Thomas Hope – art collector and author of Anastasius (1769-1831)

Thomas Hope by Sir William Beechey (1)

Who was Thomas Hope?

Thomas Hope (30 August 1769 – 2 February 1831) was both an art collector and an interior designer with enough money to indulge his passions for both. He is best known as the author of the acclaimed but racy novel Anastasius, originally thought to be the work of Lord Byron.

Family background

Thomas Hope was born in Amsterdam on 30 August 1769, the eldest son of John Hope and Philippina Barbara van der Hoeven. John Hope was from a wealthy family of Dutch merchant bankers who owned the firm Hope & Co. On his death in 1784, Thomas and his brothers shared their father’s fortune.

Addicted to architecture

After working briefly for the family firm, in 1787 Hope took himself on a Grand Tour – for most of the next eight years. Much of that time was spent in the Levant, in countries like Turkey, studying architecture and civilisation. He appreciated the beauty of classicism and became a great proponent of the Neoclassical style but was also drawn to the romanticism of Mediterranean culture.

Duchess Street

When Amsterdam was occupied by the French in 1795, Hope moved to London, establishing himself in a house in Duchess Street in 1799. He made extensive changes to the house adding large galleries to display his ever-increasing collections of antiquities and art.

Interior of Thomas Hope's picture gallery, Duchess Street (2)

The Persian ambassador, Mirza Abul Hassan, wrote in the journal of his visit to England in 1809-10:

I was invited to the house of Mr Hope…His house is magnificent, with a forecourt like a palace. Inside, there was a large assembly of English ladies and gentlemen, but the house is so vast it seemed almost empty!₁

In A Reason for Romance (The Merry Romances 2), Georgiana attends a rout at Mrs Hope’s house in Duchess Street. This rout was a historical event and took place on 5 April 1810.₂

Marriage and family

Louisa Beresford, Viscountess Beresford (3)

On 16 April 1806, Hope married the Irish beauty Louisa Beresford. Louisa was the youngest daughter of William Beresford, Archbishop of Tuam and Lord Decies. The marriage was not of her choosing.

The Persian ambassador wrote in his journal:

They say that she was married to him for his money – that her father was a ‘padre’ who forced her into a union she was not eager to accept.₃

The couple had four sons and a daughter: Henry Thomas (1807), Charles William (1808), Louisa Elizabeth (1810), Adrian John (1811) and Alexander James Beresford (1820).₄

Tragically, Charles died in 1817 at the age of eight, during a tour of Italy.

Deepdene

Deepdene (4)

In 1807, Hope bought Deepdene, an estate near Dorking in Surrey with picturesque views of Box Hill and the nearby estates of Norbury Park and Denbies.

In his Select Illustrations of the County of Surrey (1828), Prosser wrote:

The estate of the Deepdene now consists of above four hundred acres of pleasure ground, so artfully disposed that a walk, admitting a pleasing transition of view of upwards of twelve miles, may be taken without retracing a step.₅

Hope enlarged the house and commissioned rooms and furniture based on his own designs. According to Prosser, Deepdene boasted a sculpture gallery and a sculpture room and a theatre with a pavement ‘partly composed of a mosaic, from the Villa Hadriana at Rome.’₆

In the grounds of Deepdene, Hope built a mausoleum where his son Charles’s ashes were laid and Hope himself was buried.

Deepdene (5)

Antiquarian and patron of the arts

Hope started building his collections on his Grand Tour and continued to add to them throughout his life. He acquired a collection of Sir William Hamilton’s antique vases in 1801 for £4,500 and by 1806, he had over 1,500 vases. Other pieces included Greek statues of Hygeia and Athene found at Ostia in 1797.

As well as collecting antiquities, Hope patronised the arts, recognising and commissioning works from sculptors such as Bertel Thorvaldsen and John Flaxman, and artists such as Thomas Daniell and Roberts Smirke.

Prosser’s Select Illustrations lists numerous works of art in Hope’s ownership in 1828 including sculpture by Thorvaldsen and Flaxman; portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Benjamin West and George Dawe; and paintings of Venice by Canaletto.

Illustration from Household Furniture by T Hope (6)

A man of influence

Hope’s standing as a specialist in art and design was recognised by his acceptance into the Society of the Dilettanti in 1800, and his membership of the Royal Academy, the Royal Institution, the Royal Society, the Society of Arts and the British Institution.

