Embarking On A Course of Study

Chawton House Library Comes Through With Colonel Brandon Library Listings

Oh, it's going to be a very cozy winter snuggling up with these books! (Not kidding.)

Dear Christine:
 
I have attached some of the bibliographies of the type that will give you the information you need. There were many books written recommending the ideal contents of a gentleman’s library in the C18 and of the circulating libraries that individuals subscribed too, giving tiles and authors. You will also find the reviews in C18 and C19 periodicals useful.
Yours sincerely
 
Jacqui Grainger
Librarian
Chawton House Library

The Englishman and his books in the early nineteenth century / by Amy Cruse

Authors  Cruse, Amy

Imprint New York, NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, [1930?]

 

Women's reading in Britain, 1750-1835 : a dangerous recreation / Jacqueline Pearson

Authors   Pearson, Jacqueline

Imprint  Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005

 

The Rothschild Library. A Catalogue of the Collection of Eighteenth-Century Printed Books and Manuscripts formed by Lord Rothschild.

Authors  Rothschild

Imprint New York, NY: James Cummins, 1993

 

English Books 1475-1900. A Signpost For Collectors. By Charles J. Sawyer And F.J. Harvey Darton. With One Hundred Illustrations.

Authors  Sawyer, Charles and Darton, F. J. Harvey

Imprint  Westminster: Chas. J. Sawyer, LTD. And Are Also To Be Obtained At Their Book-Shop, Grafton House, Grafton Street, Old Bond Street, And In The United States From E.P. Dutton And Company, 681 Fifth Avenue, New York, 1927

 

A Catalogue Of Bedford’s Circulating Library, No. 17, St. John-Street, Bristol; Containing a valuable collection of the most esteemed works, with a considerable number of novels and romances. No novels or romances added to the library, except those of esteemed authors. To which will be continually added, The New Publications Of Merit, As Soon As Published.

Bristol: Printed By Mary Bryan, 51, Corn-Street, 1817

A nation of readers : the lending library in Georgian England / David Allan

Authors Allan, David

Imprint London: British Library, 2008

 

Bibliotheca Beauclerkiana. A Catalogue Of the Large and Valuable Library Of the late Honourable Topham Beauclerk . . .Comprehending an excellent Choice of Books, To the Number of upwards of Thirty Thousand Volumes, In most Languages, and upon almost every Branch of Science and Polite Literature . . . By Mr. Paterson.

Authors  Beauclerk, Topham

Imprint London: Samuel Paterson., No. 6, King-Street, Covent-Garden; and of the principal Booksellers of London, Oxford and Cambridge, 1781

 

The Library Companion; or, The Young Man's Guide, and the Old Man’s Comfort, in the Choice of a Library. By The Rev. T.F. Dibdin, M.A., F.R.S.

Authors Dibdin, Thomas Frognall

Imprint London: Printed For Harding, Triphook, And Lepard, Finsbury-Square; And J. Major, Fleet-Street, 1825

 

The International Library of Famous Literature. Selections from the World's Great Writers Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern, with Biographical and Explanatory Notes and Critical Essays by many Eminent Writers.Edited By Richard Garnett, C.B. of the British Museum.

Authors Garnett, Richard (ed)

Imprint London: Issued By The Standard, 1900

This is Getting Spooky

At least for me it is. On my way to a meeting in Olney, MD on Friday I stopped at a light, glanced over and saw this:

Then, at the meeting, I was handed a calendar of events and what do you think was in there?

THE NOVELS OF JANE AUSTEN

Robin Bates (professor of English, St. Mary's College)

September 24 - October 29

Thursdays, 7-9 pm

We will read the six complete novels of Jane Austen, examining them in the context of the time and her life. Among the topics we will examine are 19th-century marriage rituals, economic pressures on middle class women, Austen's favorite writers, and the dynamics of the courtship novel.

I don't think I heard the first 10 minutes of the meeting I was so surprised!

I've missed the start of the class, and St. Mary's is impossible for me to make by 7 pm after I get off of work, but the board member who handed me the calendar has team-taught classes with Robin and said she would put us in touch with each other so I could make an appointment to interview him.

Serendipity indeed.

