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Persuasions #10, 1988 Pages 117-126
Views from both Directions: Courtship and Marriage in Letters and Diaries from the Age of Jane Austen PAULA STEPANKOWSKY Daily News, Longview, Washington 98632 CONRAD K. HARPER Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, 1 Battery Park
Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10004 INTRODUCTION Conrad We can begin with an observation – which unexpectedly sounds very much
like Jane Austen – written early in the eighteenth century by the philosopher
G.W. Leibnitz: We
can miss the right road by trying to follow the shortest one, just as the stone
by falling straight down may too soon encounter obstacles which prevent it
getting at all close to the centre of the earth. This shows that it is reason and that will lead us towards
happiness, whereas sensibility and appetite lead us only towards pleasure.1 For the next few minutes we wish to recreate from letters and diaries of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the world of Jane Austen as recorded by contemporaries. I shall read the men’s letters. Paula And I shall read the women’s letters and diaries. “ …
I consider everybody as having a right to marry once in their lives for love …
” wrote Jane Austen to her sister, Cassandra, in 1808.2 Indeed, in Jane Austen’s mind – and in her novels – love and a good marriage were inseparable. One reason readers find Pride and Prejudice,
Persuasion and her other works so alive today is that they reflect what
real people felt about love and courtship – a theme central to all her works. From the glittering London salons of Devonshire House to the country inns and Bath ballrooms more familiar to Jane’s characters, young men and women of the period spent a good deal of energy wrestling with romance. A study of letters and journals written by Jane Austen’s contemporaries reveals real men and women in love, in pain, in doubt, in happiness – emotions Jane recreated in characters ranging from Emma Woodhouse to Mr. Darcy – emotions that two hundred years have done nothing to dim. Conrad During this period, money no longer was the only reason to marry nor was
courtship conducted under a chaperon’s unblinking eye. Although old attitudes and the prudence of
elders still had significant sway, many young people of Jane Austen’s class
were able to seek an ideal mate and marry for love. Some people were even coming to the same conclusion that Jane and Elizabeth Bennet did about marriage: That it is better to be single than to marry someone you do not love. Paula In addition to Jane Austen, our writers who loved, were loved or had
observations on love and courtship include: Fanny
Burney, novelist and diarist; Lord
Byron, who needs no description; Lady
Harriet Cavendish, daughter of the 5th Duke of Devonshire; Lord
Chesterfield, the compleat courtier and author of the celebrated letters to his
son; William
Cowper, poet and writer of hymns. Conrad We shall also read from: Samuel
Johnson, pre-eminent man of letters; Hester
Lynch Thrale, literary hostess and friend to Johnson; Horace
Walpole, connoisseur of the Gothic, historian and letter writer; Mary
Wollstonecraft, early feminist. THE IDEAL MATE Paula In Jane Austen’s time, as now, finding the ideal mate had a lot to do
with one’s success at love and courtship games. Jane revealed her own ideals – ones in which we can see traces of Mr. Knightley or Captain Wentworth – in a letter to her niece, Fanny Knight: There
are such beings in the World perhaps, one in a Thousand, as the Creature you
and I should think perfection, where Grace and Spirit are united to Worth;
where the Manners are equal to the Heart and Understanding … 3 A fellow novelist, Evelina author Fanny
Burney, had a similar ideal, one she found in her future husband, Comte
Alexandre d’Arblay: His
nobleness of character – his sweetness of disposition – his Honour, Truth,
integrity – with so much softness, delicacy and tender humanity – except my
beloved father and Mr. Lock, I have never seen such a man in this world, though
I have drawn such in my imagination.4 Conrad For many women, and Jane Austen heroines like Catherine Morland, a
ballroom, particularly one in Bath, was an ideal place to find a romantic hero. “Bath
is a good place for the initiation of a young Lady[,]” wrote Samuel Johnson to
Hester Thrale on one of her many visits to Bath. “She can neither become negligent for want of observers, as in
the country, nor by the imagination that she lies concealed in the crowd, as in
London.”5 Paula But taking a bow from a beau in a ballroom was no guarantee a lady would
meet her match. Lady Harriet Cavendish,
daughter of the fifth Duke of Devonshire and later an admirer of Jane Austen,
