Portrait of Captain Marryat in front of a naval battle

Michele Larrow, Regional Co-Coordinator

You never know what treasure you might find in a book recommendation from a fictional character. I was reading Christopher Morley’s charming 1917 novel, Parnassus on Wheels, about a book seller who travels in a large single-horse wagon to bring books to rural readers along the East Coast. The “Professor” Roger Mifflin, sells Parnassus to Helen McGill and talks about the pleasures of life on the road. On rainy days, he and his dog “would curl up in the bunk and smoke and read. I used to read aloud to Bock: we went through ‘Midshipman Easy’ together, and a good deal of Shakespeare. He’s a very bookish dog” (82). The title Midshipman Easy made me think of Austen’s midshipmen: William Price in Mansfield Park and Dick Musgrove in Persuasion. A quick internet search showed that Mr. Midshipman Easy was published in 1836 and was written by Captain Frederick Marryat, R.N., who started as a midshipman in the British Royal Navy in 1806, eventually ascended to the rank of post-captain, and published many novels in the 1830s and 1840s about life in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. It looked like I found my next project!

Captain Frederick Marryat

We have a wealth of information about Captain Marryat’s life from the Life and Letters of Captain Marryat (hereafter LL), written in 1872 by Florence Marryat, his daughter (see Illustration 1.1 for an engraving of Marryat based on an 1835 portrait). Frederick Marryat was born in 1792 to a large gentry family. His father was a member of Parliament. He had an unhappy childhood and ran away several times, finally getting his father’s permission to enter the navy as a midshipman in 1806 aboard HMS Impérieuse, a 38-gun fifth-rate frigate[i] captained by Lord Cochrane (Johnson xii-xiv). Marryat’s journals reveal that he admired Lord Cochrane greatly and “(his) daring gallantry and cool judgment are accredited to most of Marryat’s captains” (xiv). During his three years on the Impérieuse, Marryat was engaged in the Mediterranean and was wounded three times (LL Vol I 53). Excerpts from his journals from the period 1807-08 (LL Vol I 47-48, see illustration 1.2 and 1.3) show how active the frigate was against both merchant and enemy ships, how often men were injured, and how they fought both on land (in attacking coastal gun batteries and signal posts) and at sea. Marryat earned a commendation from his first lieutenant for his bravery in the 1809 Battle of Basque Roads (LL Vol I 66-7; Illustration 1.4 is a painting of the ship in the battle). In 1812 he became a lieutenant and “his cruises were uneventful”, although he had several injuries (Johnson xvi). He became a Commander in 1815 (at 23; LL Vol I 78). He “has sailed in the North Sea, in the Channel, in the Mediterranean, and along the East Coast of America from Nova Scotia to Surinam” (Johnson xvii). Over the course of his service, starting when a midshipman, there were 27 commendations for when Marryat “attempted to save the lives of others at the risk of his own” (LL Vol I 75). For Johnson, “It is tolerably obvious that, both as midshipman and lieutenant, he evinced the cool daring and manly independence that characterises his heroes” (xvii).

After the peace of 1815, Marryat left the navy for a couple of years. During that period, the “code of signals for the use of all merchant vessels of all nations” was developed and brought into use in several countries, for which he was thanked in 1817 by the shipowners society (LL Vol I 80). In 1819 he married, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and returned to the navy to command a sloop later that year (LL Vol I 79-80). Marryat’s ship was assigned to patrol the waters around St. Helena, where Napoleon was in exile. He was there for Napoleon’s funeral, and drew his body lying on his deathbed, which was published as an engraving when he returned to England soon after (LL Vol I 83-85). Marryat’s first publication was in 1822, a pamphlet arguing against impressment, the naval practice of taking men against their will to work as seamen. In the 1820s he saw service in Burma and commanded the Larne and then the Ariadne. He was promoted to post-captain and awarded the Order of Companion of the Bath in early 1827 in recognition for his service (LL Vol I, 150). He left active service in 1830 to focus on his writing, already having had some success with his 1829 novel, Adventures of a Naval Officer, or Frank Mildmay. Marryat wrote that his first novel, Frank Mildmay, has a fictional hero and heroine but that “the work in itself is materially true, especially in the narrative of sea adventure, most of which did (to the best of our recollection) occur to the author” (LL Vol I, 198-199). His other books are “wholly fictitious in characters, in plots, and in events” (LL Vol I, 200) but full of real naval detail. Writing for financial reasons to support his large family and his expensive spending habits (Johnson xxiv), he produced several more novels, including some children’s books, in the late 1840s (see Illustration 1.5 for a list of all his publications). He traveled in Europe and America in the 1830s and 1840s, writing about his American adventures. He died at home in 1848 after a period of ill health (xxix-xxx).

Illustration Set 1

The Works of Frederick Marryat

Marryat’s works were popular and reprinted many times in the 1800s and into the 1900s in both Britain and the United States. Several of the novels had been first serialized in the magazine Marryat edited from 1832 to 1835, The Metropolitan Magazine (Johnson xix). In the early 1840s, Marryat was attacked for publishing other works serially in newspapers and he said he would rather “write for the instruction, or even the amusement of the poor, than for the amusement of the rich” (LL, Vol II 105). His admirers included Joseph Conrad for his “youthful glamour and headlong vitality” (1919, quoted in Southam 34); Washington Irving, who wrote to Marryat in 1830 that he finds his “chivalry of the ocean quite a new region of fiction and romance” (LL Vol I 160-1); William Makepeace Thackeray, who enjoyed reading “my dearly-beloved Jacob Faithful” while ill (quoted in LL Vol I 211; this was published in 1860 in his Roundabout Papers essay “De Finibus”); and Virginia Woolf, who celebrated his “power of drawing character” (44). In the 1830s and 1840s, he was friends with Charles Dickens and “a merry circle of literary Bohemia” (Johnson xxiv) who included novelist Lady Blessington, Harrison Ainsworth, Clarkson Stanfield, and George Cruikshank and “many others of equal celebrity” (LL Vol II 114). Captain Marryat’s Novels were re-published by two publishers in 1896: the J. M. Dent edition editor R. Brimley Johnson chose Peter Simple as the first volume and W. L. Courtney highlights both Peter Simple and Mr. Midshipman Easy as excellent works in his introduction to the Peter Simple Routledge edition. This blog will focus on those two novels and how the early nineteenth century naval life Marryat wrote of gives the backstory for Austen’s naval characters. [Note: there are plot spoilers ahead.]

Peter Simple (1834)

Peter Simple is a long novel (450-600 pages depending on the edition) that tells the story of Peter from his entry in the navy as a midshipman at 14 to his becoming a captain in adulthood. His grandfather is a rich and politically powerful Viscount, but Peter’s father is the neglected youngest son who is an unhappy and financially strapped clergyman. At the beginning of the story, Peter is naïve, gullible, and slow-witted but he has good qualities such as being honest, compassionate, and honorable; he is inherently a gentleman. Over the course of the book, Peter serves under several captains: his first, Captain Savage, is skilled at managing the frigate Diomede (50 guns, fourth rate)[ii] and is a good leader. Many of the other captains he serves under have comical flaws (Captain Kearney, a liar; the indolent Captain Horton, “the Sloth”; and Captain To, who is managed by his wife, on board; eats only pork; and raises pigs onboard). As a midshipman, Peter is mentored by Terrence O’Brien, an Irish master’s mate, who teaches Peter all about naval life and the how a ship runs. Peter helps O’Brien get promoted to lieutenant through Captain Savage and the admiral after he saved Peter’s life when Peter was wounded by the French. When Peter and O’Brien are taken prisoner, Peter meets his love-interest, Celeste and her honorable father, an Irishman who is a high-ranking French officer and lets Peter and O’Brien stay with them while Peter heals. As French prisoners, Peter and O’Brien are moved around quite a bit and eventually they escape from a French prison (see Illustration 2.1), cross France into the Netherlands, follow the Scheldt to the North Sea, and find a British cutter to take them back to England.

O’Brien and a few of the other warrant officers teach and support Peter, share their stories, and try to protect Peter from harm and injustices. As an adult, Peter helps them as much as possible in their careers. Peter uses his family’s interest while his grandfather still lives to get a posting after they have been prisoners and later a promotion and posting for himself and O’Brien after Peter passed his lieutenant’s exam. O’Brien and Peter work as Commander and second lieutenant on the sloop Rattlesnake (16 guns[iii]) and have success during their time together. Peter’s uncle inherits the title when his grandfather dies and throughout the rest of the story, he seeks to cheat Peter out of being the heir to the title after he dies (since the uncle does not have a legitimate son). Peter is forced to separate from O’Brien’s protection through his uncle’s machinations, and he is put on a ship as first lieutenant with Captain Hawkins, who is a poor leader with no combat experience and, unknown to Peter, is the illegitimate son of his uncle. Peter goes through many hardships, including a court martial brought by Captain Hawkins, an attack by highwaymen, and long imprisonment in Bedlam (instigated by his uncle) until he is released through the intervention of friends. When his uncle and the fake heir die unexpectedly, Peter inherits the title, marries Celeste, and returns to the navy as a post-captain at the request of the First Lord of the Admiralty. O’Brien also prospers as a captain, kills Captain Hawkins in a duel, and marries Peter’s sister.

Mr. Midshipman Easy (1836)

And thus was our hero educated until he arrived at the age of sixteen, when he was a stout, good-looking boy, with plenty to say for himself,—indeed, when it suited his purpose, he could out-talk his father.” (Captain Frederick Marryat, Mr. Midshipman Easy 27)

Jack Easy is the only son of an eccentric wealthy man and his wife who has been raised with much indulgence. A family friend convinces his father to put Jack in school and then the Royal Navy, and he is a midshipman on board the Harpy, a 16-gun sloop[iv] commanded by Captain Wilson, a distant relation to whom his father has loaned a significant amount of money on very generous terms. Jack, like his father, is a “philosopher” who believes in the equality of man and who will argue a point with anyone. He must learn how a hierarchy works in the Navy and how to apply himself. Jack is charming and makes friends easily, especially since he is generous with his money. He forms a close relationship with another midshipman, Ned Gascoigne; and they have many adventures. He also has several enemies on board because he challenges bullies and his wealth is resented. He is challenged to a duel by the boatswain and the purser’s steward, who both dislike him, and a three-way duel/farce ensues where Jack is the only one to escape unscathed. Jack refuses a humiliating punishment of mast-heading given by the master for no reason except dislike, but the captain convinces him that he must obey a bad order if it is from a superior and then complain to the captain later. Jack agrees to the punishment to set a good example for the crew and the captain later chastises the master. Jack is brave and spirited takes many risks in service of his country.