I have started Emma and will post on that later or in a day or two. My apologies to those of you who love it, but it's my least favorite of the novels. I simply can't stand Emma. I know she's modeling certain faults and flaws, but I don't (and never did, even when I read it and was much younger) identify with her and she grates on my nerves. Mr. Knightley, as well, isn't quite up to par as a male lead. He comes off as a man in his 50s rather than mid-thirties.

So I will read for Austen's precise prose and order The Mysteries of Udolpho in preparation for Northanger Abbey!

A Sign From Jane?

Yesterday I had my own little 'Serendipity' moment (think John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale movie). I was given a dollar bill in my change with this written on it:

Is this Jane, telling me I can find her there? Or John Cusack? Either way, I'll go!

Mr. Bennet Is As Much A Fool As Mrs. Bennet

Oh dear. I've finally realized something I've hidden from myself through the other 10 or so readings of this book over the years. Mr. Bennet is a fool.

It pains me but 'tis true! I've probably known it but ignored it because I was always so focused on Lizzy and Darcy and also agreed with him that Lydia and Kitty were hopeless, emtpy-headed girls. But now must admit that it's because he never took them in hand as a father should. Clearly, Mr. Bennet, frustrated with his lot of a silly wife, took the easy, low road, and denounced his daughters as silly (once, so far, he has included Lizzy and Jane in this name calling as well). This leaving him free to be his lazy self - hiding in his library/office, reading while chaos reigned.

Had Mr. Bennet been smart himself, he would never have been blinded by Mrs. Bennet's charms. He would have seen through to her vacuous soul and looked for love elsewhere. Maybe he married her for money - I'm sure someone has investigated who the parents might be - their backstory - but as I don't have the benefit of that information, I'll just say that he should have taken his chances and said no! He should have known better. Been a better man. Been a better father.

Yes, I can only conclude that he's a lazy, selfish, silly man himself. Just exhibiting it differently from his wife. He just doesn't want to be bothered. To accept no responsibility in the matter makes him a fool.

How he can resist and fail to truly comprehend Lizzy's impassioned plea for his intervention in Lydia's trip to Brighton with Col. Forster's wife, boggles the mind. And he, very unkindly, teases Lizzy about the suitors he supposes she's lost due to her younger sisters' impropriety.

Any father worth his salt would have said no to that trip, or sent Jane or Lizzy with her as chaperone. But the two of them act as a buffer between himself and his wife and the other daughters so are hard to do without. And he indulges in those little comments with them, that make clear his lack of affection and respect for his wife. That's bad form. Lizzy and Jane are intelligent and witty and have common sense (through no effort on his part) and they amuse him and are a source of pride. But do what little he can to preserve their dignity and possibility for future happiness? Never! Not when he can so easily retreat to the solace of his office and call it a hopeless case to try to govern his household.

I don't say that he deliberately allows the madness so it will reflect back on Lizzy and Jane and keep marriage proposals at bay, but he does nothing to guard them from that madness. And when Lizzy is going to visit Charlotte, instead of wishing her a good visit with a close friend that she's missed (to some degree),it is only mentioned that he so little wishes her to go that he asks her to write to him and almost promises to answer her letter! What a show of fatherly concern and affection to almost promise to answer your daughter's letter that you profess you will miss so much.

Now, I know I'm reading this with 21st Century eyes - the first time I read it was with 20thC eyes, ;) - and that a woman's happiness was of little consequence. A man's too, really. That marriage for love was thought a fanciful notion, so let's look at it as the contract that it was. Lizzy and Jane are Mr. Bennet's two best products. The only that he can put on the marriage market with any real sense of pride, as mentioned. To allow anything or anyone to tarnish the shine on those products and jeopardize their sale is utter foolishness. Especially when there have recently been two rich, eligible bachelors in the neighborhood who might return, want to marry one of the daughters and bring an influx of (probably) much needed cash into the household accounts. And when one of those shiny, sensible daughters, is very enamored of one of the bachelors and he of her. For that period, it could have been a slam dunk - love and money.

But then, there wouldn't have been any conflict and therefore no story. And that would have been a great loss indeed.

