Robert Rodi's Blog, page 4

April 20, 2014

Home news: Volume 2 now on sale, and more

The second volume of Bitch In a Bonnet—collecting my gregarious gallop through Emma, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion—is now available as a trade paperback from both Amazon and Barnes and Noble; other retailers will be added in the coming months. (And an e-book edition will debut in a few weeks, as well.)

If you pick up a copy, let me appeal to your generous natures and ask that you also leave a review on the Amazon or B&N listing page. It's absolutely gobsmacking how much of a difference those little blurbs from readers make in deciding which books go mega, and which go meh.

If you're a gambling kinda guy or gal, you can also enter for a chance to win a free copy courtesy of the fine folks at Goodreads; we're giving away ten, and you have till May 31st to throw your name into the hat.

Thanks again for all your support over the past five years. I'm thinking of continuing the blog in some less structured manner; now that my survey of the official canon is concluded, I may dip into the unofficial one—the juvenilia and fragments, the works Austen either never prepared for publication or even finished. Or possibly turning my fiery gaze on some of the Austen TV and film adaptations. We'll see.

But in the meantime, I'll be taking a bit of time off, because yowza, am I ever tired.

View more on Robert Rodi's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 20, 2014 07:53

April 18, 2014

Final thoughts

<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Garamond; panose-1:2 2 4 4 3 3 1 1 8 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Georgia; panose-1:2 4 5 2 5 4 5 2 3 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; mso-layout-grid-align:none; punctuation-wrap:simple; text-autospace:none; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} span.textexposedshow {mso-style-name:text_exposed_show;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} </style> …And, that’s it. That’s the canon. When I undertook this project, back in 2009, my aim was to rescue Jane Austen’s reputation from those who misunderstood her—whether through ignorance, or nostalgia, or some other, more fetishistic impulse. I reread all six of her novels, in the order in which they were published, and tried to chronicle her growth as a satirist—as a writer of caustic comedies on the freakishness and hypocrisy of human society. But since I was publishing as I was reading—essentially live-blogging the Austen oeuvre—there was always the risk that I’d find myself, partway through, changing my mind…confronting a different Jane Austen than the one whose credentials I’d sought to celebrate. And in fact, I did; and this should have come as no surprise. Having immersed myself in her works for nearly five years—to the point at which her fictions functioned almost as a subtext to my own life—I should have expected that something new would be revealed to me, that some aspect of her genius which had previously proved elusive, should become apparent, and alter my view of her. In her final three novels, we see Austen evolve. From the broad, sweeping strokes of her early novels, she cultivates an increasingly refined hand—a more deftly calibrated technique. Her characters—especially her antagonists and her grotesques—gradually become more finely sketched, with more complexity and ambiguity. Persuasion, her last novel, is altogether richer in shading, texture, and tonal variety than Sense and Sensibility, her first; it offers greater range, deeper insight, and more opportunity for interpretation. So in one sense, I was right: Austen did grow—not as a satirist, per se, but as an artist. And if you consider also her wild, anarchic juvenile works, you can drawn an arc for her creative life. She began as a rollicking farceuse; developed into a relentlessly funny social satirist; and matured into a brilliant ironist. There’s no telling where she might have gone from there, had she not died so terribly, almost criminally young. But one thing seems certain: she would never have become a sentimentalist…never a romantic…never a safe little scribbler of mawkish, soft-core valentines. And if there is a literary heaven? Those writers are the souls who flee the fastest when she enters a room. A true Austen fan will always suffer some degree of anxiety—an uncomfortable sense that he or she isn’t nearly smart enough for her, or sharp enough, or possessed of an adequately nimble wit. A true Austen fan will always wonder: If it were possible to go back in time, and meet her—would I even dare approach her? This is a woman who insisted on living on her own terms, to the limited extent her constrictive society permitted. She was unflinching and unyielding. She looked at the world arrayed around her, and she was not deceived by its splendid trappings; she saw the savageness of its inequalities, and the ruthlessness of its ambitions. She enjoyed no personal victory over it; in many ways, the world defeated her soundly. But her judgment of it—uncompromising, unforgiving, and riddled through with mocking laughter—rings down the centuries to our own. She had the last word. And she always will have. <div class="MsoNormal"> </div>

View more on Robert Rodi's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 18, 2014 05:57

April 14, 2014

Persuasion, chapters 22-24

When we left Anne, she had just learned what a black-hearted sumbitch Mr. Elliot is, and her first order of business is to tell Lady Russell all about it. Not that she’s looking forward to that particular duty. She’s “concerned for the disappointment and pain Lady Russell would be feeling,” because Lady R. has totally let Mr. Elliot’s barefaced schmoozing charm her right out of her bloomers, like she’s a girl of sixteen or something. Still, that’s no reason for shirking the task (in my view, it’s a reason for pursuing it). Lady Russell has got to be informed, and then consulted as to the best way to proceed—i.e., do we go on smiling at Mr. Elliot and pretending everything’s still the tits? Or do we slip him a mickey in his Darjeeling, then with Admiral Croft’s help smuggle him onto a cargo ship bound for Bora Bora?
Fortunately, Anne has successfully evaded having to see the rangy cur before she can talk to Lady Russell about him. She arrives back at Camden-place to hear that she’s only just missed him; he apparently waited around half the morning for her. But alas, her escape isn’t complete, because Elizabeth now informs her she’s invited him back in the evening. Why the hell would she do something like that? Because “he gave so many hints,” is the answer; “so Mrs. Clay says, at least.” And Mrs. Clay chimes in with yup, he did, uh-huh, you bet, oh yeah, mm-hm.
And besides, Elizabeth goes on to say, she was touched by the way Mr. Elliot spoke of regretting not seeing Sir Walter. She “would never really omit any opportunity of bringing him and Sir Walter together. They appear so to much advantage in company with each other…Mr. Elliot looking up with so much respect!” This brings on a second little exclamation from Mrs. Clay—“Exactly like father and son! Dear Miss Elliot, may I not say father and son?”—and since this is exactly two exclamations more than Mrs. Clay has ever burst forth with before, we twig immediately that something is up with her. Because she can’t really be feeling anything near the giddy delight at Mr. Elliot coming back, that she’s pretending to.
Anne admired the good acting of the friend, in being able to shew such pleasure as she did, in the expectation, and in the actual arrival of the very person whose presence must really be interfering with her prime object. It was impossible but that Mrs. Clay must hate the sight of Mr. Elliot; and yet she could assume a most obliging, placid look, and appear quite satisfied with the curtailed license of devoting herself only half as much to Sir Walter as she would have done otherwise.
Anyway, Anne is forced to figure out how to handle Mr. Elliot, without Lady Russell’s advice. She decides on a strategic withdrawal. She resolves “to be as decidedly cool to him as might be compatible with their relationship, and to retrace, as quietly as she could, the few steps of unnecessary intimacy she had been gradually led along.”
When she puts this gambit into play that evening, it drives its victim a little bonkers. Mr. Elliot tries hard to “animate her curiosity again as to how and where he could have heard her formerly praised; wanted very much to be gratified by more solicitation” on that matter; and we can only imagine the look of defeated astonishment on his face when Anne just shrugs her shoulders and is all, Whatevs. He can’t know, of course, that she’s not only metthe source of all that former praise—but that same source has also totally narced him out to her. So that “the charm is broken”—in fact, the charm is freakin’ atomized.
Fortunately, Mr. Elliot is leaving for Bath the next morning, and will be gone for the better part of two days. That should be plenty of time for Anne and Lady Russell to put their heads together and come up with a plan—something that will rescue the family from the worst effects of Mr. Elliot’s silent-movie-villain rapaciousness. Anne’s opinion of him has sunk so low, even Mrs. Clay’s pursuit of her father looks almost innocuous by comparison, and “Anne would have compounded for the marriage at once, with all its evils, to be clear of Mr. Elliot’s subtleties, in endeavouring to prevent it.”
The next morning Anne prepares to head out for Lady Russell’s, and as she’s pulling on her gloves there are a couple of barking-out-loud funny paragraphs from her sister and father. Elizabeth begins by telling Anne she has “nothing to send [Lady Russell] but my love”, but then quickly changes her mind.
“Oh! you may as will take back that tiresome book she would lend me, and pretend I have read it through. I really cannot be plaguing myself for ever with all the new poems and states of the nation that come out. Lady Russell quite bores one with her new publications. You need not tell her so, but I thought her dress hideous the other night. I used to think she had some taste in dress, but I was ashamed of her at the concert. Something so formal and arrangé in her air! and she sits so upright! My best love, of course.”
Not to be outdone, Sir Walter adds his own love, along with a promise to call on Lady Russell soon…
“…But I shall only leave my card. Morning visits are never fair by women at her time of life, who make themselves up so little. If she would only wear rouge, she would not be afraid of being seen; but last time I called, I observed the blinds were let down immediately.”
That said—and who could say it better?—Anne turns to go; but is delayed again, this time by a knock on the door—and then by the admittance, a few moments later, of none other than Charles and Mary. Anne is surprised and delighted to see them; and “as soon as it became clear that these, their nearest relations, were not arrived with any views of accommodations in that house, Sir Walter and Elizabeth were able to rise in cordiality,” as well. What a wonderfully acid detail.
As to what Charles and Mary are doing here…well, it’s one of those Musgrove affairs, that starts out as one thing and ends up quite another. Suffice it to say that it began with Captain Harville needing to come to Bath on business, and Charles Musgrove deciding to tag along; and then six hundred other things happened and somehow turned into Ms. Musgrove’s party with everyone else tagging along…everyone else being those already mentioned, plus Henrietta—whose wedding clothes are on the list of errands for the trip. Turns out Charles Hayter has finagled a living somewhere, and now has the stability and income to head on down the aisle.
Anne is delighted to hear this—it makes the two Musgrove sisters equal again—and she tells Charles she hopes his parents feel the same. “Oh! yes,” he says. “My father would be as well pleased if the gentlemen were richer, but he has no other fault to find.” Which sends Anne off on a little whirlwind of praise that ends up, as things seem increasingly to do, in these later chapters, more about her own issues than the people she’s talking about.
“Such excellent parents as Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove…should be happy in their children’s marriages. They do every thing to confer happiness, I am sure. What a blessing to the young people, to be in such hands! Your father and mother seem so totally free from all those ambitious feelings which have led to so much misconduct and misery, both in young and old!”
I like to imagine Sir Walter’s face as she says this. But who am I kidding, whenever he’s not the one talking, his face is turned towards a mirror.
As to the other Musgrove sister: Louisa is recovering…but is becoming quite a different person. “If one happens only to shut the door a little hard, she starts and wriggles like a young dab chick in the water,” says Charles, in the manner of someone who is frequently guilty of shutting the door a little hard; “and Benwick sits at her elbow, reading verses, or whispering to her, all day long.”
Anne “had heard enough to understand the present state of Uppercross, and rejoice in its happiness; and though she sighed as she rejoiced, her sigh had none of the ill-will of envy in it. She would certainly have risen to their blessings if she could, but she did not want to lessen theirs.” Of course she doesn’t. She’s a good girl. Pretty much the only one on hand, in fact.
Now that so many family and friends have descended on Bath, Elizabeth feels an uncomfortable compulsion to ask them to dine; uncomfortable, because “she could not bear to have the difference of style, the reduction of servants, which a dinner must betray, witnessed by those who had been always so inferior to the Elliots of Kellynch.” Fortunately, Elizabeth has plenty of practice in quashing any inconvenient sensations of obligation or generosity. “It was a struggle between propriety and vanity,” Austen tells us; and thus, no freakin’ contest.
These were [Elizabeth’s] internal persuasions.—“Old fashioned notions—country hospitality—we do not profess to give dinners—few people in Bath do—Lady Alicia never does; did not even ask her own sister’s family, though they were here a month: and I dare say it would be very inconvenient to Mrs. Musgrove—put her quite out of her way. I am sure she would rather not come—she cannot feel easy with us. I will ask them all for an evening; that will be much better—that will be a novelty and a treat. They have not seen two such drawing rooms before. They will be delighted to come to-morrow evening. It shall be a regular party—small, but most elegant.”
Give her ten additional minutes, and she’ll have figured out why serving them only twigs and clippings from the front lawn is not only appropriate for the occasion, but the very thing everyone would most want.
With the invitation given, Charles and Mary depart, and Anne goes with them to their inn to pay a call on Mrs. Musgrove and Henrietta. So Lady Russell is put off again. But Anne is “convinced that a day’s delay of the intended communication could be of no consequence,” since Mr. Elliot won’t even be back till tomorrow anyway.
Anne gets a great big, potentially lethal bear hug of a welcome from Mrs. Musgrove, whose “real affection [she had] won by her usefulness when they were in distress. It was a heartiness, and a warmth, and a sincerity which Anne delighted in the more, from the sad want of such blessings at home.” She soon finds herself falling back into her Uppercross habits of helping everyone arrange their plans, listening to their confidences, offering suggestions for shops, and reassuring Mary every thirty-five seconds that no one in the room was disrespecting her or forgetting who she was or not including her in anything that she didn’t know about yet but should.
Anne hasn’t been there more than half an hour when Captain Harville appears—and with him, Captain Wentworth—whose unexpected appearance throws Anne into a little bit of a tizzy; the last time she saw him, after all, he was storming out of the concert hall in a snit of jealousy over Mr. Elliot. If she can just manage a word with him now, she might be able to set him right on that score…but, alas, “He did not want to be near enough for conversation.” What a sulky baby. Adorablysulky…but still.
Anne decides to let it go—to leave things to take their course. “Surely, if there be constant attachment on each side, our hearts must understand each other ere long. We are not boy and girl, to be captiously irritable, misled by every moment’s inadvertence, and wantonly playing with our own happiness.” Uh, sugar…that’s what you’ve been doing pretty much for the last eight years.
Before she can dwell on this, Mary—who’s seated by a window overlooking the street—calls out to say she’s spotted Mrs. Clay standing under a colonnade, “and a gentleman with her. I saw them turn the corner from Bath-street just now. They seem deep in talk. Who is it?—Come and tell me.” But she doesn’t need to be told, because a moment later she figures it out herself. “Good heavens! I recollect.—It is Mr. Elliot himself.”
Anne exclaims—a little too quickly—that it can’t possibly be Mr. Elliot, because he left Bath that very morning. And as soon as she’s said this, she can feel Captain Wentworth’s eyes on her. Why did she have to speak that name in front of him? She makes up her mind to show no more interest in anything to do with Mr. Elliot, while the captain’s around. Mr.—who? Elliot, you say?—Is that someone we know? I think I can just baaaarely remember…
But Mary spends the better part of a page haranguing her—come on, it is him, just come and look, come on, come on, come on, come on—so eventually she just gives up and goes to the window (either that or Mary actually drags her over by her feet).
She manages to look out just as Mr. Elliot and Mrs. Clay are parting—because, amazingly, it is them—and parting with a handshake, too, like just the swellest of pals. Anne covers her surprise by saying, Oh, he obviously changed his departure time, and tries to shrug the whole thing off.
Then there’s a wonderful couple of pages where Charles Musgrove boasts about having got a box at the theatre the next night, and crows to his mother about what a “good boy” he is, only to have Mary, ever the devoted wife, quash him with, you idiot, tomorrow night we’re booked at Camden-place. And Charles retaliates by saying, you’re booked at Camden-place, baby, not this guy.
“Phoo! phoo!...what’s an evening party? Never worth remembering. Your father might have asked us to dinner, I think, if he had wanted to see us. You may do as you like, but I shall go to the play.”
“Oh, Charles, I declare it will be too abominable if you do! when you promised to go.”
“No, I did not promise. I only smirked and bowed, and said the word ‘happy.’ There was no promise.”
There’s a promising career in politics waiting for Chuck, if he ever decides to lean that way.
Mary keeps on at him—because haranguing is one of her only real talents—and tries to tempt him by saying that the Dalrymples will be there, and also, even better, Mr. Elliot. “Consider, my father’s heir—the future representative of the family.”
“Don’t talk to me about heirs and representatives,” cried Charles. “I am not one of those who neglect the reigning power to bow to the rising sun. If I would not go for the sake of your father, I should think it scandalous to go for the sake of his heir. What is Mr. Elliot to me?”
And Anne feels Captain Wentworth’s eyes on her again—as though wondering, what is Mr. Elliot to her? And a few moments later—with Mary insisting she’s going to the party even if no one else joins her—Mrs. Musgrove says maybe it’d be better to change the tickets for the next night, because “we should be losing Miss Anne, too, if there is a party at her father’s; and I am sure neither Henrietta nor I should care at all for the play, if Miss Anne could not be with us.” Seeing her opportunity, Anne jumps in.
“If it depended only on my inclination, ma’am, the party at home (excepting on Mary’s account) would not be the smallest impediment. I have no pleasure in the sort of meeting, and should be too happy to change it for a play, and with you. But it had better not be attempted, perhaps.”
And then she sits back, flush with daring and little bit trembly; but happy to have made it very clear, that’s what Mr. Elliot is to her.
She’s rewarded, a few minutes later, by Captain Wentworth actually approaching and speaking to her. He accuses her—in a nonthreatening way—of not having been in Bath long enough to be dismissive of evening parties (obviously forgetting she’s been here longer than he has). But she maintains that such events have no appeal for her: “I am no card player.”
“You were not formerly, I know. You did not used to like cards; but time makes many changes.”
“I am not yet so much changed,” cried Anne, and stopped, fearing she hardly knew what misconstruction. After waiting a few moments he said—and as if it were the result of immediate feeling—“It is a period, indeed! Eight years and a half is a period!”
So we’re on page 217, and he finally goes there. And we can see why he waited: it’s a tremendously precarious moment—a heart-in-the-mouth moment; we couldn’t feel any more suspense if they were playing catch with a pouch of nitroglycerin.
So what a perfect moment for Henrietta to insist that all the ladies all get up and go out, because, hello, she’s in Bath more than an hour already and has still seen no wedding clothes. The women dutifully pull themselves together to depart with more than enough bustle to drown out Godzilla’s attack on Tokyo, never mind the nuances of Anne’s conversation with the captain.
And then, as if that weren’t enough randomness for one chapter, the ladies almost collide in the doorway with Sir Walter and Elizabeth, who are just on their way in—and “whose entrance seemed to give a general chill.”
Anne felt an instant oppression, and wherever she looked, saw symptoms of the same. The comfort, the freedom, the gaiety of the room was over, hushed into cold composure, determined silence, or insipid talk, to meet the heartless elegance of her father and sister. How mortifying to feel that it was so!
So, yeah, Sir Walter and Elizabeth…not quite life-of-the-party material.
Which is kind of too bad, because the party is the reason they’ve dropped in. They’ve very graciously decided to widen the guest list, and Elizabeth dispenses cards to everyone who hadn’t yet got one—with particular attention (and even a smile!) to Captain Wentworth; something which amazes Anne, possibly to the point of wondering if Elizabeth has suffered a Louisa-like blow to the head.
The truth was, that Elizabeth had been long enough in Bath, to understand the importance of a man of such an air and appearance as his. The past was nothing. The present was that Captain Wentworth would move about well in her drawing room. The card was pointedly given, and Sir Walter and Elizabeth arose and disappeared.
The card may have been pointedly given, but it isn’t so pointedly received. In fact, for several minutes after the Elliots have gone (and the whole room exhaled in relief), Captain Wentworth stares at the card with a look on his face as though someone has sneezed into his hand, and he has no idea of where to wipe it.
Anne, knowing him, can’t believe he’d ever “accept such an offering, as atonement for all the insolence of the past.” But Mary, typically, is all agog over Elizabeth’s generosity in including everybody in her little fête. “I do not wonder Captain Wentworth is delighted! You see he cannot put the card out of his hand!”
Finally the ladies file out for shopping (la plus ça change); and the rest of the day passes without incident…at least until evening, when, back at Camden-place, Anne has to endure Elizabeth and Mrs. Clay clucking away over all the many, many plans for the party the next night. Eventually Anne, tired of brooding over Captain Wentworth, decides to distract herself by poking a stick at Mrs. Clay, and asks her, hey, didn’t I see you having a regular old chin-wag with Mr. Elliot three hours after he was supposedly on the road out of town? And she’s immediately rewarded with a spasm of guilt in Mrs. Clay’s face.
It was transient, cleared away in an instant, but Anne could imagine she read there the consciousness of having, by some complication of mutual trick or some overbearing authority of his, been obliged to attend (perhaps for half an hour) to his lectures and restrictions on her designs on Sir Walter.
Mrs. Clay replies by laughing, oh, hahahaha, yes I was SO SURPRISEDto see him, hahahahaha, imagine, he was running late and I was in a hurry, hahahaha, imagine me forgetting to mention it, hahahaha, my head is so full of the party preparation I guess, hahahaha.
I can only imagine the hairy eyeball Anne gives her.
The day of the party dawns; and Anne has “promised to be with the Musgroves from breakfast to dinner”, which means once again Lady Russell is put off. (You have to wonder whether Lady R. has now realizes she’s being ignored, and has started to worry. We can but hope.) Anne arrives at the White Hart (the Musgroves’ inn) and finds only Mrs. Musgrove and Mrs. Croft talking together, and Captain Harville and Captain Wentworth doing similarly. She sits down to await the arrival of the others—and, with her mind free, finds herself suddenly attacked by all the anxieties and uncertainties she’s been feeling since yesterday. She “was deep in the happiness of such misery, or the misery of such happiness, instantly.” Beautifully constructed line.
Then Captain Wentworth says, “We will write the letter we were talking of, Harville, now, if you will give me materials.” Materials are duly given, and he goes off to a desk and begins writing.
So the room is quiet, except for Mrs. Musgrove droning on to Mrs. Croft. Austen turns this into a magnificently funny little set piece—you can just tell she’s showing off—where she completely nails what it’s like to be unable not to listen to the trivial chatter of somebody near to you.
…[Anne] could not avoid hearing many undesirable particulars, such as “how Mr. Musgrove and my brother Hayter had met again and again to talk it over; what my brother Hayter had said one day, and what Mr. Musgrove proposed the next, and what had occurred to my sister Hayter, and what the young people had wished, and what I said at first I never could consent to, but was afterwards persuaded to think might do very well”…
Technically ingenious, and terribly funny.
Minutes later the two women are bonding over their mutual disapproval of long engagements—the only thing worse being “an uncertain engagement; an engagement which may be too long.” Suddenly Anne’s listening with both ears, once again hearing things she can’t help applying to her own condition. “To begin without knowing that at such a time there will be the means of marrying,” says Mrs. Musgrove. “I hold to be very unsafe and unwise, and what, I think, all parents should prevent as far as they can.”
And it’s not just Anne who hears this through the filter of her own experience; “Captain Wentworth’s pen ceased to move, his head was raised, pausing, listening, and he turned round the next instant to give her a look—one quick, conscious look at her.”
After which, as you may expect, “Anne heard nothing distinctly; it was only a buzz of words in her ear, her mind was in a confusion.” Sort of like when you’re drinking in a bar where the TV is too loud. And so it remains until Captain Harville, standing by a window, motions her over to join him; and when she does, he shows her a miniature painting, and asks if she knows who it is. Of course she does; it’s clearly Captain Benwick. “Yes,” he replies, “and you may guess who it is for. But (in a deep tone) it was not done for her.”
Turns out the miniature was painted as a gift for Captain Harville’s sister, and Benwick was bringing it home to her when she died. “And I have now the charge of getting it properly set for another!” Harville sighs. In fact, the letter Captain Wentworth is now writing, is directed to the jeweler chosen for the task—Harville himself apparently not being up to the task, due to latent grief on his sister’s behalf. “Poor Fanny!” he laments, “she would not have forgotten him so soon!”
And so we enter into a comparatively brief (only three pages) but passionately urgent debate between Captain Harville and Anne on the fidelity of men’s hearts versus women’s. It’s the structural, thematic, and emotional crux of the novel, and it contains Austen’s best, most beautifully plangent writing; it’s possibly my favorite sequence from any of her novels. Which is odd, because here she steps clear outside her role as a comic author, and just delivers up the goods direct to your solar plexus. If some people insist on calling Persuasion Austen’s “serious” novel, it may be because of this scene. There’s nothing in it that plays to Austen’s strength as a humorist, satirist, ironist, whatever; it’s a narrative tightrope walk, and we almost read it without breathing, because the inescapable sense imparted by each syllable, is Everything Depends On This.
It’s difficult to summarize; the temptation is just to transcribe the whole goddamn thing. But the essence is as follows.
Anne argues for female fidelity.
“We certainly do not forget you, so soon as you forget us. It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit. We cannot help ourselves. We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us. You are forced on exertion. You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately, and continual occupation and change soon weaken impression.”
This is what we might call the constructionist argument, because it attributes women’s faithfulness, and men’s ability to forget, to socially imposed circumstances. Harville dismisses it, and argues his case based on the opposing, essentialist viewpoint, which is that men are more faithful than women because of biology: “I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bearing most rough usage, and riding out the heaviest weather.” Anne immediately counters: “Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer-lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments.”
“You have difficulties, and privations, and dangers enough to struggle with. You are always labouring and toiling, exposed to every risk and hardship. Your home, country, friends, all quitted. Neither time, nor health, nor life, to be called your own. It would be too hard indeed” (with a faltering voice) “if woman’s feelings were to be added to all this.”
It’s at this point that Anne becomes aware that the skritch-skritch-skritch of Captain Wentworth’s pen has stopped; and she turns, “startled at finding him nearer than she had supposed,” and presumably having heard everything she’s been saying. Harville, seeing that he’s stopped writing, asks if he’s finished the letter; Wentworth says five minutes, Harville says no hurry.
Then Harville turns back to Anne and tries to make the case for women’s inconstancy by citing literature, which he seems to realize is a pretty lame argument even as he’s speaking it, and he concludes by saying, “But perhaps you will say, these [books] were all written by men.” Anne (and perhaps, Austen herself, bleeding through her creation) says yes, “Men have every advantage of us in telling their own story…I will not allow books to prove any thing.”
After a little additional debate, Harville switches tack, moving from an intellectual argument to an emotional one; and baby, does it pack a wallop.
“Ah!” cried Captain Harville, in a tone of strong feeling, “if I could but make you comprehend what a man suffers when he takes a last look at his wife and children and watches the boat that he has sent them off in, as long as it is in sight, and then turns away and says, ‘God knows whether we ever meet again!’ ”
He continues in this vein—either because his feelings have run away with him, or because he sees the effect it’s having on Anne, which is considerable. But when he finally concludes, she has an answer ready, and it’s one of those immortal Jane Austen passages many people instantly recognize as hers, whether they’ve read any of her books or not. She doesn’t dispute or undervalue the “warmth and faithful feelings” of men, she assures Harville.
“No, I believe you capable of every thing great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as—if I may be allowed the expression, so long as you have an object. I mean, while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.”
She can’t continue; “her heart was too full, her breath too much oppressed.” But she doesn’t have to: she’s carried her point. “You are a good soul,” Captain Harville tells her. “There is no quarreling with you.—And when I think of Benwick, my tongue is tied.”
Comedy, for me, works best when there’s something real at stake—something vital. The exhilaration of making it across a chasm, after all, is directly proportional to how far you have to fall. One of the reasons Emmanever quite entirely works for me is that there’s never any real peril; from beginning to end, our heroine is loved and protected and safe from all harm (if not from occasional embarrassment). The humor in her story is for its own sake; it’s not in alleviation of, or in contrast to, something darker and deeper.
The risk to Anne Elliot, on the other hand, is real; she’s gambled and lost, and her life is a kind of desolation. Her only solace is in her own utility; she finds a subsistence-level validation in being an adjunct to other people’s lives.
This mere shadow of a life is her final fate—unless she can seize the second chance offered her by an unforeseeable quirk of circumstance. All the laughter—all the mockery—all the jests and jokes and jabs—have led us to this decisive moment: this naked, unbearable moment.
The spell is abruptly broken; Mrs. Croft is getting up, taking her leave. Busyness…chatter…Harville asks whether Wentworth has finished the goddamn letter already, or what. Wentworth says, almost there, just a sec; and he seals up the letter “with great rapidity,” and hurriedly joins Captain Harville, who leaves Anne with a “Good morning, God bless you”—but from Wentworth, “not a word, not a look. He had passed out of the room without a look!”
Appalling tension…then almost crippling release. He comes back in, on the pretext of having forgotten his gloves; and in the act of retrieving them, “drew out a letter from under the scattered paper, [and] placed it before Anne with eyes of glowing entreaty fixed for a moment”. Then he slips back out, leaving Anne feeling like he’s just reordered all the laws of physics at a stroke and she no longer has any idea which way “up” is.
She looks the letter: it’s addressed to “Miss A.E.—.” In her present condition, possibly it takes Anne a second or two to realize, oh, that’s me. So, when he had said he hadn’t finished Captain Harville’s letter yet, he actually had; and he was furtively writing this second one, to her.
She doesn’t spend a lot of time savoring the wonderful irony of this. “Any thing was possible, any thing might be defied rather than suspense.” So, with Mrs. Musgrove still nattering about in the background, she plunks down and opens the letter, and dives right in.
It begins without preamble.
I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half in agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.
This is what I like best about Austen heroes: they way they get right to the point. Sweep aside the clutter and just cut to the goddamn chase.
He goes on in this same manner—decisive, declarative, and yet winningly deferential—concluding with a postscript stating that he’ll return “as soon as possible. A word, a look will be enough to decide whether I enter your father’s house this evening, or never.”
For Anne, such a letter “was not to be soon recovered from.” Smelling salts may be in order, or possibly a cattle prod. While she’s still reeling from “overpowering happiness,” Charles, Mary and Henrietta come in, several scenes into a three-act play of their own, but Anne “began not to understand a word they said, and was obliged to plead indisposition and excuse herself.” All these chattering macaques are the last thing she needs, when she’s got Captain Wentworth’s sonorous sentences tolling gorgeously in her head.
But pleading indisposition is the wrong thing to do, because now they’re all standing over her, fussing and jabbering and flapping their arms. “Would they only have gone away, and left her in the quiet possession of that room, it would have been the cure;” but since that’s not likely to happen, she takes the matter into her own hands: she’ll go instead—return home, where she can reflect in private.
The idea of her going home alone, when she’s not well, causes another flurry of protest and argument and alternate plans, till Anne agrees under pressure to let Charles escort her to Camden-place. But before she departs, she earnestly asks Mrs. Musgrove to “assure Captain Harville, and Captain Wentworth, that we hope to see them both” at the party later. Mrs. Musgrove says she will, but Anne takes both her arms and gets right up in her face and is like, Seriously, I mean it, tell them exactly what I just said, and Mrs. Musgrove, possible in fear of being eaten alive, says oh I will I will absolutely you betcha.
Even so, out in the street, Anne is more than half hopeful of running into the captain, and being able to give him her answer in person. And whaddaya know, as she and Charles make their way towards Camden-place, “a something of familiar sound, gave her two moments preparation of Captain Wentworth.” And there he is, big as life—but “irresolute, whether to join them or to pass on”, until Anne “could command herself enough to receive that look, at not repulsively.”
Finally, we have the hero and heroine acknowledging their love to each other; and so far from being a passage of vulgar overindulgence in feelings and sensations and skyrockets and rainbows, the ever-astringent Austen describes it for us by way of a negative—telling us what isn’t, not what is—that Anne receives Captain Wentworth’s look “not repulsively.”
Charles is delighted to see him, because if he’s headed the right way he can take Anne off his hands, and he can still make an appointment with a gun merchant across town (we should probably worry about a husband of Mary having too many guns). And again, we get the captain’s reply in the form of a negative: “There could not be an objection.”
And here they, alone together after more than eight years, and in perfect accord. It’s very satisfying, for us as well as for them, as they spend a grateful hour retracing the route by which they came to this pass. “And there, as they slowly paced the gradual ascent, heedless of every group around them, seeing neither sauntering politicians, bustling house-keepers, flirting girls, nor nursery-maids and children”—note again the emphasis on the negative: Austen is illustrating their emotional state by painstakingly detailing what they don’t see—“they could indulge in those retrospections and acknowledgments, and especially in those explanations of what had directly preceded the present moment, which were so poignant and so ceaseless in interest.”
Yes, he had been jealous of Mr. Elliot. No, he had never in love with Louisa. Yes, it was in Lyme that he learned “to distinguish between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind.” Meaning: yeah, an overly cautious Anne Elliot didn’t look so bad, when he was on his hands and knees looking for bits of brain from the cracked head of an overly impulsive Louisa Musgrove. But by that time, it was a tad too late. “I found…that I was considered by Harville an engaged man!” And not just by Harville: Louisa’s own family were pretty much just waiting for official confirmation.
So he chose retreat as the better part of valor. He “determined to leave Lyme, and await her complete recovery elsewhere. He would gladly weaken, by any fair means, whatever feelings or speculations concerning him might exist;” and so he went to stay with his brother for six weeks…his newly, happily married brother. Who also, he tells Anne, “enquired after you very particularly; asked even if you were personally altered, little suspecting that to my eye you could never alter.” Anne quietly—but totally—grooves on hearing this.
It is something for a woman to be assured, in her eight-and-twentieth year, that she has not lost one charm of earlier youth; but the value of such homage was inexpressibly increased to Anne, by comparing it with former words, and feeling it to be the result, not the cause of a revival of his warm attachment.
When news reached him of Louisa’s engagement to Benwick, he felt a tremendous liberation; and a fierce resolve to head straight to Bath and put things right with Anne, if at all possible. “I could never doubt that you would be loved and sought by others,” he explains, “but I knew to a certainty that you had refused one man at least, of better pretensions than myself: and I could not help often saying, Was this for me?”
But, as we know, he found her being possessively pawed over by Mr. Elliot, whose intentions were pretty freakin’ clear. And the “horrible eligibilities and proprieties” of such a match made it even worse for him—as did the realization that it was “the certain wish of every being who could hope to influence you”—especially Lady Russell, whose authority over Anne was something he knew only too bloody goddamn well.
They continue thrashing through all this till they reach Camden-place; and Anne finally gets the privacy and quiet she’s been gasping for, to corral all her spiraling spirits and tether them a little more safely to terra firm.
An interval of meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of every thing dangerous in such high-wrought felicity; and she went to her room, and grew steadfast and fearless in the thankfulness of her enjoyment.
Jesus. Who else in the history of English letters could have written that sentence? Astringency over exuberancy; transcendence over indulgence; command over compulsion…all hallmarks of the Jane Austen heroine at her finest. And of the author herself, whose works—even the most problematic—stand as testaments to these very virtues. There’s nothing sloppy in Austen, nothing sappy or slavish; she’s about as yielding as iron. The world around her is a morass of social and emotional tumult, but she easily holds her place. In fact, the more the rest of us slide and sink, the more heroically fixed she seems.
Time at last for the big bash at Camden-place. “It was but a card-party, it was but a mixture of those who had never met before”—including such disparate elements as the Dalrymples and the Harvilles—“and those who met too often”—such as Lady Russell and, oh, take your pick—“a common-place business, too numerous for intimacy, too small for variety; but Anne had never found an evening shorter.” She’s all aglow, and has the genuine warm-fuzzies for everyone in the house—which is no mean feat, considering this crowd.
With Captain Wentworth, of course, she’s at her most sparkling, and when the two of them slip away together, “each apparently occupied in admiring a fine display of green-house plants”—God is in the details, baby—they get right back to fine-toothing their rather byzantine paths to their present bliss. Anne surprises us by saying that, on reflection, she was “perfectly right in being guided by the friend whom you will love better than you do now”; not that Lady Russell herself was right, but that’s beside the point.
“…I mean, that I was right in submitting to her, and that if I had done otherwise, I should have suffered more in continuing the engagement than I did even in giving it up, because I should have suffered in my conscience. I have now, as far as such a sentiment is allowable in human nature, nothing to reproach myself with; and if I mistake not, a strong sense of duty is no bad part of a woman’s portion.”
Captain Wentworth hears all this, but is a little bit stuck on that “friend whom you will love better than you do now” business. But for Anne’s sake, he gives it the benefit of the doubt: “I trust to being in charity with her soon.” Especially since he, too, has been busy reflecting, and has figured out that there is “one person more my enemy even than that lady”—he himself. If he’d just gone back to Anne once he’d become a success, and proposed a second time, she’d have accepted him in a New York minute.
“But I was proud, too proud to ask again. I did not understand you. I shut my eyes, and would not understand you, or do you justice. This is a recollection which ought to make me forgive every one sooner than myself. Six years of separation and suffering might have been spared. It is a sort of pain, too, which is new to me. I have been used to the gratification of believing myself to earn every blessing that I enjoyed. I have valued myself on honourable toils and just rewards. Like other great men under reverses,” he added with a smile, “I must endeavour to subdue my mind to my fortune. I must learn to brook being happier than I deserve.”
“Who can be in doubt of what followed?” Austen says—apparently growing a little impatient to have it all over with, as she usually is once she’s finally cleared away all the obstacles for her principal pets. We get the expected rundown on everyone’s reactions. Sir Walter and Elizabeth, while unmoved, raise no fuss. Quite the contrary: Captain Wentworth is now a man of sufficient stature and fortune to make an appropriate match for the daughter “of a foolish, spendthrift baronet, who not had principle or sense enough to maintain himself in the situation in which Providence had placed him”—and in fact Sir Walter, hilariously and characteristically, finds himself as won over by Captain Wentworth’s chiseled good looks as by anything else. As for Lady Russell, there was nothing less for her to do, “than to admit that she had been pretty completely wrong, and take up a new set of opinions and of hopes.” I might have changed that to, take up the life of a cloistered order, but I wouldn’t wish that on the other nuns.
Mary, it turns out, is the happiest with the news, because “it was creditable to have a sister married, and she might flatter herself with having been greatly instrumental in the connection” by having had Anne as her guest when Captain Wentworth first came to Uppercross. Also, it’s very satisfying that her sister is marrying so much better than Charles’s. And even though Anne’s marriage means she’ll now take precedence over Mary, Mary takes consolation in the fact that Captain Wentworth, unlike Charles Musgrove, has no property to inherit; he’ll never be landed gentry. If she “could but keep Captain Wentworth form being made a baronet, she would not change places with Anne.”
And Mr. Elliot?…He proves to be a pretty adaptable guy. Anne’s engagement means the end of his hope “of keeping Sir Walter single by the watchfulness which a son-in-law’s rights would have given…But, though discomfited and disappointed, he could still do something for his own interest and enjoyment.” Which is to work the other angle in the keep-Sir-Walter-single sweepstakes, and seduce Mrs. Clay away from the baronet…something he seems to have toyed with doing even before Anne slipped away from him (as witness the little frisson between Mrs. Clay and him, and that clandestine meeting outside the White Hart).
To Sir Walter’s and Elizabeth’s vast mortification and horror, the two elope to London, where Mr. Elliot installs Mrs. Clay as his mistress. And again, let me just say—if Mrs. Clay were really such a scheming adventuress, out for Sir Walter’s title and property, she’d scarcely have allowed herself to be distracted from it by some young turk’s fancy moves. I really do think Mrs. Clay is just a woman alone in the world, aware that she needs a man, and willing to pursue the best candidate she can find. Mr. Elliot may have played this trick more on himself, than on anybody else. Austen even admits that Mrs. Clay “has abilities…as well as affections”, and doesn’t discount her getting that Lady Elliot title after all—but from Sir William, not Sir Walter.
With this noxious mass of Elliot intrigue playing out, Anne finds that she has “no other alloy to the happiness of her prospects than what arose from the consciousness of having no relations to bestow on him which a man of sense could value.” Hey, I barked a laugh. But she does have two close friends, Lady Russell and Mrs. Smith, both of whom Captain Wentworth comes to value in time. (Austen doesn’t say how much time; but surely no more than twenty, thirty years.)
He even intervenes on Mrs. Smith’s behalf in sorting our her West Indies property, so that Austen is able to end this—her final novel (though she wouldn’t have known it to be so)—on a wonderfully characteristic note. Rather than immerse herself in tiresome romantic clichés, she gives us this completely unsentimental, blisteringly ironic bit of hilarity:
Mrs. Smith’s enjoyments were not spoiled by this improvement of income, with some improvement of health, and the acquisition of such friends to be often with, for her cheerfulness and mental alacrity did not fail her; and while these prime supplies of good remained, she might have bid defiance even to greater accessions of worldly prosperity. She might have been absolutely rich and perfectly healthy, and yet be happy.
No wonder Austen fell out of fashion with Victorians. Those terribly earnest, terribly feeling people would have been utterly confused by this kind of humor, and possibly even frightened by it.
There’s nothing left for Austen but to tip her hat to her hero and heroine as they sail away together, with just a sliver of darkness embedded in the gesture (a reference to “the dread of a future war”) to blunt the implication a happily-ever-after.
[Anne] gloried in being a sailor’s wife, but she must pay the tax of quick alarm for belonging to that profession which is, if possible, more distinguished in its domestic virtue than in its national importance.
And with that, she’s done with them. And, if she but knew it, with us.
The reverse, need I point out, is unlikely ever to be the case.
Next time: A few final words.

