Here is the video that showed on Nightline last night “Oh Mr. Darcy! Jane Austen Super Fans” – where the camera takes us through various Jane Austen events with costumed, tea-drinking fans, as well as numerous film clips of our favorite Mr. Darcys in all manner of steamy situations …
The reporters hit the JASNA AGM in Minneapolis, a Jane Austen group in Pasadena, and our very own Governor’s House in Hyde Park, Vermont which makes a grand showing, fabulous for Innkeeper Suzanne!
Another book to be added to your wish list, due out early December!
Jane Austen and the Arts: Elegance, Propriety, and Harmony
Edited by Natasha Duquette and Elisabeth Lenckos.
Lehigh U P / Rowman & Littlefield, 2013
What makes this book so special to JASNA-Vermont is that one of the chapters is by our founding member Kelly McDonald! – see chapter 2 in the table of contents below, and her blog post on it here. Congratulations Kelly!
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About the book, from the Rowman & Littlefield website:
Contributions by Jessica Brown; Diane N. Capitani; Christine Colón; Alice Davenport; Deborah Kennedy; Kathryn L. Libin; Kelly McDonald; Belisa Monteiro; Jeffrey Nigro; J. Russell Perkin; Erin J. Smith; Vivasvan Soni; Melora G. Vandersluis and Frederick A. Duquette.
The essays collected in Jane Austen and the Arts; Elegance, Propriety, and Harmony examine Austen’s understanding of the arts, her aesthetic philosophy, and her role as artist. Together, they explore Austen’s connections with Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Madame de Staël, Joanna Baillie, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck, and other writers engaged in debates on the sensuous experience and the intellectual judgment of art. Our contributors look at Austen’s engagement with diverse art forms, painting, ballet, drama, poetry, and music, investigating our topic within historically grounded and theoretically nuanced essays. They represent Austen as a writer-thinker reflecting on the nature and practice of artistic creation and considering the social, moral, psychological, and theological functions of art in her fiction. We suggest that Austen knew, modified, and transformed the dominant aesthetic discourses of her era, at times ironically, to her own artistic ends. As a result, a new, and compelling image of Austen emerges, a “portrait of a lady artist” confidently promoting her own distinctly post-enlightenment aesthetic system.
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Table of Contents:
Preface: Jane Austen’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment by Vivasvan Soni
Introduction by Natasha Duquette and Elisabeth Lenckos
I. The Fine Arts in Austen’s World: Music, Dance, and Portraiture
Ch 1. “Daily Practice, Musical Accomplishment, and the Example of Jane Austen” – Kathryn Libin
Ch 2.”A ‘Reputation for Accomplishment’: Marianne Dashwood and Emma Woodhouse as Artistic Performers” – Kelly McDonald
Ch 3. “Miss Bingley’s Walk: The Aesthetics of Movement in Pride and Prejudice” – Erin Smith
Ch 4. “The Sister Artist: Cassandra Austen’s Portraits of Jane Austen in Art-Historical Context” – Jeffrey Nigro
II. Austen and Romanticism: Female Genius, Gothicism, and Sublimity
Ch 5 – “Portrait of a Lady (Artist): Jane Austen’s Anne Elliot, Madame de Staël’s Corrine, and the Woman of Genius Novel” – Elisabeth Lenckos
Ch 6 – “Jane Austen’s Comic Heroines and the Controversial Pleasures of Wit” – Belisa Monteiro
Ch 7 – “An Adaptable Aesthetic: Eighteenth-Century Landscapes, Ann Radcliffe, and Jane Austen” – Alice Davenport
Ch 8. “Exploring the Transformative Power of Literature: Joanna Baillie, Jane Austen and the Aesthetics of Moral Reform” – Christine Colón
Ch 9. “Jane Austen’s Influence on Stephenie Meyer” – Deborah Kennedy
III. Austen in Political, Social, and Theological Context
Ch 10. “Aesthetics, Politics, and the Interpretation of Mansfield Park” – Russell Perkin
Ch 11. “Reflections on Mirrors: Austen, Rousseau, and Socio-Politics” – Melora Vandersluis
Ch 12. “‘So much novelty and beauty!’: Spacious Reception through an Aesthetic of Restraint in Persuasion” – Jessica Brown
Ch 13. “Augustinian Aesthetics in Jane Austen’s World: God as Artist” – Diane Capitani
Ch 14. “‘Delicacy of Taste’ Redeemed: The Aesthetic Judgments of Austen’s Clergymen Heroes” – Fred and Natasha Duquette
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Due out in December, you can pre-order the book here – the ebook will be available this month for a penny less!