Jack’s most interesting relationship is with Mesty (his nickname given by British sailors), an Ashantee warrior prince from Africa who escaped enslavement in America, went to England on a merchant ship, and then joined the British navy. Jack treats Mesty as an equal and is much loved by him. Mesty’s talents are wasted as a servant on the ship, and he teaches Jack all he has learned about all aspects of running a ship and naval warfare. With Mesty’s guidance, Jack captures a Spanish merchant vessel after he has ignored orders to return to the sloop after the boats attacked a convoy. Jack loses contact with his ship and the ship’s thinks they are all dead. The sailors in Jack’s charge leave the captured ship with the cutter to go to a deserted island and enjoy the spoils from the prize, essentially in mutiny. Jack and Mesty must wait in the captured vessel because there is no crew to sail her and Jack learns Spanish over the two months from a Spanish sailor. Eventually, some of the men return to the merchant vessel and Jack is able to find the Harpy. He is forgiven his disobedience because of the treasure on the vessel, which brings prize money for the ship’s crew. Jack both encourages the captain to promote Mesty, who becomes a corporal onboard, and seeks to soften the punishment for the mutinous sailors. When Jack took that Spanish merchant ship, he met a young woman, Agnes, who is headed to her family in Italy and later he and Gascoigne save her family members from attack at their home in Italy. Jack’s relationship with the family is blocked by an evil friar, who later tries to kill Mesty but is killed by him. Eventually, Jack returns to England when his father is reported to be mad and leaves the navy (still a midshipman), much to the disappointment of his naval superiors. After Jack inherits the family estate, Jack and Mesty head back to Italy in a ship as registered English privateers with a hired crew to bring back his fiancée and her brothers. In England, the couple are married after Agnes becomes a protestant and Jack settles down to run his estate with Mesty as his major domo. Jack becomes a Conservative member of parliament, having eschewed his earlier beliefs in equality for all.

Illustration Set 2

2.1 Peter and O’Brien Escaping a French Prison

Marryat’s Works Give the Backstory for Austen’s Naval Characters

“You have difficulties, and privations, and dangers enough to struggle with. You are always labouring and toiling, exposed to every risk and hardship. Your home, country, friends all quitted. Neither time, nor health, nor life to be called your own.” (Jane Austen, Persuasion 254)

Anne’s passionate acknowledgment to Captain Harville of her awareness of the risks of naval life helps convince the overhearing Captain Wentworth to write his declaration of love. Captain Marryat’s novels provide present-day readers with a detailed backstory for the “difficulties, and privations, and dangers” of navy life alluded to by the naval characters in Persuasion and Mansfield Park. Over his naval career, Marryat anchored in most of the English sea ports, visited the foreign stations, and fought in the seas and oceans that are mentioned in Austen’s two naval novels, and he takes his characters to those same places (LL Vol I passim). He gives multiple examples about what it was like for British navy ships to take merchant vessels, privateers, and enemy ships, including the use of smaller boats from the main ship. He explores the importance of prize money to all the ship’s company, the role of “interest” in promotion, and gives the details of Peter Simple’s lieutenant’s exam. He shows the danger of a tropical climate and disease to crew members and dramatizes the challenges of managing a ship in a gale or other extreme weather. Marryat novels provide a detailed account of the dangers, heroism, comradery, and infighting that existed in the British navy that Austen’s characters would have known.

Important Naval Locations

English Naval Ports

Persuasion abounds in the mention of English ports: the Sound off Plymouth, on the southwest coast, is where Captain Wentworth anchors on return from the West Indies (P 71; note 6 on p. 356: the Sound is unprotected from winds), Deal (P 77 where Mrs. Croft stays when Captain Croft is in the North Seas; note 16 on p. 358: a working port in SE England), and North Yarmouth (P 99; note 12 on p. 361: Greater Yarmouth naval base on the Norfolk coast for the North Sea and Baltic Fleets). Captain Wentworth travels from Plymouth to Portsmouth to console Captain Benwick after his fiancée’s death (P 116; a distance previously noted to be 175 miles note 13 on page 357). Portsmouth is more fully detailed in Mansfield Park Chapters 7 to 15 of Vol. III, and its importance as the fortified headquarters of the British Navy (MP, 720 note 4) is revealed in many ways. We learn that it is “a sad place” unsafe for women to walk unaccompanied (466), take a tour the large dock yard with Henry Crawford and Fanny (Vol III, Chapter 10), and hear about the preparation for leaving and launch of William’s new ship (Vol III, Chapter 7). In Peter Simple, Peter begins his career at Portsmouth as a naïve midshipman: he is solicited by a prostitute and unwittingly makes a date to see her later (Chap IV), is cheated out of money (Chap IV), and is attacked by a group of seamen’s wives when he is part of a pressgang crew trying to impress their husbands into naval service with a few marines (Chap X). Peter is based at Yarmouth when he is on convoy duty in the Baltic Sea (PS Chap LV-LVII). In Plymouth, the ships in Peter’s convoy that are headed to the West Indies wait until all ships are ready to sail and Captain Savage exchanges ships with Captain To, who fears the climate (228). Jack Easy starts his naval career at Portsmouth also, first living the high life in one of the hotels for three weeks until his captain directs the first lieutenant to hunt him down (MME Chap VIII). The Portsmouth chapters in Peter Simple might be an homage to the Portsmouth chapters of Mansfield Park, since Marryat was an Austen fan (LL Vol I 199).

Foreign Stations and Ports

Mrs. Croft tells Mrs. Musgrove that she has been to Cork (P 76; station for the Irish squadron, note 15, 357), Lisbon (base for the Mediterranean fleet, ibid) and Gibraltar (70; Royal Naval base at the entrance to the Mediterranean, note 8, 356) as well as Bermuda and the Bahamas (both British colonies off the coast of the Southern United States; Bermuda had a Royal Naval station ibid, 356-7). We know that William Price has been to Gibraltar (MP 274) and Sicily, where he gets Fanny’s amber cross (MP 295; note 1, 706 Sicily was a nodal naval base). In Mr. Midshipman Easy, the crew heads to Gibraltar to bring in prizes to the admiral there, and they have a two-week rest at Gibraltar (Chap XVII). Peter’s ship stays at Gibraltar for three weeks while the ship is “stripped to refit” the rigging, painted, and cleaned (PS 125) and Peter gets to go onshore after he has helped with all the onboard work for several days (Chap XVI). Jack Easy goes to Sicily without permission with another midshipman who speaks Italian after he was involved in a duel and there meets Agnes, his love interest whom he earlier released from a merchant ship he captured, and is feted by her family (MME Chap. XVII-XVIII). He also goes with his ship to Sicily to deliver dispatches and is given leave to visit Agnes and help defend her family from a planned attack (MME Chap XXX) and later goes to deliver prizes (Chap XLI). Gibraltar and Sicily are the only two foreign stations mentioned in Marryat’s two novels that were mentioned in Austen’s works.

The Mediterranean, West Indies, and Atlantic Crossings

During the Napoleonic Wars, Britain was fighting the war in many areas and not just against the French. Captain Wentworth was in the Battle of St Domingo (P 28; off present day San Domingo), went to the West Indies and back in the Asp (70), cruises off the Western Islands (72 now called the Azores note 10, 356) and also served in the Mediterranean (72). Admiral Croft was in the Battle of Trafalgar and served in the East Indies (24; note 10, 346 East Indies could apply to India, South-East Asia, Indonesia, or the Philippines). As a midshipman, William Price has been “in the Mediterranean—in the West Indies–in the Mediterranean again” (MP 275). Both Peter Simple and Mr. Midshipman Easy serve in the Mediterranean and the island of Malta, off Italy, is the naval port visited most often by Jack’s ship, although the admiral is in Gibraltar (according to Fulford, Malta was recently taken by the British from the French in 1802, 179). Jack becomes friends with the British Governor of Malta and frequently visits to tell of his adventures on land and sea. In the West Indies, Peter Simple’s ship is based at Barbados, a British colony where the crew spends time on land and get to know the local people some (Chapter XXXI and Chap XLIII). Their ship is sent to engage in battles off Martinique (a French colony) and St. Thomas (a Danish colony) and even carries dispatches up to Halifax in Canada (Chap XXXVI ), where Austen’s brother Charles was stationed and Marryat visited too in 1811 (Southam 34-35). While Jack Easy’s naval service occurs mainly in the Mediterranean, Peter Simple visited almost every area of naval action that is mentioned by Austen during his long time in the service.

Naval Action during War

Fleet Battles

Captain Wentworth was made commander after the Battle of St. Domingo (P 28) while Admiral Croft was in the Battle of Trafalgar (24). The only large naval battle mentioned in Marryat’s two works is when the quarter-master Swinburn tells Peter about the Battle of St. Vincent (which happened off the coast of Spain in 1797) when he was on a ship with Nelson (PS Chap 33 and 35). Perhaps Marryat did not choose to portray battles directly due to the complexity of representing the combat that would have occurred.

Ship to Ship Combat

Captain Wentworth mentions battling a French frigate coming back from the West Indies in his sloop the Asp (a smaller ship than a frigate in terms of guns) and implies that his ship had significant damage (“our touch with the Great Nation not having much improved our condition” P 71). Peter Simple has an example of how large ships would fight each other guns to guns at close range and these fights usually had many wounded and killed and damage to the ships (PS Chapter 55 against a Dutch brig). In Mr. Midshipman Easy, the Aurora (28 guns sixth-rate frigate[v]) takes on a Russian frigate at dusk into night off Corsica, where the ships broadside each other with cannons several times, resulting in the Aurora knocking over the mast of the Russian ship (273). When the Aurora rams the Russian ship, the British crew, including the captain, boards for hand-to-hand combat and they eventually take the ship, with a loss of 65 British and 200 Russian seamen and officers (MME Chapter XXIX).

Boats Attacking Enemy Ships

In Persuasion, Captain Wentworth mentions capturing “privateers enough to be very entertaining” (71) in the West Indies but does not detail how they did it. Privateers were ships were registered by a combatant country that were licensed to take enemy ships; in wartime, the British ships would attack enemy ships, privateers registered with enemy countries, or merchant vessels sailing under enemy flags. In Peter Simple, there is a detailed example of a “cutting-out expedition” (PS 280), where the frigate’s smaller boats (a launch, two cutters and a yawl 282) commanded by the boatswain, master, first lieutenant, and master’s mate (283-4) were sent out with a “fighting boats’ crew, which are selected from the very best men on board” (282) to take a privateer anchored in the bay off Danish-held St-Thomas by stealth, during the day when most of the crew was thought to be off the ship. The British boats faced gun fire from batteries on shore, fire from the Danish privateer crew on the brig and in smaller boats returning from shore, and bayonet and cutlass wounds from hand-to-hand combat when they land on the brig, resulting in several seamen wounded British (and a possible death of a severely wounded man who asked to be left behind) and the loss of the captured brig due to French cannon fire sinking it (PS, Chap XXXIII). When Jack and his cutter crew help attack a French ship, the first British cutter is sunk from French cannon fire, and then there is a great explosion from ammunition on the French ship after a pistol shot sets it off (see Illustration 2.2). Jack’s decision to have his crew wait to board allows them to save the other boat’s crew. (MME Chap XXII). Another use of smaller boat crews is to attack enemy gun batteries on the coast, a highly dangerous action. Peter Simple is wounded and the armourer is killed when their cutter crew attacks a French battery on the south coast of France. O’Brien refuses to leave the battery until he finishes spiking of the guns (driving a long nail into the cannon so the fuse cannot light, see Illustration 2.3) and can save Peter, but he and Peter are taken prisoner (PS Chapter XVIII). ). I have summarized just a few examples of the different types of naval action that Jack and Peter experience; these examples correspond well to the logs that Marryat kept as a midshipman (see Illustration 1.2 and 1.3), suggesting that Marryat’s novels are a realistic representation of what naval warfare was like in the Napoleonic Wars.

