One of my favorite books is Natalie Zemon Davis’s The Return of Martin Guerre (1983), which heralded the advent of a new historical school: that of subaltern history—essentially the history of sergeants, not generals. Davis used court records and other documents to reconstruct a mid-16th-century narrative that was all but lost to history. Davis’ work was undertaken amid what historians have come to articulate as the cultural turn, a period when post-Vietnam War historians combined anthropology, sociology, and history to create ethnographic studies. Such treatises endeavored to offer a more informed context against which the rise of specific personalities and movements can be projected and better understood.
I do recommend the book to you. However, Davis’s treatment of assumed identity and its ultimate unmasking is not central to this essay. Instead, it is the conclusion of Professor Davis’s Preface that sets the stage for my contemplation about how readers can use the Austen Canon as historical documents revealing nuances of English life several levels below the rarified atmosphere inhaled by those whose existence attracted the attention of men like Lord Acton.
I would figure out why Martin Guerre left his village and where he went, how
and why Arnaud du Tilh became an imposter…and why he failed to make it
stick. This would tell us new things about sixteenth-century rural society. …
And I would have the rare opportunity to show an event from peasant life
being reshaped into a story by men of letters.
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Turning to Jane Austen’s work, we find many places where the author used her own observations as a member of the gentry, albeit rising from modest roots as a clergyman’s daughter, to add context to her writing. As I have noted before, Austen created a world that was utterly familiar to her audience. Her readers did not require explanations of her characters' actions nor the monumental social questions that roiled British society during the Napoleonic period (~1792-1815). War, the slave trade, the Industrial Revolution, social mobility (both upwards as well as downwards), and religion were among the topics against which the good Lady cast the movements of the people populating her created worlds.
Like Mary Shelley, whose The New Prometheus (nearly 70 years before Nietzsche wrote Parable of the Madman) explored the question of Man displacing God in the universal hierarchy through the Industrial Revolution, Austen, I believe, can offer us insights into the world in which she lived.
Consider the question of the Church. Austen watched her father, a Church of England rector, interact with a panoply of characters who passed through or brushed against the parsonage at Steventon. She stored those encounters to call on them later when her writing demanded it.
Likewise, Austen was undoubtedly aware of the echoes of The Great Awakening, a purification movement led by George Whitefield. He was an associate of the Wesley brothers and, in a series of evangelical meetings (1740) in the American colonies, put a stick in the spokes of Church dominance in colonial politics. Then there were the activities of the Wesleys—John and Charles—who pointed to the inherent corruption of a state-run church. Today embodied in the Methodist conference, their movement and followers were derisively referred to as Dissenters. They were barred from English political life and the gentry, itself dependent upon government goodwill. The Dissenters instead founded their own schools and went into the one avenue of advancement open to them…trade.
One might wonder at Lady Catherine’s sneer “...the stench of trade.” Might Charles Bingley’s father or grandfather have been non-conformist Dissenters?
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I encourage you to read John Adams’s indictment of the Church of England’s political intermingling with Great Britain’s government. A Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law (1765) reflects on how the original forefathers who settled in Virginia and Massachusetts had explicitly rejected the feudal law and obligations embodied by Lady Catherine’s continuous pronouncements. (Fred Bischoff, annotator. 2006 https://www.fredbischoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Adams-Canon-Feudal.pdf )
“Since the promulgation of Christianity, the two greatest systems of tyranny that have sprung from this original, are the canon and the feudal law. The desire of dominion, that great principle by which we have attempted to account for so much good and so much evil, is, when properly restrained, a very useful and noble movement in the human mind. But when such restraints are taken off, it becomes an encroaching, grasping, restless, and ungovernable power.” Adams, DCFL (1765), para. 4
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However, back to religion as institutionalized in Great Britain. Some vicars were indeed engaged in one of the avenues of financial security open to them: second and third sons of gentle birth. Trapped as they were by Britain’s death grip on male primogeniture inheritance, these young men often availed themselves of the squirearchy’s employment service, the Church of England. (In Pride and Prejudice, if ODC had never gotten together, unentailed Pemberley would have ended up in the hands of Georgiana Darcy’s husband through coverture unless she had been declared a feme sole.) The trade-off would have been minimal: most were already comfortable in following the dictum, whose bread I eat, whose praise I sing. Is it any wonder that the government and parliamentary bishops were particularly tough on Pilgrims, Puritans, Baptists, and Methodists?
Unlike George Wickham, a connected young man like Edmund Bertram could expect his father, uncle, or grandfather to award him one of the Church parishes—curiously called ‘livings’...hmmmm—that would allow him a lifetime income. Edward Ferrars benefited from his connection through Marianne Dashwood to Colonel Brandon. Delaford did not fall from a tree and land in his lap. The living was carefully polished and placed in Elinor’s apron.
