| This blog explores social attitudes in Jane Austen's time, discusses her novels, reviews forgotten 18th century novels, and throws some occasional shade at the modern academy. The introductory post is here. My "six simple questions for academics" post is here. Spoilers abound in my discussion of these forgotten novels, and I discuss 18th-century attitudes which I do not necessarily endorse. |
CMP#253 Andrew Stuart (1800), by Mary Ann Hanway, part one. Buckle up!
I am reading novels which mention Mary Wollstonecraft, which means I will be reading novels by authors who can be broadly defined as conservative. Wollstonecraft is cited in these novels as an example to be avoided.
Mary Anne Hanway’s huge four volume novel has got me thinking about which opinions and attitudes held by educated people of Austen’s day were coded as conservative or liberal. For example, you might assume conservatives were pro-slavery and progressives were abolitionist. It’s not that simple. Hanway champions many causes we would think of as progressive, but in this novel she clearly aligns herself with the establishment against the Jacobins. I’ll expand on that later. For now, let’s try and grapple with the many plots and characters of the sprawling epic that is Andrew Stuart, the Northern Wanderer. This is a long synopsis, but even so I haven’t fully shown how all the different plots end up tying together.
Andrew starts his life as a poor crofter’s son, herding sheep in the Scottish highlands. His grandfather was a Jacobite (not to be confused with a Jacobin), a follower of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and hence the family’s fortunes have suffered for backing the wrong political horse. So our hero is not of peasant stock, but still, Andrew (and the other main characters in this novel) start from the humblest of beginnings. He runs away from home at nine years old, eager to see the world beyond his little patch of the Highlands. Hanway notes that the Scottish peasantry willingly share their scanty meals with the boy in his travels, but once he reaches the great city, he’s in danger of starving to death. This is one of many occasions in the book when she praises common folk and excoriates the wealthy and privileged.
Mary Anne Hanway’s huge four volume novel has got me thinking about which opinions and attitudes held by educated people of Austen’s day were coded as conservative or liberal. For example, you might assume conservatives were pro-slavery and progressives were abolitionist. It’s not that simple. Hanway champions many causes we would think of as progressive, but in this novel she clearly aligns herself with the establishment against the Jacobins. I’ll expand on that later. For now, let’s try and grapple with the many plots and characters of the sprawling epic that is Andrew Stuart, the Northern Wanderer. This is a long synopsis, but even so I haven’t fully shown how all the different plots end up tying together.
Andrew starts his life as a poor crofter’s son, herding sheep in the Scottish highlands. His grandfather was a Jacobite (not to be confused with a Jacobin), a follower of Bonnie Prince Charlie, and hence the family’s fortunes have suffered for backing the wrong political horse. So our hero is not of peasant stock, but still, Andrew (and the other main characters in this novel) start from the humblest of beginnings. He runs away from home at nine years old, eager to see the world beyond his little patch of the Highlands. Hanway notes that the Scottish peasantry willingly share their scanty meals with the boy in his travels, but once he reaches the great city, he’s in danger of starving to death. This is one of many occasions in the book when she praises common folk and excoriates the wealthy and privileged.
From shepherd to sailor
Andrew is rescued by a kindly British sailor who takes him on board ship as a cabin boy and everything turns out fine. The sailor becomes a second father to the boy. He talks in avast-ye-lubbers nautical speak, but Andrew somehow acquires the kind of education that enables him to speak in long, spooling 18th-century sentences.
Andrew and his mentor were serving on merchant ships, but when they returned to England, they are seized by the press gangs and forced to serve in the Navy, where young Andrew further distinguished himself with good seamanship and courageous fighting against the French. He is promoted to midshipman. Again, Hanway may be a patriot but she doesn't hesitate to condemn the cruel practise of impressment.
Andrew is rescued by a kindly British sailor who takes him on board ship as a cabin boy and everything turns out fine. The sailor becomes a second father to the boy. He talks in avast-ye-lubbers nautical speak, but Andrew somehow acquires the kind of education that enables him to speak in long, spooling 18th-century sentences.
Andrew and his mentor were serving on merchant ships, but when they returned to England, they are seized by the press gangs and forced to serve in the Navy, where young Andrew further distinguished himself with good seamanship and courageous fighting against the French. He is promoted to midshipman. Again, Hanway may be a patriot but she doesn't hesitate to condemn the cruel practise of impressment.
