Austen

 

The most complete writer

Nobody tells a tale like Jane Austen. The exquisite changes of gear, bends and reversals in an Austen novel are in the same league as a Quentin Tarantino script, only the dramatic payoffs are ten times more powerful, and the emotional satisfaction lasts permanently. This effect she achieves by creating some of the greatest characters to breathe on a page, and by casting them in the greatest stories ever narrated, which are, somehow, at once utterly probable and fairytale-like. Had she lived beyond 42, no doubt new depths of literary perfection would have been discovered, and we would be talking about her in the same breath as Shakespeare, though in my personal reckoning she surpasses him already in many respects.

The 200 year-old language is slightly quaint and the sentences are often long (though constructed so damn well that you'd seldom get lost in them), but you will rapidly get used to all that, and then delight in it. Unfamiliarity of words is never beyond the level of 'solicitude' (= concern) and 'sensibility' (= sensitivity). These are small hurdles in the way of epic rewards.

On screen

I've put together my Austen "memorabilia" here, containing among other things recommendations of film adaptations.

Visiting Jane

Excerpts from my memoirs of England, summer 2024

Day 1 of road trip

Jane Austen’s House, Old Harry Rocks [Dorset National Landscape], Corfe Castle.

The best day in England.

As we exited Belvedere and got on the motorway I felt a Vancouvery familiarity, as if we were driving to Fort Langley and Chilliwack, except on the wrong side of the road. The texture and colour of the road were nothing distinctive, and I had no trouble going back to American mode behind the wheel, except perhaps for some indiscipline in keeping to a lane. S called Chawton to let them know we were running late, and got "Just come in, we'll slot you in." About five miles out, I was already noting that Jane may have walked these fields.

The exit into Chawton, though banal, struck me as incongruously modern. A signpost pointed us to left, and I turned in somehow expecting the House to be at the far end. But I had clean passed it, so came back, parked at the public lot across, and got my first look. It was very much what it was in the pictures, except there was also asphalt and a roundabout in my vision, and a motorway and exit in my short-term memory: this was not a brick-house by a farm with English trees and narrow walks around. But it was its own magic, and I couldn't complain about the blue sky. I said out loud: "We've been saying 'Jane Austen's House, Jane Austen's House' every time we saw the house in Victoria. Well, this is Jane Austen's House.” The plaque about her art being timeless was facing the street and by a bench, occupied by a senior who moved to acknowledge our photography. The blue plaques declaring the birth and residence of Austen's characters were here too, on the other side of the entrance. A sign requested that we don't congest Chawton as it was also a regular village. Another informed that this is where Austen spent the last eight years of her life and wrote all her six published novels. We took our tickets at the gift shop, dropped a 10 rupee note in the donation box on the strength of a Chinese banknote in there, had a swift look at the donkey cart plied by Austen, and stepped out to regard the House. On a clothesline was some Regency casual wear. A plaque revealed the House was already 300 years old when it came into the hands of Austen brother Edward Knight, changed hands after their time, and was acquired in the 1940s by the Society which turned it into a museum after restoration. We admired the chair-dotted lawn and the old-style toys on it, blankets for sitting, multi-flowered garden, the neighbour's house beyond the back fence, and used the toilets; I felt a touch guilty to do this at the Jane temple.

Now we were in. A woman in the drawing room checked our tickets, and we gazed at erstwhile paintings of the village, a piano and a bookshelf. A copy of Pride and Prejudice lay by a sofa at the centre. Next a vestibule, with signs on how the front entrance used to open into the street, and a little exhibit on Jane Austen's music practice. Presently we were in the bright dining room with meal props on a large table. In a corner by a grandfather clock was the actual table Jane Austen wrote on. Here we learnt the astonishing fact that the pastel-green wallpaper was a replica of the one used by the Austens. Then we ascended the stairs and entered Jane's bedroom.

