Jane and the Man of the Cloth

Примечания

1

For a full account of the journals’ discovery, readers are directed to the Editor's Foreword in the first volume of the Austen collection, published by Bantam Books in May 1995 under the title of Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor.

2

For an excellent survey of the “nameless and dateless” romance theories, as well as a rich portrait of Austen's milieu, see George Holbert Tucker, Jane Austen the Woman, St. Martin's Press, 1994.

3

The Austens had visited Ramsgate during the spring or summer of 1803, prior to their first visit to Lyme that September. Jane disliked Ramsgate intensely; and when she wished to place a fictional charac ter in a compromising position, she often sent her to Ramsgate. Georgiana Darcy was nearly seduced by Wickham there, in Pride and Prejudice, while in Mansfield Park, Maria Bertram endured a loveless Ramsgate honeymoon before her adulterous affair with Henry Crawford. — Editor's note.

4

Jane refers here to Lyme's Marine Parade, known in her day simply as The Walk; it ran along the beach fronting Lyme's harbor, and out along the ancient stone breakwater, both of which are called the Cobb. — Editor's note.

5

Paterson's British Itinerary was the road bible of the traveling gentry from 1785 to 1832. Written by Daniel Paterson and running to seventeen editions, it detailed stage and mail routes between major cities, as well as their tolls, bridges, landmarks, and notable country houses. — Editor's note.

6

In Austen's time, traveling on Sunday was considered disrespectful to the Sabbath. — Editor's note.

7

We may presume Geoffrey Sidmouth to be referring, here, to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in which the character of the Wife of Bath figures. Jane's mention of the town must have sparked the allusion. — Editors note.

8

Austen's childhood home, the parsonage at Steventon where she lived until May 1801, would be regretted and missed for most of her life. — Editor's note.

9

It was customary in Austen's time to stay at home on evenings with little moonlight, and accept engagements for those nights when the moon would be full. Travel along unlit roads could otherwise be quite hazardous. — Editor's note.

10

In Austen's day, relations by marriage were generally referred to as relations of blood. Although the term in-law existed, it was more of an affectation than common usage. — Editor's note.

11

The Pump Room was the social center of Bath, where many of the residents and visitors congregated daily to drink the medicinal waters pumped up for their refreshment, and to stroll about in close converse with their acquaintance. To be seen in the Pump Room of a morning, and in the Upper or Lower Assembly Rooms at night, was indispensable to the conduct of one's social life. — Editor's note.

12

Eliza's first husband, the French comte Jean Capot de Feuillide, was guillotined in 1794. Eliza retained her title of Comtesse de Feuillide even after she married Henry Austen, out of habit and a liking for its aristocratic air. — Editor's note.

13

Austen probably refers here to the stairs she later used in her final novel, Persuasion, in which Louisa Musgrove falls in jumping from one level of the Cobb to another. — Editor's note.

14

Francis Austen, born between Cassandra and Jane in the order of the Austens’ eight children, and Charles, the youngest child, were both officers in the Royal Navy. Frank Austen would end his life as Admiral Sir Francis Austen, Admiral of the Fleet. — Editor's note.

15

Eliza refers to the first of Jane Austen's detective memoirs, Jane and the Unpleasantness at Scargrave Manor. — Editor's note.

16

Eliza de Feuillide used words very similar to these to describe her marriage in a surviving letter written from Ipswich in 1798. — Editor's note.

17

Austen probably refers here to the beach that fronted Lyme's harbor, which is also called the Cobb, though not to be confused with the jetty of the same name. — Editor's note.

18

This was a long-handled lorgnette, with a single magnifying lens, that hung about fashionable necks. — Editor's note.

19

A tyger was a small boy arrayed in livery, almost as a mascot, whom the fashionable set employed to ride on the exterior of their carriages. — Editor's note.

20

These words, slightly modified and expanded, make up Austen's principal description of Lyme Regis in her final novel, Persuasion. — Editor's note.

21

Named after Captain Francis Negus, this was a warm punch made of water, sugar, and sherry or port, and frequently offered at balls. — Editor's note.