View more on Robert Rodi's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 14, 2014 20:16

April 11, 2014

Persuasion, chapters 19-21

We’re three-quarters through the novel, and have experienced more than Austen’s usual round of scene-changing and character juggling. We opened on Kellynch with the Elliots and Lady Russell; jumped to Uppercross for the Musgroves and Captain Wentworth; took a side-trip to Lyme to rope in the Harvilles and Captain Benwick; now we’re at Bath, reunited with the Elliots and a few new players (Mr. Elliot, Mrs. Smith). That there’s been such narrative and thematic unity to these discordant settings has been due to Austen’s handling of her heroine, Anne Elliot, certainly the soundest, sanest, most self-contained member of the cast, whose point of view accommodates rapid shifts in locale and personnel without losing her own moral or ethical footing. She doesn’t sparkle, our gal Anne; but she burns with a low, steady flame.
And now we’re…well, I was going to say galloping towards the finish; but we’re not, really. Persuasion isn’t so robustly kinetic a novel as that. As perhaps befits its naval rigging, it can more aptly said to be sailing inexorably. Similarly, I was going to make a nice parallel by pointing out that Captain Wentworth was galloping to Bath for the finish; but in fact he isn’t. Nope. He’s already here.
Anne discovers this one a gloomy day when she’s out with her cousin, her sister, and Mrs. Clay. It starts to rain and Elizabeth, spying Lady Dalrymple’s carriage up the street, sends Mr. Elliot over to ask for a lift; meanwhile, she and the other ladies duck into a shop. Mr. Elliot comes back to say that a lift is granted, but only two can fit. No special reward for guessing which two. Elizabeth and Mrs. Clay go and wait for the carriage to pull ’round, while Mr. Elliot zips down the street on an errand. Anne, stuck for the time being, settles down by a window seat and looks out the window.
And what does she see, but Captain Frederick Wentworth. Just truckin’ his fine self down the street, as if the weather were goddamn perfect.
Almost reflexively, she gets up and heads for the door—to see whether the rain has in fact stopped, she tells herself. “Why was she to suspect herself of another motive? Captain Wentworth must be out of sight.” Whoops, but he’s not; he’s right here, bursting through the door just as Anne approaches it, “among a party of gentlemen and ladies, evidently his acquaintance”.
He was more obviously struck and confused by the sight of her, than she had ever observed before; he looked quite red. For the first time, since their renewed acquaintance, she felt that she was betraying the least sensibility of the two. She had the advantage of him, in the preparation of the last few moments.
He manages to homina-homina out a few words, then retreats to the safety of his posse; but when he’s had a few moments to pull himself together, he comes back to Anne and exchanges some banal civilities, “neither of them, probably, much the wiser for what they heard, and Anne continuing fully sensible of his being less at ease than formerly.” You can imagine how forced and stilted this conversation must be. “So, how’ve you been?” “I’m good, thanks. You?” “Oh, hangin’ in there. Hey, how about this weather?” “I know, right? Wet enough for you?” “Too wet. Can’t handle rain.” “Me, neither.” (long pause) “Shopping?”
They had, by dint of being so very much together, got to speak to each other with a considerable portion of apparent indifference and calmness; but he could not do it now. Time had changed him, or Louisa changed him.
It’s at about this point that Anne realizes Elizabeth is watching them—and that he has likewise noticed her—and that he’s ready to acknowledge her with a bow, but Elizabeth deliberately won’t make eye contact. She “would not know him”, and turns away “with unalterable coldness.” A moment later a servant pops in to announce that Lady Dalrymple’s carriage has arrived for Miss Elliot, and Elizabeth sweeps out with a waaay bigger rustle of fabric than is strictly necessary, with Mrs. Clay skittering along behind.
Seeing that Anne has been left on her own, the captain turns to her, “and by manner, rather than words, was offering his service to her.” And that simple detail—“by manner, rather than words”—if you want to talk romantic?…Right here is how it’s done. If your pulse doesn’t momentarily go a-skittering on reading this deceptively simple passage, you just go back and read it again until it does. Don’t worry. We’ll wait.
Anne thanks him, but says she prefers walking—and as for the rain, hell, it’s just a drizzle. He tries, at least, to persuade her to take his new umbrella (“Though I came only yesterday, I have equipped myself properly for Bath already, you see”), and she eventually just comes out and admits she doesn’t need any help; she’s “only waiting for Mr. Elliot. He will be here in a moment, I am sure.”
And Mr. Elliot, being the kind of guy who’s likely to appear whenever his name is mentioned, does in fact now burst into the shop, possibly with a little puff of smoke and a cymbal clang, like he’s a genie from a lamp. “He came in with eagerness, appeared to see and think only of her, apologized for his stay, was grieved to have kept her waiting, and anxious to get her away without further loss of time, and before the rain increased”—and he ushers her out, arm-in-arm. Possibly he pulls a Sir Walter Raleigh and throws his coat over a puddle for her. Possibly with himself still in it.
All of this makes quite an impression on the captain’s friends, who, when the pair are out of sight, start right in gossiping about them. One of the ladies says, “Mr. Elliot does not dislike his cousin, I fancy?” and another quips, “One can guess what will happen there.”
“She is pretty, I think; Anne Elliot; very pretty, when one comes to look at her. It is not the fashion to say so, but I confess I admire her more than her sister.”
“Oh! so do I.”
“And so do I. No comparison. But the men are all wild after Miss Elliot. Anne is too delicate for them.”
So Anne—who was introduced to us as wan, withered, and long past her bloom—is now not only fending off a bucket load of male admirers, she’s got some girl groupies lining up. How goddamn dessicated can she possibly be?
We cut away to her now, walking with Mr. Elliot and really wishing he’d just shut up already. Even though he’s gallantly expounding on her usual favorite subjects—the wonderfulness of Lady Russell, the skankiness of Mrs. Clay—“just now she could think only of Captain Wentworth.” She can’t imagine what he must be feeling after the little scene they’ve just played together; and till she knows “whether he were really suffering much from disappointment [over Louisa] or not…she could not be quite herself.”
She also wonders how long he’s staying in Bath. If it’s for any length of time, he’s bound to run into Lady Russell somewhere. “Would she recollect him? How would it all be?” And will he have his musket with him? And will it be loaded?
She’s already had to tell Lady Russell that he won’t be marrying Louisa Musgrove, after all; so it’s a combustible situation all around. And in fact the next day, out walking with Lady R., Anne’s eyes are peeled for the captain—and when she spots him approaching on the other side of the street, she turns to look at Lady Russell, to judge whether she sees him too. And when he’s just adjacent, Lady R. goes suddenly goggle-eyed. Like in a cartoon, where the eyeballs just leap right out of the skull, accompanied by the “ahooga” car horn sound.
Anne’s like, uh-oh. And when Captain Wentworth has finally passed them by, she holds her breath, waiting to hear what Lady R. has to say. Which is the following:
“You will wonder…what has been fixing my eye so long; but I was looking after some window-curtains, which Lady Alicia and Mrs. Frankland were telling me of last night. They described the drawing-room window-curtains of one of the houses on this side of the way, and this part of the street, as being the handsomest and best hung of any in Bath, but could not recollect the exact number, and I have been trying to find out which it could be; but I confess I can see no curtains hereabouts that answer their description.”
Yeah, she doesn’t see the curtains, ‘cause she’s totally making them up. Lady R. saw Captain Wentworth, all right, but has decided that to maintain the convenient fiction that she didn’t.
Days pass with no more sightings, because the theatre and assembly rooms—where Captain Wentworth is likeliest to be found—are too crammed full of common people for the Elliots to visit; they prefer the “elegant stupidity of private parties,” of which there seem to be plenty.
But then comes the occasion of a concert “for the benefit of a person patronized by Lady Dalrymple,” and Captain Wentworth is a famous music lover. Anne’s betting he’ll be there, and if she can just talk to him for a few minutes, she’s pretty sure she can figure out his frame of mind. She’s not afraid of approaching him, either; “Elizabeth had turned from him, Lady Russell overlooked him; her nerves were strengthened by these circumstances; she felt that she owed him attention.
The Elliots arrive for the concert, but have to wait inside the door for Lady Dalrymple, who’s their hostess; and so Anne is right there, front and center, when Captain Wentworth comes in.
He was preparing only to bow and pass on, but her gentle “How do you do?” brought him out of the straight line to stand near her, and make enquiries in return, in spite of the formidable father and sister in the back ground. Their being in the back ground was a support to Anne; she knew nothing of their looks, and felt equal to everything which she believed right to be done.
In fact, Anne’s having taken the initiative so decisively, actually forces her family’s hand. Sir Walter is compelled to nod, acknowledging that Captain Wentworth is a human being on planet earth, which favor Wentworth returns with “a distant bow”. Even Elizabeth offers a “a slight curtsey”—so unwillingly that I’m betting you can actually hear her knees creak. All of which, “though late and reluctant and ungracious, was yet better than nothing, and [Anne’s] spirits improved.”
Anne and the captain fumble over some initial conversational awkwardness, before the captain realizes they haven’t officially seen each other since the news of Louisa’s engagement. He manages to make something like a joke, telling Anne, “When you had the presence of mind to suggest that Benwick would be the properest person to fetch a surgeon, you could have little idea of his being eventually one of those most concerned in her recovery.” Then he goes on to give his own earnest appraisal of the match.
“With all my soul I wish them happy, and rejoice over every circumstance in favour of it. They have no difficulties to contend with at home, no opposition, no caprice, no delays.—The Musgroves are behaving like themselves, most honourably and kindly, only anxious with true parental hearts to promote their daughter’s comfort. All this is much, very much in favour of their happiness; more than perhaps—”
And that’s where he has to break off, alarmed by Anne having turned the approximate shade of an eggplant, and he realizes whoops, he’s actually talking more about his own issues than about Louisa and Benwick. So he very theatrically clears his throat and starts over.
But it’s obviously not a good day for him, because only a few minutes later he’s at it again.
“It seems…to have been a perfectly spontaneous, untaught feeling on [Benwick’s] side, and this surprises me. A man like him, in his situation! With a heart pierced, wounded, almost broken! Fanny Harville was a very superior creature; and his attachment to her was indeed attachment. A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman!—He ought not—he does not.”
Again he realizes what he’s doing, grabs the reins, and halts himself. But the effect on Anne is pretty cataclysmic.
…[I]n spite of all the various noises of the room, the almost ceaseless slam of the door, and ceaseless buzz of persons walking through, [she] had distinguished every word, was struck, gratified, confused, and beginning to breathe very quick, and feel an hundred things in a moment.
For a polite exchange of greetings on the way in to a concert, this is fairly volcanic stuff, and Anne and the captain try to forestall any risk of spewing magma by retreating to safer topics. The captain talks a while about the countryside around Lyme, which he enjoyed exploring, and when Anne says she’d like to see Lyme again herself, he’s surprised; “I should have thought your last impressions of Lyme must have been strong disgust.” But she corrects him: the pain of the last few hours weren’t enough to wipe away all the pleasure that came before it.
“I have travelled so little, that every fresh place would be interesting to me—but there is real beauty at Lyme: and in short” (with a faint blush at some recollection) “altogether my impressions of the place are very agreeable.”
Your guess is as good as mine at what that “some recollection” might be; but I think a more salient point is to compare this passage with Mrs. Croft’s proudly listing all the places she’s visited, as the Admiral’s wife. Once again, we’re meant to see Mrs. Croft as the Anne Elliot that could have been.
But this unwittingly supercharged conversation now ends—and probably just in time, before one or both of its principals faints, or starts speaking in tongues—because Lady Dalrymple and her daughter arrive, and everyone zings over to them like they’ve got a positive magnetic charge or something. Anne is necessarily one of these iron-filing people; but the attendant loss of dignity doesn’t much annoy her.
She was in good humour with all. She had received ideas which disposed her to be courteous and kind to all, and to pity every one, as being less happy than herself.
When she finally pulls herself away, Captain Wentworth is gone; but never mind—“at present, perhaps, it was as well to be asunder. She was in need of a little interval for recollection.” Possibly a little interval for a scotch-and-soda, too, but I’m not sure whether Lady Dalrymple has popped for an open bar.
Elizabeth enters the concert room arm-in-arm with Miss Carteret—in fact, possibly dangling from Miss Carteret’s wrist, like a charm bracelet—and “had nothing to wish for that did not seem within her reach;” possibly literally so, as she could easily outstretch her hand and grab herself a sizeable slab of Lady Dalrymple. Anne is over the moon as well, though we’re told it would be a mistake to compare the two sisters’ ecstasies: “the origin of one all selfish vanity, the other all generous attachment.”
In fact Anne barely notices the “brilliancy” of the room and the crowd around her; her happiness “was from within.” She’s still reeling from that remarkably unguarded conversation with Captain Wentworth, which, on recollection, seems to push her towards one almost inevitable conclusion.
His opinion of Louisa Musgrove’s inferiority, an opinion which he had seemed solicitous to give, his wonder at Captain Benwick, his feelings as to a first, strong attachment,—sentences begun which he could not finish—his half averted eyes, and more than half expressive glance,—all, all declared that he had a heart returning to her at least; that anger, resentment, avoidance, were no more; and that they were succeeded, not merely by friendship and regard, but by the tenderness of the past; yes, some share of the tenderness of the past. She could not contemplate the change as implying less.—He must love her.
She tries to pick out the captain in the audience, but fails; then she takes her seat, and Mr. Elliot all but catapults himself into the space next to her. And then the music starts—it appears to be a program of Italian songs—and Anne is in the perfect frame of mind for it: “she had feelings for the tender, spirits for the gay, attention for the scientific, and patience for the wearisome;” and dang, that’s some fine writing there. Every time I read a passage like that, I imagine Austen putting down her pen, getting to her feet, and doing a short pimp walk around her chair.
During a pause, she explains the words of a song to Mr. Elliot—“or rather the meaning of the words, for certainly the sense of an Italian love-song must not be talked of”—pimp walk number two—and Mr. Elliot responds with some excruciating praise of her many accomplishments…really, the cringeworthy way he just piles it on makes you have to mentally suppress your gag reflex. And we even like Anne.
When Anne herself protests at all this purple praise, he tells her she is “too modest…and too highly accomplished for modesty to be natural in any woman.” And when she’s like, enough already, you are so talking out of your ass, he adds, no doubt with a maddeningly inscrutable smile, “Perhaps…I have had a longer acquaintance with your character than you are aware of.”
She asks him how that could even be possible. More crazy-mysterious smirking ensues; and then this.
“I knew you by report long before you came to Bath. I had heard you described by those who knew you intimately. I have been acquainted with you by character many years. Your person, your disposition, your accomplishments, manner—they were all described, they were all present to me.”
Mr. Elliot was not disappointed in the interest he hoped to raise. No one can withstand the charm of such a mystery.
Anne repeatedly asks who this person was—this fan of hers whose description “inspired [Mr. Elliot] with her merit, and excited the warmest curiosity to know her.” But he won’t say; he’s another Austen character whose nature is essentially feline, which means he enjoys playing with her…almost taunting her.
In the end, she decides the only possibly candidate is Mr. Wentworth, the ex-curate of Monkford. Hey, it’s possible Mr. Elliot met him somewhere. And though it seems like a long shot, she’s going to go with it for now, because she won’t give Mr. Elliot the satisfaction of hearing her ask again.
At just this moment she’s distracted by a conversation her father is having with Lady Dalrymple, about (what else, if Sir Walter is involved) “a very well-looking man”. What distracts Anne about it, is that Sir Walter, seeing Lady Dalrymple ogling the dude in question, brags that he knows the guy—“A bowing acquaintance”, he calls him. Which is only true because he’s just managed to squeeze out a single bow thirty minutes before. That’s right: they’re referring to none other than “Captain Wentworth of the navy. His sister married my tenant in Somersetshire,—the Croft, who rents Kellynch.”
Anne scopes out where their eyes are directed, and spots the captain standing at the back; but his eyes are averted—and then the performance begins again, so she has to turn around and pay attention. Suddenly everything seems less peachy keen than it did five minutes before. Mr. Elliot has basically creeped her out with his borderline-stalker confession, and Captain Wentworth is apparently avoiding looking at her.
At the interval (“after a period of nothing-saying amongst the party”—pimp walk number three) everyone goes for tea—except Anne, who holds her seat; and Lady Russell, who, perhaps sensing danger, does the same. Not that Anne will allow Lady Russell to prevent her from speaking to Captain Wentworth, if the chance arises. A swift elbow to the jaw will get her out of the way, if nothing else.
But Captain Wentworth doesn’t come near her; and soon the seats start filling up again for the second half, and Anne notices—what joy!—that Mr. Elliot has been “invited by Elizabeth and Miss Carteret, in a manner not to be refused, to sit between them.” Anne is free to scoot to the end of the bench, so she can have readier access to the room, just in case.
And it’s a strategically smart move, because she spots Captain Wentworth almost at once; and his look has gone entirely sour. She can’t imagine what’s happened; did someone in her family snark on him, or what? He approaches her and says he’s leaving, he’d expected better singing than he’s heard here tonight, so yeah, cheers, see ya whenevs. Anne, summoning up her sweetest and most diplomatic manner, tries to persuade him to stay—so successfully that he starts to soften and “he even looked down toward the bench, as if he saw a place on it well worth occupying”, and it’s all looking better and better…
…And then Mr. Elliot prances up, begging their pardon, but could Anne come and explain some Italian lyrics to Miss Carteret, who wants to know what the next song is about? Anne is unable to refuse; and as quickly as she can, she translates the text of the song for Miss Carteret, in single-syllable words where possible, and where not, drawing little pictures on the program to illustrate the major points. By the time she’s finished, she leaves the young noblewoman—probably holding her program upside-down—and manages to corner Captain Wentworth just as he’s striding out the door. He gives her a brusque good night.
“Is not this song worth staying for?” said Anne, suddenly struck by an idea which made her yet more anxious to be encouraging.
“No!” he replied impressively, “there is nothing worth my staying for;” and he was gone forever.
This “idea which made her yet more anxious to be encouraging”?…It’s the realization that Captain Wentworth is jealous.
Of Mr. Elliot.
For a moment, she’s a little giddy at this epiphany (“Could she have believed it a week ago—three hours ago!”), but then she realizes it’s actually sort of a pain in the ass. Because while it’s nice to have confirmation that the captain’s crushing on her again, how the hell does she get him to say so? We can think of some interesting possibilities…nothing that would leave Mr. Elliot permanently disfigured, but would certainly be unambiguous in demonstrating Anne’s real opinion of him. But alas, she’s probably too refined to consider them seriously.
Also, she still can’t bring herself to loathe Mr. Elliot. In fact, she still feels “a great deal of good will towards him. In spite of the mischief of his attentions, she owed him gratitude and regard, perhaps compassion.” But she emphatically does not owe him any more private time. Which is why it’s such a comfort that she’s promised to visit Mrs. Smith the next day, at almost exactly the time Mr. Elliot is most likely to come sniffing around Camden-place for her.
Mrs. Smith is over the moon to see her, as usual, and Anne sits right down and gives her a full account of the concert—or as full as she can. But she doesn’t need to feel guilty over any lapses or omissions, because Mrs. Smith has already heard, “through the short cut of a laundress and a waiter,” quite a lot of what went on there, possibly more than Anne herself even knows.
In fact, Mrs. Smith now “asked in vain for several particulars of the company. Every body of any consequence or notoriety in Bath was well known by name to Mrs. Smith.” Anne has to sit there, looking increasingly slack-jawed and stupid, confessing ignorance to every inquiry—“The little Durands were there, I conclude,”—“The Ibbotsons—were they there?”—“Old Lady Mary Maclean?” It’s pretty funny stuff. On the stage, it would be a two-character sketch, but for all practical purposes it’s a monologue.
Anne tries to apologize for her appalling lack of scoopage by saying how badly placed she was in the crowd, but Mrs. Smith cheerfully excuses her: “Oh! you saw enough for your own amusement.—I can understand. There is a sort of domestic enjoyment to be known even in a crowd, and this you had.” Pimp walk number…dang, I’ve lost count.
Mrs. Smith goes on to say, “Your countenance perfectly informs me that you were in company last night with the person whom you think most agreeable in the world,” which makes Anne blush. But then—because in these chapters, it’s almost required that everyone say something to make Anne Elliot shake her head back and forth and go, WTF?—Mrs. Smith adds, “Pray…is Mr. Elliot aware of your acquaintance with me? Does he know that I am in Bath?”
Of the many responses that logjam Anne’s gullet, the first to make it past her lips is, Whoa, you know Mr. Elliot? Mrs. Smith admits she does, though “It is a great while since we met.” Anne is knocked flat.
“I was not at all aware of this. You never mentioned it before. Had I known it, I would have had the pleasure of talking to him about you.”
“To confess the truth,” said Mrs. Smith, assuming her usual air of cheerfulness, “that is exactly the pleasure I want you to have. I want you to talk about me to Mr. Elliot. I want your interest with him. He can be of essential service to me; and if you would have the goodness, my dear Miss Elliot, to make it an object to yourself, of course it is done.”
Anne, utterly mystified, says she’ll be glad to make a pitch on her behalf, “but I suspect that you are considering me as having a higher claim on Mr. Elliot—a greater right to influence him, than is really the case.”
Mrs. Smith gave her a penetrating glance, and then, smiling, said,
“I have been a little premature, I perceive. I beg your pardon. I ought to have waited for official information. But now, my dear Miss Elliot, as an old friend, do give me a hint as to when I may speak. Next week?”
Anne finally realizes what she’s getting at, and is all, Whoa, whoa, whoa, hit the rewind button, baby—yours truly is definitely not engaged to Mr. Elliot. Which doesn’t quite have the desired effect on Mrs. Smith, because “It is a thing of course among us, that every man is refused—till he offers”, and so she goes plowing on.
“…Do not forget me when you are married, that’s all. Let him know me to be a friend of yours, and then he will think little of the trouble required, which it is very natural for him now, with so many affairs and engagements of his own, to avoid and get rid of as he can—very natural, perhaps.”
And by the way, congratulations, and best wishes for your happiness, and hey, can I interest you in some handmade lace doilies for the wedding dinner?
Anne finally has to get right up in Mrs. Smith’s face—possibly pressing her forearm to her throat to keep her still for the time required—and say, definitively, that Mr. Elliot is “nothing” to her, and if he asks her to marry him, the answer will be no, but he’s not going to ask her, because are you high?
And with that finally settled, Anne asks pretty please, could you tell me how the bloody buggery bollix that idea ever entered your head in the first place. And then it all comes out. Nurse Rooke is the news source, of course. Nurse Rooke, who had it from her client the pretty, preggers Mrs. Wallis, “which did not seem a bad authority.”
Anne, who has never even met Mrs. Wallis, finds it easy to dismiss anything that lady says. Still, she’s willing to help facilitate any business Mrs. Smith has with Mr. Elliot. “Shall I mention to him your being in Bath? Shall I take any message?”
And Mrs. Smith immediately backtracks. No, she says; thanks, but that’s maybe not a good idea. Forget I said anything.
You can imagine how well that works. Anne keeps pressing, and eventually Mrs. Smith apologizes for suddenly going so taciturn: “I beg your pardon for the short answers I have been giving you, but I have been uncertain what I ought to do. I have been doubting and considering what I ought to tell you.” But she’s apparently decided in favor of the whole shebang, because she now totally unloads.
“…Mr. Elliot is a man without heart or conscience; a designing, wary, cold-blooded being, who thinks only of himself; who for his own interest or ease, would be guilty of any treachery, that could be perpetrated without risk of his general character. He has no feeling for others. Those whom he has been the chief cause of leading him into ruin, he can neglect and desert without the smallest compunction. He is totally beyond the reach of any sentiment of justice or compassion. Oh! he is black at heart, hollow and black!”
Pretty unambiguously damnatory. Not even a few points in his favor for a natty dress sense.
This conversation between Anne and Mrs. Smith comprises Austen’s longest sustained dialogue—at twenty pages, it’s also one of the longest chapters in any of her works—and its pacing is just about perfect. It’s wave after wave of tension, release, tension, release. Again—as I say so often about Austen—it would play beautifully on the stage.
But for the sake of getting to the meat of the matter, I’ll skip each masterful beat and get right to the heart of the matter. Mrs. Smith’s husband and Mr. Elliot were best buds back in the day, though it was one of those friendships where one guy is the constantly sponging cretin and the other guy the devoted dupe. Mrs. Smith didn’t immediately twig to this because, “At nineteen, you know, one does not think very seriously,” but her husband was lending Mr. Elliot cash all the time—or rather, “lending” him, because there was pretty much zero chance of him ever seeing it back—to help him maintain the appearances of a gentleman while he was only a poor law student.
Mr. Elliot may have been studying law, but his real aim in life was to amass a fortune, and to do so PDQ. Which was the chief reason he resisted the invitation from Sir Walter to take his place in the family as the official heir to Kellynch-hall. He didn’t have any objection to inheriting the land and property, certainly, but the idea of waiting for Sir Walter to drop dead—not a workable scenario. Mr. Elliot needed moneyimmediately. And the only way to get it was through marriage. Which was another reason to avoid Kellynch: Mr. Elliot sensed that Sir Walter was angling to hitch him up to his daughter Elizabeth. Which would have solved exactly none of his problems.
“That was his motive for drawing back, I can assure you. He told me the whole story. He had no concealments with me. It was curious, that just having left you behind me in Bath, my first and principal acquaintance on marrying, should be your cousin; and that, through him, I should be continually hearing of your father and sister. He described one Miss Elliot, and I thought affectionately of the other.”
Thought about her—and, Mrs. Smith admits, when Anne asks her point-blank, spoke about her. So there’s a mystery solved: Mrs. Smith, of all people, is the source for Mr. Elliot’s long-standing, rapturous opinion of her.
Still, there’s another mystery: after Mr. Elliot married a low-born woman, strictly for her money, how was it that the Smiths still befriended him? Wasn’t that a revelation of his grasping, mercernary character? Mrs. Smith scoffs.
“Oh! those things are too common. When one lives in the world, a man or woman’s marrying for money is too common to strike one as it ought. I was very young, and associated only with the young, and we were a thoughtless, gay set, without any strict rules of conduct. We lived for enjoyment. I think differently now; time and sickness, and sorrow, have given me other notions; but, at that period, I must own I saw nothing reprehensible in what Mr. Elliot was doing. ‘To do the best for himself,’ passed as a duty.”
We’re kind of getting the impression Mrs. Smith booked her own passage on the karma train.
So Mr. Elliot married the rich woman who was crazy about him, then treated her shabbily…pretty much the same way he treated his Kellynch relations, in absentia; “all the honor of the family he held as cheap as dirt,” Mrs. Smith tells Anne. “I have often heard him declare, that if baronetcies were saleable, any body should have his for fifty pounds, arms and motto, name and livery included.” And as proof, she produces a letter from several years earlier, which she’s kept squirreled away all these years, in which Mr. Elliot spells it out in big, bold letters:
Give me joy: I have got rid of Sir Walter and Miss. They are gone back to Kellynch, and almost made me swear to visit them this summer, but my first visit to Kellynch will be with a surveyor, to tell me how to bring it with best advantage to the hammer…
I wish I had any name but Elliot. I am sick of it.
Anne, despite the tepidity of her own Elliot pride, can’t read this without getting “high colour in her face”. But being a stand-up human being, she reminds herself that “seeing the letter was a violation of the laws of honour, that no one ought to be judged or to be known by such testimonies, that no private correspondence could bear the eyes of others”—and I don’t know which I find more wonderfully exotic, that such a code as this once existed in the world, or that there was ever such a thing as “private correspondence.”
Even so, Anne is compelled to ask Mrs. Smith: what the hell? If that’s how he feels about the Elliots, why has he come crawling (or rather, swaggering) back to us now? Mrs. Smith says: Because he really doeswant to marry you. Which she has on good authority from Nurse Rooke, who had it from Mrs. Wallis, who had it from Captain Wallis, who had it from Mr. Elliot himself.
Apparently Mrs. Smith is unfamiliar with the game of Telephone. Which is understandable, since the telephone hadn’t been invented yet. (Although it’s also known as Chinese Whispers, and I’m pretty sure somebody had invented China.) Anne, however, is savvy enough to figure out the principle for herself. “Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left.”
But Mrs. Smith persists. Anne wasn’t Mr. Elliot’s first object in returning to the Kellynch fold, it seems. That would be the inheritance itself. “Having long had as much money as he could spend, nothing to wish for on the side of avarice or indulgence, he has been gradually learning to pin his happiness on the consequence he is heir to.” In short, “He cannot bear the idea of not being Sir William.”
And when his friend Colonel Wallis wrote to him from Bath, warning him that Sir Walter was in danger of being seduced into marriage by a shady widow—a widow who might then reward him with a brand-new male heir—Mr. Elliot high-tailed it to Bath to make peace with his cousins, and to do what he can to prevent Mrs. Clay from inserting her harpoon-tooth or her clumsy wrist or any of her freckles into the Elliot DNA. It was only later, after meeting Anne—meeting her after admiring her elsewhere, not knowing who she was; and having long heard her praises sung—that he thought he might as well seal the deal with a little matrimonial security, himself.
Anne is pretty much disgusted by this (“The manoeuvres of selfishness and duplicity must ever be revolting, but I have heard nothing which really surprises me”). And again, honor would dictate that she have nothing to do with Mr. Elliot and his diabolical plan. But but but…she can’t help herself. “I should like to know his present opinion,” she asks, “as to the probability of the event he has been in dread of; whether he considers the danger to be lessening or not.”
Mrs. Smith is happy to say that Nurse Rooke, by way of Mrs. Wallis, by way of Captain Wallis, by way of Mr. Elliot, thinks, “lessening.”
And may I just pause here to say something that always strikes me, whenever I reread Persuasion, which is that the general fury of loathing heaped on Mrs. Clay seems waaaay out of proportion to what she actually deserves? Here we are, plunging headlong towards the end of the novel, and all she’s done for the entirety of the narrative is try to win herself a baronet—as, frankly, who could blame her?—and to do it by the diabolical means of being nice to everybody (if occasionally a tad obsequious). If she’s a villain, she’s a pretty lame one, given that nearly everyone is on to her; also, she never does anything remotely dastardly, like use underhand means to get her rivals or enemies out of the way. Maybe she even genuinely likes Sir Walter. Hey, we wouldn’t know.
Anyway, we now get to the crux of Mrs. Smith’s complaint against Mr. Elliot. Her husband, when he died, left Mr. Elliot the executor of his will—despite having pretty much ruined himself on Mr. Elliot’s behalf, and with Mr. Elliot’s active encouragement (some people literallynever learn)—and Mr. Elliot has responded by ignoring the responsibility. Actively ignoring it, as Mrs. Smith has sent him many letters, which he answered with “cold civility”, citing “the stern resolution of not engaging in a fruitless trouble.”
But the thing is, there’s a certain aspect to the estate that isn’t fruitless:
She had good reason to believe that some property of her husband in the West Indies, which had been for many years under a sort of sequestration for payment of its own encumbrances, might be recoverable by proper measures; and this property, though not large, would be enough to make her comparatively rich. But there was nobody to stir in it.
You have to sympathize with Mrs. Smith, at this point. “To feel that she ought to be in better circumstances, that a little trouble in the right place might do it, and to fear that delay might be even weakening her claims, was hard to bear!” But how much harder, after being reunited with an old school chum, who just happens to be the intended wife of the one man alive who could fix things for her—and then have that turn out to be a big fat misunderstanding…hell, maybe now she’s ready to drown herself in the bath.
Anne’s pretty staggered by everything she’s heard. She does, however, have one final question for Mrs. Smith: Why, when she thought Anne was engaged to Mr. Elliot, did she actually congratulate her? Why, knowing everything she does about him? Mrs. Smith doesn’t miss a beat:
“My dear…there was nothing else to be done. I considered your marrying him as certain, though he might not yet have made the offer, and I could no more speak the truth of him, than if he had been your husband. My heart bled for you, as I talked of happiness. And yet, he is sensible, he is agreeable, and with such a woman as you, it was not absolutely hopeless.”
You almost can’t believe this woman has suffered all the slings and arrows she has. With a tongue as glib as hers, you’d think she would’ve talked herself into the House of Lords by now.
Next time: the big finale. Secrets are revealed, patience is rewarded, and a few first-class laughs are had along the way. Plus: Austen pulls in almost the entire cast for the occasion, so almost everybody gets a curtain call. What, you could ask for more?