978-1-61146-137-4 • Hardback -December 2013 • $80.00 • (£49.95)
978-1-61146-138-1 • eBook – November 2013 • $79.99 • (£49.95)
You can also pre-order it here for a little less at Amazon.
[Text and image from the Rowman website]
Opening today! ~ “Georgians Revealed: Life, Style and the Making of Modern Britain” – 8 November – 11 March 2014 at the British Library
I.R. and G. Cruikshank. ‘Tom & Jerry at a Coffee Shop near the Olympic’ – Pierce Egan, Life in London (London, 1823).
Tasteful and polite, or riotous and pleasure-obsessed? Discover the Georgians as they really were, through the objects that tell the stories of their lives.
From beautifully furnished homes to raucous gambling dens, Georgians Revealed explores the revolution in everyday life that took place between 1714 and 1830. Cities and towns were transformed. Taking tea, reading magazines, gardening and shopping for leisure were commonplace, and conspicuous consumption became the pastime of the emerging middle classes.
Popular culture as we know it began, and with it the unstoppable rise of fashion and celebrity. Art galleries, museums and charities were founded. In this time of incredible innovation, ideas were endlessly debated in the new coffee houses and spread via the information highway that was mass print.
Drawing on the British Library’s uniquely rich and rare collections of illustrated books, newspapers, maps and advertisements, as well as loaned artworks and artifacts, “Georgians Revealed” brings to life the trials and triumphs of the ordinary people who transformed Britain forever.
See this link for a short video on the exhibition by curator Moira Goff.
And check out the online shop where all manner of Georgian -related treasures are for sale, as well as a catalogue of the exhibition, another must-have for your Jane Austen collection!
Rocque map of London fan, £8
A beautiful wooden fan, featuring a historic map created by John Rocque.
The fan has been created exclusively for the British Library. Wood/ canvas.
[Images and text from the British Library website]
If you are into your holiday shopping early, or compiling your own wish-list, here is a fine start: a must-have for your Jane Austen collection: the Folio Society’s latest edition of Pride and Prejudice, 2013.
“I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.”
One of the world’s favourite books, Pride and Prejudice has long been regarded as a classic romance. In Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, Jane Austen created the greatest pair of sparring lovers since Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedick. This sparkling comedy of manners features an inimitable cast of characters including the obsequious Mr Collins, the autocratic Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and Mrs Bennet, the most embarrassing mother in literature.
The award-winning Balbusso twins have contributed eight exquisite illustrations to this edition, as well as a striking cover design. The novel’s celebrated first line is blocked in gold on the slipcase. In a new introduction, the author Sebastian Faulks praises ‘a novel of almost boundless wit and charm that has withstood film and television adaptations and attempts to define it as a “fairy tale” or a “rom-com”.’
[Pride and Prejudice (Folio, 2013): image from the Balbusso website]
Details:
[Text from the Folio Society Website]
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c2013, Jane Austen in VermontUPDATE: Prices Realized added as available, includes buyer’s premium
There is much going on with Jane Austen and the Auction Block in the next month! – just this past week, Gorringes at their October 23, 2013 Fine Art, Antiques & Collectables auction – Sale LOCT13, had this on offer: Estimate £2,000-3,000. SOLD for £11,000 !
Lot 1454:
Austen, Jane. An autograph manuscript fragment, comprising four lines, attached to another leaf bearing authentication, in turn attached to a letter from her nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh, written on paper bearing watermark date 1868, at Bray Vicarage, February 7, 1870, presenting the fragment to Rev. G. C. Berkeley: ‘Men may get into the habit of repeating the words of our Prayers by rote, perhaps without thoroughly understanding – certainly without thoroughly feeling their full force and meaning.’ All attached to the title page of a copy of Austen-Leigh’s ‘A Memoir of Jane Austen…’ fragment approximately 1.75 x 6in.
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Upcoming auctions: an abundance of Austen, Austen’s Circle, and Regency-era prints – I include various items because they are too wonderful not to share, but please visit each auction house site to see the “infinite variety” of offerings:
Bloomsbury: 7 November 2013. Library of a Gentleman: Fine Colour Plate, Costume, Travel and Sporting Books. London.
This auction is filled with Ackerman, Rowlandson, Cruickshank, Gillray and others! – here are a few examples, but go have a look at this treasure-trove for a Gentleman OR a Lady!
Lot 1:
Ackermann’s London – “Billingsgate Market”
Ackermann, (Rudolph). Microcosm of London.