But it was not enough for Hope to become a connoisseur of art and design. He wanted to educate others and influence their taste. His Duchess Street house became a show home, with rooms lined with sculpture, painting and vases. From 1804, he even issued tickets to visit his collections, though this was viewed as rather patronising by the fellow Royal Academy members whom he offered them to.

In 1807, Hope published an influential book: Household Furniture and Interior Decoration – a compilation of his own designs for the rooms and furnishings in his home.

He published Costumes of the Ancients in 1809, and finished Essay on the Origin and Prospects of Man before he died in 1831.

Illustration from Household Furniture by T Hope (1807)

What was Thomas Hope like?

In his entry on Thomas Hope in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, John Orbell noted that Hope ‘was described as ill-looking and effeminate in manner.’₇

The Persian ambassador was very rude about Hope’s appearance. He wrote in his journal:

Mrs Hope is an Irish beauty – her mouth and teeth are particularly striking. Her husband, on the contrary, is incredibly ugly – if you were to see him in a dream, you would never wake again!₈

Although an educated and talented man, I get the impression that Hope was rather full of himself. Not only did he think his ideas superior, but he also felt the need to educate others in matters of taste and design. Orbell described him as conceited and lacking in tact.₉

When the Duke of Wellington was Prime Minister, Hope plagued him for a peerage, but he never got one.

Grecian female (8)

Beauty and the Beast

The following story must have been an embarrassment to Hope.

In 1810, the French artist Antoine Dubost quarrelled with Hope over the price of a picture. Feeling hard done by, he was out to seek revenge.

Dubost painted a caricature of Hope and his wife. He named it La Belle et la Bête – Beauty and the Beast – and included it in his Pall Mall exhibition in June.

It must have been obvious who Beauty and the Beast represented as artist Joseph Farington wrote in his diary on 15 June 1810:

Dubost’s Exhibition I went to, & saw his picture representing Mr & Mrs Thomas Hope as a Beast & a Beauty.₁₀

According to Farington’s entry for 23 June:

Thomas Hope was caricatured as a Beast, holding His beautiful wife by the hand, she represented as terrified and distressed – which we thought a natural & proper way of treating it.₁₁

Louisa Hope’s brother, Mr Beresford, was so angry about the picture that he went to Dubost’s exhibition and cut it to pieces with a knife.

The Morning Post for 23 June stated:

Amongst the pictures was one which attracted the notice of all the fashionables, called ‘La Belle et la Bête’, an allegorical painting, most beautifully executed, but supposed to be a satirical representation of a scene in high life…The picture, being a chef d’oevre, was estimated at great value; and as Mr Dubost intends to bring an action for the damage sustained, this case, which we believe to be unprecedented, will soon come before a Jury.₁₂

In the end, Dubost was the loser. In his action for damages, he obtained only £5.

Gilded-wood bench designed by Thomas Hope pre 1807 (9)

Anastasius – the novel that made Byron cry

In 1819, Hope’s novel Anastasius: or, Memoirs of a Greek; written at the close of the eighteenth century, was published anonymously by John Murray. This tale of the immoral adventures of a young Greek was based on his own travels in the Levant. The novel was an instant success and was rumoured to have been written by Lord Byron.

Lady Blessington claimed that Byron was upset that he had not written Anastasius:

Byron spoke today in terms of high commendation of Hope’s ‘Anastasius;’ said that he wept bitterly over many pages of it, and for two reasons – first, that he had not written it, and secondly, that Hope had; for that it was necessary to like a man excessively to pardon his writing such a book – a book, as he said, excelling all recent productions, as much in wit and talent, as in true pathos. He added, that he would have given his two most approved poems to have been the author of ‘Anastasius.’₁₃

Murray persuaded Hope to put his name to the second edition to put an end to speculation.