View more on Robert Rodi's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 11, 2014 13:27

April 5, 2014

Persuasion, chapters 16-18

Anne’s arrival in Bath has been so filled with busy-ness that up to now, Mrs. Clay has been able to sort of hide off on the margins, unnoticed. But now that things have settled a bit, she’s bound to start becoming an issue. Mrs. Clay seems to sense this herself; and in fact when Anne comes down her first morning in Bath, she arrives at the breakfast room door just in time to catch Mrs. Clay in the act of saying “now Miss Anne was come, she could not suppose herself at all wanted.” And then Anne hears Elizabeth’s whispered reply—“That must not be any reason, indeed. I assure you I feel it none. She is nothing to me, compared to you”—and Sir Walter’s, too:
“My dear Madam, this must not be. As yet you have seen nothing of Bath. You have been here only to be useful. You must not run away from us now. You must stay to be acquainted with Mrs. Wallis, the beautiful Mrs. Wallis. To your fine mind, I well know the sight of beauty is a real gratification.”
Actually, Anne’s more worried that to Mrs. Clay’s fine mind, the title of “Lady Elliot” is a real gratification. And she’s not entirely sure her father can be trusted not to fall into her clutches. Little things he lets drop set off alarm bells in Anne’s head. As, for instance, when Sir Walter compliments Anne’s “greatly improved” looks and (in true metrosexual fashion) aska what products she’s been using—he guesses Gowland (a sort of Regency Lancôme, from what I can gather). Anne, protests she uses nothing at all, which surprises him.
“Certainly you cannot do better than continue as you are; you cannot be better than well; or I should recommend Gowland, the constant use of Gowland, during the spring months. Mrs. Clay has been using it at my recommendation, and you see what it has done for her. You see how it has carried away her freckles.”
If Elizabeth could but have heard this! Such personal praise might have struck her, especially as it did not appear to Anne that the freckles were at all lessened.
But Elizabeth remains serenely clueless to any danger Mrs. Clay might pose. As far as she’s concerned, Mrs. Clay is just her gawky, congenial sidekick—her own personal Rhoda Morgenstern. Anne resigns herself to seeing how things play out—telling herself that Sir Walter marrying Mrs. Clay won’t be quite so cataclysmic if Elizabeth at least marries well. “As for herself, she might always command a home with Lady Russell”—presumably, as the Rhoda Morgenstern in that relationship.
Lady Russell isn’t quite as resigned as Anne to the wait-and-see approach.
The sight of Mrs. Clay in such favour, and of Anne so overlooked, was a perpetual provocation to her there; and vexed her as much when she was away, as a person in Bath who drinks the water, gets all the new publications, and has a very large acquaintance, has time to be vexed.
You know what I’d like to see? A Lady Russell vs. Mrs. Clay mud-wrestling match. I wouldn’t even care who won.
But while Lady R. remains dead set against Mrs. Clay, she’s done a complete one-eighty with regard to Mr. Elliot, with whom she’s now completely tickled pink. She “could not seriously picture to herself a more agreeable or estimable man. Every good thing united in him; good understanding, correct opinions, knowledge of the world, and a warm heart”—and if that’s not enough, there’s almost a page more of fervent praise for the guy. You get the impression that with just a leeeetle bit of encouragement, she’d go totally cougar on him. She even latches on to some intelligence provided by Captain Wallis (that Mr. Elliot’s marriage wasn’t entirely a happy one) and gets herself all worked up about this poor golden lad finding a second chance at happiness.
As for Anne, she’s not quiiiite as sold on Mr. Elliot; in fact, she’s amazed that Lady Russell “should see nothing suspicious or inconsistent, nothing to require more motives than appeared, in Mr. Elliot’s great desire of a reconciliation.” She still suspects him of setting his sights on Elizabeth—though she has to admit, nothing actually occurs within her range of sight to back her up. Sure, he pays a lot of attention to Elizabeth, but in this house, that’s Elizabeth’s due. (As she’d be the first to remind him. Or you. Or anybody.)
Mr. Elliot, too, it must be remembered, had not been a widower seven months. A little delay on his side might be very excusable. In fact, Anne could never see the crape around his hat, without fearing that she was the inexcusable one, in attributing to him such imaginations; for though his marriage had not been very happy, still it had existed so many years that she could not comprehend a very rapid recovery from the awful impression of its being dissolved.
He’s also—Anne has to admit it—“without any question their pleasantest acquaintance in Bath”, and one of the few people who not only pays her attention, but pays her compliments into the bargain. He likes to remind her about their first encounter at Lyme, and how “he had looked at her with some earnestness.” (Anne, so far from being overly swayed by this, “remembered another person’s look also”—a reference to the way Mr. Elliot checking her out, had made Captain Wentworth reappraise her.)
And despite Mr. Elliot’s mega-watt charm and superfine manners, Anne can’t totally warm to him; he and she are just too different. “His value for rank and connexion she perceived to be greater than hers”—which it would almost have to be, since hers is basically in the negative numbers. But she sees this side of him flare up—and not just him—when the Bath newspaper announces the arrival of a certain Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple, and her daughter, the Honourable Miss Carteret.
This news shakes the household at Camden-place like a snowglobe. For these esteemed new visitors are cousins of the Elliots, and Sir Walter and Elizabeth are in a sudden frenzy over how to introduce themselves. You picture them running from room to room, beside themselves, criss-crossing hallways as in a French bedroom farce.
Anne had never seen her father and sister before in contact with nobility, and she must acknowledge herself disappointed. She had hoped better things from their high ideas of their own situation in life, and was reduced to form a wish which she had never foreseen—a wish that they had more pride; for “our cousins Lady Dalrymple and Miss Carteret;” “our cousins, the Dalrymples” sounded in her ears all day long.
The problem is, there’s been a breach between the two branches of the family—the result of Sir Walter having been afflicted with a “dangerous illness” at the very time the Viscount Dalrymple died, so that no formal letter of condolence was sent from Kellynch-hall. And then when Lady Elliot died, the Dalrymples went tit-for-tat, and sent no letter of condolence either. Consequently, “there was but too much reason to apprehend that the Dalrymples considered the relationship closed.” So there.
But now the Dalrymples are in Bath—and the Elliots feel the pull of their awesome rank like some kind of blue-blooded tractor beam. And Sir Walter and Elizabeth aren’t the only ones driven to wild-eyed mania on the subject of reconnecting with these titans of society; “it was a question which, in a more rational manner, neither Lady Russell nor Mr. Elliot thought unimportant.” Though since Sir Walter and Elizabeth would pretty much resort to ritually slaughtering small animals and dancing naked around a pentagram, “a more rational manner” is very much a relative term.
Finally Sir Walter just breaks down and writes a letter making his case—and though “neither Lady Russell nor Mr. Elliot could admire the letter” (possibly it’s too abject, along the lines of “I am really really really really sorry about missing the Viscount’s death—really”), it manages to do the trick. They’re invited to visit the esteemed cousins’ house in Laura-place, and when they get back to Camden-street “they had the cards of the Dowager Viscountess Dalrymple, and the Hon. Miss Carteret, to be arranged wherever they might be most visible”—and possibly they have T-shirts made up that read ASK US ABOUT OUR COUSINS, THE DALRYMPLES.
Anne is no part of this, and is disgusted by the whole thing. It would be one thing if the Dalrymples had anything to recommend them—talent, or wit, or intelligence, or the ability to say the alphabet all the way up to M, or something. But in fact they’re a couple of titled dullards. Even Lady Russell confesses “she had expected something better”, though she still insists that it’s “an acquaintance worth having,” which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about Lady Russell’s judgment, if you didn’t already know it.
Mr. Elliot, too, admits that the Dalrymples aren’t exactly firecrackers, but he says it’s worth knowing them because they’re the types who “collect good company around them”. Anne begs to differ.
“My idea of good company, Mr. Elliot, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.”
“You are mistaken,” he said gently, “that is not good company, that is the best.”
But he’s not ceding the point; in fact he he keeps arguing that “Birth and good manners are essential”. Over a whole page of back-and-forth, during which Anne maintains how undignified it is “that we should be so solicitous to have the relationship acknowledged, which we may be very sure is a matter of perfect indifference to them,” he keeps shooting back Yes, but. He has that rare and unsettling ability to appear to agree with everything you say, while he’s actually saying the exact opposite. He’s glib, is what he is; worse than that, he’s slippery.
And he knows how to make a strategic retreat to surer ground. As when, at the tail end of this frustrating discussion with Anne, he pulls his chair a little closer to hers and leans in.
“In one point, I am sure, my dear cousin, (he continued, speaking lower, though there was no one else in the room) in one point, I am sure, we must feel alike. We must feel that every addition to your father’s society, among his equals or superiors, may be of use in diverting his thoughts from those who are beneath him.”
And as he says this, he looks directly “to the seat which Mrs. Clay had been lately occupying.” Which has the effect of immediately pulling Anne back over to his side. What are the Dalrymples—harmless idiots—compared to the poisonous black widow in their midst? (The poisonous, freckledblack widow, no less.)
In the meantime, while Sir Walter and Elizabeth are chasing after the Dalrymples like pigeons after a pretzel vendor, Anne has been making some social contacts of her own. She’s called on an old governess, who’s told her that an old school-mate of hers is now in Bath—an older girl, who, when Anne was in very low spirits after the death of her mother, took her under her wing and gave her much needed friendship and protection. This Miss Hamilton “could never be remembered with indifference”, and Anne determines to call on her.
But Miss Hamilton’s life since school has been no goddamn bed of roses. She married a man of fortune, who then discovered his greatest talent was for squandering one; and once he’d done that, he discovered his next greatest talent, which was dying young. He left his widow “with difficulties of every sort to contend with, and in addition to these distresses, [she] had been afflicted with a severe rheumatic fever, which finally settling in her legs, had made her for the present a cripple.” She’d come to Bath in the hopes of a cure, but grew even sicker on arrival, and was now living in very humble lodgings in the Westgate-buildings, which is apparently the Bath equivalent to Skid Row. Really, the calamity Austen heaps on this one character over the course of a single page, could be spread out over six more novels.
Anne pays the visit, and once the two old friends have gotten over the awkwardness of their different situations, and the shock of how much they’ve changed, they’re off to the races, remembering the good old days and having a knee-slapping old time. Because Mrs. Smith—as Miss Hamilton is now known—is not the kind of woman to let a few measly problems (like destitution, abject poverty, chronic illness, and complete despair of any change for the better, ever) get her down. “Neither the dissipations of the past—and she had lived very much in the world, nor the restrictions of the present; neither sickness nor sorrow seemed to have closed her heart or ruined her spirits.” So we know, this gal’s either a freaking saint, or an utter imbecile.
Anne, who apparently goes for Door Number One, is inspired to visit again—if only to marvel anew at how a woman who has ever reason to drown herself in her bath, actually manages to find “hours of occupation and enjoyment”. And eventually Mrs. Smith admits that there was a time—just after she’d arrived at Bath—when she really did hit rock-bottom. She’d caught cold on the journey, and was soon “confined to bed, and suffering under severe and constant pain; and all this among strangers—with the absolute necessity of having a regular nurse,” but without the finances for even an irregular nurse.
She was rescued from this dire state by the kindness of her landlady, and by her landlady’s sister—“a nurse by profession, who had always had a home in that house when unemployed, [and who] chanced to be at liberty just in time to attend her.”
So out of the extremities of anguish, Mrs. Smith found friendship and generosity—and a new faith in human nature. Since then, with the landlady’s encouragement, she’s taken up making little artsy-crafty things (“thread-cases, pin-cushions, and card-racks”—the equivalent, I suppose, to today’s braided-leather bracelets and crocheted iPhone cases) which she sells for small change to her nurse friend’s society clients. And that’s not all the service Nurse Rooke provides her.
“She is a shrewd, intelligent, sensible woman. Hers s a line for seeing human nature; and she has a fund of good sense and observation which, as a companion, make her infinitely superior to thousands of those who having only received ‘the best education in the world,’ will know nothing worth attending to. Call it gossip if you will; but when nurse Rooke has half an hour’s leisure to bestow on me, she is sure to have something to relate that is entertaining and profitable, something that makes one know one’s species better.”
You could probably boil this all down to just those six words in the middle: “Call it gossip, if you will.” And Anne can well believe Nurse Rooke is worth her testimonial in that regard, because women in her profession see so much nakedly revealed human behavior; a sick room brings it all out. Though Anne, typically, thinks of all the good it draws forth (“heroism, fortitude, patience, resignation”), so that Mrs. Smith has to correct her: “it is selfishness and impatience, rather than generosity and fortitude, that one hears of.” I’m not even going to argue about which makes for better scoops.
But alas, Mrs. Smith hasn’t much hope of gossip for the time being.
“I do not suppose the situation of my friend Mrs. Rooke is in at present, will furnish much either to interest or edify me.—She is only nursing Mrs. Wallis of Marlborough-buildings—a mere pretty, silly, expensive, fashionable woman, I believe—and of course will have nothing to report but of lace and finery.”
This is the pregnant wife of Colonel Wallis, the beautiful friend of Mr. Elliot, whose appearance at Camden-place is so eagerly anticipated by Sir Walter.
We can see what Austen’s setting up here; while her father and sister have been falling over themselves trying to touch the hem of the great White Goddess Dalrymple, Anne has quietly, and characteristically, forged an alliance with someone who has the potential to be infinitely more valuable…a woman who has access to the back door of every house in Bath society. What Nurse Rooke doesn’t know, can’t be worth knowing.
Yet the value of this friendship to Anne is still quite a ways down the road. For the present, in fact, it works against her, as a liability—at least it does when, finally, Sir Walter learns that his daughter—the daughter of a baronet!—has been paying calls in Westgate-buildings. Sir Walter can barely contain his disdain.
“Upon my word, Miss Anne Elliot, you have the most extraordinary taste! Everything that revolts other people, low company, paltry rooms, foul air, disgusting associations, are inviting to you.”
Even worse, Anne not only persists in this degraded association—she does so at the expense of the exalted connection to the Dalrymples. The Elliots have been summoned—possibly by thunderbolt, or a flock of doves—to an audience at Laura-place, and Anne won’t go because of a previous commitment to visiting Mrs. Smith at Westgate-buildings. This is beyond Sir Walter’s comprehension—almost literally. It’s like she’s refusing a trip to Valhalla in favor of jumping into a ditch to be eaten by rats.
“A widow Mrs. Smith—lodging in Westgate-buildings!—A poor widow, barely able to live, between thirty and forty—a mere Mrs. Smith, an every day Mrs. Smith, of all people and all names in the world, to be the chosen friend of Miss Anne Elliot, and to be preferred by her, to her own family connections among the nobility of England and Ireland! Mrs. Smith, such a name!”
Anne somehow resists the urge to ask him to repeat the bulk of what he’s just said, only substituting “Clay” for “Smith,” and see how it sounds. But the temptation is pretty powerful.
Anne goes ahead with her visit to Mrs. Smith, and the next morning hears endlessly about the ecstasies of the visit to Laura-place, to which Lady Russell and Mr. Elliot were also treated—invited apparently so belatedly that Lady Russell had to rearrange “all her evening engagements” to accommodate it—leaving one to wonder, how many evening engagements does Lady Russell have? Does she put on a mask when the moon comes out, and fight crime or something?
The only thing of interest to come from the evening at Laura-place (because the Dalrymples themselves certainly can’t supply any; your average clump of bread mold has more pizzazz) is that Mr. Elliot not only laments Anne’s absence to Lady Russell, he commends the cause of it. “Her kind, compassionate visits to this old schoolfellow, sick and reduced, seemed to have quite delighted [him]. He thought her a most extraordinary young woman; in her temper, manners, mind, a model of female excellence.” All of which leaves Lady Russell “as much convinced of his meaning to gain Anne in time, as of his deserving her”.
She tells Anne as much, and begs her—should the time come that Mr. Elliot does in fact pay his address—to give the guy a chance. “I think there would be every possibility of your being happy together. A most suitable connection every body must consider it—but I think it might be a happy one.” Anne, while insisting that “we would not suit,” is still human—and the idea of being one day Lady Elliot, mistress of Kellynch, just like her mother, is a pretty potent one; and Lady Russell keeps it at the forefront of Anne’s mind. “[T]o look forward and see you occupying your dear mother’s place, succeeding to all her rights, and all her popularity, as well as to all her virtues, would be the highest possible gratification to me.”
As to that, we, of course, feel that Lady Russell should feel the highest possible gratification that Anne hasn’t pushed her in front of a speeding barouche, given the way she’s behaved in the past, and maybe she should just shut the hell up and stop pressing her luck. But Anne lets her go on; because, as I said, it is an attractive idea to her. She still feels her mother’s loss; and to take up her mother’s legacy herself—yeah, that would be something she could seriously get behind.
The only problem with this rosy little scenario, is Mr. Elliot’s place in it. Yeah, sure, he’s practically perfect in every way; but the very smoothness of that perfection is what troubles her. What’s it hiding? “She distrusted the past, if not the present.” He occasionally dropped references to former practices, former associations, that threw up some serious red flags; he’s even let it be known that “there had been a period of his life (and probably not a short one) when he had been, at least, careless on all serious matters;” and though he presented himself as now being older and wiser—is he? It’s impossible to tell.
Mr. Elliot was rational, discreet, polished,—but he was not open. There was never any burst of feeling, any warmth of indignation or delight, at the evil or good of others. This, to Anne, was a decided imperfection. Her early impressions were incurable. She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others. Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still. She felt that she could so much more depend on the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped.
And his tongue not only never slips, it’s as nimble as an Olympic gymnast. “Various as were the tempers in her father’s house, he pleased them all. He endured too well,—stood too well with everybody.” Even Mrs. Clay, about whom he’s been blisteringly frank to Anne, and who he appears to regard as a no more than a feral cat no one’s bothered to chase out yet—even Mrs. Clay thinks he’s a dreamboat. Mr. Elliot is the Eddie Haskell of Persuasion.
So Anne relegates him to the sidelines of her own concerns—which, increasingly, are occupied with Uppercross and Lyme. She hasn’t heard anything from those quarters in quite a while, and is getting a little itchy for news. Then one day a very thick letter from Mary arrives, “with Admiral and Mrs. Croft’s compliments”, which is super-fantastic on two scores: first—updates from Uppercross! Second—the Crofts must be in Bath!
But first: the letter. It’s a freaking masterpiece of passive-aggressiveness. Mary manages to deliver all the news worth relating, while imbuing every single line with her own laments at being used, abused, neglected, and disrespected by everyone in the entire human race. Here’s how it begins:
I make no apology for my silence, because I know how little people think of letters in such a place as Bath. You must be a great deal too happy to care for Uppercross, which, as you well know, affords little to write about. We have had a very dull Christmas; Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove have not had one dinner-party all the holidays. I do not reckon the Hayters as any body.
And, oh man, she’s just getting started. Next she writes that Henrietta has returned home; and then there’s this:
The carriage is gone today, to bring Louisa and the Harvilles to-morrow. We are not asked to dine with them, however, till the day after, Mrs. Musgrove is so afraid of her being fatigued by the journey, which is not very likely, considering the care that will be taken of her; and it would be much more convenient to me to dine there tomorrow.
I’m resisting the temptation to just transcribe the entire text; it’s gasp-inducing, every single bloody passage. Here’s just one more:
I am sorry to say that I am very far from well; and Jemima has just told me that the butcher says there is a bad sore-throat much about. I dare say I shall catch it; and my sore-throats, you know, are always worse than anybody’s.
She’s even bitching about things that haven’t happened yet.
Just when we think this pièce de résistanceis finished, we find out there’s a second part to it—Mary having held back sending it so as to be able to report on that inconvenient dinner party. Which also provides her with some blockbuster news to impart. She and Charles arrived at the great house for the dinner, and found Louisa and the Harvilles there, as expected—but “we were rather surprised not to find Captain Benwick of the party, for he had been invited as well as the Harvilles; and what do you think the reason?”
The reason, she reveals, is that Captain Benwick is in love with Louisa, and chooses not “to venture to Uppercross till he’s had an answer from Mr. Musgrove;” because he’s already had an answer from Louisa, which is Oh I very much think so. “Are you not astonished?” Mary asks, possibly rhetorically, because how could Anne not be? And not just Anne. “Charles wonders what Captain Wentworth will say; but if you remember, I never thought him attached to Louisa; I never could see any thing of it.”
And then, being Mary, she’s got to add in this little knife-twister. I’m pretty sure it makes her day. Possibly after writing it, she goes out of doors and frolics among the winter flowers, and twines some in her hair and sings tra-la-la-la-la.
And this is the end, you see, of Captain Benwick’s being supposed to be an admirer of yours. How Charles could take such a thing into his head was always incomprehensible to me. I hope he will be more agreeable now.