22

The Royal Navy was divided into three squadrons — the Red, the White, and the Blue. Austen's brother Frank, for example, advanced to become Admiral of the Red, before his promotion to Admiral of the Fleet at the age of 89. — Editor's note.

23

Mathew Barnewall was at this time only a claimant to the viscountcy of Kingsland, and his right to that tide and inheritance was not yet determined by the House of Lords. It is unlikely that Jane Austen was aware of this dispute when she met the Bamewalls. — Editor's note.

24

Crawford is speaking of James, Duke of Monmouth, the bastard son of Charles I, who sailed from France to Lyme in 1685, intent upon toppling his uncle James II from the throne of England. His revolt was suppressed, and twelve men of Lyme were hanged on gibbets erected in the shallows of the beach where Monmouth landed. — Editor's note.

25

“The Monster” was the common appellation for Napoleon Buonaparte. Captain Fielding probably alludes to the seventeen-month-long British, Russian, and Neapolitan blockade of French forces holding Malta in 1799. The final French surrender in March of that year was marked by a daring escape attempt on the part of Admiral Denis Decres, who barely survived to be named Napoleon's Naval Minister in 1801. The nearly 1000 men on his ship, the Guillaume Tell, were hardly so fortunate; Decres gave up his opportunity to escape in order to attack the British fleet single-handedly, and lost 500 men under fire. Badly wounded himself, he was taken prisoner and released after the Treaty of Amiens in 1801. Presumably, Captain Fielding lost his leg in the midst of Decree's attack.— Editor's note.

26

The Peace of Amiens, negotiated in October 1801 and broken in May 1803, brought peace to France and England only briefly. A year later, in May 1804, Napoleon crowned himself emperor of France, and hostilities between the two countries continued until 1815. — Editor's note.

27

Captain Fielding here refers to the Earl of Westmoreland and his family, resident in Bristol but controlling Lyme's two parliamentary seats through corrupt voting practices. The Fanes dominated Lyme for roughly a century — from the 1730s until the Reform Act of 1832, when the borough was reduced to one MP. In 1867 it was disenfranchised completely. (See John Fowles, A Short History of Lyme Regis, Little, Brown & Co., 1982.) — Editors note.

28

If one can judge by the appearance of Austen's extant manuscripts — Sanditon, for example — she made a habit of writing on small sheets of folded paper, which could be readily hidden if a visitor intruded upon her privacy. These sheets were then assembled in book form, and the pages hand-sewn through at the fold. It would appear she is speaking here of her unfinished work, The Watsons, which Austen scholars believe she began sometime in 1804. The manuscript paper bears an 1803 watermark. — Editors note.

29

Cassandra was engaged in 1795 to marry the Reverend Thomas Craven Fowle, son of the Austens lifelong friends, and a protege of Lord Craven, whose naval expedition to the West Indies Fowle felt obligated to join that same year. He died of yellow fever in San Domingo in February 1797, aged 29. He left Cassandra a legacy of one thousand pounds. She never married. — Editor's note.

30

This conversation with Cassandra regarding marriage must have impressed Jane, because it eventually found its way, in amended form, into The Watsons manuscript. — Editors note.

31

Only intimates of the family were accustomed to visit before noon, while acquaintances usually paid calls before dinner. — Editors note.

32

A barouche was considered quite fancy in the first part of the nineteenth century. It had two seats facing each other, and held four people comfortably; the landau top folded back in the middle, to make it an open carriage often used for country outings. It was drawn by anywhere from two to six horses. — Editor's note.

33

Captain Fielding probably refers to the relative newness of the roads. Lyme was inaccessible to wheeled traffic until 1759, when a turnpike was built leading into the town; all land transportation prior to that date was done by pack horse. — Editors note.

34

In die presence of several members of an untitled family, it was customary to address the eldest child by the tide Miss, or Mister, with younger siblings distinguished by the tide and their first names. Thus the ordering of rank was preserved; similarly, the eldest would pass in and out of the room before die next youngest child in age, and so on to the youngest. — Editor's note.

35

Surgeons were considered common village tradesmen rather than educated professionals, such as physicians, and their wives could not be presented at Court, while physicians' wives could. — Editor's note.

