Georgian Item of the Week

The Abolition: Olaudah Equiano

Portrait of Olaudah Equiano
Circa 1780
Previously attributed to Joshua Reynolds
Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter

Although forms of bondage had existed in West and Central Africa (and indeed in Europe) before the trans-Atlantic slave trade, human beings were rarely the main commodity at the African marketplace. In the modern world however, the enslaved African was inspected, assessed, auctioned, bought, sold and bartered by Europeans and treated in any manner his owner saw fit.

In 1788 an autobiographical work, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, was published in England, and which set the precedent for anti-slavery literature written by former slaves themselves, which would have a profound impact on the abolition movements in the eighteenth century. Equiano was born in what is modern day Nigeria and kidnapped by slave traders at the age of 11. He was owned by several masters, educated, adopted into Methodism and as he was allowed by his last owner to conduct business for himself, he eventually bought his freedom.

Among the tradition of slave narratives, Equiano's is considered a remarkable achievement since the autobiographical style was not a well-developed genre in the eighteenth century. His narrative has vivid details and is written in the picaresque style. Equiano provides a detailed account of his kidnapping, the unfathomable crossing of the Atlantic in the belly of a slave ship and the brutality, the bondage and the life he endured as a slave.

Impropriety by the Seaside. Part Three - Conclusion.

Parts One and Two Here
Weymouth

“Very lucky--marrying as they did, upon an acquaintance formed only in a public place!--They only knew each other, I think, a few weeks in Bath! Peculiarly lucky!-- for as to any real knowledge of a person's disposition that Bath, or any public place, can give--it is all nothing; there can be no knowledge.”

What is Frank Churchill doing in Emma when he makes this statement at the Box Hill Picnic? Ridiculing the Eltons, whom this speech was about, and expressing his disdain for them? Carrying on the campaign of deceit in Highbury to hide his secret engagement with Jane Fairfax, which had also been formed on a few weeks' acquaintance in a public watering place, Weymouth, and having a private, ironic joke about it? Trifling with the affections of Jane Fairfax by insinuating that he might have tired of their engagement? He is doing all of these simultaneously and moreover, giving voice to an opinion generally held at the time about acquaintances formed in public, and especially watering, places.

Mr Knightley holds this opinion himself and expresses it in his succinct history of their engagement:

“He meets with a young woman at a watering-place, gains her affection, cannot even weary her by negligent treatment--and had he and all his family sought round the world for a perfect wife for him, they could not have found her superior.”

The point being of course that at watering places such as Bath and Weymouth, unscrupulous men were far more likely to be snared by Isabella Thorpes and Lydia Bennets than be fortunate enough to gain the heart and hand of an incomparably superior Jane Fairfax. Interestingly, its Frank Churchill's impropriety that is more closely associated with seaside Weymouth than Jane Fairfax's. Even before he enters the storyline himself, he is depicted by Knightley as at his leisure in 'the idlest haunts in the kingdom' and 'forever at some watering-place or other' when it was his duty instead to visit his newly wedded father and stepmother in Highbury, though he had claimed to not be at liberty to do so. It is Weymouth furthermore that Emma envisions as the setting for feelings she imagines Jane Fairfax to have for Mr Dixon, a fantasy Frank Churchill encourages her in, pretending to speculate about illicit feelings between his own fiancé and Mr Dixon, a married man; an unfeeling ruse designed to turn any suspicious eyes away from himself.

It was unseemly undoubtedly of Jane Fairfax to agree to an engagement, and a clandestine one at that, with a man who's guardians it's known as a certainty will object to her poverty despite her excellent character and real attachment to their kinsman. The treatment she receives from Frank Churchill and Emma however, the irksomeness of Mrs Elton's attentions and the tediousness of Miss Bates', and the very uncomfortable notion that such a woman as Jane Fairfax should have to waste her life as a governess, more than makes up for losing her head by the seaside, no? On the topic of Mrs Elton, Austen gives her two portions of association, and rightly so. She hails from Bristol, and is courted in Bath.

Austen visited the seaside many times, and at many different spots, during her life. Impropriety by the seaside was on it's way to theming itself into an entire novel but Austen's last illness and her sad early death left her novel of a seaside town, entitled Sanditon unfinished

The Sanditon fragment may be read here at the University of Virginia Library website.

Conclusion

Georgian Item of the Week

Between the years 1729 and 1737 Henry Fielding wrote 25 plays, including his most well known, Tom Thumb but he acclaimed critical notice with his novels. The best known are The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), a picaresque novel in which the tangled comedies of coincidence are offset by the neat, architectonic structure of the story, and The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews (1742), a parody of Richardson's Pamela (1740). In 1734, he married Charlotte Cradock, who became his model for Sophia Western in Tom Jones and for the heroine of Amelia, the author's last novel.

