Emma, chapters 34-36

We come now to a peculiar run of chapters, in which Austen turns her attention from her principals and gives the stage to the secondary and even tertiary characters. Emma is a very long novel, and those of you who think it’s just the most super-perfect Austen novel ever will probably now troll me something fierce for suggesting that it is, perhaps, somewhat longer than it needs to be. The laser-like focus of Pride and Prejudice is lacking here; not a line—not a syllable—was superfluous in that lean, mean earlier masterpiece. Whereas in Emma the many conversations between the B-Team characters strike me as Austen indulging herself; she was clearly, at this point in her career, feeling her powers, and enjoying them a tad too much. “Look at all these characters I can bring to life with just a few lines of dialogue!” Granted, the chapters in question introduce ideas and themes that will pay dividends later; but she could’ve found a cleaner means of conveying the same information. ‘S’all I’m sayin’.
And Austen apparently agrees with me; because after the rambling chattiness of these sections of Emma, she’ll snap back into military precision mode. Both Northanger Abbey and Persuasion will be shorter, tighter, and more exquisitely controlled.
Still, this is more in the nature of an observation than a complaint; because while Emma might meander a bit, here at the end of its second volume, it’s never dull; and while we’d rather spend a succession of pages eavesdropping on Emma and Knightley than on their not so brilliantly attractive supporting cast, there are some wonderfully funny set pieces as compensation, one in particular ranking among Austen’s best thigh-slappers. And it’s still, of course, even at this late date, wildly interesting to watch Austen grow as a writer—brusquely elbowing her way into new narrative byways, and sometimes retreating, but not without having a good tramp around first.
So. Down to it. But before Austen can turn the book over to the second-tier characters, she first has to gather them all in one place. This is easily done; for it’s Emma’s turn to follow all the rest of Highbury in throwing a dinner for the newlywed Eltons. She’d rather have root canal, to be sure; all the same she “must not do less than others, or she should be exposed to odious suspicions, and imagined capable of pitiful resentment.”
Mrs. Elton, as can be expected, pretty much glories in all this attention. She’s like a queen who’s finally been given a throne and a scepter and means to seriously make up for lost time.
No invitation came amiss to her. Her Bath habits made evening parties perfectly natural to her, and Maple Grove had given her a taste for dinners. She was a little shocked at the want of two drawing-rooms, at the poor attempt at rout-cakes, and there being no ice in the Highbury card parties. Mrs. Bates, Mrs. Perry, Mrs. Goddard, and others, were a good deal behind hand in knowledge of the world, but she would soon show them how every thing ought to be arranged.
As for Emma’s party, the guest list virtually writes itself: her father, the Eltons, the Westons, Mr. Knightley, and “poor little Harriet must be asked to make the eighth”—an honor which, fortunately, the girl declines, it not being her idea of a rollicking good time to spend a whole evening watching the man who spurned her make kissy-faces across the room at his swanky new wife. Emma’s relieved by Harriet’s refusal, and “delighted in the fortitude of her little friend” (for some reason we’re suddenly playing up Harriet’s littleness, to the point where you imagine a servant putting a high-chair back into storage now that he knows she’s not coming). As a bonus, Emma is now free to “invite the very person whom she really wanted to make the eighth, Jane Fairfax.” It seems Mr. Knightley’s crack about Mrs. Elton offering Jane attentions “which nobody else paid her” has lodged itself in Emma’s craw, and she’s suffering from a severe case of retroactive guilt. “Of the same age, and always knowing her, I ought to have been more friend. She will never like me now. I have neglected her too long. But I will show her greater attention than I have done.”
So the party is set…but then there’s the sudden addition of Mr. John Knightley, who’s bringing his two eldest children to stay at Hartfield, and will by chance arrive on the very day of the dinner party. Mr. Woodhouse has one of his trademark slow-motion fits of apoplexy, because he considers “eight persons at dinner as the utmost that his nerves could bear—and here would be a ninth”…and it’s only with difficulty that Emma convinces him that John Knightley is so taciturn and reserved that even seated at the table he might as well not be there at all. Throw a spoon in his direction, and it might just pass right through him.
