Time to Be in Earnest (49 page)
Read Time to Be in Earnest Online
Authors: P. D. James
Tags: #General, #Literary, #Language Arts & Disciplines, #Novelists; English 20th Century Diaries, #Novelists; English, #Biography & Autobiography, #Authorship
Emma
, most faultlessly constructed of all Jane Austen’s novels, is a story in which peace and reconciliation are produced out of discord, mysteries are elucidated and facts previously misinterpreted are at last seen in their true light. But there are other interesting parallels with the traditional detective story. The genre is often at its most effective when the setting is self-contained and the people are forced into a sometimes unwilling proximity. Here in
Emma
we have a self-contained rural community in which virtually all the characters in the book either live in or near the village of Highbury or, like Frank Churchill, are concerned with it. Only Mrs. Elton comes in as a stranger when she marries the vicar. We know them all completely in the sense that we can imagine what they would say and how they would behave when we are not there. We know intimately the life of Highbury: the Crown Inn where the gentlemen congregate to conduct their business or play whist, and where the ball is held; Mrs. Ford’s shop and what she sells; the vicarage and the lane to it; the Bates’s apartment; Mrs. Goddard’s school; the shrubberies of Hartfield and the strawberry-beds of Donwell Abbey. The scene is set.
Against this self-contained background is played out the drama of Emma, handsome, clever and rich, whose energy and powers of mind are fatefully underused so that she occupies herself in disastrous interference in the lives of others. Emma, in her zeal to manipulate and control, misinterprets facts, emotions, situations, relationships, and it is a fair guess that the nineteenth-century reader and the modern reader, coming to the novel for the first time, would be seduced by Jane Austen’s cleverness in inducing us to share Emma’s misconceptions and misunderstandings. At the end of the book, of course, chastened and penitent, she recognizes not only the truths of other people, but the truth of her own heart, and marries the one man who, loving her from her childhood, brings her from destructive imaginings to happy reality.
What then are the mysteries in
Emma?
All of them centre on a human relationship. There is Frank Churchill’s secret engagement to Jane Fairfax. There is the hidden truth of Mr. Knightley’s love for Emma and Emma’s growing love for him. There is Emma’s misjudgement of Mr. Elton’s matrimonial intentions. There is the lesser mystery, or perhaps more accurately described as a misunderstanding, centred on Emma’s interfering
and injudicious attempts to find a husband for her protégée Harriet, culminating in her horrified belief that Mr. Knightley is in love with Harriet and actually means to marry her.
But the central truth cunningly concealed at the heart of the novel is, of course, the engagement of Frank Churchill to Jane Fairfax. We share the lively interest in Highbury in seeing Mr. Weston’s long-expected son, and we may perhaps agree with Mr. Knightley that the young man certainly should have come earlier to pay his respects to his father’s new bride, poor Miss Taylor that was, as Mr. Woodhouse would say. But it isn’t until Jane Fairfax comes to Highbury to stay with her grandmother and aunt, the Bateses, that Frank Churchill manages to free himself from his demanding stepmother and comes to visit his father. We should have spotted that clue. Mr. Weston brings him at once to see Emma but after sitting together for a short time they part; Mr. Weston has business at the Crown about his hay and a great many errands for Mrs. Weston to perform. Frank does not accompany him, but goes instead to visit Mrs. Bates and Miss Bates. It would perhaps be rather more natural if he stayed with his father, or went directly home to his stepmother, but at the Bates’s he will, of course, find Jane Fairfax, the main motive for his coming to Highbury. His excuse for the visit is that they had met at Weymouth, but it is perhaps a little surprising that he should place Miss Fairfax and her relations so high on his visiting list. And when there he stays much longer than a morning courtesy visit in those more formal days would normally demand. Next day he says to Emma:
“Ten minutes would have been all that was necessary, perhaps all that was proper, and I had told my father I should certainly be at home before him—but there was no getting away, no pause, and to my utter astonishment I found … that I had been actually sitting with them very nearly three-quarters of an hour.”
Emma asks how Miss Fairfax was looking and, mischievously and cunningly, Frank pretends not to admire her complexion:
“Miss Fairfax is naturally so pale, as almost always to give the appearance of ill-health—A most deplorable want of complexion.”