Back in London as a young man, on shore for the first time in many years, he happens to overhear a fierce but delicious argument between two young women. It’s our heroine Isabella Nelson, who scorns to barter her virtue for the luxurious life of a kept woman: “Never! Never! Let me return to the poverty in which I was born, and gain a livelihood by the labour of my hands… In vain you use threats or caresses to move me from my purpose; I will not be mistress of the First Lord in the land…"
“Insolent ingrate,” [a female voice answers] “tremble at my meditated vengeance! Insect, that I can annihilate, crush into atoms, dare you turn and insult me, to whom you every thing, by this fine rodomontade of honesty, virtue, modesty, and poverty! You learn all this nonsensical jargon from the Novels you read… I recommend it to you to descend from your romantic altitudes, and accept the mere matter of fact comforts of a fine house, carriage, and servants, with five hundred pounds a year, though an old Lord is entailed upon the bargain.”
Andrew “had listened with mingled horror and astonishment to the arguments urged in favour of splendid prostitution. But how was their atrocity heightened in his opinion, when convinced they were the sentiments of a woman who, abandoned herself, endeavoured to draw her sister into the whirlpool of folly, dissipation, and vice!”
For refusing to become Lord Lorimore’s mistress, the weeping Isabel is cast out with little more than the clothes on her back. Andrew is impelled to follow her to Newington and watches as she flees to an old friend, the garrulous landlady Mrs. Hunt. Andrew offers to help protect and support Isabella from any future outrages. He may be young and naive but he knows that lecherous noblemen will go to any lengths and invest any amount of time to ensnare a heroine.
“Insolent ingrate,” [a female voice answers] “tremble at my meditated vengeance! Insect, that I can annihilate, crush into atoms, dare you turn and insult me, to whom you every thing, by this fine rodomontade of honesty, virtue, modesty, and poverty! You learn all this nonsensical jargon from the Novels you read… I recommend it to you to descend from your romantic altitudes, and accept the mere matter of fact comforts of a fine house, carriage, and servants, with five hundred pounds a year, though an old Lord is entailed upon the bargain.”
Andrew “had listened with mingled horror and astonishment to the arguments urged in favour of splendid prostitution. But how was their atrocity heightened in his opinion, when convinced they were the sentiments of a woman who, abandoned herself, endeavoured to draw her sister into the whirlpool of folly, dissipation, and vice!”
For refusing to become Lord Lorimore’s mistress, the weeping Isabel is cast out with little more than the clothes on her back. Andrew is impelled to follow her to Newington and watches as she flees to an old friend, the garrulous landlady Mrs. Hunt. Andrew offers to help protect and support Isabella from any future outrages. He may be young and naive but he knows that lecherous noblemen will go to any lengths and invest any amount of time to ensnare a heroine.
Backstory time
We then go to the backstory of Barbara and her stepsister Isabella, and Andrew disappears from the novel for a few chapters as he does repeatedly through this work which is filled with backstories.
Barbara and Isabella were orphaned at an early age and actually were sent to the poorhouse as children. While Barbara used her voluptuous beauty to rise from farm labourer to waitress to wife of a middle-class man (whom she ruins) to kept mistress, Isabella was taken in as a maidservant to a poor curate’s family. Like Andrew, she somehow acquired a head full of erudition and good grammar. I’m passing by a lot of village detail and colourful scenes but in brief, when Barbara discovers that Isabella has grown up to be a flaxen-haired blue-eyed beauty, she brings her back to London to pimp her out.
Then we return to our hero, but only to meet his young friend, Lieutenant Charles Nesbit, and hear his family backstory. Charles is one of several characters in this novel whose parents married for love, were disowned by their parents, and suffer accordingly. No amor vincit omnia here. Coincidentally, Charles is the nephew of the randy old Lord Orpington, the nobleman who took Barbara as his mistress. Small world.
Back to Andrew, who has decided that the only sure and honourable way to keep Isabella safe is to marry her. Here Hanway pauses to praise the English law which held that women have no legal existence apart from their husbands: “the wise laws of this land of freedom, made and provided for the security of its subjects, would protect her as a femme-couverte from any outrages she might fear from the artifices of Lord Lorimore, if she remained a spinster.” Isabella accepts his offer, but reluctantly, as she respects Andrew but does not feel love for him.
Thanks to the garrulous Mrs. Hunt, who tells all the neighbours, word gets back to Barbara, who vows to take vengeance with the help of the sinister lawyer and self-made man, Mr. Engross.
Then we have Edward Engross’s backstory. He was a foundling left under a hedge by gypsies, and rose from the workhouse to become a lawyer's clerk, then a lawyer and money-lender in London. Engross arranges for his henchman to kidnap Isabella from the church on her wedding day. Andrew is conked over the head, then, suffering from a concussion, the henchmen ply him with liquor, take him to a gaming hell where he loses all his money, then he is trepanned onto a ship bound for India.
