You have sinn’d & must suffer. – Then further he said
These races & revels & dissolute measures
With which you’re debasing a neighbouring Plain
Let them stand – you shall meet with your curse in
your pleasures
Set off for your course, I’ll pursue with my rain.
Ye cannot but know my command o’er July
Henceforward I’ll triumph in shewing my powers
Shift your race as you will it shall never be dry
The curse upon Venta is July in showers.’66
Jane Austen’s last work, characteristically enough, is a comic poem about the English weather.
REMEMBERING JANE
‘Behold me immortal!’ When Jane Austen imagined St Swithin’s refusal to lie down and be forgotten, she probably did not feel as confident about her own long-term survival. For all her contemporary success, in 1817 her chosen genre was still regarded as relatively minor and was yet to achieve recognition as serious literature. During the nineteenth century, as the novel grew in stature, so did Jane Austen’s literary standing. Despite the incomprehension of readers like Charlotte Brontë, Austen’s novels continued to be enjoyed and increasingly attracted a powerful body of influential admirers. For George Henry Lewes, the well-known writer, editor, reviewer and partner of George Eliot, there was no question of Jane Austen’s work being forgotten, as he announced to readers of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1859: ‘Such art as hers can never grow old, can never be superseded.’67 His prediction has proven true. By the end of the nineteenth century, Jane Austen’s novels were appearing in numerous editions, often beautifully bound and illustrated, while the foremost critics of the day were describing her as the Shakespeare of English prose. There were even special words for her supporters: the Oxford English Dictionary records the use of ‘Janeite’ as early as 1896, with ‘Austenite’ and ‘Austenian’ being coined in the early twentieth century as the numbers devoted to her work and memory continued to grow.
Interest in Jane Austen’s own life was stimulated initially by the brief but affectionate ‘Biographical Notice’ written by her brother Henry to accompany Northanger Abbey and Persuasion when they were published together a few months after her death. He revised the short, but important, account when all the novels were brought out as a set in 1833. But it was not until 1870 that the first substantial biography appeared, written by James Austen’s son James Edward Austen-Leigh, one of the pallbearers at his aunt’s funeral in 1817, who felt duty-bound to collect any surviving family memories to compile a suitable tribute. A Memoir of Jane Austen stimulated renewed interest in the novels, especially when it reappeared in 1871 with fresh material, including the startling tale of ‘Lady Susan’. Despite introducing Victorian readers to the unabashed amorality of Lady Susan, the Memoir also established a clear image of the novelist herself – as a retiring maiden aunt, living quietly with her mother and sister in a tiny country village. As critical interest in Austen’s work became more serious, the popular idea of Jane Austen’s rural England, filled with pretty girls in pretty gowns and a life untroubled by anything more difficult than the choice of dress or dancing partner, began to take root. The enduring appeal of Austen’s work to numerous readers found permanent form a century after her death when, amid the devastation of the First World War, supporters from Britain and America commissioned a memorial tablet for Jane Austen’s home at Chawton. Soon after the war, R. W. Chapman began work on the first scholarly edition of Jane Austen’s novels, published by Oxford University Press in 1923. Her status as a major author was now beyond doubt, and Chapman’s edition provided a sound basis for the studies of her work and for the paperback editions that poured from numerous presses in the following decades. Jane Austen had the honour of being ‘the first modern novelist’ conferred on her by F. R. Leavis, whose confident judgements influenced a whole generation of younger scholars and writers. When Ian Watt published his seminal The Rise of the Novel in 1957, Jane Austen was singled out as the culmination of eighteenth-century experimentation and the inaugurator of the great English novel of the nineteenth century. At a time when women writers seemed to be slipping out of critical sight, Jane Austen’s reputation remained secure. As feminist critics in the late 1970s and ’80s began to challenge the male domination of the literary canon, Jane Austen, though hardly in need of rescue, received a wave of new attention from readers who especially admired her clear treatment of issues relating to women. Familiar assumptions about the novels were overturned by critics who saw a figure such as Emma Woodhouse not as a flawed heroine in need of careful correction, but as an icon of female empowerment. At the same time, sharpened awareness of the historical contexts in which Austen wrote meant that readers were more alert to issues such as slavery in Mansfield Park, or to the political implications of her great estates and naval characters.
