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Lady A~'s T-a-t

An ad hoc tête-à-tête between Lady A~ and her fashionable friends that will embrace all things engaging and vexing in each of her Bath Novels. She will arrange her politic and impolitic tatter (musings) on these to both please and provoke. Indeed, it is here that such a lady might employ the sharpest nib of her most ‘political’ pen! Note to Ladeites: Lady A~ shall never ‘tweet’, she shall only ‘tat’!

 

T-A-T, THE FIRST

Pleasing
Lady A

Dearest Fellow Formidables,

As I slowly scrambled out of my armoire—after so many solitary years of obscurity and covered yet with so much dust (rather like Mrs. Price’s Portsmouth rug)—I began to wonder with more than a care what the world might think of me—or I of it—after so long a time of etching on ivory in the dark? “Truly”, said I to myself, “would the beau monde still be as ‘beau’—or more monde—and would such set be ready for ‘a New Novel by a Lady—’ or an ‘Interesting Novel by Lady A—’? Irrespective of any suitable answer to my perplexities, so much, as you rightly know, is thought of ‘the lady’ in question that to make any plausible attempt to live up to such towering image might very surely cast a shadow. “Well,” thought I, “tis better to live in her shade than to be cast out of her light and, to that end, you may now behold me merely as a ‘portrait of a lady’—in truth, but a silhouette of my solid self. I come to you in such insubstantial state, to offer something yet more substantial—a kingdom worth of country villages, replete with ‘3 or 4 families’ apiece, and with such dashing protagonists as my noble ‘William’ and his worthy ‘Kate’ in the first Classic Companion of TBNLA, Merits and Mercenaries.

But pray, do not suspect me of a plot! I assure you, fond friends, no contriving of any sort was employed to produce a coincidence of the ‘old’ meeting the ‘new’ in so remarkable and delightful a fashion! My estimable pair was conceived some fourteen years ago (in that same frowsty armoire), a good deal before your William descried his charming Catherine at that fashion show, and though it is a very novel coincidence of person and event by all accounts, the novelty does not cease there. The principal theme governing Merits and Mercenaries, and indeed all of TBNLA, is a notion of history meeting advancement and moderation countering excess. My William and his Katherine, like yours, are progressive symbols of a ‘new order’ evolving out of an ‘historic realm’: a (29-year-old) highly eligible scion, from a most significant and respectable family, who puts aside the rigors of duty to cautiously cast his eye—and turn his heart—in the direction of a very captivating meritocrat. My ‘Miss Kitty’ is a girl laudably equal to such enviable notice. She has evolved in a sensible family whose proper understanding of honest endeavor begetting honorable result is its richest legacy—and so empowering my heroine to plainly reach for that very illusive thing—the near-perfect ideal of an Austenian marriage.

Indeed, how much of that Jane principle do we all now see applied, before our very enchanted eyes and mesmerized minds, as an equally bewitching story of love between two modern and rational meritocrats justly unfolds in some splendor? As your William honors his Catherine then, might I likewise invite you into a splendid Hampshire, to visit with the couple’s chance-namesakes and their families; to meet with their friends and their enemies; and to discover whether the true fairy tale is either the practical possibility of reasonable love in an irrational world—or the airy fulfillment of unfulfilling dreams? Might I ask, just as Jane often did—can passion truly have probable end?

In Merits and Mercenaries that question depends largely on obstacles and these, as is always the case, come in many figures and forms of ‘intriguing’ humankind—none of whom are in any way kind. Mr. Francis Pope is perhaps the most sinister soul of the lot, ‘an inveterate villain’ and the ‘fiercest savage of the social pack’, while Miss Maria Beckett stands ‘toe to toe’ with this ‘foe’ in alluring feminine form. Much is set afoot between them to complicate William’s and Katherine’s journey to resolution, and so the opposing forces of meritocrats and mercenaries engage to herald the ‘new’ challenging the ‘old’, the ‘good’ combating the ‘bad’ and the ‘light’ shining through the ‘dark’. All ranges of delicious opposites that define the antithetical measure of happiness, such as it may be in an imperfect world, and the unpretending nature of what makes us all—even a prince and his bride—truly human.

No one understood this ‘truth universal’ better than Jane Austen. Hers was rather a world of ‘disappointment than joy fulfilled’ and she could clearly see both sides of such a place because she stood, rather inexactly, in the middle: neither rich nor poor, but sandwiched in that nether-realm which at once offers possibility but so easily extinguishes hope. In such a place do many of us often find ourselves, a modern ‘gentry’, a contemporary middle-class, trying to carve out a comfortable place between extremes in this world of austerity, and so universally and perpetually embracing Jane’s every rational truth.

