Oxford World’s Classics
Page 34
Family continuations to Volume the Third
Continuation of Evelyn, by James Edward Austen
205.3–207.3 On his return home … the proprietors of the White horse Inn— written in a different hand, that of JEA. After breaking off ‘Evelyn’ at p. 21 of her notebook, JA left the next nine pages blank, beginning ‘Kitty, or the Bower’ at p. 30. Probably between 1815 and 1817, the teenage JEA completed ‘Evelyn’ in a competent pastiche of his aunt’s comic style.
205.3 stet ‘let it stand’ (Latin), inserted in pencil at an unknown date, possibly in a hand other than JA’s, restoring the deleted words ‘On his’. These words mark the beginning of the continuation of ‘Evelyn’ (pp. 21–7 in the original notebook
205.6 dining parlour window opened
205.21 seated on a chaise long Sofa
205.30 inhab^itants
206.4 of the respectful he owed her
206.27 wefare > welfare
206.29 acident > accident
207.2 proprieters > proprietors
Continuation of Evelyn, by Anna Lefroy
207.5–208.22 On re entering his circular domain … of a Summer morning’s sun—JAEL four loose leaves inserted at the end of the notebook contain a different, abandoned attempt to continue ‘Evelyn’ in a more melodramatic style. They are signed with the initials ‘JAEL’ (Jane Anna Elizabeth Lefroy), indicating that this continuation was not executed before November 1814 when its writer, JA’s niece Anna Austen, aged 21, married Ben Lefroy.
207.20 language power of language
207.24 writing table he > and
207.36 curl paper which ^&
208.6 tantôt qui
208.10 mysterious > dangerous ^dangerous the refashioning of ‘mysterious’ as ‘dangerous’ is poorly legible, so Anna Lefroy clarified the change by repeating ‘dangerous’
208.22 JAEL Jane Anna Elizabeth Lefroy
Continuation of Kitty, or the Bower, by James Edward Austen
208.25–209.28 Kitty continued in this state … having some Gentleman to attend them— JA broke off ‘Kitty, or the Bower’ at p. 124 of her notebook after the words the unaccountable conduct of Young Men. The story was continued from this point for a little more than three pages (pp. 124–7) in the hand of the teenage JEA, c.1815–17.
208.28–9 Augusta Hallifax a possible misreading of the earlier part of the story, where ‘Augusta’ was a ‘Barker’ (later changed by JEA to ‘Barlow’) when she was introduced at p. 178; the ‘Halifax’ girls (p. 178) are ‘Miss Halifax’, ‘Caroline’, and ‘Maria’
208.29 Mary Wynn ‘Mary Wynne’ in the earlier part of the story (pp. 170ff)
208.30 Mrs Peterson ^Percival the deletion and replacement offer further strong support for the view that the alteration to the name throughout is non-authorial and may have occurred at a late stage in JEA’s revision of the piece, perhaps not before the section beginning at 209.5 was added
209.4 to the particular remembrance ^it brought to her mind of Edwd Stanley
209.6 incident worth narrating, save one > or any
209.6 Catharine the first occasion on which this appears as a first choice spelling of the heroine’s name, as opposed to a revision. Like the substitution of ‘Percival’ for ‘Peterson’, still occurring as late in JEA’s continuation as 208.30, it suggests that the superlinear alteration from ‘Kitty’ to ‘Catharine’ in the earlier parts of the manuscript may be a late revision, after the paragraph beginning at 209.5 (‘The Summer passed away’) was added.
209.8 announcing their > the
209.8–9 correspondance > correspondence
209.14 except the account ^a description
209.15 panegirge(?) in error for ‘panegyric’
209.16 abuse of Sir > the
209.17 Mrs. Percival the first and only use of this name not introduced as a substitution; as with the first primary use of ‘Catharine’ at 209.6 above, it suggests that the alteration (always superlinear) from ‘Peterson’ to ‘Percival’ in earlier portions of the manuscript may have occurred only after the paragraph beginning at ‘The Summer passed away’ was added
209.18 five miles from the town Exeter
209.19 of her own JEA wrote ‘of her her own’; corrected by the editors
209.22 there &
209.25 attending the performance & an
209.28 some Gentleman of their party ^to attend them^
Explanatory Notes
We are indebted to the work of previous editors; in particular, to the explanatory annotations of Austen’s early work compiled by R. W. Chapman, Brian Southam, Margaret Anne Doody, Peter Sabor, and Christine Alexander. The following notes have been written with the aim of expanding the reader’s sense of what the young Austen might have been responding to. It is not always possible to identify the books that she read—she owned relatively few herself, but had access to a number of libraries and other collections. Her teenage writings often appear to be saturated in an idiom and atmosphere of popular fiction rather than to be alluding to a single or specific text. Nevertheless, the sources given below suggest a richer and fuller sense of her mental furniture and range of allusions than has been previously available.
