Dear Ashton,

I am afraid that by addressing the following two issues I may be leaving my head unprotected for brickbats, but here goes.

Has anyone read the sequel to P&P, Letters from Pemberly? I have yet to see any blood on the website concerning it, so I can only assume that if anyone has read the pastiche they are reluctant to say so.

I haven't read it, but would be interested to read any reviews from any Austenites. In my opinion, the story that would best lend itself to a sequel would be the progression of the Wickham-Lydia marriage, but we may have a prequel of that in Hograth's The Rake's Progress paintings.

Has anyone looked into the type of clergyman Jane's father was. Just by reading the novels I get the feeling that he was of the "establishment" type with latitudinarian overtones. The clergymen in the novels seem to have an opportunistic air about them combined with all the religious zeal of a civil servant.

At one time I considered the possibility that Lady Catherine was modeled on Selina, Countess of Huntington, who was the patroness of quite a number of evangelical clerics like George Whitfield, or Hannah Moore, one of the first Bluestockings who became an evangelical writer and champion of women's education, but dropped the idea. Both women were pious and more interested in spreading the Gospel among the common folk than being deferred to because of their social positions.

I'm not looking for religion subtexts in JA's works (one would more readily find it in the Bronte's works, either pro or anti because, from what I've heard their father was a Methodist preacher which, by definition, were of a much warmer religious sentiment than the average Anglican divine at the time) but I am curious as to whether JA's outlook was informed by the experience of living in an overtly religious household or was a product of the society at large.

Dear Dave,

I'm going to really make Ashton suffer for this, because I'm flat maggot on a work project, and he wrote to me and asked me to look at your letter. Actually, you should probably be grateful that I am busy, or you might end up bored to death.

Mr Bronte wasn't a Methodist:  he was a perpetual curate of the Church of England, but his church was different to that of Mr Austen, as the former was a member of the Evangelical movement. If you have any special interest in this evolution of Anglicanism, I must recommend to you Juliet Barker's Life of the Brontes, which includes a great deal of the life and work of the father, as well as the children, and shows what a complex, difficult job was that of a clergyman of the time, who took his work seriously. Evangelical clergymen are nailed by Thackeray - the Rev. Mr Slope being a prime example; their genuine goodness, and the inequities under which they laboured, is also described in Frameley Parsonage, where a conscientious, good, and completely indigent clergyman is shown alongside his rich fellow priests, all of whom derived their fortunes from the church.  I just don't have time to give you the reference at the moment, but if you're interested, let me know and I'll dig it up for you.

Jane Austen's father lived his clerical life before the Evangelical movement really took off: in her later years, Jane Austen began to think about the system of organised religion, and commented in a letter to Fanny Knight that 'she was not sure that we should not all be Evangelists.' Henry Crawford is doing no more than describing the truth and a social norm when he imagines Edmund Bertram's life as a clergyman ..'he will have 700 pounds a year and nothing to do for it, as he will continue at home:  two sermons a week will be the sum of his labours.'  This does in fact describe the situation of Henry Tilney, who is indeed living at home, while preaching his two per week in his parish.

Incidentally, the Methodist connection of the Brontes came from their Aunt Branwell, and her 'mad Methodist magazines.'  Miss Branwell was, I think, a methodist before her marriage, but not, of course, after she became Mrs Bronte.

Hannah Moore, and questions regarding the propriety of women's preaching in the Evangelical movement, is wonderfully drawn in Adam Bede, by George Eliot, but I believe that character was a composite of Hannah and a relation (aunt?) of the author.

Now look what you've done!  I'm late, late, late.

But I'd love to discuss this further.  In Jane Austen's world of the home counties, livings tended to be in the 'gift' of the large landowners, and frequently a means of employing younger sons.  Dr Grant and the Crawfords only exploded upon Mansfield because Sir Thomas was obliged, instead of having a friend 'mind' the living, to convert it into cash by selling it to Dr Grant - I don't know the financial details of how such things worked.  Elizabeth Bennet comments to herself that she cannot understand Charlotte's sacrificing so many hours to Lady Catherine, until she recollects that their might be other livings going:  clergymen might hold more than one at a time, and plonk some poor sod of a curate in the spare, at a pittance of a couple of hundred pounds per year (which is about what Mr Bronte lived on, though his income was determined in a different manner).

I MUST GET SOME WORK DONE!!!!!!!!! STOP TEMPTING ME TO ENJOY MYSELF!!!!!!!
Julie

Dear Dave,

You won't bring forth any brickbats with the mention of sequels, but you will meet with a great deal of cold blood. A book distributor dropped by with an advertisement and here is a link to that. I refuse to read it.