Sir Walter and Elizabeth have been watching Anne read the letter, and now—seeing how her jaw has dropped to her chest—they ask what’s the big news, anyway? She tells them, but of course their interest in the actual answer is next to nil. Louisa might be engaged to an organ grinder’s monkey, without raising any more interest than they show here.
No, they have far more important questions to ask. “Sir Walter wanted to know whether the Crofts travelled with four horses, and whether they were likely to be situated in such a part of Bath as it might suit Miss Elliot and himself to visit”. Mary, for her part, only inquires what brings the Crofts to Bath at all. When Anne tells them that the Admiral is suffering from gout, Sir Walter snorts, “Gout and decrepitude!…Poor old gentleman”, which is pretty sure to have made his day.
Mary goes on to ask whether the Crofts have any acquaintance in Bath—possibly with a wrinkle of her nose, signifying, We’renot meant to be their BFFs , are we? And when Sir Walter, in a burst of proprietary feeling (“I suspect…that Admiral Croft will be best known in Bath as the renter of Kellynch-hall”) actually toys with the idea of presenting the gouty old gentleman at Laura-place, Elizabeth quickly throws cold water on the idea—and possibly over Sir Walter himself, while discreetly moving the flask of canary wine out of his reach. “We had better leave the Crofts to find their own level,” she advises. “There are several odd-looking men walking about here, who, I am told, are sailors. The Crofts will associate with them.” What makes this line even funnier, on re-reading, is that this is exactly what the Crofts actually do.
Anne makes a strategic retreat to her room, to try and figure out the Benwick-Louisa business in private. She’s not at all wounded for her own sake; you get the impression she sort of liked Benwick being sweet on her, but is more than okay with having that off the table now. (For someone whose bloom is supposedly long wilted, she’s having to spend a deal of time juggling the menfolk.) She is, however, worried that Benwick’s engagement willwound Captain Wentworth. “She could not endure the idea of treachery or levity, or any thing akin to ill-usage between him and his friend. She could not endure that such a friendship as theirs should be severed unfairly.” Her best hope is that Wentworth never really loved Louisa much, in the first place. He certainly seems to have quitted the field easily enough.
But leaving the field open to Captain Benwick still doesn’t explain how Benwick came to claim it. A sad sack like that, winning over an ebullient girl like Louisa?…It’s like Droopy Dog seducing Betty Boop. Anne puzzles over it until she realizes, “of course they had fallen in love over poetry. The idea of Louisa Musgrove turned into a person of literary taste, and sentimental reflection, was amusing, but she had no doubt of its being so.” And while I think Anne is giving due credit to the persuasive power of verse, I don’t think she’s giving quite enough to the equally realigning properties of a blow to the head. Such cranial traumas have been known to alter characters; and the Musgroves are pretty lucky, in my opinion, that Louisa’s injury only rendered her susceptible to Lord Byron. A slightly harder impact, in a slightly different place, and she might have sat up in bed after a day or two, convinced she was Lord Byron.
Having settled all this, Anne is ready to analyze her own feelings on the matter. And she’s not quite prepared for the conclusion she draws.
…[I]f Captain Wentworth lost no friend by it, certainly [it was] nothing to be regretted. No, it was not regret which made Anne’s heart beat in spite of herself, and brought the colour into her cheeks when she thought of Captain Wentworth unshackled and free. She had some feelings which she was ashamed to investigate. They were too much like joy, senseless joy!
I’m not sure “senseless” is a term we can associate with Anne Elliot; she’s not likely to go running into the street in her petticoat, planting kisses on the cheeks of passers-by and sticking tulips in all the horses’ bridles. Her joy is almost certainly more focused, more controlled—though probably equally intense.
It’s also, for the moment, private. Eventually, the Elliots and the Crofts exchange visits, and though Louisa and Captain Benwick are mentioned, it’s “without even half a smile.” So the news of the engagement hasn’t yet been made public, placing the story clearly in that archaic era that predates the Twitterverse.
Anne is delighted to see the Crofts again—and to see them often, too, as Sir Walter “was not at all ashamed of the acquaintance, and did, in fact, think and talk a great deal more about the Admiral, than the Admiral ever thought or talked about him.”
Austen goes on to paint a wonderfully endearing portrait of the Crofts in Bath, where they’ve “brought with them their country habit of being almost always together”, and of walking quite a bit, to relieve the Admiral’s gout. Anne “saw them wherever she went”, and she doesn’t just see them: she actively keeps tabs on them, in a way that kinda-sorta borders on stalking. Though really, you can’t blame her.
She always watched them as long as she could; delighted to fancy she understood what they might be talking of, as they walked along in happy independence, or equally delighted to see the Admiral’s hearty shake of the hand when he encountered an old friend, and observe their eagerness of conversation when occasionally forming into a little knot of the navy, Mrs. Croft looking as intelligent and keen as any of the officers around her.
This is all witnessed, by the way, from within Lady Russell’s coach. Which is why Anne sees the Crofts, but the Crofts don’t see her. (Just to forestall any idea that she’s lurking behind a shrubbery or something, spying on them through the branches.) But on the first occasion that she happens to be on foot, and comes across the Admiral alone and staring into the window of a print shop, she does the polite thing and stops to say hello.
Of course he greets her with his usual blustery cheerfulness. He’s basically the most happening dude in the whole Austen canon, and every time he gets some air time, we just wish he’d tuck the whole novel up under his arm and carry it off with him. We don’t even care where. “This is treating me like a friend,” he says to Anne, possibly with a slap on her back—and if anyone could get away with that, he could.
“Here I am, you see, staring at a picture. I can never get by this shop without stopping. But what a thing here is, by way of a boat. Do look at it. Did you ever see the like? What queer fellows your fine painters must be, to think that any body would venture their lives in such a shapeless old cockleshell as that. And yet, here are two gentlemen stuck up in it mightily at their ease, and looking about them at the rocks and mountains, as if they were not to be upset the next moment, which they certainly must be. I wonder where that boat was built!” (laughing heartily) “I would not venture a horsepond in it.”
I. Am. Weeping.
The Admiral gives his arm to Anne and offers to walk her home, because “I have something to tell you as I go along.” But before he can spit it out, he runs into someone he knows.
“But here comes a friend, Captain Bridgen; I shall only say, ‘How d’ye do,’ as we pass, however. I shall not stop. ‘How d’ye do.’ Bridgen stares to see anybody with me but my wife. She, poor soul, is tied by the leg. She has a blister on one of her heels as large as a three shilling piece. If you look across the street, you will see Admiral Brand coming down and his brother. Shabby fellows, both of them! I am glad they are not on this side of the way. Sophy cannot bear them. They played me a pitiful trick once—got away some of my best men. I will tell you the whole story another time. There comes old Archibald Drew and his grandson. Look, he sees us: he kisses his hand to you; he takes you for my wife…”
And so on, and so on—like a vaudeville sketch, with Anne itching to hear what news he’s got for her, and he distracted by the now positive flood of acquaintances—and the memories they prompt. It’s hilarious.
In the end, his news is anticlimactic; it’s just the revelation—new to him—of what’s happened to Louisa. Or, as he calls her, “That young lady, you know, that we have all been so concerned for. The Miss Musgrove, that all this has been happening to. Her christian name—I always forget her christian name.” How much would you bet, if Anne were to say her name was Bambi, or Lollipop, or Cleopatra, the Admiral would say, “Yes, yes, the very one.”
As the Admiral reports it, Louisa was all set to marry Frederick (a.k.a. Captain Wentworth), who was “courting her week after week. The only wonder was, what they could be waiting for, till the business at Lyme came; then, indeed, it was clear enough that they must wait till her brain was set to right.” (Dang, but the Admiral should be reviewing these novels, not me.) Except then Frederick went and lit out for Plymouth, and from there to stay with his brother the rector—and meantime Captain Benwick has moved in and sealed the deal. It’s all a complete mystery to the Admiral, as well it might be. It’s not exactly crystal clear to Anne. Or to us, for that matter.
The Admiral has one interesting new layer to add, which is that he heard the news from none other than Frederick himself. Yes, Captain Wentworth has written to tell the Crofts of the engagement. Which means, of course, that he knows about it himself. Anne, unable to resist, says she hopes “there is nothing in the style of Captain Wentworth’s letter to make you and Mrs. Croft particularly uneasy”—meaning, something like oh my dear Louisa without her love I am a lost man and will never come again; forget me, forget my name. Or alternately: Benwick shall pay for his cunning perfidy—the next time I see him, let it be pistols at dawn. But no such luck: Frederick’s letter, the Admiral attests, contains “not an oath or a murmur from beginning to end.”
“He does not give the least fling at Benwick; does not so much as say, ‘I wonder at it, I have a reason of my own for wondering at it.’ No, you would not guess, from his way of writing, that he had ever thought of this Miss (what’s her name?) for himself. He very handsomely hopes they will be happy together, and there is nothing very unforgiving in that, I think.”
Anne’s more than satisfied to hear this, thanks very much; but then the Captain goes on to say, “Poor Frederick!…Now he must begin all over again with someone else. I think we must get him to Bath. Here are pretty girls enough, I am sure…Do you not think, Miss Elliot, we had better try to get him to Bath?”
Does she? Does Miss Elliot think they’d better? Or doesn’t she?…Does Miss Elliot even knowwhat she thinks?
As we’ll see next time, it doesn’t really matter. Because guess who’s already on his way?

View more on Robert Rodi's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 05, 2014 05:58

April 1, 2014

Persuasion, chapters 13-15

Persuasion is a Jane Austen novel, which means we can count on finding in it certain narrative devices that are common to all her works. For instance: each Austen novel features a rival and a cad. The rival exists to lure the hero’s attention away from the heroine and the cad to do the reverse—to distract the heroine from the less obvious, but superior, charms of the hero. In both Sense and Sensibilityand Pride and Prejudice, the rival and the cad are hilariously loathsome sorts—the kind you love to hate; ditto in Northanger Abbey, which was written earlier than the other novels, but not published until after Austen’s death.
But beginning in Mansfield Park, Austen seems to become impatient with broadly despicable villains. The rival and cad of that novel—Mary Crawford and her brother Henry—are much more complex and sympathetic figures; and Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill, in Emma, even more so.
In Persuasion, Austen has so far outgrown her need for these devices that they almost get lost in the larger structure. In fact, the rival’s subplot barely overlaps the cad’s; by the time Mr. Elliot is introduced, Louisa Musgrove’s arc is on the decline. And Louisa’s potency as a rival to Anne Elliot—who has already given up all hope of Captain Wentworth, anyway—is muddied for the majority of her appearances by a sub-rivalry with her sister Henrietta. By the time Louisa finally pulls ahead, Austen is nearly ready to dispense with her.
The fact is, the rival and the cad are fairly extraneous to the real story of Persuasion. The real factor separating Anne and Captain Wentworth is the bitterness of their personal history—the hurtful way they parted, eight years before. And their way back to each other is not past the more dazzling charms of other people, but past their own damaged feelings: Anne’s shame at having given up too easily, the captain’s obsession for his wounded dignity.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. We’re not quite finished with Uppercross (and Louisa) nor yet arrived at Bath (and Mr. Elliot), but on the cusp of the transition between them—a fulcrum moment in the novel.
We find Anne at the manor house, helping to care for Mary’s children while Mary herself remains in Lyme, tending the wounded Louisa. Except not really; as we’ve expected, the only tending she does is to her own grievances. “[Mrs. Harville] really left nothing for Mary to do,” Charles says when he comes to Uppercross to report on Louisa’s condition. Also, “Mary had been hysterical again this morning.” Note that “again.” Anne certainly notes it, and contrives to send Louisa’s old childhood maid, Sarah, up to Lyme to look after her in Mary’s place. Sarah herself is totally up for the trip, because with all the children grown she’s been basically sitting around for a decade waiting for stockings to mend or whatever. And having her there will free Mary from the sick room entirely, so that she can cease being hysterical and go back to being merely sulky and resentful.
Dispatching Sarah is Anne’s last contribution to the cause; she’s now to leave Uppercross and return to Kellynch to stay with Lady Russell. The Musgroves go into a panic over her imminent departure—“What should they do without her? They were wretched comforters for one another!”—and possibly they try to entice her to stay; maybe Mrs. M. attempts to sit on her, which would certainly do the trick. Anne escapes this fate by convincing them to go to Lyme themselves, an idea which suits them so well that they leave the very next morning, no doubt after having got down the driveway seven or eight times and having to turn back because dammit I forgot my good waistcoat and oh no I’ve left behind the Parcheesi board.
Once all the dust is settled, Anne realizes that—with the exception of Mary’s children (and, of course, the servants who are beneath anyone’s notice)—she’s all alone at Uppercross, “the very last, the only remaining one of all that had filled and animated both houses, and of all that had given Uppercross its cheerful character.” Most of us, in this situation, would feel a kind of illicit thrill, and immediately start going through all the dresser drawers; but Anne, being a lady and all, only pauses to commemorate the moment.
Then, on a gray, wet November day, Lady Russell’s carriage arrives for her, and she leaves Uppercross for good—but not “without a saddened heart.”
Scenes had passed in Uppercross, which made it precious. It stood the record of many sensations of pain, once severe, but now softened; and of some instances of relenting feeling, some breathings of friendship and reconciliation, which could never be looked for again, and which could never cease to be dear. She left it all behind her; all but the recollection that such things had been.
Anne’s very good at this elegiac stuff, and left to her own devices might just spend the rest of the novel wallowing in it. Lady Russell’s not exactly a barrel of laughs herself; she greets Anne with “some anxiety mixed with [her] joy” because she’s heard that you-kn0w-whohad been hanging around Uppercross during Anne’s stay there, and Lady R. has a lot invested in keeping Anne safe from any further dips in that end of the pool. Little does she know that you-know-who isn’t the one on Anne’s mind when they meet.
…Anne, in receiving [Lady Russell’s] compliments on the occasion, had the amusement of connecting them with the silent admiration of her cousin, and of hoping that she was to be blessed with a second spring of youth and beauty.
Lady Russell now catches Anne up on her father and sister, who have apparently settled into a totally bitchin’ crib in Bath; but Anne is surprised to find how little any of this interests her.
Anne would have been ashamed to have it known, how much more she was thinking of Lyme, and Louisa Musgrove, and all her acquaintance there; how much more interesting to her was the home and friendship of the Harvilles and Captain Benwick, than her own father’s house in Camden-place, or her own sister’s intimacy with Mrs. Clay. She was actually forced to exert herself, to meet Lady Russell with any thing like the appearance of equal solicitude, on topics which had by nature the first claim on her.
There’s a little bit of awkwardness when Anne tells Lady Russell about the accident in Lyme—because it really isn’t possible to tell the story without mentioning you-kn0w-who. Anne “could not speak the name, and look straight forward to Lady Russell’s eye, till she had adopted the expedient of telling her briefly what she thought of the attachment between him and Louisa.” And that, of course, takes the electric charge out of the words “Captain Wentworth” so that even Lady Russell can speak them without making the sign of the cross and fondling a crucifix around her neck. But that doesn’t mean she feels totally easy about him.
Lady Russell had only to listen composedly, and wish them happy; but internally her heart reveled in angry pleasure, in pleased contempt, that the man who at twenty-three had seemed to understand somewhat of the value of an Anne Elliot, should, eight years afterwards, be charmed by a Louisa Musgrove.
Jesus, Lady R.! You’re the one who made sure he couldn’t have coq au vin. Now you’re gonna harsh on him for having Chicken McNuggets? What is wrong with your brain?
After a few days, a note arrives from Lyme—Anne “could not tell how”, meaning she doesn’t know by whose hand, since whoever it was didn’t stop to say howdy—and the note bears “a rather improving account of Louisa”, though in this sense we don’t really know what “improving” means. It might mean she can now count from one to five almost without using her fingers; or it might mean she’s out playing tetherball on the beach. But while anxiety about Louisa has been lifted from Anne’s shoulders, another anxiety descends on them: Lady Russell announces she can no longer put off paying a call on Mrs. Croft. “Anne, have you courage to go with me, and pay a visit in that house? It will be some trial to us both.”
Anne, however, finds that when it comes to it, it really won’t be a trial for her at all. Quite the opposite.
She…considered her father so fortunate in his tenants, felt the parish to be so sure of a good example, and the poor of the best attention and relief, that however sorry and ashamed for the necessity of the removal, she could not but in conscience feel that they were gone who deserved not to stay, and that Kellynch-hall had passed into better hands than its owners’.
Yeeowtch! Not exactly a sentimentalist, our Anne. So yeah, she’s got no prob with the Crofts hanging their hats in the house she’s called home since birth, and soon finds herself happily seated in the ancestral drawing room as a guest. Of course the “sad accident at Lyme” is the first topic under discussion, and Anne learns to her surprise that the Crofts are as updated as she is on Louisa’s recovery—because Captain Wentworth brought them news of it just the day before. Anne now realizes that it must also be Captain Wentworth who left the note at Lady Russell’s. He actually came to Lady Russell’s door his own actual human self, and managed to deliver the note without setting even one fire or smashing a single window. This is clearly a sign of extremely high regard.
What’s more, he even singled Anne out for special mention to the Crofts.
He had enquired after her, she found, particularly;—had expressed his hope of Miss Elliot’s not being the worse for her exertions, and had spoken of those exertions as great.—This was handsome,—and gave her more pleasure than almost any thing else could have done.
As for the accident itself—well, after all the hysteria and hand-wringing of the past few chapters, it’s like a nice, cold gust of wind to hear Admiral Croft’s take on it.
“Ay, a very bad business indeed.—A new sort of way, this, for a young fellow to be making love, by breaking his mistress’s head!—is it not, Miss Elliot?—This is breaking a head and giving a plaister truly!”
Admiral Croft’s manners were not quite of the tone to suit Lady Russell, but they delighted Anne. His goodness of heart and simplicity of character were irresistible.
Well…not really irresistible, if Lady Russell resists them. But you get the impression she’d be able to resist an entreaty from the risen Christ to enter the kingdom of Heaven, if he didn’t couch it just so. I know she’s genuinely fond of Anne, so I shouldn’t hate Lady Russell quite as much as I do, but dang, I would just love to introduce her face to a large, damp mackerel.
It now occurs to Admiral Croft that being on the premises might be awkward or uncomfortable for Anne, who used to actually, y’know—live here; so he invites her “Get up and go over all the rooms in the house if you like.” In fact, he encourages her to have a tramp around the grounds and check out whatever interests her. They’ve changed hardly anything, he says, except a laundry-door, which he’s already told her about at Uppercross, but which he’s apparently keen for her to see, because “Mr. Shepherd thinks it the greatest improvement the house ever had”, which admittedly sounds like Mr. Shepherd.
The Admiral now mentions one other slight alteration he’s made, which has been to remove some of the mirrors from his dressing room, which had previously been Sir Walter’s.
“A very good man, and very much the gentleman I am sure—but I should think, Miss Elliot” (looking at her with serious reflection) “I should think [your father] must be rather a dressy man for his time of life.—Such a number of looking-glasses! oh Lord! there was no getting away from oneself. So I got Sophy to lend me a hand, and we soon shifted their quarters; and now I am quite snug, with my little shaving glass in one corner, and another great thing that I never go near.”
At this point, we wouldn’t mind hearing the news that everyone in Lyme has also jumped off the Cobb into a coma, so that the novel could just be about Admiral Croft and his wife, with occasional pop-ins by Anne. But unfortunately, we’re going to get the opposite of that; the Crofts are soon to depart for a few weeks, to visit some friends up north, and won’t be back till after Anne and Lady Russell have scarpered off to Bath.
However, this means Captain Wentworth won’t be swinging on over to Kellynch every three-and-a-half minutes, because his sister and brother-in-law won’t be there to received him. Anne lets out a big “Phew!” at being safe from running into him anymore.
Another week or so passes, and Charles and Mary finally return to Uppercross from Lyme, “much longer after Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove’s going, than Anne conceived that they could have been at all wanted”. They soon visit Anne at Lady Russell’s, and bring some more specific news of Louisa, reporting that they left her “beginning to sit up; but her head, though clear, was exceedingly weak, and her nerves susceptible to the highest extreme of tenderness.” So, I guess when earlier reports spoke of her as “improving,” the were pretty much using “corpse” as a baseline measure.
We also learn how Mary has spent her time there since she was freed of the bulk of her duties by Sarah. She had, surprisingly, “found more to enjoy than to suffer.” There was a dodgy bit in the beginning, which involved dinners at the Harvilles at which Mrs. Harville always gave precedence to Mrs. Musgrove; but then she discovered her mistake and made “so very handsome an apology” to Mary that Mary could even overlook them having only one maid-servant to wait table. That, and things like there being a lending-library, bathing, and many more people to look at in church than Uppercross ever provided, all made it a regular holiday for Mary. She might even write Captain Wentworth a thank-you note: “Much gratitude for having injured Louisa in so splendid a location; do you think you might do it again next year?”
There were of course a few downsides. Charles Hayter showed up quite a bit oftener than Mary would’ve preferred (easy to do, since her preference was “never”) and she also had some difficulties warming to Captain Benwick, who she pronounces “a very odd young man.”
“We asked him to come home with us for a day or two; Charles undertook to give him some shooting, and he seemed quite delighted…when behold! on Tuesday night, he made a very awkward sort of excuse; ‘he never shot’ and he had ‘been quite misunderstood,’—and he had promised this and he had promised that, and the end of it was, I found, that he did not mean to come.”
Charles laughs at this, and tells Mary she knows perfectly well the real reason he declined; then he turns to Anne and says it was her doing. “He fancied that if he went with us, he should find you close by”—and when he learned in fact that Anne was with Lady Uppercross, three miles away, he lost interest in the scheme. Mary really, reallydoes not like this slant on things at all,on the principle that it makes Anne out to be a “greater attraction” than herself, which is a violation of the laws of physics—or if it’s not, dammit it should be. And when Charles goes on to tell Anne how much Captain Benwick talked about her—“Miss Elliot was spoken of in the highest terms!… ‘Elegance, sweetness, beauty,’ Oh! there was no end of Miss Elliot’s charms”—Mary snidely shoots him down.
“And I am sure,” cried Mary warmly, “it was very little to his credit, if he did. Miss Harville only died last June. Such a heart is very little worth having; is it, Lady Russell? I am sure you will agree with me.”
“I must see Captain Benwick before I decide,” said Lady Russell, smiling.
And she’s promised that very opportunity, as the captain has vowed to “make his way over to Kellynch one day by himself…I am sure from his manner that you will have him calling here soon. So, I give you notice, Lady Russell.” Lady Russell assures Charles that any acquaintance of Anne’s is welcome to her, which, again, kicks Little Miss What-About-Me into a snit.
“Oh! as to being Anne’s acquaintance,” said Mary, “I think he is rather my acquaintance, for I have been seeing him every day this last fortnight.”
“Well, as to your joint acquaintance, then, I shall be very happy to see Captain Benwick.”
This sets off another, and this time longer, argument on whether Lady Russell will like Captain Benwick or not, which Lady Russell enables by refusing even to take a guess till she she’s met him. (Or rather, till she sees Anne with him. We’ve got Lady R.’s number, all right. She’s half-snob, half-yenta.)
Lady Russell is much more definitive when the subject of Mr. Elliot comes up—which of course it does because Mary has pretty much decided she owns him, and so trots out the story of juuuustmissing him in Lyme like it’s goddamn show-and-tell time or something. But she doesn’t get the desired enthusiasm from Lady R., whose reaction is so frosty, it turns every glass of wine in the vicinity into a Slurpee.
“He is a man,” said Lady Russell, “whom I have no wish to see. His declining to be on cordial terms with the head of his family, has left very strong impression in his disfavour with me.”
The decision checked Mary’s eagerness, and stopped her short in the midst of the Elliot countenance.
So we’re up to date on Captain Benwick and Mr. Elliot; but what about the other guy? Y’know, the one who’s our hero, and everything. Well, Anne of course refuses to come right out and ask, but Mary ends up volunteering everything she wants to know anyway (because by doing so she gets to keep talking). Captain Wentworth is feeling hella better these days, we learn.
As Louisa improved, he had improved; and he was now quite a different creature from what he had been the first week. He had not seen Louisa; and was so extremely fearful of any ill consequence to her from an interview, that he did not press for it at all; and, on the contrary, seemed to have a plan of going away for a week or ten days, till her head were stronger.
Apparently he’s afraid that one look at him will send Louisa into a relapse. I’m guessing it’s the reverse; one look at her, and he’d faint dead away from guilt.
We also learn that he asked Captain Benwick to accompany him his getaway to Plymouth, possibly for a little Regency bromance-slash-road-trip comedy—which is a missed opportunity, alas, because Benwick declined the invitation, being ostensibly “much more disposed to ride over to Kellynch.”
Anne and Lady Russell are delighted to hear it, and from this point on expect him almost hourly; and after each full day of awaiting his arrival in vain, they retire for the night still expecting him to melt out of the shadows, like Dracula. After a full week of this, Lady Russell has had enough. She decides she doesn’t have to meet him to pass judgment on him after all; dude is clearly a bum.
Back at Uppercross, Charles and Mary take up charge of their children again, and the Harvilles’ children too—to get them out of Mrs. Harvilles’ hair while she’s nursing Louisa. Soon the other Musgroves trickle back, and by Christmas, when Anne and Lady Russell pay a holiday call, the house is roaring with rambunctious life again. Anne can’t help feeling “such a domestic hurricane [is] a bad restorative of the nerves, which Louisa’s illness must have so greatly shaken”. But in fact Mrs. Musgrove takes her aside, and “with a happy glance around the room”—where the assembled children are pulling down the curtains and roasting one of the smaller dogs over a spit—she confesses to Anne that “nothing was so likely to do her good as a little quiet cheerfulness at home.”
It’s a great joke, spoiled only by Lady Russell sniffing, on their departure “I hope to remember, in future…not to call at Uppercross in the Christmas holidays.” Austen follows this with a brilliant little set piece about how Lady R. isn’t one to talk; that for her, the clang and bustle and clatter of Bath are as restorative as the shrieks and wails and battle-cries of children are to Mrs. M. We all have our version of “quiet cheerfulness,” in other words, that to other eyes (and ears) might not seem quiet at all. (Check out your twentysomething cousin playing Grand Theft Auto, if you have any doubt.)
But neither feral children nor urban clamor have any part of Anne’s own version of quiet cheerfulness, and she remains seriously bummed about having now to go to live at Bath. And in fact “her first dim view of the extensive buildings, smoking in rain,” sinks her spirit; though not as much as the realization that no one will be glad to see her arrive here. She looks back, “with fond regret, to the bustles of Uppercross and the seclusion of Kellynch.”
But there’s one sliver of intelligence that lightens the prospect of hunkering down in Bath, which is that Mr. Elliot is in town. Anne’s had a letter from Elizabeth saying that he’s called on her and Sir Walter repeatedly, and “had been taking as much pains to seek the acquaintance, and proclaim the value of the connection, as he had formerly taken pains to shew neglect.” Which is intriguing enough even to get Lady Russell to set aside her I-have-no-wish-to-meet-that-man thing and defer judgment for later. As for Anne, “she would rather see Mr. Elliot again than not, which is more than she could say for many other persons in Bath”, and rather less than she could say if she were being really straight with herself.
Anne’s let out at Camden-place, while Lady Russell drives on to her own lodgings in River-street; and she goes in to face the dreaded reunion with her haughty pop and sis, “anticipating an imprisonment of many months”. However, she’s surprised to find herself enthusiastically welcomed; and it’s a while before she figures out that it’s got nothing to do with her as a person. Sir Walter and Elizabeth are just tickled to have someone new to show off the house to, and to have now a fourth when they sat down to dinner (the gold-digging and freckled Mrs. Clay being the third, remember). Anne only rates as a warm body and a fresh set of ears; which, admittedly, is way more highly than she’s usually valued. But still.
[Sir Walter and Elizabeth] were evidently in excellent spirits, and [Anne] was soon to listen to the causes. They had no inclination to listen to her. After laying out for some compliments of being deeply regretted in their old neighbourhood, which Anne could not pay, they had only a few faint enquiries to make, before the talk must be all their own. Uppercross excited no interest, Kellynch very little, it was all Bath.
I like to imagine Anne attempting to insert a comment about Admiral Croft’s improvement to the laundry-room door, and having Sir Walter and Elizabeth look at her like she’s speaking Martian.
The gist of the evening’s conversation is that their house in Camden-place is the best on the street, their society is sought by everyone in Bath, their invitations choke the mailbox, calling cards litter the front hall, they are the most beautiful and popular and their shit smells like perfume from France. Anne, for her part, is amazed that they can be happy at all in this place, much less over the moon. All she sees are a couple of comparably big fishes in a very small pond.
Could Anne wonder that her father and sister were happy? She might not wonder, but she might sigh that her father should feel no degradation in his change; should see nothing to regret in the duties and dignity of the resident land-holder; should find so much to be vain of in the littleness of a town; and she must sigh, and smile, and wonder too, as Elizabeth threw open the folding-doors, and walked with exultation from one drawing-room to the other, boasting of their space, at the possibility of that woman, who had been mistress of Kellynch Hall, finding extent to be proud of between two walls, perhaps thirty feet asunder.
But it’s not just the lodgings that have Sir Walter and Elizabeth doing the Snoopy dance. It’s the abject contrition of Mr. Elliot, “was not only pardoned, they were delighted with him.”
They had not a fault to find in him. He had explained away all the appearance of neglect on his own side. It had originated in misapprehension entirely. He had never had an idea of throwing himself off; he had feared that he was thrown off, but knew not why; and delicacy had kept him silent. Upon the hint of having spoken disrespectfully or carelessly of the family, and the family honours, he was quite indignant. He, who had ever boasted of being an Elliot, and whose feelings, as to connection, were only too strict to suit the unfeudal tone of the present day! He was astonished, indeed!
We, being sophisticated readers, are well aware that the degree of indignation at being accused of a lie, is directly related to how true the accusation is. So we’ve got Mr. Elliot pegged. Sir Walter and Elizabeth, however, blinded by blood (and by more intimate ambitions, in Elizabeth’s case) hear only what they want to hear.
Mr. Elliot’s marriage has also been explained away to their satisfaction—not by Mr. Elliot himself, but by his sidekick, Colonel Wallis, “a highly respectable man, perfectly the gentleman, (and not an ill-looking man, Sir Walter added)”, who divulges that the late Mrs. Elliot, while not a woman of any rank in society, was “well educated, accomplished, rich, and excessively in love” with Mr. Elliot—and had pretty much thrown herself at him; he was not the pursuer, but the pursued. “Sir Walter seemed to admit it as a complete apology, and though Elizabeth could not see the circumstance in quite so favourable a light, she allowed it be a great extenuation.”
Anne hears all this with even greater surprise and confusion. She knows she has to allow for the limited judgment of her father and sister, and probably some degree of exaggeration, too. But she can’t help feeling there’s something fishy about Mr. Elliot suddenly wanting to be all chummy with them again, after so many years. He has absolutely nothing to gain by it; he’s already probably richer than Sir Walter, and Kellynch Hall will come to him whether he’s on good terms with the present owner or not. “A sensible man! and he had looked a very sensible man, why should it be an object to him?” Anne can only figure it’s for Elizabeth’s sake. Maybe he really did have a thing for her once, that was temporarily derailed by his marriage; and now that he’s free again, why not pick up where he left off?
Elizabeth was certainly very handsome, with well-bred, elegant manners, and her character might never have been penetrated by Mr. Elliot, knowing her but in public, and when very young himself. How her temper and understanding might bear the investigation of his present keener time of life was another concern, and a rather fearful one.
In other words, now that he’s older and wiser, and once again on the scent of his hot-mama cousin, how long before he figures out she’s a total See You Next Tuesday? Anne hopes he isn’t the kind of guy who’s way scrupulous about that kind of thing, because with Mrs. Clay egging Elizabeth on in the matter, it’s not likely Elizabeth will be adopting any humbler-than-usual attitude around him. (Presuming she even knows how to do that, which is not a bet I’d place money on.)
There’s a lot of discussion of Mr. Elliot’s looks, and Anne, assuming this is for her benefit, mentions that she’s already seen him; but they couldn’t possibly be less interested. It seems they just liketalking about his looks, and do it all the time. He has, in their view, a “very gentleman-like appearance,” is elegant and fashionable, with a “good-shaped face” and a “sensible eye”—but Sir Walter can’t get past his unfortunate lower jaw, which apparently juts out a tad too much; “nor could he pretend to say that ten years had not altered almost every [other] feature for the worse.”
“Mr. Elliot appeared to think that he (Sir Walter) was looking exactly as he had done when they last parted;” but Sir Walter had “not been able to return the compliment entirel,y which had embarrassed him. He did not mean to complain, however. Mr. Elliot was better to look at than most men, and he had no objection to being seen with him any where.”
You get the impression the only kind of guy Sir Walter would object to being seen with, is someone who looks better than he does. Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to have met anyone to fill that particular bill; though he’s got to live in terror of the day.
A handsome woman is a different thing entirely, and apparently there’s one among Mr. Elliot’s acquaintance—Mrs. Wallis, the colonel’s wife—who’s a total looker, “quite worthy of being known in Camden-place.” Alas, she’s out of circulation at the moment, being about to give birth, but as soon as squirted the kid into a wet nurse’s lap and got back on her feet she’s target numero uno for Sir Walter’s hospitality.
“He longed to see her. He hoped she might make some amends for the many very plain faces he was continually passing in the streets. The worst of Bath was, the number of its plain women. He did not mean to say that there were no pretty women, but the number of the plain was out of all proportion. He had frequently observed, as he walked, that one handsome face would be followed by thirty, or five and thirty, frights; and once, as he had stood in a shop in Bond-street, he had counted eighty-seven women go by, one after another, without there being a tolerable face among them.”
He counts them. He keeps score. I really don’t think I need add anything more here.
Sir Walter has just got around to asking after the appearance of his other daughter (“How is Mary looking?…The last time I saw her, she had a red nose, but I hope that may not happen every day”) when the room is thrown into a tizzy by a knock on the door, and a kind of giddy derangement overtakes them at the thought that it might be Mr. Elliot. Mrs. Clay even “decidedly thought it was Mr. Elliot’s knock.”
And so it was—and so it is. Mr. Elliot is ushered in with “all the state which a butler and foot-boy could give,” and is presumably given the same welcome we see the Beatles receiving in the early scenes of A Hard Day’s Night—if not the one Sebastian Venable gets at the end of Suddenly, Last Summer.
Anne hangs back until the furor dies down, at which time Mr. Elliot notices her for the first time, and is at long last introduced to her.
He looked completely astonished, but no more astonished than pleased; his eyes brightened, and with the most perfect alacrity he welcomed the relationship, alluded to the past, and entreated to be received as an acquaintance already. He was quite as good-looking as he had appeared at Lyme, his countenance improved by speaking, and his manners were so exactly what they ought to be, so polished, so easy, so particularly agreeable, that she could compare them in excellence to only one person’s manners. They were not the same, but they were, perhaps, equally good.
So, score one for Mr. Elliot. And very nice of Anne not to get all picky over his Jay Leno chin.
He sits down, and after ten minutes has impressed Anne as a “sensible man.” He of course wants to talk about Lyme, and the amazing coincidence of them both having been guests in the same hotel there. He expresses his regret “that he should have lost such an opportunity of paying respects to her”, especially since he spent his night there dining alone in his room. He “had heard voices—mirth continually; thought they must be a most delightful set of people—longed to be with them; but certainly without the smallest suspicion of his possessing the shadow of a right to introduce himself.” Just, apparently, the shadow of a right to ravish Anne with his male gaze whenever she crossed his field of vision. But, as we’ve seen, Anne sort of grooved on that, so we’ll leave out any talk of rape metaphors.
He’s quickly drawn away by the others, but when he returns to Anne later and asks more about her time at Lyme, he hears—inevitably—an allusion to Louisa’s accident. And having heard the allusion, “he must hear the whole.” Seeing that Mr. Elliot is interested in the story, Sir Walter and Elizabeth suddenly become interested as well—though only for show. Mr. Elliot could express interest in the marine life of the Outer Hebrides, and they’d be all, Yes tell us all about the dear seals and porpoises. But Mr. Elliot’s interest, Anne senses, is genuine; and she experiences the flattery of actually—who’d’a thunk it?—being listened to beneath her father’s roof.
By the time Mr. Elliot says sayonara, sweetheart, and hits the road just after the clock strikes eleven, Anne has forgotten her earlier suspicion of him, and is all dewy with girlish pleasure. She “could not have supposed it possible that her first evening in Camden-place could have passed so well!” Mr. Elliot, our cad, has taken his sweet time getting here; but he’s making up for it with a triple-strength charm offensive. Is Anne in danger? Is the Pope Argentinian?

