Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?
Mary Lutyens
By chance Violet Powell and I were introduced to Jane Austen at the age of eight — she through Emma and I through Pride and Prejudice. This early experience turned us both into addicts.
In her enchantingly produced Compendi- um, Violet Powell tells the story of the six great novels with lucidity and scholarship and often with almost as much liveliness and wit as Jane Austen herself. But are the two given purposes of the Compendium ful- filled: to invite 'the uninitiated to discover the brilliance of Jane Austen's pen' and incite 'the seasoned reader to an avid rereading of her novels'? Do seasoned readers need such incitement, and how many people want to read a book for the first time of which the plot has been fully revealed? I fear that this excellent book, with its index, may be used mostly as a crib by seasoned readers and students.
I now ask, is an author justified in falsify- ing the chronology of a famous book in order to devise a plot for a sequel to it? This is what Emma Tennant has done. We know from Pride and Prejudice that Darcy married Elizabeth before Christmas and that only the Gardiners were invited to Pemberley for this first Christmas. We also know that Jane married Bingley on the same day and that they stayed on at Netherfield for a twelvemonth before Bing- ley bought an estate within 30 miles of Pemberley.
In the sequel, the Darcys have been mar- ried 'almost a year' and are planning a house-party for their first Christmas at Pemberley. They are blissfully happy, except that Elizabeth is beginning to fret because she has not yet started a baby, whereas Jane has not only produced a daughter but gives birth to a son on Christ- mas morning at Pemberley. Although we have been told how rarely Darcy uses the bed in his dressing-room, Elizabeth is too shy to discover what he feels about having a family. She is still overawed by the size of Pemberley; 'the large, handsome stone building' which she and the Gardiners were shown round on their first visit, has been blown up on the jacket and endpapers into a red-brick Chatsworth, while Elizabeth and Darcy have been correspondingly diminished in character.
I find this sequel an insult to Jane Austen, who so perfectly ended her book to everyone's complete satisfaction, yet there may be those who will derive much amusement from it. All the original charac- ters appear, apart from Mr Bennet who has, alas, died (but then who other than Jane Austen could have invented his immortal lines such as his admonition to Mary, when she had been singing for too long at a party, 'That will do extremely well child. You have delighted us long enough'?), and new characters are intro- duced, uced, including an odious Master Roper (why Master?) who, it transpires, will inherit Pemberley if Darcy dies without a male heir.
, The plot revolves round this Christmas house-party. Elizabeth's arch enemies, Lady Catherine de Bourgh (surprisingly, often called Lady de Bourgh by the author) and Caroline Bingley, are as bitchy to her as ever, and Mrs Bennet's vulgarity in front of them at Pemberley is almost a caricature of her vulgarity in the original. Several mis- understandings arise between Elizabeth and Darcy over Christmas which could eas- ily have been cleared up if Elizabeth had not locked her bedroom door against him. Darcy, in consequence, departs for London !text morning without saying good-bye, leaving Elizabeth desolate, without any realisation of the enormity she has commit- ted and believing that Darcy has never loved her. The surprise ending, which brings about the inevitable reconciliation, I will not divulge. Jane Austen's deliciously comic History of England, with an introduction and transcript by Deirdre Le Fay, from 'the reign of Henry the 4th to the death of Charles the 1st by a partial, prejudiced & ignorant Historian', was written when she Was 16, and is amusingly illustrated in Colour by her sister Cassandra. This is the first facsimile of it ever to be published, and is a sure winner as a Christmas present for all ages.
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