Promotion, Prize Money, and the Role of Interest

Prize Money and Promotion

Captain Wentworth was promoted from a first lieutenant to a commander after a battle in 1806 and has at some point been promoted to captain and given command of a frigate, the Laconia, and has made at least £20,000 in prize money during the war (P 28, 55, 81) For prize money, “the value of a captured vessels and its cargo was distributed to the crew of the ship that captured her, in a graduated scale from the captain downwards” (MP 719, note 1). Specific amounts of prize money are not mentioned in Marryat’s two novels, but like William Price’s goal to share his prize money as a lieutenant with his family at Portsmouth and save for a cottage with Fanny when out of the navy (MP 433). Peter and O’Brien send their prize money home and plan to support Peter’s sister after her father dies as both families are financially insecure (PS 97, 390). Getting a promotion to a higher rank meant a higher percentage of a ship’s prize money and a higher level of responsibility on the ship. Once the rank of first lieutenant is reached, promotion to commander and post-captain can occur when openings occur on ships through death or sickness that results in someone leaving service or by meritorious service, especially in battle or through prize money. After Captain Savage dies of accidental copper poisoning, First Lieutenant Falcon is promoted to commander, and the Admiral shuffles a few other officers to get a more experienced captain onto the frigate and Falcon onto a sloop (PS Chap XXX-XXXI). Captain Wilson is promoted from commander to post-captain and posted to a frigate Aurora and First Lieutenant Sawbridge becomes a commander of the sloop Harpy after Jack’s capture of a merchant vessel with 14,000 dollars on board, a lucrative prize for his ship and the Admiral of that station (MME 108,135). There is almost a mutiny on board a ship near the end of Peter Simple because the crew has fought valiantly against a Dutch brig, with many British sailors killed and wounded, and Captain Hawkins, who has not had combat experience, refuses Peter’s advice to take the last step to capture the vessel and another British ship gets the capture and the prize money. The crew is very angry and voice their belief that the captain is not fit. Peter must defend the captain’s inaction to maintain order on the boat but is later brought up for a court martial by Captain Hawkins (Chap LV). Marryat shows that all the ships’ crews and the admiralty are motivated by prize money and it can plays great role in promotion.

Becoming a Lieutenant

In Mansfield Park, William Price appears to have already passed his lieutenant’s exam but is unable to get a commission as a lieutenant (“that long thought of, dearly earned, and justly valued blessing of promotion” 273, also, 290 and note 19, page 705). Henry Crawford asks his uncle the Admiral to help, and William is promoted to become a second lieutenant and assigned to a ship. Once William is second lieutenant, he is already thinking about becoming a first lieutenant if the current first lieutenant is “out of the way” through action (MP 433). Peter Simple’s lieutenant exam takes place on a ship in Plymouth, the day after Peter has saved a drunk soldier who is drowning, ruining his only uniform. At his exam, the three captains review his logs and certificates, ask about navigation, seamanship, and one berates him for his attire. After learning through a newspaper that he was the person who saved a drowning man, the captains are kinder and ask if he knows how to club-haul a ship, which he does because he has witnessed Captain Savage do it. Peter passes and is told he is “a good seaman and a gallant young man” (Chapter XXXVIII 330-336).

The Role of Interest

At the start of Mansfield Park, Sir Thomas is described as having “interest” but as being unable to help Mr. Price due to his working for the Marines (4; note 6, page 641 defines interest as the power to obtain places or appointments through political clout”). When Sir Thomas hears that William has been invited to meet Henry’s uncle, Admiral Crawford, he is happy because “The Admiral he believed had interest” (MP 309). The Admiral writes to a friend who writes to the First Lord of the Admiralty and thus gets William’s commission to a sloop, the Thrush (346). In Persuasion, Admiral Croft tells Captain Wentworth that he was lucky to get a sloop after his promotion from lieutenant to commander and “with no more interest than his” (P 70). In Peter Simple, Peter asks his grandfather, Lord Privilege, to write to the First Lord after he and (newly promoted) Lieutenant O’Brien have escaped France to get them a new posting together and that letter succeeds (Chapter XXVI). When Peter gets a second letter from Lord Privilege to get his commission as lieutenant and O’Brien as a commander, his father tells him that his “grandfather’s interest was so great with the administration, that I might consider my promotion as certain” (Chapter XXXIX 343). Of course, interest can also result in the promotion of incompetent leaders, as Captain Horton (“The Sloth”) “was a young man of family who advanced rapidly in the service from interest” and his laziness made him occasionally seem brave and impervious to danger, such as walking rather than running from enemy fire. However, his laziness leads him to avoid any enemy engagement as a captain and the men on his ship do not like him (PS Chapter XXXVIII 324). Thus, in Marryat’s works, the political dimension of “interest” in naval promotions and ship assignments is clear; in Mr. Midshipman Easy, the political party is even named: “Gascoigne, by the interest of the Conservative member, soon attained the rank of post-captain” (MME 367).

Dangers of Weather, Climate, and Disease

Climate in Tropical Areas and Disease

In Mansfield Park, the “constant danger” Edmund says that Sir Thomas faces in going to Antigua probably includes the risk of disease in a tropical climate (147; note 22, 680 mentions both the danger of crossing the Atlantic and tropical disease). When Sir Thomas returns, he is “thinner and had the burnt, fagged, and worn look of fatigue and a hot climate” (208-209). In Peter Simple, there is a funny incident of the ship’s doctor and a few other officers using the dangers of a tropical climate to convince the ineffectual Captain To and his wife (the pig-raising and pork-eating couple) to swap for command of another ship when their ship has been ordered to the West Indies, focusing especially on Captain To’s high chance of death due to his heavy weight in a hot climate, that eating pork produces fatal dysentery in the tropics, and the risk of yellow fever (Chap XXVII, especially 225-7). Later in the novel, Captain Kearney suffers the “insidious attacks of a hot climate” in the West Indies and his “constitution appeared now to be breaking up” (316) by the time they get to Halifax with dispatches, where he dies after a few weeks (Chap XXXVII). In the Mediterranean, Jack’s ship has several cases of dysentery, which reduces the number of officers available for commanding the smaller boats and gives Jack a chance at a command of a cutter when they attack a convoy (MME Chap XIII). Scurvy is only mentioned in these two novels as something to be prevented with fresh food: after orders from the Admiral at Port Mahon, Jack is sent by his captain to Tetuan in Morocco on a mission to get bullocks “to drive the scurvy out of the Toulon fleet” (MME 224; Chap XXIII-XXIV). Marryat shows the very real risks of a tropical climate and disease that are a part of British naval life.

Extreme Weather

Captain Wentworth said he never had bad weather in the Asp until he returned to Plymouth, where he experienced a gale lasting four days when he was in the Sound that would have destroyed the ship if he had been out in the ocean. (P 70). In Mr. Midshipman Easy, the crew experiences a gale at sea with a lightning strike to the mast of the ship that destroys the mast and starts a fire in the coal hold. Jack helps to fight the fire, and the crew must prepare “jury-masts and jury-rigging” until they can get to a harbor to make repairs (MME Chap XXV-XXVI 246, see illustration 2.4). In one of the most exciting chapters of Peter Simple, there is a gale when the ship is near land and Captain Savage commands his crew to use a club-haul (dropping a temporary anchor and then releasing it) to avoid running aground on rocks and later expertly directs the control of the sails and the wheel in fierce wind to get the ship around a point of land, saving his crew from death from being dashed on rocks in both instances. While in the Caribbean, Peter faces a hurricane in a smaller boat with a crew rowing when they had been sent to capture prizes. Several of the crew are killed and some injured, including Peter, as the boat is thrown against the rocks on the French-held island of Martinique, where General O’Brien, Celeste’s father, is in charge. After Peter and his remaining crew help to look for survivors in wrecked buildings on Martinique, the British crew is patched up and allowed to return to their ship (PS Chaps. XLVII-XLIX).

Summary: Marryat Dramatizes Austen’s Allusions to the Danger, Heroism, Brotherhood, and Infighting of the Navy

Marryat’s works bring to life several aspects of the navy that Austen alluded to: the danger, heroism, brotherhood, and infighting. William Price has seen “every variety of danger, which sea and war together could offer” and had “the glory of heroism, of usefulness, of exertion, of endurance” (MP 275). In Persuasion, Captain Harville has “never had been in good health since a severe wound he had received two years before” and later is described as “a little lame” (P 101,105). Peter Simple and Mr. Midshipman Easy are full of instances of death or injury to the ship crews in naval combat, as discussed in the Naval Action section. Peter is shot in the leg by the French (PS Chap XVIII) and Jack Easy receives a cutlass wound in the fight to take the Russian frigate (MME Chap XXIX). Marryat also shows the dangers from bad weather, tropical climates, or disease and random hazards (such as the copper poisoning that killed Captain Savage in Peter Simple). As the novel plot summaries show, Marryat celebrates the joy and spirit of most of the sailors and officers getting ready for a naval battle or other missions and there are many examples of bravery and heroism. Like William Price, Jack and Peter are eager to learn naval skills from more experienced sailors and officers and to develop their leadership potential. The brotherhood of the navy that Austen shows in the relationship between Captain Harville, Captain Benwick, and Captain Wentworth in Persuasion is also shown with Jack and Peter’s ability to form strong relationships with their superior officers who mentor them and fellow midshipmen when they are friendly. Finally, Mary Crawford speaks of the “bickerings and jealousy” (MP 71) of the Admirals around Admiral Crawford (her uncle) and, when walking in Bath with Anne, Admiral Croft calls Admiral Brand and his brother “Shabby fellows . . . [t]hey played me a pitiful trick once–got away some of my best men” (P 184). Both Jack and Peter face many instances of peers or superiors acting from jealousy or dislike who seek to manipulate, unjustly punish, or thwart them. Marryat’s naval protagonists and Austen’s naval characters face the same dangers and share a similar heroism in serving their country and experience both friendship and rivalry among their naval comrades.

Captain Frederick Marryat and Jane Austen as Authors

The ‘Naval Officer,’ when ‘corrected,’ will be so improved that he may be permitted to stand on the same shelf with ‘Pride and Prejudice’ or ‘Sense and Sensibility’.” (Frederick Marryat, quoted in Florence Marryat LL Vol I 199)

As the quotation above shows, Marryat was a fan of Jane Austen’s work and sought to connect with her as an author. Most critics recognize that his skill as a writer does not approach hers in terms of plot, dialogue or narrative (see Woolf, Courtney, Johnson, and Southam). I find his plots when the characters are on land often unrealistic and sensationalized—for example, the murderous clergy, imprisonment in Bedlam, and repeated unlikely coincidences, with some last-minute saves that are truly unbelievable, everything that Austen mocked in her juvenilia. Reflecting English imperialism of his time, Marryat sometimes writes about other cultures with insensitivity (Fulford194; PS, Chap XXXI). The world he portrays is almost all men, with a few worrying mothers or insipid love-interests in the background. However, his descriptions of life on ship and what an officer or a sailor does feels real–“the world of 1806 is real to us and ordinary” (Woolf 42). His naval characters are “drawn vigorously, decisively, from the living face” (43). Virginia Woolf connects his fictional world to Austen’s world:

“he can create a world; he has the power to set us in the midst of ships and men and sea and sky all vivid, credible, authentic, as we are made suddenly aware when Peter [Simple] quotes a letter from home and the other side of the scene appears; the solid land, England, the England of Jane Austen, with its parsonages, its country house, its young women staying at home, its young men gone to sea; and for a moment, the two worlds, that are so opposite and yet so closely allied, come together.” (Virginia Woolf 44)

Fulford links Austen and Marryat to the works of Southey in his Life of Nelson (1813) and Coleridge in his Life of Sir Alexander Bell (1809) as promoting “models of British manliness on which a stable domestic society could be founded”, with officers as “the embodiment of the virtues necessary for command . . . such as patriotism, self-reliance, courage, paternalism, and, above all, attentiveness to duty” (187, 162). Compared to the three male authors, though, Austen “created positive models of femininity” in the “practicality, adaptability, and cheerful self-reliance” of Mrs. Croft and Anne Elliot’s focus on healthy morality and social usefulness (187-188). Despite his limitations, Captain Marryat does a wonderful job of creating a realistic and technically-detailed representation of life in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars that helps modern Austen fans understand what Captain Wentworth, William Price, and the rest of Austen’s naval characters experienced on board a ship. I hope you will give his books a read!