View more on Robert Rodi's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on April 01, 2014 16:44

March 26, 2014

Persuasion, chapters 10-12

We return to a narrative with the potential to become a lovely little Shakespearean frolic—a kind of Midsummer Night’s Dream scenario of mismatched lovers: Charles Hayter pining for Henrietta Musgrove, who with her sister Louisa is besotted with Captain Wentworth, who is also the object of regretful sighs from Anne Elliot, who once foolishly spurned him. In just a few pages, Austen will even throw them all into a wood—but rather than this being an analog for untamed nature, and therefore the impetus for a comic reshuffling of all the relationships, the cast of Persuasion will emerge from the wild with more clarity and more affirmation than when they went in. In Austen, unlike Shakespeare, the woodland revealsrather than confuses.
Right off the bat, we find Anne—who knows the Captain very well—unconvinced that he really prefers either of the Musgrove sisters. “They were more in love with him; yet there it was not love. It was a little fever of admiration; but it might, probably must, end in love with some.” And being Anne Eliot, to whom no one ever listens, she has the Cassandra’s curse of knowing exactly where everyone’s headed, without having one goddamn thing she can do about it.
Anne longed for the power of representing to them all what they were about, and of pointing out some of the evils they were exposing themselves to. She did not attribute guile to any. It was the highest satisfaction to her, to believe Captain Wentworth not in the least aware of the pain he was occasioning [Charles Hayter]. There was no triumph, no pitiful triumph in his manner…He was only wrong in accepting the attentions—(for accepting must be the word) of two young women at once.
Then Charles Hayter, who’s been hanging around in a snit over Henrietta’s sudden coolness to him, griping and bitching and kicking the rugs out of place, does exactly the right thing, for once. He stops coming to Uppercross at all. No big dramatic goodbye, no show of wounded feelings…he just stops showing up. What he’s doing—whether he knows it or not—is calling Henrietta’s bluff. If she’s going to be so dismissive of him, well, he’ll just consider himself dismissed.
Mary, of course, is thrilled by this development, because to her any Hayter blood is basically the genetic equivalent of Agent Orange. She’s convinced Henrietta really has given him the boot, though her husband misses the guy, and “lived under the constant dependance of seeing him to-morrow. Anne could only feel that Charles Hayter was wise.” Which is not a compliment you can pay to too many of the characters in Persuasion. In fact Lucky Chucky may be the first and last.
The next morning the Musgrove sisters appear at the cottage window (I tell you, that freakin’ window’s a regular Grand Central Station). The Captain and Charles Musgrove have gone hunting, and the girls are bored so they’re going for a long walk, and they know Mary doesn’t like walking so they’re sure she doesn’t want to come along. Whoops—wrong way to approach it. Mary, craving attention and activity, is launched out of her chair like a catapult, because of course she likes long walks, long walks are her most favoritest thing in the world, what infamy that anyone should say she doesn’t love a long walk—and suddenly the Musgrove girls are realizing a better gambit for passing the cottage would have been just to crawl beneath the window till they were in the clear.
Anne catches the looks of dread the girls give each other, and tries to talk Mary out of going with them; but Mary’s like a stallion straining at the bit by this point, so Anne’s only recourse is “to accept the Miss Musgroves’ much more cordial invitation” that she should come too.
Just as they’re setting out, the Captain and Charles return, their hunt ruined because of a young dog who didn’t know his job (but who probably had a bloody terrific time—I picture him getting miles ahead of his masters and just scattering partridges everywhere). In default of their good time, the guys decide to join the walk as well, which is the last thing Anne wants: more enforced time with Captain Wentworth, whose presence, to her, is like being persistently confronted with a really bad Yelp review. But she decides to make the best of it.
Her pleasurein the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which has drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.
She’s pretty much screwed, though, because poetical musings are impossible with the Musgrove girls honking away at Captain Wentworth, so much so that Anne can’t really help listening in. Immediately she notices that Captain “was more engaged with Louisa than with Henrietta. Louisa certainly put more forward for his notice than her sister.”
Wentworth comments on what a perfect day it is for the Admiral and Mrs. Croft to be out on a drive, and he wonders “whereabouts they will be upset to-day”, assuring Louisa that they go ass-over-teakettle on a pretty regular basis, which sounds a little alarming to me, but maybe the Crofts wear crash helmets, who knows. The Captain adds that his courageous sister “makes nothing of it—she would as lieve be tossed out as not.” Louisa has a smart reply to that.
“…If I loved a man, as she loves the Admiral, I would be always with him, nothing should ever separate us, and I would rather be overturned by him, than driven safely by anybody else.”
It was spoken with enthusiasm.
“Had you?” cried he, catching the same tone. “I honour you!” And there was silence beween them for a little while.
We’re told that “Anne could not immediately fall into a quotation again”, and no bloody goddamn wonder.
A little farther on and Anne appears to recognize the path the Miss Musgroves are leading them along. “Is not this one of the ways to Winthrop?” she asks—but of course no one responds. Anne could cry, “Watch out, a puma!” and the others would just keep quietly strolling along.
What’s worth remembering here is that Winthrop is the home of the Hayter family; and sure enough, when the group of hikers reaches the summit of the largest hill, they find themselves looking down on the very town. And since Winthrop is “without beauty and without dignity,” it’s looked down on in more ways than one.
Mary, ever tone deaf to human affairs, can’t believe they’ve come this far—all the way to Winthrop! “I declare I had no idea!—well, now I think we had better turn back. I am excessively tired.” The rest of us have by now pretty much clued in that Henrietta chose this route in the hope of running into the AWOL Charles Hayter; but such is the shrill insistence of Mary that they turn back right now, before any Winthrop germs get on me, that Henrietta is ready to give up her mission with a shrug.
Louisa, who seems determined to get Henrietta back on mission (possibly because reuniting her with Charles Hayter will clear her way for her to snag the Captain), argues for forging head. And she gets some assist from her brother Charles, who thinks it would be rude to come this far without calling on his Aunt Hayter—and who tries to induce Mary to joing him. Mary, of course, would rather be covered in honey and fed to fire ants than pay a call on Aunt Hayter, and digs in her heels. So eventually it’s settled that just Charles and his sisters will run down the hill and pay the call, while everyone else waits up on the summit.
Mary flops herself down in a snit and says to Captain Wentworth, “It is very unpleasant, having such connexions! But I assure you, I have never been in the house above twice in my life.” She might as well add, And both times I was de-loused immediately afterwards and burned all the clothes I came out in. Captain Wentworth acknowledges this with “an artificial, assenting smile, followed by a contemptuous glance…which Anne perfectly knew the meaning of.” And so do we.
Louisa is the first to return; and with clear intent, for she immediately leads Captain Wentworth away, “to try for a gleaning of nuts in an adjoining hedge-row,” and you’ll excuse my eighth-grade humor in wondering exactly whose nuts. This leaves Mary and Anne alone, and Mary is suddenly itchy because she has no audience anymore except Anne, who barely counts as a presence.
Mary was happy no longer; she quarreled with her own seat,—was sure Louisa had got a much better somewhere,—and nothing could prevent her from going to look for a better also. She turned through the same gate,—but could not see them.—Anne found a nice seat for her, on a dry, sunny bank, under the hedgerow, in which she had no doubt of their still being—in some spot or other. Mary sat down for a moment, but it would not do; she was sure Louisa had found a better seat somewhere else, and she would go on, till she overtook her.
Mary’s restive, anxious comic energy here becomes actively kinetic, and it’s a great scene, with Anne running after her as if chasing down a puppy who’s got off his leash. Though at this point Anne gives up the pursuit and just lets Mary go sniffing after Louisa’s scent on her own.
Anne is now quiet and composed under a hedgerow, which in any story—for the stage or for the page—is the perfect, irresistible spot for eavesdropping. And that’s exactly what happens now, as Captain Wentworth and Louisa (who has indeed found a better seat, and it’s the one attractively tucked in the Captain’s trousers) amble in, talking.
The subject of their conversation is Henrietta. Louisa is appalled that her sister was ready to give up the entire expedition to Winthrop just because Mary wanted to turn back. She’d come all this way to see Charles Hayter, but would’ve gone home empty-handed just because Mary had a panic attack. Louisa assures the Captain that she would never be so namby-pamby. If she ever set out to do something, she’d goddamn well do it and pity the mere mortals who got in her way.
The Captain is tickled pink by Louisa’s force of will. “Your sister is an amiable creature; but yours is the character of decision and firmness, I see.” Henrietta’s wishy-washiness, by comparison, is a big black mark on her character. “It is the worst evil of too yielding and indecisive a character, that no influence over it can be depended on.—You are never sure of a good impression being durable. Every body may sway it; let those who would be happy be firm.”
Of course he doesn’t know Anne is listening; but the effect on her is the same as if he were right in front of her, saying it to her face while wagging his forefinger at her for good measure—and possibly even pulling her bonnet down around her ears. Anne’s rejection of him, at Lady Russell’s urging, has made him an enemy of pliant personalities forever. He has become the Soup Nazi of the Austen canon.
But while Anne sits, scarcely daring to breathe lest she give herself away, a little balm to her ego comes to salve her wounded pride. It begins with Louisa—having thoroughly eviscerated Henrietta—now taking up a different victim, just to keep her flow of happy trash-talk going.
“Mary is good-natured enough in many respects,” said she; “but she does sometimes provoke me excessively, by her nonsense and her pride; the Elliot pride. She has a great deal too much of the Elliot pride.—We do so wish that Charles had married Anne instead.—I suppose you know he wanted to marry Anne?”
He very much did not know it. His first question is, “Do you mean that she refused him?”—which is answered by, “Oh! yes, certainly.” And I never know what to make of these two lines. Does the Captain ask whether Anne refused Charles because he’s come to see her as a serial refuser, or because he can’t imagine her even considering accepting him? Louisa’s “Oh! yes, certainly” implies that her brother isn’t such a hot prize even for an ageing spinster, but that seems a harsh thing to be admitting, especially to her brother’s friend.
Louisa continues:
“…We should all have liked her a great deal better; and papa and mamma always think it was her great friend Lady Russell’s doing, that she did not.—They think Charles might not be learned and bookish enough to please Lady Russell, and therefore, she persuaded Anne to refuse him.”
I wish we could have an account of the Captain’s face at the mention of Lady Russell. I imagine it’s a “Sloooowly I turned…” moment.
As for Anne, “The listener’s proverbial fate was not absolutely hers; she had heard no evil of herself,—but she had heard a very great deal of painful import.” And it’s not like she can just jump up and defend herself, either—or defend Lady Russell, for that matter. Which it’s too late to do now anyway, as the Captain and Louisa have wandered off, so that Anne is finally free to exhale the breath she’s been holding for six-and-a-half minutes, and to shift her weight off the acorn that’s been biting into her gluteus maximus.
She goes and fetches Mary and they return to the hilltop, where the Captain and Louisa meet them, and then who should come traipsing up as well but Charles and Henrietta, returning from their cousinly call with Charles Hayter in tow. Both Henrietta and Charles H. look simply dopey with glee, so you know there’s been a reconciliation (probably endearingly fumbling and inarticulate). Now that Henrietta’s had a taste of a Charles-free life she’s not ever going to let him do that again—and so the way is open for Louisa, who we now are pretty sure has been working actively behind the scenes to make it so.
Now follows another very funny sequence in which the company arrives at a narrow passage, so that they have to split into three groups to wend their way along it. The two sets of not-quite-yet-lovers-but-give-them-another-week take the lead, with Anne, Mary, and Charles Musgrove bringing up the rear. Anne is “tired enough to be glad of Charles’s other arm;—but Charles, though in very good humor with her, was out of temper with his wife”, who made such an embarrassing scene about visiting his aunt.
Mary had shewn herself disobliging to him, and was now to reap the consequence, which consequence was his dropping her arm almost every moment, to cut off the heads of some nettles in the hedge with his switch; and when Mary began to complain of it, and lament of her being ill-used, according to custom, in being on the hedge side, while Anne was never incommoded on the other, he dropped the arms of both to hunt after a weasel which he had a momentary glance of; and they could hardly get him along at all.
Explain to me again, please, how Austen doesn’t write physical comedy.
The company is now overtaken by the Crofts in their gig, having not yet gone tits up (or maybe having done so three or four times and then righted themselves again and carried on; who knows, with the Crofts). The couple are gobsmacked by how long a walk everyone has had, and make an offer of a seat in their gig; they’ve got room enough for just one. “The invitation was generally declined”, and not, apparently, for fear of being crushed to death the next time the thing tips over. No, it seems the Misses Musgrove don’t want to be parted from their newly secured fellas; Anne is too humble to put herself forward; and Mary, who you’d think would jump at the chance, is offended that she wasn’t specifically asked to take the seat before it was offered to anyone else, as is her right as a baronet’s daughter; plus “the Elliot pride could not endure to make a third in a one horse chaise.” As for the men, they can’t very well accept where ladies have declined, now can they?
Admiral Croft flicks the reins and the gig starts up again—but then Captain Wentworth chases it down, halts it, and has a word in his sister’s ear; and a moment later Mrs. Croft turns back and says, “Miss Elliot, I am sure you are tired,” and insists that Anne get in. Anne tries out the usual volley of protestations—thanks but I’m not tired at all, plus your chaise is too small for three, also I’m highly infectious with whooping cough, and anyway I’m just waiting here for a bus—but in the end she has pretty much has to give him.
The Crofts “compressed themselves into the smallest possible space to leave her a corner”—I like to imagine Mrs. Croft climbing up and riding on the Admiral’s shoulders—and then Captain Wentworth assists Anne into the gig.
Yes,—he had done it. She was in the carriage, and felt that he had placed her there, that his will and his hands had done it, that she owed it to his perception of her fatigue, and his resolution to give rest…She understood him. He could not forgive her,—but he could not be unfeeling.
This of course makes her incredibly happy-sad, which is the most messed-up of all the emotions, so that she’d probably have been better off if she’d just walked—especially since the Crofts spend the whole ride talking about when when when will Captain Wentworth settle down. The Admiral is pretty impatient on the matter.
“I wish Frederick would spread a little more canvas, and bring us home one of these young ladies to Kellynch. Then, there would always be company for them.—And very nice young ladies they both are; I hardly know one from the other.”
“Very good humored, unaffected girls, indeed,” said Mrs. Croft, in a tone of calmer praise, such as made Anne suspect that her keener powers might not consider either of them as quite worthy of her brother; “and a very respectable family. One could not be connected with better people.—My dear admiral, that post!—we shall certainly take that post.”
This last bit—and another few similar incidents—leave Anne “with some amusement at their style of driving,” though she’d probably be less amused if she found herself pinned under a wheel with one of her legs sheared off. But given the state of mind she’s in, it’s probably best she takes the lighter view of things.
The time is now approaching for Lady Russell to return, which will mean Anne moving back to stay with her at Kellynch—the same village where Captain Wentworth seems to have hammered in his tent-pegs semi-permanently. This worries her at first; “but, on the other hand, he spent so much of his time at Uppercross, that in removing thence she might be considered rather as leaving him behind, than as going towards him”.
But before Anne can make her escape from Uppercross, Captain Wentworth reappears there after a two-day absence, during which time, he confesses, he was visiting an old colleague, one Captain Harville, over in Lyme. He waxes so ecstatic about the place that suddenly everyone has the idea of accompanying back and having a look at it for themselves; “though November, the weather was by no means bad; and, in short, Louisa, who was the most eager, having formed the resolution to go, and besides the pleasure of doing as she liked…bore down all the wishes of her father and mother for putting it off till summer”. You have to wonder about Louisa’s toilet training. She was probably allowed to wet the bed till she was fifteen.
They set out the next day, and there’s a lot of to-do about getting there, and finding a hotel to put them up for the night, and where they might also have dinner. And then there’s a lot of travel porn about the beauties of Lyme, which actually does sort of make you want to see it for yourself, except if you made the trip today you’d probably mainly find fast-food joints and budget electronics stores that Austen was lucky enough to predate.
Then Captain Wentworth introduces them all to Captain Harville, along with his wife and a certain Captain Benwick, who’s been staying with them—a melancholy soul, whose sad romantic history (previous related by Captain Wentworth) “rendered him perfectly interesting in the eyes of all the ladies.” He’d been engaged to Captain Harville’s sister, with their wedding delayed till Benwick could make his fortune; which alas took a couple of years, during which time the lady, possibly sick of waiting, unfortunately kicked the bucket.
Captain Wentworth “believed it impossible for man to be more attached to woman than poor Berwick had been to Fanny Harville, or to be more deeply afflicted under the dreadful change.” He’s grown melancholy, and taken to reading poetry (that sure sign of a really seriously waterlogged psyche). But he’s found a welcome home with the Harvilles, whose modest and unpretentious ways suit him, and leave him plenty of opportunity to go and stand on the beach with the wind in his hair and reflect on how unlucky his life has turned out.
“And yet,” said Anne to herself…”he has not, perhaps, a more sorrowing heart than I have. I cannot believe his prospects so blighted forever. He is younger than I am; younger in feeling, if not in fact; younger as a man. He will rally again, and be happy with another.”
In that single phrase—“younger in feeling, if not in fact; younger as a man”—there’s a helluva lot to unpack. Probably a number of feminist lit classes have already given it a go. What’s most remarkable about it to me is that we don’t really glean any self-pity or bitterness in it; just a hint of very understandable envy.
Which to my mind marks the principal difference between the two bereaved figures here. Anne Elliot would love to rejoin the world—openly regrets being unable to, due to her age and sex. Whereas Captain Benwick gives the impression of being rather addicted to his loneliness and grief; he seems to be besotted with his own misery. He could be a parody of the Romantics who would follow hard on the heels of Austen’s own rationalist era; but that may just be our own perceptions coloring our view of him—informed, also, by our knowledge of Austen’s predisposition to mercilessly mock anyone who is in any way immoderate.
Anne feels for Captain Benwick; she also crushes hard on the Harvilles, whose easygoing charm and cheerful hospitality are something she hasn’t really encountered before. But, alas, this pleasure has its down side.
Anne felt her spirits not likely to be benefited by an increasing acquaintance among [Captain Wentworth’s] brother officers. “These would have been all my friends,” was her thought; and she had to struggle against a great tendency to lowness.
A visit follows to the Harville’s very small but very cozy abode, where Captain Harville occupies himself in manly, sailor-ish ways. “He drew, he varnished, he carpentered, he glued; he made toys for the children, he fashioned new netting-needles and pins with improvements, and if everything else was done, sat down to his large fishing-net in one corner of the room.” And then, no doubt, he has lunch. Then a nap, and then up to colonize a tropic or two.
Anne thought she left great happiness behind her when they quitted the house; and Louisa, by whom she found herself walking, burst into raptures of admiration and delight on the character of the navy—their friendliness, their brotherliness, their openness, their uprightness; protesting that she was convinced of sailors having more worth and warmth than any other set of men in England; that they only knew how to live, and they only deserved to be respected and loved.
We’re meant to remember, here, Captain Wentworth’s sole conditions for a potential wife: “A little beauty, and a few smiles, and a few compliments to the navy, and I am a lost man.” Louisa’s knocking it out of the park on every single count.
By this time, Anne’s become “so much more hardened” to hanging out with Captain Wentworth that it almost doesn’t bother her anymore; the exchange of “common civilities” that make up their only social intercourse have become “a mere nothing.” He could be a cigar-store Indian, really, or a giant cardboard cutout of Doctor Who.
Everyone reassembles at the hotel after dinner. Anne and Captain Benwick—the two members of the party least inclined to sit around slapping their knees at bombastic old naval anecdotes—find a place in a quiet corner and talk about poetry, which is their big point of common interest; they’re sort of like the only two teens in a small rural town who are into death metal. Of course they bond like super glue.
He was shy, and disposed to abstraction; but the engaging mildness of her countenance, and the gentleness of her manners, so had their effect; and Anne was well repaid the first trouble of exertion.
She draws the guy out of his shell; she shares his enthusiasms, and even gets him to smile. And then—hoping to be “of real use to him”, she sorta kinda drops a hint that maybe he shouldn’t read onlypoetry, “and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.”
This is amazing, razor-sharp stuff; and we can only fault Anne, when she goes on to recommend that he balance his reading with the works of moralists, memoirs, and other improving types of works, that she doesn’t suggest giving a try to Pride and Prejudice as well. That’d snap him out of the sulks, damn straight.
Austen doesn’t say so, but Anne’s kindness and sympathy for Captain Benwick, and her drawing him out of himself, is bound to be noticed by Captain Wentworth. And seeing her valued by someone hevalues, causes him to begin reassessing her—taking her measure all over again. Which is good news for her, if she only knew it; and great news for the novel.
Even more dramatic opportunities for this reappraisal come the following day. On returning from the beach (and after a pretty hilarious comic monologue by Henrietta, who’s already scheming for Charles Hayter’s advancement), the Uppercross party is passed by a fine-looking dude who basically stops in his tracks and flat-out cruises Anne in such a way that, if this were happening between two gay guys on Fire Island, it would result in a mad tumble in the weeds ninety seconds later.
Anne’s face caught his eye, and he looked at her with a degree of earnest admiration, which she could not be insensible of. She was looking remarkably well; her very regular, very pretty features, having the bloom and freshness of youth restored by the fine wind which had been blowing on her complexion, and by the animation of eye which it had also produced. It was evident that the gentleman, (completely a gentleman in manner) admired her exceedingly. Captain Wentworth looked round at her instantly in a way which shewed his noticing of it. He gave her a momentary glance,—a glance of brightness, which seemed to say, “That man is struck with you,—and even I, at this moment, see something like Anne Elliot again.”
Anne again runs into this fancy man again back at the inn, almost colliding in a corridor; and once more he gives her an I-am-undressing-you-with-my-eyes look, while at the same time speaking his apologies to prove that he is “a man of exceedingly good manners.” He’s “about thirty, and, though not handsome, had an agreeable person. Anne felt that she should like to know who he was.” And he should like to know how Anne feels. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.
She doesn’t have long to wait, because while everyone’s at breakfast a curricle pulls up and collects the very man, along with his groom—both in mourning. Everyone watches—they pile into the window to spy on the operation, one of the novel’s more endearing images—and everyone spies the mysterious stranger drive away over the hill; then they sit back down to finish their breakfast and speculate like crazy. Ah, the things people did for entertainment before talk radio.
When a waiter enters the room, Captain Wentworth asks who the gentleman was who’s just departed, and is told that was—wait for it—a Mr. Elliot, “a gentleman of large fortune,” on his way to Bath and London.
This has the expected effect of knocking everybody back in their chairs. But no points for guessing who’s the most stupefied of all.
“Bless me!” cried Mary; “it must be our cousin;—it must be our Mr. Elliot, it must indeed!—Charles, Anne, must not it? In mourning, you see, just as our Mr. Elliot must be. How very extraordinary! In the very same inn with us! Anne, must not it be our Mr. Elliot; my father’s next heir?”
Not content with asking confirmation from everyone in the party, Mary hauls over the waiter to ask him whether in fact that gentleman just departed was the Mr. Elliot who belongs to the Kellynch family, and the water—resisting, perhaps, the urge to dump a carafe of water over her head—says that the gentleman’s servant mentioned no actual family, but did say his master would be a “baronight” some day. (Which I’m guessing is Austen mocking the guy’s lower-class pronunciation. Another reminder that our girl has no democratic leanings.)
For Mary, this is as good as proof. “Depend upon it, that is a circumstance which his servants take care to publish wherever he goes.” This from the woman who takes care to publish that she’s a baronet’s daughter wherever she goes. But of course that’s different, because reasons.
Mary’s in a funk that the opportunity of meeting him has now passed, though Anne gently tries to remind her that Mr. Elliot and Sir Walter haven’t been on civil terms for years, which would make any such meeting totes awkward, and even Captain Wentworth observes that “we must consider it to be in the arrangement of Providence, that you should not be introduced to your cousin.” But this is all just blah-blah-blah to Mary, who can’t get over the coincidence of two such rare comets as she and Mr. Elliot having streaked by each other in full blaze.
After breakfast the group is joined by the Harvilles and Captain Benwick for their final walk around the town before their return to Uppercross. Captain Benwick easily falls in beside Anne to talk more about Mr. Scott and Lord Byron and to quote some of his favorite works; nothing much, just a few dozen sonnets and maybe one epic poem.
Later, Captain Harville takes Anne aside to thank her for drawing his friend out of his shell and reviving his spirits. Anne replies that it’s perhaps natural for the Captain to be still a big old gloomy Gus, it having been such a short time since his bereavement, and Harville says indeed it has—it was only last summer when their ship, the Grappler, docked at Porstmouth and was delivered the news of Benwick’s fiancée kicking off. And no one had the courage to tell Benwick himself about it, except—pointing to Captain Wentworth—that guy right there.
“The Laconia had come into Plymouth the week before, no danger of her being sent to sea again. [Wentworth] stood his chance for the rest—wrote up for a leave of absence, but without waiting the return, travelled night and day till he got to Portsmouth, rowed off to the Grappler that instant, and never left the poor fellow for a week; that’s what he did, and nobody else could have saved poor James. You may think, Miss Elliot, whether he is dear to us!”
So yeah, Wentworth’s getting a chance to see Anne in a different light; but very much vice-versa, as well.
But now the Anne Elliot Through A New Prism thing pulls into a spectacular lead. The Uppercross party says goodbye to the Harvilles and heads back to the inn, accompanied by Captain Benwick, who still has a few cantos left to recite for Anne. They decide to take the lower walk because of the wind. And Louisa, who’s been acting like a sophomore on spring break ever since arriving in Lyme, can’t be contented simply to descend the steps with dignity; she has to jump down and have Captain Wentworth catch her, because what fun.
In all their walks, he had to jump her from the stiles; the sensation was delightful to her. The hardness of the pavement for her feet, made him less willing upon the present occasion; he did it, however; she was safely down, and instantly, to shew her enjoyment, ran up the steps to be jumped down again. He advised her against it, thought the jar too great; but no, he reasoned and talked in vain; she smiled and said, “I am determined I will:” he put out his hands; she was too precipitate by half a second, she fell on the pavement on the Lower Cobb, and was taken up lifeless!
Which is just as well, because if she’d run up one more time, I’d have been willing someone to push her.
In the horror and confusion that follow, the females of the party show their stuff—Henrietta by fainting, Mary by swooning into her husband’s arms and shrieking, “She is dead! she is dead!”—leaving Anne alone to rescue the dignity of her sex. She rolls up her sleeves, tells Captain Benwick to hand the unconscious Henrietta over—“I can support her myself”—then orders him to go and help Captain Wentworth try to revive Louisa. “Rub her hands, rub her temples; here are salts,—take them, take them.”
And when that doesn’t work, and Captain Wentworth himself lapses into useless panic—“Oh God! her father and mother!”—Anne, still with a clear head and a steady nerve, immediately shoots back, “A surgeon!” Captain Wentworth says oh yes of course a surgeon and goes galloping off to find one, and Anne calls out, Ahem, maybe the guy who actually lives here and knows where he’s going is a better fit for the job?—and Wentworth comes thrashing back while Benwick lights out, having “resigned the poor corpse-like figure entirely to the brother’s care”.
And then everyone stands around in various stages of uncertainty, hysteria, or unconsciousness, until they turn in their despair to the only authority who can be counted on.
“Anne, Anne,” cried Charles, “what is to be done next? What, in heaven’s name, is to be done next?”
Captain Wentworth’s eyes were also turned towards her.
So suddenly Anne, who for the entirety of the story thus far may as well have in a different novel for all anyone’s paid attention to her, has got pretty much the whole cast trembling in anticipation of her next words. It’s a pretty delicious irony, and it’s not lost on us, no bloody way. In fact, we’re totally digging it. Because you get the feeling, if Anne weren’t on hand?...The others would all just run mad, either dashing their skulls against the sea wall or throwing themselves headlong into the surf.
Anne suggests moving Louisa to the inn, and since her word is now law immediately the Captain hauls Louisa up to do just that—leaving the out-like-a-light Henrietta and the why-is-this-happening-to-me Mary in the care of Charles, who’s not exactly a pillar of steadiness himself. Meantime a crowd has gathered, as crowds will, so that when Henrietta comes to and sees all these strange faces pressing in on her, she almost conks out again—but once more, Anne comes to the rescue, poking her along to keep her upright.
They’re soon met by the Harvilles, who have come back out again after seeing Captain Benwick tear past their window, waving his arms and wailing like an ambulance. At Mrs. Harville’s insistence, Louisa is taken to their house “and conveyed up the stairs, and given possession of her own bed, [while] assistance, cordials, restoratives were supplied by her husband to all who needed them.” I love that detail: you’d think the whole lot of them fell off the damn Cobb.
The surgeon comes and eases everyone’s anxieties: Louisa’s head has suffered a contusion, but the rest of her is fine. He assures them he’s seen worse cases (possibly he’s seeing worse cases right now, in the Harville’s sitting room). And the degree of abandonment with which everyone gives way to relief is almost shocking, for an Austen novel.
The tone, the look, with which “Thank God!” was uttered by Captain Wentworth, Anne was sure could never be forgotten by her; nor the sight of him afterwards, as he sat near a table, leaning over it with folded arms, and face concealed, as if overpowered by the various feelings of his soul, and trying by prayer and reflection to calm them.
This is basically the Jane Austen equivalent to primal scream therapy.
It’s pretty soon decided that Louisa is to stay where she is; there’s no question of moving her, and the Harvilles—ma, pa, young’uns, and Uncle Benwick—shuffle their sleeping arrangements to accommodate her. Mrs. Harville herself is “a very experienced nurse” so there’s no anxiety about leaving Louisa with her.
Despite which, no one wants to go. Captain Wentworth insists that somebody has to go back to Uppercross to inform the Musgroves of what’s happened, and everyone agrees in principle. But.
After some thrashing, it’s agreed that Charles Musgrove will stay in Lyme, while Captain Wentworth escorts Henrietta home (the better to comfort her parents). As for the others, the Cap’s got that figured out as well: “…If one stays to assist Mrs. Harville, I think it need be only one.—Mrs. Charles Musgrove will, of course, wish to get back to her children; but, if Anne will stay, no one so proper, so capable as Anne!”
As it happens, Anne walks in just in time to hear this little panegyric to her super-specialness, and is almost—but not quite—overcome with emotion. (Another reason we love her long time. She’s a sensitive kid; but she knows how to rein it in.) And of course she agrees. “It was what she had been thinking of, and wishing to be allowed to do.—A bed on the floor in Louisa’s room would be sufficient for her, if Mrs. Harville would be think it so.”
With that settled, Captain Wentworth darts off to fetch the chaise. Ah, but they’ve all been forgetting one thing: the titanic self-regard of Mary Musgrove. She can’t bear not to be the top name in any list, and never mind what the list is even for. And in this case her nose is particularly put out of joint.
She was so wretched, and so vehement, complained so much of injustice in being expected to go away, instead of Anne;—Anne who was nothing to Louisa, while she was her sister, and had the best right to stay in Henrietta’s stead! Why was she not to be as useful as Anne? And to go home without Charles, too—without her husband! No, it was too unkind!
In the end she gets her way, as serial whingers usually do, so that when Captain Wentworth pulls up in the chaise he’s astonished to find Anne waiting there with Henrietta instead of Mary. And his show of disgust at the arrangement is so intense that Anne becomes convinced that “she was valued only as she could be useful to Louisa.” A usefulness which has just been knocked down to zero.
The first part of the journey back is a little awkward, as you can imagine. Fate keeps seeming to conspire to get Anne and Wentworth in smaller and smaller spaces, with fewer and fewer companions. Now they’re knocking knees in a chaise, with only Henrietta as a third.
Henrietta, however, is sufficiently agitated to keep them both busy for a while. When, for instance, she insists on re-living the moment on the Cobb when Louisa jumped, the Captain has to basically ask her to shut the hell up.
“Don’t talk of it, don’t talk of it,” he cried. “Oh God! that I had not given way to her at the fatal moment! Had I done as I ought! But so eager and so resolute! Dear, sweet Louisa!”
Anne has one moment of bitter triumph, as she reflects that maybe now that the Captain’s seen where that kind of “eager and resolute” manner leads, he’s less likely to spit on the compliant, more willingly influenced kind.
Henrietta, having demonstrated her affinity for passing out, soon drops off again. (We can’t judge her harshly for it; narcolepsy will be quite an advantage once she marries into the Hayters.) And as the chaise approaches Uppercross, Wentworth leans in and speaks to Anne directly. Worried about Henrietta’s bursting in on her parents, all waving her arms and hysterical and flinging herself at various items of furniture, he thinks it might be better if he himself went in first, while Anne keeps Henrietta company in the carriage. “Do you think this is a good plan?” he asks her.
She did: he was satisfied, and said no more. But the remembrance of the appeal remained a pleasure to her—as a proof of friendship, and of deference for her judgment, great pleasure; and when it became a sort of parting proof, its value did not lessen.
The pacing in Persuasion is mind-blowingly perfect. We’re at the exact midpoint of the novel, and Anne and the Captain have just exchanged their first private words. But due to the circumstances, they barely register as such, until we close the book and think about it a while—then we feel the impact, and we’re all, “Day-umn.”
Persuasion is definitely Austen at the pinnacle of her powers; she’s guiding us with so secure a hand—a hand we barely realize is there—that it takes a metaphor to do it justice. She’s jumped her narrative off the Cobb; and unlike Captain Wentworth, she’s not only seen it safely down, but imbued it with more strength, more vigor, and more urgency than almost anything she’s ever written before. Like Louisa, we may want to run back up and risk it again…but she’s gently, firmly pressing us on. She’s got much, much more to show us.