In the preface to this edition, Hope wrote:

TO you, my LOUISA; to you, the sole partner of all my joys and sorrows; to you, whose fair form but enshrines a mind far fairer, I inscribe not these pages. Composed of materials collected ere I knew you, ere I was inspired by your virtues, or could portray your perfections, they are not worthy of bearing your name: they were not even intended to divulge that of the writer, had his secret been preserved as inviolate as he wished.₁₄

The novel was acclaimed by Sydney Smith, writing for the Edinburgh Review in 1821:

There are few books in the English language which contain passages of greater power, feeling, and eloquence, than this novel, - which delineate frailty and vice with more energy and acuteness, or describe historical scenes with such bold imagery, and such glowing language.₁₅

Smith’s main criticism of the book was its length.

It abounds in eloquent and sublime passage, - in sense, - in knowledge of history, - and in knowledge of human character; but not in wit. It is too long; and, if this novel perishes, and is forgotten, it will be solely on that account.₁₆

He attributes the particularly vivid description of the death of Anastasius’s child to Hope’s own devastation at the loss of his son Charles:

…above all, to the landing of Anastasius with his sick child, and the death of the infant. It is impossible not to see that this last picture is faithfully drawn from a sad and cruel reality.₁₇

Illustration from Anastasius by T Hope (10)

Despite having his name on the cover, many still struggled to believe that Hope had written Anastasius because it was so unlike his other works. Smith wrote:

Mr Hope will excuse us, -- but we could not help exclaiming, in reading it, Is this Mr Thomas Hope? - Is this the man of chairs and tables — the gentleman of sphinxes — the Oedipus of coal boxes-- he who meditated on muffineers and planned pokers? - Where has he hidden all this eloquence and poetry up to this hour? - How is it that he has, all of a sudden, burst out into descriptions which would not disgrace the pen of Tacitus — and displayed a depth of feeling, and a vigour of imagination, which Lord Byron could not excel? We do not shrink from one syllable of this eulogium. The work now before us places him at once in the highest list of eloquent writers, and of superior men.₁₈

Illness and death

Hope became ill and died on 2 February 1831 in his Duchess Street home. He was interred in Deepdene mausoleum.

His estate was inherited by his eldest son Henry and his widow Louisa married her cousin William Carr Beresford, Viscount Beresford, the following year.

I first came across Thomas Hope when investigating a possible miniature of Lady Jersey which had been given to his wife Louisa. You can read about my investigations here.

Rachel Knowles writes faith-based Regency romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew.

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Detail of pictures

1.       Thomas Hope by Sir William Beechey © NPG 4574 used under a Creative Commons Licence CC BY-NC-ND 3.0.2.

2.       Interior of Thomas Hope’s picture gallery, Duchess Street, London 1825-54 by William Henry Bartlett from the Met Museum DP806018.

3.       Louisa Beresford, Viscountess Beresford (previously Hope), from The Court Magazine and Monthly Critic (1837).

4.       Deepdene from Select Illustrations of the County of Surrey by G F Prosser (1828).

5.       Deepdene from Select Illustrations of the County of Surrey by G F Prosser (1828).

6.       Illustration from Household Furniture and Interior Decoration by T Hope (1807).

7.       Illustration from Household Furniture and Interior Decoration by T Hope (1807).

8.       Grecian female from Costumes of the Ancients by T Hope (1809).

9.       Gilded-wood bench designed by Thomas Hope before 1807 from the Met Museum DP18976-022. This bench may have been part of the furnishings of Deepdene.

10.   Illustration from 1836 edition of Anastasius by Thomas Hope.

Notes

1.     Hassan Khan, Mirza Abul, A Persian at the Court of King George 1809-10, edited by Margaret Morris Cloake (1988).

2.       Ibid.

3.       Ibid.

4.       I have found evidence of Louisa’s baptism on the Family Search website, but not of her subsequent death. She is not mentioned in the article on Viscountess Beresford in The Court Magazine and Monthly Critic (1837) and it seems likely that she died as an infant.

5.       Prosser, George Frederick, Select Illustrations of the County of Surrey (1828).

6.       Ibid.

7.      Orbell, John, Thomas, Hope (1769-1831) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press 2004, updated 2020).

8.      Hassan op cit.

9.      Orbell op cit.

10.   Farington, Joseph, The Farington Diary, edited by James Greig (1922-28).

11.   Ibid.

12.   Ibid.

13.   Blessington, Countess,  A Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington (1893).

14.   Hope, Thomas, Anastasius: or, Memoirs of a Greek written at the close of the eighteenth century (2nd edition 1820).