One cannot generalize about the portrayal of clergymen in Jane Austen's novels. There is the opportunistic Mr. Elton and the toady Mr. Collins, but Edward Ferrars and Edmund Bertram are entirely different. Both men were not only not opportunistic, they both sacrificed a great deal in order to become clergymen. Ferrars's insistance on this profession was one of the two factors that led his mother to disinherit him from a great deal of wealth. Bertram's determination placed his passionate attachment to Mary Crawford at risk. It is a great mystery to me why some will always think of Collins and Elton and forget Ferrars and Bertram when attempting to characterize our Lady's attitude about the clergy.

When Elton failed in his attempt to move up in the world through marriage to Emma, he moved on to Bath where he felt certain of finding a good dowry - and he was right about that. He was able to make that move, because he can shuck all responsibility onto a curate. (Incidentally, I think the annual salary of a curate in Jane Austen's time was about 50 pounds - Julie's estimate is for the time of the Bronte's, as Julie herself makes clear.) Jane Austen explicitly expressed her attitude about absentee clergymen in the words of Sir Thomas Bertram admonishing Henry Crawford:

" '...But a parish has wants and claims which can be known only by a clergyman constantly resident, and which no proxy can be capable of satisfying to the same extent. ... [Edmund] knows that human nature needs more lessons that a weekly sermon can convey, and that if he does not live amongst his parishioners and prove himself by constant attention their well-wisher and friend, he does very little either for their good or his own.' "

Jane Austen does not explicitly describe a religious zeal for either man, but I would counter by saying that our Lady does not explicitly describe Elizabeth Bennet's sexual passion either; however, Jane Austen leaves no doubt of either sensibility.

"What kind of clergyman was Jane Austen's father?" I don't know enough to answer that question, but I know some things that begin to speak to that. Jane's father, George Austen, was not the younger son of a gentleman; in fact, he was born without any significant expectations. He did, however have a wealthy and caring uncle, Francis Austen a lawyer. Francis saw something in this nephew that he liked and chose to become his benefactor. I can see no reason why George could not have chosen the law or the military, but he chose to study at Oxford and to become a clergyman instead. After his marriage (to a Cassandra), George and his wife carved out a living that came to him under the influence of Francis, and they began that family of eight children. One of the children was disabled from birth and never brought into the home, but the other children were very successful adults--including that seventh child and second daughter, Jane Austen.

Incidentally, Jane Austen wrote some prayers and I have excerpted some of those for our community.

If you would like to read the intimate details of one clergyman's life, in the time of our Lady's father, see the Woodforde diaries.

Dear Sir,

I know very well that all you really want to do is get me the sack, but I must take issue with you on one point:  that of Edumund Bertram's 'sacrifice' on becoming a clergyman.  I disagree, and so did the gentleman himself. In almost his first introduction in the novel, it is stated that 'he was to be a clergyman'.  Under the peculiar English laws of inheritance, their was often no cash provision for younger sons - and Edmund himself, while making his preference for the Church clear, nevertheless corrects Fanny, who says that Edmund would not be influenced by the though of livings held for him:  he himself admits that the knowledge that there were originally two, and still one living, in the gift of his father, did influence his choice.  Thornton Lacey and Mansfield together would have been worth at least 1,500 pounds.  Mr and Mrs Norris began married life on 'very little less than 1,000 pounds per year'; Thornton Lacey was worth 700 pounds.  When Mr and Mrs Edmund Bertram took up the living of Mansfield, they were at a time of life 'to begin to want the increase of income', which means that Edmund probably held both livings, and installed a curate at Thornton Lacey.  Edmund was comfortable with his choice of profession, but what were his options?  He acknowledged himself too old for the armed services (which in any case would have entailed expense for his father, who, throughout the action of the novel, was actually worried about his straitened income), and Edmund felt himself unfitted for the Law - which in any case, would have meant him remaining dependent, and thus a financial burden.  Edmund could hardly go to Sir Thomas and say that he planned to marry Miss Crawford, but unfortunately she didn't like clergymen, so could he please be maintained for another five years or so while he made other arrangements?  That prerogative belonged, in families of the Bertrams' class, to the son and heir.

Mr Bingley, Mr Darcy, Mr Knightley, Mr Bertram , Mr Churchill, Mr Crawford, Mr Rushworth - eldest sons, all - had no professions, and were maintained at their families' expense until such time as the old fellow popped off. Captain Tilney is rather an exception. Colonel Fitzwilliam, as a younger son, bewails his limitations.

In fact, a great deal of what Miss Crawford says about the clergy of the day was correct   the Evangelical movements began not all that long after she made her observations. And while Mr Woodforde was indeed a conscientious and believing minister of religion, didn't he just kick up holy hell when he was trumped in his expectation of his father's living!

