by P. D. James
“Not five minutes to spare even for your friends, Miss Fairfax and Miss Bates? How unlucky! Miss Bates’s powerful, argumentative mind might have strengthened yours.”
“Yes—I have called there; passing the door I thought it better. It was a right thing to do. I went in for three minutes, and was detained by Miss Bates’s being absent. She was out; and I felt it impossible not to wait till she came in … It was better to pay my visit, then.” He hesitated, got up and walked to a window. “In short,” said he, “perhaps, Miss Woodhouse—I think you can hardly be quite without suspicion.”
He looked at her, as if wanting to read her thoughts. She hardly knew what to say. It seemed like the forerunner of something absolutely serious, which she did not wish. Forcing herself to speak, therefore, in the hope of putting it by, she calmly said:
“You were quite in the right; it was most natural to pay your visit, then …”
She heard him sigh. It was natural for him to feel that he had cause to sigh. He could not believe her to be encouraging him.
Emma, deluded as ever, is, of course, half-expecting a proposal, or at least a declaration of love. In reality Frank Churchill, suspecting that Emma has guessed his secret, has got very close to telling her that he is engaged to Jane Fairfax. A careful reading of the passage shows clearly that what he is about to confide is related not to Hartfield, but to his visit to the Bates’s.
So Frank Churchill departs, to the distress of Highbury and, no doubt, the satisfaction of Mr. Knightley, and we come to the clue of Jane Fairfax and the letters. We do not hear of her going out to the post office to collect her personal mail until Frank Churchill is no longer at Highbury. We learn that Jane is receiving letters, which she prefers to collect herself, at the dinner party which Emma gives for Mr. Elton and his new bride, when Mr. John Knightley, sitting next to Jane, expresses the hope that she did not venture too far that morning during the wet weather. He says:
“The post office has a great charm at one period of our lives. When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for.”
Immediately the kind Mrs. Weston expresses concern that Miss Fairfax has been out in the rain and the officious Mrs. Elton pesters her with offers that her servants can fetch the mail. Jane, of course, is quietly adamant. In the early nineteenth century young men and young women did not correspond unless they were engaged, and for Frank Churchill to be known to be corresponding with Jane Fairfax would be fatal to their secret.
And it is, of course, one of these letters which puts them in danger again once Frank has returned. This is in Chapter 5 of the third volume of the novel, where Emma, Harriet and Mr. Knightley, taking an evening walk, fall in with Mr. and Mrs. Weston, Frank Churchill, Miss Bates and Jane Fairfax. Emma invites them all back to Hartfield, and they are turning into the grounds when Mr. Perry passes on horse-back and the gentlemen speak of his horse. We then have this conversation:
“By the bye,” said Frank Churchill to Mrs. Weston presently, “what became of Mr. Perry’s plan of setting up his carriage?”
Mrs. Weston looked surprised, and said, “I did not know that he ever had any such plan.”
“Nay, I had it from you. You wrote me word of it three months ago.”
“Me! Impossible!”
Frank, obviously embarrassed, suggests that he must have dreamed of Mr. Perry’s carriage and attempts to change the conversation by suggesting that Miss Smith walks as if she were tired. But he cannot so easily rid himself of the subject. Miss Bates confirms that there was indeed such an idea for Mrs. Perry herself had mentioned it to Mrs. Bates. She said:
“Jane, don’t you remember grandmamma’s telling us of it when we got home? I forget where we had been walking to—very likely to Randalls; yes, I think it was to Randalls … I never mentioned it to a soul that I know of … Extraordinary dream indeed!”
It was at that moment, when they were entering the hall, that Mr. Knightley glances at Jane. He sees confusion suppressed or laughed away in Frank Churchill’s face, who seems determined to capture Jane’s eye, but Jane passes between them into the hall and looks at neither. The John Knightleys and their children are at Hartfield at this time and a little later all the company sit themselves round a circular table to play with the children’s alphabets, forming words for each other. Frank Churchill places a word before Miss Fairfax. She discovers it, and with a faint smile pushes it away, leaving the letters to be immediately mixed up with the others. But Harriet picks it up and, with the help of Mr. Knightley, rearranges the letters to form the word “blunder.” Harriet exultingly proclaims it and there is a blush on Jane’s cheek. It is indeed a blunder. Who else could have conveyed to Frank the news of Mr. Perry’s proposal to set up a carriage but Jane Fairfax.