But then Mr. Weston is forced to withdraw from the dinner due to business, so we’re back down to eight anyway. (See what I mean about meandering? We’re spending pages where paragraphs would do.)
The night of the party arrives. And here’s where Emma and Knightley fade into the wallpaper, and for once we get an Austen party scene delivered almost entirely through the agency of the also-rans. First up is John Knightley and Jane Fairfax, who spend a really mind-bogglingly long time talking about the former having encountered the latter walking in the rain earlier that morning, on an errand to the post office. The risks of walking in the rain versus the joy of connecting with the outside world through the post, are discussed at length, and charmingly; but not with tremendous verve.
At least not until Austen’s favorite buttinskies get hold of the subject. First up: Mr. Woodhouse, for whom walking to the post office in the rain is basically the equivalent of prancing across Niagara Falls on a tightrope.
“I am very sorry to hear, Miss Fairfax, of your being out this morning in the rain. Young ladies should take care of themselves. Young ladies are delicate plants. They should take care of their health and their complexion. My dear, did you change your stockings?”
Then Mrs. Elton twigs to what’s under discussion, and grandstands superbly. “My dear Jane, what is this I hear?—Going to the post-office in the rain!...It is a sign I was not there to take care of you.” When Jane insists that she’s feeling perfectly fine, and for Christ’s sake would everyone just chill already, Mrs. Elton remains un-quailed.
“Oh! do not tell me. You really are a very sad girl, and do not know how to take care of yourself. To the post-office indeed! Mrs. Weston, did you ever hear the like? You and I must positively exert our authority.”
I love that Mrs. Elton is always lassoing people into backing up her “authority”. And it’s always the people who least want to have anything to do with her, though Mrs. Weston is too polite not to make at least a show of complying. But Mrs. Elton really doesn’t need any backup; she’s a one-woman SWAT team and now descends on Jane Fairfax with a voice full of artillery fire.
“I shall speak to Mr. E. The man who fetches our letters every morning (one of our men, I forget his name) shall enquire for yours too and bring them to you. That will obviate all difficulties you know; and from us I really think, my dear Jane, you can have no scruple to accept such an accommodation.”
Dear Jane, quite the contrary, has a whole boatload of scruple to accept the accommodation, and says so. But it’s like arguing with a barking dog. Mrs. Elton just keeps repeating that the thing is done, henceforth so shall it be, I have decreed, kneel before your sovereign. Despite which Jane keeps declining the offer, politely but firmly (and we like her for it; she’s taking no bullshit).  
Eventually Jane gives up and just changes the subject. Her new topic: Isn’t the post office wonderful. (Jane needs a little help in the convivial small-talk department.) This eventually leads to a discussion of the difference between men’s and women’s handwriting, with clear props to the latter at the expense of the former. Emma, deciding to stick her head back into the novel that bears her name, considers taking the opportunity to bring up Frank Churchill. “Am I unequal to speaking his name at once before all these people?” she asks herself, which can only be rhetorical, because as if. “Is it necessary for me to use any roundabout phrase?—Your Yorkshire friend—your correspondent in Yorkshire;—that would be the way, I suppose, if I were very bad.” And Emma might be naughty, but never bad.
In the end, she just blurts it out: “Mr. Frank Churchill writes one of the best gentleman’s hands I ever saw.” This prompts Mr. Knightley to pop his head back into the novel too, so that he can counter, “I do not admire it…It is too small—wants strength. It is like a woman’s writing.” And when Emma threatens to fetch a sample of Frank’s handwriting to prove him wrong, he goes into a sulk. “Oh! when a gallant young man, like Mr. Frank Churchill…writes to a fair lady like Miss Woodhouse, he will, of course, put forth his best.”
I just love the schoolyard snark Mr. Knightley shows here. He’s one of my favorite characters, but it does crack me up that he’s so prickly on the subject of that gol’ durn smooth-talkin’ pretty boy Frank Churchill. You can practically see him cross his arms in a huff, then turn away and give the baseboard a surreptitious kick.