Further preferments could see the man feathering his nest with additional parishes or higher positions in the cathedral cities. For instance, in my book, In Plain Sight, I had Edward Benton, the rector of a Thornhill living, catch the eye of the Earl of Matlock, who pulled a few strings to bring him an archdeacon’s stall at Winchester.
Like the aristocracy, the Church was not merit-based.
Please do not think I am forgiving of William Collins, but I do get the man. I must, as Churchill said, ‘If Hitler invaded Hell, I would at least make a favorable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.’ We need to look beyond Collins’s shortcomings. How could an unconnected man like Collins, also short on intellectual fortitude, find employment after his ordination? Yet, work he must lest he gently starve while waiting for Mr. Bennet to meet his Maker.
A more accomplished man with higher status like Edmund Bertram, admittedly strained by the denial of his preferred living and forced to accept £100 a year, still could afford not to scramble. Either Thomas Bertram (pere ou fils) would be willing to feed and house him. Lady Bertram would not countenance anything else. Collins had no such avenues open to him. Who would grant him a living and why?
Desperation would have amplified Collins’ natural sycophancy, much as Austen did to allow him to appeal to Lady Catherine, a caricature of the aristocracy. Likewise, we must assume that Austen did not create the personality of Lady Catherine from the whole cloth. We can infer that both Collins and Lady Catherine were examples of personality archetypes of churchmen and those of the ton. I imagine Jane heard her father wax poetic about this pathetic curate or that pompous benefactor.
Austen offers us a different portrait of churchmen once we distance ourselves from the oleaginous Collins. I always find much to admire in Edward Ferrars’s upright nature. His honor, exemplified by his seeking to fulfill his promise to Lucy Steele and sacrificing his happiness, allows us to see the decent sort of man who most likely inhabited most of the livings across the Isles. Ferrars was Austen’s first published portrayal of a Man of God.
And we must recall that Austen returned to type with Bertram in Mansfield Park after she swung her ink-tipped blade in Pride and Prejudice. Then back again to Mr. Elton in Emma. I imagine Jane abed of a night whispering to Cassandra, ‘I have to do another smarmy social climber. Papa gave me too much material!’
I could see Ferrars or Bertram spending all night at the bedside of a failing parishioner with none of the sanctimonious pretensions that Collins or Elton would have expressed to inflate his feeble ego. None of these men are canonical aristocrats, bishops, canons, or Archbishops. That was left to Trollope in Barchester Towers.
I took the Ferrars/Bertram model to heart when developing the character of Edward Benton for In Plain Sight. While I was not reconstructing a hidden discourse—that labor is reserved for the Darcy/Smith character—I sought to use Austen’s observations as I interpreted them as source material to apply the same techniques Austen put to work as she shaped her characters. I cast Benton as a reformer, desiring to work within the system rather than a Dissenter, trying to tear down the oppressive regime. I assumed that Benton, too, would conduct his ministry in whatever parish he could win, never seeking to advance himself to the detriment of his congregants and community.
Please enjoy this excerpt from In Plain Sight.
US Link for Amazon In Plain Sight
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This excerpt is © 2020 by Don Jacobson. Any reproduction in any manner, either electronic or print, without the expressed written consent of the author is prohibited. Published in the United States of America.
Chapter Seven
Elizabeth schooled her features into impassivity as the wagon lurched its way toward Netherfield. She reminded herself that Papa had not taken her to task after she had tweaked his nose over his treatment of her sisters. Her penance was to forgo her pre-dinner ramble up the Mount.
But I shall be most interested to see how Mary and this Reverend Benton react to one another. And I have never encountered convicts. The closest I have come to one was when a magistrate’s wagon stopped at the coaching inn while the warders refreshed themselves. Even then, one of them always stood guard to shoo away neighborhood children.
Mr. Bennet rode alongside the drayage astride his hunter, Pompey. As the afternoon was warm, Bennet had chosen to wear his long unbleached linen greatcoat and a broad-brimmed straw hat. He had borrowed the look from his college friend, Sir Thomas Bertram, an old Sugar Islands’ hand. As he bounced along in her peripheral vision, Lizzy accounted him a typical gentleman, conceited enough to adopt some eccentricities to set him apart from his neighbors but also mature enough to know a country squire’s sartorial limits. Her father’s petty vanities made Lizzy love him all the more.
James guided the wagon toward where the hedgerow demarked the end of Longbourn and the beginning of Netherfield. Over the centuries, wagons, horses, and people had worn a track on either side of the impenetrable hawthorn as they brought supplies and labor to the estates. While gates and stiles had been cut through and over the greenery, the well-defined ways offered the smoothest path from the main road onto the adjacent lands.