And there are, of course, other clues. If we wonder why Frank Churchill should suddenly have remembered his obligation to his father and his father’s bride, we may ask ourselves why Jane Fairfax is content to remain so long at Highbury when she has a standing invitation from Colonel and Mrs. Campbell to join them in Ireland with the Dixons. Frank, of course, attempts to explain this, at least to Emma, by their joint collusion in the idea that Jane cannot be with the Dixons since she has seduced Mr. Dixon’s affections from his bride. But this doesn’t prevent Emma from finding it strange that Jane should wish to stay at Highbury. As she says to Frank Churchill:
“I’m sure there must be a particular cause for her chusing to come to Highbury instead of going with the Campbells to Ireland. Here, she must be leading a life of privation and penance; there it would have been all enjoyment. As to the pretence of trying her native air, I look upon that as a mere excuse … What can anybody’s native air do for them in the months of January, February and March?”
But Jane, of course, cannot bear to leave Highbury. Frank Churchill could not possibly visit her either in London or in Ireland, but he had every excuse for coming regularly to Highbury whenever he could obtain Mrs. Churchill’s consent.
And then there is the telling incident at the Donwell Abbey strawberry-picking. Jane is monopolized by Mrs. Elton and officiously urged to take the desirable situation as governess which Mrs. Elton has procured for her. Frank Churchill has promised to ride over from Richmond and is eagerly awaited, but still has not arrived. And then Jane, in obvious distress, tells Emma that she must walk home, refuses the use of the Hartfield carriage and sets off alone. Fifteen minutes later Frank Churchill arrives and for the first time Emma, and we, see him in a serious bad temper: deploring the heat, almost wishing he hadn’t come, saying he’s too hot to eat, and announcing that he’s tired of England and proposes, as soon as his aunt is well enough, to go abroad. But surely Frank Churchill, arriving fifteen minutes after Jane Fairfax left, must have met her on the road. He admits as much, but doesn’t even mention her name. He says:
“You will all be going soon, I suppose; the whole party breaking up. I met one as I came—Madness in such weather! Absolute madness!”
It doesn’t occur to Emma, nor did it to me when I first read the novel, that Frank Churchill’s bad temper is the result of that encounter on the road with a distressed and reproachful Jane.
Jane can bear it no longer. She breaks off the engagement and becomes ill. Emma feels real compassion, but her efforts at help, and even her arrowroot, are spurned. Jane is consumed with jealousy and distress. But then, of course, all ends happily. Mrs. Churchill, who was never admitted by anyone to be seriously ill, justifies her hypochondria by dying. Frank Churchill has no difficulty in obtaining the easy-going Mr. Churchill’s consent to his marriage, and returns triumphantly to Highbury to claim his bride.
The news of the engagement is initially greeted with great distress by the Westons, who were completely taken in by Frank’s attentions to Emma. But when they realize that Emma’s heart is untouched, they are reconciled, as is the whole of Highbury. But it is surprising that the engagement should cause such widespread astonishment. The clues to
the truth were there for them to deduce as they are for us. But only the perceptive Mr. Knightley suspected the truth.
The reader has small excuse for misinterpreting Mr. Elton’s matrimonial aspirations, but here Emma is particularly obtuse. Mr. Elton’s visits to Hartfield are to commend himself to her, not because he knows he will find Harriet there. His tender sighings over Harriet’s portrait, painted by Emma, and the care he takes to convey the precious consignment to London for framing, is because he aspires to the artist not the sitter. The conundrum he writes and sends anonymously is obviously meant for Emma, and even Emma is struck by the incongruity of ascribing bright eyes and a ready wit to her friend. Mr. Elton has no intention of missing Mrs. Weston’s dinner party just because Harriet Smith is ill. And there is the evidence of character, as important in well-written detective stories as it is in Emma, and always the most telling of clues. Mr. Elton is the last person to court a penniless and illegitimate girl. As Mr. Knightley tells Emma:
“Elton is a very good sort of man and a very respectable vicar of Highbury, but not at all likely to make an imprudent match. He knows the value of a good income as well as anybody. Elton may talk sentimentally, but he will act rationally.”
