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Colin Carman

~ Jane Austen Scholar & Culture Vulture

Colin Carman

Tag Archives: british history

The British Are Coming

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Posted by colincarman in Jane Austen

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british history, england, freddy mercury, gay, gay and lesbian history, GLBT, hampshire, history, Jane Austen, lesbian, portsmouth, pride, pride and prejudice, shelley, transgender, winchester, winchester cathedral

“You haven’t mentioned me in the blog yet. Just sayin!” – Marc (my partner of some 19 years)

Made you look! Jane Austen may have overturned the conventional traditions when it came to how an educated English lady should fall in love and tie the knot (slowly, mindfully, cautiously – never head-over-heels) but when it comes to sexuality, she was silent. Virtually no scenes take place inside a woman’s boudoir: keep out!

Write what you know, as every creative-writing instructor tells her students. Thus, it’s unlikely that Austen had any first-hand knowledge when it came to sexual love of any kind. A student once asked, puzzlingly, “So did she die a virgin?” We have no way of knowing, I replied; ask her yourself on Tinder or OK Cupid!

Queer truth be told, there’s something strange about a spinsterish life, like a virgin, touched for the very first time; if asexual people exist at all – I don’t know any, myself, do you? – they are the conscientious objectors of erotic life. Jane may have been a member of that very small and inscrutable circle. Let’s face it: her major endowment existed north of the neck. This doesn’t mean that she was a total prude; Her “History of England” includes a playful reference to King James I, a man of such “amiable disposition which inclines to Friendship” and “keener penetration” than “other people.” As I explain below, this is a subtle allusion to the the king’s “pet,” a man named Robert Carr.

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Austen’s fiction, then, is no help when it comes to how GLBT+ people lived, and largely suffered, prior to the twentieth century and it was never-ending nightmare until recently…and it remains so in most of the under-developed parts of the world. Donald F. Trump has taken aim at trans people because they’re a minority within a minority and he knows how to throw red meat at his bigoted base.

“Buggery” was declared not just criminal but punishable by death in 1533 and while it’s undeniably gotten better, we still have to fight the bigotry embodied by the aforesaid hypocrite (no paragon of moral virtue) and Margaret Thatcher (her Clause 28 of 1988 sought to stamp out any promotion of “homosexuality” as a “pretended family relationship”). Thatcher was better known as the Iron Lady whereas Trump is America’s Bronze(r) Man. I miss the days when you could actually see the tan lines from his tanning-bed goggles! A cruel pseudo-aristocrat turned populist turned autocrat.

There is no real basis for the claim that Jane Austen, the so-called aunty spinster of British literature, was anything but heterosexual though some rumbling about the matter does exist and you can read the great Devoney Looser on the topic here. My first book was on the Shelleys and while Percy and Mary Shelley were somewhat happily married, there is actual evidence that the two enjoyed the intensity of their same-sex friendships whereas, with Austen, there is zero proof of her Sapphism. Consider, for example, that Percy Shelley tried not once but twice to get his wives (first, Harriet and, later, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin) to live in a menagé à trois         (a household of three) with his “bosom friend” and “brother of my soul” Thomas Jefferson Hogg. They weren’t having it but perhaps because Hogg was a hog or a bore or an eye-sore but who knows? It’s the literature that outlasts us all (bloggers included, I’m afraid to say).

Yet we do care because Percy Shelley carried his interest in, and support for, same-sex love into his prose and poetical writing. Importantly, he wrote, safely living abroad in Italy (where he couldn’t be thrown in the Tower) only the second essay in English to defend same-sex love on moral grounds, and though penned in 1818 as an exculpatory preface to his translation of Plato’s Symposium (that perfidious text of the sex-mad Greeks!), it wouldn’t see the light of day until the 1930s. His widow Mary Shelley didn’t even quite know what to do with it since it made a case for “romantic friendship” as a perfectly normal and natural way to live and love.

Poor Mary: living with a mad genius, she always had a lot on her plate. Mad, bad, and exhausting to know. Even more exhausting to call him your husband. Good grief! For instance, here are the ways in which Shelley addresses Hogg in his early letters, just after the two were expelled from Oxford: “Enter into my schemes – love me as I love you; be as inseparable as once I fondly hoped you were” (from Nov. 1811). He also jokes that he wants to keep his “bosom friend” as his prisoner and, in an Essay on Friendship (which Hogg published for him, in 1858), he describes the overwhelming love he felt for a pre-adolescent classmate that he used to kiss before bedtime at Sion House. He reported all of this to his mother to which she gave him the silent treatment. “She thought me out of my wits, for returned no answer to my letter.” Whatever you do, don’t tell Mom!

