The Sweets of Autumn
As Autumn opens upon the Jane Austen world, our airspace is filled with fortunate and excited Janeites winging their way to Minneapolis for the JASNA AGM. Their spirits must be so high that they need only hold out their pelisses to soar. I stayed home this year, but even so, disappointment is no excuse for my forgetting my turn to post this week! Perhaps I am suffering from the opposite of spring fever, i.e., autumn fever. With this in mind, let us examine to how Our Authoress used this season in her writing.
In the morning of her life, when Jane Austen was writing her early novels, it’s hardly unnatural that the later seasons do not seem to have been much on her mind. Remarkably, the word “autumn” does not appear in Pride and Prejudice or Northanger Abbey at all, and in Sense and Sensibility it exists only at a rising, optimistic moment – the happy occasion of Elinor and Edward’s wedding, when “the ceremony took place in Barton church early in the autumn.”
That is the precise time of year we are enjoying at present; and perhaps, as the multitudes celebrate Pride and Prejudice in Minneapolis, they are unaware that they may also be celebrating the (approximately) 220th wedding anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ferrars. And we are fortunate enough to know what the young couple was doing in the weeks following their wedding:
“The first month after their marriage was spent with their friend at the Mansion-house, from whence they could superintend the progress of the Parsonage, and direct everything as they liked on the spot; could chuse papers, project shrubberies, and invent a sweep. Mrs. Jennings’s prophecies, though rather jumbled together, were chiefly fulfilled; for she was able to visit Edward and his wife in their Parsonage by Michaelmas.”
Now, Michaelmas occurs on 29 September in England, but here is a problem: the Autumnal Equinox in Jane Austen’s day usually fell on 23 or 24 September. So how could Mrs. Jennings visit Elinor and Edward on Michaelmas after a month of marriage if they were married in “early autumn”? Is this a rare instance of an Austenian stumble? It would seem to be far more likely a misunderstanding of the Equinox on my part, than a mistake by Jane Austen…*
In Mansfield Park, written when Jane Austen was in what might be considered the early autumn of her life, she uses autumn to deliberately make certain effects, illustrating something of the somberness of Fanny’s situation, even though she is only eighteen, and ought to be in springtime. Here is a picture of her bleak little room, together with a glimpse of the real hardiness and unassuming gratitude of her character:
“The aspect was so favourable that even without a fire it was habitable in many an early spring and late autumn morning to such a willing mind as Fanny’s; and while there was a gleam of sunshine she hoped not to be driven from it entirely, even when winter came.”
In another passage, Fanny and Mary Crawford share some time together out in the wildly uncertain air of autumn, described in a romantic fashion which Fanny embraces, though Mary does not:
“…they sauntered about together many an half–hour in Mrs. Grant’s shrubbery, the weather being unusually mild for the time of year, and venturing sometimes even to sit down on one of the benches now comparatively unsheltered, remaining there perhaps till, in the midst of some tender ejaculation of Fanny’s on the sweets of so protracted an autumn, they were forced, by the sudden swell of a cold gust shaking down the last few yellow leaves about them, to jump up and walk for warmth.”
The only other reference to autumn in Mansfield Park is given to Mrs. Norris, who represents coldness itself, and adroitly uses autumn as a characteristic excuse to “sponge” for comforts at Mansfield Park:
“Sir Thomas’s sending away his son seemed to her so like a parent’s care, under the influence of a foreboding of evil to himself, that she could not help feeling dreadful presentiments; and as the long evenings of autumn came on, was so terribly haunted by these ideas, in the sad solitariness of her cottage, as to be obliged to take daily refuge in the dining–room of the Park. The return of winter engagements, however, was not without its effect…”
In Emma, the young heroine, one-and-twenty and the picture of grown-up health, is not afraid of winter itself, much less autumn, so it is not surprising that autumn is a word that rouses only those hypochondriacs, Mr. Woodhouse and Isabella, to anxiety: “But colds were never so prevalent as they have been this autumn.”
References to autumn rise to a chrysanthemum crescendo found nowhere else in Austen’s writing, in the famous hedgerow scenes in Persuasion. The seasonal scene is set thus:
“Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which has drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling. She occupied her mind as much as possible in such-like musings and quotations.”
And, “Anne could not immediately fall into a quotation again. The sweet scenes of autumn were for a while put by, unless some tender sonnet, fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining happiness, and the images of youth, and hope, and spring, all gone together, blessed her memory.”
Then, of course, Captain Wentworth and Louisa “try for a gleaning of nuts in an adjoining hedge-row,” and he gives his panegyric to the nut:
“Let those who would be happy be firm. Here is a nut,” said he, catching one down from an upper bough, “to exemplify: a beautiful glossy nut, which, blessed with original strength, has outlived all the storms of autumn. Not a puncture, not a weak spot any where. This nut,” he continued, with playful solemnity, “while so many of its brethren have fallen and been trodden under foot, is still in possession of all the happiness that a hazel nut can be supposed capable of.” Then returning to his former earnest tone — “My first wish for all whom I am interested in, is that they should be firm. If Louisa Musgrove would be beautiful and happy in her November of life, she will cherish all her present powers of mind.”
