Letter #4

Saturday 14 January 2012
To Cassandra, from Rowling, "I have heard nothing of Mary Robinson since I have been [here]. I expect to be well scolded for daring to doubt, whenever the subject is mentioned." - Jane Austen, Thursday 1 September 1796

Mary Darby Robinson was, by 1796, a writer. She had been, among many other things, an actress. Her story is tragic, but very interesting. Here is a link if you are curious. There is no need for me to rewrite what has already been written.

http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/robinson/biography.html#darby

What I found interesting was that as I was reading about Mary Robinson I was reminded of several situations in Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion. Such as, this quote from Mary Robinson's memoir, "Every event of my life has more or less been marked by the progressive evils of a too acute sensibility." - Mary Darby Robinson, The Memoirs of Mary Robinson, pg 8. The memoir's were published in 1801.

Isn't this the main point of Sense and Sensibility? Elinor has sense and Mary Ann has "a too acute sensibility". Perhaps Jane Austen wanted to present a comparison and an answer to the possible tragic outcome of a life lived with an unchecked acute sensibility.

Also, back in 1781 Mary Robinson agreed to be the seventeen-year-old prince's mistress for the tidy sum of 20,000 pounds, which, when their affair was over, he did not pay. She made a fuss, which ruined her reputation. She ended up with 5,000 pounds instead and in 1782 she obtained a further annuity for herself  of  500 pounds and a 200 pound annuity during the life of her daughter, Maria Elizabeth.

Do you remember the scene in Sense and Sensibility chapter two in which John Dashwood and his wife discuss what should be done about the promise to help the Dashwood girls:

"Certainly not; but if you observe, people always live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid them; and she is very stout and healthy, and hardly forty. An annuity is a very serious business; it comes over and over every year, and there is no getting rid of it. You are not aware of what you are doing. I have known a great deal of the trouble of annuities; for my mother was clogged with the payment of three to old superannuated servants by my father's will, and it is amazing how disagreeable she found it. Twice every year these annuities were to be paid; and then there was the trouble of getting it to them; and then one of them was said to have died, and afterwards it turned out to be no such thing. My mother was quite sick of it. Her income was not her own, she said, with such perpetual claims on it; and it was the more unkind in my father, because, otherwise, the money would have been entirely at my mother's disposal, without any restriction whatever. It has given me such an abhorrence of annuities, that I am sure I would not pin myself down to the payment of one for all the world."

Jane Austen put these words into the mouth of Mrs. John Dashwood, a ridiculous character. She, herself, received an annuity from several of her brothers.

In an article on the Chawton House Library page about Mary Darby Robinson, by Katherine Binhammer, she says, "She felt too much, while the men in her life felt not enough, and she emerges from her Memoirs as a triumphant yet tragic heroine. She blames these men for her sorrows – from her father's abandonment of the family to take up with his mistress, to her lover of fifteen years, Barnastre Tarleton's leaving her two years before her death for a younger wife – men cheat and women truly love, both in her life and in her writing." 


This is such a contrast to the sweet passage between Anne and Captain Harville in Persuasion, chapter XI, about who loves longer, men or women.


And then , Captain Wentworth's letter, "I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce by soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more you own, than when yo almost broke it eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone I think and plan.-Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes?-I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice, when they would be lost on others.-Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment  and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating in "F. W."
"I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look will b e enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening, or never."


Perhaps Miss Austen wanted to make a statement in contrast to the statement Mary Robinson made in her memoir.

                                                Mary Robinson as painted by Gainsborough

Mary Robinson as painted by John Hoppner

I am very affectionately yours,

Terrie