Today, I traveled to the once-capital of England, Winchester to visit the grave of Jane Austen, and 10 College Street where she died in July of 1817. She died with her little head on her older sister Cassandra’s knee. I’m going to report on that mecca for my last post later this month but, for now, I’d like to take a brief break from Austen and report on the richly queer history of Hampshire, her rural home in southern England. Below, it was a local’s drawing of Freddy Mercury that got my wheelies spinning!

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Portsmouth, after all, was a hotbed for men seeking sex with sailors. In the Navy! In 1957, the Wolfenden Report reported that, after London and Birmingham, Portsmouth was third in terms of “unnatural offenses.” William Williams, a man whose parents named him twice, probably horrified his parents when the 38-year-old was charged with an “assault” on Richard Killin. Contrary to legal opinion, these were consenting adults just doing their thing. In the States, the Supreme Court ruling, Bowers versus Hardwick, would finally protect gays and lesbians from doing just that behind closed doors and in private; before that, in 1986, we were never safe from intrusion and incarceration. This may explain the joke vis-a-vis the Royal Navy and Portsmouth in Mansfield Park, which some reject is a pun on the character Mary Crawford’s part. “Of Rears and Vices, I saw enough. Now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat.”

I was quite impressed that the Hampshire Record Office & Archives, probably in support of June and Pride Month, produced a diorama on the topic and will even sell you a copy called “A Queer A-Z of Hampshire” by Clifford Williams for two quid. Lord Alfred Douglas (the twinky catalyst of Oscar Wilde’s ruination) went to Winchester College between 1884-88. He double-majored in Vanity and Betrayal. The gross indecency belongs soley to Douglas, a true “chancer,” as the British say (or manipulator), and modern-day Judas. If you’re wild about Wilde, you must abhor “Bosie” and his virulent father, The Marquess of Queensberry. An even (red) tie with Don and Don Jr. OK, I’ll stop the political point-scoring because July is my Trump-cleanse.

Here are two sites in Hampshire that may interest you if you wish to travel the yellow brick road of GLBT+ history. Below, you’ll see a marker in Portsmouth for George Villiers, the First Duke of Buckingham. He was King James’s devoted companion and stabbed to death in the Greyhound public house in the old part of the city. In the city’s cathedral, you’ll find a moving memorial to him influenced by his sister, Susanna Countess of Denigh, who subtly acknowledges her brother’s great beauty. His bowels were buried in Portsmouth, beside his sister, but his body buried in Westminster Cathedral. Apparently you can be in two places in once. I don’t mean to make light; another victim of homophobia, King Edward II, died after he had a hot fire-poker stuck up his arse. The intense suffering to which gay people have been subjected is further testament to the angry ambivalence they arouse in their attackers. When victimized, we unleash the animal inside.

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Finally, this is an entry in (the village of) Odiham’s marriage records that show that Charles Hambleton and Mary Seamel were wed in 1748 but only later was Charles proved to be a lady. It may be hard to see but a clerk, belatedly alert, circled the names in red (see the right-hand side and just before “1749”). Odiham was never that easy of a place to live: during the Napoleonic war, British soldiers forced their French prisoners to build the canal, which meant digging out of a chalk landscape. Historians such as John Boswell have shown that same-sex marriage dates back to antiquity.

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This post is dedicated to all of those who lived their lives openly, or secretly,

and died in the red.

And to Marc who is patiently waiting to join me here in the south of England. In terms of Austen’s leading men, he’s closest to Henry Tilney (of Northanger Abbey) because he’s the queerest and chattiest of her six major heroes.

And that’s just fine by me XOXO

51.144487 -0.974932

It Takes A Village…or Two…or Ten

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Posted by colincarman in Jane Austen

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british history, british romanticism, charles dickens, dickens, hampshire, horatio nelson, Jane Austen, lord nelson, napoleonic wars, naval history, portsmouth, royal navy, thomas le froy

“With ships and sailors she felt herself at home.” – James Edward Austen-Leigh (JA’s nephew and the family biographer, 1870)

How much is that Austen in the window? The one with the waggly (six) tales? This is Austen (some of Alton’s bread-and-butter) painted rather inexplicably inside a door frame. Kiss it and you’ll be lead off in handcuffs.