This is almost a sermon, and a misapplied sermon (since he is addressing the wrong woman, and Louisa turns out to be altogether too firm in her willfulness), while Anne sadly listens, protected by “a bush of low rambling holly.”
Altogether autumn seems to be a beautiful but somewhat suspect season to Jane Austen, changeable and uncertain, given to tempests as well as sunshine. Perhaps this is why she gives Lady Russell a particularly wrong-headed meditation on autumn, when she contemplates the match she wishes for between Anne and Mr. Elliot. “Nor did she ever enjoy a sweeter feeling than the hope of seeing him receive the hand of her beloved Anne in Kellynch church, in the course of the following autumn.” As we know, that could only have been a disaster; but fortunately the confusing autumn breezes give way to the cooler clearness of winter, and Anne and Captain Wentworth are engaged by the end of February.
*Note: Indefatigable researcher Arnie Perlstein has looked into the matter for me, and here are the fruits of his research:
“In North America, autumn is usually considered to start with the September equinox, but meteorologists use a definition based on months, with autumn being September, October and November in the northern hemisphere. In Ireland, the autumn months according to the national meteorological service, Met Éireann, are September, October and November. However, according to the Irish Calendar, which is based on ancient Gaelic traditions, autumn lasts throughout the months of August, September, and October, or possibly a few days later, depending on tradition.” [From Wikipedia] Arnie concludes, “It seems likely that and Austen thought of the beginning of September as the beginning of Autumn, which is verified by this passage in Persuasion: ‘Anne though dreading the possible heats of September in all the white glare of Bath, and grieving to forego all the influence so sweet and so sad of the autumnal months in the country, did not think that, everything considered, she wished to remain.’”
Diana Birchall
Diana is the author of the Jane Austen sequels Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma and Mrs. Elton in America, the Austen-related plays You are Passionate, Jane, and The Austen Assizes (co-written with Syrie James), and much other Austenesque writing. She has also written the biography of her grandmother, Onoto Watanna, the first Asian American novelist. Diana works as a Story Analyst at Warner Bros Studios. Originally from New York City, she now lives in Santa Monica, California with her husband, son, and three cats.
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Thanks for the extra food for thought.
I’ll be posting a spinoff from your post next week, picking up on something your post prompted me to check into for the first time.
you are missed here at the AGM-I am sitting and listening to our friend Joan Rae amuse and instruct the plenary assembly.
Cheers, Arnie @JaneAustenCode on Twitter
Hi Diana,
That was a most interesting of Jane’s use of autumn as an allusive device. I struggled for a long time to work out precisely when autumn officially began. I concluded that dating it from the equinox is an arbitrary modern idea that doesn’t exactly correlate with the time one senses it to have arrived, at least here in England – but in Ontario where I grew up, too. We sense that most plant growth has stopped some time in late August, and the Horse Chestnut leaves begun to turn brown. They are always far and away the first into leaf and blossom in the spring, when other species haven’t even begun to sprout their foliage – and the first to wither. (Having said that, because we had an extraordinarily long winter, and adequate rain over the summer, they have been late turning this year. I saw the first fallen chestnuts three days ago, again several weeks late. Kids are all out collecting their conkers today.) The first of the great Atlantic storms (the “equinoctial gales,” we get them at the vernal equinox too) hits us usually around the second week of September, and even those who don’t look up at the trees can’t help noticing the leaves blown along the road.
There’s another detail that no-one can can miss. Between the equinoxes the hours of daylight and darkness change by roughly one hour each month at both ends of the day. In June it’s totally dark for about six hours, between 10:30 pm and 4:30 am, while in December the sun doesn’t fully rise till 8:30, and sunset is between 4 and 4:30 pm. By early September the night draws in noticeably early – sunset today is at 6:45, and even if one is still in a summery mood, the onset of autumn doesn’t wait. (Daylight Saving hadn’t been invented in Jane’s time, so sunset would arrive one hour earlier still.) To me there’s always a disjunct between the longest days in mid-June, and the onset of full summer. The fact that June 20 or 21 is known here as midsummer’s day only serves to confuse, but that dating makes sense if the seasons are determined the agricultural calendar.
By the way, I think that the four great festivals of the Christian church, which give their names to the seasons, are simply near enough, and have little to do with the biological clock. School terms at traditional English schools still take their names from those festivals – my son’s old school, Dulwich College, calls this the Michaelmas term. In Last Wills, wealthy people who left regular pensions to their servants or relatives often stipulated that they were to be paid regularly at each of those points in the church calendar, in other words dating the payments to the beginning of each season.
That makes me think – the timing and dating of life was then still governed by the agricultural clock and calendar. It certainly would have in the hamlet of Steventon!
Ron
I conclude she liked autumn; she loved its looks even if Elinor says to Marianne it’s not everyone who has your love for dead leaves.
E.M.
http://reveriesunderthesignofausten.wordpress.com/
With perfect timing, Mags of AustenBlog has just posted this:
http://austenblog.com/2013/09/29/your-sunday-austen-meditation-for-michaelmas/
Ron