Longbourn’s plow horses made progress, albeit slowly, toward the junction.
Bennet, feeling Pompey’s impatience at his stable-mate’s pace, rode ahead to allow the stallion to stretch his legs. By the time the wagon bearing James and the ladies had rounded the last bend before the cutoff, he had dismounted and stood speaking with a man wearing a parson’s black waistcoat and topcoat. The young man’s pate was exposed to the heavens because he had eschewed a vicar’s headgear. Lizzy apprehended a well-featured young man with medium brown locks, trimmed neatly above his ear. At the sound of the jangling harnesses, he glanced their way.
Then she heard a sharp intake of breath from beneath the deep-brimmed bonnet to her right. Before Mary demurely dropped her chin, breaking eye contact, Lizzy caught a delicate blush flooding up her neck and onto her cheeks. She also saw Mary’s hands nervously twisting her handkerchief.
Papa called on me to watch. He did not say what I was to be looking for.
Now I can hold my own when he pulls me into the bookroom. I am certain that he will find much diversion in hearing about Mary’s reaction to the sight of Mr. Benton.
Bennet waved James to a halt and brought his companion up to the wagon. As he introduced his daughters to Benton, he considered Mary’s reaction. What he saw, and what he would later discuss with Lizzy, was a marked preference on her part. While he had been accused of ignoring Mary’s sentiments, he had been surrounded by women for two decades. He could recognize the signs.
Whether she knew it or not, Mary Bennet was in the first stages of love.
And, caring father that he was, Thomas Bennet would do nothing to stand in the way of either happiness or heartbreak. In the case of the first, she would be well-situated throughout her life. If the other was to be the order-of-the-day, Mary would have her sisters to comfort her.
He had already decided that he would stop impeding his daughters’ happiness. Bennet always had felt rather ham-handed when dealing with his girl-children. Usually, he delegated their management to their mama, but today, he resolved to try to foster Mary’s prospects with a little matchmaking of his own.
Telling Mary to hand him the gray lamb’s-wool throw from beneath the bench seat, Bennet spread it in the wagon’s bed. Then he suggested, as they had a schedule to keep, that Reverend Benton clamber up and ride the rest of the way to the barnyard. Then he himself joined the young man. Pompey had to content himself with trailing the conveyance, his reins tied to the loading gate. The two men’s discussion, bits of which floated forward to Lizzy and Mary’s ears, seemed to revolve around a comparison between their respective universities and the struggle both institutions seemed to have preparing men to function in the modern world.
The young ladies understood that this was the type of conversation for which their father had been thirsting: a meeting of minds upon the intellectual battlefield. Mary and Lizzy enjoyed the newfound animation that colored their father’s rejoinders to Benton’s sallies. The young vicar held his own as the wagon crested the last rise before it began to descend into the natural bowl that housed the barn and other outbuildings.
***
The men milled about the dusty expanse stretching away from the barn. They were hemmed in by several more bearing clubs. A few additional guards stood watch from atop wagon beds. These lookouts bore muskets and metal-strapped truncheons.
The noise level rose and fell as if it were a case clock tolling the hours: regular and frequent. Between crescendos, an animal-like moan rose to be heard by those in the approaching wagon. That groan was cut off by a whistling sound that ended in a meaty thwack.
Bennet jumped to his feet and peered at the sight ahead from between his daughters’ shoulders.
“Stop the wagon. Now,” Bennet shouted. Mary and Lizzy jumped at the sound of their father’s urgency.
Lizzy squinted ahead, the sunlight in her eyes. “Papa, what is it? I expected them to be organized for services.”
“I have no idea, but I do not want either of you anywhere near whatever is happening. There are armed men. Whether there is some sort of riot or not, I cannot say.
“What I can say is that this is no place for my daughters. Do not move!”
At that moment, a figure in black flew past the wagon and raced toward the barn.
Edward Benton knew exactly what was going on. In the months after he had been ordained, he had served as chaplain to a distant cousin, an admiral, aboard his flagship, the Bellerophon. While the ship’s captain was not known as a right tartar, infrequently administered floggings left an impression upon the young man’s consciousness. Whenever the master at arms let the “cat” out of the bag, hardened seamen shuddered in the knowledge that backs would be flensed and blood would flow.
The sounds of the cat-o’-nine-tails and the victim on the grate were unmistakable and unforgettable. And Benton refused to allow this travesty to mar the Sabbath!
As he neared the mob, he sighted the crosstrees soaring above the massed heads and shoulders. A thin man—no, more a boy—was bound arm and leg to the wooden members, themselves a mockery of Calvary’s splinter. A beefy man in a canvas apron wielded the scourge. Nobody noticed Benton’s approach, so intent were they upon the blood sport playing out in front of them.