In 1747, several years after Charlotte Fielding’s death, he caused some scandal by marrying his wife's maid and friend Mary Daniel - he was condemned by every snob in England. She was about to bear his child, and Fielding would not abandon her to disgrace.

Fielding's writings became more socially orientated – among other things, he opposed public hangings. After having studied the law throughout his life, he was appointed to the bar in 1740 and he was made justice of the peace for the City of Westminster in 1748 and for the county of Middlesex in 1749. He fought constantly against corruption and with his brother he set up the Bow Street Runners, a detective force that later turned into Scotland Yard. Fielding was a pioneer of the novel as an art form and Tom Jones has been the most admired of them all by many writers who followed him, including Jane Austen

Becoming Marketable

Biopics that meddle with historical figures and bend the facts to promote their agenda drive me crazy. At the same time, I love a good historical film. I am not immune to enjoying historical inaccuracy. A movie like Amadeus for example puts a person like me in a bit of a jam. On one hand, it’s a phenomenal production in every sense. On the other, it’s a total fabrication and thanks to it, Salieri will probably always be thought of by every body who takes biopics to be factual, as the murderer of Mozart. Which is really unfair if you happen to be Salieri; and which leads me again and unequivocally for the last time, to Becoming Jane. God, that title is so syrupy it makes me queasy.

It is true that Jane Austen and Tom Lefroy had a short but animated flirtation, that they were very much attracted to one another, and that Lefroy disappointed her. A very brief non-mention of him in one of her letters three years after their acquaintance ceased shows that she had cared for him but there is nothing to suggest a grand love. (I’m pretty sure ‘non-mention’ isn’t passable as a word but I think it describes Austen's allusional style of letter writing better than, well, allusion. Caveat: allusional is also not a word kids.) In his old age Lefroy told his nephew that he’d had ‘a boyish love’ for ‘the writer Jane Austen’ but I can’t help but wonder that if she had not become famous by the time this remark was made, would he have even remembered the short flirtation of their long distant youth?

I call it shabby indeed to build these few scratchings of a month long flirtation into a love affair and declare that it was a talented writer’s greatest influence. Austen’s influences were clearly drawn from the world around her, for her books are full of lives, the way of people and the way of the world, not just courtships. Those lives are diverse too and not often romantic: glimpses into the never ending workload of servants, the grubby port dwelling Prices, Harriet Smith and Eliza Williams of dubious and undesirable birth, Eliza Barton in a spunging-house¹, Mrs Smith in poverty and crippled, Dick Musgrove, a troublesome half-wit son, the grasping, offensive, stupid John Thorpe and a long list of gamblers, seducers and idiots. Her works feature sailors and soldiers at war, allusions to political unrest, ambition of every nature and moral ambiguity. If love isn’t the sole feature of her books, how can it reasonably be called her sole influence?

If an ado really had to be made about her love life, which I cannot consider as necessary or desirable, Austen was disappointed likewise by a Mr Holder of Ashe House as well as Tom Lefroy. Austen had evidentially expected a proposal from Holder, had even written of her disappointment to her sister, of their being ten minutes alone together in the same room and yet her not receiving any declaration. Austen appears to have had at least three serious suitors, two of whom she received definite proposals from, and denied, but it has been, more realistically in my opinion, speculated that if Austen ever had strong feelings for anyone, it was for the third, and a very shadowy personage, the Nameless Clergyman. In the summer of 1801 the Austens holidayed in Devonshire and formed a friendship with two brothers; a physician and a clergyman. Austen and the clergyman fell in love, apparently to the happiness and approval of all parties. The brothers intended to visit the Austens soon after the holiday was over, and the two factions even planned out a trip together for the following year. To quote from John Halperin²:

It was fully expected by the Austen family that at the first opportunity the clergyman would offer marriage, and that Jane would accept….Instead of an early reunion with her would-be fiancé Jane Austen, according to Cassandra³, received soon after from his brother notice of his death

Anybody who has become friendly with someone while on holiday, promised to keep in touch, and then never contacted them again, will know that such friendships do spring up and fizzle out in life, and that sometimes, rather than inflict hurt, a person will lie to get out of an acquaintance or obligation. But the possibility of lying about a brother’s death however, even to get out of a reconsidered and cooled attachment, seems too extreme to be probable. But it is possible and we can’t reject the possibility of this notice being untrue. Some of Austen’s letters from this time, like so many others, were censored and cut up by Cassandra Austen after her sister’s death and no further mention of the clergyman, his brother or their name can be found.