But Emma’s final misunderstanding, that Mr. Knightley seriously wishes to marry Harriet, was perhaps fortunate. It was only when she was faced with this appalling possibility that Emma admitted the truth. Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself. When we come to consider Mr. Knightley and his love for Emma—and he tells her at the end of the book that he has loved her since she was thirteen—the strongest clue is undoubtedly the amount of time he spends at Hartfield. He does, in fact, visit Emma and her father daily, sitting with them in the evenings, and this can hardly be for the lively pleasure of Mr. Woodhouse’s company.
And Mr. Knightley is always genuinely interested in every aspect of Emma’s welfare, even her reading list and her handwriting. He takes the trouble to correct her when he thinks her wrong and to praise her when she does right, but he does it always as an equal, not as a patronizing superior or with avuncular condescension. He respects her intelligence as well as admiring her beauty and to that beauty he is certainly not impervious. As he says to Mrs. Weston, “I love to look at her,” and we can picture him as he sits, night after night, in the drawing-room at Hartfield enduring the tedium of Mr. Woodhouse’s conversation and the fire which Mr. Woodhouse’s tender habits require on almost every evening of the year, resting his eyes on Emma’s lovely face before walking home to the coolness and solitude of Donwell Abbey.
The second and perhaps the strongest clue is, of course, his unreasonable jealousy of Frank Churchill. The announcement that Frank is at last to visit his father and his father’s new wife causes a general flutter of anticipation in Highbury which Emma shares. Mr. Knightley must be aware that the Westons hope that Emma and Frank will fall in love. Mr. Knightley betrays jealous disapproval of the young man even before his arrival. When Frank Churchill defers his first visit because of pressure from Enscombe, no one is more censorious than Mr. Knightley.
“There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chuses, and that is, his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution.”
Emma argues vigorously that without being acquainted with Enscombe and Mrs. Churchill’s temper they should not be too hard on Frank Churchill, and accuses Mr. Knightley of being determined to think ill of him.
“Me! Not at all,” replies Mr. Knightley, rather displeased, “I do not want to think ill of him. I should be as ready to acknowledge his merits as any other man, but I hear of none, except what are merely personal, that he is well grown and good-looking, with smooth, plausible manners.”
Their argument continues, and when Emma points out that her love for Mr. and Mrs. Weston gives her a decided prejudice in Frank Churchill’s favour, Mr. Knightley says crossly, “He is a person I never think of from one month’s end to another,” a somewhat surprising assertion since he has obviously been giving a great deal of thought to Mr. Churchill’s defects of character and behaviour and has spent the last half-hour vigorously arguing about him.
And when Frank Churchill does at last arrive—a day early, which is a little inconsiderate of him bearing in mind Mrs. Weston’s desire to have everything at Randalls perfect for his arrival—only Mr. Knightley doesn’t join in the general praise of him throughout the parishes of Donwell and Highbury. Hearing about his trip to London to have his hair cut, he comments, “Hum! Just the trifling silly fellow I took him for.” He even criticizes his handwriting. “I do not admire it. It wants strength. It is like a woman’s writing.” And Mr. Knightley is alone in disliking the prospect of the ball at the Crown where, of course, Miss Woodhouse and Mr. Frank Churchill will undoubtedly shine. Mr. Knightley, the normally fair-minded and judicious Mr. Knightley, can’t say a good word for Frank Churchill until, at the end of the novel, “Emma is his Emma by hand and word” and we read:
If he could have thought of Frank Churchill then, he might have deemed him a very good sort of fellow.
And if Mr. Knightley is constantly in Emma’s company, continually concerned with her welfare and her conduct, he is certainly seldom out of Emma’s mind. Every male character is judged against him. Much as she liked Mr. Weston’s open manners and friendliness to all,
she felt, that to be the favourite and intimate of a man who had so many intimates and confidantes, was not the very first distinction in the scale of vanity … General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.—She could fancy such a man.