While academic debates have raged over Jane Austen’s politics or lack of political awareness, the wider enthusiasm for her work has continued unabated. The development of film and television in the twentieth century provided an entirely new stage for Jane Austen’s characters, many of whom are now initially encountered on screens rather than pages. Aldous Huxley wrote the screenplay for the first cinematic adaptation of Pride and Prejudice in 1940, and the BBC made a pioneering production of Emma in 1948. Since then, Jane Austen has remained a staple of television costume drama, and from the 1990s onwards, her novels have been transformed into a bewildering sequence of lavish offerings, attracting the most celebrated actors and producers. In 1995 alone, Kate Winslet made her name as Marianne Dashwood in Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility, Amanda Root gave a brilliant performance as Anne Elliot in Roger Michell’s Persuasion, Amy Heckerling interpreted Emma for the cult teen movie Clueless, and Andrew Davies’s six-part adaptation of Pride and Prejudice fixed the image of a dripping Mr Darcy in the minds of millions of BBC viewers. The appetite for watching Jane Austen’s stories seems unappeasable, every year bringing new versions to compete with those already in circulation.
Film-makers have not limited themselves to adapting the novels. Jane Austen’s life has also caught the imagination of audiences around the world, providing the inspiration for Becoming Jane in 2007. James Edward Austen-Leigh and his sisters would probably have been surprised by this twenty-first-century Hollywood treatment of their aunt, who is embodied in the beautiful form of Anne Hathaway and depicted in the grip of a mutual passion. As such, the Jane Austen of contemporary imagination is youthful, confident and energetic, equally handy with a cricket bat as with a pen. She cuts quite a different figure from the late-Victorian Miss Austen, with her neat little writing desk and exquisite needlecraft. Each generation creates its idea of Jane Austen, who lives for ever in her own books. Over two centuries have passed since her words were first heard through the printed pages of Sense and Sensibility. But, far from becoming fainter with the passage of time, her voice, if altering at all, has grown stronger and clearer as the years have gone by.
AFTERWORD
When Jane Austen spoke of being ‘in love with’ Clarkson, in a private letter of 1813, she was referring to the indefatigable anti-slavery campaigner Thomas Clarkson and his splendid History, which charted the progress of the abolitionist movement.68 Two hundred years later, the name of Clarkson would be linked very publicly to her own in a rather different kind of campaign. Once the news broke in 2012 that the American singer Kelly Clarkson was about to return to the United States with a ring belonging to Jane Austen, there was a national outcry in Britain. Clarkson had bought the ring entirely legitimately at an auction sale for £152,450, but so powerful was the wave of public feeling that the Culture Secretary felt obliged to impose a temporary export embargo, giving indignant supporters the chance to raise sufficient funds to save the ring for the nation. For many of her readers, the very idea of Jane Austen sporting a pretty gold and turquoise ring came as something of a surprise. Her novels are hardly gem-bespangled and, when an item of jewellery
does appear, it is often a focus of attention – and tension. Edward Ferrars’s arrival at Barton Cottage wearing a ring containing a lock of fair hair causes almost as much consternation as the gold necklaces given to Fanny Price in Mansfield Park. It was oddly appropriate, then, that the author’s own ring should have generated such powerful feeling. Within a year, the money had been raised, Kelly Clarkson graciously withdrew her right of possession, and the ring went on display at the Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, where it remains. Ardent admirers can even buy a replica for £450.
If Jane Austen endured her painful last days by amusing herself with thoughts of St Swithin’s reaction to his canonisation, she might (or might not) have been comforted by the knowledge that her own supporters would eventually come to regard her with similar reverence. Anything touched by Jane Austen is now treated almost as a religious relic: revered, coveted, contested and finally displayed at a shrine for pilgrims to wonder at. Chawton Cottage now attracts some 40,000 visitors a year, all wanting to see the bedroom in which she slept in, the donkey cart in which she travelled in, the little round table at which she sat and wrote. The gardener at Chawton even has to contend with devotees determined to scatter the ashes of loved ones on the earth where Jane Austen once walked. Her significance in English literary history has been abundantly evident since the beginning of the twentieth century, but her peculiar place in broader cultural life only became fully apparent towards its close. In the decade since the original version of this short biography was completed, Jane Austen’s stature has assumed extraordinary proportions – and shows no sign of shrinking.
