed a pug (this being the generic name for a breed of toy dog) and treated the creature with the same indulgence. She came by it in the following way. On 7 November 1796 Eliza reminded her cousin Philadelphia Walter (‘Phylly’) that she had promised to acquire a dog for her. Eliza says, ‘I live in hope of dear Pug’s arrival. Pray get him for me if possible’. By the following month it is clear that Phylly has obliged, because Eliza states that she is now in possession of her Pug and ‘shall joyfully receive as many more as you can provide for me’. Not only that, but Eliza has consulted her doctor about the dog and the administration of ‘Vapour Baths, which he has prescribed for him’.1 Eliza did, in fact, go on to possess several pug dogs. However, it was not Lady Bertram who Jane had in mind for Eliza, but another of the principal characters in the story: Mary Crawford.

  What similarities are there between the real life Eliza and the fictional Mary? Eliza, from her portrait, is an attractive woman with long, wavy, auburn hair and large brown eyes reminiscent of a painting by Rubens, but not, perhaps, a classical beauty; Mary is ‘remarkably pretty’. Eliza is comfortably placed, thanks to the generosity of Warren Hastings; Mary is ‘possessed of £20,000’. Both have good connections: Eliza is accustomed to mixing in the upper echelons of society at both the French and the English Courts; Mary’s brother Henry has ‘a good estate in Norfolk’. Both ladies are fond of London (and in Eliza’s case, Paris also); both play the harp and the pianoforte and love to sing; both participate in amateur theatricals. Moreover, both are strong-minded characters used to having their own way.

  Both Mary and Eliza are essentially townspeople who are not altogether comfortable in the countryside. For example, when Mary complains that she cannot find a wagon or cart for hire in the village on which to transport her harp, Edward feels obliged to point out that yes, indeed, this would be difficult in the middle of harvest time. How different this is from London, says Mary, where ‘every thing is to be got with money’. As for Eliza, she was accustomed to the French Court and later to the English Court, and yet her letters to Phylly indicate that in later years she had become more attuned to country living.

  Just as Eliza has lived in France and speaks the language fluently, so too in Mansfield Park does Mary show that she has a knowledge of that country and its people. Mary says, in reference to the vanity of a former French King:

  To say the truth, I am something like the famous Doge [Chief of State] at the court of Lewis [Louis] XIV; and may declare that I see no wonder in the shrubbery equal to seeing myself in it.

  And Mary tells her sister Mrs Grant:

  If you can persuade Henry [her brother] to marry, you must have the address of a Frenchwoman. All that English abilities can do has been tried already.

  (Is this Jane telling us in code that Eliza had tried, without success, to find a suitable English husband before she married the Count?) Apart from these superficial similarities, there is evidence that Mary was like Eliza in more fundamental ways.

  Mary declares that, ‘A large income, is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of’. And Fanny Price says of Mary, ‘She had only learnt to think nothing of consequence but money’. The obvious way to achieve wealth was, of course, to marry and this was exactly what Mary had in mind. ‘Matrimony was her object, provided she could marry well’. Her advice was that ‘every body should marry as soon as they can do it to advantage’. However, Mary warns that for those like herself, who marry for money, there are pitfalls. She says:

  [marriage] is, of all transactions, one in which people expect the most from others, and are least honest themselves … It is a manoeuvring business. I know so many who have married in the full expectation and confidence of some one particular advantage in the connection, or accomplishment of good quality in the person, who have found themselves entirely deceived, and been obliged to put up with exactly the reverse!

  Is this Jane telling us that Eliza (Mary) was disappointed in her marriage to the Comte? After all, Jean-François Capot was not a genuine count. He was

  [the] son of a provincial lawyer who had risen to become mayor of Nérac, a town in the province of Guinne, in the south-west of France, where the family owned a small estate.

  For Mary, there are certain classes of people who it would be folly to marry. For example, she is dismissive of Edmund’s intention to become a clergyman and declares, ‘A clergyman is nothing’, by which she meant that a man of the cloth, by virtue of his position in life, cannot aspire to wealth. When Mary declares to Edmund her intention to become very rich, he in turn declares that his intentions are only ‘not to be poor’. To this, Mary replies:

  Be honest and poor by all means – but I shall not envy you; I do not much think I shall even respect you. I have a much greater respect for those that are honest and rich.

  Mary also demonstrates her disdain for the clergy by expressing the opinion that, in former times, ‘parsons were very inferior even to what they are now’.

