Posted on Thursday, 6 June 2002
How did Jane Austen happen upon the characters she used in Emma? All writers borrow from real life. Check this story out that postulates how Jane Austen was influenced by real people to write Emma when she had to endure her own "Incident on Box Hill." Also see if you can find the inspiration for some of her characters' dialogue.
A Writer's Revenge
By Eugene Orlando
When Cassandra arrived home, her elder sister Jane was waiting for her in the parlor, fit to be untied and set loose in a china shop.
"Cassandra," she bellowed, "is it true that you are responsible for our little picnic outing Saturday next at Beachen Cliff?"
"Why, yes, Jane," Cassandra defended, removing her gloves. "I thought it would be..."
"Never mind what you thought it would be, for torturous is what it is going to be: the torture coming in the form of having to endure the oversized ego of Miss Emily Rankhouse. If a woman can be a rake, then she is it. You know I cannot bear to hear her jabber on so."
"Jane, dear," Cassandra soothed, putting a hand on her sister's shoulder, "as a writer, you can handle your fictional characters quite well. However, you must learn how to deal with real life characters. You simply must have the patience of Job."
"I have the patience of Job...when she is not about." Jane pulled away from her and went to look out the Sydney Street parlor window that faced in the direction of Beachen Cliff south of Bath. "I cannot stand her confounded bragging about her less-than-admirable gifts concerning matchmaking. She simply forces me to take revenge in snide remarks."
"Forces you? Well, I have never before seen her holding a knife to your throat forcing you to demean her character. That is where you must exercise control, sister." Cassandra walked over to Jane and put an affectionate arm around her. "You must refrain from any ill thoughts, and if they do arise, keep them captive in your mind. You must do it."
"If I am able to do it...however, I must find some way to exact revenge. Alas, it is my nature that imprisons me."
The picnic arrived all too soon a week from Saturday. Several people gathered atop Beachen Cliff and sprawled over three lawn blankets, ate, drank, and then indulged in tea, cakes, and conversation.
Besides Emily Rankhouse, a strikingly beautiful thirty-year-old, and the Austen sisters, Jane and Cassandra, there was the thirtyish Mr. Kingley, a friend and neighbor to Jane and her sister; Miss Bateman, a spinsterly twenty-something, Emily Rankhouse's official verbal hindquarter kissing machine; and lastly the Parson Weldon and his wife.
"You certainly chose a lovely day for a picnic, Miss Cassandra," Parson Weldon chimed cheerfully.
"A very nice day for Bath, indeed," his wife added.
"Ah, well, yes," chirped Miss Bateman like a bird chick just given a fat worm, "A very nice day indeed." She cackled in staccato style. "Ah, Mrs. Weldon, I am so very sorry. You seem to have said that already."
"Why thank you, Mr. Weldon," Cassandra murmured shyly, ignoring Miss Bateman. "Would that I had known the weather was to be so agreeable beforehand, I would take pride in your compliment."
"Do you not just love being in Bath," Emily offered to everyone present. "It is quite a quaint, clean city."
"I love Bath," Miss Bateman asserted, shaking her head up and down while looking around for enthusiastic agreement. When she saw no heads bobbing with hers, she stopped and sat very still.
Jane immediately threw aside her evil thoughts of Miss Rankhouse and brought forth the innocuous. "We have only just arrived in Bath a month ago. It is not as though it is a strange place, because we have often visited our Uncle Perrot here as children."
"So...despite your visits to your uncle, you are new to Bath," Emily remarked, donning her best condescending grin.
Jane decided to let a little of her evil retaliate. "My first view of Bath in fine weather did not answer my expectations; I think I see more distinctly through the rain. When the sun gets behind everything, the appearance of the place is all vapor, shadow, smoke, and confusion."
"Well," Emily countered, "wherever I go I shall always be talking of Bath, as I do like it so very much. Oh, who could ever be tired of Bath?"
"Certainly not the blind," Jane offered whimsically. "Then again, surveying all the glaring whiteness of the buildings and pavements could make us all not tire of it."
"Well," Emily smirked, picking up her teacup, " 'tis 1801, Miss Austen: a brand new century. Take it from someone who has lived here since the 80s, Bath is a better place than you will ever see."
Miss Bateman raised a hand to reenter the conversation. "1788 to be sure, Miss Rankhouse." She giggled incessantly. "I was just thinking...ah, well...I hope you do not find this silly, but...think of all the baths you have had in Bath since your arrival, Miss Rankhouse." She stopped to laugh and everyone else except Jane offered their well-mannered courtesy snicker. "Ah, well...I made a funny I do believe." She pulled on Emily's sleeve. "Was that not a good funny? Ah, well...indeed it was a funny funny." She choked up several short, quick chuckles as nearly everyone else rolled their eyes out of sight of one another.
