Birchall

The Compleat Mrs. Elton – Diana Birchall

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I wouldn’t normally count a book from the author as a Reading Presently candidate, but in the case of The Compleat Mrs. Elton (2004) by Diana Birchall (consisting of The Courtship of Mrs. Elton, A Defence of Mrs. Elton, and Mrs. Elton in America) things are different – because Diana is a friend of mine, and you may know her blog.  We first met online – through a book discussion email list – but have now met at least three times in person, and Diana gave me a present of this book (and the biography she wrote of her grandmother Onoto Wantana) at a lovely riverside tearoom in Oxfordshire.  Photographic evidence…

I suspect most of you will already have worked out what the book is about, if you do not know already, for – yes- it is Mrs. Elton from Emma, once Augusta Hawkins, the fairly ghastly woman who ends up marrying the vicar.  If any of Austen’s characters ever needed a defence, it is she, with her ‘caro sposo’ and ‘Mr. K’ and vulgarities here and there.

At least, that is the generally agreed line.  Diana disagrees.  Of the three, I found the Defence of Mrs. Elton both the most intriguing and the most controversial – but I will come to that in time, starting at the beginning with Augusta’s courtship.

Firstly, I should say that Diana writes Austen beautifully.  A long time ago I wrote about Diana’s sequel to Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma (which is brilliant) and there is no doubt in my mind that Diana is among Jane’s most faithful imitators – and it is a joy to read her taking on Austen’s mantle.  The courtship between Mr. Elton and Augusta Hawkins shows the future Mrs. Elton to be as aware of her age and singleness as Austen’s better-loved heroines… it’s a nice tale, and starts the defence:

If our lovers were in fact a venial pair, marrying only in a spirit of self-seeking, how much worse were they than half the world?  It was such a perfect case of like marrying like, that the most elevated love between two pure souls could be no more perfectly matched.  With a strong mutual wish for matrimony, and for each finding a partner who could bring benefits to the other, and a determination and resolve to be bettering themselves, Mr. Elton and Miss Hakwins stood a great chance of finding as lasting a happiness as exists in this mutable world.
Which leads me onto In Defence of Mrs. Elton.  Scenes from Emma, from Mrs. Elton’s arrival onwards, are shown again from that lady’s perspective, away from the satirical and subjective slant of the narrator.  In my opinion (and I would love to enter into a debate), Diana doesn’t so much defend Mrs. Elton’s character as give her a different one…

Augusta knew, even as she was speaking, that everything she was saying was wrong […]
Did she?  Hmm… of course, people often say one thing and mean another, or don’t come across in the way they intend, but it is perhaps too easy a defence to take a character’s objectionable qualities and say they were not really there.  Diana does, however, is more convincing and does a very good job when attacking the other characters – I hadn’t really noticed quite how awful Emma et al are to the newcomer, and Augusta’s plea swayed me…

They were all her enemies, yet what had she done to any of them?  Her ways, her manners, were not like theirs; she knew that well enough.  She was not capable of their sort of superior insolence, the exquisite politeness that only pointed up the disdain beneath: when she thought a thing, she said it.  If they were so pretty and exacting as to mind such a difference in her, and disapprove of the manner when the heart was right, what hope had she of ever living in harmony with any of them.
Onto the next and final story – whizzing through these, but hard to write about three novellas in one post!  Well, it’s the one where things go a bit mad, and it’s great fun.  Not only does Mrs. Elton go – with husband and children – to America, they travel among the Native Americans.  There is scalping…  From anybody who loved Austen less, I might not have forgiven the narrative world Diana takes her characters to, away from the English village life they call home, but I know that Diana would fall down dead rather than be disrespectful to Jane Austen.  The writing is good enough to support the scenario.  There is even much discussion of slavery – a wry comment on those who see slavery hidden behind Mansfield Park, I wonder?