This censorship took place to preserve Austen’s reputation, or image rather, as a contented, dutiful and sedate woman. This white-washed image was gobbled up whole by a society nursing a conservative backlash that would soon fully unleash itself during the reign of Victoria, and distort every Austen biography or memoir for decades to follow. But it’s this very censorship, that Cassandra did not practice in the case of Lefroy or Holder or other suitors, that suggests that here there were real feelings and existing delicacies to be hurt by exposure to the public. What it comes down to is speculation nonetheless, and a little too much to call something biographic.

If a filmmaker were bent on producing an Austen love biopic, this tender history of a dead lover would seem far more likely material or at least be enough to discredit the notion of one young and immature man straight of college having an influence over the work of Austen for the rest of her life. Lefroy, I don’t doubt was focused on because, as he later became the Chief Justice of Ireland, there was plenty of information about his life to flesh him out and he happened to utter that claim to immortal association, of having had a ‘boyish love’ for her. The question of why a studio would make such a film can have at least two answers, and probably more. A feminist take would suggest that our society can’t handle the thought of a bold, intelligent woman becoming one of the greatest authors in the canon of English literature simply because she was brilliant, and must attribute the greatness of her works to the influence of men. A similarly cynical answer may be the most obvious: that thanks to the popularity of the screen adaptations of Austen’s novels, a love biopic about the writer herself, along with the bonus of permitting a usage of the carriages and corsets draw card, ever popular with the free spending female audience, is going to bring in buckets of cash, whether accurate or not.

¹A place of temporary confinement for debtors, kept by a bailiff, where debtors were sponged of all money they had on themselves, before being transferred to debtor's prison (Wikionary)

² Jane Austen's Lovers by John Halperin in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 25, No. 4, Nineteenth Century. (Autumn, 1985), pp. 719-736

³ Cassandra Austen, Jane Austen’s sister and chief correspondent.

Impropriety by the Seaside. Part Two.

Lyme
Although there is indecorousness at Uppercross, foolishness at Kellynch and snobbishness in Bath, the improprieties practiced by all almost every character in the first half of Persuasion are capped by the dangerous and interesting events of the novel taking place by the seaside, at Lyme. The careless intimacy between Captain Wentworth and Louisa Musgrove proceeds rapidly at Uppercross and in her child-like admiration of him ‘he had had to jump her from the stiles’ in all of their country walks. In fervor for the navy and by proxy, the sea, the Miss Musgroves fuel a trip for the Uppercross young people to Lyme, where Wentworth’s closest friends, the Harvilles and Captain Benwick, are quartered. On a walk on the Cobb there are some perilous stairs to be got down and as ‘the sensation was delightful to her’; Louisa is jumped down them by Captain Wentworth. Undoubtedly the sensation of being held in the captain’s hands was more delightful than jumping from heights. Headstrong and infatuated, Louisa insists on jumping again, from higher and with too little notice, and she falls unconscious and concussed onto the pavement. Louisa’s headstrong actions leave her barely conscious for weeks at Lyme and though she recovers, her near fatal fall alters her temperament, her former boisterousness gone and a quiet, nervous, sober girl emerges from the drama.

On the same trip to Lyme Anne Elliot twice briefly encounters a gentleman the party later learns to be Mr Elliot, the heir to Kellynch Hall and Anne’s cousin. His failure to properly attend the Elliot family, his marriage to a low woman and his disparaging remarks about Sir Walter and Miss Elizabeth Elliot had caused a breech between the baronet and his heir. Though reconciled for a short period with the Elliots in Bath , his past life proves to be a true representation of his character, as it transpires that he has seduced Mrs Clay to get her away from Sir Walter, in order that he may prevent the baronet from marrying her and producing a son, thereby disinheriting him. With Mrs Smith’s enlightening story, the reader learns that he contributed to the financial ruin of her deceased husband and refuses, though Smith thought him a great friend, to act on her behalf that she may lift herself out of her present poverty. He is linked also with another seaside place, as it was told in Lyme that he had been in Sidmouth previous to his introduction into the narrative.

To be continued

Impropriety by the Seaside. Part One.

Modern day readers of Jane Austen may well be baffled by the scandalous reputation of seaside resorts in Georgian Britain. The word 'resorts' refers not to those mega complex hotel monstrosities that can currently be seen ruining the landscape of exotic locales the world over but simply a destination that is an attraction in itself, such as the seaside, and which also provides a society of sorts for visitors. 'Watering place' was likewise a term applied to seaside places and also encompassed Bath.

