Sister Novelists by Devoney Looser

Author:Devoney Looser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

CHAPTER 15

Family Misfortunes and Jane’s Scottish Chiefs (1810)

During the dramatic, painful year of 1809, while Maria dangled in the viselike grip of the Margravine of Anspach, Jane endured problems of her own. One of the things she had to contend with was the fallout from the reemergence of Percival Stockdale, her former mentor and would-be keeper.

Stockdale’s memoir, the work Jane had spent those captive months editing four years earlier, was finally published in March 1809. He gave it the long-winded title The Memoirs of the Life, and Writings of Percival Stockdale Containing Many Interesting Anecdotes of the Illustrious Men with Whom He Was Connected. Written by Himself. It was a two-volume, 943-page book, published by Longman and Rees and dedicated to Jane.

Jane wasn’t pleased. Stockdale’s book, she reported to Maria, is “most flamingly dedicated to me.”1 He had recently declared, in a private letter, that Jane was his best friend.2 But the book’s dedication didn’t have her best interests at heart. It was written by an old married man, estranged from his wife, who called attention to his strong feelings for a much younger, single woman.

Stockdale’s four-page dedication to Jane used the language of a lover while diminishing her efforts by describing her as his “humble copier.”3 He revealed she’d once lived in his Northumberland home, which didn’t have the look of propriety. Stockdale declared that the present age couldn’t adequately understand Jane’s goodness, which was more characteristic of long-past, romantic, heroic ages than the fallen world of the present. His worship was on view for all to see. Jane didn’t admit it to herself, but Stockdale’s dedication to her wasn’t unlike what she’d done in dedicating Thaddeus of Warsaw to Sir Sidney Smith. That had also aroused gossip and prompted speculation. Thanks to Stockdale’s dedication to her, she was imagined as the paramour of a man some considered cock-brained and one of the worst poets of the present age.4

In the five years since Jane escaped Stockdale’s home in Lesbury, she’d maintained a regular correspondence yet kept him at arm’s length. They’d reconnected in person in the winter of 1809, when he traveled to London to oversee the printing of his Memoirs. Despite all Jane had endured with him, she still felt sympathy for this frail man in his early seventies who’d taught her so much.

When Stockdale’s Memoirs were published, Thaddeus of Warsaw was in its fourth British edition, and Jane was trying to write another great novel. They needed the two hundred pounds she’d be paid when she delivered her next book. While Maria was living with the Margravine, Jane was at Ditton Cottage, researching and writing her five-volume masterpiece about the legendary life of thirteenth-century Scottish hero William Wallace. Maria called Jane’s book “her Wallace.” When they composed novels, Jane and Maria fully immersed themselves in the moments, people, and worlds of their chosen settings. Jane later described their approach in an anonymous letter to the Gentleman’s Magazine. They intended for the stories to excite an interest beyond themselves.

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