And then—and remember the poor man has a concussion—he sits and listens to the long and detailed backstory of a new acquaintance, John Carter, the son of a poor clergyman whose parents married for love, not money. His backstory takes up the second half of the second volume. A wealthy baronet and his wife allow their children and the clergyman's children to grow up together—what could possibly go wrong?
We then go to the backstory of Barbara and her stepsister Isabella, and Andrew disappears from the novel for a few chapters as he does repeatedly through this work which is filled with backstories.
Barbara and Isabella were orphaned at an early age and actually were sent to the poorhouse as children. While Barbara used her voluptuous beauty to rise from farm labourer to waitress to wife of a middle-class man (whom she ruins) to kept mistress, Isabella was taken in as a maidservant to a poor curate’s family. Like Andrew, she somehow acquired a head full of erudition and good grammar. I’m passing by a lot of village detail and colourful scenes but in brief, when Barbara discovers that Isabella has grown up to be a flaxen-haired blue-eyed beauty, she brings her back to London to pimp her out.
Then we return to our hero, but only to meet his young friend, Lieutenant Charles Nesbit, and hear his family backstory. Charles is one of several characters in this novel whose parents married for love, were disowned by their parents, and suffer accordingly. No amor vincit omnia here. Coincidentally, Charles is the nephew of the randy old Lord Orpington, the nobleman who took Barbara as his mistress. Small world.
Back to Andrew, who has decided that the only sure and honourable way to keep Isabella safe is to marry her. Here Hanway pauses to praise the English law which held that women have no legal existence apart from their husbands: “the wise laws of this land of freedom, made and provided for the security of its subjects, would protect her as a femme-couverte from any outrages she might fear from the artifices of Lord Lorimore, if she remained a spinster.” Isabella accepts his offer, but reluctantly, as she respects Andrew but does not feel love for him.
Thanks to the garrulous Mrs. Hunt, who tells all the neighbours, word gets back to Barbara, who vows to take vengeance with the help of the sinister lawyer and self-made man, Mr. Engross.
Then we have Edward Engross’s backstory. He was a foundling left under a hedge by gypsies, and rose from the workhouse to become a lawyer's clerk, then a lawyer and money-lender in London. Engross arranges for his henchman to kidnap Isabella from the church on her wedding day. Andrew is conked over the head, then, suffering from a concussion, the henchmen ply him with liquor, take him to a gaming hell where he loses all his money, then he is trepanned onto a ship bound for India.
And then—and remember the poor man has a concussion—he sits and listens to the long and detailed backstory of a new acquaintance, John Carter, the son of a poor clergyman whose parents married for love, not money. His backstory takes up the second half of the second volume. A wealthy baronet and his wife allow their children and the clergyman's children to grow up together—what could possibly go wrong?
The obliging footman What doesn't go wrong?
Well, John's sister Laurina, seduced by the glamorous life of the rich families she’s socializing with, runs off to London to be the kept mistress of Lord Lorimore. Yes, the Lord Lorimore who was pursuing Isabella. Tnat's not all. Edward Lurcher, the baronet's son, pines away for love of Laurina. John Carter and Florentina Lurcher fall in love but he doesn’t bore Andrew Stuart with the grisly details: “Convinced that the conversation of lovers,” [he says], “though exquisitely delightful to themselves, when repeated to an unimpassioned hearer, is tiresome and vapid, I will therefore only observe that I soon found an opportunity to pour out, at the feet of Florentina, my thanks for her condescending goodness.”
The discovery enrages Florentina’s parents, and they take Florentina off to the continent.
During John's long backstory, which is basically a novel-within-a-novel, there are some interesting digressions which I’ll get back to in a future post. In brief, after being kicked out of Cambridge when he’s falsely accused of atheism by the arrogant mischief-making Lord Buford, Carter goes to Edinburgh to study medicine but has to flee when he challenges Lord Buford to a duel for lying and getting him expelled. Then he heads off to wicked London to find his sister Laurina and urge her to return to the paths of virtue. Then--
For the love of Pete, within John Carter's backstory we are now getting the backstory of the footman who answers the door at Laurina’s place. Plus, bonus backstory, this footman tells us about the time he met a poor girl named Amantha who is seduced and abandoned by a nobleman. Her parents married for love, not money, and suffered accordingly. She was living with a wealthy family and was seduced by a nobleman, then abandoned. The footman helped her out as best he could. This story is tied together with the story of the slimy lawyer Mr. Engross. Hanway’s leitmotif is that most ordinary people are generous and kind, albeit powerless, while the nobility are just awful.