3 vol., first edition, early issue with several of Abbey’s 12 “key plates” in first state (nos.1, 5, 8, 10, 11 & 18 and possibly 9), lacking half-titles, with wood-engraved pictorial titles, engraved dedication leaves, 104 hand-coloured aquatint plates after Rowlandson and Pugin, offsetting from plates but plates generally clean, some text leaves in vol.1 browned, handsome contemporary diced russia with elaborate gilt borders and cornerpieces, by C.Hering with his ticket, g.e., rebacked preserving old gilt spines, later cloth slip-cases edged in morocco, [Abbey Scenery 212; Tooley 7], 4to, [1808-10].
Early issue bound from the original parts, watermarked 1806-07 and with all the 13 errata at end of vol.3 uncorrected and the Contents leaf in vol.1 headed “Contents”. However, the imprint of the wood-engraved title to vol.2 does not have a comma after “Bensley” but that in vol.1 does.
Estimate: £3,000 – £5,000; Starting Bid £2,600 – Sold for £4464
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Lot 2:
“Foppish Attitudes” from The Busy Body, or Men and Manners
[Agg (John)] The Busy Body, or Men and Manners, edited by Humphrey Hedgehog, vol.1 & 2 only (parts 1-12), 11 hand-coloured aquatint plates by Williams, a little browning and offsetting, later tan calf, gilt, by Rivière & Son, spines gilt, g.e., spines chipped at head, joints split with covers becoming loose, 8vo, J.Johnston, 1816-17.
Estimate £200 – £300; starting Bid £180 – Sold for £211
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Lot 3:
“Driving Discoveries”
[Alken (Henry)] – the set of 7 hand-coloured etchings by Henry Alken, very slight marginal soiling, bookplates of William Henry Smith, Viscount Hambleden and George Seton Veitch, handsome later scarlet morocco, by Rivière & Son, covers with gilt border and upper cover titled and dated in gilt, spine gilt in compartments with five raised bands, g.e., corners very slightly rubbed, an excellent copy, [Siltzer pp.57 & 69; Tooley 25], oblong 4to, S. & J.Fuller, 1817 [watermarked 1821].
Estimate: £600 – £800; starting Bid £500 – Sold for £1364
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Lot 37:
[Burney (Fanny)] Evelina: or Female Life in London: being the History of a Young Lady’s Introduction to Fashionable Life, and the Gay Scenes of the Metropolis, hand-coloured engraved additional pictorial title and 6 plates after W.Heath, all but one aquatints, most offset onto text, some browning, bookplates of Charles C.Auchinloss and Hon.John Wayland Leslie, contemporary mottled calf, gilt, spine gilt with red morocco label, small gouge to lower cover, preserved in later red silk folder (a little rubbed and faded), red morocco slip-case (slightly darkened at edges), [Tooley 119], 8vo, 1822.
⁂ ***Originally published in 1778 under the title Evelina, or, A Young Lady’s Entrance into the World but reissued with this title following the popularity of Egan’s Life in London..
Estimate £200 – £300; starting Bid £180 – Sold for £496
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Lot 267:
Dacre (Charlotte). The School for Friends, a Domestic Tale, first edition, hand-coloured etched frontispiece and vignette title by Thomas Rowlandson, 12pp. text, lightly soiled and stained, stitched in original blue wrappers with paper label on upper wrapper, uncut, slightly soiled, preserved in later cloth portfolio and morocco-backed cloth slip-case, spine faded, 8vo, Thomas Tegg, [c.1800].
One copy only listed on COPAC, in the National Library of Scotland..
Estimate: £200 – £300; starting bid £180 – Sold for £3968
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Lot 274:
Rowlandson: “A Stag at Bay”
Rowlandson, Thomas. Miseries of Human Life”
Hand-coloured etched title and 50 plates by Thomas Rowlandson, without the rare ‘Pall Mall’ plate but replaced with ‘The Chiropodist’ as often and with an additional plate ‘The Enraged Vicar’ (signed and dated in plate 1805), otherwise with all plates as listed in the Abbey copy, light foxing, mostly marginal but affecting a few images, ex-library copy with bookplate and ink accession number to lower margin of first plate (otherwise unstamped), later olive morocco, gilt, by Rivière & Son, spine gilt, t.e.g., rather faded and a little rubbed, covers warped, upper joint repaired, [Abbey, Life 317], 4to, R. Ackermann, [1808].
Estimate: £500 – £700; Starting Bid £440 – Sold for £1054
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Lot 279:
[Collier (Jane)] An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting.