36

In her letter to Cassandra, written from Lyme Sept 14, 1804, Austen refers to Miss Armstrong without revealing her Christian name; in another letter dated April 21, 1805, she mentions renewing the acquaintance in Bath. We learn here for the first time that Miss Armstrong's name was Lucy. — Editor's note.

37

Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) is best known as a wealthy lawyer of the Georgian period who advocated Utilitarianism: the belief that society should be regulated by inherent principles, much as his rough contemporary Adam Smith (1723–1790) believed economies operated by self-evident market forces. Chief among these principles was that social action should produce the “greatest good for the greatest number”—a frankly democratic notion. Bentham attracted a coterie of “philosophical radicals,” who, by 1815, advocated universal suffrage in England. Reverend Austen is referring here, however, to a famous passage from Bentham's 1789 work, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and legislation. — Editor's note.

38

Mr. Sidmouth is paraphrasing Kant The philosopher actually wrote that he was unable to find “any being capable of laying claim to the distinction of being the final end of creation.” (Critique of Judgment, 1790). — Editors note.

39

The search for fossils was well advanced along the Dorset coast by the time Austen visited it in 1804. A local schoolgirl, Mary Anning, would be credited with the discovery of the world's first ichthyosaur in the cliffs between Lyme and Charmouth in 1811, when she was just twelve years old. — Editor's note.

40

Ann Radcliffe Is best remembered for the Gothic romance, The Mysteries of Udolpho, which Austen satirized in Northanger Abbey. She was, along with her contemporaries Maria Edgeworth, Charlotte Smith, and Fanny Burney, one of the women novelists Austen read and admired. — Editor's note.

41

Nuncheon was a common term for food taken between breakfast and dinner — which in the country was usually eaten in the late afternoon, around four o'clock — since the term luncheon, or lunch, did not exist. — Editor's note.

42

Eliza refers here to the March 1804 execution of the Due D'Enghien, who was of royal Bourbon blood. Napoleon had the duke seized, imprisoned, secretly tried, and executed, in the wake of several Royalist plots to dethrone him. — Editor's note.

43

Venturers were what we might call venture capitalists — titled or simply wealthy gentlemen who invested in others’ business ventures. — Editor's note.

44

The cutter Jane describes probably came about near Charton Bay, two miles west of Lyme proper; this was a lonely stretch of shoreline favored by smugglers. — Editor's note.

45

Captain Fielding is referring to the Royal Navy practice of pressing smuggling captains into active service when apprehended. Such seamen were known to be remarkably skilled, from long experience of landing on difficult coasts in bad weather and under cover of darkness; exactly the sort of captains the Royal Navy needed in time of war. — Editor's note.

46

The Pinny, in Austen's time, was a heavily wooded wilderness a short walking distance from town. She describes it in Persuasion as possessed of chasms between romantic rocks, where the scattered forest trees and orchards of luxuriant growth declare that many a generation must have passed away since the first partial falling of the cliff prepared the ground for such a state….” There were to be additional land-tails in subsequent years, the most spectacular of which took place in 1839. It was the ideal place for a smugglers’ band to meet. — Editor's note.

47

Jane alludes here to the whittle — a shawl of red wool traditionally worn by the women of Lyme's laboring class. By the turn of the eighteenth century, however, the tradition was on the wane, as Lyme residents of all classes were increasingly exposed to the cosmopolitan dress of fashionable visitors. — Editor's note.

48

Tom Musgrave, a charmingly vacant womanizer in The Watsons manuscript, should not be confused with the more finely drawn Musgrave family of Persuasion. It was Louisa Musgrove who received a near-fatal head injury in falling from the Cobb — an event that may have been inspired by Cassandra Austen's misfortune recounted in this diary. Austen clearly liked the sound of the name and its variations; and her godmother was Jane Musgrave of Oxfordshire, a relative of her mother's. — Editor's note.

49

Frank Austen had recently fallen in love with Mary Gibson, a girl of Ramsgate whom Jane found disappointing — she considered her as vulgar as her town. Frank married Miss Gibson in 1805; they had six sons and five daughters before her death in childbirth. — Editor's note.