Where we cannot establish which version of a text Austen herself might have read, first editions are cited. Reference is made by volume and chapter, letter, or page number (for novels), by act and scene number (for plays), and by canto, epistle, or book, and line number (for poems), these being the most stable locations for readers consulting a variety of scholarly, standard, and non-standard editions.
References to Austen’s novels follow the practice of modern editions and therefore cite continuous chapter numbers, not volume and chapter number.
VOLUME THE FIRST
1 contents: JA inserted page numbers beside each of the listed items. ‘Detached peices’ covers a number of different items whose individual titles are not listed here, nor are those pieces referred to collectively as ‘Detached peices’ other than on the Contents page. The original page numbers are here suppressed and replaced with the correct pagination for this edition.
Frederic & Elfrida
2 To Miss Lloyd: Martha Lloyd (1765–1843), who with her mother and sisters Eliza and Mary (1771–1843) rented Deane parsonage from JA’s father in spring 1789. Martha was 23 or 24 and Mary 18; Cassandra was 16 and JA 13. They became firm friends, as this dedication attests, and—as in ‘Frederic & Elfrida’—‘the intimacy between the Families … daily encreased’ (p. 5). In 1797 Mary became the second wife of JA’s brother James; in 1828 Martha became the second wife of JA’s brother Francis. Martha was at that time 63, the age (or thereabouts) at which Captain Roger in this tale contemplates marriage to Rebecca (p. 5). ‘Frederic & Elfrida’ may date from as early as 1787, when JA was 11, but (as Brian Southam notes) the dedication was added some time after this tale was transcribed into Volume the First (‘The Manuscript of Jane Austen’s “Volume the First” ’, The Library, 5th series, 17 (1962), 231–7, 232, n. 4).
2 my muslin Cloak: cf. the later reference in this tale to ‘Indian & English Muslins’ (p. 5). Cloaks made of muslin, a finely woven cotton, were fashionable in the late 1780s and early 1790s. In Elizabeth Hervey’s Louisa. A Novel, 3 vols. (1790), a beautiful, mysterious stranger partly conceals her figure in ‘a long muslin cloak’ (iii, 187). JA’s interest in muslin is evident in NA (ch. 3) and in letters to Cassandra, e.g. that of 25 Jan. 1801 ( Jane Austen’s Letters, ed. Deirdre Le Faye, 4th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) (hereafter Letters), 81).
this little production: such phrasing may allude to the theatrical aspect of JA’s teenage works, many of which (whether or not they are styled plays or playlets) seem designed to be read aloud or performed.
3 Frederic & Elfrida / a novel: the names of the title characters are elaborate near-anagrams of one another, echoing the tale’s insistence on how impossible it is to tell them
apart. ‘Elfrida’ is a highly unusual, romantic name not used elsewhere in JA’s work; ‘Frederic’, however, she liked enough to give it to Captain Wentworth in P. Cf. Elfrida; or Paternal Ambition. A Novel, 2 vols. (1786); there is another ‘Elfrida’ in Beatrice, or The Inconstant. A Tragic Novel, 2 vols. (1788), and another in Agatha; or, A Narrative of Recent Events. A Novel (1796). The name gained currency in such works due to William Mason’s popular historical tragedy Elfrida, A Dramatic Poem (1752), which is quoted in Frances Burney’s Cecilia; or, Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), bk 4, ch. 5. Of JA’s teenage works, ‘Jack & Alice’, ‘Henry & Eliza’, ‘The beautifull Cassandra’, ‘The three Sisters’, ‘Love and Friendship’, ‘Lesley-Castle’, and ‘Evelyn’ are described as novels. The books JA published in her lifetime are all subtitled A Novel.
the Father’s side: Frederic and Elfrida therefore share a surname, ‘Falknor’, as Elfrida signs herself in her letter to Miss Drummond (p. 3). The Faulknors were a naval dynasty with Hampshire connections (see e.g. The Naval Chronicle, 16 (1806), 1). JA first wrote that Frederic’s uncle was the ‘Mother’ of Elfrida before correcting it to ‘Father’, showing a trace of the same confusion of male and female that occurs at the level of plot (see Textual Notes, p. 220).
one school: an impossibility, since schools for children of the gentry and aristocracy were strictly divided according to gender.