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This childhood image of the author is unauthenticated and like so much of her short life blurry at best. As a result, there are the purist Austenites who quote her letters because that’s the “truth” whereas there are the fiction-lovers, like me, who claim that art outlives all things and matters most. But we are all projecting ourselves onto the blank slate that was Austen, the woman, daughter, sister, and friend…but above all else, a true artist.

All that we know for certain is that, and this may sound slightly daft, I truly feel her presence here in the countryside. Her fiction is a gateway into nineteenth-century rural life. A volunteer at Chawton House explained that the ha-ha (funny term, eh?) is a landscaping technique that keeps the livestock out but doesn’t disrupt the vista from the house. In essence, you create a short, gated drop that animals can’t cross and close to, on the grounds of Chawton, what’s termed the wilderness (a wooded spot deliberately kept uncultivated and wild.) “I made it through the wilderness, somehow I made it through…” (know the lyric? I think you do.)

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After lunch, I walked in the wilderness to the south of Chawton House and was suddenly overcome by something quite inexplicable. It was the genius loci, the extraordinary gift that Austen gave us through her fiction, which, when properly read, can be a kind of secular Bible of rights and wrongs, an outcrop of the rural countryside of Hampshire that grew her creative excellence. What a gift for dialogue, plot, pacing, and overall brilliance! “Brill,” or so says a friend at Chawton, as short for the British go-to: “Brilliant!”

“She’s smiling on you,” said the secretary for the Jane Austen Society on Saturday when she attributed the cool, pleasant weather so far to something far more supernatural. Fanny Price, the heroine of Austen’s Mansfield Park, was “almost over-powered with gratitude” – ah yes, being grateful can be as overpowering as feeling loved. My punchiness could be the finally-fading jet-lag; I get a bit weepy when I’m overtired. Then again, literature-lovers tend to be a squishy sort of people.

I’m on foot here in Austenland – the Disneyland for Brit Lit twits – for one major reason:

My driving is rubbish (see, the English colloquialisms are sinking in) and I know how to turn a page better than I do cross the street, especially when everything is backwards. The most valuable lesson I learned back in 1999, when I spent my junior year of college, at Oxford didn’t take place amongst the derisive dons but in the car of my host parents in Herefordshire. They were your classic Britons, what with their figurines of Princess Diana and Florence Nightingale in her china hutch and the pinkish husband in pleated plants who wanted to talk football with me until he realized my knowledge is limited to the arts, oh and DIY anesthesiology (an innocent but illegal hobby of mine). On our drive into town, I felt instantly uneasy being on the “wrong” side of the road and said so, but my hostess replied: “It’s not wrong, darling. It’s just different.” Man, is there a greater lesson in life than those seven words? Just because you don’t agree with or understand something strange to you does not mean it’s bad or wrong; it’s just different. All morality departs from that simple starting-point. Here’s Austen, my life-coach as of late: “My dear child, there must be a little imagination here…you see but half” (Mansfield Park). Translation? We humans, innately selfish and stupid, rarely grasp the big picture: too stuck in ourselves. But you’re reading a stranger’s words and reading is always an adventure into the mind of the other, so you’re already on your way!

Now that I think of it: everything I learned at Oxford was really self-taught. You write long, well-researched essays that you read aloud, in a tutorial, to a tutor who is half-listening and thinking of his/her own work. Is that teaching, really? Man dreams alone and he learns alone. Yes, I’ve had some superb teachers but, as the old saying goes, only when the pupil is ready does his teacher appear.

The Jane Austen House Museum asked me to help in the garden (see below). I was stung, swatted at by a cat, and severely under-caffeinated but all in a day’s work. The cat’s name is Marmite. He local and a sign warns visitors that he can bite. Why, then, on earth does Marmite hang around the place where over 100+ tourists visit a day?