Half-title, folding etched frontispiece and 4 plates by Rowlandson after G.M.Woodward, all hand-coloured, frontispiece with short tear repaired, text browned, later tan calf, gilt, spine gilt, t.e.g., others uncut, a little rubbed, upper joint split, 12mo, 1808.
Estimate: £100 – £150; Starting Bid £90 – Sold for £112
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Lot 288:
Rowlandson: “Doctor Syntax and Bookseller”
[Combe (William)] The Tour of Doctor Syntax, in Search of the Picturesque. A Poem.
First edition, second issue with “Canto I”, hand-coloured aquatint frontispiece, vignette title and 29 plates by Rowlandson, 4pp. advertisements at end, old ink signature at head of title, some light browning and soiling, final leaf of text with small repair to upper inner margin, original boards, uncut, rubbed, rebacked preserving part of old paper label on spine, preserved in later red morocco drop-back box with metal catch, gilt, slightly rubbed, [Tooley 427], 8vo, [1812].
Estimate: £200 – £300; Starting Bid £180 – Sold for £496
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Lot 344:
Wilson (Harriette) – [?Heath (Henry)] Illustrations of Harriette Wilson’s Memoirs,
12 hand-coloured etched plates, 3 signed “H.H.”, c.170 x 140 or vice versa, 7 trimmed to border or just outside plate-mark and tipped into blank leaves, light soiling, one or two small tears to edge of image (repaired), engraved circular bookplate of Sir David Lionel Salomons, Bart., later dark blue morocco, gilt, by Bumpus of Oxford, spine gilt, very slightly rubbed and marked, 4to, S.W.Fores, 1825.
Estimate: £1,000 – £1,500; Starting Bid £900 – Sold for £1736
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Millea Bros. November 9, 2013. Asian, English, Modern Books
Lot 1473:
Austen, Jane. Works. London, 1925. (10) volumes, 8vo., red morocco – Condition report: overall good, bindings good, a few scuffs and nicks
Estimate: $500-700. [no price realized available]
There is no further description about this set in the auction catalogue, but it is the 1925 George Harrap reprint of the 1908-9 Chatto & Windus edition of the novels, with illustrations by A. Wallis Mills. Here is one illustration:
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Bonham’s: 12 November 2013. Books, Atlases, Manuscripts and Photographs including the Aldine Collection of the late Sir Robert Horton, London.
Lot 165:
Austen, Jane. Emma: A Novel, 3 vol., first edition, half-titles in volumes 2 and 3 only, advertisement leaf at end of volume 3, light scattered foxing, stitching becoming loose with P3-4 in volume 1 partially detached, ownership signature of “M.E. Malden” on endpapers, contemporary half calf, worn, 3 covers detached, 4 corners strengthened with vellum, spines cracked [Gilson A8], 12mo, John Murray, 1816.
Estimate: £4,000 – 6,000 (US$ 6,400 – 9,600) – Sold for £5,250 (US$ 8,435) inc. premium
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Christies: 15 November 2013. Sale 9702: Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts. London.
Lot 402:
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. London: T. Egerton, 1813. 2nd edition. 3 volumes, 12° (173 x 115mm). (Lacking half-titles, P2 at end of volume one with small marginal repair, tiny orange marginal mark to L5v of vol. II and lighter mark on a few other leaves, some spotting occasionally heavier.) Contemporary calf (rebacked, extremities lightly rubbed).
Estimate: £2,000 – £3,000 ($3,234 – $4,851) –
Sold for £2750 ($4,406)
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Lot 403:
Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey: and Persuasion… With a Biographical Notice of the Author [by Henry Austen]. London: C. Rowarth [vols I-II], and T. Davison [vols III- IV] for John Murray, 1818 [but ca. 20 December 1817]. 4 volumes, 12° (169 x 100mm). Half-titles. (Some occasional light browning and spotting, without final blanks P7-8 in vol. IV as often.) Contemporary half calf, leather gilt spine labels, speckled edges (front cover of vol. I nearly detached, front joints cracked and restored in vol. III, extremities lightly rubbed). Provenance: Maria Cipriani (ownership inscription). FIRST EDITION OF BOTH NOVELS.
Estimate: £3,000 – £5,000 ($4,851 – $8,085) – Sold for £4,750 ($7,610)
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Of interest:
Lot 148:
WOLLSTONECRAFT, Mary (1759-1797). Thoughts on the Education of Daughters with Reflections on Female Conduct, in the more important Duties of Life. London: J. Johnson, 1787. 8° (150 x 98mm). G6 a cancel as usual. (Short tear to last leaf.) Contemporary half calf (rebacked, extremities rubbed).