Famous authors inspire many different kinds of devotion, ranging from the serious scholarship of those whose lives are spent studying the work to the creative responses of artists and writers in every medium. Then there is the design and production of remarkably varied merchandise aimed at the largest band of followers: enthusiastic readers, viewers and visitors. ‘Jane Austen’ has long since ceased to refer solely to a woman novelist who lived between 1775 and 1817; it has expanded to encompass an icon and an industry.
As the twenty-first century rolled into its second decade, the bicentenary of Jane Austen’s first published novel generated fresh interest in a novelist whose reputation was in need of no help. Celebrations of Sense and Sensibility set the scene for 2011, but it was a new portrait of Jane Austen that really stole the media attention, forming the centrepiece of the BBC’s Austenfest on Boxing Day that year. Paula Byrne’s identification of Jane Austen as the sitter in a Regency portrait she owned was a very significant development – not least because, until then, the only portrait known to have been taken from life was the little watercolour sketch by Cassandra. This slender, upright woman sitting in front of a window in Westminster was very different from the subject of the intimate sketch by Jane Austen’s sister, but Paula Byrne was struck by the facial resemblance to portraits of the Austen brothers, an insight prompted by the name on the back of the picture: ‘Jane Austin’. Her energetic and persuasive case for the authenticity of this newly discovered Austen portrait did not carry universal conviction, and probably will not unless the crucial question of provenance, essential for all firm attributions in the art world, is resolved. The picture nevertheless went on display at the Jane Austen’s House Museum and was reproduced in Byrne’s biography, The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things.
An even more significant event for Austen scholars that year was the Bodleian Library’s acquisition of the manuscript of ‘The Watsons’. (The purchase also attracted considerable media attention, largely on account of the sum involved: £993,250.) Very little of Jane Austen’s fiction survives in its original form, so this was a unique opportunity to secure an early, unfinished draft in Jane Austen’s own handwriting. This precious remnant, like the unpublished Sanditon, similarly scored with crossings-out and second thoughts, offers rare insight into Austen’s creative process, otherwise lost in the transition from manuscript to print. Hints in the letters and family anecdotes about the writer who firmly lopped and cropped her stories are fully corroborated by these brief but invaluable manuscript fragments.
There has never been any doubt about the importance of Austen’s manuscripts, but it is only in the past decade that they have become accessible to a wide audience. Excitement over ‘The Watsons’ was fanned by an extraordinary website. Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts is an online resource launched in October 2010 that enables people all over the world to see what survives of the hand-written narratives, simply by visiting janeausten.ac.uk. Here are the three volumes of her juvenilia; here is the original ending of Persuasion; here is Sanditon, with no end in sight. Anyone can now take a look at the flourishes of her teenage quill that adorn the dedications and finales of early gifts to family members.
The digitisation of the fiction manuscripts, carried out by Kathryn Sutherland and her expert team, has made the potential of utilising electronic technology to enlarge understanding of the novels abundantly evident. The visual possibilities of computer graphics have also begun to open up other areas of Jane Austen’s world. In May 1813, Jane Austen, flushed with excitement over the publication of Pride and Prejudice, was staying with her brother Henry and taking the opportunity to visit the London art galleries. At an exhibition put on by the Society of Painters in Oil and Watercolours, she was very pleased to spot a portrait resembling Jane Bennet: ‘Mrs Bingley’s is exactly herself, size, shaped face, features & sweetness; there never was a greater likeness. She is dressed in a white gown, with green ornaments, which convinces me of what I had always supposed, that green was a favourite colour with her.’69 Jane Austen also supposed that ‘Mrs D. will be in yellow’, but the gallery failed to offer a suitable candidate. A few days later, at the Reynolds retrospective in Pall Mall, she was again disappointed to find no image matching her idea of Elizabeth Bennet (‘I can only imagine that Mr D. prizes any Picture of her too much to like it should be exposed to the public eye’70). Her unsatisfactory search has now borne unexpected fruit in the form of a virtual reconstruction of the Reynolds exhibition of 1813. The What Jane Saw project, led by the Austen scholar Janine Barchas, allows present-day viewers to enter the gallery, admire the paintings and even move from room to room. They will not spot an image of Elizabeth Bennet, but they can at least find out what she did not look like, in the eyes of the ultimate authority.