And just like that he’s back on the margins again. Emma lingers front and center a while longer, intrigued by the glow of contentment that Jane seems to be giving off, and wondering whether it’s due to having found word from a certain someone waiting for her at the post office after her infamous walk. Emma playfully considers saying something provocative—“She could have made an enquiry or two, as to the expedition and the expense of the Irish mails”—but then she remembers she’s supposed to be being nice to Jane, so she doesn’t follow through. And then, on the principle that if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all, she too shuffles off to the sidelines.
But that’s okay, because we’re now in for Round Two of the great Jane Fairfax vs. Mrs. Elton championship bout. It takes place after dinner, when the ladies retire to drawing room. They’re pretty evenly matched, but you can boil down the play-by-play to basically this:
            MRS. ELTON: It is high time you found a suitable position.             JANE: I have no intention of seeking a position just yet.             MRS. ELTON: I will find you the perfect position among people of quality.             JANE: I absolutely insist you not do that.
Repeat, with many variations, for four pages.
Mrs. Elton is of course utterly hilarious here, because Maple Grove Mr. Suckling Maple Grove, but the real surprise is that Jane holds her own and, as in the previous scene, shows a real spine and a steely determination. We’ve only really seen her through Emma’s eyes up to now, and as a result we’ve come to consider her a kind of pallid, cold fish; but this Jane has integrity. This Jane has fire.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but this is by no means my intention; I make no enquiry for myself, and should be sorry to have any made by my friends. When I am quite determined as to the time, I am not at all afraid of being long unemployed. There are places in town, offices, where enquiry would soon produce something—offices for the sale, not quite of human flesh, but of human intellect.”
“Oh! my dear, human flesh! You quite shock me; if you mean a fling at the slave-trade, I assure you Mr. Suckling was always rather a friend to the abolition.”
“I did not mean, I was not thinking of the slave-trade…governess-trade, I assure you, was all that I had in view; widely different certainly as to the guilt of those who carry it on; but as to the greater misery of its victims, I do not know where it lies.”
In my analysis of Mansfield Park I openly wondered about the extent of Jane Austen’s awareness of the slave trade that flourished in her era; Jane Fairfax’s remarks here—putting the misery of governesses on a level with the misery of slaves—might imply ignorance. Certainly African slaves could be subjected to physical indignities and cruelties far beyond what English law would allow to be inflicted on any governess. But I choose to see this passage rather as a rare flash of outrage in the Jane Austen canon…a protofeminist cri de coeur.
A little later, Mrs. Elton insists that Jane mustn’t work in an office, she needs to work for a rich family so that she can move “in certain circles” and “command the elegancies of life.” And Jane shoots back:
“You are very obliging; but as to all that I am very indifferent; it would be no object to me to be with the rich; my mortifications, I think, would only be the greater; I should suffer more from comparison. A gentleman’s family is all that I should condition for.”
So, yeah. Jane Fairfax, man. Totally throwin’ it down.
Eventually Mr. Woodhouse shows up—the first of the gentlemen to rejoin the ladies after their postprandial glass of sherry (or three, or seventeen)—and Mrs. Elton, whose ego is the size of one of the smaller moons of Jupiter, takes the venerable patriarch’s appearance as a compliment to herself. She half-whispers to Jane:
“Here comes this dear old beau of mine, I protest!—Only think of his gallantry in coming away before the other men!—what a dear creature he is!—I assure you I like him excessively…I wish you had heard his gallant speeches to me at dinner. Oh! I assure you I began to think my cara sposa would be absolutely jealous. I fancy I am rather a favourite; he took notice of my gown. How do you like it?—Selina’s choice—handsome, I think, but I do not know whether it is not over-trimmed. I have the greatest dislike to the idea of being over-trimmed—quite a horror of finery…”
And so on, and so forth. In full flow, Mrs. Elton can make Lady Catherine de Bourgh seem like a timid ingénue.