View more on Robert Rodi's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on March 26, 2014 06:42

March 17, 2014

Persuasion, chapters 7-9

Austen has seldom teased a character’s introduction so aggressively as she has Captain Wentworth’s. (The exception may be Lady Catherine de Bourgh, who was exhaustively and breathlessly talked about before we actually met her.) And as Chapter 7 opens, she’s still doing it. The captain, we now learn, has arrived at Kellynch, where he’s the guest of his brother-in-law, Admiral Croft. Mr. Musgrove pops right out and pays a call on him, and comes back to Uppercross to announce that the Captain is a totally stand-up guy and his new BFF and oh by the way he’s coming to dinner here in one week. Mr. Musgrove wanted him sooner, but the Captain was either too busy, or maybe just isn’t quite as into this sudden bromance as his new friend is.
Anne thinks, Great, I have one week to mentally prepare myself to look him in the face again, even as she secretly realizes she could have one year or one decade or, hell, one geologic age and it still wouldn’t be enough. And then something happens to make it clear she might not even get that puny week: she and Mary leave the cottage to visit the great house one morning, but are interrupted and have to turn back. And Anne later learns that Captain Wentworth had dropped by the great house to return Mr. Musgrove’s call that very half-hour. So if she had in fact showed up there…? Awwwwkward.
The cause of the interruption is a serious one. One of Mary’s kids has had a wicked bad fall—out of a tree, or a window, or from a low-flying plane—we don’t know, Austen doesn’t say, though he’s in pretty rough shape, with a broken collar bone. What Austen does say, is that Anne “could not hear of her escape with indifference, even in the midst of the serious anxiety which they afterwards felt on his account”—one of the few times when we’re, like, Anne, honey…srsly?
She makes up for it later, however, by being the only one in the household who’s got even base-level competency.
It was an afternoon of distress, and Anne had every thing to do at once—the apothecary to send for—the father to have pursued and informed—the mother to support and keep from hysterics—the servants to control—the youngest child to banish, and the poor suffering one to attend and soothe;—besides sending, as soon as she recollected it, proper notice to the other house, which brought her an accession rather of frightened, enquiring companions, than of very useful assistants.
Eventually the apothecary arrives and sets the collar bone, and everyone calms down enough to “eat their dinner in tolerable ease of mind;” after which the party from the great house is sufficiently mellowed out to take their leave and go back home.
All except the two young girls, that is; they linger behind a while, to share some gossip about Captain Wentworth, who is in their opinion a complete and total DILF.
[They expressed] how perfectly delighted they were with him, how much handsomer, how infinitely more agreeable they thought him than any individual among their male acquaintance, who had been at all a favorite before…And, in short, he had looked and said every thing with such exquisite grace, that they could assure them all, their heads were both turned by him!—And off they ran, quite as full of glee as of love, and apparently more full of Captain Wentworth than of little Charles.
As for Mr. Musgrove, once he gets over his relief that his grandson isn’t materially harmed, he experiences an almost equal relief that the kid’s condition won’t mean he has to postpone the dinner with Captain Wentworth. Though he does figure the crew at the cottage will probably not want to leave their little invalid behind for the occasion—to which “both father and mother were in much too strong and recent alarm to bear the thought; and Anne, in the joy of the escape, could not help adding her warm protestations to theirs.”
But Austen, ever the master of human psychology, now chronicles a slow shift in opinion as the days roll on and the trauma of the accident subsides. Suddenly, Charles Musgrove doesn’t see any damn reason why he shouldn’t go the damn dinner.
The child was to be kept in bed, and amused as quietly as possible; but what was there for a father to do? This was quite a female case, and it would be highly absurd in him, who could be of no use at home, to shut himself up. His father very much wished him to meet Captain Wentworth, and there being no sufficient reason against it, he ought to go; and it ended in his making a bold public declaration, when he came in from shooting, of his meaning to dress directly, and dine at the other house.
“Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain,” Austen tells us, and Mary certainly sees that she’s got nothing in her arsenal that will do the job here. But there’s a silver lining, because with the ever-patient Anne on hand to complain to, Mary can console herself with a real humdinger of a bitch session.
“So! You and I are to be left to shift by ourselves, with this poor sick child—and not a creature coming near us all the evening! I know how it would be. This is always my luck! If there is any thing disagreeable going on, men are always sure to get out of it, and Charles is as bad as any of them. Very unfeeling!...So, here he is to go away and enjoy himself, and because I am the poor mother, I am not to be allowed to stir;—and yet, I am sure, I am more unfit than any body else to be about the child. My being the mother is the very reason why my feelings should not be tried. I am not at all equal to it.”
Yes, she actually says this. Mary is the supreme rationalizer in the whole Austen canon. She could be crowned queen of England, and she’d find some reason for claiming to be abused and unappreciated, not to mention for arguing that nothing that happens in the kingdom is her responsibility anyway.
Anne tries to talk some sense into her. “But, could you be comfortable yourself, the whole evening away from the poor boy?” she asks, to which the answer is basically, Hell to the yeah—so that there’s really nothing left to do but for Anne to offer to watch the child herself while Mary joins her husband at the great house. If only to get her to shut up.
Except, she doesn’t shut up. She’s so excited and pleased that she rehashes all the arguments in favor of her going, perhaps trying to figure out which one persuaded Anne to give in so that she can be sure to use it next time; and when her hubby ambles back in, she hits him with the news that she’ll be on his arm tonight. More re-hashing and persuading follows; and then, thank sweet lawd Jebus, the pair of them finally pull themselves together and go—leaving Anne happy to be alone, happy to be quiet, and happy to be of use. “She knew herself to be of the first utility to the child; and what was it to her, if Frederick Wentworth were only half a mile distant, making himself agreeable to others!”
And yeah…what is it to her, come to mention it? Because she may have posed that question rhetorically, but she seems unable to leave it that way. And with nothing to do in the cottage but sit and listen to the clock tick away, she falls into that dangerous state of mind we call conjecture.
She would have liked to know how [Captain Wentworth] felt as to a meeting. Perhaps indifferent, if indifference could exist under such circumstances. He must be either indifferent or unwilling. Had he wished ever to see her again, he need not have waited till this time; he would have done what she could not but believe that in his place she should have done long ago, when events had been early giving him the independence which alone had been wanting.
As if that were the only difficulty. She’s clearly not accounting for his wounded pride, here; possibly she’s afraid of accounting for it. Because it’s beginning to seem as though it was very, very wounded. Bambi-after-the-hunters wounded.
Eventually Charles and Mary return, both of them over the moon about dreamy Captain Wentworth. For Charles it’s a bona fide man-crush, and he’s tickled pick to being going shooting with the Captain the very next day, possibly followed by a picnic lunch and a lazy hour making daisy wreaths for each other to wear.
Breakfast, however, will be at the great house, because the Captain doesn’t want to put the cottage to any special effort, on account of the ailing child. Mmmm-hm. That.
Anne understood it. He wished to avoid seeing her. He had enquired after her, she found, slightly, as might suit a former slight acquaintance, seeming to acknowledge such as she had acknowledged, actuated, perhaps, by the same view of escaping introduction when they were to meet.
You can’t blame Anne here if she’s starting to wonder whether they have to meet at all. They’ve made it this far, so maybe the evasive maneuvers can just continue indefinitely. She can find reasons not to go to the great house; he can find reasons to steer clear of the cottage; and in the event of an accidental encounter, there’s sure to be a tree to hide behind, or if not Anne can just pull her skirt over her head.
And yet all that goes balls-up the next morning, when Charles pops in after breakfast to tell Mary and Anne that he’s just come for his dogs, and btw Captain Wentworth and the girls are right behind him, coming along to say whassup—and then all of a sudden there he is, standing right there in the actual flesh in front of Anne’s actual human face.
Her eye half met Captain Wentworth’s; a bow, a curtsey passed; she heard his voice—he talked to Mary, said all that was right; said something to the Miss Musgroves, enough to mark an easy footing: the room seemed full—full of persons and voices—but a few minutes ended it. Charles shewed himself at the window, all was ready, their visitor bowed and was gone; the Miss Musgroves were gone too, suddenly resolving to walk to the end of the village with the sportsmen; the room was cleared, and Anne might finish her breakfast as she could.
“It is over! it is over!” she repeated to herself again, and again, in nervous gratitude. “The worst is over!”
And she appears to believe it, too. Clearly Anne has never read a Jane Austen novel.
After seeing the hunters off, the Musgrove girls gambol back to the cottage and gossip some more with Mary, while Anne clears the table, washes the dishes, mops the floor, re-thatches the roof, and wrestles a marauding bear in the vegetable patch. And after the girls have gone back to the great house, Mary passes all their intelligence along to Anne, including this unwitting bombshell:
“Captain Wentworth is not very gallant by you, Anne, though he was so attentive to me. Henrietta asked him what he thought of you, when they went away; and he said, You were so altered he should not have known you again.”
Of course Anne is utterly mortified…all the more so, because he was almost certainly being honest, not cruel.
“Altered beyond his knowledge!”…Doubtless it was so; and she could take no revenge, for he was not altered, or not for the worse…No; the years which had destroyed her youth and bloom had only given him a more glowing, manly, open look, in no respect lessening his personal advantages. She had seen the same Fredrick Wentworth.
The silver lining is that, having heard these words, Anne is now able to pack up any hope she might have had, wrap it in a little paper satchel tied with string, and drop-kick it onto the burn pile. The captain’s words “were of a sobering tendency; they allayed agitation; they composed, and consequently must make her happier.” They must, you hear that? Because that’s the way it always work. Everybody knows that.
Austen now pulls a very tricky bit of sleight-of-hand, by switching, almost without blinking, to Captain Wentworth’s point of view. From his being a mysterious, behind-the scenes-figure for so many chapters, we’re now ushered without ceremony right into his frontal lobes, and have already read a few lines before we can even register the surprise.
Frederick Wentworth had used such words, or something like them, but without an idea that they would be carried round to her. He had thought her wretchedly altered, and, in the first moment of appeal, had spoken as he felt. He had not forgiven Anne Elliot. She had used him ill; deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shewn a feebleness of character in doing so, which his own decided, confident temper could not endure. She had given him up to oblige others. It had been the effect of over-persuasion. It had been weakness and timidity.
He’d had no desire to meet her again, and now that he has—and has seen for himself that she looks rode hard and put away wet—it just makes it easier for him to move on with his plan to marry…marry someone else, that is. In fact, marry anyoneelse. As he puts it to his sister: “Any body between fifteen and thirty may have me for the asking. A little beauty, and a few smiles, and a few compliments to the navy, and I am a lost man.” But when pressed, he admits—with Anne “not out of his thoughts”—that he’d also prefer his future wife to have “[a] strong mind and a sweetness of manner”…though, thinking of the Miss Musgroves, he adds, “Something a little inferior I shall of course put up with, but it must not be too much.” Which is such a totally, idiosyncratically Jane Austen line that I’d have it put on a t-shirt, if it weren’t just a hair too long. (I wear a Medium, which alas is scarcely sufficient.)
With their first meeting now out of the way, Anne and the Captain find themselves constantly in the same circle. It’s a little awkward, of course, because neither of them can refer to their former relationship, but at the same time it can’t help being on both their minds, especially when the Captain said things like, “That happened before I went to sea in the year six,” which can only conjure up messy memories of what else he had on his plate in the year six. “There must be the same immediate association of thought,” Anne concludes, “though she was very far from conceiving it to be of equal pain.” I can almost imagine Anne developing some sort of facial spasm or nervous tic, so that every time the Captain mentions “the year six” she either grimaces, or knocks over a wine glass, or kicks the dog.
For all that they’re thrown together, there’s no actual personal contact between them—“no intercourse but what the commonest civility required. Once so much to each other! Now nothing!”
There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to cease to speak to one another. With the exception, perhaps of Admiral and Mrs. Croft, who seemed particularly attached and happy, (Anne could allow no other exception even among the married couples) there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in union, no countenances so beloved. Now they were as strangers, nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted. It was a perpetual estrangement.
This is heartfelt stuff, and it gets us in the gut; but it’s also a great piece of storytelling, because again Austen holds up Admiral Croft and his wife as the living illustration of the future Anne relinquished. They’re the parallel-universe Frederick and Anne—the road not taken—and they’re a wonderful means by which we readers can keep in the forefront of our minds exactly what Anne gave up…the stakes which she played for, and lost. No: worse than lost…conceded.
The fact that she and the Captain now don’t speak isn’t the cause for any awkward silences or anything, because at the Musgrove mansion everybody’s always talking over each other anyway, and especially so when Captain Wentworth’s on hand. Despite having had a son in the navy (thought admittedly the black sheep), the family is guilty of “a very general ignorance of naval matters” and the Captain is “very much questioned, and especially by the two Miss Musgroves,” who I also imagine kneeling by his chair, constantly fingering his epaulets and trying on his hat.
This, alas, is painful for Anne to witness, because it reminds her of the days when she’d been equally stupid, and “she too had been accused of supposing sailors to be living on board without anything to eat, or any cook to dress it if there were, or any servant to wait, or any knife and fork to use.” Which is very charming stuff, but it also makes some of us blush and think, Oh, they had cooks on board?
On this occasion the Miss Musgroves get out the navy list with the idea of checking up on all the Captain’s old ships. This gives him a chance to wax nostalgic, and to show off an unexpected, and rather biting, wit.
“The admiralty…entertain themselves, now and then, with sending a few hundred men to sea, in a ship not fit to be employed. But they have a great many to provide for; and among the thousands that may just as well go to the bottom as not, it is impossible for them to distinguish the very set who may be least missed.”
Oh yeah, we’re likin’ this guy.
He also manages his first meaningful address to Anne—though it’s an extremely indirect one. When Admiral Croft tells him how fortunate he was in his first command, he says, “I felt my luck, admiral, I assure you…I was as well satisfied with my appointment as you can desire. It was a very great object with me, at that time, to be at sea,—a very great object. I wanted to be doing something.”
Okay, that’s gotta sting. Possibly Anne even jumps in her seat a little, as though someone’s jabbed her with a pin.
The Captain goes on to relate some of his adventures, including capturing a French frigate just before a great gale which, had his tussle lasted only a little longer, would have sunk him in pretty much every respect, including the most literal. This prospect causes Anne to shudder quietly; the Miss Musgroves, without any reason to conceal their own fright, make a big show of it, possibly wailing and running amok around the room, though you get the idea that’s how the Musgroves pass an average evening anyway.
There’s a lot more sea talk, including, inevitably, a few words eulogizing the lost Musgrove son, Richard, a.k.a. Shifty Dicky, and at one point Mrs. Musgrove coos about how “steady a correspondent” he’d become under Captain Wentworth’s tutelage. “Ah!” she exclaims, “it would have been a happy thing, if he had never left you. I assure you, Captain Wentworth, we are very sorry he ever left you.”
There was a momentary expression in Captain Wentworth’s face at this speech, a certain glance of his bright eye, and curl of his handsome mouth, which convinced Anne, that instead of sharing in Mrs. Musgrove’s kind wishes, as to her son, he had probably been at some pains to get rid of him; but it was too transient an indulgence of self-amusement to be detected by any who understood him less than herself; in another moment he was perfectly collected and serious…
I love this moment, because it shows us that Captain Wentworth enjoys Mrs. Musgrove’s ridiculousness as much as we do. Austen’s fiction is filled with the freakish and the fatuous, brimming with grotesques and gasbags, brutes and buffoons; but for the most part her characters take them all at face value—or, if they do see the humor in so much human absurdity, they make the mistake of laughing aloud at it (as, say, Frank Churchill does), which is bad form. I can think of only one other Austen character both sharp enough, and well-bred enough, to find private amusement in the noisy idiocy of almost everyone she encounters, and that’s Lizzy Bennet.
So yeah, I’d say Wentworth’s in pretty good company, here. Have I mentioned I’m a fan? I think I may have mentioned I’m a fan.
Now, a small upheaval: Captain Wentworth, being a gentleman and all, comes and sits beside Mrs. Musgrove, the better to offer her a few consoling words about Shifty Dicky. And since Anne is seated on Mrs. Musgrove’s other side, you know what that means. “They were actually on the same sofa…they were divided only by Mrs. Musgrove. It was no insignificant barrier indeed”—as apparently Mrs. M. is something of a sofa herself.
It’s at this point that the snarky Jane Austen we know from her letters to Cassandra momentarily obtrudes on the narrative, with some authorial comment prompted by Mrs. M.’s “large fat sighings over the destiny of a son, whom alive nobody had cared for.”
Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions. A large bulky figure has as good a right to be in deep affliction, as the most graceful set of limbs in the world. But, fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will patronize in vain,—which taste cannot tolerate,—which ridicule will seize.
Which is a pretty clear indication that, while this novel may offer us a heroine whose blush is long faded, and another character whose obsession with his own handsomeness is a source of relentless mockery—still Jane Austen is Jane Austen: she likes ’em good-lookin’. Yes, she’s sufficiently matured to recognize that beauty isn’t everything; but she also knows it’s far from nothing.
The jolly banter continues, as a remark from Admiral Croft prompts the Captain to comment that he “would never willingly admit any ladies on board a ship of his, excepting for a ball, or a visit, which a few hours might comprehend.” He insists this isn’t for lack of gallantry towards them; but the explanation he does supply (the difficulty of making them comfortable) makes them sound rather more like perishable items of cargo than human beings.
This sets off several pages in which he and his sister volley back and forth—with Anne listening, no doubt on the edge of her seat, and probably with her fingernails biting into her palms. Mrs. Croft says, “I believe I have lived as much on board as most women, and I know nothing superior to the accommodations of a man of war.” Presumably she’s talking about the vessel and not the admiral, though I’ll bet the testimonial would stand for both.
The Captain argues that of course she was comfortable, she was with her husband, and blah blah blah ladies are not seaworthy because reasons. His sister shoots back, “But I hate to hear you talking so, like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.” And then the admiral really gives the pot a good stir, by saying, “Ah! my dear…when he has got a wife, he will sing a different tune”, at which point Anne probably has to turn away by pretending to search for something beneath her seat cushion, like a pin, or a button, or Australia.
Meantime the conversation continues in ways that can only lash her more deeply with regret. Mrs. Musgrove says, “What a great traveler you must have been, ma’am!” and Mrs. Croft replies, you better believe it, and lists all the places she’s sailed, which basically takes the rest of the evening and into breakfast the next morning.
“…I have crossed the Atlantic four times, and have been once to the East Indies, and back again; and only once, besides being in different places about home—Cook, and Lisbon, and Gibraltar. But I never went beyond the Streights and never was in the West Indies. We do not call Bermuda or Bahama, you know, the West Indies.”
Mrs. Musgrove had not a word to say in dissent; she could not accuse herself of having ever called them any thing in the whole course of her life.
People who refer to Persuasion as Austen’s “serious” novel—do they just not getthe jokes, or what? Because what they hell, they’re all right there.
Mrs. Croft concludes her case magnificently, with a virtual aria on the joys of traveling with her husband.
“…I can safely say, that the happiest part of my life has been spent on board a ship. While we were together, you know, there was nothing to be feared…The only time that I ever really suffered in body or mind, the only time that I ever fancied myself unwell, or had any ideas of danger, was the winter that I passed by myself at Deal, when the Admiral (Captain Croft then) was in the North Seas. I lived in perpetual fright at the time, and had all manner of imaginary complaints from not knowing what to do with myself, or when I should hear from him next; but as long as we could be together, nothing ever ailed me, and I never met with the smallest inconvenience.”
This pretty much reduces Anne to tears. I mean, literally so. Dancing begins, and Anne takes her place at the piano, where her eyes can well up unobserved. The poor kid. She’s really had salt rubbed in her wounds in a big way. And it’s sea salt, which makes it hella worse.
And it ain’t even over. She has to endure Captain Wentworth being in higher spirits than anybody else, possibly marking the time between dances by doing one-armed pushups or magically producing a pigeon from Mrs. Musgrove’s bonnet. Meanwhile all the young ladies—meaning the two Miss Musgroves and several poor-relation cousins—scurry off to confess to each other how much in love they are with him, then rush back to fawn over him some more, and really, “If he were a little spoilt by such universal, such eager admiration, who could wonder?” Me, I’m amazed he doesn’t just send for his trunks and move in.
Anne feels his eyes on her only once (I wonder if her fingering stumbles; or whether she shifts into a minor key), after which she overhears him ask his dance partner whether Miss Elliot ever danced. The answer is, “Oh! no, never; she has quite given up dancing. She had rather play. She is never tired of playing.” Which is possibly the reason why, when she later returns from having briefly left the room, and finds Captain Wentworth at the piano bench, he immediately jumps up and moves away.
“I beg your pardon, madam, this is your seat;” and though she immediately drew back with a decided negative, he was not to be induced to sit down again.
Anne did not wish for more of such looks and speeches. His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than any thing.
Wellll…maybe not worse than anything. Certainly it would be worse if he gave her a shove, or set the hem of her gown on fire, or started calling her Old Auntie Annie. But the point is made: she’s cap-M miserable.
She might reasonably take some comfort in the idea that the Captain will soon be moving on; he has plans to head to Shropshire to visit his other brother (the former curate) and meet his new wife. But he’s having such a swell time visiting his sister that he ends up putting off those plans and just hanging his hat at Kellynch indefinitely. And not only Kellynch.
It was soon Uppercross with him almost every day. The Musgroves could hardly be more ready to invite than he to come, particularly in the morning, when he had no companion at home, for the Admiral and Mrs. Croft were generally out of doors together, interesting themselves in their new possessions, their grass, and their sheep, and dawdling about in a way not endurable to a third person, or driving out in a gig, lately added to their establishment.
The Crofts are so adorable, you want to just cram them into a blender and drink them down like a smoothie.
But now trouble enters the picture. I mentioned the Musgroves’ poor relations a few paragraphs back—a gaggle of cousins called the Hayters, who are pretty much white trash, with the exception of the eldest boy, Charles. He’s sort of their analog to Sticky Dicky—the white sheep instead of the black sheep. (Call him Lucky Chucky.) He’s managed to escape the slack-jawed idiocy that’s afflicted all his siblings, and is a “very amiable, pleasing young man”—damning with faint praise, maybe, but you get the impression, with the Hayters, just not making mouth-bubbles is enough to qualify you as a prodigy.
Anyway, Charles—who’s been ordained, so he’s got an actual career going for him as well, such as it is—has been pitching woo at his cousin Henrietta for a while, and she’s been quite encouragingly receptive. But now he returns from a short absence from home and finds she’s dropped her catcher’s mitt in the dirt and is busy floating around after Captain Wentworth with stardust in her eyes.
So he’s a little bit put out. No, actually, he’s a lot put out; because he’s essentially chosen Henrietta as his future Mrs. Curate. There’s no impediment to the idea from the families, either; for despite the vast disparity in their fortunes, there was “no pride on one side, and no envy on the other” and Charles’s sniffing around Henrietta is perfectly fine with her parents, whose wonderfully democratic reaction is simply “It would not be a great match for her; but if Henrietta liked him,—and Henrietta did seem to like him.”
Well, she doesn’t seem to like him anymore. She’s too busy competing with her sister for Captain Wentworth’s attention—I picture one cartwheeling alongside him, while the other juggles pineapples—and though no one knows which, if either, Captain Wentworth prefers, Henrietta’s hardly going to vacate the field of battle just because Lucky Chucky’s come dawdling back.
You’d think this would be a matter of some concern to Ma and Pa Musgrove; but “either from seeing little, or from an entire confidence in the discretion of both their daughters, and of all the young men who came near them, [they] seemed to leave every thing to take its chance.” Really, they’re so delightfully laissez-faire in everything to do with their offspring, you have to wonder that the kids made it through childhood with all their limbs accounted for.
But while Henrietta’s love life goes unremarked-on at the great house, it’s a matter of energetic discussion at the Cottage, where Captain Wentworth’s martial future is being all thrashed out for him. “Charles gave it for Louisa, Mary for Henrietta, but quite agreeing that to have him marry either would be extremely delightful.”
Charles, in fact, is so enamored of Captain Wentworth (having “never seen a pleasanter man in his life” and being “very sure that he had not made less than twenty thousand pounds by the war”) that you half-wonder whether he won’t just push Mary down a well and try to marry the Captain himself. Mary, who basically has one standard of measurement for all earthly affairs, is less enthused by the Captain’s present recommendations than by his potential future ones.
“If he should ever be made a Baronet! ‘Lady Wentworth’ sounds very well. That would be a noble thing, indeed, for Henrietta! She would take place of me then, and Henrietta would not dislike that. Sir Frederick and Lady Wentworth! It would be but a new creation, however, and I never think much of your new creations.”
Mary’s especially keen on having it be Henrietta over Louisa, because of the Charles Hayter thing. The mild-mannered Musgroves may be perfectly content with their low-bred cousins, but if it were up to Mary she’d call in an Orkin man and have every last Hayter sprayed out of the house. Her husband, not being a snob, takes a more sanguine view of Charles Hayter’s possibilities. “It would not be a greatmatch for Henrietta,” he admits, “but Charles has a very fair chance…of getting something from the Bishop in the course of year or two; and you will please to remember, that he is the eldest son; whenever my uncle dies, he steps into some very pretty property.” The way he sees it, if Henrietta nabs Charles Hayter, and Louisa gets Captain Wentworth, that’llbe worth a party.
You’ll notice that Anne is largely absent in all of this recent business. That’s basically because she’s essentially benched herself. She has the excuse of little broken Charles to nursemaid, to get her out of most family engagements, and failing that she can always resort to a strategically timed headache. There’s pretty much zero she’d rather not do, than join in the rest of the family in playing “The Bachelor – Home Game Edition”, and not only for her own sake, but for Charles Hayter, for whom she has “a delicacy which must be pained by any lightness of conduct in a well-meaning young woman, and a heart to sympathize in any of the sufferings it occasioned”. As far as Anne is concerned, the sooner the Captain and Henrietta figure out which of their available choices they prefer, the better for everyone involved.
Austen now provides a wonderfully excruciating set piece, which begins the next morning at the Cottage with Anne tending the still recuperating Li’l Charles (who I’ll continue to call L’il Charles, because we’ve suddenly got Charleses piling up in the narrative like sandbags against a flood). Anne’s got him lying on the sofa in the drawing-room, presumably for a change of scene. And who should walk in but Captain Wentworth.
The surprise of finding himself almost alone with Anne Elliot, deprived his manners of their usual composure: he started, and could only say, “I thought the Miss Musgroves had been here—Mrs. Musgrove told me I should find them here,” before he walked to the window to recollect himself, and feel how he ought to behave.
Under better circumstances, Anne could take this opportunity of his turning away from her to skedaddle right out of the room—possibly leaving a little Road Runner cloud of dust in her wake. But she can’t do that because of L’il Charles on the sofa. If she left him now, he could roll right off and break his other collar bone.
But never mind, she hears someone coming—someone to rescue her from being alone with the one man in all creation she can’t face being alone with. But then the door opens and—Charles Hayter enters. Charles Hayter, who’s also in the category of would-rather-die-than-be-alone-in-a-room-with-Captain-Fancypants.
Wentworth, the big lug, has no idea of the wrench he’s thrown into Charles’s love life, so he turns around, delighted to be no longer alone with Anne, and marches over with his arm outstretched, ready to shake Charles’s hand and have a nice manly chat about, oh, shooting things, or wenching, or guess how drunk I was last night.
And Charles Hayter cuts him dead. Just completely shuts down his approach in the most unmistakable manner possible. He ignores the outstretched hand, sits down in a chair, and begins furiously reading the newspaper. That’ll show Captain Fancypants he’s not everybody’s goddamn Big Man On Campus.
So we have an absolutely wonderful, absolutely agonizing little trio of awkwardness here. It’s like the opposite of the Captain’s love triangle with Henrietta and Louisa, only even more complicated. Charles Hayter doesn’t want to be with Wentworth, who doesn’t want to be with Anne; but they’re all three stuck together like they’ve walked into a glue trap.
Then the door opens again—thank God, another chance at rescue! Except it’s one of the younger Musgrove boys, Walter—“a remarkable, stout, forward child, of two years old,” whose brashness and busyness completely upset the delicate scaffolding of polite silence the three adults have built up between them. With the right actors, this would play beautifullyonstage—hilarious while at the same time utterly cringe-making.
Eventually Walter decides his best shot at fun would be to hang around Aunt Anne’s neck while she’s trying to tend L’il Charles, and he’s such a vigorous little bugger that she can’t shake him off.
“Walter,” said she, “get down this moment. You are extremely troublesome. I am very angry with you.”
“Walter,” cried Charles Hayter, “why do you not do as you are bid? Do you not hear your aunt speak? Come to me, Walter, come to cousin Charles.”
But not a bit did Walter stir.
The phrase has yet to be invented, obviously, but Walter clearly grasps the concept of “You are not the boss of me.”
But a few moments later Anne feels Walter’s weight being lifted from her, and turns around just in time to see Captain Wentworth hauling the errant brat away, ideally by his pinkie finger, or an earlobe. Anne is thrown into a total clusterfuck of conflicting emotions, and fusses over L’il Charles to cover all the Sarah Bernhardt blushing and grimacing and eye-popping she’s obviously doing.
His kindness in stepping forward to her relief—the manner—the silence in which it had passed—the little particulars of the circumstance—with the conviction soon forced on her by the noise he was studiously making with the child, that he meant to avoid hearing her thanks, and rather sought to testify that her conversation was the last of his wants, produced such a confusion of varying, but very painful agitation, as she could not recover from, till enabled by the entrance of Mary and the Miss Musgroves to make over her little patient to their cares, and leave the room. It might have been an opportunity of watching the loves and jealousies of the four; they were now all together, but she could stay for none of it.
Clearly, Uppercross is too small a place to contain both Anne and Captain Wentworth. The law of averages pretty much insists that there will be an increasing number of mortifying encounters like this one…or worse. So, next time around, Anne gets out of Uppercross.
Does that help the situation?...Hell do youthink?