15.   Smith, Sydney, The Works of the Rev Sydney Smith Volume 4 (1840).

16.   Ibid.

17.   Ibid.

18.   Ibid.

Sources used include:

Blessington, Countess,  A Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington (1893)

Cust, Lionel, MA and Colvin, Sir Sidney, MA, History of the Society of Dilettanti (1914)

Farington, Joseph, The Farington Diary, edited by James Greig (1922-28)

Hassan Khan, Mirza Abul, A Persian at the Court of King George 1809-10, edited by Margaret Morris Cloake (1988)

Hope, Thomas, Anastasius: or, Memoirs of a Greek written at the close of the eighteenth century (1819)(2nd edition 1820)

Hope, Thomas, Costume of the ancients (1809)

Hope, Thomas, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1807)

Orbell, John, Thomas, Hope (1769-1831) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press 2004, updated 2020)

Prosser, George Frederick, Select Illustrations of the County of Surrey (1828)

Smith, Sydney, The Works of the Rev Sydney Smith Volume 4 (1840)

The Court Magazine and Monthly Critic (1837)

Family Search website

Findagrave website

Historic England – Deepdene Mausoleum

The Regency Redingote – Anastasius 

 

The notorious Lady Craven, Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Bayreuth

Lady Craven by Romney
from Romney by R Davies (1914)

Profile

Elizabeth, Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Bayreuth, previous married name Lady Craven (17 December 1750 – buried 13 January 1828), was a playwright and author, notorious for her scandalous affairs during her first marriage to Lord Craven.

Early years

Elizabeth Berkeley was born on 17 December 1750, the youngest daughter of Augustus Berkeley, 4th Earl of Berkeley, and his wife, Elizabeth Drax of Charborough in Dorset.

The infamous Lady Craven

William Craven, 6th Baron Craven, from 
The Beautiful Lady Craven, Lady Craven's
memoirs edited by AM Broadley and L Melville (1914)

On 10 May 1767, at the age of 16, Elizabeth married William Craven (1738-91), a man some twelve years her senior. Two years later he became the 6th Baron Craven on the death of his uncle. They had seven children: Elizabeth (1768); Maria (1769) who married William, 2nd Earl of Sefton; William, 1st Earl of Craven (1770); Georgiana; Arabella; Henry Augustus Berkeley (1776); and Keppel Richard (1779).

The marriage, however, was not a success. Both Elizabeth and her husband indulged in affairs, notably Elizabeth’s scandalous liaison with the French ambassador, the Count of Guines, in 1773, which even made it into the pages of the Morning Chronicle.

The Count, afterwards the Duke, of Guines, from 
The Beautiful Lady Craven, Lady Craven's
memoirs edited by AM Broadley and L Melville (1914)

Elizabeth became friends with Horace Walpole, corresponding with him and visiting his home at Strawberry Hill. Some of her early work was published on the Strawberry Hill Press. During this period, she wrote a satire on German snobbery and several plays, including The Miniature Picture, which was put on at Drury Lane in 1780/1.

Horace Walpole
from The Beautiful Lady Craven, Lady Craven's
memoirs edited by AM Broadley and L Melville (1914)

Whilst Lord Craven tolerated Elizabeth’s behaviour, she was still received in society, but in 1783, Lord Craven had had enough. He arranged a separation, giving Elizabeth a settlement of £1,500 a year.

Travel and intrigues

Lady Craven and her son,
from The Beautiful Lady Craven, Lady Craven's
memoirs edited by AM Broadley and L Melville (1914)

Taking her youngest son Keppel with her, Elizabeth went to live near Versailles in France where she wrote plays for the court theatre. She became romantically involved with Henry Vernon, the great nephew of Admiral Edward Vernon, and over the next few years, she travelled extensively in Europe, in France, Italy, Austria, Poland, Bulgaria, Russia, Greece and Turkey. Whilst on her travels, she wrote to Christian Frederick Charles Alexander, the Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Bayreuth, whom she had met in France. The Margrave was part of the Prussian royal family with a sickly wife back at home.

At the suggestion of Horace Walpole, Elizabeth published the story of her travels, A Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople (1789), her most popular work.