There is no point in mentioning clerical life if it includes the word 'Bronte', I know, but Mr Bronte's life (which was contemporaneous with that of Jane Austen, even though he had the poor taste to outlive her) as an indigent parson in the impoverished north of England, gives a very different picture to that of Jane Austen's clergymen:  Mrs Gaskell does the same, when she transplants a comfortable clerical household in the home counties to the industrialised north (and, yes, I know that was later, but it does not necessarily invalidate my point).
Julie

Dear Julie,

I will repeat what I said, but more slowly this time:

"... Both [Ferrars and Bertram] were not only not opportunistic, they both sacrificed a great deal in order to become clergymen. ... Bertram's determination placed his passionate attachment to Mary Crawford at risk."

I said nothing else about Bertram. What, pray tell, does this have to do with economics or inheritance? In order to make myself absolutely clear, I will quote from the text. This from the passage in which Fanny was going up to her room to dress for the ball that Sir Thomas was about to hold in her honor. She met Edmund who had been waiting in hopes of talking to her. He had just returned from the parish hall where he had asked for the first two dances with Mary, the wish had been granted but

" '...she says it is to be the last time that she will ever dance with me. She is not serious, I think, I hope, I am sure she is not serious--but I would rather not hear it. She has never danced with a clergyman she says and she never will. ...' "

It was a joke - a cruel joke, but a joke that carried a message. Fanny tried to console Edmund but encouraged him not to say too much, say things that he may later regret of having said about a wife.

" 'you are all considerate thought!--But it is unnecessary here. The time will never come. No such time as you allude to will ever come. I begin to think it most improbable; the chances grow less and less. ...' "

So, you see no sense of sacrifice here, eh? Sacrifice can only have a monitary interpretation, can it?

I confess though, that you are right about one thing.

Dear Sir,

You could have had the grace to protect me, given the immense stress I am under, what with the boxer shorts and all.  This (wonderful, finally!) discussion harks back to the query regarding clergymen in Jane Austen's time, which was looking to explore the role and the status of the clergyman in Jane Austen's England.  We are probably shouting at each other over a huge cultural gulf on this point, as I am told that the culture of the United States largely originated and developed from a search for religious freedom.  This is a concept, and a way of thinking, simply unknown in Australia, so I am unable to see the issue as you do. As I see it, however, Edmund Bertram never for one minute considered abandoning his profession in order to marry Mary Crawford; his choice of profession was made for him, I suspect, before he could walk or talk, and was his means of gaining an income from his family's estates (Sir Thomas himself points out to Tom that if he can do anything in the future to increase Edmund's income, it would be no more than his duty).  In other words, Edmund did not see himself as having options:  either Mary married him as he was, or she did not:  at no time in the novel does Edmund, or his creator, imply that Edmund views his career as a 'sacrifice 'But in order to see this situation clearly, we must be able to see the social structure of the time in its context: Edmund's taking orders was a method by which he was enabled to derive income from the family estates.  Miss Ward obtained her livelihood from the family estates when she found herself 'obliged to be attached' to Mr Norris, who held his old friend's, Sir Thomas Bertram's, living at Mansfield.

In Mansfield Park, Jane Austen is examining issues that were to lead to huge social upheaval in the years following her death  but at the time of writing, Mansfield Park gives us a glimpse of the intricate weave of patronage and influence, that determined the fate of many a younger son.

Edmund did not make any 'sacrifices', because Edmund had no choices to make: in order to take any share in the family wealth, he was obliged to be a clergyman.  Sir Thomas' interests in other areas is acknowledged to be limited, as we see when William's promotion is celebrated, and interest and influence counted for a great deal at that time - General Tilney's eldest son was not a Captain by accident!  George Wickham's career reinforces this point:  his patron, the late Mr Darcy, having no younger son of his own, and a great affection for his steward, is willing to bestow a living that is within his gift on young George - and the man was a fool not to take it, really.  Religion had nothing to do with it, at that time:  the Evangelical movement was a popular revolt against that system. So, perhaps, we are quibbling about concepts.  If your contention is that Edmund Bertram made sacrifices by becoming a clergyman, then perhaps we should consider by what means he would have supported a wife had he not taken orders?  And I don't think he would have relished the prospect of being 'Mrs Crawford'.
Julie

From the Meister: OK, so I did the editing, now you have
to tell everyone about the boxer shorts and the jellybeans!

Dear Ashton,

Oooh! oooh! my birthday too! 29th December. Send no flowers, just money.

Here, for the truly anal retentive, is a list of all the members of Jane Austen's family, close and distant, that I know were born in December.