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This is why I was oh so grateful to take not one but two field trips over the weekend. My first was guided by the insanely knowledgeable secretary of the JAS. I learned that I am the first male recipient of this grant. Breaking the Austen ceiling here in Hampshire, baby: getting’ Janey with it! See below for our sundial of sites: Farringdon (a village close to Chawton) and the redbrick home, privately owned today, of the Lefroy family. Born in Limerick, Ireland, Tom Lefroy briefly courted Jane – she would have walked in and out of that front door, and you don’t need the film “Becoming Jane” (2007) to Hollywoodize the matter – but neither were wealthy and it kind of, well, fizzled. Remember that people didn’t marry because they swiped right and found his/her soul mate but because the match was somehow advantageous for one, or both, party and for his/her family.  It was 1796 and the couple, one year apart in age, were in newly twenty-somethings. There was no Thank You, Next.

Below are retirement homes available only here in Alton, so if you’re going a bit gaga, the time to buy is now! Apparently, the Jane Austen House Museum had to prevent people from spreading their ashes on the grounds without permission. I don’t take sugar and milk and my tea, and I certainly don’t take human cremains. Ha-choo! Looking for a retirement home in Alton? Only six units left, so act fast. When Winston Churchill had the flu, his daughter Sarah read Pride and Prejudice to him, which he quite enjoyed: “What calm people!” he remarked. That could be you at Austen Place someday.

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It’s too bad Lefroy didn’t write the account down and detail the memory. Instead, he told a relative before he died that he had a boyhood crush on the Jane Austen. By the time of Lefroy’s death in 1869, more than fifty years after her death at 41, she had gained posthumous recognition and he had to say something about his puppy-love. (When I wrap up this one-moth research residence, I’ll report on her mysterious death and fatal illness.) We wouldn’t even be saying Lefroy’s name, or watching a film like Becoming Jane, had he not crossed paths with the immemorial ironist. Her only second proposal, as is well known, was accepted but, after she slept on it, rejected the day after. Thank you, Next Novel.

The second guide took to me to Portsmouth, a coastal city entirely defined by defenses. Fortress Portsmouth, really. Both of Austen’s youngest brothers, Francis and Charles, were in the navy. I heard twenty-five ways of saying the same thing: Portsmouth had to defend itself from a French invasion and, thus, forts built up north (if and when a powerful little potentate named Napoleon entered England through its east and west coasts) and a thousand ways that the English wished to slow or full-stop invaders through its ports north of the Isle of Wight. I toured the battleship of Lord Horatio Nelson (1758-1805), the HSM Victory, and saw the very spot where the sea captain fell after taking a shot across the bow from the French. Dying, he asked Cpt. Hardy to kiss him, a tale that made the already awkward English even more uncomfortable, so they made up the idea that Nelson said “Kismet” (Turkish for “fate”). At this death, Lord Nelson was blind in one eye and missing an arm from battle. He gave his body and soul to his native England. So, give the man a kiss, would you?!? Sometimes the truth is queerer than fiction.

Nelson’s body was preserved in a barrel of brandy and returned to London for a ceremonial funeral. That’s how I travel to and fro work. Learned lots of fun naval facts in Portsmouth: the “powder monkeys” were the English boys who supplied the cannon powder; “one square meal” comes from the wooden square plate that every seaman and midshipman had for their meal (in addition to a gallon of beer — safer than water at sea); “cat out-of-the-bag” comes from the flogging whip used on Navy men who broke the rules. Tight ship, indeed.

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Above is the birth and death place of a still underrated and relatively unknown novelist named Charles Dickens (1812-1870). Note (up top) the family name in the red  as his father John (a pay officer on the Portsmouth dockyard) was absolute shit with money and landed the whole fam in debtor’s prison. Charles, meanwhile, went from rags to riches and is now synonymous with the industry that is Christmastime.

Dickens died of stroke at his home Gad’s Hill in Kent and the chaise is so stiff that stroke is the only other option, after a terrible neck-ache. I was surprised to learn that tabacco (prior to Dickens’ stroke) was sniffed rather smoked: put on the back of the hand and snorted like a line of cocaine. Hardcore! But what is literature, after all, but yet another powerful intoxicant and distraction from the dreary routine that is life? (Don’t answer that; it’s rhetorical, so just nod your head.) And on that depressing note, I bid you adieu! Now kiss me, Hardy, or is it hardily? Awww Heck, what’s my password for Netflix?

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