VOL.3 No .3, 2017 INSIDE THIS ISSUE Farewell To Visiting Fellows and Heavy Horses New Austen £10 Introducing Susan Smythies Launched A Stage-Coach Journey ‘I am sorry to tell you that I am getting very extravagant, and spending all my money, and, what is worse for you, I have been spending yours too.’ Jane Austen, letter to Cassandra (April, 1811) On 14 September 2017, four years after it was In closing her speech, Gillian had the first announced, a new ten-pound note went following words: into circulation in Britain, featuring Jane Jane Austen and Austen’s image. Austen joins Charles Dickens ‘200 years after her death, Jane Austen has a Germaine de Staël and William Shakespeare, the only other textual presence across the Globe. But there is A report from our July conference writers to have circulated in such a way, and something wonderful, I think, in imagining Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale, the the further places she will go, printed on the ten only other women aside from the Queen. pound note. I like to think of her in a smart leather wallet on a business trip to Washington DC; A few weeks earlier, Chawton House tucked inside a handbag en route to the beach in Library’s Executive Director Gillian Dow Mauritius; or indeed on a shopping trip to London joined Bank of England Governor Mark – an activity that we know Austen enjoyed greatly. Carney at the unveiling of the banknote at But most of all, I like to think of all the people who Winchester Cathedral. She gave a speech will look at this new ten pound note and say ‘Jane to commemorate Austen’s enduring legacy. Austen. I’ve always meant to read her’. The people Celebrating Winston Churchill, she noted, amongst many who will then return to the texts, to those timeless other commentators, suggested that Austen’s works of art that led us here in the first place. She Mary Wollstonecraft fiction is quiet, understated, and concerned wrote herself into comparatively little money in (April 1759 – September 1797) with trivial, domestic matters. In reality, life; she has written herself onto millions of pounds however, Austen tackled broad and important in death. England’s Jane; the World’s Jane; the ten political issues that continue to be relevant and pound note Jane – I feel certain she would relish vital today – none more so than money. ‘Single the honour.’ women’, Austen wrote in a letter to her niece, ‘have a dreadful propensity for being poor – The full text of Gillian’s speech is available to which is one very strong argument in favour read on our website. • of matrimony.’ Royston Farewell to Old Friends Autumn is moving in, and the last few months have seen many changes at Chawton House Library, as we plan for the future. estate, helping to maintain it in an Speedy environmentally-friendly way. Books by former Fellows The horses have all gone to excellent new homes in the South of England. We are delighted to confirm that they have all settled in well with their new owners and their new field mates. We have had a lovely update From left to right:Victoria Joule, visitor Mika Suzuki, Lindsay Seatter, Karen Gevirtz, and Emily Friedman. from the new owner of Speedy, which mentions that Speedy has befriended fellow horses Boxer, In August we also hosted our final Visiting Journeys, 1690-1800’, and she writes about her Issac Leona and Little Jack, explains Fellows. Emily Friedman, an Associate Professor findings later in this issue. Lindsey Seatter is a his new owner’s experience of English at Auburn University, was one of the first PhD candidate at the University of Victoria, and (which includes membership of Fellows back in 2009. For her 2017 Fellowship, she spent her Fellowship examining Jane Austen’s It was with sadness this September that we bid a fond the Southern Counties Heavy was continuing work begun eight years earlier, and writing style and unpicking her literary influences, farewell to our four heavy horses, Royston, Speedy, Horse Association, British exploring the manuscript collection at Chawton focusing particularly on Mary Brunton. Isaac and Summer, and to our Head Horseman Heavy Horse Driving Trials House Library. This research is part of a wider Angela McLaren and Assistant Horseman Michael Club and the British Driving project she is working on: a digital resource that Although the library will remain open to the Harris. The decision to re-home the horses was Society among others), and talks compiles unpublished manuscript fiction from public, the Fellowship programme, run in made after careful consideration and with great about some of Speedy’s current 1750-1900. Karen Gevirtz, an Associate Professor partnership with the Faculty of Humanities at sorrow because everyone – staff, Trustees and and future activities, including of English at