So I will just have to put up with Mr. Bennet being a fool and try to forgive him when he later admits to his foolishness. And suppress my wonder that Lizzy and Jane make it through this book to a happy ending at all! I will contribute it - and rightly so, that's the point - to their being examples to us all, even today, for how a woman should conduct herself, esteem herself, and, most importantly, know when she is wrong, have character enought to admit it, and alter her course of thought and action.

Lizzy Mouthing Off

The other day I spent a lovely evening watching the first half of Pride & Prejudice (the Firth version, of course), while doing my silk ribbon embroidery. I mastered the French Knot! I'm particularly proud of that. I also tried the Daisy stitch. It's coming along. I'll post pics tomorrow.

Just a quick note here - I'm beginning to notice the prejudice more in Lizzy than I have in previous readings of P&P. It's especially glaring in her scene with Col. Fitzwilliam, when they are walking in Rosings Park and he tells her about Darcy's triumph in separating Bingley from an undesirable lady and Lizzy knows it's Jane.

She's pretty mouthy in this scene and says things that are fairly rude if you ask me, though I suppose her wit is supposed to disguise that. If there is any there. I didn't see the wit so much as her being pissy and feeling justified in acting so because of how Jane was slighted.

For example, within about two minutes of him joining her, about 8 exchanges of dialogue, mostly brief sentences about his surprise at meeting up with her and when he and Darcy are going to leave Kent, he says, of himself, "...A younger son, you know, must be inured to self-denial and dependence."

And she answers (with nary a mention of a twinkle or a smile), "In my opinion, the younger son of an Earl can know very little of either. Now, seriously, what have you ever known of self-denial and dependence? When have you been prevented by want of money from going wherever you chose, or procuring any thing you had a fancy for?"

Nice, Lizzy. It was a pleasant walk with a charming man and you're acting like you're itching for a fight about privilege. Unprovoked, as well.

A page later she says, "I imagine your cousin brought you down with him chiefly for the sake of having somebody at his disposal. I wonder he does not marry, to secure a lasting convenience of that kind. But, perhaps his sister does as well for the present, and as she is under his sole care, he may do what he likes with her." Again - no twinkle or smile. It's kind of brassy to speak of Miss Darcy - a young woman she has never met - in this manner.

To his credit, the Colonel only responds that he and Darcy share guardianship of Miss Darcy and ignores the rest.

So I was more sensitive to her behavior during Darcy's first proposal and her refusal and really noticed how much she overreacts. Sure he's being rude, and he hurt Jane through his actions, but she really goes overboard. It shows her prejudice all right, but without enough build up, I think, especially after the last full, real scene we had with them was the one at the pianoforte, where neither side showed any malice or even irritation in their comments. It was, flirtatious even.

An overreaction as a means of revealing the depth of Lizzy's prejudice is fine but it also feels to me that her change here is rather sudden. Until now she's teased, and her teasing had an edge to it, but you also felt like it didn't touch her much. Then, here, all the claws are out all at once, starting with the walk with Fitzwilliam.

The proposal just doesn't feel like a justifiable breaking point on this reading. Lizzy's shift could have used a smoother transition/build up. It doesn't feel earned. Perhaps I was blinded to it before by the overall romantic idea one has about the book. One practically races through it to get to the happy end.

Interesting to feel this new way about her after all the times I've read it.

English Country Dancing the Night Away

I'm finally getting to post about the English Country Dance I attended last Monday at St. Mark's church in Pikesville, Maryland.

Some things I should tell you up front:

1) I was really worried about screwing up and I did - many, many times, but all was well and it didn't matter.

2) Wear flat, well-soled shoes - meaning they have some texture to them so you don't slide.

3) Don't eat for several hours before. It's quite a workout and, if you are nauseated by exercising in a hot room (and, therefore, you abhor 'hot yoga' as I do), that might be the case for you at a dance like this.

4) There was no Mr. Darcy at my dance, but you could get luckier!

I drove over with my friend and fellow brave soul, Shara,and we were both pretty nervous. Perhaps it was perfomance anxiety or just that neither one of us had set out to learn something new and so wholly foreign to us in a very long time. Maybe ever.

The setting was charming, an old stone church with archways and stone paths and lots of greenery, still dripping with rain from an earlier shower. We were warmly received and introduced around, and the caller gave us a brief lesson on some of the steps.