50

George III and his retinue made a habit of visiting the Dorset village of Weymouth, where his brother the Duke of Gloucester often stayed. — Editor's note.

51

Henry refers here to his stepson, Hastings de Feuillide, Eliza's sickly son. The boy died in 1801 at the age of fourteen. — Editor's note.

52

A spigot lanthorn is as Austen described it in the first chapter — a curiously shaped lamp designed specifically for signaling. It was tall, cylindrical, and entirely closed except for the spigot projecting from one side, the open end of which could be covered and uncovered by the signaler's hand, emitting a blink of light. It was frequently employed by smugglers. — Editor's note.

53

French brandy was considered “raw” when it hit English shores, because it was colorless. The smugglers would mix it with burnt sugar to give it the deep golden hue the English expected, and probably thinned it with water as well. — Editor's note.

54

An exclusive men's club in Pall Mall. — Editor's note.

55

The length of a woman's train increased with her desire for elegance; Austen usually ascribes a long sweep to her more vulgar characters, such as Isabella Thorpe in Northanger Abbey. — Editor's note.

56

Much of this description of the past few days, and Austen's circle of acquaintance in Lyme, may be found almost verbatim in the surviving letter she wrote to Cassandra the same morning as this journal entry. A copy of that letter was not included in this journal, but can be found in the collected correspondence (Jane. Austen's Letters, Deirdre LeFaye, ed., Third Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, Letter #39, page 92). — Editors note.

57

“A brisk dance characterized by intricate figures and frequent changing of partners. Other dances common to the country Assembly Rooms were the minuet — which generally opened a ball — the ecossaise, the contredanse, and a variety of Scotch reels and English country dances. The waltz, considered “fast,” made its first London appearance by 1812, and the quadrille — a type of square dance with music in five movements of varying tempos — in 1816. — Editor's note.

58

Free Trade was the term smugglers applied to their business, since the purpose of smuggling goods into England was to avoid the numerous and costly taxes applied to a wealth of imported items. — Editor's note.

59

A curricle was a light, fast equipage that held only two people, and was usually drawn by one or two horses easily managed by a male passenger. It was considered a smart carriage, usually owned by young men, rather like the sports car of today. Austen, for example, has Henry Tilney drive one in Northanger Abbey, to the utter transport of his companion, Catherine Morland. — Editor's note.

60

Mathew Barnewall is described by Deirdre LeFaye, editor of the 1995 edition of Jane Austen's Letters, as having been a “missing heir” to the viscountcy of Kingsland, whose early life was spent as an illiterate potboy in the slums of Dublin. His claim to his property and title was in dispute at this time. Whether Austen was aware of Barnewall's history is unclear, but it probably accounts for her perception of the incongruities in his personal demeanor and character — a strange mix of crudity overlaid with hasty polish. — Editors note.

61

Miss Crawford describes the common practice among genteel families of ordering the construction of a new carriage for a wedding — usually at the groom's expense. — Editor's note.

62

This letter no longer survives in the collected correspondence. Cassandra Austen is believed to have destroyed many of Jane's letters after her sister's death. — Editor's note.

63

Austen's description of the tunnel corresponds to several discovered in recent years throughout the coastal towns of the Channel counties. Some lead to landing areas from the cellars of inns, which often served as smugglers’ central meeting places and storage areas for contraband; others, from manor houses on the cliffs above; and still another, from a family vault in the crypt of a church — used to store brandy barrels, no doubt, instead of dead ancestors. — Editor's note.

64

The Buddie was the name given to the mouth of the Lym river, from which Lyme derives its name. — Editor's note.

65

Austen here describes a feature of the River Buddie district that was apparently not wiuiout design. Geofftey Morley notes in his book, Smuggling in Hampshire and Dorset, 1800-1850 (Newbury, Berkshire: Countryside Books, revised edition, 1994), that this was the traditional smugglers’ quarter of Lyme, and that the proximity of the housing served as a useful means of escape. When a smuggler's home was to be searched, its occupants often fled out die back windows to the houses on the Buddie's opposite bank, taking their contraband with them. — Editor's note.