Dear Ashton,

Thanks for the tip about Persuasion. We both have seen it a couple of times, and, to be truthful, I think I enjoyed it a bit more than Mrs. P. As a matter of fact, one of the things I liked about it was the actor who played Wentworth. He's no pretty boy, for sure, but he's no Marty Feldman either. I thought he did a very good job in that role.

I think you're right about the English cultivating their actors differently. What I've noticed is that the English actors seem to engage in more trans-media work. They move from stage to television to film. Here it seems quite the opposite. For whatever reason American actors seem to get trapped like flies in amber in whatever media they first become known in. So film and television actors don't seem to get a whole lot of experience in really acting and having to memorize lengthy dialog. Also, the American movie industry is blockbuster oriented and I could go on about that forever, but will spare you and everyone else a foam mouthed rant.

I'm glad you didn't set this site up as a Jennifer Ehle fan site. She's a lovely woman, but when I start to get enamored of a actress I remember a line from Rosencrantz and Gildenstern are Dead that was said by the Player King, "We're not people! We're actors!"

I want to take this opportunity to wish you and all concerned a Happy Thanksgiving.

From the Meister: Thanks Dave,
and the very best to you and yours.

Dear Anielka,

If you read an unabridged version of Clarissa I personally will nominate you for sainthood.  I slogged through a 600-some odd page version (or perhaps it just felt like it), but it is not better than Pamela, which is superior for its brevity.

You are right, of course, JA loved Richardson.  She didn’t have herself to read, however, (huh?) or she did, but it must have been more work for her than pleasure, since she would most likely have been editing at the time.  Anyway, she is by far the superior writer.  But I must admit you will discover some wheat among the chaff.  I speak of Lovelace.  A finer rogue you’ll never meet.  Even Wickham does not stoop to the depths of that cruel man.  But Wickham, you will see, is not such a flat character as those devised by Richardson.  Sigh.  I must stop bashing the man.  He is (I’m digging. . ., I’m digging . . .), he is a master of the epistolary novel, and he has invented some very unique and clever ways of letting the correspondence continue under the direst situations (you have already seen how his friend Henry has played with that).  But after you have done with him, do continue your programme, move on to greener pastures and have a Fielding day with Joseph Andrews. I couldn’t recommend a sweeter spoonful of sugar for the medicine you are about to take.

Ashton:  I’d love to chat, but I’m just on my way out . . . to buy some paste.  I’m stocking up for Y2K.  Do you realize, you numbers guys, that last Friday was the last day for 1100 years that we will be able to use all odd digits to write it out?  11/19/1999.  Next is 1/1/3111.  To celebrate, I wrote up a list of things you can do with an odd digit.  The Squire had some great ideas, but I’ll spare you.

Dear Ashton,

May I remind everyone that Patricia Rozema specifically denied that there was anything homo-erotic in Mansfield Park, the film festival event. She said that her characters were straight. She implied or said that the characters in Austen were straight. What she said was straight. It is a straight story. As in undeviatingly upright. I am going straight to the cinematic film movie house to see with my own eyes and ears just what rot Rozema has wrought. In a few weeks. And then I intend to come straight back to this computer and write some straight talk about what I expect from my straight reading so far to be a straight-forward attempt to put Austen's story onto the big screen without resorting to Swedish film techniques. And if Rozema has thrown a few curves at us This is New? in a film about pretty young women? and furthermore Newton said that both curves and warps are what you get in anything straight in a universe filled with gravitation. That is the straight of it.

Within the past week, Ashton, some of the same people who gave us 1999 as something that was not the antepenultimate year in the anno domines are now saying that what they had been meaning all along was that the spending in 1999 had not been executed in order to celebrate the end of the second millennium, no,no, dear me, no but but to lead up to January 1, 2000, when we will get out into the wherevers into order to carouse and cavort for the entire year 2000 until the Third Millennium, trumpets and organs, begins on January 1, 2001. I think that they are saying straight to us that they have not been straight with us.

Dear Anielka,

When it comes to plots, it was common to use whatever was available. Shakespeare, for example, wrote only one original play, The Tempest. Some may argue that Macbeth is a Shakespearean invention, but he used at least two stories to create this piece of flattery of James I and libel of the very good King Macbeth whose 16-year rule was happy for his subjects. (His subjects did not include those clanns related to the great Clann Donald) If you place your copy of Julius Caesar beside North's translation of Plutarch's Lives of Certain Imminent Greeks and Romans, you may be astounded that except that North is prose and Shakespeare poetry they are nearly exactly alike. Amazing good. Years ago, the scholars were tooth and nail about which version or versions Shakespeare used for Hamlet. But there was no talk of theft or plagiarism. How many thousands of times have writers ripped off Jane Austen without so much as a "from a chapter by Jane Austen".

And that in days when intellectual property is considered of at least citation value even after copyright laws have run their course.

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