It is of course a precise description of Mr. Knightley. And when Emma, accompanied by Harriet, pays a wedding visit to the newly married Eltons, there is another clue given with great subtlety. Mrs. Elton says:
“‘My friend Knightley’ had been so often mentioned that I was really impatient to see him; and I must do my caro sposo the justice to say that he need not be ashamed of his friend. Knightley is quite the gentleman. I like him very much. Decidedly, I think, a very gentleman-like man.”
Emma can hardly contain her indignation until they have left the house:
“Insufferable woman!” was her immediate exclamation. “Worse than I had supposed. Absolutely insufferable! Knightley!—I could not have believed it. Knightley!—never seen him in her life before, and call him Knightley!—and to discover that he is a gentleman! A little upstart, vulgar being, with her Mr. E, and her caro sposo, and her resources, and all her airs of pert pretension and under-bred finery. Actually to discover that Mr. Knightley is a gentleman! I doubt whether he will return the compliment, and discover her to be a lady.”
She then wonders what Frank Churchill would say about it if he were here and adds:
“Always the first person to be thought of! How I catch myself out! Frank Churchill comes as regularly into my mind!”
But she hasn’t, of course, been thinking of Frank Churchill. It has been Mr. Knightley who came first into her mind, Mr. Knightley of whom she constantly thinks.
When I discussed this talk with my daughter Jane, she reminded me of another example of Emma’s preoccupation with Mr. Knightley, which she described as “the clue of the spruce beer.” Harriet is demonstrating her total recovery from her infatuation with Mr. Elton by destroying in front of Emma her “most precious treasures”; the court plaister which Mr. Elton had worn on his cut finger and the end of an old pencil which Mr. Elton had used to make a note in his pocketbook about Mr. Knightley’s recipe for brewing spruce beer. “I do remember it,” cried Emma; “I perfectly remember it. Talking about spruce beer. Oh! yes—Mr. Knightley and I both saying we liked it, and Mr. Elton’s seeming resolved to learn to like it too. I perfectly remember it. Mr. Knightley was standing just here, was not he? I have an idea he was standing just here.”
And then there is her passionate argument with Mrs. Weston when her old governess suggests, after the ball, that Mr. Knightley might wish to marry Jane Fairfax. Emma, of course, ha
s convinced herself that her dislike of Mr. Knightley marrying anybody is based on her wish that her nephew, Henry, shall eventually inherit the Donwell property.
“Mr. Knightley and Jane Fairfax!” she exclaims. “Dear Mrs. Weston, how could you think of such a thing?—Mr. Knightley!—Mr. Knightley must not marry! You would not have little Henry cut out from Donwell?”
Then, a little later:
“I am sure he has not the least idea of it. Do not put it into his head. Why should he marry? He is as happy as possible by himself; with his farm, and his sheep, and his library, and all the parish to manage … he has no occasion to marry, either to fill up his time or his heart.”
And the argument continues with Emma increasing in virulence against the idea. As Mrs. Weston says:
“If Mr. Knightley really wished to marry, you would not have him refrain on Henry’s account, a boy of six years old, who knows nothing of the matter?”
We may suspect that Emma’s vehemence has very little to do with little Henry and his inheritance. Later Emma cannot resist a delicate hint to Mr. Knightley about his admiration for Jane Fairfax, and is told:
“That will never be … Miss Fairfax, I dare say, would not have me if I were to ask her, and I am very sure I shall never ask her.”
Emma compliments him on his lack of vanity and Jane Austen writes:
He seemed hardly to hear her; he was thoughtful—and in a manner which shewed him not pleased, soon afterwards said: “So you have been settling that I should marry Jane Fairfax?”
“No, indeed I have not. You have scolded me too much for match-making for me to presume to take such a liberty with you. What I said just now, meant nothing … Oh! no, upon my word, I have not the smallest wish for your marrying Jane Fairfax, or Jane anybody. You would not come and sit with us in this comfortable way, if you were married.”
