Jane Austen's Immortal Legacy

Cassandra Austen's watercolor portrait
of her sister Jane, painted in 1804
This past week is the 201st anniversary of Jane Austen's death. She died on July 18, 1817, at age 41 after about a year of suffering from a degenerative disease.

Although her illness was undiagnosed at the time, most scholars think she had Addison’s disease (a disorder of the adrenal glands), though some believe that it was Hodgkin’s lymphoma, cancer involving the body’s lymph nodes, which finally took her life. 

Both of these conditions are treatable today.

By contemporary standards, Jane Austen's life was relatively short. Yet she left us with six novels and a novella that have become classics in English literature, along with two unfinished books and a host of other works. 

However, despite this prodigious literary output, there’s no mention of her writing in the epitaph her brother James composed for her memorial gravestone in Winchester Cathedral, her burial site.

Another sketch of Jane by Cassandra, 1810
Instead, her brother, who like his father was the rector at Steventon, commemorates the “extraordinary endowments" of his sister's mind, lauds her benevolence and sweet temperament, and commends her soul to God. No one reading that description could guess that she'd ever published a word.

While Jane Austen did enjoy some modest success as an author while she was alive, you could say her career really took off after her death. Her novels slowly gained in popularity during the rest of the 19th century, and by the 20th century not only were her novels well known and loved (and on many a high school and college student’s reading list) but were adapted into movies and television series, too.


And I’m not just talking about Pride and Prejudice, perhaps her most famous book. (The Internet Movie Data Base lists 44 television programs and feature-length films based on Austen’s novel, going back as far as 1938.) Sense and Sensibility, Emma, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and Northanger Abbey have all come to life on the screen. 

Colorized portrait of Jane done in 1872, based on
Cassandra's 1810 sketch. Note how the unknown artist
softened her face and gave her a 
wedding ring!
These stories are not just told using their original Regency settings, but many have inspired modern-day adaptations as well.

Sometimes these adaptations are almost unrecognizable from Jane’s original tale, but her basic story always shines through, no matter the setting.

Some examples are Clueless (1995), a clever spin on Emma set against a backdrop of a snobbish and socially stratified Beverly Hills high school, and Bride and Prejudice (2004), a delightful Bollywood take on Jane's classic tale, complete with a character named Darcy. 

More recently there’s From Prada to Nada (2011), a 21st-century version of Sense and Sensibility playing out in the contrasting worlds of Beverly Hills and the East Los Angeles barrio.  

And in 2016 Jane's novella Lady Susan made it to the big screen, adapted into a movie titled Love and Friendship starring Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny.

Jane Austen wrote her last piece, a comic poem she most likely dictated to her sister, on July 15, just a few days before she died. The humor of the piece is pretty remarkable in itself since, according to Cassandra, Jane was in a lot of pain during that time. 

Winchester Cathedral, where Jane is buried.
(Photo by Matt Turner, CC-BY-2.0)
This last work was about the Winchester races, held every summer and supposedly cursed by St. Swithin. According to legend, when St. Swithin’s remains were relocated by monks to a shrine inside the Cathedral against his explicit wishes, the saint cursed the event forevermore with wet weather.  

In Austen’s poem, here’s what the outraged St. Swithin says to the townspeople, by way of explaining his supernatural ability to literally rain on their parade:

When once we are buried you think we are dead,
But behold me Immortal.

Though she couldn’t have known it, Jane was describing her own literary future. 

So, while Jane Austen may have died over two centuries ago, her ideas, as expressed in her writing, live on. And that’s the best legacy any author can hope for.

Here’s the official trailer of Love and Friendship:








Sources for this post include:

Jane Austen Her Life Her Times Her Novels
Jane Austen, Her Life, Her Times, Her Novels by Janet Todd, an Andre Deutsch book, Carlton Publishing Group, London, 2013

Voices from the World of Jane Austen, by Malcolm Day, a David & Charles, F+W Publications Inc., Cincinnati, Ohio, 2006

Downton Abbey: The New Movie and Its Inspiration

Poster from Season 1 (IMDB.com)
Good news travels fast, so by now, you may have heard that a feature-length movie continuing the Crawley family saga from the popular BBC television series Downton Abbey has officially been given the green light. Filming is set to begin this summer, with a release likely to take place sometime next year.