FIRST EDITION OF WOLLSTONECRAFT’S FIRST BOOK. Although it was an educational manual, the ‘more or less veiled remarks about her own emotional state … make it abundantly clear that she was far more interested in the state of her own life and the prospects that lay ahead of young women than in their years at school’ (Claire Tomalin, The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft, London: Pelican, 1977, pp. 58-59). GOOD COPY. Rothschild 2595.
Estimate: £1,800 – £2,500 ($2,898 – $4,025) – Sold for £3,750 ($6,008)
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Christies: 20 November 2013. Sale 1160. Valuable Manuscripts and Printed Books. London.
Lot 84:
[AUSTEN, Jane (1775-1817).] Mansfield Park: A Novel… By the Author of “Sense and Sensibility,” and “Pride and Prejudice.” London: T. Egerton, 1814.
FIRST EDITION. 3 volumes, 12° (176 x 102mm). Half-titles. (Lacking blank O4 in volume II and advertisement leaf in volume III, occasional faint spotting.) Contemporary calf, flat spines with compartments ruled in gilt, green morocco gilt spine labels to second compartments, the others tooled in blind, speckled edges (extremities very lightly rubbed).
Estimate: £4,000 – £6,000 ($6,484 – $9,726) – Sold for £13,750 ($22,138)
Lot 85: (another one!)
[AUSTEN, Jane (1775-1817).] Northanger Abbey: and Persuasion … With a Biographical Notice of the Author [by Henry Austen]. London: C. Rowarth [vols I-II], and T. Davison [vols III- IV] for John Murray, 1818 [but c. 20 December 1817].
4 volumes, 12° (177 x 103mm). Half-titles. (Some occasional light spotting, without final blanks P7-8 in vol. IV.) Contemporary calf, tan morocco gilt spine labels, speckled edges (extremities lightly rubbed, spines more heavily). Provenance: Baroness Keith of Meiklour House (bookplates). 1st edition of both novels.
Estimate: £4,000 – £6,000 ($6,484 – $9,726) – Sold for £7,500 ($12,075)
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Also of interest at this auction:
Lot 124:
JOHNSON, Samuel (1709-1784). A Dictionary of the English Language in which the words are deduced from their originals, and illustrated in their different significations by examples from the best writers. London: W. Strahan for J. and P. Knapton [and others], 1755.
FIRST EDITION. 2 volumes, 2° (405 x 250mm). Titles in red and black, woodcut tail-pieces. (The first title with repaired losses and tears affecting some letters, the titles and a few leaves repaired in the inside margin, some marginal tears and some of these repaired, occasional mostly marginal soiling and spotting, faint dampstain in the margins of some leaves in vol. II.) Contemporary calf (neatly rebacked to style, corners repaired, sides scuffed). Provenance: David Tennant (title signature, some marginalia including on the verso of second title) — Stewart of Glasserton (bookplate).
Estimate: £5,000 – £8,000 ($8,105 – $12,968) – Not Sold
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All images are from each of the auction house websites, as cited.
Happy browsing!
“If adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village,
she must seek them abroad…”
-Jane Austen in Northanger Abbey
Alas! without a Mrs. Allen to squire me about or offer much-needed fashion advice, nor a Henry Tilney awaiting me in the wings, I head off for another adventure at the JASNA Annual Meeting – this year in Minneapolis, in celebration of the bicentenary of Pride & Prejudice.
I promise reporting and pictures upon my return – there is never time to post during the conference, what with lectures, and field trips, and Tea, and Balls and Emporiums, one has not a moment to reflect until on the plane returning home – so I will offer various musings on the event next week … I will try to facebook and/or Twitter if I can [but no promises!] so check both for updates:
[ Pride and Prejudice ~ Limited Editions Club (1940) ~ illus. Helen Sewell ]
Dear Readers: I welcome today Ron Dunning, who wrote here last year about his “Akin to Jane” website – today he shares with us an article he wrote for the Huguenots of Spitalfields newsletter “Strangers” – here expanded somewhat and with pictures – and see how Jane Austen connects to various families and traditions of Spitalfields life in London.
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[View looking down Brushfield Street toward Christ Church, Spitalfields – image from HofS facebook page, from Bishopsgate Institute]
To have lived in London for the past 40 years has been an immense pleasure. Now I’ve discovered a new one, and that is to be retired in London. I’ve always loved to explore, but was only able to appreciate the various parts of town for their ambience. Now there’s time to appreciate them more deeply, to learn about their associations with history, about interesting residents. Many have passed out of fashion and been built over – in which case there’s only the odd surviving building to stimulate the imagination – but in other areas, where the faded charm is obvious and where their economic value has not been great enough to attract the redevelopers, new residents have moved in to restore houses and revive the life of the community.