something more than bare politeness: marriages between first cousins were not unusual in this period. JA’s brother Henry married his widowed first cousin (on the paternal side) Eliza de Feuillide in 1797. In P&P, Lady Catherine de Bourgh plans for her daughter to marry her maternal first cousin, Mr Darcy, by ‘the wishes of both sisters’ and to ‘unite the two estates’ (ch. 16). In MP, Mrs Norris tells Sir Thomas Bertram that ‘the only sure way of providing against’ a marriage between one of his sons and their maternal first cousin, Fanny Price, is ‘to breed her up with them’ (ch. 1).
rules of Propriety: Frederic and Elfrida’s restraint goes well beyond the strictest conventions. Even Arabella, the wildly unrealistic heroine of Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella, 2 vols. (1752), criticizes a romance heroine who ‘thought all Expressions of Love were criminal’ (bk 2, ch. 9). In any case, the ‘rules of Propriety’ traditionally confined only the female lover, who was supposed to conceal any preference for a man until he had indicated some feeling for her. Samuel Richardson’s Rambler, no. 97 (1751) insists on this rule; his last novel, The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753–4), one of JA’s favourite works, dwells on the complications arising from superhuman efforts at self-control.
so much alike: the doubling plot or trope, whereby siblings or lovers appear to be identical, is common in romance and sentimental fiction and derives from Shakespearean comedy. Cf. ‘Lesley-Castle’, in which William declares of the Miss Lesleys that ‘They are so much alike … that I should suppose the faults of one, would be the faults of both’ (p. 109). The convention as applied to lovers is sent up in ‘Frederic & Elfrida’ and ‘Collection of Letters’, where Lady Scudamore tells Henrietta that she and Musgrove are ‘born for each other … your opinions and Sentiments so exactly coincide. Nay, the colour of your Hair is not very different’ (p. 147).
intimate freinds: sentimental and novelistic phrasing; cf. ‘her most intimate freind’ (‘Henry & Eliza’); ‘my most intimate freind’ (‘Love and Friendship’, pp. 28, 70). In the opening paragraph of ‘Kitty, or the Bower’, JA expands on what such friendship might involve: ‘the little Girls tho’ separated for the greatest part of the year by the different Modes of their Education, were constantly together during the holidays of the Miss Wynnes. In those days of happy Childhood, now so often regretted by Kitty this arbour had been formed’ (p. 170).
fashionable Bonnet, to suit the complexion: hats and bonnets were worn by men and women; the bonnet typically had a smaller brim, or no brim at all, and was tied under the chin with ribbons. Female complexions were meant to be pale, as Lady Williams reminds Alice: ‘when a person has too great a degree of red in their Complexion, it gives their face in my opinion, too red a look’ (‘Jack & Alice’, p. 14). Susan in ‘Lesley-Castle’ claims to find the complexions of the Lesley sisters ‘so horridly pale’ (p. 110).
Crankhumdunberry … sweet village: alluding to Oliver Goldsmith’s poem ‘The Deserted Village’ (1770), which laments the lost charms of ‘Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain’ (l. 1). Crankhumdunberry is a spoof Irish compound: ‘Crank’ means funny, deceitful, or odd; ‘hum’ is a hoax or imposition; the Gaelic ‘dun’ means ‘a fortified place’; ‘berry’ presses home the comic use of ‘sweet’ (five times) in ‘Frederic & Elfrida’ (the word appears eleven times in ‘The Deserted Village’). Cf. the mock-Irish ‘Kilhoobery Park’ in ‘Sir William Mountague’ and the mock-Welsh ‘Pammydiddle’ in ‘Jack & Alice’ (pp. 34, 10).
pressing her alternately to their Bosoms: cf. the comic use of ‘alternately’ in ‘Edgar & Emma’ (p. 25) and ‘Love and Friendship’: ‘We fainted Alternately on a Sofa’ (p. 77). The source for all three moments may be a stage direction in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Critic: or, A Tragedy Rehearsed (1781): ‘They faint alternately in each others arms’; Sheridan is parodying a scene in act 2 of John Home’s Douglas: A Tragedy (1757). Symmetrical gestures and mirrored emotions, like doubleness and coincidence, are conventions of sentimental fiction; in ‘Frederic & Elfrida’, even Rebecca’s and Roger’s ages, 36 and 63 (or ‘little more than 63’), are mirror images of each other (p. 5). In e.g. The False Friends. A Novel. In a series of letters, 2 vols. (1785), ‘Now rage, then despair, alternately took place’ (ii, 107).