This now was entirely surreal. I was looking at the four-posted bed that took up most of the room: surely this is not the cot Jane slept in? Is this the mirror that held for the genius her visage? Then I was gazing out the window at the sight on the yard that met her everyday. I had images of her walking to church or neighbours on lanes nearby. On the sill was a nice touch, a pot of paper flowers with petals made of Austen's printed prose. On the walls was narrated Cassandra's life. This — this was the moment to which I had looked forward again and again, this was the acme of my sweep through England. Had we done nothing else in this country but arrive here I would have returned a contented soul.

The surrealness piqued as we entered a room dedicated to Mansfield Park: no other Austen was given this privilege, at least not during our visit. I contributed a mini-review to the wall of Post It notes. Austen's personal collection of her coterie's reviews were put up, so were her "live tweets" to her sister as the manuscript developed, and all the controversies were openly discussed, including marriage between cousins. The end room was about her portraits and influence, including Winston Churchill's letter describing his solace in her words through illness, and a lovely precis that the true legacy of Austen was the emotional one. One more room by the corridor was about the Austen family, and by the exit below were old copies of the novels and the house's history. At the "learning centre" by the garden I tried on a jacket and top hat, and at the gift shop we bought a fridge magnet depicting the house, the only affordable item among beautiful books and swag. The chubby, coloured-haired girl at the counter handed us a map for a village walk to Chawton House, for which we lacked time.

[…]

We bypassed Winchester, hence the grave of Austen in its cathedral, for time's sake. Pretty soon we had to turn away from the motorway into the famed English country road. […]

Day 2 of road trip

Jane Austen Centre at Bath

[…]

Past the Circus – roundtana circumscribed by three building arcs that I mistook for the signature edifice on television shows – and on to Jane Austen Centre on Gay Street. As we had missed our slot the receptionist added us to the next one, and my explanatory “We had difficulty parking” elicited from a bonneted, gowned girl who had just flitted in “It is hard to find a spot for one’s carriage here”. It took me a couple of seconds to register that she was in character. While we waited I went down to the WC, which had Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle on the doors. As we then waited in a mini-theatre lounge, in walked a dashing young man – dark blue overcoat, brown hair, and brilliant smile – who ushered us into an adjoining classroom. He introduced himself as Charles Bingley, which suited him perfectly, and embarked on a loving history of Jane and family, their time in Steventon, Bath and Chawton, most charmingly presented and with masterly timing. Some information from the previous day was repeated, e.g., that Cassandra Austen destroyed Jane’s letters because “the sisters kept nothing from each other, and Jane could be a nasty gossip”. He showed five props of Jane’s images, each increasingly dubious. The silhouette, he offered with apologies, was probably not Jane because she was described as tall and slender, whereas this was “too busty. There, I’ve said it.” The last one where she poses writing with Westminster Abbey in the window was almost certainly a fantasy as there is no building offering that angle.

We moved on to a passageway that described the social history of the time, and into a theatre showing a campy skit touring Jane Austen’s Bath; I smiled when the middle-aged lady pined for Captain Wentworth at the expense of her husband. Out through another passageway, where Bingley had reappeared, addressing everyone as “sir” and “ma’am”, and presently urged me and S to peer at a large newspaper page from two centuries ago mentioning something about Jane’s relatives – a theft, perhaps? – which, as I noted to him, answered my question of whether the Austen family was mentioned in written records of the city. Taking a leaf out of another’s book, I got a picture with him, in the process putting in, “Which is your favourite Jane Austen novel?” He couldn’t answer in full at first, distracted by other visitors, but came back to warm my heart to the effect of:
“Pride and Prejudice is wonderful, but I am very partial to Emma. In the beginning I just want to shake her up, but she improves through the novel – ”
“‘Badly done, Emma’,” I interjected.
“ ‘Badly done, Emma’. I love the evolution of the story.”
I mentioned that Emma was S’ favourite, too, and that for me it was a three-way tie between Emma, Mansfield Park and, of course, Pride and Prejudice. He excitedly chimed in on Mansfield Park’s boldness and controversy, and I returned that I was absolutely happy to find a room dedicated to it in Chawton the previous day. This moment marks an indelible highlight of my life. I had never encountered another man of my age who had scrutinized – and loved – Austen, and here was a kindred spirit if there ever was one. Besides, I had managed to make Charles Bingley talk about worlds outside of his existence.

