Literary A Memoir of Jane Austen by James Edward Austen-Leigh

[sun surfer]

This is the MR Literary Club selection for September 2016. Whether you've already read it or would like to, feel free to start or join in the conversation at any time, and guests are always welcome! So, what are your thoughts on it?

[Bookpossum]

I have finished reading it and enjoyed it very much. Even allowing for the wish of a family member to show Jane in the best possible light, she comes across as a warm, funny and loving person.

My favourite part was the document found among her papers after she died: "Plan of a novel according to hints from various quarters", which I found quite hilarious. She had a keen sense of the absurd. The warmth of her relationships with her family members is illustrated in various letters, not least in one where she teases her young nephew who has written to her from his home and in his letter told her that he had arrived there:

I am glad you recollected to mention your being come home. My heart began to sink within me when I had got so far through your letter withouts its being mentioned. I was dreadfully afraid that you might be detained at Winchester by severe illness, confined to your bed perhaps, and quite unable to hold a pen, and only dating from Steventon in order, with a mistaken sort of tenderness, to deceive me. But now I have no doubt of your being at home. I am sure you would not say it so seriously unless it actually were so.

I downloaded my copy from Gutenberg, and also a copy of a book by William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh, which I shall read in the future.

[fantasyfan]

I downloaded the Oxford edition. It has a brilliant introduction by Kathryn Sutherland and those other "Family Recollections". Sutherland puts the Memoir in its historical perspective and reminds us that one cannot expect the kind of analytical deconstruction of character that occurs in modern biography. But there is little doubt but that Austen-Leigh does try very hard to "domesticate" his aunt. And part of the problem is owing to the fact that Jane's sister, who was very close to her, destroyed all the letters in her possession which she felt might militate against Jane's image.

However, Sutherland cites an early and perceptive writer, Margaret Oliphant, who
"refuses to have any truck with Austen-Leigh's idealized portrait of a selfless spinster aunt . . ." She felt that the novelist Austen wrote "books so calm and cold and keen" that in the portrayal of human nature they were "cruel" in their "perfection".

Despite this, the Memoir does still give us some vivid glimpses of Jane Austen. She clearly inspired love in those around her and the examples cited by Bookpossum demonstrate her ironic humour so well.

[fantasyfan]

If you haven't bought that Oxford edition, you can get a substantial chunk of the great introduction by downloading a sample

[AnotherCat]

Mmmm, I will have to tread carefully here .

I just got to this 2 days ago, I had a copy of the memoire in the Delphi collection of Austen's works but had never read it. However, on the basis of the extra material in it, I got a copy of the Oxford World Classics edition. I have scanned both and taken a couple of short sessions of reading to see what I thought and I have to say that I have dumped the project of reading either.

My reasons, which are of course personal ones and not claimed to be global, are:

1) While there is much worthwhile material in Kathryn Sutherland's introduction I found it, for my liking, very poorly written for anyone not inclined to struggle through it. Frequent long clumsy sentences, sentences with quotes included in them which, in my view, would have been better set off as extracts, very long (like VERY long) paragraphs that were unnecessarily dense and having plenty of scope in them for dismembering into a more presentable read, and often poor flow or rhythm in the what reads to me as being quite ponderous prose.

It came across to me as being from an intellectual who wrote from an introverted perspective writing to please herself, rather than with an outward view having consideration for her readers' needs. If anyone wrote for me material, of the type I have had to have produced, in the manner of this book's introduction they would be sent away to rewrite it (and I myself, have been asked to rewrite my own material having such faults, but the hard lessons in that were long back now ).

2). The memoire itself I don't have any issue with (that must be a relief after the above rant ), it is what it is and what could be expected. It is of the type that is written by local or family member amateurs about the history of some aspect of every little town (my own included) or of anyone who has some sort of place in history. Local bookshops abound with them and from my own personal view they hold little interest, I preferring a more substantial read without the trivialities and with the hearsay (of which there is quite a bit in this memoire) filtered out or tested, hopefully diligently, by a later biographer using that material for whom it is undoubtedly useful.

But it has not been a waste, my interest has been piqued enough to start reading instead Claire Tomalin's Jane Austen, A Life which appears much better suited to my own preferences.

As an aside, there is an interesting chapter on Austen in Maugham's Ten Novels and Their Authors which book has been mentioned in the Maugham thread (By FantasyFan if I remember correctly?).