There was without doubt a loosening of propriety within the society of watering places. These towns were public places, while the social activities of London houses and country estates were much more controlled and private in the main. In the country a person was in their private home, in London they were working the season, elsewhere they were on holiday. Acquaintances were made that would never have been made in the stricter regimes of London or the country, familiarities might be allowed and liberties may be taken that similarly could never have been anywhere else. If this seems surprising within the context of Georgian society, well, just think what people will do on holiday these days that they would never do at home. It's the same mindset.

Bath was a respectable, wealthy town famous for it's drinking water and healing baths and popular amongst the holidaying classes who were in need of restoration, or did not like or could not afford London for a couple of months. It's being cheaper and cheerier made Bath an ideal spot for fortune-hunters such as the Thorpe siblings of Northanger Abbey and the scene of Eliza Williams' acquaintance with Willoughby in Sense & Sensibility, who could live at less expense and worm their way more easily into hearts of genteel folk in the more relaxed society of Bath, than they could in London.

The chief attraction of Bath was the benefits the place had to one's health, and to ne're-do-wells no doubt the chief attraction was the bored wives, daughters and nieces of gouty gentleman more occupied with their own ailments than the pleasures of their womenfolk. But at the seaside there were even greater health benefits to be had in sea bathing and (oh god) drinking sea water, and most likely ladies who were even more unoccupied, since there were considerably fewer town things by the seaside to take up their time and interest. And there was sea bathing, and all the sensations and delight such an activity could stir up compared to the otherwise sedate experiences of a Georgian lady. It's no accident that so many improprieties occur at seaside resorts in Austen's novels.

Ramsgate
Tom Bertram's gallivanting in Mansfield Park sees him idling in as many as three seaside places (as well as London and country houses) within the short time frame of the narrative. He races horses at Brighton, he makes the acquaintance of the fashionable and rather weak-headed Yates at Weymouth, who later persuades Julia Bertram to elope with him, and in telling a story of a visit to Ramsgate he gives a description of the kind of impropriety tolerated in watering places. He forms a new acquaintance on the pier, an inappropriate beginning in itself. Mrs Sneyd is 'surrounded by men' and the two Miss Sneyds are left to the company of other strange young men. Moreover, it transpires that the youngest Miss Sneyd, though 'perfectly easy in her manners, and as ready to talk as to listen' and not demurely attired, is not even 'out' in society. An unseemly piece of mismanagement, as 'Miss Augusta should have a been with her governess'. In other words, she was but a child being made available for the pleasures of men, not unlike Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Georgiana Darcy, Lydia's predecessor in the schemes of Wickham, was taken to Ramsgate by his co-conspirator Mrs Younge, in order that he may gain access to her while she is unchaperoned, unwatched and without guidance, and be persuaded to elope with him. Ramsgate is a natural choice here, the quieter, more isolated town means fewer eyes on such a wealthy and young lady. Wickham of course fails at Ramsgate with Georgiana due to the lucky arrival of Darcy. Later however, to really seal the deal of Lydia's seduction, Wickham has as an advantage the largeness and the careless, mindless, raffish, rakish society of Georgian party central: Brighton.

Brighton
Wickham wasn't the only one sexing it up at Brighton, for the town was the darling of the most oversexed personage of the era, Prince George. Throughout the prince's patronage, especially during the Regency, Brighton was the most decadent, amoral real society in the land. I say 'real society' because the demi-monde, the world of courtesans and mistresses, was a thriving one but not 'society' as such. Soldiers, sailors, courtiers, nobleman, fortune-seekers, pleasure-seekers, money, fashion, familiarity, balmy summer eves and the invigoratingly fresh and salty air...Brighton was a dangerous place. As Austen well knew, for it becomes the scene of Lydia Bennet's licentious flirtations with many an officer in Pride and Prejudice, of Wickham's hedonism and of their elopement together. An elopement even that does not pass honorably with a chaste wedding in Scotland but ends in seduction, and then concealment in London. Brighton, in Mansfield Park comes after the wedding rather than before it. The Rushworths honeymoon in the town with Julia Bertram in tow, an odd place and an odd arrangement unless you consider than the new Mrs Rushworth is likely to want to spend a little time with her tiresome husband as possible. When Sir Thomas sardonically states that his daughters 'have their pleasures at Brighton' he alludes to such pleasures as would not be tolerated at Mansfield.

To be continued...

Georgian Item of the Week

Young Woman Ironing
circa 1800
Louis-Léopold Boilly
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

This painting has got me thinking and I believe I'll research a post on servants in Georgian Britain and Austen's novels. Check in for that over the next few days. Due to a faulty (and scarily sparky) power cord, my computer and I had parted ways for a while but we're back to posting more often from now on.