​In the last post, I introduced the 4-volume novel Nobility Run Mad, or, Raymond and His Three Wives (1802) as an example of the way Bristol merchants were portrayed in the novels of Austen’s era. I got as far as the middle of volume 3, when our noble hero Lord Raymond finally meets our heroine Theodosia. 
    Although the title promises the reader a story about nobility behaving badly, Lord Raymond's dissolute dad was just part of the backstory. In this book, we get more emphasis on portrayals of uncouth, small-minded people from the merchant class of Bristol, namely, miserly old Mr. Filmore, his grandson Samuel, and their friends the Middletons who have Theodosia in their clutches. That’s great for my purposes. I am exploring the hypothesis that in the novels of the long 18th century, the objection to Bristol merchants—such as Mrs. Elton’s father in Emma—is not that they were involved in the slave trade, it’s that they were not genteel. In the novels I've been exploring, Bristol merchants and their families are used as comic characters, as foils to the heroine, because of their vulgarity and presumptuous attitudes.
    To return to the novel: It seems our (anonymous) author found her comical and villainous characters to be intrinsically more interesting than her hero and heroine. Lord Raymond, says sententious things like: “It would very ill become me, Mr. Milner, to arraign my father’s conduct…” (Even though his dad was a complete waste of space who gambled away large fortunes before dying young in France and leaving huge debts behind him.) We have a sentimental storyline with Lord Raymond and Theodosia, but the more energetic storyline involves the Filmores. Young Samuel elopes with Lady Arabella, a scheming noblewoman. He assures Lady Arabella that Lord Raymond is dying, which means Samuel will succeed to the title. Samuel wants to get his hands on her fortune. Lady Arabella wants to get married to Samuel before he finds out she doesn’t have a fortune...

   Yes, Emma is being a snob, but Mrs. Elton lives down to her expectations: she is comically inappropriate in social situations, pushy and obnoxious.
    This is no less than what a reader of the time would expect, because Mrs. Elton's father was a Bristol merchant. I'll explain presently.
   First, what does Austen's little dash between “Bristol” and “merchant” signify? You can almost hear the the dismissive snicker. is Austen hinting that Mrs. Elton's father was a slave-trader?  (cont'd)​

     My book club is reading The Way We Live Now (1875) by Anthony Trollope, so I was in the mood to re-watch the 2001 BBC mini-series with Matthew Macfadyen playing the irredeemably useless and selfish Sir Felix Carbury. In the novel, Sir Felix invests a lot of time into trying to seduce Ruby Ruggles, a working-class girl, who deludes herself that he will marry her. Sir Felix and Ruby meet secretly in the woods. He “got his arm around her waist,” he “talked of love,” but he dared not "ask her to be his mistress.” In the mini-series, however, Sir Felix and Ruby (played by Maxime Peake) do more than chat and kiss and cuddle.
   The mini-series version seemed more probable to me. Of course Sir Felix wouldn’t waste his time travelling down to the country to see Ruby, or take her out to the music hall in London, if she didn’t put out.
​   And I wonder whether Trollope’s readers would have assumed the same. Yet I don't see Trollope hinting that they actually have sex. When push comes literally to shove in the novel, Ruby screams for help. She goes on to marry respectably. Her complacent fiancé asserts that she is a good girl. I think if she wasn't, she would have been fated to die by the end of the story.
     In Emma, Jane Austen references Goldsmith's short poem: "When lovely woman stoops to folly." I think Austen mentioned the "dying from shame" trope in a tongue-in-cheek manner. Recently, however, I’ve come across some examples of readers and critics arguing that there are some artfully hidden clues about sexual liaisons and love children in Jane Austen’s novels..

      In my previous post, I gave some examples of novels and plays of the long 18th century that depict Methodist ministers as grifters and con artists. According to these writers, Methodism appealed to the simple, the ignorant, and the credulous. Here are some examples of novels which featured poor working people who were attracted to Methodism. (We capitalize "Methodism" and "Methodists" but the early novels often didn't).
   In Secrets Made Public (1808), “a poor shoemaker, of weak intellects, but inoffensive manners” is “seduced to methodism by the eloquence of an itinerant orator.” At the end of the day, by the light of a dim rushlight, the shoemaker pores over William Huntington's books about predestination and "antinomianism." [Let's not bother with explaining what all that means, but if you want to know... I don't think Huntington was literally a Methodist but, like many other nonconformist ministers, he had no formal education. He became a popular fire-and-brimstone preacher].
​     At any rate, some young men, members of the idle rich, decide to play a prank on the cobbler. They dress up as “demons and… various poetical monsters” and one springs into his house one night as the cobbler sits reading his religious tracts. "“He entered the apartment of the cobbling enthusiast, who was devoutly lifting up his eyes and hands, and exclaiming with fervour, ‘We are all d[amne]d!” when the horrible spectre encountered his vision." The cobbler is terrified out of his wits. "With a last exertion of strength, he fell on his knees and ejaculated, or attempted to ejaculate, ‘Lord have mercy on us!’ "  (cont'd after break)