Seton Hall University in South the University of Southampton, has now been visitors alike – loved seeing the horses around logging and harrowing, and Orange, New Jersey, was completing research suspended, in hopes of restoring it in the future. the estate. However, given our current financial participating in equine therapy for part of her project entitled ‘Mary Davys and In our next issue, we will look back on the last situation, securing the organisation’s survival in the to help those with disabilities the Popularization of Science, 1660-1732’, which ten years of Fellowships, celebrating our global short term means cutting back on any activities that and stress conditions. The full involved thinking about the way that domestic academic community and the diverse scholarly are not absolutely critical to its identity, and there update is available to read on our ‘female’ practices influenced public ‘male’ sciences. research that the programme has facilitated into were considerable costs involved in the upkeep of website. Independent scholar Victoria Joule, who was also early women’s writing. In the meantime, please the horses. one of the first 2009 Fellows, was researching visit our Facebook page to see a video made by the Summer We wish all the horses the best fictional journeys for a project called ‘Up Close and final fellows about their time at Chawton House The four horses came to us between 2010 and 2013. of luck in their new homes, and Personal in Fictional Stage Coaches on Novelistic Library. • Since their arrival, they have played a big part in the life of the village thank our Horsemen for taking such good care of them during their and of the Chawton estate, participating in village events, national time with us. • shows and parades, and annual fun rides. They have also worked on the Our campaign to secure the future of Chawton House Library as an improved and extended cultural and literary destination continues. We are asking our supporters to help keep our house and library going during a development phase, whilst progress is made on our major capital project, Reimagining Jane Austen’s ‘Great House’. To keep up to date with the campaign or to donate, please visit www.janesgreathouse.org 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 readings of the stagecoach in fiction in the period as it is the fullest, My conclusions about Smythies’ novel: in addition to contributing longest and most sustained usage I have found. Smythies’ novel was to my larger research project on stagecoach fiction, my research at also clearly quite popular as it ran into further editions and was used as Chawton has led me to decide Smythies’ work merits an article solely an identification device in her later novel,The Brothers. By the Author of on her. But further than that, The Stage-Coach’s positivity towards the Stage-Coach and Lucy Wellers (1758). My reading of The Stage-Coach movement and what it says about community seem particularly fitting made me more convinced that the novel is significant to literary history, for Chawton House Library as it moves into its next phase. I have particularly in the way it utilises the stagecoach as a device. We could benefitted greatly from the Library itself, but also the community that situate Smythies’ work in a history of the stagecoach in literature, as is part of it and that I will continue to be involved with. • arguably the ‘high point’ of its usage, but her novel also demonstrates and engages in the mid-century shifts in fiction writing. Smythies uses the stagecoach device to resist the division often established between Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding. Broadly speaking, the psychological, interiority-driven, first-person approach of Richardson with its integral didactic intent was set against the satiric, comic-epic, third-person narrated novels of Fielding. The Stage-Coach amalgamates these features with a moralistic impetus— the inset character’s tales of virtue rewarded are punctuated by other characters who are jovially tripped up for their faults and pretensions. For example, the arrogant ‘Captain Cannon’, posing as a gentleman, is exposed when a fellow traveller recognises him— ‘as I’m alive, ‘tis Bob Cannon!’—his working class Essex background is revealed in comedic fashion. Mr Moody, who we discover lives at the appropriately named residence, ‘The Sullens’, is a character right out of Fielding—always providing a grunting, opinionated remark and many humorous scenarios for the reader’s enjoyment, from knocking over tables in his sleep to skidding along a polished floor. William Hogarth, ‘The Stage Coach’ (1747) The novel’s relationship with these prominent male writers is clear from the content, but also from the explicit gestures Smythies makes towards them.