There was a room next where we tried calligraphy with a quill and ink stand, and another with Austen-era games – cards, cup-and-ball at which Jane excelled (going 100x), Pick Up Sticks – in one corner, a waxwork of Austen in another, but mainly dedicated to modern adaptations of Austen, replete with Emma Thompson’s peachy letter to the Centre. Bingley bowed out: “You have a lovely rest of the day, sir”, and Wickham in red militia garb took our picture with the waxwork. While waiting for S to return from the bathroom I read the chapter on Henry VIII in Austen’s A History of England at the gift shop.

Quotes

• Edmund Clerihew Bentley

"The novels of Jane Austen
Are the ones to get lost in.
I wonder if Labby
Has read Northanger Abbey."

• Roger Ebert

"I read Jane Austen for a simple reason, not gender-related: I cannot put her down and often return to her in times of trouble."

"Jane Austen wrote six of the most beloved novels in the English language, we are informed at the end of Becoming Jane, and so she did. The key word is "beloved." Her admirers do not analyze her books so much as they just plain love them to pieces."

• Mark Forsyth here

"Christ, it's hard to write like Austen."

• A misguided Mark Twain

"I often want to criticise Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Everytime I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone."

"To me his prose is unreadable — like Jane Austin's [sic]. No there is a difference. I could read his prose on salary, but not Jane's. Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity that they allowed her to die a natural death."

"Jane Austen? Why I go so far as to say that any library is a good library that does not contain a volume by Jane Austen. Even if it contains no other book."

• Connie Willis

"When you tell people you write Science Fiction, they say, “Oh, space ship and aliens,” and then want to know your qualifications … "I suppose you majored in science.”
It's best to nod, even if you majored in English. You won't get anywhere trying to explain that you subscribe to the Miss Marple theory of literature, which maintains that you don't have to go farther than your front yard to understand the universe. (Even though Jane Austen subscribed to it, too.)"

• An insufficiently patient P G Wodehouse

"How do you feel about literary classics? I have come to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with me, because I can't read them. I tried Jane Austen and was bored stiff, …"

• Virginia Woolf here

"One of those fairies who perch upon cradles must have taken her a flight through the world directly she was born. When she was laid in the cradle again she knew not only what the world looked like, but had already chosen her kingdom. She had agreed that if she might rule over that territory, she would covet no other. Thus at fifteen she had few illusions about other people and none about herself. Whatever she writes is finished and turned and set in its relation, not to the parsonage, but to the universe. She is impersonal; she is inscrutable."

"The balance of her gifts was singularly perfect. Among her finished novels there are no failures, and among her many chapters few that sink markedly below the level of the others."

• Rudyard Kipling

"Jane went to Paradise:
That was only fair.
Good Sir Walter met her first,
And led her up the stair.
Henry and Tobias,
And Miguel of Spain,
Stood with Shakespeare at the top
To welcome Jane —

Then the Three Archangels
Offered out of hand,
Anything in Heaven’s gift
That she might command.
Azrael’s eyes upon her,
Raphael’s wings above,
Michael’s sword against her heart,
Jane said: “Love.”

Instantly the under-
standing Seraphim
Laid their fingers on their lips
And went to look for him.
Stole across the Zodiac,
Harnessed Charles’s Wain,
And whispered round the Nebulae
“Who loved Jane?”

In a private limbo
Where none had thought to look,
Sat a Hampshire gentleman
Reading of a book.
It was called Persuasion,
And it told the plain
Story of the love between
Him and Jane.

He heard the question
Circle Heaven through —
Closed the book and answered:
“I did — and do!”
Quietly but speedily
(As Captain Wentworth moved)
Entered into Paradise
The man Jane loved!"

"Jane lies in Winchester — blessed be her shade!
Praise the Lord for making her, and her for all she made!
And while the stones of Winchester, or Milsom Street, remain,
Glory, love, and honour unto England’s Jane!"