Julian Fellowes, the creator of the original series (which I've discussed in an earlier post), is working on the script. Most, though not all of the primary characters in the series, including the Dowager Duchess (Maggie Smith) have signed on for the film.

What’s interesting to history lovers like me is that there’s a real person behind the story at the heart of Downton Abbey. Cora Levinson, the fictional daughter of a dry goods millionaire from Cincinnati in the series owes much to Mary Leiter, the real-life daughter of a dry goods millionaire from Chicago. Both Cora and Mary were part of a group who became known as the "Buccaneers" - rich American girls brought to England in the late 19th century by their social-climbing mothers, who were looking to "buy" a title for their daughters in the form of a substantial marriage dowry to a financially needy peer of the British realm.

Elizabeth McGovern, who plays American heiress
Cora Levinson who marries Lord Grantham
 and becomes a Countess in Downton Abbey.
It was a good bargain for the impoverished British nobility, who were desperate for an infusion of cold hard American cash to revive their crumbling estates. Some of these marital transactions turned out all right but others were downright disastrous in terms of mutual love and affection. (The miserable union of Consuelo Vanderbilt to Charles “Sunny” Spencer-Churchill, the 9th Duke of Marlborough, comes to mind.)

But a happy exception was the marriage of Mary to George Curzon, the eldest son of the 4th Baron Scarsdale. 

A noted scholar and adventurer with good looks and charisma, Curzon was destined to inherit a barony from his father and later become a Marquess. But he came from a big family with a small fortune.  

When George caught Mary’s eye, he was a politically ambitious young aristocrat who needed money to pursue his career goals. And the best way for gentlemen of his social class at that time to get money, if they couldn't inherit it, was to marry it. 

By 1890 Curzon had already made an unsuccessful attempt to court a wealthy widow. Then he saw Mary dance with the Prince of Wales at the Duchess of Westminster's ball. More importantly, Mary saw him, and she soon became enamored. 

In stark contrast to many of her fellow Buccaneers, Mary fell in love with her prospective groom and was able to marry him. And it was a happy marriage, even though Curzon didn’t reciprocate Mary’s affection at first. Like the American heiress Cora and Lord Grantham in Downton Abbey, George fell in love with his wife after their marriage.

And also like Cora, Mary was unable to give her husband a male heir. Instead, Mary and George had three daughters, none of whom were able to inherit their father’s estate or title, which is another historical fact Fellowes made use of in his fictional story.

Unlike Cora, Mary died at a relatively young age (36), leaving her grieving husband bereft. But Lady Curzon made quite a splash before she died, exciting universal admiration for her beauty, charm, and charitable works. She also rose quite high in Victorian society when her husband was appointed Viceroy of India in 1899 and she held the corresponding title of Vicereine of India. 
  
Because of her statuesque height and well-endowed figure, Mary wore clothes beautifully, a fact that George Frederick Worth, the Englishman who went to Paris and became the most famous fashion designer of the 19th century (he's been called the father of haute couture) didn’t fail to notice. Lady Curzon was one of many illustrious women in his exclusive clientele, and he designed many dresses for her.

But Lady Curzon’s most memorable Worth creation was undoubtedly the Peacock Gown, a truly stunning dress she wore to the Delhi Durbar, a ball held by her husband the Viceroy in 1903 in honor of the coronation of Edward VII a year earlier.

Mary’s sumptuous gown featured panels of chiffon decorated by craftsmen from Delhi and Agra with a gold-wire weaving technique called zardozi. The gold and silver embroidered panels were then shipped from India to Paris for assembly into the dress designed by Jean-Philippe Worth, who with his brother Gaston had taken over the family business after their father died in 1895. 