Notes

[i] The website threedecks.org has a search feature for ships that tell the type of ship, number of guns, and class if rated. The Impérieuse was a 38-gun, fifth-rate frigate from 1804 to 1838. https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=ships_search

[ii] Jane Austen used fake names for the ships that were sailed in by her characters except for the ships anchored at Spithead near the Thrush in Mansfield Park, which were ships commanded by her brothers (MP 439, note 13, page 721). Marryat used real ship names for the British Navy ships in his novels. The Diomede, a fourth-rate frigate, had 50 guns during the period 1798-1815. https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=ships_search Frigates would be sixth rate (20-28 guns), fifth rate (30-44 guns), fourth rate (50-60 guns from 1801 on), third rate (64 to 84 guns from 1801 on), second rate (90-98 guns from 1782 on), and first rate (100-120 guns from 1802 on), https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=ship_rates

[iii]The Rattlesnake sloop, unrated, had 16 guns 1791-1814. Sloops were unrated and usually had between 10 to 22 guns during the period 1803-1807. https://threedecks.org/index.php?display_type=ships_search.

[iv] The Harpy sloop, unrated, had 16 guns 1796-1817 ibid.

[v] The Aurora, a sixth-rate frigate, had 28 guns 1777 to 1814 ibid.

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

1.1 Crickmore, H. Portrait of Frederick Marryat. In Marryat, Frederick. The Novels of Captain Marryat: Volume First: Peter Simple. United Kingdom, J.M. Dent, 1896, frontispiece. This was etched from a print published in 1836 by Henry Colburn based on the oil portrait by John Simpson in 1835 in the National Portrait Gallery (UK), note p. x. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Peter_Simple/k0o1AAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

1.2 Marryat’s log for 1807 in Marryat, Florence. Life and Letters of Captain Marryat. London: R. Bentley & Son, 1872. Vol. I, p 47. https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/wwc3AAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 (Digitized by the U. of California).

1.3 Marryat’s log for 1808 in ibid., p. 48.

1.4 Whitcombe, Thomas. Destruction of the French Fleet in Basque Roads – April 12th 1809 (detail). 1817. HMS Imperieuse (right) engages the grounded French ships. Thomas Whitcombe, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Basques_Road-Thomas_Whitcombe-217057.JPG

1.5 “List of Marryat’s Works”. In Marryat, Frederick. The Novels of Captain Marryat: Volume First: Peter Simple. United Kingdom, J.M. Dent, 1896, p. ix. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Peter_Simple/k0o1AAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

2.1 Wheeler, E. J. “Escaping from the French prison”. In Marryat, Frederick. Captain Marryat’s Novels: Peter Simple United Kingdom, Routledge, 1896, between pp. 156 and 157. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Captain_Marryat_s_novels/kWGh1xrVgvUC?hl=en&gbpv=0

2.2 Unknown. “Their eyes directed to the volumes of smoke which poured through the ports”. In Marryat, Frederick, Mr. Midshipman Easy New York, Century Co., 1906, frontispiece. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mr_Midshipman_Easy/k-5GlEzJtlsC?hl=en&gbpv=0

2.3 Unknown. “Easy and Gascoigne went down with large bundles in their arms” in ibid, p. 244.

2.4 Wheeler, E. J. “O’Brien spiking the guns”. In Marryat, Frederick. Captain Marryat’s Novels: Peter Simple United Kingdom, Routledge, 1896, between pp. 130 and 131. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Captain_Marryat_s_novels/kWGh1xrVgvUC?hl=en&gbpv=0

WORKS CITED

Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. Ed. John Wiltshire. Cambridge: CUP, 2005.

____. Persuasion. Eds. Janet Todd & Antje Blank. Cambridge: CUP, 2006

Courtney, W. L. “Introduction” in Marryat, Frederick. Captain Marryat’s Novels: Peter Simple United Kingdom, Routledge, 1896. (Digitized by the Bavarian State Lib) https://www.google.com/books/edition/Captain_Marryat_s_novels/kWGh1xrVgvUC?hl=en&gbpv=0

Fulford, Tim. “Romanticizing the Empire: the naval heroes of Southey, Coleridge, Austen, and Marryat.” MLQ: Modern Language Quarterly 60.2 (1999): 161-196.

Johnson, R. Brimley “Frederick Marryat: Biographical Introduction” Marryat, Frederick. The Novels of Captain Marryat: Volume First: Peter Simple. United Kingdom, J.M. Dent, 1896 (Digitized by U of Michigan) https://www.google.com/books/edition/Peter_Simple/k0o1AAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

Marryat, Florence. Life and Letters of Captain Marryat. London: R. Bentley & Son, 1872. Vol. I: https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/wwc3AAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 (Digitized by the U. of California). Vol II: https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/ZbOfnBx4ckEC?hl=en&gbpv=0 (Digitized by the University of Michigan)

Marryat, Frederick. Captain Marryat’s Novels: Peter Simple. London: Routledge, 1896. (Digitized by the Bavarian State Lib) https://www.google.com/books/edition/Captain_Marryat_s_novels/kWGh1xrVgvUC?hl=en&gbpv=0

_______. Mr. Midshipman Easy New York: Century Co., 1906. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mr_Midshipman_Easy/k-5GlEzJtlsC?hl=en&gbpv=0

_______. The Novels of Captain Marryat: Volume First: Peter Simple. Ed. R. Brimley Johnson. London: J.M. Dent, 1896 (Digitized by U of Michigan) https://www.google.com/books/edition/Peter_Simple/k0o1AAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

Morley, Christopher. Parnassus on Wheels. New York: Modern Library, 1917/1925. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Parnassus_on_Wheels/8_1LAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0 (Digitized by the U. of Chicago)

Southam, Brian. “Jane Austen and North America: Fact and Fiction.” Jane Austen and the North Atlantic. Ed. Sarah Emsley. Alton, U.K.: Jane Austen Society (2006): 22-37.

Woolf, Virginia. “The Captain’s Death Bed.” In The Captain’s Death Bed & Other Essays. London: Hogarth Press (1950): 39-48. (The essay was originally published in 1935).

© Michele Larrow, 2026. This blog was written without the use of AI.

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Flat Jane Austen Turns Four

July 15, 2024August 19, 2024 jasnaewanid

. . . And Visits All 50 States!

by Michele Larrow, FJA’s Travel Coordinator

Header Image: FJA at the Burchart Gardens, Brentwood Bay, BC, at 2022 AGM in Victoria, photograph by Roseann Thompson

Flat Jane Austen (FJA) is a project our region started in August 2020 as a way for Janeites to connect during a time when many people were home due to the Covid lockdown. We made many copies of FJA over the past four years, in the original 6 inch size and the later 9 inch size. She was mailed to about 100 different hosts. Our hosts have taken her to teas, ballgames, dances, hiking, museums, libraries, and JASNA events. They shared pictures of FJA’s adventures on our website FJA page, in our Flat Jane Austen Facebook Group, or through other social media using #FlatJaneAusten or #FlatAusten hashtags. This spring, FJA has finally made it to all 50 states. She also has visited several Canadian provinces and been to much of Europe, as well as Iceland and Taiwan. FJA is still going strong. If you would like to host or re-host FJA, see our website FJA page and fill out the sign-up form. To celebrate her milestone of going to all 50 states, we’d like to highlight a few FJA hosts (in alphabetical order) who have brought us along on some fun adventures.

Lisa Angel, Georgia

Lisa has hosted FJA twice and took her all over the Atlanta area and other parts of Georgia–going to concerts, lacrosse games, a professional bull riding show, the CDC museum, and river tubing in Helena. She has also taken FJA to vacations in Wisconsin, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Colorado, and Utah. Perhaps most importantly, Lisa’s pup, Mr. Bingley, is a huge FJA fan.

Mr. Bingley and FJA attend a Braves/Orioles game in Atlanta

Kirk Companion, Massachusetts

Kirk is a region member who heads the “Boston Branch” of the FJA project, with his own FJA. He spreads the word about FJA on his Austen in Boston social media. He has visited the most states of any host (28) and was the first to take FJA to visit Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, West Virginia, Washington D.C., Iowa, South Dakota, and North Dakota (the last three states were numbers 48, 49, and 50 on our map). Kirk also loves to travel to JASNA meetings in other states, including Alabama, Colorado, New York, Vermont, Maine, Maryland, Washington, and New Jersey.

JASNA Maryland Meeting with Juliette Wells

Roseann Thompson, New Mexico

Roseann is a region member from New Mexico who has taken FJA to the 2021 AGM in Chicago, the 2022 AGM in Victoria, BC, and the 2023 AGM in Denver, CO. Through Roseann’s frequent postings from the AGMs, FJA helped those of us who aren’t able to attend share some of the excitement of being there. Roseann also has taken FJA to the bottom of the Grand Canyon (on mule), to the Four Corners Monument (NM, AZ, CO, and UT), and to Scotland with a stopover in Iceland.

FJA chats with Adrian Lukis (Mr. Wickham 1995) at the 2023 AGM

Jeanette Watts, Illinois

In the spring and summer of 2022, Jeanette took FJA on her travels to several states including Delaware (first time visit), Maryland, Virginia, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, North Carolina, and Texas. FJA had lots of fun and attended balls, went to museums, and visited historic sites.

“A Thousand Thanks”

Thank you to all who helped with FJA: Jane Provinsal, co-RC for our region, thought of the FJA project and has created many wonderful posts with FJA for our social media. Debra Peck, region secretary at the time, designed and made up many copies of the original FJA. Christina Boyd, of The Quill Ink, helped to publicize our project and invited many JAFF authors to join our FJA Facebook group, some of whom have also hosted FJA. Many JASNA regions, including Georgia, Maryland, Hawai’i, Middle Tennessee, Utah, Metropolitan Kansas City, North Nevada, Wyoming, Vancouver, BC, and Puget Sound, have hosted FJA. Finally, thanks to everyone who has hosted FJA and those who followed along with her adventures.