Lady Craven and the Margrave of Anspach
from The Beautiful Lady Craven, Lady Craven's
memoirs edited by AM Broadley and L Melville (1914)

 The Margrave of Ansbach

In 1787, Elizabeth visited her long-time correspondent, the Margrave of Ansbach, and successfully displaced his mistress in his affections. Together they travelled to Berlin to arrange the sale of the Margrave’s principality to the King of Prussia for a very handsome sum. The Margrave’s ailing wife died in early 1791, and Lord Craven followed suit in September. Less than a month later, on 13 October 1791, Elizabeth married the Margrave in Lisbon with great style.

The Margrave of Anspach from The Beautiful
 Lady Craven, Lady Craven's memoirs
 edited by AM Broadley and L Melville (1914)

Brandenburg House

Elizabeth and the Margrave travelled to England and bought a house in Fulham overlooking the Thames which they called Brandenburg House. If Elizabeth had hoped that her wealth and position would see her past indiscretions forgotten, she was to be disappointed.

The Bon Ton in March 1792 said:

The Margravine of Anspach is not visited by any of the leading Ladies of Fashion, although she had not been wanting in sending round her cards of invitation, and calling at their houses. At a ball given at her house a few nights since, to which there was a general invitation, only thirty people of both sexes were present.1

It must have been an even greater blow to Elizabeth that she was not received at court. George III disapproved of her marriage, thinking it unequal – the Margrave was a member of the Prussian royal family and Elizabeth was only the daughter of an earl. The King refused to recognise the title of Princess Berkeley that the Holy Roman Emperor Francis II had bestowed on her.

Despite these setbacks, Elizabeth entertained lavishly at Brandenburg House and frequently put on plays in the little theatre near the house.

Brandenburg House from Old and New London by E Walford (1878)

Benham Park

Around 1799, the Margrave bought Benham Park, near Newbury in Berkshire, the country seat of the Cravens. The Margrave took a keen interest in horseracing and bred horses at Benham.

The Margrave died quite suddenly on 5 January 1806 leaving his wife a fortune of around £150,000. Elizabeth erected a huge memorial to him near Benham, on the Bath Road.

The widowed Margravine continued to divide her time between Benham Park and Brandenburg House with occasional trips to Europe.

The Persian ambassador

Mirza Abul Hassan Khan by Sir Thomas
Lawrence (1810) in Fogg Art Museum
Photo by Daderot CCO via Wikimedia Commons

Elizabeth entertained the Persian ambassador, Mirza Abul Hassan, several times during his diplomatic visit to England in 1809-10. He first visited Brandenburg House in March 1810. In his journal, he described it as ‘a heavenly house overlooking the Thames’, and wrote of a room full of Chinese porcelain and another full of musical instruments, all of which, he was told, Elizabeth could play. He wrote of Elizabeth that: ‘In her youth she was incomparable in beauty, grace and charm; even now, in old age, her face bears the traces of youthful beauty.’2

The ambassador was back at Brandenburg House on 6 April 1810, during the London riots over Sir Francis Burdett’s arrest. He noted that two of the Margravine’s guests, Lord Keith and his daughter Margaret Mercer Elphinstone, arrived covered with mud, because the rioters had pelted them with stones for refusing to remove their hats.

On 16 May, he was invited to experience the Brandenburg House Theatricals:

Brandenburgh House Theatre was opened yesterday for the first time since the death of the Margrave. Miss Jane Cramer’s performance was much admired. The Persian Ambassador was in the fashionable circle, and the Duke of Kent’s Band attended.3

Queen Caroline and the end of Brandenburg House

In June 1820, Caroline, Princess of Wales, the estranged wife of George IV, returned to England to claim her position as Queen Consort of England. Elizabeth lent Brandenburg House to Queen Caroline, and it was here that Caroline died on 7 August 1821, having failed in her attempt to be crowned Queen. The following February, Elizabeth commissioned the sale of furniture, china and books at Brandenburg House, and in May, the fabric of the building was sold off, including staircases, chimney pieces, doors, windows, and the scenery and machinery of the theatre.

Villa Craven

Elizabeth was living in Villa Craven, her house in Naples, when she wrote her colourful memoirs which were published in 1826. She died two years later and was buried in the British cemetery at Naples on 13 January 1828.