The centurion, Wadkins, hauled back his arm to deliver another stroke.
Benton roared his outrage and threw himself between the descending lashes and the boy’s back. The knotted leather caught the priest full across the face and laid his cheek open down to the bone. He crumbled into the dust.
Wadkins growled his displeasure at his work being interrupted, stepped forward, and fired a booted foot into Benton’s ribs, tossing the defenseless man a foot off the ground. He was setting himself for another blow when a massive left hook was delivered to his liver. Vision tunneled to a point, and his legs jellied; Wadkins joined Benton in the dirt.
When the thug had pulled Wilson out of their Sunday make-and-mend circle, Smith knew that the boy was condemned to provide satisfaction to the sadists in charge of the work crew. As much as he hated what was to come, Smith also realized that the sentinels had both might in the form of muskets and pistols and right as conferred by His Majesty’s courts on their side. No group of convicts could venture to defeat that combination. Rather, he would hope that Wadkins would realize that a slight fellow like Wilson could bear only half a dozen strokes rather than the traditional dozen. Soames had no problem with his employees relieving their boredom by abusing the prisoners if they could return to work the following day. He also frowned upon killing any prisoner: a death that would have to be accounted for with the local magistrate and outraged gentle sensibilities soothed in the usual—and expensive—manner.
Smith had given Wilson a piece of an old belt to bite down upon as the blows landed. He also had quickly traded some tobacco for a pint of homebrew, half to pour down Wilson’s throat, the other half to sluice over his wounds once he had been freed from his torture. His advice to the terrified fellow was to transport his mind to a happier place than the barnyard.
The flogging followed the usual script with the unfortunate being dragged out of his shelter to the sounds of jeers from his mates, relieved that they were not the ones being blamed for the trench collapse. They could howl at another’s pain and forget their own for a while.
Smith then placed himself directly in Henry’s line of sight to give him strength in his coming ordeal.
Wilson fainted after the fourth stroke, sagging into his bindings. Usually the floggings halted when the victim could not appreciate his punishment.
Not this time.
The depravity of the fifth stroke, thus, stunned Smith, when Wadkins expertly parted the rope Wilson had been using to hold up his trousers. The blood from his shredded back trickled down to stain Wilson’s grimy and tattered smallclothes. Smith snarled and charged Wadkins—to be stymied when a man Smith recognized as the prisoner’s vicar diverted Wadkins’s attention.
Events became hazy after Smith flattened the guard.
A muslin-clad blur raced into the mews and threw herself atop the supine holy man and shrieked, “Edward, no!”
A musket butt slammed into the back of Smith’s head, turning out his lights.
The sound of hooves rumbled up. A large equine shadow interposed itself between the crosstrees and the crowd as Mr. Bennet, astride Pompey, circled the figures laid low.
He roared, “Enough! My name is Thomas Bennet of Longbourn, and I am the magistrate in these parts.
“Send a man for Soames…now! Get those prisoners back into the barn.”
Looking above the milling men, he called out to James who had brought the wagon forward. “Cut that poor man down. Lay him in the wagon. Take him and the ladies back to Longbourn. Send for Jones to treat his injuries. I shall wait here for Master Soames.”
By this point, Edward had stirred and gently disengaged himself from Mary’s protective embrace. He clutched her handkerchief, bloodstained now, to his bruised and battered face. He whispered comfort to her as she wept. First, he pointedly looked up at Bennet and then, unwilling to open his heart in front of strangers, glanced down at the crown of Mary’s bonnet where it vibrated emotionally against his shoulder. When he again locked eyes with her father, he pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows.
His features softening, Mr. Bennet gave Benton a firm nod that told of the need for a deeper conversation to confirm what just had passed without words. Edward clambered to his feet and then helped Mary to rise. Arm in arm, they followed James to the back of the wagon where they helped situate young Wilson.
Throughout all of this, Lizzy did not say a word. The horror of what she had just observed had rendered her immobile, knuckles whitely clutching the front lip of the wagon’s bench seat. So much activity swirled in front of her eyes, yet she was unable to drink in the broader view. Rather, Elizabeth’s focus encompassed only the small crowd of bodies immediately in front of her.
And, only one, the tall form stretched out motionless in the dust, transfixed her.
Yes, I appreciate your conscientious scholarship AND the feel of what you write. It feels much more plausible than most, and more historical ly-based as well.
Don, such a compelling scene. The casual cruelty that underpinned much of Regency society is often elided in many romances. As it is today in many contemporary books. To have the Bennets encounter such a scene would have been shocking in the extreme to gently bred ladies. The horror of it, now as then, is very clear. And what a cliffhanger at the end of the scene.