  According to Mary, Edmund’s salvation would be if his brother Tom were to die, thereby leaving him to inherit Mansfield Park. Edmund would then be a much more attractive proposition as a husband. At this, the horrified Fanny remarks dryly, ‘Edmund would be forgiven for being a clergyman, it seemed, under certain conditions of wealth’.

  Was Mary Crawford a flirt, as Eliza was alleged to be? No, because for Jane this would have been a step too far, as she would have risked offending both Eliza, who would certainly have recognised herself in the novel, and her husband Henry. Instead, she makes Mary’s brother Henry the flirt. As previously quoted, Mary says:

  He [Henry] is the most horrible flirt that can be imagined. If your Miss Bertrams do not like to have their hearts broke, let them avoid Henry.

  So who is there, in Mansfield Park, to counteract the influence of Mary? Why, Fanny Price, of course, who in turn is undoubtedly a vehicle for Jane’s own thoughts and feelings. When Mary played the harp to Fanny (as Eliza undoubtedly did to Jane), the latter is described as being ‘so full of wonder at the performance’.

  In a similar way, Jane’s youngest brother Charles is represented by Fanny’s older brother William, who is a sailor in the Royal Navy and who makes his sister the present of an amber cross.

  Referring to Mary, Fanny says, ‘She might love, but she did not deserve Edmund by any other sentiment’. Fanny believed there was scarcely a second feeling in common between them [which she follows up with the words]: ‘She loves nobody but herself and her brother’.

  In Mansfield Park Jane mirrors the Stevenson amateur theatrical performances which Eliza enjoyed so much. When the Honourable John Yates, a friend of Tom Bertram, arrives on the scene and suggests that they ‘raise a little theatre’ – i.e. put on a play, Edmund has reservations, believing that were they to do so, this would ‘show great want of feeling on my father’s account, absent as he is’. Edmund also believes that the particular play they have chosen, Lovers’ Vows, is ‘exceedingly unfit for private representation’. (This was a real life play by the German August von Kotzebue, written in 1780 and entitled Das Kind der Liebe – ‘Child of Love’, and adapted by actress, novelist and dramatist Elizabeth Inchbald. As the title suggests, it featured seduction and an illegitimate birth.)

  In Mansfield Park, although it is not Mary who chooses the play which is to be performed, when the choice is made she condones it, and eagerly expresses the wish to participate in it. Perhaps the real life Eliza did actually choose some of the plays which were performed at Steventon – notably the more risque ones, and perhaps this offended Jane and one or more of her brothers. It may even have come to the notice of the Revd Austen who, like his fictitious counterpart Sir Tomas Bertram, would have considered such plays to be inappropriate and unseemly.

  Jane, typically, could not portray Mary as being a
ll bad, and when the latter comforts Fanny, after her Aunt Norris pressurises her [unsuccessfully] to accept the hand of Mary’s brother Henry, Jane writes: ‘Fanny did not love Miss Crawford; but she felt very much obliged to her for her present kindness’. Perhaps this was how Jane viewed Eliza, who had shown her acts of kindness but whom she could not bring herself to love.

  Due to the prolonged periods which Eliza spent with the Austens at Steventon, it is likely that Jane was familiar with her views on the subjects discussed above. However, it is unlikely that she challenged her cousin on these views. After all, there was a disparity in their ages, Eliza being more than a decade her senior, and in their position, Eliza had rubbed shoulders with royalty and aristocracy, both English and French. Nevertheless, to hear Eliza being disparaging about the clergy, cynical about marriage and concerned with personal gain rather than with true love, must have caused Jane a certain amount of anguish.

  Instead, Jane, as Fanny Price, made Eliza, as Mary Crawford, her protagonist in Mansfield Park, and in doing so she was not only able to give vent to her emotions, but also to create that tension between two opposites which is essential for the success of any novel. How paradoxical, therefore, that Eliza, with whom Jane had little or nothing in common in a spiritual or moral sense, became pivotal to the narrative of Mansfield Park.

  Eliza was left ‘friendless and alone’. On the other hand Mary, who had suffered ‘disappointment in the course of the last half year’ (largely because of the irresponsible behaviour of her brother), had the good fortune to be taken in by her half-sister Mrs Grant. As for Henry, his punishment was to suffer ‘wretchedness’ and ‘vexation’ for tampering with Fanny’s feelings, and thereby destroying any chance which he may have had of winning her heart.