The tomb of the Margravine of Anspach, Naples,
from The Beautiful  Lady Craven, Lady Craven's
 memoirs ed by AM Broadley and L Melville (1914)

Notes

(1) From Craven, Elizabeth Craven, Baroness, The beautiful Lady Craven edited by AM Broadley and Lewis Melville (1914). Ansbach was sometimes spelt Anspach as in this article.

(2) From Hassan Khan, Mirza Abul, A Persian at the Court of King George 1809-10, edited by Margaret Morris Cloake (1988).

(3) From Craven, Elizabeth Craven, Baroness, The beautiful Lady Craven edited by AM Broadley and Lewis Melville (1914). Brandenburg was sometimes spelt Brandenburgh as in this book.

Sources used include:

Davies, Randall, Romney (1914)

Courthope, William, editor, Debrett's Complete Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1838)

Craven, Elizabeth Craven, Baroness, later Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Bayreuth, The Beautiful Lady Craven edited by AM Broadley and Lewis Melville (1914)

Hassan Khan, Mirza Abul, A Persian at the Court of King George 1809-10, edited by Margaret Morris Cloake (1988)

Turner, Katherine, Elizabeth, Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach-Byreuth (other married name Elizabeth Craven, Lady Craven) (1750-1828) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edition May 2010; accessed 9 June 2017)

Walford, Edward, Old and New London: A narrative of its history, its people, and its places (Cassell, Petter & Galpin, 1878, London) Vol 6

LBHF Libraries blog: The end of Brandenburg House

Jane Austen - The Secret Radical by Helena Kelly - a review

Consider carefully before you read this book!

If you are happy reading Jane Austen’s novels as the Regency era love stories that I have always believed them to be, then don’t read this book. It might help you to understand some of the influences that affected Jane’s writings which might lead to a greater enjoyment of her work, but it is also possible that you might not like everything you discover. If you take all Kelly’s ideas seriously, this book could completely undermine the way that you look at some of Jane’s plots and characters.

Why did I read this book?

I love Jane Austen’s novels and I know something of Jane’s life and period. I certainly ought to, as one chapter in my new book (What Regency Women Did For Us) is given over to my favourite author! However, I am not a literary critic and have never sought to pull Jane Austen’s novels to pieces in search for greater meaning. I accepted this review copy on the basis that it promised new insights into the novels through greater knowledge of the period in which Jane Austen wrote. As a Regency historian, I decided to hear what Kelly had to say.

Jane Austen from A Memoir of Jane Austen
by JE Austen Leigh (2nd edn 1871)

The format

The book opens with a chapter entitled ‘The Authoress’. An interesting decision to use the word ‘authoress’ rather than ‘author’. After all, Pride and Prejudice was originally described as being ‘by the author of Sense and Sensibility’1 not the authoress.

This is followed by a chapter devoted to each of Jane’s novels and a final one looking at her death. Each of these chapters begins with a fictional section based on one of Jane’s letters which helped set the theme for the chapter. Although I found the book readable in style, I did not like all the content!

Kelly argues that Jane’s novels are much more than love stories – they are revolutionary and tackle subjects which would have been seen as highly controversial at the time they were written. Different chapters look at subjects such as the failure of men to provide for their female relatives, the corruption of both the clergy and the nobility, the slave trade, and poverty and the corn laws.

Though I am ready to accept that Jane was highly influenced by the times in which she wrote, I remain unconvinced that she wrote just to be radical, dressed up in a story. To challenge and instruct as well as entertain maybe, but I personally still believe she was first and foremost a storyteller.

More than a mock Gothic novel?

Although I have read The Mysteries of Udolpho (you can read my guide to it here), I can’t say I know it very well, therefore I appreciated Kelly pointing out that the links between Mrs Radcliffe’s Gothic novel and Northanger Abbey were even stronger than I had realised. Jane’s original readers would have seen all the parallels that the modern reader misses, and these would have been even stronger if the book had been published straight after it had been written, rather than years later, after Jane’s death.

However, Kelly lost me completely when she started suggesting that all the bedroom scenes in Northanger Abbey had sexual connotations. I prefer to leave Northanger Abbey as a clever play on the Gothic novel.

Illustration from The Mysteries of Udolpho
(1806 edition)

The irresponsibility of men?

