Jane Austen and George Stubbs: Two Speculations

Jane Austen and George Stubbs: Two Speculations Alistair M. Duckworth Unlike Ann Radcliffe, Walter Scott, and other novelists in her time, Jane Austen does not refer directly to painters to help readers visualize her scenes. In The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), Radcliffe refers to Salvator Rosa in her description of the Pyrenees and, in Waverley (1814), Scott refers to Rosa in describing the highland lair ofDonald Bane Lane, to Poussin in describing Flora Maclvor's romantic bower, and to Raeburn in describing the painting ofFergus Maclvor and Waverley, standing resplendent in highland dress against a wild mountainous background.1 Such is not Austen's mode; but if specific painterly references are absent from her fictional descriptions, more general visual allusions, though not frequent, are to be found. We know from her brother Henry's "biographical notice" to the posthumous edition of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (1818) that "at a very early age she was enamoured of Gilpin on the Picturesque" (p. 7), and as several scholars have shown, William Gilpin plays a significant role not only in the minor works, where he is mentioned by name, but 1 If Radcliffe's descriptions of sublime landscapes owe much to Salvator Rosa, her descriptions of beautiful scenes often draw on a general knowledge of Claude's landscapes, bathed in a golden light and suggestive of civilized peace and harmony. In his "Prefatory Memoir to Mrs. Radcliffe," Scott writes that she knew how "to paint Italian scenery, which she could only have seen in the pictures of Claude and Poussin"; also that other descriptive passages "approach more nearly to the style ofSalvator Rosa." The Novels ofMrs. Ann Radcliffe, vol. 10 ofBallantyne's Novelist's Library (London: Hurst, Robinson, & Co., 1824), pp. xiv-xv. For Scott's allusions to Rosa, Poussin, and Raeburn, see, respectively, chapters 17, 22, and 71 of Waverley. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 13, Number 1, October 2000 54 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION also in the novels, where he is not.2 Two of Fanny Price's three "transparencies " in the window of the East Room at Mansfield Park are surely of Gilpin's aquatints: "Tintern Abbey held its station between a cave in Italy, and a moonlight lake in Cumberland" (p. 152).3 In Sense and Sensibility (1811) Marianne Dashwood deplores the fact that "admiration of landscape scenery is become a mere jargon. Every body pretends to feel and tries to describe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what picturesque beauty was" (p. 97). But if Gilpin is here silently exempted from the excesses of his followers, the picturesque nevertheless comes off badly in Marianne's debate with Edward Ferrars. Disingenuously claiming to "know nothing of the picturesque," Edward reveals a detailed awareness of Gilpin's writings and drawings, as well as ofthe formulaic descriptions of "blasted trees" and "banditti" found in gothic novels (pp. 96-98). Gilpin is ironically alluded to again in Pride and Prejudice, when Elizabeth Bennet refuses to make up a fourth with Darcy, Miss Bingley, and Mrs Hurst as they walk in the grounds of Netherfield: "No, no; stay where you are.—You are charmingly group'd, and appear to uncommon advantage . The picturesque would be spoilt by admitting a fourth. Good bye" (p. 53). Her companions, were they to recognize the allusion, would hardly be flattered. Elizabeth has been reading the section in Gilpin's Observations ... On ... the Mountains, and Lakes ofCumberland and Westmoreland in which he discusses how cows may best be grouped in a painting and provides several illustrations of his theory.4 One further example will confirm Austen's typical mode of visual allusion. When in Northanger Abbey 2 Austen references are to The Novels of Jane Austen, ed. R.W. Chapman, 3rd edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932-34). For Austen and the picturesque, see especially Frank W. Bradbrook's chapter on "The Picturesque" in Jane Austen and Her Predecessors (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), pp. 50-68, and John Dixon Hunt's article, "The Picturesque," The Jane Austen Companion, ed. J. David Grey et al. (New York: Macmillan, 1986), pp. 326-30. 3 William Gilpin's aquatints of Tintern Abbey may be viewed in his Observations on...