"You silly goose," Emily admonished Miss Bateman, shaking a playful finger at her. "You silly, silly goose."
"Ah, well," Miss Bateman returned in good spirits, "I am a silly goosey, I am afraid."
"Why not change the talk to another subject?" Mr. Kingley requested from across the blanket.
Emily gave Mr. Kingley a rude look. "Because we are not finished with this one." Turning to Jane, she continued. "What are you, Jane...seven of eight or eight of nine?"
"Actually I am 3,669 of 3,670."
"And what mystery is that, pray?" Emily retorted.
"I am very recently added to the population of Bath, though reluctantly so, but to many I am just Jane."
"Perhaps you missed my meaning." Emily's artificial smile faded into a look of mystery. "I hear you are one of eight or nine siblings."
"Yes, Miss Rankhouse, eight to be sure, but I am also one of 3,670 citizens of this overly bright town."
Miss Bateman screwed up her face in bewilderment. "Are there that many people in Bath? How come you to know the exact number?"
"I do not, it is a...guess manufactured to make a point."
Emily looked off in a direction where there were no people. "I do thank you, I suppose, for providing me with information not requested. I shall have to learn to expect, and come to terms with tangents."
"Oh, please, Miss Rankhouse," Jane mocked apologetically, "do not pay any mind to the ramblings of a writer. We take pleasure in our little tête-à-têtes with eccentricity."
"Why not seize the pleasure," Emily said haughtily.
"Why not, indeed," Jane retorted, her anger nearly boiling over.
"Well," Mr. Kingley interrupted nervously, "let us talk of Mr. Lamb's good fortune."
"Ah, very well indeed," Miss Bateman buzzed, "Mr. Lamb, Mr. Lamb, Mr. Lamb. Now that is something to talk about."
"Yes indeed," Emily brightened up. "I had much to do with that, you know. I introduced him to Margaret Fuller and, in no time at all, he proposed."
"Oh, yes," Jane jabbed, "Mr. Lamb was married last month to Mrs. Fuller...and her three daughters."
"I knew they were the perfect match." Emily waved her hand proudly as all the others elected not to bring out their ten-foot poles, for they knew that the most dreaded topic was before them and they dared not prolong it. "I dabble in matchmaking, you know, and I own that my friends say I have quite an eye."
Jane sipped her tea. "I own that I would like to see all matchmakers confine themselves to the art of sulfur and wood. For there is a match made to burn with passion."
Emily brought her ego down from the clouds to address the lesser beings around her. "The most beautiful thing in the world is a match well made. Do not think me vain when I tell you that I possess the talent for pairing a match...and my word alone you will not have to take. Others confirm it almost weekly."
"Is that spelled w-e-a-k-l-y?" Jane asked.
Emily stared at Jane for the longest time. "Every week someone informs me how I plant into the heads of others the fertile notion of marriage."
"Yes," Jane agreed readily, "the infertile soil does require its manure."
Giving Jane a stiff glare, Emily continued. "Well, I hope you all do not think me vain, for it is a matter of fact from which I speak."
"Vanity working on a weak head produces every kind of mischief," Jane said, after ignoring the look of retribution on Mr. Kingley's face.
Miss Bateman, looking faint, waved a hand fanning her face. "Ah, well. Vanity indeed."
"My, my." Emily haughtily looked around at no one in particular. "This day has produced some most disagreeable conversation."
"We all have our bad days," Cassandra offered in genuine apology for her sister.
Emily lifted her teacup. "Oh, I think everyone should be agreeable, do you not believe so, Miss Austen?"
Jane put her tea down. "I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."
"Really, Miss Austen," Mr. Kingley interjected quickly, "what unusual insights you writers have on the rest of us. With talk like that, you should end up an old maid."
"I own that I shall never marry," Emily announced to no one in particular, "for I derive far too much ecstasy at producing the bonds of matrimony for others to enjoy. If I marry, then my distraction will lead to the unhappiness of those I will not have paired."
Jane chuckled to herself. "I would not think any young woman would relish the idea of willingly wanting to be an old maid."
"However," Emily pointed a delicate finger at Jane, "I shall not be a poor old maid, for it is a bad financial station that makes celibacy contemptible. Oh, yes, but a single woman of good fortune is always respectable. You see...it is narrow income that contracts the mind as the cold does the skin on one's arm."
"So, poverty contracts the mind," Jane reiterated.
"And it also sours the temper," Emily added.
"And sours the soul," Jane included.
"Just so. And good fortune expands the mind causing all to see that the single woman can be quite agreeable without a husband."