We are seduced into believing from the outset that Frank Churchill is no admirer of Miss Fairfax’s beauty. It is when Frank, Mrs. Weston and Emma are strolling together in Highbury that Emma asks the question
which Frank must have known was inevitable, but which he must also have dreaded. Emma asks: “Did you see her often at Weymouth? Were you often in the same society?” Frank has only seen Miss Fairfax in the presence of her grandmother or aunt and they have had no opportunity to discuss privately what their story will be. It is a tricky situation for Frank, and this is how Jane Austen deals with it:
At this moment they were approaching Ford’s, and he hastily exclaimed: “Ha! This must be the very shop that everybody attends every day of their lives, as my father informs me … If it be not inconvenient to you, pray let us go in, that I may prove myself to belong to the place, to be a true citizen of Highbury. I must buy something at Ford’s.”
The diversion gives him time to think, but he knows that the question has to be answered. A little later he voluntarily returns to it and cleverly suggests that Emma should address it to Miss Fairfax, saying:
“It is always the lady’s right to decide on the degree of acquaintance. Miss Fairfax must already have given her account. I shall not commit myself by claiming more than she may chuse to allow.”
Miss Fairfax has
not
given her account and, reticent and secretive, nor will she.
It is during this walk together that Frank asks Emma’s opinion of Jane Fairfax as a musician and the next day we have one of the strongest, perhaps most obvious, clues to the true relationship between Jane and Frank. Frank Churchill goes to London to get his hair cut. The excuse is, of course, not sensible, and he hardly troubles to make it credible; he would not have come to visit his new stepmother with his hair uncut. But he is of course going to London to purchase and arrange for the delivery of the pianoforte to Mrs. Bates’s house. It is not a grand pianoforte but a solid square one, suitable for the smallness of the sitting-room, which he has now seen for himself. We first hear of its arrival when Frank Churchill, with Emma and the rest of her Highbury friends, is attending the dinner party at the Coles’s. Here Frank colludes with Emma in her suggestion that the pianoforte comes not from Colonel Campbell, which is the general opinion, but from Mr. Dixon,
who has married Miss Campbell but who is in love with Jane. And Frank, pretending to be convinced, finally admits that “I can see it in no other light than as an offering of love.” It is, indeed, an offering of love. The clue here could not be stated more plainly. It is at the same Coles’s dinner party that Emma detects Frank gazing fixedly across the room at his love, and when Emma notices this, he recollects himself and claims he cannot take his eyes away from Jane’s outré hairstyle. That Jane herself very well knows who sent the pianoforte is apparent to us from her embarrassment when it is referred to, an embarrassment which Emma attributes to Jane’s guilty love for her friend’s husband.
Mrs. Weston, kind-hearted and musical, was particularly interested by the circumstance, and Emma could not help being amused at her perseverance in dwelling on the subject; and having so much to ask and to say as to tone, touch, and pedal, totally unsuspicious of that wish of saying as little about it as possible, which she [Emma] plainly read in the fair heroine’s countenance.
Next day Emma and Harriet are walking to Highbury to buy ribbons in Ford’s when, looking down the Randalls road, they see Mrs. Weston and her son-in-law. Frank is, of course, again calling on Jane Fairfax. Mrs. Weston says:
“My companion tells me that I absolutely promised Miss Bates last night, that I would come this morning. I was not aware of it myself. I did not know that I had fixed a day, but I am going now.”
Mrs. Weston, of course, had not fixed a day, but Frank cannot wait to see his love again, and no doubt to see the pianoforte. He makes some little demur at the visit, but he obviously has every intention of accompanying Mrs. Weston to the Bates’s and not being diverted to Randalls.
One of the strongest clues to the secret engagement is the amount of time Frank Churchill spends with the Bateses. Apart from being almost the first house at which he calls, he manages to devise opportunities of being with Jane on every possible occasion. When the ball at the Crown is mooted and the Westons and Emma are examining the possibilities of the room there, it is he who suggests that Miss Bates should be invited to join them. Mrs. Weston understandably is unconvinced the garrulous and too
obliging Miss Bates will be able to offer any real assistance, but she is sent for and brings Jane with her, as Frank very well knew that she would.
Then comes that moment, disagreeable to Emma but devastating to Jane, when Frank Churchill is called back to Enscombe. Here he calls on the Bateses
before
he comes to say goodbye to Emma. He almost tells Emma his secret, imagining that her quick wit has probably already divined it. The conversation is as follows. Emma says:
“Not five minutes to spare even for your friends, Miss Fairfax and Miss Bates? How unlucky! Miss Bates’s powerful, argumentative mind might have strengthened yours.”