[Bookpossum]

Originally Posted by fantasyfan

I downloaded the Oxford edition. It has a brilliant introduction by Kathryn Sutherland and those other "Family Recollections". Sutherland puts the Memoir in its historical perspective and reminds us that one cannot expect the kind of analytical deconstruction of character that occurs in modern biography. But there is little doubt but that Austen-Leigh does try very hard to "domesticate" his aunt. And part of the problem is owing to the fact that Jane's sister, who was very close to her, destroyed all the letters in her possession which she felt might militate against Jane's image.

However, Sutherland cites an early and perceptive writer, Margaret Oliphant, who
"refuses to have any truck with Austen-Leigh's idealized portrait of a selfless spinster aunt . . ." She felt that the novelist Austen wrote "books so calm and cold and keen" that in the portrayal of human nature they were "cruel" in their "perfection".

Despite this, the Memoir does still give us some vivid glimpses of Jane Austen. She clearly inspired love in those around her and the examples cited by Bookpossum demonstrate her ironic humour so well.

I can't agree with Margaret Oliphant in using words such as cold and cruel. Austen was certainly razor sharp in her portrayals of her various characters, and their foolishness (Mrs Bennet for instance) or nastiness (Mrs Norris in Mansfield Park) is made very clear. But I see her as perceptive of human foibles and witty about them. And in Emma, she had Mr Knightley take Emma to task for her unkindness to another foolish character, Miss Bates. Here is her description of Miss Bates:

“... she had no intellectual superiority to make atonement to herself, or frighten those who might hate her into outward respect. She had never boasted either beauty or cleverness. Her youth had passed without distinction, and her middle of life was devoted to the care of a failing mother, and the endeavour to make a small income go as far as possible. And yet she was a happy woman, and a woman whom no one named without good-will. It was her own universal good-will and contented temper which worked such wonders. She loved every body, was interested in every body's happiness, quicksighted to every body's merits; thought herself a most fortunate creature, and surrounded with blessings in such an excellent mother, and so many good neighbours and friends, and a home that wanted for nothing. The simplicity and cheerfulness of her nature, her contented and grateful spirit, were a recommendation to every body, and a mine of felicity to herself. She was a great talker upon little matters, which exactly suited Mr. Woodhouse, full of trivial communications and harmless gossip.”

Not at all cold or cruel I think.

[Bookpossum]

Yes AnotherCat, I saw that Claire Tomalin had written a biography of Jane Austen, and would like to read it at some stage. I haven't yet read any of her biographies (which is why I was interested to read the one on Charles Dickens), but believe they are very good indeed.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

Yes AnotherCat, I saw that Claire Tomalin had written a biography of Jane Austen, and would like to read it at some stage. I haven't yet read any of her biographies (which is why I was interested to read the one on Charles Dickens), but believe they are very good indeed.

FantasyFan's nomination of Tomalin's Charles Dickens biography, which I have (edit)NOT read, is what gave me the idea to try her Austen one. I intend trying the Dickens one too, so have it plonked very close to the top of my reading list pile.

[fantasyfan]

I suppose that when it comes to literary criticism one is always (happily) going to experience a wide variety of opinions. I think that AnotherCat's interesting post does deserve a response. I stand by my remark that Kathryn Sutherland has written a brilliant--if occasionally tendentious--introduction to the Memoir.

I think that it is worth mentioning that she is a highly respected academic, a Professor of Bibliography and Textual Criticism and a Professorial Fellow of St Anne's College, University of Oxford.

Yes, her style is dense and certainly academic but always lucid and I had no problems following her ideas and the patterns of her arguments. She makes excellent points regarding the social context and the specific problems involved in understanding exactly what type of work the Memoir is, how it differs from the approaches we expect in biographies--especially those in our time, and how and possibly why Austen-Leigh took the approach of creating a kind of domestic hagiography. She also refers to the contrasting modern approaches to Jane Austen and the Tomalin Biography in particular. And from a certain perspective the method used by Austen-Leigh is described as more "principled".

It is true that she certainly does take some strips off Jane's nephew! I think she was unnecessarily harsh in some sections--particularly here:

"Austen-Leigh's snobbish streak runs fairly wide through the Memoir, a recognizable if unattractive nervousness which at times descends into massive condescension and complacency--when confronting the absence of improvements in in domestic arrangements, furniture, meals, and general living conditions during Jane Austen's lifetime. At such moments he comes perilously close to her own Mr Collins."

