VOL.3 No .2, 2017 INSIDE THIS ISSUE Germaine de Staël From Fame to Footnotes Ghostly Conversations Reimagining Jane’s E. J. Clery on researching Anna Letitia Barbauld ‘Great House’ ee us through to the The overarching ambition is to create a cultural literary destination within the wider grounds next chapter… of Chawton House – known to Jane Austen S and her family as the ‘Great House’. This will Fanny Holcroft Chawton House Library is currently offer larger and more extensive visitor facilities Notes on a manuscript melodrama at a pivotal moment in its 25-year history. and improved interpretation. It will provide an Following the announcement by our Founding enhanced experience of the Chawton estate Patron, Dr. Sandy Lerner OBE, that she was that was Jane Austen’s home throughout the stepping down from the Board of Trustees last final, productive years of her life, and continue year, the Charity is currently undertaking a to promote the women writers who inspired strategic review, with a clear focus on reshaping her. In turn, the revenue from these increased the organisation and creating resilience. commercial activities will continue to support Through the Bosack Kruger Foundation, Dr. the education and research programmes, with Lerner supported Chawton House Library the aim of inspiring future generations of with approximately 65% of its operating costs readers and writers. but, now that this relationship is coming to an • end in four months, we face both significant Drama in the Drawing Room challenges, and exciting possibilities. Frances Burney and the theatre To achieve our ambitions, Chawton House Library is asking supporters to help keep our house and library going during a development phase, whilst progress is made on the planning and launch of a major capital project, Reimagining Jane Austen’s ‘Great House’. We will be launching a number of fundraising and awareness-raising activities as part of this campaign, the first of which has already begun: #TheDarcyLook. To take part or to donate, please visit our website at www.chawtonhouselibrary.org, call 01420 541010, or text JANE03 £3 to 70070. For more information about the campaign, please visit www.janesgreathouse.org, or you can keep informed via our social media sites on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Corinne is crowned at the Capitol. Fickle Fortunes: Jane Austen and Who was Germaine de Staël? Germaine de Staël ‘Bonaparte had persecuted her in Corinne incorporates political such a way that it was said there commentary, descriptions of were three powers in Europe: Italy and its arts, and reflections England, Russia and Madame de on national identity, but is also a Staël.’ love story - the tale of a doomed On 12 June, our new exhibition Victorine de Chastenay, Memoirs love affair between Scottish opened at Chawton House Library, 1771-1815 (1896) nobleman Oswald, Lord Nelvil, and talented Italian artist and celebrating the life and works of two ‘Exile made me lose the roots which performer Corinne. Staël’s tied me to Paris and I have become heroine captured the imagination remarkable women, and reflecting European.’ of many subsequent women on their shifting reputations in the Germaine de Staël, letter to writers. Felicia Hemans, for Mme de Berg (May 1814) example, opens her 1827 poem 200 years since they died. ‘Corinne at the Capitol’ with the following lines Germaine de Staël (1766-1817) was born into a about the heroine’s genius: Swiss family who lived in France. Her mother, Suzanne Necker (née Curchod) held salons ‘DAUGHTER of th’ Italian heaven! that certainly taught her much about the art Thou, to whom its fires are given…’ politics and travel meant that Staël existed in Four days before Jane Austen’s death, the renowned writer, essayist and its objects map out the strange reversals in the reputations of these of hosting from an early age. But she also had a state of exile, frequently moving from place and salonnière Germaine de Staël passed away in Paris on 14 July two writers, which saw Staël fade from view whilst Austen grew in literary aspirations. She wrote her first play at Despite the praise of Corinne, the poem to place. During the French revolution, Staël 1817. She was mourned by Europe. Just a week later, news of her death fame. just 12 years old. Her father, a French statesman, ultimately extols the virtues of domestic came to stay in Surrey in England, where reached Winchester, the city where Austen spent her final months, disapproved of women writing, and so she was femininity in contrast to the sort of public life she met Frances Burney but she returned to when it was reported in The Hampshire Chronicle that ‘The celebrated Accompanying the exhibition cases are sculptures and engravings forced to hide her ‘masculine’ aspirations from that Corinne led. Staël herself was painted as France after the Terror. She was banished by Madame de Stael [sic]died at Paris.’ that form part of ‘Inspired by the Word’, a multi-venue visual arts him. Corinne by the famed portrait artist Vigée Napoleon in 1803, and came to settle at the exhibition by contemporary artists, to celebrate the literature of le Brun in 1807 [above left]. Unfortunately, Château de Coppet in Switzerland. At Coppet, It was the relatively unknown Austen, however, not Staël, who went Hampshire writers, including Austen. Staël went on to become a European celebrity, neither were happy with the result. Although she entertained frequent visitors, but she also on to become globally celebrated. This summer, Austen will join known for her famous salons in Paris and le Brun had done her best to capture a look traveled widely, visiting Weimar, Berlin, Milan, Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare as the only writers to have ‘Fickle Fortunes: Jane Austen and Germaine de Staël’ will run from Coppet (Switzerland), and for her diverse of inspiration on her subject’s face, Staël was Rome, Naples, Florence, Bologna, Padua, Pisa, featured on English banknotes, when she appears on the ten pound 12 June to 24 September 2017. • writings on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the trial obviously displeased. She refused to display it at Venice, Vienna, Brno, Moscow and Stockholm. note. The bicentenary of her death has seen a wealth of events and of Marie-Antoinette, revolutionary politics, her Salon, and had it repainted by Swiss painter activities across England to mark the continuing fascination with and suicide. She wrote two highly influential Firmin Massot shortly after, in a manner more The struggle with Napoleon continued, Britain’s best-loved woman writer, from talks and television shows, to novels – Delphine (1802), and Corinne, or Italy in accordance with contemporary fashions and however. In 1810, in the middle of printing, art installations and immersive re-enactments. (1807). Translations of both novels made beauty standards. Staël’s comparison of northern and southern their way to England quickly, and were read, literary traditions, L’Allemagne, was pulped by These two very different writers were aware of one another in their enjoyed or critiqued by writers including Lord The French Revolution, a notorious rivalry with the French Emperor, who suppressed it because own lifetimes. Austen recommended Staël’s novel Corinne, ou L’Italie Byron, Mary Shelley, and Maria Edgeworth. Napoleon Bonaparte, and a lifelong interest in of its sympathy to Germany. John Murray, who to one of her acquaintance, whilst Staël was less complimentary about published Jane Austen and Lord Byron, went on Austen, dismissing Pride and Prejudice as ‘vulgaire’. However, the two to publish L’Allemagne three years later, using a share more than just an unequal appreciation of one another. The set of proofs that Staël had hidden. He reissued exhibition at Chawton House Library, curated by Dr. Gillian Dow, the French original and an English translation examines Jane Austen and Germaine de Staël side by side, exploring in 1813, and paid Staël 1,500 guineas for the what connects these two women as well as what distinguishes them book. from one another. Using rare first editions, alongside paintings, manuscripts, letters, modern editions and merchandise, the exhibition Staël’s home in Coppet became the site of many pilgrimages for other writers, although her increasing fame and her love affairs meant that she was not seen as altogether proper company for ladies. Staël had been married to diplomat Baron Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein, but it was a marriage of convenience and they had separated by 1797. Burney was This exhibition would not have been possible without the financial support of the University of Southampton and the Friends of the National reluctant to renew her acquaintance with Staël Libraries. Thanks also go to the University of Oxford, the National Library of Scotland, Catriona Seth, Janine Barchas, Sandra Clark, Huw Austen moved four times in her life, when she had the chance in 1802 and Jane Prall, Anna Hilditch, David Giles, Deborah Barnum, the University of Aberystwyth, the Jane Austen House Museum and Deborah Barnum within an 80-mile radius, whereas Staël travelled widely in Europe. Austen’s brother reported in 1833 that Jane had for donating or loaning items for this exhibition. also refused to meet Staël.. In her own words, Staël was ‘condemned to celebrity without being known.’ • 2 | VOL.3 NO.2, 2017 THE FEMALE SPECTATOR FROM CHAWTON HOUSE LIBRARY THE FEMALE SPECTATOR FROM CHAWTON HOUSE LIBRARY VOL.3 NO.2, 2017 | 3 one of the leading British financiers in the period This was fascinating: not only did it suggest that of the Napoleonic wars, whose suicide in 1810, Barbauld was relatively immune to criticism in the Ghostly Conversations in the following the threat of bankruptcy, had shaken press, but it also indicates that Lucy Aikin was the Stock Exchange.