“Yes—I
have
called there; passing the door I thought it better. It was a right thing to do. I went in for three minutes, and was detained by Miss Bates’s being absent. She was out; and I felt it impossible not to wait till she came in … It was better to pay my visit, then.” He hesitated, got up and walked to a window. “In short,” said he, “perhaps, Miss Woodhouse—I think you can hardly be quite without suspicion.”
He looked at her, as if wanting to read her thoughts. She hardly knew what to say. It seemed like the forerunner of something absolutely serious, which she did not wish. Forcing herself to speak, therefore, in the hope of putting it by, she calmly said:
“You were quite in the right; it was most natural to pay your visit, then …”
She heard him sigh. It was natural for him to feel that he had
cause
to sigh. He could not believe her to be encouraging him.
Emma, deluded as ever, is, of course, half-expecting a proposal, or at least a declaration of love. In reality Frank Churchill, suspecting that Emma has guessed his secret, has got very close to telling her that he is engaged to Jane Fairfax. A careful reading of the passage shows clearly that what he is about to confide is related not to Hartfield, but to his visit to the Bates’s.
So Frank Churchill departs, to the distress of Highbury and, no doubt, the satisfaction of Mr. Knightley, and we come to the clue of Jane Fairfax and the letters. We do not hear of her going out to the post office to collect her personal mail until Frank Churchill is no longer at Highbury. We learn that Jane is receiving letters, which she prefers to collect herself, at the dinner party which Emma gives for Mr. Elton and his new bride, when
Mr. John Knightley, sitting next to Jane, expresses the hope that she did not venture too far that morning during the wet weather. He says:
“The post office has a great charm at one period of our lives. When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for.”
Immediately the kind Mrs. Weston expresses concern that Miss Fairfax has been out in the rain and the officious Mrs. Elton pesters her with offers that her servants can fetch the mail. Jane, of course, is quietly adamant. In the early nineteenth century young men and young women did not correspond unless they were engaged, and for Frank Churchill to be known to be corresponding with Jane Fairfax would be fatal to their secret.
And it is, of course, one of these letters which puts them in danger again once Frank has returned. This is in Chapter 5 of the third volume of the novel, where Emma, Harriet and Mr. Knightley, taking an evening walk, fall in with Mr. and Mrs. Weston, Frank Churchill, Miss Bates and Jane Fairfax. Emma invites them all back to Hartfield, and they are turning into the grounds when Mr. Perry passes on horse-back and the gentlemen speak of his horse. We then have this conversation:
“By the bye,” said Frank Churchill to Mrs. Weston presently, “what became of Mr. Perry’s plan of setting up his carriage?”
Mrs. Weston looked surprised, and said, “I did not know that he ever had any such plan.”
“Nay, I had it from you. You wrote me word of it three months ago.”
“Me! Impossible!”
Frank, obviously embarrassed, suggests that he must have dreamed of Mr. Perry’s carriage and attempts to change the conversation by suggesting that Miss Smith walks as if she were tired. But he cannot so easily rid himself of the subject. Miss Bates confirms that there was indeed such an idea for Mrs. Perry herself had mentioned it to Mrs. Bates. She said:
“Jane, don’t you remember grandmamma’s telling us of it when we got home? I forget where we had been walking to—very likely to Randalls; yes, I think it was to Randalls … I never mentioned it to a soul that I know of … Extraordinary dream indeed!”
It was at that moment, when they were entering the hall, that Mr. Knightley glances at Jane. He sees confusion suppressed or laughed away in Frank Churchill’s face, who seems determined to capture Jane’s eye, but Jane passes between them into the hall and looks at neither. The John Knightleys and their children are at Hartfield at this time and a little later all the company sit themselves round a circular table to play with the children’s alphabets, forming words for each other. Frank Churchill places a word before Miss Fairfax. She discovers it, and with a faint smile pushes it away, leaving the letters to be immediately mixed up with the others. But Harriet picks it up and, with the help of Mr. Knightley, rearranges the letters to form the word “blunder.” Harriet exultingly proclaims it and there is a blush on Jane’s cheek. It is indeed a blunder. Who else could have conveyed to Frank the news of Mr. Perry’s proposal to set up a carriage but Jane Fairfax.