At this point the other gentlemen enter, and Mr. Weston as well, having returned from his business duties in time to join the party. Mr. John Knightley, whose preferred state of being is solitude and silence (in the 21st century, he’d have an isolation tank in his home, and immerse himself in it whenever Isabella and the kids were around), is completely astonished that “a man who might have spent his evening quietly at home after a day of business in London, should set off again, and walk half-a-mile to another man’s house, for the sake of being in mixed company till bed-time, of finishing his day in the efforts of civility and the noise of numbers”. He stares at Mr. Weston as though he were a carnival freak—conversing amiably, smiling, taking in the blather of women as though it were preferable to shutting himself up in a dark room and listening to the house settle—and sadly shakes his head, thinking, “I could not have believed it even of him.”
It isn’t long before we learn exactly why Mr. Weston traipsed that half-mile to Hartfield to put himself among actual human people again. He’s had a letter—he displays it with a flourish—from his son, Frank Churchill, announcing his return. Frank’s aunt—whose supposed illness was the reason the boy was prematurely yanked away from them the last time he visited—has decided London might suit her, so Frank will be near enough to Highbury to come and go as he pleases. Everyone is delighted by the news—or nearly everyone; Emma is “a little occupied in weighing her own feelings, and trying to understand the degree of her agitation, which she rather thought was considerable” (i.e., am I in love or am I not). And of course neither Mr. Woodhouse (who sees Frank as that reckless young daredevil who’s always throwing open windows) nor Mr. Knightley (who sees Frank as a pampered little Papillon who spends too much time yapping) is exactly doing a jig about it.
While Emma and Mr. Knightley are occupied with their private thoughts, the spotlight swivels back to the supporting cast, and we finally get the pièce de résistance. Mr. Weston pays his respects to Mrs. Elton, and the two of them begin an increasingly perilous game of one-upmanship that goes on for six pages—pages fraught with parries and thrusts and daring sallies and bold frontal assaults—before it’s finally interrupted. It’s one of Austen’s finest pieces of comic writing, and yes, she lets it run away with her a bit, but this time we’re enjoying it every bit as much as she is. I’d love to see this scene staged by two really fierce comic actors—say, Hugh Laurie and Catherine Tate. It would have the potential to actually incapacitate the audience.
The premise is this: Mr. Weston only wants to talk about his well-connected son Frank Churchill. Mrs. Elton only wants to talk about Maple Grove Mr. Suckling Maple Grove. So each of them has to pay close attention to what the other is saying, and be on the alert for even the tiniest opening that allows them to change the subject. Then, when the subject is changed, they have to be mindful of every syllable they utter, lest they give the other guy an excuse to change the subject back again. It’s dizzying and hilarious; a verbal football game.
When Mr. Weston mentions Frank’s residence at Enscombe, Mrs. Elton asks (in all apparent innocence) if that is in Yorkshire. Mr. Weston says, yes, about 190 miles from London. Which gives Mrs. Elton the opening she needed, to point out that this is sixty-five miles farther from London than Maple Grove, where her brother-in-law Mr. Suckling lives, and hemakes the trip twice in one week.
Mr. Weston grabs the ball back before Mrs. Elton can dash down the field with it, by pointing out that the distance isn’t so much the problem as Mrs. Churchill’s physical frailty, which makes it difficult for her to travel. Although now she’s feeling much improved, and is “so impatient to be in town, that she means to sleep only two nights on the road—so Frank writes word. Certainly delicate ladies must have very extraordinary constitutions, Mrs. Elton; you must grant me that.”
Mrs. Elton will grant him nothing, and in fact says Mrs. Churchill’s desire to sleep only two nights at an inn has nothing to do with her constitution and everything to do with the tackiness of inns, and by the way my sister Selina who is the wife of Mr. Suckling of Maple Grove always travels with her own sheets, “an excellent precaution. Does Mrs. Churchill do the same?”