The author often regarded as quintessentially English is now an international phenomenon, as immediate to those in the Antipodes as in Andover. The Jane Austen Society of the United Kingdom was founded in 1940, chiefly to help with the preservation of the Chawton home. It has since grown into a flourishing organisation with numerous members and meetings. Branches have spread across the British Isles; new societies continue to sprout all over the world. The Jane Austen Society of Pakistan meets annually in December for a birthday tea party, while the Jane Austen Society of Australia celebrates with a pre-Christmas lunch in Sydney. Spain is one of the more recent countries to launch a Jane Austen Society, now offering competitions, conversations and reading clubs, while the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA), founded in 1979, currently boasts some 5,000 members and seventy regional branches, as well as a reputation for exuberant annual meetings and an excellent online journal, Persuasions.
The bicentenary of Pride and Prejudice in 2013 was a global phenomenon, marked by a celebrity readathon in Bath, exhibitions in Canterbury, Chawton, Edinburgh, Gretna Green, London, Lyme Park, Oxford and Winchester, study days in Brighton, Chawton, London, Oxford and York, and international conferences in Adelaide, Brisbane, Cambridge, Chicago, New York, Singapore and Tokyo. Regency balls and dinners abounded, Austen weekends became de rigueur, Cunard launched Austen-related transatlantic cruises. The Royal Mail entered into the mood of the moment by issuing a set of stamps to honour the occasion and designing a special postmark for letters sent from Chawton or Steventon in the publication anniversary week. Even the Bank of England did its bit to bolster Jane’
s fame. In the year of Pride and Prejudice, Governor Mark Carney announced that Jane Austen would be the face of the new £10 note, replacing Charles Darwin (who, as a great admirer of her novels, would probably have had no objection).
Jane Austen herself might well have been amused by Cassandra’s little portrait being transformed into currency, as well as by the choice of accompanying quotation: ‘I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!’ She composed these words for Miss Bingley, whose preference, in fact, is more for banknotes than books. The portrayal of Jane Austen on a £10 note is in keeping with a view long held by certain critics that money was a major preoccupation for her. W. H. Auden’s comment is the pithiest: in his ‘Letter to Lord Byron’, he confessed to being shocked to see ‘An English spinster of the middle class . . . Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety / The economic basis of society.’71 What would Auden have had to say about the handful of ‘Jane Austen fivers’ that began to circulate late in 2016, on which a tiny portrait of Austen engraved by Graham Short increased the notes’ value to £50,000? Or about the auction in March 2017 at which a first edition of Pride and Prejudice sold for £38,000?
‘Jane Austen’ is big business. Pride and Prejudice has been précised and presented via kittens, knitted figures and guinea pigs dressed in bonnets and lace. There are peg doll kits and cut-out cards of Mr Darcy. Quotations from the novels have found their way onto bags, bookmarks and bracelets, mugs and mousemats, cushion covers and caps. Marketing opportunities are a sign of modern success, but the merchandise tells much about the enduring appeal of Jane Austen. Whatever earlier literary critics may have had to say about the transcendent truths embodied in her words, the memorabilia tells another story. The Jane Austen action figure, striding confidently ahead with pen in hand, is a different Jane from the late-Victorian image of the spinster aunt at her tiny table. What Lady Catherine de Bourgh offered as a crushing insult to Elizabeth Bennet is now sported proudly on T-shirts: ‘Obstinate Headstrong Girl’.
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