The Making of Jane Austen by Devoney Looser

Author:Devoney Looser
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Figure 8.2. “The Divine Jane: Domine,” The 236th Meeting of the Sette of Odd Volumes: 27 May 1902 (London: Sette of Odd Volumes, 1902), menu by John Hassall.

A further and crucial piece of evidence is the fact that lectures were always featured at the Sette’s dinners. Hassall’s busted Jane was created in conjunction with that evening’s scheduled talk, delivered by fellow Sette member Walter Frewen Lord (1861–1927).32 The night was described as “The Divine Jane: Domine” because the word “domine” (meaning lord and master) was also Lord’s club nickname. Lord was a literature and law man (Inner Temple), having been invalided out of the Civil Service in India. He would eventually leave London to become a history professor at the Durham College of Science at Newcastle-upon-Tyne.33 It was with a historian’s sensibility, and as a privileged, well-traveled man, that Lord approaches the subject of Austen’s fiction. He found much to criticize in it in his lecture. For Lord, William Thackeray was the greatest novelist, the one most deserving of comparison to Shakespeare.34 Austen, Lord thought, was overrated among his brethren. Lord would later publish an essay taking down the Austen-lovers Thomas Babington Macaulay and W. D. Howells. We get a sense of Lord’s disdain for their praise when he asks, “But really? Shakespearean? Divine? Are there any two qualities more entirely lacking to Miss Austen?” (Mirror 79). It seems likely that on that night in 1902, Hassall knew that Lord’s lecture was going to knock Austen’s head off. Hassall created an image meant to accompany a rousing verbal depreciation.

The Sette of Odd Volumes, in addition to its privately printed menus, also privately published an annual Year-Boke. It is from that volume that an account of Lord’s Austen lecture may be found. It reports that Lord spoke on “the merits and defects of ‘The Divine Jane.’ ” He took the floor “with a narrow table in front of him, on which were displayed a set, uniformly bound, of the works of Jane Austen, with carefully arranged and disposed book-marks in each” (Year-Boke 16). Lord read aloud “illustrative extracts.” He poked fun at Hassall’s drawing, which he described as “representing an imaginary night of the Dominie [Lord] with a most Undivine Jane.” Lord sarcastically declared himself “much offended” with the image, taking his revenge by reading what he himself called “a Paper of vast length and appalling dulness” (17). He predicted his own poor performance as a lecturer. He reports that he prosed on “until his voice was drowned in universal execration” (18).

Lord did precisely what Arnold Bennett would later say he feared to do. He went into his men’s club and prodded his Janeite friends with the sharp stick of an anti-Janeite lecture. He dared to criticize Jane Austen in front of his club men. After he spoke, there was a discussion. Records tell us that two guests declared against Lord’s arguments, in “untimesly [sic]” and “unreformed” condemnation (Year-Boke 19). They reputedly pronounced Lord “Advocatus Diaboli”—devil’s advocate—and wanted to retitle his paper “The Diabolic Dominie and the Divine Jane” (19).

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