writes of the countless balls she attends without meeting anyone who can touch
her heart: Perhaps
it is a misfortune to have such very high ideals of perfection; especially as I
always expect to find them realized, but it is also a safeguard and adds
interest to every society, though often great disappointment.6 Lady Harriet, whose letters rival Jane’s in their trenchant observations, had the same high standards for her only brother, Lord Hartington, one of the biggest matrimonial catches of the Regency. “He
is just now wild with delight at the Miss Monsons being arrived in Town,” she
wrote to her sister in 1808. “Heaven
send his taste may mend before we have a sister-in-law.”7 Conrad Men, too, had their ideal women. Though he never married, Horace Walpole had a keen eye for female beauty and character, something he found in the attractive Berry sisters: They
are of pleasing figures; Mary the eldest, sweet, with fine dark eyes, that are
very lively when she speaks, with a symmetry of face that is the more
interesting from being pale. Agnes, the
younger, has an agreeable sensible countenance, hardly to be called handsome,
but almost … [T]hey dress within
the bounds of fashion, though fashionably; but without the excrescences and
balconies with which modern hoydens overwhelm and barricade their persons. In short, good sense, information,
simplicity and ease characterize the Berrys.8 Lord Byron’s views of the ideal woman were considerably more
tongue-in-cheek. Of his mistress, Lady
Caroline Lamb, he wrote: I never knew a woman with
greater or more pleasing talents, general as in a woman they should be,
something of everything and too much of nothing. 9 But of his future wife, Arabella Milbanke, he
said: Miss M I admire because she is
a clever woman, an amiable woman, and of high blood, for I have still a few
Norman and Scotch inherited prejudices on that last score, were I to
marry. As to love, that is done in a week
(provided the lady has a reasonable share); besides, marriage goes on better
with esteem and confidence than romance, and she is quite pretty enough to be
loved by her husband, without being so glaringly beautiful as to attract too
many rivals.10 COURTSHIP Paula From the eighteenth century to the time Jane Austen published her first
novels, the relationship between courting couples relaxed considerably. Witness the stiff proposition faced by Hester
Thrale, who in 1778 describes her courtship twenty years earlier by her first
husband, the brewer Henry Thrale: Our Courtship (if such it
might be called) was always carried on under the Eye of my Mother, whose
project it originally was; and this so completely that except for one five
minutes only by mere Accident, I never had a Tete a Tete with my Husband in my
whole Life till quite the evening of the Wedding Day.11 Conrad Horace Walpole describes another mid-century courtship that was nothing
if not brief: The young Lord it seems has
been in love with Charlotte for some months, but thought so little of inflaming
her, that yesterday fortnight she did not know him by sight. On that day he came and proposed himself to
my brother, who with much surprise heard his story, but excused himself from
giving an answer … he would send for her and know her mind …. She came and saw this impetuous lover, and I
believe was glad she had not refused point blank – for they were married last
Thursday.12 Paula Times had changed by the end of the century. Young people found it easier to get to know each other naturally,
making courtship, or even a flirtation, a more lighthearted prospect, as Jane
Austen wrote to her sister in 1796: At length the day is come on
which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy; and when you receive this, it will
be over. My tears flow as I write at
the melancholy idea.13 But allowing young people to choose a partner
for themselves opened the door to heartache and confusion. Nearly twenty years later, Jane gave her
niece, Fanny, this advice about the failure of her first romance: Oh poor dear Fanny, your
mistake has been one thousands of women fall into. He was the first young Man who attached himself to you. That was the charm and most powerful it is.14 Some young women still felt pressure to marry
to please their relations, a fact reflected in Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield
Park and Persuasion. Like Fanny Price, Lady Harriet Cavendish was
encouraged to marry a suitable man whom she disliked. She writes of her difficult position to her mother: … [I]f a year hence or more, I
should have altered my mind, I shall be blamed by everybody, accused of being
unfeeling, coquettish and other faults, if that is the case, I am now as much