Kirk Companion and Roseann Thompson unite 2 FJAs at the 2023 AGM in Denver, CO (photo courtesy of Roseann Thompson)

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Miss Austen Mouse Reviews “Dinner with Mr. Darcy”

January 8, 2024January 29, 2024 jasnaewanid

Cassandra Bates, Regional Co-Coordinator

Dearest readers, I am back! I have longed to write you with news of my exploits. I have had the pleasure of having Dinner with Mr. Darcy! No, not actually, but I have come across a most wonderful book: Dinner with Mr. Darcy by Pen Vogler. I must tell you, reader, it is a beautiful book! The recipes are very easy to follow and even include historical receipts. The pictures of the entrees are simply stunning and transport you to another time of breeches and waistcoats and cravats. I must stop, tis too much! Each section of the book includes a wonderful introduction to the history of the various meals (breakfast, tea, dinner, etc) along with various passages from Miss Austen’s novels. Mind you the recipes are U.K. standards and so may take some conversions, but I have found that very little is required in that the author did a thorough job at ensuring all could enjoy the recipes. Overall, this book is an excellent addition to anyone’s Austen bookshelf.

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The Donwell Abbey Kitchen Garden and Orchard in June

June 28, 2023July 10, 2023 jasnaewanid

by Michele Larrow, Regional Co-Coordinator

It was now the middle of June, and the weather fine; and Mrs. Elton was growing impatient to name the day [for Box Hill], and settle with Mr. Weston as to pigeon-pies and cold lamb, when a lame carriage-horse threw every thing into sad uncertainty. . . .

“Is not this most vexatious, Knightley?” she cried.—”And such weather for exploring!” . . .

“You had better explore to Donwell,” replied Mr. Knightley. “That may be done without horses. Come, and eat my strawberries. They are ripening fast.”

If Mr. Knightley did not begin seriously, he was obliged to proceed so, for his proposal was caught at with delight; and the “Oh! I should like it of all things,” was not plainer in words than manner. Donwell was famous for its strawberry-beds, which seemed a plea for the invitation: but no plea was necessary; cabbage-beds would have been enough to tempt the lady, who only wanted to be going somewhere.”
Jane Austen, Emma, Vol III, Chap 6, 398-399

Mr. Knightley hosts the strawberry picking party at Donwell Abbey “at almost Midsummer” (E III, 6, 404; June 24 in the English quarter system). After the strawberries are picked and to escape Mrs. Elton, Jane Fairfax asks Mr. Knightley to show them “all the gardens . . . the whole extent.” (III, 6, 408). Contemporary Austen readers would have a sense of what the gardens would look like, both the kitchen garden (where the strawberry beds would be) and orchards and the “pleasure grounds”, which at Donwell terminate in the “broad short avenue of limes” (III, 6, 408; “lime trees” are lindens in the United States). The pleasure grounds include flower gardens, shrubbery, and wooded areas and will be discussed in the next blog. This blog will explore how a kitchen garden and orchards would be set up in the early 1800s, what plants would be growing there, and what work would be going on in them in the busy month of June.

The Estate Library

If Jane Austen’s brother, Edward Austen Knight, is any indication, owners of estates like Mr. Knightley would have a collection of books about gardening and farming in their library for reference. The 1818 catalogue of the Knight library, which is now searchable at https://www.readingwithausten.com/catalogue.html, lists several gardening and botany books from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century that were popular and went through many editions. Some of the Knight gardening books are organized by type of plant, such as John Evelyn’s Sylva or John Abercrombie’s The Universal Gardener and Botanist (UGB, 1778 first edition)[i]; others are organized by months of the year to describe what work needs to be done in each part of the garden, such as Philip Miller’s Gardeners Kalendar (GK, 1732 first edition); and others focus on methods for propagating and growing plants, such as William Marshall Planting and Ornamental Gardening (1785 first edition) and Abercrombie’s The Propagation and Botanical Arrangements of Plants and Trees (1784 first edition). Other popular gardening books I consulted that are not in the Knight collection are Miller’s Gardeners Dictionary (GD, 1754 edition at MASC), Abercrombie’s Every Man His Own Gardener (EMOG, 1813 edition), which is another gardener’s calendar, and John Loudon’s An Encyclopaedia of Gardening (1822 edition online and 1826 edition at WSU MASC; 1835 reprint edition), which summarizes the knowledge of over 100 gardening books from the 1700s and early 1800s. All these books are available online through Google books, and I studied original versions (although usually a different edition) of several of the books at the Washington State University Manuscript, Archives & Special Collections library (see photographs of the MASC books in Illustration Section 1 and the Works Cited list for links to the online versions). These 18^th and 19^th century books can give us a sense of what was involved in raising fruits and vegetables in Austen’s time.

Illustration Section 1: English Gardening Books from Early 1800s and 1700s

Pictures taken at Washington State University Manuscripts, Archives & Special Collections (MASC) by Michele Larrow

Philip Miller **The Gardeners Dictionary,** 3 vols, 1754 from WSU MASC

Fruits and Vegetables Mentioned in Austen’s Letters and Works[ii]

Before I describe the kitchen garden and orchard, I will review some of the ways fruits and vegetables are mentioned in Austen’s letters and works. Fruits or vegetables, along with other foods, are sometimes used in the story’s context to show the moral failings of a character (see Lane 90-100). Dr. Grant and Mrs. Norris’s argument about the apricot tree, with Dr. Grant’s insult that “these potatoes have as much flavor of a moor park apricot, as the fruit of that tree” (MP I, 6, 94) and Mrs. Norris’s angry defense that the cost to Sir Thomas was “seven shillings, and [it] was charged as a moor park” apricot tree (I, 6, 93), show his selfish gourmand neglect of other people’s feelings and her money-focus and seeking power through Sir Thomas. In Northanger Abbey, when General Tilney’s asks Catherine about Mr. Allen’s “succession-houses” and feels “self-satisfaction” when told Mr. Allen did not care about the garden, along with General Tilney’s complaint-brag that his “pinery had yielded only one hundred in the last year” of very-expensive-to-grow pineapples, are all signs of his greed and relentless focus on social comparison (II, 7, 256, see Wolfson’s note 18; also, Lane 95). While waiting to pick up Lizzy and Jane at an inn, Lydia Bennet’s extravagance and thoughtlessness is shown when she orders “cucumber and sallad” (sallad would mean just lettuce, Lane 65) without having the money to pay for it—cucumbers were quite expensive because they were grown in hot frames, especially for May (PP II, 16, 258, see Spacks note 5). Austen also notes in a letter from Bath that a cucumber will be a “very acceptable present” because it cost 1 shilling (5-6 May 1801). In Sanditon, Mr. Parker’s willingness to leave his ancestral estate and his complaints about the “Eyesore of [the Kitchen Garden’s] formalities; or the yearly nuisance of its decaying vegetation.–Who can endure a Cabbage Bed in October?” in spite of his wife’s obvious “fondness of regret” (MW 380) for the old home show his lack of attention to other’s feelings as an “Enthusiast” seeking to develop Sanditon (371). Of these examples, General Tilney and Dr. Grant are the most morally deficient because they “render the atmosphere in their homes unpleasant” (Lane 93).

Emma is all about eating and growing food and has several characters who reveal themselves through their discussion of food. Mr. Elton’s excessively detailed description of dinner at the Coles to Harriet, with “the Stilton cheese, the north Wiltshire, the butter, the cellery, the beet-root and all the dessert” shows his self-absorption (and lack of romantic interest in Harriet; I, 10, 122; also Lane 91). Mrs. Elton “monopolizing the conversation” (LeFaye 96) while strawberry picking at Donwell shows her desire to dominate and be seen as knowing everything:

‘The best fruit in England . . .–These the finest beds and finest sorts. . . .–Hautboy infinitely superior . . .– Chili preferred—white wood finest flavour of all—price of strawberries in London—abundance about Bristol—Maple Grove—cultivation—beds when to be renewed—gardeners thinking exactly different—no general rule—gardeners never to be put out of their way—delicious fruit—only too rich to be eaten much of—inferior to cherries—currants more refreshing—only objection to gathering strawberries the stooping—glaring sun—tired to death—could bear it no longer—must go and sit in the shade.’”
Emma (II, 6, 406)

Mr. Woodhouse is in his own class in seeking to control what others eat: his “gentle selfishness and being never able to suppose that other people could feel differently from himself” (I, 1, 33) leads to his depriving poor Mrs. Bates of “asparagus and sweetbreads” (as reported by Miss Bates; III, 2, 372), or offering guests “a little bit of tart, a very little bit. Ours are all apple tarts” (I, 3, 54). He wants the Bates’s to cook their apples “three times” (II, 9, 277) and hopes that the ham that was gifted from Hartfield will be “eaten very moderately of, with a boiled turnip and a little carrot or parsnip” (II, 3, 208). Although there is humor in his portrayal, Mr. Woodhouse is a poor host who intellectually is unable to consider other people’s true needs and desires. In these examples from Emma, Austen uses the characters’ interactions around food to show that they are inherently self-centered and contrasts with the true charity of other characters.

Fruits and vegetables can be special gifts of generosity and hospitality that reflect the giver’s moral worth and bring joy to the recipients. In Emma, Miss Bates learns from William Larkins (Mr. Knightley’s steward) that Mr. Knightley gave them “all the apples of that sort his master had; he had brought them all” (II, 9, 278), so that Mr. Knightley deprives himself of apples for the rest of the spring. Generous Miss Bates invites all her guests (Emma, Harriet, Frank, and Mrs. Weston) to share in the baked apples in that same chapter. In her letters, Austen tells Cassandra with delight about receiving “two hampers of apples” from the Fowle family at Kintbury (24-25 October 1808) and asks her nephew to thank his father (James) “with love” for the “Pickled cucumbers” he sent (16-17 December 1816). Mr. Darcy and Geogianna serve “beautiful pyramids of grapes, nectarines, and peaches” (PP III, 3, 309) to Elizabeth and Mrs. Gardiner, an elegant and welcoming treat for their guests. Sometimes, however, the gift of food fails to comfort, as when young Fanny Price misses home so much that she is not able to eat “two mouthfuls” of the “gooseberry tart” (MP I, 2, 53) without crying and good-natured Mrs. Jennings attempts to soothe Marianne’s broken heart with “dried cherries” (SS II, 8, 237) and “Constantia wine” are rejected, although Elinor drinks the wine instead, reflecting that “its healing powers on a disappointed heart might be as reasonably tried on herself as on her sister” (II, 8, 242; Spacks note 13 says Constantia is a sweet dessert wine made with Muscat grapes).

In Austen’s letters, and occasionally in the novels, fruits or vegetables are mentioned in more everyday ways as items grown in the garden or near the house, parts of housekeeping, or food eaten. One of the rare mentions of a pear occurs in Persuasion: “the compact, tight parsonage, enclosed in its own neat garden, with a vine and a pear-tree trained round its casements” (I, 5, 74; “vine” by itself refers to grape vines in that period, see Abercrombie, EMOG 173). In letters to Cassandra, she mentions plans for the garden or the state of the plants: at Steventon “apples, pears, and cherries” are planned (20-21 November 1800) and “Grapes . . . must be gathered as soon as possible” (27-28 October 1798); at Southampton “currant and gooseberry bushes, and . . . raspberries” are planted (8-9 February 1807); while at Chawton, she discusses the number of “Orleans plumbs [and] . . . greengages” (29 May 1811) and “pease,” “strawberries,” “gooseberries,” and “currants” (6 June 1811). Gardens do not always go as planned, producing one of Austen’s funniest lines in a letter: “I will not say that your Mulberry trees are dead, but I am afraid they are not alive.” (31 May 1811). The growth of the garden and its produce is enjoyed by Austen in Chawton, probably especially after living in Bath.