3 Grove of Poplars: a staple ingredient of sentimental prose and verse of the late 18th century; see e.g. ‘a beautiful grove of poplars’ in John Langhorn, The Effusions of Friendship and Fancy. In several letters to and from select friends, 2 vols., 2nd edn (1766), i, 147–8.
4 verdant Lawn … variety of variegated flowers: stock pastoral and sentimental language; ‘variety of variegated’ is notably repetitive. A ‘verdant lawn’ appears in countless 18th-century poems and songs, including Mark Akenside’s highly influential and popular The Pleasures of the Imagination (1744), bk 2, l. 364. Elegant Extracts: or useful and entertaining passages in prose (1784), a copy of which JA gave to her niece Anna in 1801, includes a tale about Arachne and Melissa, two friends ‘alike in birth, fortune, education, and accomplishments’. But where Arachne sees only the dark side of life, Melissa finds ‘numberless beauties’ in ‘the variegated flowers of weeds and poppies’ (101–2).
purling Stream … Valley of Tempé: more hackneyed pastoral phrases, already being sent up in 1701 in John Philips’s Miltonic parody The Splendid Shilling (1701): ‘Or des’prate lady near a purling stream, | Or lover pendent on a willow tree’ (ll. 104–5); ‘purling’ means eddying, swirling, or murmuring. The Vale or Valley of Tempe is a gorge in northern Thessaly, Greece, praised by Greek poets and their translators and imitators for its beauty, and as a favourite haunt of Apollo and the Muses. It features in Lennox’s Female Quixote as ‘the Valley of Tempe, so celebrated by all the Poets and Historians’ (bk 7, ch. 3).
Damon … I was deceiv’d: Damon is the lovelorn swain and singer of Virgil’s Eclogue 8; his name is given to pastoral lovers and shepherds in the poetry of Milton, Marvell, and others. JA’s mock-melancholy song of seduction and betrayal may allude to that of Olivia in a scene of ‘pleasing distress’ in Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield: A Tale, 2 vols. (1766): ‘When lovely woman stoops to folly …’ (ii, ch. 5).
elegant dressing room … festoons of artificial flowers: Humphry Repton, in his Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803), refers to ‘The present dressing-room … added to each modern bed-room’ (178); dressing rooms were often treated as sitting rooms. Female Stability: or, The History of Miss Belville, 5 vols. (1780) features ‘an elegant dressing room, where Miss Duncannon was reading on a sopha’ (i, 1
06). The same novel includes an outdoor scene with ‘festoons of lamps … ornamented in the most elegant manner’ and ‘wreaths of artificial flowers’ (ii, 266); in an indoor setting, however, such ‘artificial flowers’ may be carved woodwork in the shape of wreaths or garlands. JA wrote to Cassandra on 1 Dec. 1798: ‘We live entirely in the dressing-room now, which I like very much; I always feel so much more elegant in it than in the parlour’ (Letters, 25).
Jezalinda: a nonce name that unites the Old Testament Jezebel (1 and 2 Kings)—whose dressing in finery and use of makeup led to the association of cosmetics with painted women or prostitutes—with the suffix ‘linda’, as in the name ‘Ethelinda’, which appears several times in The False Friends, i, 130. Depending on when ‘Frederic & Elfrida’ was composed, JA may have in mind the heroine of Charlotte Smith’s novel Ethelinde, or the Recluse of the Lake, 5 vols. (1789).
the amiable Rebecca: ‘amiable’ and ‘agreeable’ are stock epithets attached to sentimental heroines and their intimate friends; ‘amiable’, as noted in Johnson’s Dictionary, can mean both ‘lovely’ and ‘pretending’ or merely ‘shewing’ love. Cf. Knightley’s comments on the double meaning of ‘amiable’ in E (ch. 18). (On ‘agreeable’, see also Note on Spelling, see p. xliv.) Rebecca is an Old Testament name, unusual in JA’s time. She also gives it to the Prices’ servant in MP (ch. 38).
5 Lovely & too charming Fair one: cant sentimental and novelistic language; cf. ‘too lovely, and unfortunate Fair-one’ in Lennox’s The Female Quixote (bk 6, ch. 11).
your forbidding Squint … your swelling Back: the glaring, mock-instructive contrast of Jezalinda with Rebecca may parody a moment in Samuel Richardson’s The History of Sir Charles Grandison. In a Series of Letters Published from the Originals, 6 vols. (1753–4) when Harriet Byron contrasts the pretty but ‘visibly proud, affected, and conceited’ Miss Cantillon with plain Miss Clements, ‘of a fine understanding, improved by reading; and who having no personal advantages to be vain of, has, by the cultivation of her mind, obtained a preference in every one’s opinion over the fair Cantillon’ (i, letter 10).