bound as if I was actually engaged.15 Conrad It took more than finding the right person to bring courtship to a
successful conclusion. One had to have
the proper frame of mind, and even be prepared to mend one’s ways. Before going courting, wrote poet William
Cowper to his friend, Chase Price: … You must Amend, or Despair
of finding in Honest Matrimony a sure Contentment – Whatever means you think
likely to work such a Reformation I would advise you to pursue; Neither the
Single nor the Marry’ d State afford any sure Contentment But to the Virtuous.16 One who did not mend his ways was Lord Byron,
whose rakish reputation made it difficult for him to court marriageable young
ladies of high society. In a letter to
his worldly friend, Lady Melbourne, he writes of his failure: … I do not know of a single
gentlewoman who would venture upon me …
I admired your niece, but she is engaged to Eden; besides she deserves a
better heart than mine. What shall I do
– shall I advertise?17 Courtship through letters might be romantic but
it was also remote. William Cowper
wrote: Our
correspondence after this proceeded smoothly for a considerable time, but at
length having had repeated occasion to observe that she expressed a sort of
romantic idea of our merits, and built such expectations of felicity upon our
friendship, as we were sure that nothing human could possibly answer, I wrote
to remind her that we were mortal, to recommend it to her not to think more
highly of us than the subject would warrant, and intimating that when we
embellish a creature with colours taken from our own fancy, and so adorned,
admire and praise it beyond its real merits, we make it an Idol, and have
nothing to expect in the end but that it will deceive our hopes, and that we
shall derive nothing from it but a painful conviction of our error.18 MARRIAGE AND MONEY For men and women of Jane Austen’s time, love and courtship were still
influenced by property, though not to the degree of a half-century earlier,
when Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son: My kinsman, Lord Strathmore,
is to be married, in a fortnight, to Miss Bowes, the greatest heiress, perhaps,
in Europe, and ugly in proportion.19 Horace Walpole unleashed this anecdote: I hear your friend Lord North
is wedded; somebody said, “It is very hot weather to marry so fat a bride”; G.
Selwyn replied. “Oh! she was kept in
ice for three days before.”20 Paula Jane Austen’s novels, and heroines like Elizabeth Bennet, reflect a
growing repugnance for the marriage of convenience. Letters of the period show a parallel distaste. Fanny Burney writes about her friend, Mrs.
Waddington, who made an arranged marriage in 1789: I grieve eternally at our long
separation and at her barbarous destiny!
tied for life to an establishment!
oh Heavens, how preferable is poverty!21 Early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft did not
mince words in a letter to an unknown man who proposed marriage to her in 1795: In a few words, what I call an
insult is the bare supposition that I could for a moment think of prostituting
my person for a maintenance; for in that point of view does such a marriage
appear to me …22 Conrad While many were repelled by the idea of marriage for money, few could
marry without some attention to the financial circumstances of their intended,
even Lord Bryon, who wrote to his half-sister Augusta: I have no connections to
domesticate with, and for marriage, I have neither talent or inclination. I cannot fortune hunt, nor afford to marry
without a fortune.23 Paula Here is Fanny Burney on the astronomer Herschel’s marriage: His wife seems good-natured,
and she was rich, too! and astronomers are as able as other men to discern that
gold can glitter as well as stars.24 When a Miss Sawbridge and a tutor announced
their engagement, Jane Austen immediately wrote Cassandra: … [T]hey must be one of the
happiest Couples in the World, and either of them worthy of Envy – for she must
be excessively in love and he mounts from nothing to a comfortable Home.25 Women of good family who married without money
were sometimes excluded from high society, something Fanny Burney faced when
she married the penniless French émigré
general, Comte Alexandre d’Arblay: “How the World would blame me
at first, I well know; but his worth, in time, would make its own way and be my
vindication,” she wrote to her sister, Susan.26 To remain single was to court economic
oblivion, as Jane Austen acknowledges ironically in a letter to Fanny Knight: Single Women have a dreadful
propensity for being poor – which is one very strong argument in favour of
Matrimony. 27 MARRIAGE FOR LOVE Conrad Gradually, however, love gained on money as the reason to get
married. Lord Hertford wrote about his
daughter, Isabella, to Horace Walpole.
