A Day in the Life

How I wish someone would publish an annotated edition of Jane Austen's letters which I'm reading, or dipping into, as part of my research for my (tentatively titled) Immortal Jane books.

I wouldn't go so far as to agree with the description of the letters as "a desert of trivialities punctuated by occasional oases of clever malice" (H.W. Garrod) but they can be hard going. I've picked a letter Jane wrote to her sister Cassandra 210 years ago, on Tuesday, June 11, 1799, and will share with you what I found.

Jane was probably finishing Susan (renamed Northanger Abbey) around this time. There's a reference in this letter to First Impressions, revised almost a decade later to become Pride & Prejudice. Jane, Mrs. Austen and Edward Austen/Knight had arrived in Bath on May 17, and were staying at 13, Queens Square. They returned home at the end of June.

Much of the letter is to do with fashion. Jane had certain shopping errands she had to fulfill in the big city, including finding trimmings for Cassandra's hat:

Though you have given me unlimited powers concerning Your Sprig, I cannot determine what to do about it, & shall therefore in this & every future letter continue to ask you for further directions.--We have been to the cheap Shop, & very cheap we found it, but there are only flowers made there, no fruit--& as I could get 4 or 5 very pretty sprigs of the former for the same money which would procure only one Orleans plumb, in short could get more for three or four Shillings than I could have means of bringing home, I cannot decide on the fruit till I hear from you again.--Besides, I cannot help thinking that it is more natural to have flowers grow out of the head than fruit.--What do you think on that subject?

Sure enough, the Lady's Magazine of May 1799 pronounced: No woman, truly loyal to the divinity of fashion, can possibly appear now without feathers and flowers.

No mention of fruit, however, which Cassandra seemed to have her heart set on, and the Orleans plum[b] was a fairly ordinary dark-red English-grown fruit, nothing particularly exotic. To me, that begs the question of why you'd want it on a hat in the first place.

Jane mentions in the letter that they have not been out anywhere public, but in her previous letter of June 2 she mentioned that they were planning several outings, including attending

a Concert with Illuminations and fireworks;--to the latter Eliz. & I look forward with pleasure, & even the Concert will have more than its' usual charm with me, as the Gardens are large enough for me to get pretty well beyond the reach of its sound.

This was Jane Austen the music lover? Or should we assume that the musicianship at Sydney Gardens was of a particularly low standard? This outing was to have taken place on June 4, George III's birthday, but rain required the event to be postponed until June 18. It had been a particularly unpleasant spring and early summer in England that year, cold and rainy. The oboist in the orchestra, which Jane was so avid not to hear, was Alexander Herschel[l], brother of astronomer and composer William Herschel.

I'll blog another time about Sydney Gardens, a fashionable pleasure garden at the end of Great Pulteney Street, complete with a moated castle ruin, bowling green, labyrinth, and many other delights.

Here's another quote from today's letter which strikes a particular chord with me:

I do not know what the matter is with me today but I cannot write quietly; I am always wandering away into some exclamation or other.

I think I've probably answered my own question of why no one has annotated Austen's letters, or, more likely, demonstrated my incompetence at an attempt. Have you read Austen's letters? Whose letters from the period would you recommend? And do you agree with Austen that it's more natural to have flowers than fruit growing from one's head?

Le Faye, Deirdre. Jane Austen: A Family Record. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Le Faye, Deirdre (ed.). Jane Austen's Letters. Oxford University Press, 1997.
Snaddon, Brenda. The Last Promenade: Sydney Gardens, Bath. Millstream Books, 2000.

And now, in a blatant burst of self-promotion:
New website and contest at janetmullany.com and a chance to win a signed copy of A Most Lamentable Comedy in Pam Rosenthal's latest contest.
Plus today I'm blogging over at Risky Regencies about John Constable, whose birthday it is today, and talking about Immortal Jane at Austenprose and Jane Austen Today.