In the chapter on Sense and Sensibility, Kelly suggests that Jane was indirectly criticising the men in her family for failing to provide adequately for the women who were dependent on them – Jane, her sister Cassandra, and their mother. I already knew how hard Jane had found it when her father suddenly decided to give up the living at Steventon and uproot his family from the only home they had ever known and settle them in Bath, but I had never really considered the alternative. Kelly writes that Jane’s father need not have given up the majority of his income to his eldest son – who, by the way, already had the means to support himself – but could have hired a curate to help him and retained most of the income to support his wife and daughters. Another question that I had never asked was why, after the death of Jane’s father, it took Jane's rich brother Edward Knight four years to offer his mother and sisters a permanent home.

However, I found little sympathy with Kelly when she began trying to read sexual meanings into Edward Ferrars’ behaviour and implied he was no better than Willoughby. It certainly does not help me enjoy the novel better. Edward might not be a Darcy, but he is a man who has been downtrodden by his mother, and if Eleanor loves him, who are we to question her choice? Despite what Kelly suggests, I retain my right to believe that Edward and Eleanor could live happily ever after.

Hidden depths to Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice is my favourite book and I dare anyone to spoil it for me! Fortunately, Kelly does not try to undermine the characters of Darcy and Elizabeth, but rather draws attention to the underlying prejudices of the novel which are far more revolutionary than a modern audience appreciates.

In Jane’s time, there were deep-rooted prejudices in favour of the nobility and the clergy. Pride and Prejudice undermines both, in the persons of Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Mr Collins. Could Lady Catherine really be a sensible person to appoint Mr Collins to the living at her disposal and then actually welcome his irksome company? When the contrast is drawn between the noble Lady Catherine’s behaviour and Elizabeth Bennet’s aunt and uncle, the Gardiners, who are in trade, the reader’s conclusion is inevitable: good breeding has nothing to do with titles.

More in a name

Mansfield Park has always seemed a more serious book to me than Jane’s other novels, but I had not made the connection between the names used in the book and the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade. The very name of the book – Mansfield Park – links the book to Lord Mansfield whose judgement ‘removed the practical basis’2 on which slavery rested, and the hated Mrs Norris shares her name with a notorious slave trader.

Misquoting the text

When Kelly is discussing Willoughby’s visit to the Dashwoods in Sense and Sensibility when he believes Marianne to be dying, Kelly states that Willoughby ‘turns up at what he thinks is Marianne’s death-bed intoxicated (“yes, I am very drunk”)’3, quoting Willoughby’s own words. However, she totally disregards his next words – ‘A pint of porter with my cold beef at Marlborough was enough to over-set me’4 – indicating that Willoughbly was being sarcastic and most definitely in his right mind and not drunk.

Kelly also talks of Edward Ferrars’ education and writes “Why send him to Exeter?”5 But surely it was not Exeter where Edward was educated but at Longstaple near Plymouth at the house of Lucy Steele’s uncle, Mr Pratt.

A very large handful

My final gripe is about earls. When discussing titles in the chapter on Pride and Prejudice, Kelly refers to Lady Catherine de Bourgh as the daughter of an earl and claims “there are no more than a handful of them in England.”6 An earl is indeed the third highest title in the British peerage after duke and marquess as Kelly states, but whilst there were less than 20 English dukedoms and a similar number of marquessates at the start of the Regency, there were decidedly more than a handful of earls. According to Debrett’s, there were about 90 English earldoms alone at the start of the Regency – a very large handful!7

A mixed bag

There are many more comments I could make on this book which, in my opinion, is a mixed bag of fascinating insights and unhelpful suggestions that I could have done without. You may discover, as I did, some real gems that take you closer to Jane’s world, but if you love Jane’s novels as the love stories they are, then you might not want to take the risk!

 

Rachel Knowles writes clean/Christian Regency era romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew.

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Notes
(1) From Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)
(2) From Jane Austen - The Secret Radical by Helena Kelly (2016) p176
(3) From Jane Austen - The Secret Radical by Helena Kelly (2016) p96
(4) From Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (1811)
(5) From Jane Austen - The Secret Radical by Helena Kelly (2016) p99
(6) From Jane Austen - The Secret Radical by Helena Kelly (2016) p135
(7) From Debrett’s The Peerage of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1820)