The words could fit Fanny Price and Edmund Bertman: The gentleman of her choice is
a Mr. George Hatton, a man of respectable family, character and conduct, but a
younger brother with a slender fortune … Could I have
made my choice freely, I will acknowledge to you as a friend that I should have
waited some other offer, but when my daughter tells me she is unambitious and
chooses retired life with a gentlemen of Mr. Hatton’s temper and disposition,
and that he has fortune enough to satisfy her views in life, I hope you will
think I have done kindly as well as prudently in not withholding my consent.28 When Lord Byron finally prevailed on Miss
Milbanke to marry him, a letter to his friend, Thomas Moore, indicates he did
so without inquiring about the state of her fortune: I am going to be married –
that is, I am accepted, and one usually hopes the rest will follow … She is said to be an heiress, but of that I
really know nothing certainly, and shall not inquire. But I do know that she has talents and excellent qualities, and
you will not deny her judgement, after having refused six suitors and taken me
… I must, of course, reform thoroughly;
and, seriously, if a man can contribute to her happiness, I shall secure my
own. She is so good a person, that –
that in short, I wish I was a better.29 Paula Some were saying, as might a Jane Austen heroine, that they would not
marry without love: “I have all my life determined
never to marry without having the very highest value and esteem for the man who
should be my lord,” Fanny Burney wrote as a teenager to her mentor, Samuel
Crisp. “… I have long accustomed myself
to the idea of being an old maid and the title has lost all its terrors in my
ears … Don’t imagine by what I say that
I have made a vow for a single life – No: but on the other hand, I have no
objection to it.”30 Conrad Lord Byron mused to Arabella just after their engagement in 1814 about
the key to happiness in marriage: Do you think my love, that
happiness depends on similarities or differences in character? I doubt it. I am rather inclined to lay more
stress upon intellect than is generally done – much upon temper. Affection must do the rest.31 But neither intellect nor affection was enough to calm the storms that
eventually overwhelmed their marriage. Paula Jane Austen was a firm believer that true regard was the basis of a
long-lasting, fulfilling marriage. “I … entreat you not to commit
yourself farther and not to think of accepting him unless you really do like
him,” she wrote to her niece Fanny Knight.
“Anything is to be preferred than marrying without Affection.”32 In a letter to Fanny Knight written two weeks
later, Jane says further: Nothing can be compared to the
misery of being bound without Love, bound to one, and preferring another. That is a punishment which you do not
deserve.33 Conrad Love was not the only ingredient needed for a successful
relationship. Samuel Johnson warned a
friend, Joseph Baretti, of how the thrill of courtship could overwhelm reason: Of your love I know not the
propriety, nor can estimate the power; but in love, as in every other passion,
of which hope is the essence, we ought always to remember the uncertainty of
events. There is indeed nothing that so
much seduces reason from her vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an
amiable woman; and if all would happen that a lover fancies, I know not what
other terrestrial happiness would deserve pursuit.34 Paula For some people, however, independence was all. Neither love nor money was enough to
persuade Mary Wollstonecraft to marry William Godwin. They married only a few days before their daughter was born. Even then, Mary wished to preserve her
independence, as she wrote in this letter to Godwin, who had gone to the
countryside: A husband is a convenient part
of the furniture of the house, unless he be a clumsy fixture. I wish you, from my soul, to be riveted in
my heart: but I do not desire to have you always at my elbow – though at this
moment I did not care if you were.35 Conrad Whenever Jane Austen’s heroines followed their creator’s advice and
married for love, we can imagine their receiving congratulations somewhat like
those Cowper bestowed on his friend, Samuel Rose: Among the many who love and
esteem you there is none who rejoices more in your felicity than myself; far
from blaming, I commend you much for connecting yourself, young as you are,
with a well-chosen companion for life …36 Paula We can also imagine that Catherine, Elinor, Elizabeth, Fanny, Emma and
Anne found nineteenth century marriage fashions more to their liking than those
of the preceding century. Six months after their own weddings, Jane
Austen’s heroines might have written something like the letter Lady Harriet
Cavendish sent to her sister shortly after she married Lord Granville
Leveson-Gower in 1809: ... early hours, wholesome
dinners, a comfortable bed and Granville, adored Granville, who could make a
barren desert smile.37 NOTES 1 G.W. Leibnitz, New Essays on
Human Understanding, translated and edited by Peter Remnant and Jonathan
Bennett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 194. 2 Jane Austen, Jane Austen’s
Letters to her Sister Cassandra and Others, edited by R.W. Chapman. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), p.