[Rooftops of Spitalfields, formerly the workrooms of the silk weavers and now gentrified – c Jeremy Freedman]
One such area that I’ve come to know much better is Spitalfields, just to the east of London’s old city walls. Its development by speculative builders was begun in the early 1700s, as a new suburb. Huguenot refugees from France and the Low Countries soon settled there, particularly those involved in the silk fabric trade. They brought their skills and their contacts from the continent and quickly restored their prosperity. Some 150 years later the mechanising of weaving, relaxation of tariffs on imports from France, and robust trade with China destroyed the Spitalfields silk trade.
[Image from the Huguenots of Spitalfields Facebook page]
The houses had aged by the mid-19th century too, and to some extent Spitalfields became a slum, housing successive waves of immigrants – who each moved on once they became prosperous. By the 1970s, when the latest wave of new arrivals to the poorer streets was Bengali, city redevelopment was threatening to overtake it. Just in the nick of time young artists discovered the antique charm of the weavers’ houses, which could be bought for a pittance. They are now worth over £1,000,000.
I’ve been researching the Austen pedigree for long enough that it’s possible to link her family with almost anyone. Though the worlds of the Huguenots and of Jane Austen would seem almost to inhabit separate universes, a surprising number of Huguenot families had close connections with hers. I’ve made a list of the most notable.
Anyone who has read Jon Spence’s book, Becoming Jane Austen (or seen the film Becoming Jane), will recognise the name of Lefroy. Antoine Loffroy, a native of Cambray, took refuge in England from religious persecution in the Low Countries in about 1587, and settled at Canterbury, where he and his family engaged in the business of silk dyeing. His descendant Tom Lefroy was the one young man with whom Jane was said to be truly in love. Tom at that point didn’t have an income with which to support a wife, and was quickly bundled off by his elders and betters. He rose eventually to become the Chief Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench in Ireland and, at the end of his life, remembered Jane with great affection. Ben Lefroy, from a later generation, did marry an Austen – one of Jane’s favourite nieces, Jane Anna Elizabeth.
The Portals were an ancient and noble Protestant family of Toulouse who stood firmly by the faith of their fathers, and several of them suffered death rather than recant it. They were among the Huguenots who introduced the art of fine paper making to England – Henry Portal established a mill at Laverstoke, on the River Itchen in Hampshire. He achieved such a reputation that the Bank of England awarded him the contract to produce bank notes. Living in Hampshire, the Portals had extensive social contacts with the Austens. Adela Portal married Jane’s nephew Edward Knight, while her sister Caroline married Edward’s brother William.
The Chenevixes were another distinguished family of Protestants, this time from Lorraine, who fled after the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. One branch settled in Ireland, and were much attracted to the military and clerical professions. Melesina Chenevix, the poet and diarist, and granddaughter of Richard Chenevix, the Anglican Bishop of Waterford and of Lismore, was the ancestor of a number of people linked to the Austen pedigree. Melesina had married Richard Trench – the de la Tranches were yet another family who had taken refuge in England shortly after the massacre of St. Bartholomew – and their descendants assumed the double-barrelled surname of Chenevix-Trench. Their granddaughter Melesina Mary Chenevix-Trench married Chomley Austen-Leigh, Jane’s great nephew. Melesina Mary’s sister Helen Emily married Arthur Blundell George Sandys Hill, another great nephew. Their brother Charles married Emily Mary Lefroy, a cousin of Tom Lefroy. Their cousin Melesina Gladys, as well as being the mother of the famous editor of the Daily Telegraph, Bill Deedes, was the grandmother of FitzWalter Plumptre, the Baron FitzWalter – who can also trace his pedigree to the family of Eleanor Bridges, the wife of Jane’s brother Edward. Lord FitzWalter still lives at Goodnestone, the seat of the Bridges family, where Edward and Eleanor lived before they could move into Godmersham.