“Yes – it is very painful,” agreed her husband, shaking his head.  “We cannot be glad enough that there is not such an evil institution in England as slavery; and hope that it can be removed from this country in the natural operations of time, so that America may one day be as fair and untainted a land as ours.”
From an English writer, this might come across as snobbery – but Diana is an American gal born and bred, which makes her tour of early America through the Eltons’ eyes particularly intriguing.  It’s a crazy idea, but it somehow works – and is a darn sight more entertaining than the next Lizzie-and-Darcy bonkfest penned by every author fixated with the 2005 film…

So, there you have it!  For those of us who adore Austen’s novels and are on the look-out for intelligent, sensitive, and adventurous explorations of her characters – look no further.  Now, in the comments… thoughts on Mrs. Elton?

Postjudiced

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It seems Mrs. Darcy has been a busy woman, paying calls on more or less every blog in the neighbourhood, and Stuck-in-a-Book is no different. In fact, despite Diana Birchall (whom I know from an online literary discussion list) contacting me a while ago, her book Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma has been hither and thither, all around Oxfordshire and most of the departments of the Bodleian. Hallowed company indeed. Finally she landed at my doorstop (or, more precisely, the janitors’ desk) and I read this lovely novel in little under a day.

I have a healthy scepticism of prequels and sequels and so forth, if not written by the original author, and no author comes more sacred than our Jane. Advocacy has bordered on obsession ever since the earliest days of general access to her writings, and though national Jane-addiction comes in peaks and troughs, it has never truly been absent. I came to Pride and Prejudice in 1995 along with so many others, through the BBC TV version, when I was nine or ten. Though I’ve only read the novel once, I have listened to an unabridged cassette and watched a fairly faithful television version probably some hundred or so times. There is not a book in the world I would less like to see sullied.

Lucky Diana Birchall feels the same, isn’t it?
What shines from every page of Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma is a love of Jane Austen, a respect for her great craft, and a deep affection for every single one of her characters, whether likeable or not. We have moved on twenty-five years, the wedding which concluded Pride and Prejudice has become a lengthy marriage and produced three children – Fitzwilliam, Henry and Jane. When Lydia’s progeny, Bettina and Cloe, come to visit their Aunt, Uncle and Cousins, romance, scandal and a sororal reunion cannot be far behind.
Within the first few pages, I had to make a decision – as will any reader, and it is the only way to read a sequel, I think. That decision was to read Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma as a exercise in hypothetical speculation; a diverting game of “what if?”, not “and then…” For there were a hundred times when I thought “No! She wouldn’t have ended up like that”, or “Surely they would have…” and so forth. I am certain that Diana would welcome such a response – she is not laying down Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma as a definitive continuation of Pride and Prejudice, but rather a skilful and witty piece of fantasy. If I were writing (or, rather, plotting) a sequel, then I’d have been kinder to Lydia and Kitty, certainly given Jane a pleasing and humble daughter, and maybe even… no, you see, each reader has her/his projections, affinities and affections.

To return to the novel. It has been many months since I read something so addictively, so keen to dedicate all my spare time to reading it. Yes, it even entered read-whilst-walking-to-work territory, which only happens once or twice a year. This was helped by the fact that Diana cleverly divides the narrative focus between revisiting old characters, and exploring the antics of their children. Most of P&P’s characters appear, or are at least mentioned. We see Lizzy and Lydia making the same mistakes as their father and mother respectively, and watch the good ‘uns and bad ‘uns (as usual in Jane country, the bad ‘uns are foolish more than wicked) from the next generation make a mess of things, and, of course, sort themselves out.

Naturally, Diana Birchall isn’t as good a writer as Jane Austen – it would be an odd coincidence if she were, since nobody else has achieved that in the last two centuries – but I can think of no finer hands into which to place this playful task. Playful in theory, of course, but I daresay terribly difficult in practice. Diana gets the tone so right: witty and ironic and moving and very, very Austen. I think the greatest compliment I can pay Mrs Darcy’s Dilemma is that I was left not mourning the handling of beloved characters who appeared, but wondering what she’d have done with the ones who did not.