Many of Austen’s letters to Cassandra mention food that was served or eaten. Austen was the deputy housekeeper when Cassandra was away and her mother indisposed so she reports to Cassandra about serving “pease soup” (1-2 December 1798) and “haricot mutton” (17-18 November 1798; Lane shared a 1782 haricot mutton recipe for a stew containing mutton, carrots, turnips, celery, asparagus, cabbage, and cayenne but no beans, 60). Sometimes the housekeeping duties are too much–Austen complains after guests have left Southampton about “the torments of rice pudding and apple dumplings” (7-8 January 1807). While at Godmersham, Austen asks Cassandra if their Chawton garden has the fruit that she is enjoying such as “Tomatas . . . [which] Fanny & I regale on” daily (11-12 October 1813); and when living in Southampton, she writes “I want to hear of your gathering strawberries, we have had them three times here” (20-22 June 1808). Endearingly, when Austen enjoyed “Asparagus & a lobster” at an inn on the way the Bath with her brother Edward’s family, she “wished for” Cassandra to be there too (17 May 1799). While Mrs. Jennings description of eating mulberries from the tree on Colonel Brandon’s estate is seen as somewhat vulgar “Lord! how Charlotte and I did stuff . . .” (SS II, 8, 240) and in the topsy-turvy world of “The Visit”, there is humor in the refined guests feasting on common foods such as “fried Cowheel and Onions,” “Elder wine,” and “Gooseberry Wine” (J 66-67; Sabor notes on 413 that cowheel and onions is “a coarse dish consumed by labourers”; also Lane 80), Austen clearly enjoys everyday foods, especially fruit: “Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness” (17-18 October 1815).

The Kitchen Garden

Kitchen Gardens were quite large on estates since they had the land, and it was much cheaper to grow your own food. When the Austen family lived at Steventon, they were largely self-sufficient for food between their kitchen garden and orchards, poultry and dairy, and farm crops (LeFaye 48; Wilson 1). The famous eighteenth century horticulturalist and botanist, Philip Miller (GD Vol. II, “Kitchen Garden”) recommended 1 acre (about 3/4s of a football field) for a small family (which includes servants, see Lane 144) and 3-4 acres (about 3 football fields; see Video 2 of Hillsborough Castle for a 4-acre walled garden) for a large family, built on one side of the house, near the stables (for dung) and near water. Abercrombie writes that a kitchen garden of about an acre can be cared for by one gardener and larger gardens would need more help (UGB “Kitchen Garden”). The kitchen garden would have square or rectangular beds divided by walkways. Miller suggested surrounding the garden with a 12-foot wall for training fruit trees and to keep out animals that would eat the food. The area within the wall would have a wide dirt border (about 12 feet) to support the wall-trained trees. There was also space for glass-topped frames for growing melons and cucumbers that need protection from the cold. Nursery beds are sheltered beds where seedlings and cuttings could grow, often spaced more closely together than how they will grow when transplanted in their permanent spot. Loudon (1826 edition) gives an example of a kitchen garden design and diagrams the parts, as seen in illustrations 4.1 and 4.2 below. In Video 1 of Walmer Castle and Video 2 of Hillsborough Castle, there are several aerial shots over the kitchen gardens so you can see the scope of them (see the end of the blog text for the video links).

Colonel Brandon’s estate Delaford is described by Mrs. Jennings as “quite shut in with great garden walls that are covered with the best fruit trees in the country” (SS II, 8, 240) and Donwell Abbey’s kitchen garden was probably very similar. Fruit trees that are trained against the south-facing garden wall have a more protected and warmer growing environment for earlier blooming or more cold-sensitive fruit. Trees grown on the north-facing walls would be somewhat later blooming and bear fruit later, to prolong the fruit’s season (Miller, GD Vol. 2“Kitchen Garden”). Almost every fruit tree mentioned in Austen’s works or letters could be trained against garden walls (at least in the southern English counties) include apples, pears, plums, cherries, apricot, peaches, nectarines, and grapes (the last three fruits are in Pride and Prejudice, where they would have been grown in forcing houses since Derbyshire is so far north—see my prior blog https://jasnaewanid.org/2022/07/30/mr-darcys-fruit/ ). Fruit trees such as apples and pears trained onto garden walls or espalier (trained on fences as Robert Martin’s apple trees are in Emma II, 5, 224)[iii] would be pruned into a single flat layer of branches growing horizontally from the trunk of the tree, about 4-6 inches apart and allowed to grow to full length (Abercrombie, EMOG; Miller, GD Vol. 3 “Training”) and stone fruits would be trained into a fan pattern (Loudon 1835 668-671; see below for illustration 4.3 for pruning shears, 4.6 for an iron espalier rail, and 4.7 for training patterns from the 1826 edition). Figs are also wall-trained although they can grow as standards (Loudon, 1835 959). Gooseberries and currants grow on bushes, often trained as “standards” with a single stem topped by several branches with fruit and might line walkways in the kitchen garden about 6-10 feet apart (Loudon, 1835 743; Miller, GD Vol. II “Kitchen Garden”). Raspberries, a native of Britain, usually are grown as shrubs best planted in a shadier spot of the garden, although they are also used to line walkways (Loudon 1835 935-937). Mulberries were sometimes trained against kitchen garden walls but more often would be a stand-alone tree, as it appears to have been at Delaford since Mrs. Jennings described it as “such a mulberry tree in one corner!” (SS II, 8, 240), either placed in the kitchen garden (especially in the 1700s), in the pleasure grounds, or in the orchard. Mulberries take several years to produce fruit and can live to an old age still producing (Loudon, 1835 927). Strawberries would be grown in beds in the kitchen garden, planted in rows a foot apart with plants spaced from 8-24 inches apart depending on the size of the strawberry variety (Miller, GD Vol. 1, “Fragaria”). George Brookshaw’s Pomona Britannica (1812) has beautiful illustrations of many fruits, showing the many varieties especially of strawberries, gooseberries, cherries, apricots, plums, peaches, nectarines, grapes, pears, and apples, as well as the currants and raspberries, which just have two or three varieties (see Section 2 for a selection of the plates).

Illustration Section 2: Fruits from George Brookshaw’s Pomona Britannica

Illustration Credits list the exact fruit pictured and give a link for the digital copy

There would also be a large variety of vegetables grown in the kitchen garden. Austen’s family grew peas, tomatoes, and potatoes at Steventon and Chawton (Wilson 4, 46 and LeFaye 21, 248). Other vegetables mentioned in Austen’s works and letters that would be in the kitchen garden include celery, cucumber, beets, cabbage, carrots, turnips, onion, parsnip, and asparagus. Also grown in the kitchen gardens at the time, though not mentioned by Austen, are broccoli, cauliflower, artichokes, leeks, radish, beans, hot peppers, and many herbs (see Miller, GD and Abercrombie, EMOG). Most of the vegetables would be grown from seed and planted annually; Miller recommends changing where the plants are grown in the garden each year (GD Vol II “Kitchen Garden”). Loudon discusses the rotation of vegetable and some fruit crops in more depth: recommending annual rotation of the “brassica tribe [cabbage family], the leguminous family, the tuberous and carrot-rooted kinds, the bulbous or onion kinds; and the lighter crops, as salads and herbs” (Loudon, 1835 749). Strawberry beds should be renewed every 4-5 years. Artichokes, asparagus, currants, gooseberries, and raspberries should be renewed every 7-8 years (Loudon, 1835 748-749). To maximize the length of time that specific vegetables were available fresh, the vegetables grown from seed would be sown at regular intervals many times through the growing season, such as lettuce, celery, peas, beans, carrots, radishes, etc. (Abercrombie, EMOG) starting as early as January and lasting through December (Loudon, 1835 1245-1260). Asparagus is started as a seed, but the roots do not produce stalks until after 3 years; the stalks come up annually after that and are best when harvested in May and June (Abercrombie, UGB “Asparagus”). Vegetables such as celery, asparagus, and endive would be grown using a process called “earthing” where the stalks are covered with earth to keep the vegetable “white, tender, and palatable” (UGB “Apium”). Other vegetables like potatoes would be planted in March or April from chunks of potato with one or two eyes and then harvested in the fall (Abercrombie, EMOG 37, 159). Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbal, originally published in 1737-39, has illustrations of several vegetables grown in the kitchen garden (see Illustration Section 3).

Illustration Section 3: Vegetables from from Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbal

Illustration Credits list the vegetable pictured and give a link for the digital copy

Orchard

Mr. Wentworth, Mrs. Croft and Captain Wentworth’s clergyman brother, is described thus by Sir Walter’s lawyer, Mr. Shepard: “came to consult me once, I remember, about a trespass of one of his neighbours; farmer’s man breaking into his orchard—wall torn down—apple stolen—caught in the fact; and afterwards, contrary to my judgment, submitted to an amicable compromise.”
Persuasion I, 3, 59

Since orchards have large trees, they can produce a great deal of fruit that is valuable for both home baking and dessert eating and for sale (and potentially pilfered, as Mr. Wentworth found in Persuasion). We know in Emma that Mr. Knightley sells most of his apples when he tells Miss Bates, as reported by her, that “William Larkins let me keep a larger quantity than usual this year” telling her a white lie to convince her to accept his gift of apples (II, 9, 278). At the strawberry picking party, the “orchard in blossom” that Emma sees looking down to Abbey-Mill Farm, Robert Martin’s prosperous farm that he rents from Mr. Knightley, is seen as one of Austen’s few mistakes in facts, since orchards usually bloom in May (III, 6, 409). Austen enjoyed orchards for both their beauty and utility; in a letter to Cassandra from Chawton, she tells her “You cannot imagine, it is not in Human Nature to imagine what a nice walk we have round the Orchard” (31 May 1811).

Philip Miller recommended that orchards be situated on gently rising ground (not a hill) open to the southeast so that trees are exposed to the right amount of “the Sun and Air” (GD Vol. II, “Orchard”). He also prefers that the trees be defended from winds from the west, north, and east and that a screen of timber trees be planted around the orchard if it is not naturally protected by hills. Trees should be planted “fourscore [80] feet asunder not in regular rows.” Wheat and other crops can be planted between the trees in order to plow and till the soil, which makes the trees “more vigorous and healthy”. Miller focuses on stone fruit, apples, pears, and cherries in the orchard. Trees should be planted in the spot they will stay in when young and been previously raised in similar soil to the orchard in the nursery bed. Once the trees are established, they should only be pruned to take off dead branches.

In The Gardener’s Encyclopaedia, John Loudon summarizes several different gardeners’ writings on orchards, saying that they can be between 1 and 20 acres, depending on land and demand for the fruit (1835 744-746). Alternatively, large fruit trees can be distributed among the ornamental plantings on an estate. Hardy fruits such as apples, pears, cherries, plums, medlar, mulberry, quince, walnut, chestnut, filbert, berberry make for a complete orchard. If fruit is grown for sale, “apples are first in utility” and pears, cherries, and plums “are acceptable” for cooking with (1835 744). Orchards are best planted in the autumn and Loudon recommends that trees be spaced about 30-40 feet apart.