That is very possibly why we still find the tradition of her work so very refreshing, and yearn for something like it still—something to properly fill the genteel nankin boots of a lady once known as ‘Lady A—’; a lady who also once chanced to amble in pattens, along country lanes with her sister, in the very measured understanding that a simple pair of clogs might lift her over anything that nature might set in her way.

With Jane’s defensive footwear in mind then, may I wish parcels of pattens to our royally charming couple of Williams and K(C)atherines, in their united journeys of self-discovery and love; indeed, may such shoes lift them over every obstacle. For the rest, I shall invite you, the fair and ‘uncommon’ woman and man, to explore similarly fresh ‘avenues’ of discovery with me, through TBNLA, in Lady A—’s domain. Together, each of us on our ‘own ten toes’, and not unlike the journeys of princes and princesses, heroes and heroines, shall we find that the world beneath the feet of that particular lady still remains, in no small measure, very much the ground under our own….

Believe me, fond friends,
Yours most affectionately, in pattens

A Lady

Provoking
Lady A

Lady A—’s Pocket-book: 30th November, 2010.

Upon the day that I sat sewing shirts with Sophia and Selina, two wretches with very little out of the common way to recommend them either one, I was intrigued, though not a little surprised, to hear them profess some dubitable knowledge of my craft. 

“Lady A—,” began Selina in her provocatively provincial way, “we hear that your novel, though much crowed over (a colluding snicker), nay proclaimed about every domain—from pillar to post—is still not out. Pray, is she out, or is she not?” (Another conspiring little laugh.)

“My dear Selina,” I replied coolly, “though it is exceedingly apparent that you are so well informed as to pose this question with some authority, I am sure you will agree that you are rather less well informed to be one in matters of publishing and books. I, unlike those who foolishly choose to believe my literary muse was an indifferent speller with random and digressing thoughts, can trust nothing so very troublesome to my editor. I assure you, my first novel is very soon to be released to the Public, but lest I be remembered for giving all the work of style to a person whose principal gift is grammar, I have chosen to follow the sublime Miss A. and painstakingly perfect the composition myself. ‘Never force the course of the river’ as they say.”

“La! How very droll,” interjected her simple companion, “but it is well known what William Gifford was to your Miss A! As her editor, did not he write all of her books?”

“Ah, Sophia, so very enlightened as you are with such a set of ‘facts’, you may be well surprised to discover that Mr. Gifford never laid a pen upon Miss A’s first novels, which are accounted to be her best and most popular. I fear your suppositions are rather like Selina’s, but perhaps we writers should leave all the work of fiction to editors and ladies?”

“Phoo! Phoo!” retorted Sophia in her puffed-up fashion. “Whatever you might think about it, what business have you in trying to steal her ‘style’, if she was so very accomplished? Is not this first novel of yours nothing more than a spin-off? I can see nothing so very remarkable in your creation equal to seeing poor Miss A. in it—a poor-man’s version of a classic—very poorly written (a wry look at the minx opposite). Classic Companions, indeed! What know you of either of those things, pray?”

Not being a writer or a seamstress to be gainsaid, I returned with some mettle, “What I know is this; Miss A. wrote classics, which, in turn, became my companions; so far we are equal. You too easily forget that she was inspired to write because of the success of both Miss Edgeworth and Madame d’Arblay, and if she had thought herself so very unequal to the task because of their triumph, what should we all be reading now but Evelinas over Emmas? I surely make no paltry attempt to do what only Miss A. could do so very well for herself—that is, to write superior classics! All I claim is that my novels are purely informed by her, but plainly written by me, and, I might also add, not a Darcy or a Bennet to be had in them for furlongs.”

“Ha! For shame, I know nothing of your furlongs!” cried Selina. “At any rate, who should want to read about these Halfords or Huntleys that try to take their place? What possible interest could such inferior characters hold for those madly devoted to Miss A’s amazingly divine Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth? You had better be writing about them.”

“Again, I think you quite mistake the matter, dear Selina. You refer so worshipingly to the sparkling persons that Mr. Gifford did not create that it clearly cancels out any prior argument regarding Miss A’s proficiency. Indeed, you have overlooked the only reasonable thing, which is, I should never wish to put a writing hand to re-creating such luminaries nor should I wish to call them my own. It is because of this, and because of Miss A’s own true example with the likes of her muses’ creations, that I go (as she went) my own independent way; with characters born of my imagination. The Public may judge very well for itself whether it likes them or not, but at least Miss A. can rest in peace knowing I had as little to do with her Darcy and his Elizabeth as Mr. Gifford did, and for that we should all be thankful!”

With a united “humpf!” and vexed looks between them, the two wretches hastily took up their shirts and began sewing again. I was most contented to let them to it and, as the neatest worker of the party, as promptly took up mine.

L.A.

Note to myself: Document S & S’s ‘opinions’ as ‘too natural to be interesting’.