Jane Austen In Early 1816

Early in 1816, Jane Austen's brother Henry retrieved her manuscript 'Susan', an early version of Northanger Abbey, from a publisher named Crosby, who had bought it from Jane for £10 thirteen years earlier but never published it. It's thought that Jane revised it during this year, and gave her heroine a new name - Catherine Morland. However, Jane may have felt that her novel was now rather out of date, because although she wrote an advertisement for the work, it was not published until after her death. 

The second edition of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park was published by John Murray sometime in February 1816. (There are some fascinating documents relating to Austen in the John Murray Archive at the National Library of Scotland). The first edition, published by Egerton, had sold out fairly quickly but had not been reprinted, so Jane must have been hopeful that a more well-known publisher would help 'puff' her book. 

However, in the event, Mansfield Park did not sell at all well, and Murray had to reduce the price. You can see some readers' opinions of Mansfield Park and Emma (published in December 1815) collected by Jane Austen here. 

Image from the author's collection: a 'carriage dress' or 'morning dress' made from 'finest dark blue ladies' cloth' and head-dress 'a la mode de Paris', Ackermann's Repository, January 1816. 

Christmas Theatricals at Steventon

Jane Austen loved the theatre!

She was about seven years old when family theatricals first began at Steventon Rectory, circa December 1782. Dr Thomas Francklin’s Matilda was seemingly the first play performed, probably in the dining-room. Jane’s big brother James penned some additional verses to accompany the performance.

George Austen taught fee-paying scholars at home, so the plays only took place during the summer and Christmas holidays, when his pupils were away. At some point some stage scenery was painted to accompany the Austens’ theatricals, which must have added to the fun.

In 1787, Jane’s cousin Phila Walter wrote in a letter that Eliza de Feuillide (another cousin of Jane and Cassandra’s) was planning to visit Steventon at Christmas and that the family 'mean to act a play, Which is the Man? and Bon Ton. My uncle's barn is fitting up quite like a theatre, and all the young folks are to take their part. The Countess is Lady Bob Lardoon [sic] in the former and Miss Tittup in the latter. They wish me much of the party and offer to carry me, but I do not think of it. I should like to be a spectator, but am sure I should not have courage to act a part, nor do I wish to attain it.' (Phila sounds amazingly like Fanny Price in this letter!)

Eliza wrote to Phila to ‘assure you we shall have a most brilliant party and a great deal of amusement, the house full of company, frequent balls. You cannot possibly resist so many temptations, especially when I tell you your old friend James is returned from France and is to be of the acting party’.

But Phila was not keen, so Eliza wrote to her again, begging her to come for a fortnight to Steventon, provided she could bring herself to act, 'for my Aunt Austen declares "she has not room for any idle young people'.

Jane’s recollections of these family theatricals clearly influenced the Bertrams’ performances in Mansfield Park – but surely none of the Austen brothers acted like that ‘ranting young man’ Yates, who was ‘almost hallooing’ as he rehearsed his part?

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all Janeites everywhere!

Images

 ‘ Hints to managers, actors and authors / G.M. Woodward, del.1790, courtesy Library of Congress. 

Hugh Thomson illustrations for Mansfield Park. 

Horsemanship

Hunting scene, Alken.

The horse took fright with Fanny.

Horsemanship was an essential skill for gentlemen, as horses were the chief means of transport for social, military and sporting activities. 

Hunting was a dangerous sport; it was not unknown for men to break their necks when jumping horses over hedges and ditches, so Mansfield Park’s Fanny Price felt alarmed instead of obliged to Henry Crawford when he lent her sailor brother William a horse. 

She was ‘by no means convinced... that he was at all equal to the management of a high-fed hunter in an English fox-chase. When it was proved, however, to have done William no harm, she could allow it to be a kindness’. 

 Although some ladies went fox-hunting, writers like Thomas Gisborne felt that 'the cruel spectacles of field-sports, are wholly discordant, when contrasted with the delicacy, the refinement, and the sensibility of a woman' (Enquiries Into the Duties of the Female Sex, 1797). 

Fanny Price learns to ride.

The ride to Mansfield Common.

For ladies, riding was a good way to exercise (Fanny Price's health went downhill when Mary Crawford borrowed her pony for several days so that she could learn to ride, too). 

Boys and girls learnt to ride at home on a steady pony, or perhaps (if they lived in town) at a riding school or academy.

Places like Bath had 'extensive and commodious...riding-schools' where ladies and gentlemen could take equestrian exercise indoors when the weather was too inclement to go riding about the countryside. If you did not already know to ride, lessons were 5s 6d each, or 3 guineas for 16 lessons (Pierce Egan, Walks Through Bath, 1819).

And if you wanted to see some amazing feats of horsemanship, Astley's Amphitheatre was the place to go.

Illustrations

Hunting scene, Henry T. Alken, The Chace, The Turf and The Road (2nd edition), John Murray, 1843. ‘The horse took fright with Fanny’. Illustration for Fatherless Fanny, G. Virtue, c.1819.

Fanny Price learns to ride with Edmund and the old grey pony. The ride to Mansfield Common. Hugh Thomson illustrations for Mansfield Park.

Happy Birthday Mansfield Park!

Jane Austen's third novel, Mansfield Park, was published by Thomas Egerton in May 1814. Mansfield Park is in some ways a reworking of the Cinderella story; its heroine Fanny Price is transplanted from her crowded Portsmouth home to be brought up with her cousins Maria and Julia, Tom and Edmund Bertram. Fanny fetches and carries for her aunts Lady Bertram and Mrs Norris.

As Fanny grows up, she falls in love with her cousin Edmund; but he only has eyes for pretty, witty Mary Crawford. At first Mary, who is on the look-out for a rich husband, sets her sights on Tom. She ‘had felt an early presentiment that she should like the eldest best. She knew it was her way’.

But when she turns her attention to Edmund, she is surprised and alarmed because he plans to earn his living as a clergyman: ‘There is generally an uncle or a grandfather to leave a fortune to the second son’.

Meanwhile, Fanny is growing up. Her first ball at Mansfield Park was: ‘the thought only of the afternoon, built on the late acquisition of a violin player in the servants’ hall, and the possibility of raising five couple’. It was, however, ‘a very happy one’ for Fanny as she danced four times with her cousin Edmund.

Mansfield Park is the most obviously Johnsonian of Jane Austen’s works. Dr Johnson’s uncompromising moral outlook and Fanny Price’s are strikingly similar at times, although the timid heroine, unlike Johnson, usually shrinks from making her true feelings clear. Moralising has acquired ‘priggish,’ dull overtones for many modern readers, who find Fanny difficult to empathise with.  

But in the more religious age that Austen lived in, thinking and talking about people’s moral values was far more common, and Jane received some favourable comments on Fanny's character from friends and family. Near the end of the novel, Edmund Bertram comments: ‘Fanny is the only one who has judged rightly throughout, who has been consistent’.
Will the worldly Mary Crawford marry Edmund? Will her handsome brother Henry seduce Fanny’s affections from Edmund? You’ll have to read the novel to find out...

Illustration: A young man proposes marriage. Pocket Magazine, 1820.