We wrote in a previous blog https://jasnaewanid.org/2022/06/04/pomona-britannica-and-emma/ that apples and pears had hundreds of varieties in the 1700 and 1800s, some varieties would ripen in mid-summer and others in late fall/early winter and then would finish ripening off the tree in storage, to ensure almost a year-round supply of the fruit (especially of apples). Miss Bates says of Mr. Knightley’s apples “there never was such a keeping apple anywhere as one of his trees—I believe there is two of them. My mother says the orchard was always famous in her younger days” (E II, 9, 278). Orchard tree fruit should be picked by hand (using ladders or using a fruit gatherer, like illustration 4.4) to keep it as unblemished as possible—windfalls and those shaken down are liable to bruise and spoil easily. According to Miller (GD Vol II “Malus”), late ripening apples should be left on the tree as long as possible (until frost) and then picked in dry weather, sweated in piles for 3-4 weeks, wiped dry, and stored in large oil jars. Jane Austen stored her “two hamper of apples” from Kintbury on the floor of the “garret” when living in Southampton to keep them cold (24-25 October 1808). Larger estates would have fruit rooms with regulated temperature where fruit was kept on shelves of open lattice for air circulation, which also allows easy access to take out the fruit for consumption throughout the winter (Loudon, 1835 760 and illustration 4.5). Apples and pears for keeping would be stored in jars or barrels in the temperature controlled (32℉ to 40℉) fruit cellar and not opened until needed in the spring, lasting into May or June (Loudon, 1835 759-761). With careful management, apples and pears could be eaten year-round.

**Illustration Section 4: Illustrations from An Encyclopaedia of Gardening by John C. Loudon, 1826 edition**

Pictures taken at Washington State University Manuscripts, Archives & Special Collections (MASC) by Michele Larrow. The book was propped to preserve the spine so the pictures are not flat. For 4.2 Diagram of a Kitchen Garden a=slips, b=walls c=walks, d=quarters (beds), e, h, k=rooms, f=compost & hot-beds, g=gardener’s house, m=fountain/water, p=open railing, q=irregular borders

June in the Kitchen Garden and Orchard

In the 1700 and 1800s, there were several calendars for gardeners that helped them to keep track of what needed to happen when in the gardens. Philip Miller’s Gardeners Kalendar was owned by Austen’s brother Edward. John Abercrombie’s Every Man his Own Gardener gives even more details about the work that needs doing than Miller’s Kalendar. Miller offers us a list of the fruits that would be ripe in June, such as strawberries, currants, gooseberries, cherries (trained on walls) and in forcing houses peaches, nectarines, and grapes. He also notes that “carefully preserved” keeping apples such as Golden Russet and Stone Pippin, would still be good (GK 187). The vegetables available in the kitchen garden would be cauliflower, cabbage, young carrots, beans, peas, artichokes, asparagus, turnips, cucumbers, salad herbs, some celery, and melons (GK 183). Because of the protection of the kitchen garden walls, much produce would be available as early as June.

In the June Kitchen Garden, Abercrombie recommends constant weeding and watering when plants are dry. Beets, onions, carrots, and parsnips are to be thinned. Lettuce, peas, turnips, and cabbage can be first planted or sown again for use later in the summer (lettuce and peas) and in the fall and winter (turnips and cabbage). Celery would be planted at different times for a continuous supply over the summer and earthing (packing dirt around the base) takes place in June. Asparagus stalks should not be cut after June 24^thto keep the roots strong. Cucumbers would be grown in frames and were sown in January and February for summer consumption. On June days, the frames would be opened to allow air and they would be shaded from the sun during the hottest parts of the day (EMOG 1787 283-300).

For the fruits in the Kitchen Garden, in May and June wall-fruits such as apricots, peaches, nectarines, apples, pears, cherries, and plums should be thinned, taking off many of the fruits and only leaving those that are the best shape and the biggest (and only as many as the size of the branch can support). The young fruit that is taken off can be used for tarts. Additionally, the fruit trees need to be pruned of shoots that are not productive to fruit either this year or next. Grapes vines should be pruned in May and June of all shoots that are weak or non-productive. The strawberry beds produce runners in June that can be planted for next year (or even for the winter if planted in frames; Abercrombie, EMOG 1787 252-253, 301-307).

Conclusion

An incredible amount of labor went into producing food in Jane Austen’s time. Mr. Knightley would undoubtedly have at least one gardener to work in his garden, separate from William Larkins, who functions as his steward, managing the estate, including going over the books with him. The gardens involve numerous tasks in every month of the year, whether it is pruning hardy fruit trees in January, planting seeds and bulbs in March, destroying insects in May, sowing autumn vegetables in July, planting cuttings of shrub-fruits in September, or storing late fruit in November (see Loudon, 1835 1243-1260 for a short Kalendarial Index). The goal in the kitchen gardens was to have fresh fruit and vegetables as early as possible and lasting as long as possible through the year.

In our next blog, I will cover the pleasure grounds, including flower beds, shrubbery, ornamental woods, as well as the growth of trees for sale as timber. I will also discuss the use of greenhouses and hot-houses for growing cold sensitive plants in that blog.

Videos

These videos all show examples of walled kitchen gardens on large estates in the British Isles. Thanks to region member Sara Thompson for video suggestions.

Video 1: https://youtu.be/WE2kkFMTFIY Walmer Castle Kitchen Garden (about 4 minutes)Spring in the walled kitchen garden with espalier trees, beans, asparagus, strawberries, cold frames.

Video 2: h ttps://youtu.be/aLu_P69ZkuI Hillsborough Castle Walled Garden Autumn Harvest (about 4 minutes; Northern Ireland British Royal Palace) 4-Acre Walled Garden with espalier pear trees; shows lots of vegetables also.

Video 3: https://youtu.be/vop2ZpK7fbY Audley End House Kitchen Garden in Spring (about 14 minutes) Walled kitchen garden that includes espalier apples in bloom, potting tomatoes, a peach house and a vinery.

Video 4: https://youtu.be/ssAoqhrVT28 Audley End House Kitchen Garden: Picking Apples in Fall (about 11 minutes) Picking apples growing in the walled garden on espalier wires and walls. Although this video is described as gardening practices in the Victorian era, the advice about how to pick the apples is the same as what was written in the 1700s and early 1800s.

NOTES

[i] The title page of several of Abercrombie’s works lists Thomas Mawe as the first author, but in fact he did not contribute to the works (see introduction to the EMOG book and the title listing of the 11^th edition in WORKS CITED), so I am listing Abercrombie as the sole author for EMOB and UGB.

[ii] The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press editions of the six novels were used for reference (NA=Northanger Abbey, SS=Sense and Sensibility, PP=Pride and Prejudice, MP=Mansfield Park, E=Emma, and P=Persuasion). These editions have excellent annotations often with illustrations about gardening, food, and landscaping, as well as other topics. For ease of comparison to other editions, I have included the Volume and Chapter of each quotation, as well as the page number in the edition used. See the Works Cited section for the specific editions used of the Minor Works (MW) and Juvenilia (J). For Jane Austen’s Letters (L), I used the Diedre Le Faye 3^rd Edition, 1995 and am indebted to the wonderful searchable index of subjects for that edition created by Del Cain in 2002 and available at: https://www.mollands.net/etexts/ltrindex/index.html.

[iii] The term “espalier” was used in the 1700s and early 1800s only to refer to fruit trees that are trained against rails or fences into a flat pattern. Fruit grown against walls would be called “wall trees”, see for example Loudon, 1835, 1252. In current usage, espalier refers to 1. a tree that is trained to grow into a flat pattern against a wall or other supports or 2. the supports itself (as a noun) and 3. the process of training the tree to grow in a flat pattern (as a verb; see dictionary.com).

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

Illustration Set 2: Fruits

Most of the fruit illustrations are from George Brookshaw’s Pomona Britannica (1812). Digital copies were color-enhanced to correspond to the prints available in George Brookshaw Pomona Britannica: The Complete Plates, Koln, Germany: Taschen, 2002.

2.1 Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. “Wood strawberry – The new early prolific strawberry – White Alpine.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1812. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-8858-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

2.2 Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. “Red and the White Antwerp Raspberries.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1812. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-8864-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

2.3 Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. “Black currant – Dutch red and white currants.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1812. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-886a-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

2.4 Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. “Sixteen varieties of Gooseberry.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1812. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-8876-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

2.5 Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. “May-Duke, the White and Black-heart Cherries.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1812. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-887f-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

2.6 Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. “Drap d’Or, or Cloth of Gold, White gage, Blue gage and Green gage plums.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1812. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-889c-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

2.7 Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. “Royal Dauphin, Wine sour, Prune, Myrabolan and Carnation plums.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1812. [Note: These are apricots and are labeled incorrectly as “plums”] https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-88b6-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

2.8 Hooker, William. Pomona Londinensis: Containing Colored Engravings of the Most Esteemed Fruits Cultivated in the British Gardens : with a Descriptive Account of Each Variety. United Kingdom, W. Hooker, 1818. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Pomona_Londinensis/wDVKAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1, plate 9

2.9 Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. “Red nutmeg, Hemskirk, Early Ann and French Vanguard Peaches.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1812. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-88c6-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

2.10 Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. “Vermash, Violette Hative, Red Roman, North scarlet, Ell rouge and the Peterborough nectarines.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1812. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-88e9-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

2.11 Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. “Black muscadine (grapes).” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1812. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-8931-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

2.12 Blackwell, Elizabeth. A Curious Herbal… Engraved… by Elizabeth Blackwell…. United Kingdom, John Nourse, 1739/1751. Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. “The mulberry tree” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1751. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/19cfebd0-fcde-0136-5175-0d7952ce55cb

2.13 Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. “Pears (Brown beurree, Golden beurree and the COlmar varities).” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1812. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-899c-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

2.14 Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. “Apples (White Colville, Red Colville, Norfolk Beefin, Norfolk paradise, Norfolk storing varities).” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1812. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-8b7a-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

2.15 Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library. “Apples (Phoenix and the Norroway’s beauty varities).” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1812. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47dc-8b6a-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

Illustration Set 3: Vegetables

Most of the vegetable illustrations are from A Curious Herbal, illustrated by Elizabeth Blackwell. This edition was published in 1751, it was originally published in 1737-39.

3.1 George Arents Collection, The New York Public Library. “Artichoke” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1739. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/7cc98c60-6da5-0136-f4fe-0d6ad4614061

3.2 Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. “Sparagus” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1739. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/13d191c0-6da7-0136-469d-0f917af7af15

3.3 George Arents Collection, The New York Public Library. “The bean” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1751. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/f1e370b0-fcdd-0136-1a19-00dcd1e3eb67

3.4 Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. “Red beet” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1751. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/5f9e3470-fce0-0136-0588-339a3bceb83b

3.5 Deutschlands Flora in Abbildungen Echte Möhre, Daucus carota Artist Jacob Strum https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Daucus_carota_Sturm12033.jpg

3.6 Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. “Garden cucumber” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1751. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/ec3f0ba0-fcdd-0136-e197-0c7e27bce827

3.7 George Arents Collection, The New York Public Library. “The leek” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1739. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/131de310-6da6-0136-72b5-085faccb9d2c

3.8 Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. “Lettice” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1751. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/0b833750-fcde-0136-14a7-0117869a6c24

3.9 George Arents Collection, The New York Public Library. “Peas” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1751. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/09b7acf0-fcde-0136-b64d-0819a9ad2c1f

3.10 George Arents Collection, The New York Public Library. “Guinea pepper” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1751. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/1afd19f0-fcde-0136-2309-4715cdcab7dc

3.11 George Arents Collection, The New York Public Library. “Garden radish” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1751. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/091f6030-fcde-0136-aa1c-0574f4b1e236

3.12 Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. “Love apple” [Tomato] The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1751. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/1c73fe80-fcde-0136-5330-3d2b7c157681

3.13 Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. “Turnep” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1751. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/5abe7a40-fce0-0136-664c-04524d9e1f4c

WORKS CITED

Abercrombie, John Every Man His Own Gardener Being a New, and Much More Complete Gardener’s Kalendar … By Thomas Mawe … John Abercrombie … and Other Gardeners [or Rather, by John Abercrombie Alone]. The Eleventh Edition, Corrected and Greatly Enlarged London: various publishers, 1787. https://books.google.com/books?id=R8NgAAAAcAAJ; 1813 edition used at WSU MASC.