(Note here: fortunately, another friend and accomplished country dancer, Barbara M. gave us a nearly two hour lesson two days before, which helped tremendously. Had we not had that, it would have been harder. What I'd love to find and what I think is needed, is a real class. An hour or so for several weeks where you can learn with other newbies and move slowly through the dances, stopping to make corrections and redoing parts of it over several times. The more complicated parts. I'm also all for just being thrown into the pool, but I wouldn't say that what I learned stayed with me as it was in the moment, by following my partner and the other dancers and so didn't make a lasting impression. I would have dearly loved to learn and retain as I went, rather than grasp things quickly out of a survival instinct! It's a blur in that case, so we're going as many times as we can for the next few months. It's something I'd like to keep up with.)

That said, everyone was fantastic. They were happy to have us there and there was no shortage of kind and patient gentlemen asking us to dance and guiding us expertly through, explaining steps whenever possible. You are to look your partner and the other dancers in the eye the entire time, which was a little disconcerting and meant that Shara and I grinned giddily most of the time. It felt strangely intimate. The oddest part was to lock eyes with those who were deadly serious and showed no humor on their face at all. Fortunately, these were few. Most smiled back and this practice helps the other dancers guide you through the dance and creates a warm connection and festive air.

The caller walked us through the dance once or twice, and some of them were new, even to those dancers that attend every week - apparently they have a book of 300. And then we were off and I quickly learned you have to just go with it and not think too much about the next step. The good news is you do the same series of steps as you move down the set (the line of couples facing each other), so after the first few stumbles, you get the hang of it.

The problem for me was when I reached the end of the set with my partner and then had to move back up. Those moving up and those moving down each have some differences to the steps and you are, in some places, reversing what you did going down the set. So here’s where I often got lost and it took me longer to get the hang of the return back to the top of the set.

After two dances I won’t lie, I was absolutely pouring with sweat. The church wasn’t air conditioned and, though it was cool outside, it got very warm, very quickly, inside. I can't imagine dancing in the layers and the corset of the Regency period. Talk about unromantic! I was going to rest because I was starting to get information overload, but someone else asked me to dance and I couldn’t say no. It was on this third dance that I completely lost the thread and was eventually just following what people were telling me as the dance progressed. I retained parts of it, but other parts not.

I will say, that once or twice, as we were learning the dance, my partner missed part of the instruction and so I missed it too as a result. While he was able to correct himself quickly, I was not, being too new to know when and how to compensate. So, that third dance was the low point for me and I just prayed for it to end quickly so I could get some water and some air! I can see now why so many women fainted, having to wear those corsets and with so many people surely making the room very close. I didn’t have the luxury of being able to swoon, a fan, or Colonel Brandon to half-carry me out of the room!

The floor got slippery on my side of the room, whether from the sweat of the dancers or from the drinking of water, which was nearby and perhaps was spilled. So I was also trying not to wipe out!

I was able to sit out the fourth dance and just watch and it was a gorgeous dance with several sets of six couples and lots of complicated (at least to me) exchanges and crossovers and turns. They were all so graceful and skilled; it was a joy to watch. I hope someday to be that good.

Shara and I danced one last dance (separately – we often did not encounter each other during the dance – at one point there were two sets and she was in the other one), whose name I can’t remember (in fact, the only one I remember was the first one – The Major; I’ll try to do better), but in that dance things finally started coming together for me. I don’t know whether it was simpler or I was getting the hang of it, but I was so connected to the dance that what came next was more instinctual for me than about having learned it, and I was able to guide some members of the set who turned the wrong way or hesitated. That was very satisfying.

 

Here are some links to the host of the dance I went to, the Baltimore Folk Music Society and the Country Dance and Song Society, which show some of the figures and have definitions of them and videos as well.

  

So, should you try it? I give you an unequivocal and resounding yes! It was so much fun and challenging and we were pretty darn proud of ourselves for making it through. We have plans to go again tomorrow night (Monday), as we were given a free pass, which was a nice gesture. (The dance costs $10 for non-members.)

I hope you give it a try. Leave me a comment here if you do. Or if you are someone who attends these dances, leave some tips!