Jane smirked behind her hand at Mr. Kingley. "And what of the proposals that will surely come your way?"
"Oh, Miss Austen," Emily chuckled, "it is a brutal task, but the suitor can be made to simply understand."
Jane offered a cantankerous smile. "The most incomprehensible thing to a man is a woman who rejects his offer of marriage."
"Come now, my fine Miss Austen," Emily wheezed. "What do you know of men?"
"They think, talk, and act in riddles. That is why I write cautiously of them."
Emily took another cake and set it on her plate. Then she donned a look of reflection as though a candle was lit inside her head. "Why not have a few riddles now? That way we may discover the true nature of men through riddles." She peered at Mr. Kingley. "What do you say to us making riddles, sir?"
"Sounds capital."
"Ah, well," Miss Bateman interjected. "I love riddles."
Emily fanned herself in the warm afternoon sun. "I can tell you how hurt I was the last time I played at riddles. Nobody asked me to produce a single one."
Jane's smile betrayed her wicked thought just before she spoke it. "Maybe they thought your personality riddle enough, and you overqualified."
"Jane," Cassandra rebuked. "Must you always be in the writing mode?"
Mr. Kingley raised a hand. "No, I do believe that we should leave the riddles on men well enough alone."
"Ah, well...we have gone astray from the previous conversation at any rate," Miss Bateman announced.
"Goose," Emily snapped at Miss Bateman, and then recovering, threw out a little cackle for all to interpret as levity. "The conversation has strayed a bit I am afraid, as it often does on such mixed outings. I am accustomed to talking of things very clever, however, when with the lower mix of company, I find myself bombarded with things quite dull." Emily looked directly at Jane. "Do you not think so?"
"Dull is as...dull is," Jane replied. "Now that is a clever remark, is it not Miss Rankhouse?"
"As to the dull side, Miss Austen," Emily admonished her, "I would think that you would not be limited in number."
"And I am not...at least in fiction to characters deserving of it."
Emily picked up a tart and scrutinized it carefully. "I find many on the lower end of society whose lives are little more than fiction."
"And fantasy on the other extreme, I daresay." Jane threw a wink at Mr. Kingley who scorned her a frown in return.
"My," Mr. Kingley interjected, "how Jane and Emily do dominate the conversation."
Jane gave Mr. Kingley a smirk from across the blankets. "I dominate only in reply, Mr. Kingley."
Emotionally charged, Emily huffed up as the last remarked hit home. "Yes, I admit that I carry the burden of conversation. It is always up to me; else each social gathering dissipates into stares of boredom. It is people like you, Miss Jane Austen, who belittle and cajole, always looking to steal factuality in order to manufacture fiction."
"Well, I must away," Jane said, getting up. "I feel a sudden urge to write." Looking at Emily, she offered her worst glare. "Revenge for wrongful and hurtful words by a normal person may exact a petty revenge or not, but a writer's revenge is for all time. Good-day to you, Miss Rankhouse."
Mr. Kingley went to Jane as she was walking away. "I must say...that was badly done, Jane...badly done, indeed."
Jane stopped and spit a nasty look in his eye. "Mr. Kingley, the worst is yet to come. Please reserve your negative judgment for when my real wrath arrives."
Nearly fifteen years later, Jane Austen returned to Bath for a very special visit. After finding out that Miss Emily Rankhouse was still living in Bath and where, Jane went to her home and rang the bell. After being escorted into the front parlor and waiting for several minutes, a much older Miss Rankhouse entered.
"Yes, may I help you?" Emily said, wrinkling the wrinkles already on her brow.
Jane handed her a book. "I do not know if you remember me, but I wanted you to have this. My name is Jane Austen."
"Jane." Emily thought a moment, took the book, and looked at the cover. "I think I knew a Jane once." She pointed a sudden finger at Jane. "Say, are you not the writer?"
"Yes, I am." Jane pointed to the book in Emily's hand. "I wanted you have this autographed copy of my latest book."
Opening the book, Emily read aloud. " 'Emma...by Jane Austen.' " Looking up, the wrinkles wrinkled yet again. "I do not understand. We have had nothing to do with one another for years. Why now?"
"You probably will not remember our picnic outing to Beachen Cliff back in 1801 when I said something to the effect that a writer's revenge is for all time."
Emily shook her head bewildered. "I am sorry, Miss Austen. I do not remember the outing, and I have no idea what this book has to do with me, nor your revenge."
Jane walked to the parlor entrance, stopped, and turned around. "As you read the book, you will note several similarities, of which the least is not the fact that Emma is a name so very close to Emily. Good-day, Miss Woodhouse."
Jane sauntered through the arch and let herself out, never to return to Bath again.