Abercrombie, John. (Also lists Mawe, T. as an author but he did not contribute). The Universal Gardener and Botanist London: G. Robinson, Pub., 1778. This is the same edition that Edward Austen Knight owned. https://books.google.com/books?id=eMtCAQAAMAAJ

Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. Bharat Tandon. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press/Harvard UP, 2012.

____. Jane Austen’s Letters. Ed. Deirdre Le Fay. 3rd ed. Oxford: OUP, 1995.

____. Juvenilia. Ed. Peter Sabor. Cambridge: CUP, 2006.

____. Mansfield Park. Ed. Deidre Shauna Lynch. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press/Harvard UP, 2016.

____. Minor Works. Ed. R. W. Chapman, 3^rd ed. Oxford: OUP, 1953/1967.

____. Northanger Abbey. Ed. Susan J. Wolfson. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press/Harvard UP, 2014.

____. Persuasion. Ed. Robert Morris. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press/Harvard UP, 2011.

____. Pride and Prejudice. Ed. Patricia Meyer Spacks. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press/Harvard UP, 2010.

____. Sense and Sensibility. Ed. Patricia Meyer Spacks. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press/Harvard UP, 2013.

Brookshaw, George Pomona Britannica: The Complete Plates, Koln, Germany: Taschen, 2002.

Lane, Maggie. Jane Austen and food. London: Hambledon Press, 1995.

Le Faye, Deirdre. Jane Austen’s Country Life. London: Frances Lincoln, 2014.

Loudon, John Claudius. An Encyclopaedia of Gardening, comprehending the theory and practice of horticulture, floriculture, arboriculture and landscape gardening. London: Longman, 1822. https://books.google.com/books?id=6vqUeGAey64C (1826 edition available at WSU MASC; a 1835 second edition was also consulted in print from the 1982 reprint by Garland Publishing in the English Landscape Garden series, 2 volumes).

Miller, Philip. The Gardeners Dictionary, 1754 edition (at WSU MASC) London. Vol 1: https://books.google.com/books?id=ko9cAAAAcAAJ Vol 2: https://books.google.com/books?id=C1wZAAAAYAAJ Vol 3: https://books.google.com/books?id=NuRi8m3xvykC

Miller, Philip. Gardeners Kalendar, Fourth Ed. London: C. Rivington, Pub,1737. https://books.google.com/books?id=dSFWAAAAYAAJ 1732, first edition in Knight collection and Fourteenth Edition, 1765 available at WSU MASC.

Wilson, Kim. In the Garden with Jane Austen. London: Frances Lincoln, 2008.

June 28, 2023

featured, Uncategorized

Jane Austen’s Proposals

January 22, 2023 jasnaewanid

Michele Larrow, Regional Co-Coordinator

In Letter 6 of Love and Freindship, a teenage Jane Austen writes a short proposal scene between Edward and Laura, who have just met:

. . . ‘and now, my Adorable Laura (continued he, taking my Hand) when may I hope to receive that reward of all the painfull sufferings I have undergone during the course of my Attachment to you, to which I have ever aspired? Oh! when will you reward me with Yourself?’

‘This instant, Dear and Amiable Edward.’ (replied I.). We were immediately united by my Father, who tho’ he had never taken orders had been bred to the Church.”
Love and Freindship, 1790 p. 109

This might be the only example Jane Austen wrote of a proposal scene with the dialogue of both the hero and the heroine portrayed. Jane Austen’s novels have many marriage proposals, but when it comes to the proposal between the hero and the heroine at the end of story, the reader is not privy to the complete dialogue.

Sarah Franz (2002) argues that rather than demonstrating the love of the couple, the real business of the proposal scene is to show that the hero is “worthy of the heroine’s love because he is aware of and acting upon his capacity to change for the better” (169). In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy’s short second proposal to Elizabeth and the couple’s later discussion about pride and impact of the first proposal prove that he has changed and now fully appreciates Elizabeth (169-173). In Persuasion, Wentworth’s letter is an “indirect, because written, but serious declaration of love” and he and Anne have discussions where he admits to his mistakes about how he treated Louisa and his awareness that his feelings prevented an earlier reconciliation (174). Although Franz sees Mr. Knightley as generally morally correct, “his love for Emma is exactly the moral realization that he has to make during the course of the novel” and then be able to correct his unfair evaluation of Frank Churchill’s character, which she sees as Mr. Knightley’s main moral flaw (180-2). I think that Mr. Knightley’s moral change involves recognizing that he has sought to direct Emma’s behavior, that she is her own moral agent, and that he needs to treat her with sympathetic understanding and kindness (Larrow). Mr. Knightley is shown pouring forth his love for Emma in the proposal scene to demonstrate how much he has changed.

If we use Franz’s focus on the hero’s moral growth rather than love in the proposal, it might be easier to understand why we don’t have much representation of the final proposal scene in Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Mansfield Park. In both Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility, the hero’s moral growth is shown in his ability to stand-up to his tyrannical parent to marry a woman each man feels honor-bound to. In Mansfield Park, Edmund has always been kind and appreciative of Fanny and his moral growth centers around realizing his misperceptions of the Crawfords. Although we don’t see the proposal in these novels, we do see the hero and heroine discuss the change the hero made to act morally.

Our region will be discussing the proposals in the novels at two events: 1. Spokane In-Person Discussion Saturday, February 4, 2023 2. Virtual Meeting Sunday, February 19, 2023. Full details and registration forms are on our events page https://jasnaewanid.org/events/. We have some discussion questions below to get you ready for the meetings.

WORKS CITED

Austen, Jane. Juvenilia. Ed. Peter Sabor. Cambridge: CUP, 2006.

Frantz, Sarah S. G. “‘If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more’: Direct Dialogue and Education in the Proposal Scenes.” The Talk in Jane Austen. Eds. Bruce Stovel and Lynn Weinlos Gregg. Edmonton: U. of Alberta Press, 2002. 167-182.

Larrow, Michele. ““Could He Even Have Seen into Her Heart”: Mr. Knightley’s Development of Sympathy.” Persuasions On-Line 37.1 (2016). https://jasna.org/publications-2/persuasions-online/vol37no1/larrow/

Discussion Questions

In Pride and Prejudice, do you see any parallels between Mr. Collins’s proposal to Elizabeth and Darcy’s first proposal? Does Elizabeth make similar claims for herself in each proposal? Do you think after the second proposal Darcy is shown as changed to the degree he needed to change?

In Mansfield Park, Henry Crawford’s proposal to Fanny is fragmentary, reflecting her confusion about what is going on. Could Henry ever have won Fanny? How would he have to change? Although we don’t get Edmund’s proposal to Fanny, has he changed enough for them to be happy?

In Emma, Mr. Knightley’s proposal to Emma shows both his language and some non-verbal aspects and behaviors that show his emotion. How does that contrast with Emma’s prior interpretation of Mr. Elton’s proposal? We know Emma has realized her love for Mr. Knightley, so do we need to hear her say it to him?

Are you a fan of Captain Wentworth’s letter in Persuasion? Do you think there is anything missing from the letter? There are hints from Austen that Captain Wentworth and Anne know each other better and are better people when they get engaged the second time. What are your thoughts?

In Sense and Sensibility, the narrator tells us of Elinor’s strong emotion on hearing that Edward is not married to Lucy and then doesn’t show the proposal scene. Does that choice make sense? Do you feel disappointed that Colonel Brandon and Marianne wait two years to marry and there is no proposal scene?

In Northanger Abbey, what are your thoughts about John Thorpe’s awkward semi-proposal and Catherine’s response to it? Are you disappointed that we don’t hear Henry Tilney say he loves Catherine?

Do you have a favorite proposal scene from one of the movie/tv adaptations of the novels?

Michele Larrow, Regional Co-Coordinator

Captain Frederick Marryat

Illustration Set 1

The Works of Frederick Marryat

Peter Simple (1834)

Mr. Midshipman Easy (1836)

Illustration Set 2

Marryat’s Works Give the Backstory for Austen’s Naval Characters

Important Naval Locations

English Naval Ports

Foreign Stations and Ports

The Mediterranean, West Indies, and Atlantic Crossings

Naval Action during War

Fleet Battles

Ship to Ship Combat

Boats Attacking Enemy Ships

Promotion, Prize Money, and the Role of Interest

Prize Money and Promotion

Becoming a Lieutenant

The Role of Interest

Dangers of Weather, Climate, and Disease

Climate in Tropical Areas and Disease

Extreme Weather

Summary: Marryat Dramatizes Austen’s Allusions to the Danger, Heroism, Brotherhood, and Infighting of the Navy

Captain Frederick Marryat and Jane Austen as Authors

Notes

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

WORKS CITED

© Michele Larrow, 2026. This blog was written without the use of AI.

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. . . And Visits All 50 States!

by Michele Larrow, FJA’s Travel Coordinator

Header Image: FJA at the Burchart Gardens, Brentwood Bay, BC, at 2022 AGM in Victoria, photograph by Roseann Thompson

Lisa Angel, Georgia

Kirk Companion, Massachusetts

Roseann Thompson, New Mexico

Jeanette Watts, Illinois

“A Thousand Thanks”

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Cassandra Bates, Regional Co-Coordinator

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by Michele Larrow, Regional Co-Coordinator

The Estate Library

Illustration Section 1: English Gardening Books from Early 1800s and 1700s

Pictures taken at Washington State University Manuscripts, Archives & Special Collections (MASC) by Michele Larrow

Fruits and Vegetables Mentioned in Austen’s Letters and Works[ii]

The Kitchen Garden

Illustration Section 2: Fruits from George Brookshaw’s Pomona Britannica

Illustration Credits list the exact fruit pictured and give a link for the digital copy

Illustration Section 3: Vegetables from from Elizabeth Blackwell’s A Curious Herbal

Illustration Credits list the vegetable pictured and give a link for the digital copy

Orchard

Illustration Section 4: Illustrations from An Encyclopaedia of Gardening by John C. Loudon, 1826 edition

June in the Kitchen Garden and Orchard

Conclusion

Videos

NOTES

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

Illustration Set 2: Fruits

Illustration Set 3: Vegetables

WORKS CITED

June 28, 2023

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Michele Larrow, Regional Co-Coordinator

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**Illustration Section 4: Illustrations from An Encyclopaedia of Gardening by John C. Loudon, 1826 edition**