Lady Curzon in her peacock dress, photo taken in 1903 by Albert Edward Jeakins

What made the dress truly spectacular, however, was the addition of peacock feathers, which covered the gown in an overlapping pattern. And attached to the center of each feather was a shiny blue-and-green beetle wing.

Mary's dress was a sensation, which is no surprise. The gown is now on display at the Fashion Museum in Bath. The metal threads in the embroidery and embellishments on this gorgeous dress have reportedly become a little tarnished with time. However, the beetle wings are still shining with their iridescent luster, giving visitors an idea of the gown’s former full glory.

In her book, The World of Downton Abbey, Jessica Fellowes (niece of Julian) notes that as an American heiress Cora would have purchased her entire wardrobe from the House of Worth, making the twice-yearly pilgrimage to Paris to shop at Worth's salon and be present for fittings. That's another way the fictional world of Downton Abbey and the very real world of Lady Curzon overlap. 

It would have been fun to see a dress like Lady Curzon’s Peacock Gown on Downton Abbey, even if we just saw it hanging in the closet during Season 1. Cora could have pulled it out once or twice to reminisce about the time she made a big splash at the King’s coronation ball.

But I’m sure the TV program’s budget couldn’t have been stretched to cover such an extravagance. We’ll just have to see what sort of costumes Fellowes and his crew come up with for the movie!


Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

 Sources for this post include:
  • To Marry an English Lord, Or, How Anglomania Really Got Started (especially in America!), by Gail MacColl and Carol McD. Wallace, Workman Publishing, New York, 1989
  • The House of Worth, 1858-1954, The Birth of Haute Couture, by Chantal Trubert-Tollu, Françoise Tétart-Vittu, Jean-Marie Martin-Hattemberg, Fabrice Olivieri, Forward by Christian Lacroix, Thames & Hudson LTD, London, 2017
  • The World of Downton Abbey, by Jessica Fellowes, St. Martin's Press, New York, 2011

Beau Brummell and Famous Snubs

Isaac Cruikshank's 1824 satiric sketch of the Cyprian's Ball,
where 13 years earlier Brummell snubbed the Prince Regent 


This July is the anniversary of one of the most famous snubs in history, or at least in British history.

George Cruikshank's 1819
caricature of Prinny
For it was in July of 1813 that Beau Brummell snubbed the Prince Regent at London’s Argyle Rooms. And that snub, for whatever momentary satisfaction it may have given Brummell, marked the beginning of the end of his career as the most famous dandy in Regency England.

Brummell and a trio of his aristocratic chums (Lord Alvanley, Sir Henry Mildmay, and Henry Pierrepoint) were hosting a ball to celebrate the money they’d won gambling at Watier’s Club.

The four dandies reluctantly invited the Prince Regent to their party, primarily because His Royal Highness was determined to attend despite the fact that he'd recently quarreled with Brummell. So when he arrived at the ball, Prinny greeted Brummell’s friends but ignored the Beau.

Brummell retaliated by inquiring in a high-pitched voice that penetrated the room's din:

 “Alvanley, who is your fat friend?”

Now, the Prince was extremely sensitive about his ever-increasing girth, so he was mortified and infuriated by Brummell’s remark, so much so that he never spoke to the Beau again. And despite the fact that the Prince Regent was enormously unpopular with his subjects and the dandy's social standing remained undiminished after the snub, at least for a time, forever losing his royal patron had an enduring effect on Brummel. 

To the end of his life, the Beau hoped the rift between him and Prinny would heal, especially after the Prince was crowned King George IV in 1821.  
Brummell in 1805

Instead, Britain’s most famous dandy spent the next couple of years shunned by the Regent. It became increasingly difficult for him to find anyone who'd give him a line of credit, and he piled up gambling debts he couldn’t repay. 

Brummell was forced into exile, fleeing to France in 1816 to avoid arrest. He never returned to England, much less to his former position as the unrivaled authority on Regency manners and mores.  