66

Maggie Tibbit is presumably referring to the two-story structure set upon a knoll between West Bexington and Puncknowle. It was built as a signal tower for the Sea Fencibles, the local militia arrayed against a seaborne invasion by Napoleon; it commanded a view beyond Portland and Weymouth to the east, and over Bridport to Lyme Regis and Lyme Bay some seven miles distant Signal fires would have been lit to warn of enemy ships approaching the coast, which ran straight and clear at this point, making for easy landing. — Editor's note.

67

The Assizes are preliminary sessions held locally throughout the United Kingdom, in which a suspect is charged, indicted, and remanded for trial. In Austen's time they were held quarterly. — Editor's note.

68

Wootton Fitzpaine is a small village some three-and-a-half miles northeast of Lyme, between the forested Wootton Hill and Coney's Castle Hill, on which sit the ruins of an Iron Age settlement. — Editor's note.

69

Tattersall's was the most famous of the horse auction houses in the London of Austen's day; it was also known for its betting book, kept in an anteroom, and forming the secondary occupation of the gentlemen who frequented the place. — Editor's note.

70

There were numerous varieties of snuff in Austen's day, rather as there are of herbal teas in our own, and different blends were chosen according to the mood of the consumer or the time of day. The Prince of Wales kept varieties from all over the world in his snuff cellar, though he disliked snulT itself, and contrived never to inhale it however many times a day he went through the ritual. His mother, Queen Charlotte, consumed from the age of seventeen only one blend — of tobacco, ambergris, attar, and bitter almonds. — Editor's note.

71

This was less a turban than a length of material — often lace — tied around the crown and knotted at one side of the head, in a somewhat Turkish fashion. — Editor's note.

72

The Preventy Men was a common name for the officers of the Board of Customs. — Editor's note.

73

Austen's brothers James and Henry, while students at Oxford, established the literary journal The Loiterer, to which Austen herself may have contributed the occasional letter. — Editor's note.

74

Broad Ledge was originally a part of Lyme proper — medieval maps of the area suggest it once was crowded with houses — but was later inundated by the sea, and is now visible only at low tide. It serves as a reminder of the shifting nature of the Dorset coastline. — Editor's note.

75

Throughout the Napoleonic Wars, Royal Navy officers — if they survived — frequently made considerable fortunes from the taking of enemy ships and their cargoes. Austen's naval brothers sent frequent news of such booty, and she describes this sort of swift advancement in Persuasion. Captain Wentworth begins his career in 1802 a man without fortune, and by 1814 is a wealthy one. — Editor's note.

76

This description of the Lyme fire appears nowhere in Jane Austen's surviving letters to Cassandra, and it is probable that it is among those that Cassandra is known to have destroyed before her own death, as too revealing of Jane's personal life. A reference to the flames does appear in letter #57 in the LeFaye edition of Jane Austens Letters, which LeFaye attributes to the November 5, 1803 fire known to have occurred in Lyme. The account of a blaze recorded here, however, some ten months later, may in fact be the one to which Jane refers in letter #57. — Editor's note.

77

Lord Harold Trowbridge — rake, scoundrel, second son of a duke, and spy in the service of the Crown — made his first appearance in Austen's journals while both were at Scargrave Manor, the home of her friend Isobel Payne. — Editor's note.

78

This was a sort of coastal militia, of fishermen and small craft superintended by naval officers, arrayed against possible channel invasion from France. — Editor's note.

79

What Jane suspected was in some part true. By 1804 the British government was actively supporting French Royalist plotters who found refuge on English shores by providing them with bank drafts in the millions of francs; and a certain Captain Wright allegedly carried three separate shiploads of Royalist insurgents to French shores throughout 1803 and early 1804. All were discovered, tried, and, in the main, executed. “I may fairly say,” Napoleon later re called, “that during the months from September, 1803, to January, 1804, I was sitting on a volcano.” The assassination attempts culminated in Napoleon's unwarranted seizure and execution of the Due D'Enghien, who was of Bourbon descent and falsely accused of aspiring to Napoleon's throne, in March 1804; but from Austen's account, it would seem that Royalist efforts continued well after ward. — Editor's note.