Letters to Alice (15 page)

She knew too much, you see, for her own good.

The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author — and to her treatment of the subject I will only add in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too informed themselves to desire any thing more in women than ignorance.

Can you imagine it?

‘And will you dance, Miss Austen, will you dance? You pretty, giddy little thing, with your trim small body and your clear complexion, and your pretty face, perhaps rather too full in the cheeks for perfect beauty — will you dance?’ No!

Catherine and Isabella (her friend) shut themselves up, in defiance of wet and dirt, to read novels together:

Yes, novels; — for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances to the number of which they are themselves adding — joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens — there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. ‘I am no novel reader — I seldom look into novels — Do not imagine that
I
often read novels — It is really very well for a novel.’ — Such is the common cant — ‘And what are you reading, Miss —?’ ‘Oh! it is only a novel!’ replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. — ‘It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda;’ or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the
Spectator,
instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation, which no longer concern any one living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.

‘Improbable circumstances, unnatural characters’! It is they who inhabit the real world: the City of Invention is peopled by altogether more reasonable folk, with natural and consistent characters. In that City if there is an effect there is a cause; there is relevance, purpose and meaning; it is a wonderful place. She knew it.

I don’t think you will have much difficulty in actually
reading Northanger Abbey,
but since you tell me you are now five chapters into your novel — now entitled
The Wife’s Revenge
— you may not have a great deal of time at your disposal, so I will give you a quick run-down of the plot.

I do, you see, feel just a little guilty in encouraging you in your literary interest, in the face of your father’s disapproval. Only if you manage to pass your exams as well, will I be vindicated; will this family ever be reunited. If you fail, I will get the blame, not you, so don’t feel unduly pressurized.

Northanger Abbey,
1798. The novel starts as a literary burlesque and ends as a serious story, in which the heroine — or anti-heroine — has actual, real, recognizable feelings, brought about by social disgrace and public humiliation. Catherine Morland, up to Bath for the season, is asked to stay by her suitor Henry Tilney at his ancestral home, Northanger Abbey. The Abbey fails to live up to her expectations of Gothic horror:

The furniture was in all the profusion and elegance of modern taste. The fire-place, where she had expected the ample width and ponderous carving of former times, was contracted to a Rumford, with slabs of plain though handsome marble, and ornaments over it of the prettiest English china. The windows, to which she looked with peculiar dependence, from having heard the General talk of his preserving them in their Gothic form with reverential care, were yet less what her fancy had portrayed. To be sure, the pointed arch was preserved — the form of them was Gothic — they might be even casements — but every pane was so large, so clear, so light! To an imagination which had hoped for the smallest divisions, and the heaviest stone-work, for painted glass, dirt and cobwebs, the difference was very distressing.

Henry’s father, General Tilney, does arouse her suspicions, however. There is a certain room which no one enters, and the General’s wife died in what could be construed as mysterious circumstances. Henry, discovering her suspicions — by now quite obsessive — disillusions her with wit, kindness and concern. He’s as fine a lover as any you’re likely to find in the Collected Works. They seem on the verge of marriage. But Catherine is then suddenly and rudely dismissed by the General, peremptorily sent home by carriage. A long, uncomfortable and lonely journey.

What had she done, or what had she omitted to do, to merit such a change?

The only offence against him of which she could accuse herself, had been such as was scarcely possible to reach his knowledge. Henry and her own heart only were privy to the shocking suspicions which she had so idly entertained; and equally safe did she believe her secret with each. Designedly, at least, Henry could not have betrayed her. If, indeed, by any strange mischance his father should have gained intelligence of what she had dared to think and look for, of her causeless fancies and injurious examinations, she could not wonder at any degree of his indignation. If aware of her having viewed him as a murderer, she could not wonder at his even turning her from his house. But a justification so full of torture to herself, she trusted would not be in his power.

Anxious as were all her conjectures on this point, it was not, however, the one on which she dwelt most. There was a thought yet nearer, a more prevailing, more impetuous concern. How Henry would think, and feel, and look, when he returned on the morrow to Northanger and heard of her being gone.

What’s happened is that the General has discovered she isn’t an heiress as he had unreasonably concluded — his paranoia (to use a word totally, thank God, unknown at the time. We have too many axe words like this, I believe: cutting through sensibility with a sharp single blow), equalling hers, and in a way serving her right. Henry defies his father and marries Catherine in spite of his disapproval. The novel ends thus:

To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen, is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced, that the General’s unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.

What do
you
think, Alice, since it does concern you? She is still talking to you, and she knows you are there. You, the reader, are involved in this literary truth, as much as the writer.