So, John Carter is on board ship with Andrew because he, too, was shanghaied and tossed aboard at the behest of the wicked Lord Lorimore to punish him for his insolence.
Now we're caught up. John and Andrew make themselves so useful during the long voyage that Captain Bowsprit (and yes, we get his backstory too) agrees to set them free as soon as they reach India.
Well, John's sister Laurina, seduced by the glamorous life of the rich families she’s socializing with, runs off to London to be the kept mistress of Lord Lorimore. Yes, the Lord Lorimore who was pursuing Isabella. Tnat's not all. Edward Lurcher, the baronet's son, pines away for love of Laurina. John Carter and Florentina Lurcher fall in love but he doesn’t bore Andrew Stuart with the grisly details: “Convinced that the conversation of lovers,” [he says], “though exquisitely delightful to themselves, when repeated to an unimpassioned hearer, is tiresome and vapid, I will therefore only observe that I soon found an opportunity to pour out, at the feet of Florentina, my thanks for her condescending goodness.”
The discovery enrages Florentina’s parents, and they take Florentina off to the continent.
During John's long backstory, which is basically a novel-within-a-novel, there are some interesting digressions which I’ll get back to in a future post. In brief, after being kicked out of Cambridge when he’s falsely accused of atheism by the arrogant mischief-making Lord Buford, Carter goes to Edinburgh to study medicine but has to flee when he challenges Lord Buford to a duel for lying and getting him expelled. Then he heads off to wicked London to find his sister Laurina and urge her to return to the paths of virtue. Then--
For the love of Pete, within John Carter's backstory we are now getting the backstory of the footman who answers the door at Laurina’s place. Plus, bonus backstory, this footman tells us about the time he met a poor girl named Amantha who is seduced and abandoned by a nobleman. Her parents married for love, not money, and suffered accordingly. She was living with a wealthy family and was seduced by a nobleman, then abandoned. The footman helped her out as best he could. This story is tied together with the story of the slimy lawyer Mr. Engross. Hanway’s leitmotif is that most ordinary people are generous and kind, albeit powerless, while the nobility are just awful.
So, John Carter is on board ship with Andrew because he, too, was shanghaied and tossed aboard at the behest of the wicked Lord Lorimore to punish him for his insolence.
Now we're caught up. John and Andrew make themselves so useful during the long voyage that Captain Bowsprit (and yes, we get his backstory too) agrees to set them free as soon as they reach India.
Recap so far
So now we have three young men: Andrew Stuart, our titular hero, his well-born and very decent friend Charles Nesbit, who is off in Wales at this point, and his new friend John Carter, the medical student who has messed up his life completely by trying to get justice from corrupt noblemen.
On the female side, Charles Nesbit is at the castle of his antiquated aunt, who wants to meet him and make him her heir before she dies. We hear her backstory, which is set in a more comic vein as opposed to John Carter’s story. Charles Nesbit devotedly stays and keeps her company as her health declines. We have two vividly-drawn, strong-willed but immoral women, Laurina Carter and Barbara Nelson. I especially liked the letter Laurina left behind at the farmhouse to explain why she had chosen freedom and London over stagnating at home.
Plus, we have the vulnerable Amantha who is trying to find a way to support herself in honourable employment to support her illegitimate but beloved child. And then of course there is Isabella--
Isabella--
Oh my god, what happened to Isabella! She was kidnapped from the church weeks ago!
So now we have three young men: Andrew Stuart, our titular hero, his well-born and very decent friend Charles Nesbit, who is off in Wales at this point, and his new friend John Carter, the medical student who has messed up his life completely by trying to get justice from corrupt noblemen.
On the female side, Charles Nesbit is at the castle of his antiquated aunt, who wants to meet him and make him her heir before she dies. We hear her backstory, which is set in a more comic vein as opposed to John Carter’s story. Charles Nesbit devotedly stays and keeps her company as her health declines. We have two vividly-drawn, strong-willed but immoral women, Laurina Carter and Barbara Nelson. I especially liked the letter Laurina left behind at the farmhouse to explain why she had chosen freedom and London over stagnating at home.
Plus, we have the vulnerable Amantha who is trying to find a way to support herself in honourable employment to support her illegitimate but beloved child. And then of course there is Isabella--
Isabella--
Oh my god, what happened to Isabella! She was kidnapped from the church weeks ago!
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