“Depend upon it, Mrs. Churchill does every thing that any other fine lady ever did. Mrs. Churchill will not be second to any lady in the land for—”
Mrs. Elton eagerly interposed with,—
“Oh, Mr. Weston, do not mistake me. Selina is no fine lady, I assure you. Do not run away with such an idea.”
“Is not she? Then she is no rule for Mr. Churchill, who is as thorough a fine lady as any body ever beheld.”
Mrs. Elton began to think she had been wrong in disclaiming so warmly. It was by no means her object to have it believed that her sister was not a fine lady; perhaps there was was want of spirit in the pretence of it; and she was considering in what way she had best retract, when Mr. Weston went on.
But soon enough it’s her turn again, and she has the triumph of getting to bring Bath into the conversation (if Mrs. Churchill is so ill, why doesn’t she go there?) and it just keeps going on and on, back and forth, with Mr. Weston lobbing Enscombe and the Churchills at her, and Mrs. Elton firing back with Maple Grove and Bath and Selina. At one point, Mrs. Elton has control of the field and is roaring over it, but she “was stopped by a slight fit of coughing, and Mr. Weston instantly seized the opportunity of going on.”
A few pages later, Mr. Weston has—for various tactical reasons—shifted from praising Mrs. Churchill to complaining of her pride and arrogance, which are especially vexing because she “was nobody when (Mr. Churchill) married her, barely the daughter of a gentleman; but ever since her being turned into a Churchill, she has out-Churchill’d them all in high and mighty claims: but in herself, I assure you, she is an upstart.” Which prompts my very favorite of all Mrs. Elton’s many delightful ripostes:
“Only think! Well, that must be infinitely provoking! I have quite a horror of upstarts.”
I confess, I had to put the book down, and then my head too, and make high-pitched whimpering noises for a few minutes. My dogs were understandably alarmed.
By this time, you can pretty well infer how smitten Austen is with her new creation. She has to work hard to prevent Mrs. Elton from just packing up the entire novel under her arm and carting if off to Maple Grove. (Or Bath.) In fact, it’s a testament to the genius of Mrs. Elton that simply placing her in a scene with a heretofore lightweight comic figure (Mr. Weston), improves him as well—forces him to rise to the occasion and become and comedic titan in his own rights. We can barely wait to see him again, after this.
But we will have to wait, because their conversation is now interrupted by the tea being carried in (inconveniently in the middle of a particularly energetic spate of Mr. Suckling this Mr. Suckling that), and then by half the party sitting down to cards. The other half is left to its own devices, and Emma suddenly finds herself sandwiched between the Knightley brothers. Instinctively she knows: no good can come of this.
John Knightley leads off, which isn’t a promising start, because he seemingly can’t be in the same room with Emma without launching into his favorite theme, i.e. “The problem with you.”
He begins neutrally enough, thanking her for agreeing to take care of his boys; but he goes on to beg her to send them back home if they become troublesome. Emma is surprised by this; what does he mean, “troublesome”? Only, he replies, that “they may be some incumbrance to you, if your visiting engagements continue to increase as much as they have done lately.”
As we’ve seen, visiting engagements are to John Knightley a trivial and silly business that are to be stoically endured until they can be escaped, like prison cells or flaming coaches. So we know—and Emma does too—that this is a barely veiled criticism. She denies that her engagements have increased at all, but then the other Knightley brother chimes in that of course they have, agreeing that, “The difference which Randalls, Randalls alone, makes in your goings-on is very great.”
She valiantly defends herself by fiercely insisting that her nephews will always be the number-one priority for Auntie Emma, more so than they would be for Uncle Knightley anyway, “who is absent from home about five hours where she is absent one; and who, when he is at home, is either reading to himself or settling his accounts.”
And so ends the second volume of this triple-decker. It’s a pretty lackluster attempt by our hero and heroine to re-take the novel; Emma mainly sputters, and Mr. Knightley barely speaks at all. They’re going to have to do better, if this whole thing isn’t going to wind up being retitled Augusta. Join me next time, and we’ll see how they manage.