When I say to would-be writers, but you must think of your readers, this is what I mean. Not that you must consider markets, and write to fill them, but that, in generosity, forgetting your individual self, you must use your craft to pass on energy and animation and involvement; and if you do it properly, then the craft is understood to be art. You must
aspire,
in order that your readers can do the same.

love from,

Aunt Fay

London, May

M
Y DEAR ALICE,

I am back from a publishing tour of Denmark. Contemporary writers are required, from time to time, to undertake visits to other countries for the purpose of publicizing their work. They will be given an itinerary on arrival and someone from the publishing house delegated to look after them. They will sit in their hotel room and give press interviews at hourly intervals; they will make TV appearances, and radio interviews; they will sign books in bookshops and give lectures at the local university; they will lunch with publishers and book club officials, and breakfast, if they are sensible, alone. There will be no time to think, only to perform. With any luck there will be television in the room (not in Holland, where TV is considered down-market) for late nights, and bath oil and shower caps in the bathroom for early mornings. If there is an hour or two to spare, they will be taken on a sightseeing tour before it is time for their flight. (The word has understandably taken on a double meaning.)

Now an etiquette has grown up around these visits: there is a way to behave and a way not to behave but no one to tell you what it is. There are things to beware, but you must find them out for yourself. To this end, I started a short story which I know I will never finish, it being faultily constructed. £50 if you can tell me why it is unfinishable. (As a clue, I’ve already told you why
Lesley Castle
never got published.) Herewith:

RETURN TO THE HOTEL ATLANTIC, AARHUS

or

The visiting writer’s handbook

Well now listen, sisters! As more and more of us take up our pens and write, so do more and more of us get asked abroad, by publishers, universities, festival organizers and so forth, and we have no rule book to go by, and no handbook to consult, any more in this respect than we do in real life. In real life we have friends to guide us, and magazines to explain ourselves to ourselves, and parents who hold up a mirror (often unflattering) in which we can gaze, but who does the visitor abroad have, in Wellington, New Zealand, or Aarhus, Denmark?

All places of course get nearer home as the cultures of the world become more and more similar, except for the air fare that separates them, and that’s a comfort. A woman’s group in Madrid is pretty much like a woman’s group in Johannesburg. A Women’s Studies Department in Oslo is much like one in Melbourne: English is everyone’s second language: the divisions in the world are increasingly those of occupation and political opinion, not of nationality. Even so, jaunting abroad, I have nearly jumped from a window of the Lakeside Hotel, Canberra, nearly stepped deliberately in a lorry’s path in Stockholm, so great is the overwhelming depression, the sense of isolation that can afflict the visiting writer abroad, in the midst of admiring, even enthusiastic crowds, and all for the lack of a handbook, a little advice, a little forewarning as to what to expect.

Therefore I, Grace D’Albier, aged thirty-five, author of a novel about incest, pass on a little information to you.
Lot and his Daughter
was my first novel, the first one to go into translation, to take the world by storm (publisher’s language) and to send me hurtling by Pan-Am around the world, explaining as I go that the novel is not autobiographical; that I made it up. No one believes this, of course. Journalists, in particular, who work so cleverly from the real world, understand description, but not invention. It is not surprising. They lose their jobs if they do invent — novelists get sued if they don’t invent. So I, Grace D’Albier, must go round the world, stared at as a victim of paternal and maternal incest: and though my parents still speak to me, they do so in a rather stiff way. They can comprehend that I made it up, but their friends can’t.

On the other hand, all over the world women come up to me and thank me, and say my book has helped them; not that the thing, the deed, actually happened to them, but the feeling was always there, and now they need no longer be ashamed that it was. They are part of the new community of the literate; they are released and absolved from guilt, and I have done it.

But there is no comfort at home. My own children look at me askance, especially my oldest son, for Susan in the book had her first child by her father, when she was fifteen, and Susan’s mother conceived a child by the son, when the boy was fifteen. Of course I made it up. I am not old enough not to have made it up. But people everywhere believe what they want to believe, not what is true, let alone credible. God knows what the children’s friends say. I daren’t ask, and they don’t say.

Sometimes I think I cannot go on. Here at the Hotel Atlantic, Aarhus, looking out over the cold bright sea and the car-ferry loading bay, and the busy bleak industriousness of normal early morning people, I wonder what I have done to be so separated out from them. And how did it happen that I, who started out as a writer, have turned willy-nilly into a performer? Yesterday afternoon I spoke to five hundred students at the university here: they listened with attention and I felt useful, but a flea — perhaps I picked it up on the plane? — was jumping about inside my new silver Kurt Geiger boots, biting me, and how can you scratch and scream while facing an audience of five hundred? Last night I scratched my feet and ankles while I slept and this morning I find my nails have raked raw weals into my flesh.