But she immediately continues to put this "nervousness" into a social context:

" . . . the social anxiety his biography registers offers a valuable insight into a family who were, much like the fictional society of the novels, insecurely positioned in what has been described as 'pseudo-gentry'--in some cases upwardly mobile and with growing incomes and social prestige, and in others in straightened circumstances, but, in either case, aspiring to the lifestyle of the traditional rural gentry." (She then cites an article which substantiates and develops this idea}.

Sutherland goes on to discuss the continuing effect of the Memoir on later attitudes towards the novels.

"Austen-Leigh's complacent presentation of his aunt had an incalculable influence on the popularization and critical reading of her novels far into the twentieth century. It was not seriously disturbed until 1940 when D.W.Harding, a psychologist rather than a literary critic, detected beneath the cosy domesticity a 'regulated hatred' declaring that her 'books are . . . read and enjoyed by precisely the sort of people whom she disliked.'" (The Harding essay is still well worth reading.)

What I find in Sutherland's Introduction are quite significant insights, well-reasoned arguments and a depth of detail that makes one's reading of the Memoir a much deeper experience. I am very glad that I have read it.

[issybird]

As an aside, I've read Tomalin's biography of Nelly Ternan, Dickens's long-term mistress, and I thought it wonderful. Her literary biographies are on my list, but it's the usual so many books problem.

[fantasyfan]

I plan to read Tomalin's Jane Austen: A Life. I enjoyed her biography of Dickens.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

Yes AnotherCat, I saw that Claire Tomalin had written a biography of Jane Austen, and would like to read it at some stage. I haven't yet read any of her biographies (which is why I was interested to read the one on Charles Dickens), but believe they are very good indeed.

I've still got her biography of Samuel Pepsys on my TBR that issybird nominated a few years ago!

[AnotherCat]

I read Tomalin's Samuel Pepys biography (on paper) back when it was first published and enjoyed that, so I have no idea why I had not thought of getting the Dickens one before because I am a Dicken's fan, but I have it now.

Issybird, I don't think I was aware of the Nelly Ternan biography so maybe that's another one to try and fit in sometime.

I am getting into the Austen one and am finding that very interesting.

[fantasyfan]

A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections

The primary work in this valuable collection is the Memoir by James Edward Austen-Leigh--a nephew of the great author. Though it was written decades after the death of Jane Austen, it remains an immensely valuable first-hand source. It is not a biography in the modern sense at all; rather it is a recollection culled from various family sources emphasizing the genuine love Jane Austen inspired in those who were intimately acquainted with her.

There can be no doubt but that this book recalls a very domestic Jane Austen indeed. It is questionable if JEAL actually understood how great a literary figure his aunt was. He mentions that those who most appreciate her

" . . . see her safely placed . . . in her niche, not indeed amongst the highest orders of genius, but in one confessedly her own, in our British temple of literary fame . . . ."

How far this is from the comment of F. R. Leavis in his first chapter of The Great Tradition:

"Jane Austen is one of the truly great writers, and herself a major fact in the background of other great writers."

and

"She not only makes tradition for those coming after, but her achievement has for us a retroactive effect: as we look back beyond her we see in what goes before, and see because of her, potentialities and significances brought out in such a way that, for us, she creates the tradition we see leading down to her. Her work, like the work of all great creative writers, gives a meaning to the past."

Still we get significant (if edited) insights from her letters. JEAL does include extracts from the very funny "Plan of a Novel, according to hints from various quarters." However, he omits some of the gentle humour shown by Jane Austen even on her deathbed when she composed some comic verses three days before she died. (You can find them in R.W. Chapman's Minor Works as well as the "Plan".)

As to her death, her nephew does convey the bafflement and anguish created by that final illness which took her away at the height of her powers. In all likelihood it was either Addison's or
Hodgkin's Disease--neither of which was understood in the 19th century. A summary of what is known will be found here:

http://mh.bmj.com/content/31/1/3.full

This particular edition of the Memoir also contains a wealth of explanatory and contextual notes as well as illustrations and a family tree.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Thanks, fantasyfan! The medical link was very informative. I had not thought about how Cassandra's censorship of letters also included details about Jane's medical history.