One a king of London society, Brummell died in Caen in 1840 after a stint in debtor's prison. He ended his days in dire poverty, ravaged mentally and physically by syphilis, dirty and unkempt - a state that was a far cry from his former fastidiousness. 

Whether retaining the King as a lifelong friend rather than making him an enemy in 1813 would've altered Brummell's sad fate is impossible to know but easy to conjecture.

In researching the Brummell/Prinny incident, I came across other snubs and put-downs in history. I suspect they’re more fun to read about than to experience.

Here are four other encounters (in roughly chronological order) during which at least one person got zinged:


Lord Sandwich and Samuel Foote

Samuel Foote was a famous 18th-century playwright, and the story goes that he was sharing a meal with Lord Sandwich at London’s famous Beef Steak Club in Covent Garden. After the bottle had passed back and forth a few times, Sandwich said:

“Foote, I have often wondered what catastrophe would bring you to your end; but I think you must either die of the pox [syphilis] or the halter [hanged on the gallows].”

Without missing a beat, Foote replied: “My Lord, that will depend upon one of two contingencies - whether I embrace your Lordship’s mistress or Your Lordship’s principles.” 


 Talleyrand and Madame de Stäel 

Madame de Stäel was a famous French author and one of the most influential women of her time. Her life spanned both the French Revolution and the Regency, as well as Napoleon's rule in France. Her lovers included several important men, including the witty Talleyrand, the French politician who represented France at the Congress of Vienna.  

Madame de Stäel in 1810 

In 1802 Madame de Stäel published her first novel, Delphine. In the book, de Stäel depicts her former lover, Talleyrand, as the character Madame Vernon, a sly and treacherous villain. Meanwhile, the title character Delphine, whom de Stäel modeled after herself, is written as a paragon of feminine beauty.

The book was a sensation, and no doubt an embarrassment to Talleyrand. But he had his revenge on de Stäel, a woman known for having a somewhat masculine cast to her facial features.

In a letter to her, he wrote: “I hear that you’ve written a book in which both you and I are disguised as women.”


Sarah Bernhardt around 1864
Oscar Wilde and Sarah Bernhardt 

Oscar Wilde was an admirer of the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt. 

Once, after a supper, Wilde asked the actress: “Do you mind if I smoke?”

To which she replied, “Oscar, I don’t care if you burn.”



Mark Twain and Henry James

The famous American author offered this witty twist to a standard compliment in a comment he made about a book written by his literary contemporary, Henry James:

“Once you’ve put it down, you simply can’t pick it up!”

Winston Churchill in December 1941

Winston Churchill and Lady Astor

Churchill was noted for being an astute politician, a heavy drinker, and a clever wit. But not everyone was charmed by him.

According to legend, Lady Astor once said to him in exasperation: “If you were my husband, I’d put poison in your coffee.”

His response? “If I were your husband, I’d drink it.”


So there you have it – five famous snubs. One contributed to a social lion's eventual downfall, and the others make amusing anecdotes. These stories are a good reminder that a witty remark can sometimes ricochet, hurting the one who hurled it. 

That was certainly true for Beau Brummell. 

But for most of us, a funny comment is a blessing because, after all, who doesn’t appreciate a good joke, especially in these distinctly unfunny times?

And while we're on the subject of wit, here is British author, actor and wit Stephen Fry with his explanation of the difference between American and British comedy and comedians:



Sources for this post include:
  • Wit, The Best Things Ever Said, compiled and edited by John Train, Edward Burlingame Books, New York, NY 1991
  • The Prince of Pleasure and his Regency, by J.B. Priestley, Harper and Row Publishers, New York, NY 1969
  • Beau Brummell, by Hubert Cole, Mason/Charter, New York, 1977

Photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons



It's a Blog Revival

The Regency Looking Glass is back! I have some good news - I'm happy to announce that The Regency Looking Glass (which I started in 2013...