View more on Robert Rodi's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on March 17, 2014 16:25

March 8, 2014

Persuasion, chapters 4-6

Flashback time! Cue your special effect of choice: a slow fade, a tasteful dissolve, or that one where the present-day picture gets all wavy and then turns into the past. There’s probably a name for that, but “that one where the present-day picture gets all wavy and then turns into the past” is a bit much to Google, so let’s just go with it as is.
We now learn that the Mr. Wentworth who was curate of Monkford (and therefore beneath the notice of Sir Walter Elliot) not only had a sister, who is, by great coincidence, now going to be the mistress of Kellynch-hall (at least for a while, anyway); he also had a brother, a “remarkably fine young man, with a great deal of intelligence, spirit and brilliancy” who came to live with him for a few months during a break in his naval duties. And this stay occurred at just the time when a young Anne Elliot had reached her peak of prettiness, bloom, and sweetness (though apparently a rather low-scaled peak). “Half the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough,” Austen tells us, “for he had nothing to do, and she had hardly any body to love;” but as it turns out it was well more than half the sum; in fact, the attraction in question pretty much broke the bank. The two young people fell headlong in love.
Alas, as is often the case of young people headlong in love, the world comes along to bite them in the ass.
Sir Walter, on being applied to, without actually withholding his consent, or saying it should never be, gave it all the negative of great astonishment, great coldness, great silence, and a professed resolution of doing nothing [financially] for his daughter. He thought it a very degrading alliance; and Lady Russell, though with more tempered and pardonable pride, received it as a most unfortunate one.
The principal difference between the two objections is that Sir Walter is disgusted by the idea that this is the best Anne could do, with all her advantages of birth and breeding, and wants to distance himself from the shame of it; while Lady Russell thinks that Anne could in fact do quite a bit better, precisely because of her birth and breeding, than to throw herself away at nineteen to some dude out of nowhere “who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession”.
Never mind that this Captain Wentworth has so much unrestrained self-esteem that the law of gravity can barely tether him to terra firma. He “was confident that he should soon be rich;—full of life and ardour, he knew that he should soon have a ship, and soon be on a station that would lead to every thing he wanted. He had always been lucky; he knew he should be so still.” Lady Russell is all yeah, yeah, talk to the hand. To her he’s just blue-skying up her petticoats, and frankly, in this particular case I have to take her side (don’t look for a repeat; Lady R. is far from my fave, as I think is clear by now). Almost every young buck in his early twenties is one-hundred-and-ten percent certain he’s going to be master of all time and space by the time he’s thirty. I sure as hell was. And those of us who have got past that stage—bloodied and scraped by the hard edges of reality—have learned to be a tad sanguine about the young folks coming up behind us who insist that they’regoing to be different.
Still, everyone is entitled to make his own mistakes—and is usually the better for it. But Anne isn’t to be allowed that luxury; Lady Buttinsky unloads her reservations on her, and “could not, with such steadiness of opinion, and such tenderness of manner, be continually advising her in vain.” Translation: Lady Russell will just. not. shut. up. And given Anne’s innate humility, the result is inevitable. “She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing—indiscreet, improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it.” Even worse, Lady Russell convinces Anne it would be wrong for him; and this is the real deal-breaker. Anne, being a stand-up kid, might be willing to risk her own happiness—but not his.
He doesn’t quite see it that way, of course, and their final meeting is just a tad acrimonious. He’s “totally unconvinced and unbending,” and feels himself “ill-used by so forced a relinquishment.—He had left the country in consequence.” Nice job, Lady Russell. What’s your next trick? You saw Anne in half?
Now it’s seven years later, and this romance—which itself only lasted a few months from beginning to end—ought by now to be no more than a blip in Anne’s life. Except that everything has turned out exactly the opposite from the way Lady Russell expected it to. Anne suffered an “early loss of bloom and spirits” over Captain Wentworth’s departure, which didn’t exactly inspire any more deserving young swains to come a-callin’; and the one proposal she did get, she turned down.
She had been solicited, when about two-and-twenty- to change her name, by the young man, who had not long afterwards found a more willing mind in her younger sister; and Lady Russell had lamented her refusal; for Charles Musgrove was the eldest son of a man, whose landed property and general importance, were second in that country, only to Sir Walter’s, and of good character and appearance.
But “good character and appearance” aren’t exactly high recommendations after the high-octane charisma of Captain Wentworth. Lady Russell, “as satisfied as ever with her own discretion, never wished the past undone,” but she’s beginning to have little worrying fits (possibly the cause of those crow’s feet that so horrify Sir Walter) about anyone evercoming along to tempt Anne into “a state for which she held her to be peculiarly fitted by her warm affections and domestic habits.”
And Anne feels pretty much the same. At twenty-seven, she “thought very differently from what he had been made to think at nineteen.”
She did not blame Lady Russell, she did not blame herself for having been guided by her; but she felt that were any young person, in similar circumstances, to apply to her for counsel, they would never receive any of such certain immediate wretchedness, such uncertain future good.
This is pretty heartbreaking stuff. And it’s about to get worse, as we learn that—whaddaya know—brash, boastful young Captain Wentworth was absolutely bang-on about his prospects. “All his sanguine expectations, all his confidence, had been justified. His genius and ardour had seemed to foresee and to command his prosperous path.” The guy’s gone out and made himself a fortune, exactly as he told Anne he would.
And Anne knows it, too. She follows the navy lists—the Regency equivalent of the sports pages—so she’s perfectly (shall we say, achingly) aware of his triumphs, and is certain that he’s rich; though, “in favour of his constancy, she had no reason to believe him married.”
How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been,—how eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence!—She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older—the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.
What a freaking gorgeous, and devastating, bit of prose there. And it really does set up Anne’s dilemma for us. She’s had to learn to live with regret—to accept that she made a decision based on what other people wanted for her, rather than what she wanted for herself—only to learn that it was emphatically, spectacularly, cataclysmically the wrongdecision. And rather than be left in peace to repine and sigh and fade ever farther in the background, her bad decision is chasing her down like a coyote after a one-legged rabbit. Captain Wentworth’s bloody brother-in-law has rented her own house out from under her, and Captain Wentworth himself can’t be far behind.
In hardening her nerves against that business, Anne, we’re told, is aided “by that perfect indifference and apparent unconsciousness, among the only three of her own friends in the secret of the past, which seemed almost to deny any recollection of it.” Meaning that her father, her sister Elizabeth, and Lady Russell say exactly zip-zero-zilch about anything to do with the matter. They may as well have—they very possiblyhave—forgotten all about it. The name “Captain Wentworth” never seems to so much as flit across any of their minds. Well…possibly Lady Russell’s. But you gotta think she’s maybe not in such a rush to bring the matter up, given…well, given everything, basically. I mean, counselors to kings and popes have had their heads cut off for advice that wasn’t half as bad as Lady R’s.
So the knowledge of Anne’s current anxiety is at least limited to a trio of people, none of whom is inclined to give her any strange or discomfiting looks (or look at her at all, much). So she’s spared that mortification.
Certainly nobody gives her any looks when Admiral Croft finally arrives to check the place out; he’s the kind of outsize personality who commands the attention of every pair of eyes in the room. He oozes confidence and masculinity and bluff good humor, so much so that even Sir Walter is won over; he declares the Admiral “to be the best-looking sailor he had ever met with, and went so far as to say, that, if his own man might have had the arranging of his hair, he should not be ashamed of being seen with him any where”. This rather qualified admiration is most generously returned, as the Admiral later tells his wife, “The baronet will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems no harm in him”. Somebody gets these guys a room.
So it’s all set: the Crofts are to move in at Michaelmas, with the Elliots skedaddling to Bath the month before. But…Lady Russell wants Anne to stay behind, with her, until Christmas, at which time they can travel up to Bath together. Anne isn’t too keen on the idea. She’s in no hurry to leave the country, true, and less so to arrive at Bath (a place she doesn’t even like), but she still thinks it would be “most right, and most wise, and therefore, must involve least suffering, to go with the others.”
Now, I love Anne. Swear to God. Won’t hear a word said against her. But at about this point I just want to take her by her prim little shoulders and give her a good gin-martini shake, and say, “Anne. Sweetheart. The others?...They could stand a little suffering.”
As it happens, the issue becomes moot when Anne receives a summons from her other sister, Mary, to come and look after her. “Mary, often a little unwell, and always thinking a great deal of her own complaints”, was “always in the habit of claiming Anne when any thing was the matter”. So it’s decided: Anne will go neither to Bath, nor to Lady Russell’s, but to the delightfully named Uppercross Cottage, where her sister lives with her husband and children.
Lady Russell is happy that she’ll be able to take Anne to Bath at Christmas, after all. But uh-oh, that happiness is short-lived, because guess what.
…Mrs. Clay [was] engaged to go to Bath with Sir Walter and Elizabeth, as a most important and valuable assistant to the latter in all the business before her. Lady Russell was extremely sorry that such a measure should have been resorted to at all—wondered, grieved, and feared—and the affront it contained to Anne, in Mrs. Clay’s being of so much use, while Anne could be of none, was a very sore aggravation.
Anne herself shrugs off the insult. Hey, the way her life’s gone, if she hasn’t been locked out all night in the snow, or had Sir Walter’s hounds set after her for sport, that’s a good day. But she’s still aware—and somehow still manages to care—that the presence of a hot-blooded widower in her father’s risks exposing the family to salacious gossip…and even worse, of that gossip having some actual foundation.
She did not imagine that her father had at present an idea of the kind. Mrs. Clay had freckles, and a projecting tooth, and a clumsy wrist, which he was continually making severe remarks upon, in her absence; but she was young, and certainly altogether well-looking, and possessed, in an acute mind and assiduous pleasing manners, infinitely more dangerous attractions than any merely personal might have been.
Anne’s so worried about the possible repercussions that she makes a valiant attempt to warn Elizabeth about it. Elizabeth basically laughs at her—the idea of Sir Walter falling for a dame with freckles and a harpoon tooth! Are you high?—then she swings a lever that opens a trap door beneath Anne, of which there is one in every room in Kellynch-hall.
As Anne climbs back up to ground level, she’s still glad she spoke up—glad she cleared herself of any possible complicity in what shenanigans might now ensue, and also “not absolutely hopeless of doing good. Elizabeth, though resenting the suspicion, might yet be made observant by it.” Because yeah, Elizabeth is so observant of everything that isn’t one-hundred percent connected with Being Elizabeth.
Then the day comes when the Elliot party packs off to Bath, and Anne, left behind “in a sort of desolate tranquility,” shuffles off to the estate’s Lodge, which reduction in her estate we might feel sorry for if said Lodge weren’t bigger and more lavishly appointed than any house you or I will ever live in, unless we hop in a time machine and go back and co-found Microsoft.
But she doesn’t stay at the Lodge for long; she wants to be well out of the way before Admiral and Mrs. Croft arrive. So after a week she finally sets out to see her sister at Uppercross—a “moderate-sized village, which a few years back had been completely in the old English style”, but which now boasts a few renovated houses that are flashier than the squire’s mansion, including the Cottage, “with its viranda, French windows, and other prettinesses”. I can’t tell whether Austen’s having a sly snark at Regency-era yuppification here, or not. I’m gonna go with yes, because it works so well as sly snark.
“Uppercross” always strikes me as a mash-up of “uppercut” and “double-cross,” so I invariably go into these chapters expecting some high comedy. And we get some right off the bat, as Anne arrives to find her sister Mary alone; “but being alone, her being unwell and out of spirits, was almost a matter of course.”
Mary’s a great comic creation, but a very complex one; she’s always complaining of being sick, but the real trouble with her is that “she had no resources for solitude; and inheriting a considerable share of the Elliot self-importance, was very prone to add to every other distress that of fancying herself neglected and ill-used.” Basically, she drives people away by being too shrill and demanding; then when they’re all gone she gets lonely. Which she dresses up as being “unwell.” Which she blames on other people, so they’re even less likely to want to spend time with her. It’s a dizzying and very funny (and very sad) little caucus race she runs all by herself.
Anne gets a face-full of Mary-ness when she enters. From where she languishes on the couch, Mary says, “So you are come at last! I began to think I should never see you. I am so ill I can hardly speak. I have not seen a creature the whole morning.” So, immediately, Anne is roped into the general blame. This bitch is good. I mean, her pathology is bad, but she’s so good at it.
And yet she’s oblivious to her own contradictions. When Anne asks where Mary’s husband is, she says, “Oh! Charles is out shooting. I have not seen him since seven o’clock. He would go, though I told him how ill I was. He said he should not stay out long; but he has never come back, and now it is almost one.” I got news for you, chiquita. He’s hiding.
And then there’s this, about Mary’s in-laws up at the Great House:
“I can give you no account of them. I have not seen one of them to-day, except Mr. Musgrove, who just stopped and spoke through the window, but without getting off his horse; and though I told him how ill I was, not one of them have been near me. It did not happen to suit the Miss Musgroves, I suppose, and they never put themselves out of their way.”
“You will see them yet, perhaps, before the morning is gone. It is early.”
“I never want them, I assure you. They talk and laugh a great deal too much for me. Oh! Anne, I am so very unwell!”
Love that detail of Mary’s father-in-law only paying his respects through a window, and in saddle at that, so he can bolt the hell outta there the very nanosecond politeness allows.
But from Mary’s attitude towards her sisters-in-law (“They never come and see me”/“I never want to see them”) it’s pretty clear that she’s a woman who is flat-out incapable of being pleased. What she wants is attention and admiration, yet she behaves in a way that makes both impossible; but it’s just as well, because even if she were to get any, it would never be enough…she’d just keep wailing for more.
As witness now, when she berates Anne for not having come sooner. Anne explains that she couldn’t possibly have, she had too much to do at Kellynch. “Dear me!” Mary says, “what can you possibly have to do?” And when Anne—possibly sitting on her hands to keep from taking a swing at her sister—lists all the various duties and tasks she had to carry out before the Crofts arrived, Mary—who’s almost certainly only half-listened, and may even have dozed off for a second near the middle, responds, “Oh! well…But you have never asked me one word about our dinner at the Pooles yesterday.”
Yep, she’s that kinda gal. And worse. Because when Anne does ask how the dinner at the Pooles was, Mary’s reply: “Nothing remarkable.”
For most of us, such behavior would pretty much guarantee that this visit to Mary would be our first, last, and only, and possibly on our way out the door we’d shoot a flaming arrow into the house for good measure, and sow the fields around it with salt.
But Anne, whose superpowers are patience and “forced cheerfulness,” sticks it out, giving Mary exactly what she wants: a living human being who will sit quietly and hang on her every word. So within the space of twenty minutes the woman who was previously Oh! so very unwell! is amazingly up on her feet, peering out the windows, primping the flower arrangements, and for all we know dropping down for fifty push-ups and then lifting a writing-desk over her head.
Witnessing Mary’s restored energy, Anne suggests they take a walk up to the Great House. At first Mary isn’t keen; her in-laws should pay a call on Anne first, she insists. “They ought to feel what is due to you as my sister.” But Anne convinces her to ignore ceremony this once, and off they go.
Which is a wonderful victory for the novel, because it gets us out of Mary’s claustrophobic, strangulated little prison cell (I’m talking about her head, not her house) and into the big, rambunctious, overstuffed, underregulated life of the senior Musgroves and their daughters. It’s basically the Regency version of one of those madcap scenes you find in early comedy films, where the camera passes through a front door to find one kid playing a piano, another kid training the dog, pop rehearsing a speech, mom vacuuming, and little junior in a corner preparing to dynamite the roof off the whole lot of them. Austen, in an uncharacteristic flight of fancy, gives us a brief dose of disapproval from the unlikeliest source imaginable:
Oh! could the originals of the portraits against the wainscot, could the gentlemen in brown velvet and the ladies in blue satin have seen what was going on, have been conscious of such an overthrow of all order and neatness! The portraits themselves seemed to be staring in astonishment.
However, we’ve learned by now that Austen prefers merry chaos to barren order. And so we’re not surprised to find that Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove are jovial, friendly types—sweethearts, really; you want to sit in their laps and pinch their fat cheeks—and that the two daughters, Henrietta and Louisa (nineteen and twenty, respectively), while a tad wild, are “fashionable, happy, and merry.” They’re also a couple of lookers, and clearly adored by their parents…a pair of anti-Annes, in pretty much every respect. Despite which our gal can manage to view them with complete equanimity.
Anne always contemplated them as some of the happiest creatures of her acquaintance; but still, saved as we all are by some comfortable feeling of superiority from wishing for the possibility of exchange, she would not have given up her own more elegant and cultivated mind for all their enjoyments; and envied them nothing but that seemingly perfect good understanding and agreement together, that good-humored mutual affection, of which she had known so little with either of her sisters.
Okay…almost complete equanimity.
The house, for all its disorder and confusion, is a tonic to Anne, who can’t help “wishing that the other Elliots could have her advantage in seeing how unknown, or unconsidered there, were the affairs which at Kellynch-hall were treated as of such general publicity and pervading interest”. In fact, Anne is surprised—in a good way—at how blithe the Musgroves are about the matters that have been twisting her into knots for the past several weeks. They’ll infrequently direct a question at her about Sir Walter and Elizabeth’s plans for Bath, but without waiting for an answer they’ll plunge right on to the next item of interest, be it Oh look at what the dog is doing now, or Where is my thread-winder, it was right here a minute ago, I can’t keep anything nice in this house.
In fact, Anne recognizes that it’s only right that each family has its own concerns to occupy its collective mind, and she determines that as long as she’s going to be here for two weeks, “it was highly incumbent on her to clothe her imagination, her memory, and all her ideas in as much of Uppercross as possible.” This sets her immediately apart from Mary, who’s still, after years of marriage, waiting sulkily for Uppercross to conform to her.
Anne’s so skilled at ingratiating herself with everyone in the family that she even gets along with Mary’s husband—who, you’ll remember, proposed to Anne before he popped the question to Mary. You’d think there might be some awkwardness between Charles Musgrove and the woman who turned him down, but no. It certainly helps that Anne’s greater exposure to Charles does absolutely nada to persuade her he might’ve improved as her husband. He “did nothing with much zeal, but sport; and his time was otherwise trifled away, without benefit from books, or any thing else.” In fact, he seems a much better spouse for Mary, because his general good spirits “never seemed much affected by his wife’s occasional lowness”.
We might wish for Charles to be a more sharply drawn comic character, but there are other compensations to be had at Uppercross, such as Anne serving as a sounding board for everyone’s separate complaints, which are hilariously contradictory. For instance:
Mary’s declaration was, “I hate sending the children to the Great House, though their grandmamma is always wanting to see them, for she humours and indulges them to such a degree, and gives them so much trash and sweet things, that they are sure to come back sick and cross for the rest of the day.”—And Mrs. Musgrove took the first opportunity of being alone with Anne to say, “Oh! Miss Anne, I cannot help wishing Mrs. Charles had a little of your method with the children…Bless me, how troublesome they are sometimes!—I assure you, Miss Anne, it prevents me wishing to see them at our house so often as I otherwise should.”
But there’s a down side to Anne being such a peach to everyone, and making herself the best pal and confidante of every member in the household, and that is, Mary suffers by comparison. For instance, Mary’s nose is still out of joint over the fact that when she and Charles dine at the Great House, she isn’t given the precedence that is due her, as a baronet’s daughter, in walking in to dinner. Whereas Anne, also a baronet’s daughter, doesn’t care who walks in before her, and would probably go in last if anyone asked her. (Hell, she’d eat up in the attic off a tin tray, if anyone asked her.) This is noticed, and quietly remarked upon, and very much not in any way that’s to Mary’s advantage.
Which isn’t to say that everyone is suddenly Team Anne. As is pretty much always the case with our excessively humble homegirl, her presence at Uppercross is all about utility. She’s there for everyone to vent their frustrations to, without them returning the favor by hearing hers; her mere presence improves Mary’s spirits, but Mary’s presence is a constant drain on her own; and her role overall, as she sees it, is to facilitate everyone else’s happiness while ignoring her own. It’s easy for her to disappear in such a large family, and to be overlooked in the constant socializing with the surrounding neighbors. When they gather together for a dance, Anne prefers “the office of musician to a more active post”; she deliberately sidelines herself. This isn’t self-abasement, so much; it’s just a grown woman making what she sees as the only place available for her in the lives of her friends and family. And yeah, it’s pretty sad.
Soon the Crofts move into Kellynch, and the awkward necessity of paying a call on them arises. Of course the sister who hasn’t lived there in years bemoans it most loudly. “Mary deployed the necessity for herself. ‘Nobody knew how much she should suffer. She should put it off as long as she could.’” But it’s all show; in fact she nags her husband into driving her over “on an early day; and was in a very animated, comfortable state of imaginary agitation when she came back.”
Anne herself finally gets a look at Mrs. Croft—her might-have-been sister-in-law—when she and the Admiral return the call by popping in at Uppercross. Anne’s on full alert “to watch for a likeness, and if it failed her in the features, to catch it in the voice, or the turn of sentiment and expression.”
Mrs. Croft, though neither tall nor fat, had a squareness, uprightness, and vigour of form, which gave importance to her person. She had bright dark eyes, good teeth, and altogether an agreeable face; though her reddened and weather-beaten complexion, the consequence of having been almost as much at sea as her husband, made her seem to have lived some years longer in the world than her real eight and thirty. Her manners were open, easy, and decided, like one who had no distrust of herself, and no doubts of what to do; without any approach to coarseness, however, or any want of good humour.
Austen has rarely, if ever, heaped this much adulation on any of her female characters. Even Lizzie Bennet had that prejudice thing to keep her from scoring a perfect 10 on the Just-Gotta-Love-Her scale. But Austen isn’t just gifting us with a graceful, capable, confident earth mother for the sake of mere iconography. What she’s really doing—very slyly—is giving us (and Anne, whether she knows it or not) a look at what Anne herself might be in a parallel universe, one in which she actually married Captain Wentworth. When Anne looks at Mrs. Croft, she’s seeing the Road Not Taken.
She doesn’t really have time to dwell on it, however, as Mrs. Croft snaps her to attention by casually bringing up the one subject Anne would rather fling herself out the nearest window than have to embark upon.
“It was you, and not your sister, I find, that my brother had the pleasure of being acquainted with, when he was in this country.”
Anne hoped she had outlived the age of blushing; but the age of emotion she certainly had not.
“Perhaps you may not have heard that he is married,” added Mrs. Croft.
This not being Italian opera, Anne does not grab the poker from the fireplace and impale herself upon it, though I’m pretty sure the thought does cross her mind. But in that moment of reflection, Mrs. Croft makes it clear she’s talking about her curate brother and not her captain brother. Whew! So apparently the Crofts really don’t have a clue about the whole engagement imbroglio.
Anne’s just congratulating herself on a narrow escape, when the Admiral, rising to depart, drop-kicks her back into a tizzy by announcing, “We are expecting a brother of Mrs. Croft’s here soon; I dare say you know him by name.” But this time we don’t get to find out immediately which brother is meant, because the Admiral is “cut short by the eager attacks of the little boys, clinging to him like an old friend; and being too much engrossed by proposals of carrying them away in his coat pocket, &c., to have another moment for finishing or recollecting what he had begun”. Which gets my vote as she most adorable freaking scene in the whole of Austen.
With the Admiral gone, Anne can’t know whether her jilted fiancé is the brother soon to descend on them; but at least she can take solace in no longer having to hear his name crop up when she least expects it. After all, no one in Uppercross knows Captain Frederick Wentworth from a hole in the wall. Right?...I mean, right?
Wrong. Turns out there was a fourth Musgrove siblin, after Charles and the two girls: a boy named Richard, who was pretty much the black sheep of the family—“a very troublesome, hopeless son”—and the only thing they could do with him was ship him off to sea while he was still in his teens, “because he was stupid and unmanageable on shore”. And at sea he stayed, “seldom heard of, and scarcely at all regretted, when the intelligence of his death abroad had worked its way to Uppercross, two years before.”
As often happens, death wipes Richard’s slate clean of all his defects. From the moment they heard he was no more, the Musgroves—especially Mom and Pop—grieved and languished and pined for their lovely young Adonis, taken from them too soon and yadda yadda. (Here’s Austen the piercing social satirist benefitting from the insights of Austen the master of human psychology.)
Now, in the wake of Admiral Croft’s visit, and the mention of a Captain Wentworth as a member of the Admiral’s family, a little light bulb goes off in Mama Musgrove’s head. She recalls the two letters she received from Richard during his seafaring years; only two, and in each one he admits that he is being forced to write by his captain, who otherwise is right jolly old salt cod, or whatever terms of praise an English sailor might use in a letter to his parents. Helluva guy, is what it amounts to. Dick Musgrove might be a worthless S.O.B., but he doesn’t half look up to his good ole cap’n.
Mrs. Musgrove, acting on a hunch, ferrets out the letters, and there it is, just as she thought: Richard’s captain’s name was Wentworth. You don’t suppose…?
To hear them talking so much of Captain Wentworth, repeating his name so often, puzzling over past years, and at last ascertaining that it might, that it probably would, turn out to be the very same Captain Wentworth whom they recollected meeting, once or twice, after their coming back from Clifton;—a very fine young man; but they could not say whether it was seven or eight years ago,—was a new sort of trial to Anne’s nerves. She found, however, that it was one to which she must enure herself. Since he actually was expected in the country, she must teach herself to be insensible on such points.
Yeah, good luck with that one, sweetheart.
This is really funny stuff. Anne, who drifted for years in a kind of arid vacuum, suddenly finds her One Bad Decision coming back fast to snap at her booty. From the moment her father decides to rent out Kellynch, she can’t escape the invocation of Captain Wentworth. She hot-foots it all the way to goddamn Uppercross to get some relief, and where does she find herself?—seated in a room filled with weeping people, clutching old letters from their dead son and wailing their admiration of Captain Wentworth, Captain Wentworth, Captain Wentworth. Really, it could be a vaudeville sketch.
And next time, it won’t just be the Captain’s name intruding on Anne’s peace of mind. It’ll be the right jolly old salt cod himself.

