"JANE AUSTEN CORRECTED"
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,,-L--May I beg for space in the ,Spectator to comment on a few points in your interesting review of my book, Somehow Lengthened : A Development of Jane Austen's Posthumous Fragment Sanditon ? Your reviewer, Miss Monica Redlich, thinks my plot melodramatic and incongruous with Jane Austen ; yet she agrees with me that " the abduction was clearly foreshadowed." Now, a violent abduction (no mere elopement) carried to its logical extreme by a man out for " ruin " not marriage, entailed, I believe, in 1817 the death penalty. This seems melodramatic enough to justify equally melodramatic circumstances and rescue. The Sanditon, characters, taken all together, seem to foreshadow a story with more of farce, danger and dash than belong to Jane Austen's norm. No one can see more vividly than myself the figure cut by my- first three chapters (in which I do not so much " re-write " Sanditon as set down what might be taken far the material of the dull bits she left out.) But without something of the sort Somehow Lengthened would have been unintelligible. I had the kind permission of Sanditon's pub- lishers for what I did, but I could not bodily annex and re. print Miss Austen's fragment.
I am anxious to convince your reviewer that Charlotte, that " thoroughly likeable girl," did not play " an unfair trick." Notice that Charlotte never flirts. She treats " the men " with cool observation, quiet sarcasm, or frank friendli- ness. Besides, her parents had forbidden her to say anything. The moment it is permitted she makes her announcement. Is the West Indian Octoroon, heiress of sixteen, more of a clamorous spoilt child than is probable ? And surely Edward Denham would be as " wearisome " in his Byron-mania as a modern film fan. With his perpetual ridiculous references to poetry it looks as if Jane Austen intended him to be a bore
. . to Charlotte. A Byron-inaniac he most assuredly Was. " It is impossible," said Claire Clairmont at seventy, `` to give an idea of what Lord Byron was to the youth of England." That Byron is conspicuous by his absence among the poets Sir Edward quotes is doubtless intentional. Jane Austen had a strong sense of delicacy, and Byron had recently left England under a particularly dark and un- pleasant cloud.
One thing I vow and protest. Lady Denham was " mean and miserly." In Sanditon Charlotte calls her " very very mean." This woman, who owned half the parish, wanted to let out to an invalid a second-hand contrivance for exercise I That she should take some pride, even to endowment, in the family whence came her title, is quite natural. Miss Redlich is " convinced that Jane Austen intended Charlotte for Sydney Parker. I am convinced that one is intended to. think so at first ; but, do what I would, I could not see Charlotte succumbing to his charms ; so I had to make another match for her. I feel your reviewer, who says, " we have all made plans for Charlotte " will agree that I could not " leave her without any young man of her own," as one of my readers put it.—I am, Sir, &c., Holbrook CI., Hereford. ALICE CORBETT.
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