David Papillon, the first of his family to settle in England, had been sent with his mother and siblings by his father, to escape persecution. They were shipwrecked while crossing the English Channel, and his mother drowned. The story of the mingling of genes between David’s descendants and the Austens, through the Brodnaxes, is a bit too obscure to tell here, but one of them featured in Jane’s life – the Rev John Rawstorne Papillon. The living of Chawton parish was offered to him; should he decline, it was then to pass to Jane’s brother Henry. John did take it and became the rector of the village in which Jane lived during her final years. There is a neat bracketing of Huguenot suitors for her hand, from the beginning and the end of her adult life – Mrs Knight, the widow of Thomas Brodnax and elderly benefactor of both the Austens and the Papillons, suggested that the Rev John, a life-long bachelor, would make a suitable husband. With characteristic irony Jane remarked in a note to her sister: ‘I am very much obliged to Mrs Knight for such a proof of the interest she takes in me – & she may depend upon it, that I will marry Mr Papillon, whatever may be his reluctance or my own – I owe her much more than such a trifling sacrifice.’
I could end this essay here, but want to mention another resonance between the Huguenots and the Austens, and to return Spitalfields to the fore. Jane’s paternal ancestors, going back three generations and further, were clothiers of Kent – staunchly Protestant, fiercely independent, wool and woollen fabric merchants. The organisation of their business was very similar to that of the silk merchants in London. I was struck, while gazing up to the roofs of Spitalfields, by a parallel. In both industries labour was organised by narrowly demarcated skills, and in both the weavers’ workplace was accommodated on the top floor of merchant’s houses. I was seized by a vivid impression of crabbed men and no doubt women, in both London and Kent, toiling for 14 hours a day in those garrets for a pittance!
[Grovehurst House: one of the Austen houses at Horsmonden in Kent, which dates in parts from the 14th century – I was struck by the resonance between Spitalfields and the Kentish Austens – they were clothiers, and their industry in wool was structured much like silk weaving in London. My understanding is that the weavers worked in the loft of this house.]
[Initials of John (Iohannes, presumably) Austen, over the middle window upstairs, cRon Dunning]
[Another Austen house (Broadford) at Horsmonden, Kent where the weavers laboured on the top floor]
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A brief history of the Huguenots
The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572 was a targeted group of assassinations, followed by a wave of Roman Catholic mob violence, directed against the French Calvinist Protestants (known as Huguenots) during France’s Wars of Religion. The Edict of Nantes, issued on 13 April 1598 by King Henry IV of France, granted them substantial rights in the interest of civil unity. In October 1685 Louis XIV, Henry IV’s grandson, revoked the Edict of Nantes with the Edict of Fontainebleau, and declared Protestantism illegal. As many as 400,000 Protestants chose to leave France, moving to Great Britain, Prussia, the Dutch Republic, Switzerland, South Africa, and the new French colonies in North America. This exodus deprived France of many of its most skilled and industrious individuals.
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Links and attributions, with thanks to all!
Breaking Jane Austen News!
From The Argus [Surrey, UK]:
Visitors to a new Worthing housing estate are in for a literary experience.
Three streets at the Barratt Homes development, The Fieldings have been given names connected to celebrated author Jane Austen.
[Image from the Barratt Homes website]
Austen found inspiration for many scenes and characters in her final and unfinished novel Sanditon when she visited the town in 1805.
Members of the Jane Austen Society contacted Worthing Borough Council calling for a street name in the town for the author. [it is the JAS-Midlands Branch that spearheaded this effort under the leadership of Chris Sandrawich.]
Barratt Homes have now unveiled the street names as Austen Gate, Sanditon Way and Chawton Gate on the estate. [There is also a block of flats called Mansfield Court.]
Society members and descendants of the author gathered in Worthing to mark the unveiling.
Barratt southern counties sales director Lynnette St Quintin said: “Where we build new homes and create new communities, it is important they are reflective of local history. The Worthing connection with Jane Austen is certainly one for everyone to be proud of.”
[Source: http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/10667516.Jane_Austen_gives_inspiration_to_Worthing_roads/]
One wonders with “The Fieldings” so named if there might also be a Joseph Andrews Avenue or a Tom Jones Junction, or how about Bow Street Runners Boulevard … even Jane Austen would like that I think!
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You might recall last year’s efforts regarding the Library Passage in Worthing: this street naming is a partial result of the JAS’s hopes to have some recognition of Jane Austen in the area. There is more to come in a future post from Chris Sandrawich, so stay-tuned, and on your next trek to England be sure to put Worthing on your itinerary; better yet, buy a home here at Chawton Gate!
I most fortunately stumbled upon this book My Mr. Darcys when searching for another Austen title and found the bookseller had this title as well – but alas! no available copies. So I went straight to the source and found not only this but other delightful books from the Boston-based book artist Laura Davidson – we got into a conversation about what inspired her to create this miniature book [4 ¼” x 3”] about the various Mr. Darcys in film:
LD: My Mr. Darcys: An Appreciation (2009) is a tribute to the many actors who have played the role of Mr. Darcy in Pride & Prejudice adaptations. It includes portrait miniatures of six actors along with text from each film. It is especially made for the true Austenite.