View more on Robert Rodi's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on March 08, 2014 14:10

March 1, 2014

Persuasion, chapters 1-3

Persuasion is the last novel Jane Austen prepared for publication before she died, and it was released posthumously. For that reason, many people have come to regard it as valedictory; and this illusion is aided by its heroine, Anne Elliot, who, as a lifelong spinster disdained by her family, appears on the surface to be a stand-in for Austen herself. In granting Anne Elliot a second chance at love, and with the man she’d foolishly rejected in her youth, some readers—stupid readers, I think; sentimental and sloppy ones—view Persuasion as Austen’s attempt to live vicariously through a fictionalized version of herself; to bring her own story to a happy resolution before death claimed her. Like Prospero in The Tempest, Anne Elliot becomes the author taking her leave of her readers, by way of a dramatic stand-in.
You only have to take a look at the novel Austen was working on when she died to realize that Persuasion is no such thing. Sanditon clearly shows Austen back in biting social-satire mode, and even extending her palette to include sharp satiric jabs at commerce and industry. At the end of her life she was expanding her focus, not narrowing it.
Likewise Anne Elliot is, on closer examination, nothing like Jane Austen. Anne is humble, dignified, respectable, always correct; whereas Austen was ambitious, proud, irreverent, and rebellious. Certainly Anne, like her creator, is a spinster who refused an offer of marriage in her youth; but she has grown to regret deeply that decision. We can’t know to what extent, if any, Austen ever regretted declining Harris Bigg-Wither’s proposal (one day after she’d accepted it), but we can be reasonably certain that any regret would have been tempered by relief, and by a fierce independence of spirit.
Austen created Anne Elliot for the same reason she created all of her heroines: because she was a new kind of character, who presented new tests for her powers. Likewise, Anne Elliot’s family is vastly more exalted than any other Austen ever invented. Unlike the Darcys and the DeBourghs and the Woodhouses, the Elliots are titled. They aren’t mere gentry, or even aristocracy; they’re nobility.
Something new. Something to challenge her.
Persuasion does not, it’s true, employ the same broad comic strokes we find in her previous novels; but it’s scarcely the elegiac lament some people make it out to be. It is absolutely and unequivocally a comic novel, and a very, very funny one. And it leaves the victims of its satiric gaze every bit as pulverized. It’s pretty much irresistible; and Anne Elliot—far from being a doppelganger of the author—is as close to an everywoman as Austen ever created. Everyman, too. Lizzy Bennet and Emma Woodhouse remain spectacularly popular because they’re idealized figures of identification; they’re us, the way we’d be if we were perfect (or at least if our faults were adorable). Anne Elliot is us as we are—at our everyday best; she is the decent and deserving side of ourselves, and in her striving for a moral and ethical equilibrium, we recognize our own struggles.
But before we’re introduced to Anne we meet her father, Sir Walter Elliot of Kellynch-hall in Somerset, “a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage,” and chiefly the page on which his own honors and ancestry are detailed; which pursuit provides him “occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one”. He is, then, not merely a snob, but an anxious snob; he requires constant reminding that he’s cream-of-the-crop, top-of-the-heap.
But his title isn’t his only means of validation; he’s got another one he likes almost as well.
Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot’s character: vanity of person and of situation. He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man. Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did; nor could the valet of any new lord be more delighted with the place he held in society. He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Walter Elliot, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion.
It’s only the second bloody page of the novel, and we’ve already got a world-class comic monster on our hands. We can’t wait to see much, much more of him; and—spoilers—he will not disappoint.
Sir Walter is a widower with three daughters, “an awful legacy for a mother to bequeath; an awful charge rather, to confide to the authority and guidance of a conceited, silly father.” Fortunately, Lady Elliot is survived by a good friend, Lady Russell, “of steady age and character,” who has stepped in and acted as surrogate mother to the extent propriety allows. There was, in fact, an expectation that she and Sir Walter would marry, but thirteen years later they both remain single. Probably because the real love of Sir Walter’s life already resides with him at Kellynch Hall—or more specifically, in the smooth surface of every Kellynch Hall mirror.
Lady Elliot’s place in the actual household has been taken by her eldest daughter, Elizabeth; “and being very handsome, and very like [Sir Walter] himself, her influence had always been great, and they had gone on together most happily.” The two remaining daughters, however, are in Sir Walter’s shrewish eyes “of very inferior value.”
Mary had acquired a little artificial importance, by becoming Mrs. Charles Musgrove; but Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister: her word had no weight; her convenience was always to give way;—she was only Anne.
Lady Russell, however, likes Anne best; “it was only in Anne that she could fancy the mother to revive again.” But Lady Russell’s special favor is, as we’ll see, not the super-specialist thing that could have happened to Anne. As for her father—who appears to judge her principally by her looks—in his view she might as well tumble down a well and save him the trouble of clothing and feeding her. Because with her youthful bloom faded (and never having been all that hot even at its height), she’s not likely to be taken off his hands by anything resembling a husband, much less a titled one.
He had never indulged much hope, he had now none, of ever reading her name in any other page of his favourite work. All equality of alliance must rest with Elizabeth; for Mary had merely connected herself with an old country family of respectability and large fortune, and had therefore given all the honor, and received none: Elizabeth would, one day or other, marry suitably.
Elizabeth, in her father’s eyes, is “still the same handsome Miss Elliot that she had begun to be thirteen years ago;” and Sir Walter is proud—if possibly a little delusional—that he and his eldest daughter alone are holding onto Total Babe status while everyone else around them shrivels like prunes. “Anne haggard, Mary coarse, every face in the neighbourhood worsting; and the rapid increase of the crow’s foot about Lady Russell’s temples had long been a distress to him.” Sir Walter Elliot is clearly not only as vain as any drag queen; he’s as unrepentantly bitchy as well.
Elizabeth, however, isn’t quite so happy with her seemingly endless run as homecoming queen of Kellynch Hall. “Thirteen winters’ revolving frosts had seen her opening every ball of credit which a scanty neighbourhood afforded; and thirteen springs shewn their blossoms, as she travelled up to London with her father, for a few weeks annual enjoyment of the great world.” She’s ready for a promotion, is the thing. She’s tired of being lady of the house in the lower-case-L sense only. Her father may be Sir Walter; but she’s just plain old Miss Elliot. And if she’s going to bag a bag a baronet herself, and become Lady Somebody, it had better be soon, because she’s on the down-slope to thirty, and the toboggan’s picking up speed.
She was fully satisfied of being still quite as handsome as ever; but she felt her approach to the years of danger, and would have rejoiced to be certain of being properly solicited by baronet-blood within the next twelvemonth or two. Then might she again take up the book of books with as much enjoyment as in her early youth; but now she liked it not. Always to be presented with the date of her own birth, and see no marriage follow but that a youngest sister, made the book an evil; and more than once, when her father had left it open on the table near her, had she closed it, with averted eyes, and pushed it away.
She’s already missed her best, most desirable chance at realizing this ambition. In default of a son, Sir Walter’s heir is his nephew, William Walter Elliot, Esq., and as soon as she realized her cousin would be the next baronet, Elizabeth decided he was the hubby for her. Unfortunately he had other ideas, and kept both father and daughter at arm’s length for years, during which time their overtures grew increasingly frequent and even a tad desperate. Eventually William married someone else—purchasing independence by “uniting himself to a rich woman of inferior birth”—and though that lady has since died, Elizabeth hasn’t renewed her campaign to nab him, because news has filtered back that he’s trash-talked his titled relations to anyone who’s cared to listen. (And this being London society, everyone has cared to listen.) Snubbing, jilting, and disrespecting are enough to dampen even Elizabeth’s Hillary Clinton-esque ambition; too bad, because there still isn’t “a baronet from A to Z, whom her feelings could have so willingly acknowledged as an equal.”
Such were Elizabeth Elliot’s sentiments and sensations; such the cares to alloy, the agitations to vary, the sameness and the elegance, the prosperity and the nothingness, of her scene of life—such the feelings to give interest to a long, uneventful residence in one country circle, to fill the vacancies where there were no habits of utility abroad, no talents or accomplishments for home, to occupy.
That paragraph right there—hey, I’m talkin’ to you, Austen “sequel” writers—that right there is why, no matter how hard you try, you. can’t. touch. her.
Worsening the Scandinavian bleakness of Elizabeth’s little privileged treadmill is the fact that she’s in danger of being thrown off it. Her old man’s been gushing money like a geyser, and his extravagance is beginning to catch up with him. “While Lady Elliot lived, there had been method, moderation, and economy, which had just kept him within his income; but with her had died all such right-mindedness”. So that eventually he has to come clean and admit to his daughter that he’s in a spot of trouble—which he does by asking her, charmingly, “Can we retrench? does it occur to you that there is any one article in which we can retrench?” Elizabeth, eager for any new occupation, is on it like flapjacks on a griddle.
…[Elizabeth] had finally proposed these two branches of economy: to cut off some unnecessary charities, and to retrain from new-furnishing the drawing-room; to which expedients she afterwards added the happy thought of their taking no present down [from London] to Anne, as had been the usual custom.
Just in case you were feeling sorry for Elizabeth, that oughtta fix it, right there. So much so that we’re kind of glad to hear that the great sacrifices she’s proposing don’t make a goddamn dent in Sir Walter’s hemorrhaging expenses, and she’s left feeling “ill-used and unfortunate,” as she learns of the true extent of their troubles.
In desperation they turn to Sir Walter’s accountant, Mr. Shepherd, for advice, and to Lady Russell as well; “and both father and daughter seemed to expect that something should be struck out by one or the other to remove their embarrassments and reduce their expenditure, without involving the loss of any indulgence of taste or pride.” Lower people are so good at that kind of thing, don’t’cha know; so clever. They just move a decimal point or something, and then everything’s rosy again.
Unfortunately, Mr. Shepherd, “a civil, cautious lawyer…would rather have the disagreeable prompted by any body else,” and so excuses himself from offering any advice at all, possibly also crouching behind a Chinese screen until all of this blows over. Which leaves the whole matter in Lady Russell’s capable lap, and she, unlike Mr. Shepherd, is “most anxiously zealous on the subject;” you almost get the feeling she’s been watching Sir Walter for years, biting her lip and just waiting for the day when she’d be able to sit him down and tell him everything he’s been doing wrong.
She drew up plans of economy, she made exact calculations, and she did, what nobody else though of doing, she consulted Anne, who never seemed considered by the others as having any interest in the question…Every emendation of Anne’s had been on the side of honesty against importance. She wanted more vigorous measures, a more complete reformation, a quicker release from debt, a much higher tone of indifference for every thing but justice and equity.
You can imagine how well this goes over. On being presented with this radical new proposal, Sir Walter lets out an affronted shriek that sets birds into frightened flight as far north as Sheffield, if not the Orkneys. For a man who considers himself already on a subsistence budget because he’s cut his monthly order of hair pomade in half, the slash-and-hack plan submitted by Lady Russell is “not to be borne.”
“What! Every comfort of life knocked off! Journeys, London, servants, horses, table,—contractions and restrictions every where. To live no longer with the decencies even of a private gentleman! No, he would sooner quit Kellynch-hall at once, than remain in it on such disgraced terms.”
And possibly after this outburst he throws himself onto a couch, sobs into its pillows, and has a good, long, kicking-the-air tantrum.
But it’s too late; he’s opened the Pandora’s box by speaking the words “quit Kellynch-hall.” Mr. Shepherd clamps onto that phrase like a barnacle, and, since it was in fact Sir Walter who originally introduced the idea, he has no problem now in pressing for it.
There’s a lot of argument and ego-petting before the beleaguered nobleman is made to see that by moving to a smaller house his expenses will be accordingly reduced. Eventually a place in Bath is settled on, because it would be embarrassing to downsize in the country (everyone would know why), and Sir Walter can’t be trusted in London; and also, Lady Russell likes Bath. (We’re coming to realize that Lady Russell usually gets her way. Possibly in a “just do as she says and she’ll shut the hell up already” type of scenario).
Anne doesn’t like Bath, but of course that makes about as much difference as whether or not Anne continues breathing, which is to say, none at all. Even Lady Russell, who’s ostensibly fond of the kid, does some pretty fancy rationalizing to make it okay to flout her desires. “Anne had been too little from home, too little seen. Her spirits were not high. A larger society would improve them. She wanted her to be more known.” Also, the sea air will add color to her cheeks and the waters two inches to her height. Plus, lending-libraries!
Living in a smaller house with a reduced staff, however, is only half the plan. The other half is to rent out Kellynch, so that there’s money coming in as well as going out. “This, however, was a profound secret; not to be breathed beyond their own circle.” Mr. Shepherd “had once mentioned the word, ‘advertise;’—but never dared approach it again”—ha! How much you want to bet his client’s reaction involved singed eyebrows? No, Sir Walter, being Sir Walter, prefers to just sit around and wait for some “unexceptionable applicant” to come forth and propose himself, presumably having discovered the house is for rent by a combination of Tarot cards and a keen sense of smell.
This is all rollicking good stuff. Many comedies since have gotten terrific juice from the set-up of snooty, despicable aristocrats being knocked down a peg or seventeen, and certainly we all enjoy a heaping helping of Schadenfreude as much as Austen herself probably did. But this being a novel, with two hundred-plus pages left to run, we’ve got to have a few other complications sewn into the weave, and Austen introduces one now.
It seems that Mr. Shepherd has a widowed daughter, Mrs. Clay, who’s returned home to live with Pop and, in the manner of literary widows everywhere, is basically out for whatever she can get. She’s “a clever young woman, who understood the art of pleasing; the art of pleasing, at least, at Kellynch-hall,” which basically means she tells Elizabeth everything Elizabeth wants to hear, which is chiefly how magnificent a thing it is to be Elizabeth. Flattery, in Mrs. Clay’s case, gets her everywhere.
From situation, Mrs. Clay was, in Lady Russell’s estimate, a very unequal, and in her character she believed a very dangerous companion—and a removal that would leave Mrs. Clay behind, and bring a choice of more suitable intimates within Miss Elliot’s reach, was therefore an object of first-rate importance.
Poor, naïve Lady Russell. We know, as she apparently does not, that when a grifter of Mrs. Clay’s ambition finally gets a fish on the hook, it’s going to take more than moving that fish fifty miles away to break the hold. You’d have to relocate it to the Indian subcontinent, or possibly New Zealand. Or, to be really safe, the planet Neptune.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Clay’s father, perhaps unaware of these undercurrents, is doing his best to find a tenant for Kellynch. He observes that the recent defeat of Napoleon “will be turning all our rich Navy Officers ashore”, and when Sir Walter predictably scoffs at the idea of some salty dog swanning about the Arcadian splendors of his ancestral seat, Mr. Shepherd reassures him that it’s really the totally ideal solution.
And he does so in such a spectacularly long-winded manner, that he instantly vaults to the upper echelons of Austen’s comic creations. You’re all familiar with that delightful English habit of not using two words where two hundred will do, right? Well, here’s Mr. Shepherd telling Sir Walter, in essence, that Navy men are cool, and he’ll do all the hard work.
“I presume to observe, Sir Walter, that, in the way of business, gentlemen of the navy are well to deal with. I have had a little knowledge of their methods of doing business, and I am free to confess that they have very liberal notions, and are as likely to make desirable tenants as any set of people one should meet with. Therefore, Sir Walter, what I would take leave to suggest is, that if in consequence of any rumours getting abroad of your intention—which must be contemplated as a possible thing, because we know how difficult it is to keep the actions and designs of one part of the world from the notice and curiosity of the other,—consequence has its tax—I, John Shepherd, might conceal any family-matters that I chose, for nobody would think it worth their while to observe me, but Sir Walter Elliot has eyes upon him which it may be very difficult to elude—and therefore, thus much I venture upon, that it will not greatly surprise me if, with all our caution, some rumour of the truth should get abroad—in the supposition of which, as I was going to observe, since applications will unquestionably follow, I should think any from our wealthy naval commanders particularly worth attending to—and beg leave to add, that two hours will bring me over at any time, to save the trouble of replying.”
I was basically destroyed by the end of this. I’d love to have heard Mr. Shepherd’s proposal of marriage to his wife. Possibly she conceived, carried to term, and weaned the child off her breast by the time he got to the main point.
Anyway, there’s a general pile-on as everyone flatters Sir Walter with how lucky some old seaman is going to be, getting this fabulous pile of bricks, and continually reassuring him that he needn’t worry about such a tenant abusing the place or anything. Mrs. Clay says, “I quite agree with my father in thinking a sailor might be a very desirable tenant. I have known a good deal of the profession”, provoking a laugh in us modern-types that I’m not a hundred percent sure Austen intended. (Though I wouldn’t put it past her. She’s quite a scamp.)
Despite this, Sir Walter isn’t at all sanguine about the idea of the idea of some Regency Popeye and Bluto types knocking about his hallowed halls, or his grounds either. “I am not fond of the idea of my shrubberies being always approachable; and I should recommend Miss Elliot to be on her guard with respect to her flower-garden.” So that ultimately, Anne has to speak up:
“The navy, I think, who have done so much for us, have at least an equal claim with any other set of men, for all the comforts and all the privileges which any home can give. Sailors work hard enough for their comforts, we must all allow.”
We expect this of Anne, because she’s been introduced as the only right-thinking (actually, as the only not-functionally-insane) member of the whole clan. But we’ll soon discover she has a more personal reason for her interest in the welfare of naval types; and we also get a clue, right about now, of how deep the opposition to that interest is, when Sir Walter snarks, “The profession has its utility, but I should be sorry to see any friend of mine belonging to it.”
“…I have two strong grounds of objection to it. First, as being the means of bringing persons of obscure birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honours which their fathers and grandfathers never dreamed of; and secondly, as it cuts up a man’s youth and vigour most horribly; a sailor grows old sooner than any other man; I have observed it all my life.”
He then recalls seeing a man in society—“his face the colour of mahogany, rough and rugged to the last degree, all lines and wrinkles, nine grey hairs of a side, and nothing but a dab of powder on top”—and being told that this is Admiral Baldwin; and when asked to guess his age, he settles on “Sixty…or perhaps sixty-two” only to be told that the admiral is in fact only forty.
So there you go. Navy = Bad. Sir Walter Elliot and his anecdotal evidence has settled it. And he also has a solution to the problem he now broadly hints at: “It is a pity they are not knocked on the head at once, before they reach Admiral Baldwin’s age.”
Sir Walter is just a comedy machine in these chapters. He repeatedly mows us down on page after goddamn page.
Mrs. Clay, seeing an opening to further ingratiate herself, launches into a tiresome monologue about how all the professions destroy looks and vitality (“The laywer plods, quite care-worn; the physician is up at all hours”) and concludes, in a style that could earn her a gold medal in ass-kissing, that it’s only people who have no profession, “who can live in a regular way, in the country, choosing their own hours, following their own pursuits, and living on their own property, without the torment of trying for more; it is only their lot, I say, to hold the blessings of health and a good appearance to the utmost.” She might as well go for broke and add, “And only those whose initials are W.E.”
So Sir Walter is reluctantly persuaded, and a good thing too, because in no time at all Mr. Shepherd is able to report that one Admiral Croft has expressed “as strong an inclination for [Kellynch] as a man who knew it only by description, could feel” and so there you go: tenant.
But not so fast: “And who is Admiral Croft?” Sir Walter demands to know, possibly screwing up his mouth as he speaks the name, like just forming the syllables produces a salt taste on the tongue. And Mr. Shepherd can’t furnish an answer beyond a few mere demographic commonplaces…but guess who can? Our gal pal Anne:
“He is a rear admiral of the white. He was in the Trafalgar action, and has been in the East Indies since; he has been stationed there, I believe, several years.”
“Then I take it for granted,” observed Sir Walter, “that his face is about as orange as the cuffs and capes of my livery.”
This is apparently a deal-breaker for Sir Walter (why, I couldn’t say; you’d think his aesthetic sense would be pleased by his tenant’s face being color-coordinated to his livery), which sends Mr. Shepherd into several pages of desperate dithering about what a really, no kidding, totally super fantastic renter Admiral Croft would be, seriously, I mean it. This scattershot of testimonials includes such sterling character traits as “he sometimes took out a gun, but never killed” and that he’s a married man without children, which is cool because “A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.”
Then Mr. Shepherd reaches too far, and boasts that the Admiral’s wife isn’t just a lowly stranger to the ‘hood, but is “sister to a gentleman who did live amongst us once;” which gets him into trouble because he can’t remember which gentleman, and spends a page frantically trying to remember, even asking his daughter what the man’s name was, except she can’t help because she’s too busy frolicking around Elizabeth’s chair and strewing her with rose petals.
Eventually, by the few clues Mr. Shepherd is able to provide, Anne—again—comes riding in to the rescue, by saying, “You mean Mr. Wentworth, I suppose.” It’s always Anne who keeps things rolling. She’s like a Greek chorus the dramatis personae can actually sometimes hear.
But alas this magical name does nothing to impress Sir Walter. You might as well tell him Admiral Croft’s wife is the sister of the salt cod he had for dinner last Thursday.
“Wentworth? Oh! ay,—Mr. Wentworth, the curate of Monkford. You misled me by the term gentleman. I thought you were speaking of some man of property; Mr. Wentworth was nobody, I remember; quite unconnected; nothing to do with the Strafford family. One wonders how the names of man of our nobility become so common.”
Still, it’s not like Sir Walter has a lot of choice in the matter. He’s got to resign himself to accepting the admiral’s tenancy, or risk his finances totally bottoming out. And his vanity—which, remember, is basically his superpower—manages to come up with a little silver lining to the whole transaction.
“I have let my house to Admiral Croft,” would sound extremely well; very much better than to any mere Mr. ——; a Mr. (save, perhaps, some half dozen in the nation,) always needs a note of explanation. An admiral speaks his own consequence, and, at the same time, can never make a baronet look small. In all their dealings and intercourse, Sir Walter Elliot must ever have the precedence.
Reading this, we wonder whether the “half dozen in the nation” who might be “Mr.” with impunity, would include Fitzwilliam Darcy; and the fact that we do have to wonder shows us really how far up the socioeconomic ladder Austen has projected her imagination this time. In Persuasion, she’s dealing with a stratum of society that might turn Lady Catherine de Bourgh into a fawner. The fact that this Olympus, from what we’ve seen of it so far, is peopled by characters every bit as ghastly and objectionable as any Austen has ever shown us, is wonderfully comforting; in fact, in our grubby little democratic hearts, we want them to be even worse.
The exception being Anne, who, as our heroine, is sort of contractually obligated to be a pussycat…and who’s turning out to be a champion charmer, despite very little push from her creator. (Austen obviously learned her lesson about trying too hard, by the visceral way we reacted to her flogging us with Fanny Price’s virtues.) We leave this chapter, in fact, on Anne escaping the room to “seek the comfort of cool air for her flushed cheeks”, without an accompanying explanation of why they should be flushed after something as relatively dry as a conference on the letting of the family estate to a naval officer. But we do get a pretty big freakin’ clue, as she “walked along a favourite grove, [and] said, with a gentle sigh, ‘a few months more, and he, perhaps, may be walking here.’ ”
Fortunately, for us, it’ll be quite a bit sooner than a few months. And he will turn out to be worth the wait, even if it were.

View more on Robert Rodi's website »

Like • 0 comments • flag

Published on March 01, 2014 11:44

← Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next →

Robert Rodi's Blog

Robert Rodi's profile
123 followers