 

A Reading List to Swoon Over

Now we're talking!

These were suggested by the English Country Dance list serv - many thanks to them and Barbara for asking them. Speaking of which, I'd like to post about the country dance I went to on Monday, but it requires more time and energy than I have at present. Will do this weekend. Suffice it to say it was a tremendously fun and challenging evening and I'll be going back next week. They were lovely.

On to the list. There are some duplications I didn't weed out. Not sure where I'll start after rereading the novels.

Actually, I'm lying - I REALLY want to read The Mysteries of Udolpho. So that's where I'll begin. Only fair, then, to read a serious book directly after and alternate silly and serious from that point on.

Sounds like a Marianne plan to me!

Here's the list:

The Mysteries of Udolpho

The Female Quixote, Charlotte Lennox
Waverley, Scott
Cowper
The Giaour, Byron
Clarissa, Richardson
Pamela, Richardson
Evelina, Burney
The Spectator Papers

She certainly knew her Shakespeare and her Bible, as well. (

(Chris note: have read all of Shakespeare's plays, so much as I worship him, will be reading books I haven't read first.)

Tom Jones (Fielding)
The Monk (Lewis)
Swift
Defoe, Sterne
The Arabian Nights
Gilpin's Tour to the Highlands
Shakespeare
The Female Quixote (Charlotte Smith)
The Sorrows of Werhter (Goethe)
Arnaud Berquin's L'ami des enfan and L'ami de l'adolescence
Mame. de Genlis' Les Veilees du Chateau and Adelaide and Theodore
Dr Johnson's Rasselas and The Idler as well as his Dictionary of the
English Language and A Journey to the Western Islands
Boswell's Life of Johnson adn Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
The works of Oliver Goldsmith
Shakespeare
The Bible
Hume's History of England
Addison & Steele's The Spectator
Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (in English)
The Rev. Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres
The novels of Fanny Burney: Evelina, Cecila, Camilla and the Wanderer
Roche's The Children of the Abbey and Clermont
Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest and The Mysteries of Udolpho as well as
the Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents
The Midnight Bell
The Castle of Wolfenbach
The Mysterious Warning
The Necromancer or The Tale of the Black Forest
The Orphan of the Rhine
Horrid Mysteries
Margiana, or Widdrington Fair
Ida of Athens
More's Coelebs in Search of a Wife
Mme de Stael's Corinne, or Italy
Carr's Descriptive Travels in the Southern & Eastern parts of Spain
Mary Brunton's Self-Control (she didn't like it)
The Heroine, or Adventures of a Fair Romance Reader
the novels of Maria Edgeworth
Scott's Waverley and his poems
Byron's The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos
the works of William Cowper, Campbell, Montgomery, Crabbe & Wordsworth
Tom Moore's poems

Round 2 With JASNA or This Is Far Enough Down The Rabbit Hole, Thank You

In case you missed it in the comments, I received another message from the President of the Jane Austen Society of North America (or Lady Catherine de Bourgh as some of us are affectionately calling her, for I feel just like Lizzy being taken to task - in my case, for polluting the shades of the offices of JASNA, I suppose).

I will share her additional reply here, along with a few comments and then we are getting off the crazy train and back to the business of this project! Which, lest you forget amid the sturm und drang of this drama, is not a battle with the US version of the Jane Austen Mother Ship.

Here you go:

My dear Miss Stewart,
I understand that, after receiving my message last night, you sent a kind repsonse to the JASNA web master thanking her for providing reading suggestions for your project. I'm sure you appreciate that JASNA could not put you in touch with our 4,000+ members, whose privacy we respect.

Your response regarding my message is very much in the spirit of Marianne Dashwood before she married Col. Brandon and began her course of study. Jane Austen satirizes Marianne's conviction that it is her right to display her feelings in public without restraint and that to do otherwise would be artificial and false. Marianne is rude to Mrs. Jennings without compunction and abuses Eleanor for acting withing the bounds established by polite society. Austen makes it clear that, as Marianne matures, she learns to value the advice of others and abandons her former conduct.

Pardon me if I note that you could benefit from Austen's message about Marianne. If you stand back and review the tone of your postings, you may see on whose side the rudeness lies.