240. Hereafter Chapman. 3 Chapman, pp. 409-10. 4 Madame d’Arblay, Journals
and Letters of Fanny Burney [1791-1840] edited by Joyce Hemlow (Oxford:
Clarendon press, 1972-1984), II, p. 38.
Hereafter Hemlow. 5 Samuel Johnson, The Letters
of Samuel Johnson with Mrs. Thrale’s Genuine Letters to Him [1719-1784],
edited by R.W. Chapman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), II, 362. Hereafter Johnson. 6 Lady Harriet Cavendish, Hary-O:
The Letters of Lady Harriet Cavendish [1796-1809], edited by Sir George
Leveson-Gower and Iris Palmer (London: John Murray, 1940), p. 110. Hereafter Leveson-Gower. 7 Leveson-Gower, p. 279. 8 Horace Walpole, Horace
Walpole’s Correspondence [1725-1797], edited by W.S. Lewis and others, (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1937-1983), XXXIV, 25. (Emphasis in original.)
Hereafter Lewis. 9 George Gordon, Lord Byron, With
Byron in Love, edited by Walter Littlefield, (New York: J.H. Sears &
Co., 1926), p. 97. Hereafter
Littlefield. 10 Littlefield, p. 131. 11 Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale, Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs. Hester Lynch
Thrale (Later Mrs. Piozzi) [1776-1809], edited by Katherine C. Balderston
(Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1942), I,
306. 12 Lewis, XXI, 439 (footnotes omitted). 13 Chapman, p. 6. 14 Chapman, p. 409. 15 Leveson-Gower, p. 103. 16 William Cowper, The Letters and Prose Writings of William Cowper
[1750-c.1799], edited by James King and Charles Ryskamp (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1979-1986), I, 73. Hereafter
Cowper. 17 Littlefield, p. 133. 18 Cowper, II, 18-19. 19 Fourth Earl of Chesterfield, The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope,
4th Earl of Chesterfield [1712-1773], edited by Bonamy Dobree (London: Eyre
& Spottiswoode Ltd., 1932), VI, 2795-96.
Hereafter Chesterfield. 20 Lewis, IX, 116. 21 Hemlow, II, 74. 22 Mary Wollstonecraft, Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft,
edited by Ralph M. Wardle, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), p. 327. Hereafter Wardle. 23 Littlefield, p. 225. 24 Madame d’Arblay, Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay (1778-1840),
edited by Charlotte Barrett, with prefaces and notes by Austin Dobson (London:
MacMillan & Co. Ltd., 1904), IV, 113. 25 Chapman, p. 230. 26 Hemlow, II, 50. 27 Chapman, p. 483. 28 Lewis, XXXIX, 432-33 (footnotes omitted). 29 Littlefield, p. 138. 30 Frances Burney, Early Diary of Frances Burney, [1768-1777)
edited by Annie Raine Ellis (London: George Bell & Sons, 1807), II, 74. 31 Littlefield, p. 142. 32 Chapman, p. 410. 33 Chapman, p. 418. 34 Johnson, I, 146. 35 Wardle, p. 396. 36 Cowper, III, 386. 37 Lady Harriet Granville, Letters of Harriet, Countess Granville
[1810-1845], edited by the Hon. F. Leveson-Gower (London: Longman, Green
& Co., 1894), I, 25. |