There are 500 copies, each signed and numbered. $28.00
When I was doing research for this book, I had to re-watch all of the films, taking notes about which line would work with each painted miniature of the actors. This was easier than one might think, and also really fun. When it came to the text on the back of my book, I knew which line from P&P I wanted to use, but had no idea where to find it quickly. I phoned my older sister Paula, a devoted Austenite and the one who introduced me to Jane originally. She was driving, pulled off the road, and reached into the side pocket of the passenger door to pull out her emergency copy of P&P and found the passage for me right away. At the time – I was amused by this. But now, of course, I carry an emergency copy of P&P on my phone (along with Persuasion). [Ed. I am not going to tell you which passage Laura chose for the back of the book – you will just have to buy your own copy to find out! – but what passage do you think she might have chosen?]
JAIV: Why did you feel compelled to do this book – you refer to your sister being an “Austenite” – are you as well?
LD: At the time, my sister and I were talking quite often about the various adaptations of Pride and Prejudice and it occurred to me that there must be women everywhere having the same conversations and comparing Darcys. I’m a book artist, and much of my work is making visual lists, drawing everyday items, familiar yet very personal things. My work often reflects my passion for art history, maps and architecture. My Mr. Darcys was a bit out of the blue. I don’t really know how it came into my mind to do the book exactly, but once the seed was planted there was no turning back. I like that a book a woman wrote 200 years ago still resonates today and inspires artists, writers, and filmmakers to keep the characters alive. So, I would say that yes, I am an Austenite.
JAIV: Which of the novels do you like the best?
LD: Persuasion. I adore Anne Elliot, because she always knew her own heart even though she was afraid to follow it.
JAIV: Which adaptation do you like the best?
LD: I love the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. I think it was perfectly cast. Of all the Austen adaptations I’ve seen though, the Persuasion from 1995 is my favorite. Watching it is like comfort food to me.
JAIV: And which Mr. Darcy is your favorite, and why?
LD: Laurence Olivier was in the first “Hollywoodized” version which was terribly cast, except for him. He played Darcy’s imperiousness beautifully, but the compromised ending let him down.
Colin Firth was absolutely perfect in the role, getting the arrogance right, but showing the vulnerability beneath. Plus, all the Darcys that came after were a direct result of his performance, and that of the rest of the cast. If he hadn’t had the charm and charisma to pull off the Darcy character, I doubt any of the other adaptations would have been made.
So, Colin Firth, to me, is the definitive Mr. Darcy. And we can’t forget the lake scene…!
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So fellow Darcy fans, this is must have book – know that some of you like David Rintoul the best from the 1980 BBC production – he is, sorry to say not in this book – but everyone else is, each with an appropriate quote that sums up his character best… it is small, doesn’t take up much shelf space, but I think you will choose to display it in a prominent place somewhere as a centerpiece to your Austen collection.
What else I had to buy: for an obsessed Red-Sox Fan! [and a best friend, even though I am, dare I say it, a Yankee Fan…]
Fenway Park Tunnel Book: This tunnel book shows a view of Fenway Park and the skyline of Boston. The images were painted, then offset printed, laser cut and pieced together by hand. Each copy is signed.
2007, 2008; 2nd edition (with 2007 world championship flag); 6.5 x 8 and 3/16 inches, 6 two-sided pages; $38.
I bought another book but as it is a gift for a friend that I have not yet given it to, I must wait – but will say it has something to do with Birds!
And what book-loving person would not require this:
Block Prints: Read Art
2012, 10 x 14” hand printed on Kitakata rice paper, two colors. One small print on a book page is attached, printed in an edition of 12. Unframed $125.
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Here is Laura’s website and contact information: http://www.lauradavidson.com/ – take some time to look at her various creations – time well-spent I assure you! If you have a question or a comment for Laura, please do so here and I will pass them on to her for a response…
[all images copyright Laura Davidson and used with permission]
New issue!
The September/October issue of Jane Austen’s Regency World magazine is out now and will be mailed to subscribers this week. In it you can read about:
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To subscribe now click here: http://janeaustenmagazine.co.uk/subscribe/ – and make sure that you are among the first to read all the news from Jane Austen’s Regency World.
[Image and text from JARW Magazine: http://janeaustenmagazine.co.uk/ ]
Jane Austen in Vermont 