I remain your humble servant,
Marsha Huff

I will not be replying personally again as this has gone far enough. I do have a few things to mention, though:

1) You started it.

2) Um, we live in the 21st Century. Just a friendly reminder.

3) JASNA is not the CIA. I didn't ask for the membership email list. I asked for my message to be emailed or added to a newsletter or sent to whoever might handle inquiries of its kind.

4) A blog is public and usually personal. That's the nature of them. (Perhaps this is an unresolvable misunderstanding as a result of us clearly not dwelling in the same century. See Item 1.)

5) I am not your Dear Miss Anything.

6) Because I am a nice person, despite the not-so-thinly veiled suggestion to the contrary: no hard feelings.

Moving on!

I am to attend an English Country Dance this evening at St. Mark's Church, hosted by the Baltimore Folk Music Society (www.bfms.org). 

I'm excited to go, terrified to make a fool out of myself, and wishing I had something new to wear.

Actually, I'm more nervous about completely screwing up and throwing off my partner and the nearby couples in the line. I suppose that if that is even possible, they've experienced that before, know how to handle it, and all will be well.

I'm off to review the dance scenes in P&P, just in case.

Speaking of Lizzy Bennet, I will borrow her words as my final comment to Ms. Huff and anyone who agrees with her:  "I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me."

How I Offended the Jane Austen Society of North America

Oh my. The drama begins!

Marianne would surely post this very unwarranted (and insulting) comment from the President of JASNA, so I will too. It is in response to my post 'An Unsatisfactory Reply' of a few days ago. Basically, though I appreciated the suggestions in that initial response, obviously I'm going to read Sense and Sensibility again and take suggestions from the text on what to read, so it wasn't as helpful as I was hoping for from a society that puts out a scholarly magazine. No reflection on the sender of the message at all. No offense meant. Just not what I was looking for. I think it's fair to state that.

However, here's the comment I received last night from Ms. Huff, the President:

My dear Miss Stewart, I regret that you were not satisfied with the response you received from Carol Moss, the dedicated, volunteer web master for the Jane Austen Society of North America (jasna.org). She very kindly gave you appropriate suggestions for year reading project, and yet you find her response "unsatisfactory." In the course of your blogging, you may come across etiquette books that will guide you in in the proper way to thank those who assist you. Your humble servant, Marsha Huff President, Jane

Wow, huh? Not to be snarky, but this is dripping with that fake polite (but really disgusted and superior) tone. Ick. Clearly I'm being taught a much needed lesson here, in Ms. Huff's opinion, though I think Jane herself would be appalled. It's quite an unnecessary reply. Quite out of line. Quite rude!

Here's my reply:

Ms. Huff -
 
Thank you for taking an interest in my blog. I regret that you found it lacking, There was nothing rude in my post, unless one is displeased with the term 'unsatisfactory,' which clearly you are. I meant no offense to Ms. Moss whatsoever and there was nothing in my post that commented or reflected back on her personally.
 
I was simply sharing with those reading my blog, in the spirit of being transparent about this journey, information as it came in and my reaction to it. In this case, my sincere disappointment that I didn't receive an answer of more substance from a premier organization such as yours whose mission is a dedication "to the enjoyment and appreciation of Jane Austen and her writing." I have only just begun this project and had very high hopes in writing to JASNA, which was the first group I wrote to as I assumed that if anyone would give me expert guidance, it would be JASNA. I have since received more detailed direction from Claire Bellanti, which was also helpful, like Ms. Moss', to a different degree.
 
However, I am quite surprised and offended by the tone and implication of your email as it relates to my manners. It is completely disproportionate in weight and feeling to my post. I am sorry you felt it necessary to send me such a message.
 
Best, &&&

Again, feels like I'm in high school. I guess the Jane Austen Society and I are fighting and are no longer BFFs!

So Much for Etiquette!

Here's the reply I received from the charm school in Bowie:

"Hello Ms. S--,
 
Thank you for your interest in our Charm School.  How did you learn about us?"

Notice there is no 'best regards' or 'sincerely' and no name from the sender. Nor did she/he answer any of the questions in my email, including my question about a course catalogue.

Not much evidence of practicing what they preach so far....