Humphry Repton, "any Mr. Repton," and the "Improvement" Metonym in Mansfield Park

Humphry Repton, "any Mr. Repton," and the "Improvement" Metonym in Mansfield Park RICHARD QUAJNTANCE The way three characters mention "Mr. Repton" five times in chapter 6 of MansfieIdParkhas prompted some readers to smudge the reputation of this actual person cited more often than any other in Jane Austen's fiction : he's "the notorious improver" for whose methods "it is also possible that she had a reasoned dislike."1 This ad hominem/de auctore style of reading Repton's appearance is unjust, I think, to both Repton and Austen. Assenting to a caricature of his career, it risks obscuring the satiric skill and moral subtlety which Austen exercises by introducing him. As the leading landscape designer of his generation in England (and for that matter, then the best-known throughout Europe), Humphry Repton—in the eyes of fellow-practitioners and the public—virtually established an entire profession through his five books, based upon his hands-on work at over four hundred sites, published from 1795 to 1816 and republished after his death in 1818. No surprise, that so dominant a figure provoked comic distortion from Price, Knight, and Peacock during Austen's writing career, exactly coterminous with his landscaping. It wouldn't be hard to distinguish her treatment of him from theirs, but here I intend rather to surface enough of his work and thought, and her likely awareness of it, to begin to flesh out what I consider genuine congenialities between tihem, of wit about words and of values about behavior. I hope firmly to validate the Repton-friendliness of Austen's artistic con365 366 / QUAINTANCE trol of this novel's several rich métonymie engagements between the motif of "improvement" and (1) "the whole acting scheme" developed in the thirteenth through twentieth chapters;2 (2) the game of Speculation played at the Parsonage;3 and (3) the way a Norris hedgerow turned into a Grant shrubbery , some Scripture-citing smilers, and other such passing acts of characterization .4 From its first to last sentence, so much of this novel concerns making one's place in this life that perhaps it is time to try to relocate the celebrated place-maker within it. Let's first try to hear those "Repton" references in fresh relationship to Austen's historical situation and response to literary conventions. J. H. Plumb proposes that "'Improvement' was the most over-used word of eighteenthcentury England," baiting the hooks of entrepreneurship everywhere, whether we canvass the hype of agronomists or pedagogues, clerics or toymakers, inventors or musicians.5 Among the articles so advertised was the service of altering a landscape to make a "place"-owner feel that the view from his doorway was more like what it ought to be. And after Capability Brown's death in 1783, for that commodity throughout Austen's adult years "Repton" became the leading brand-name. Hence, in the Mansfield Park dinnertable conversation which opens chapter 6, when the twit Rushworth tries to impress his fiancée Maria Bertram with how much his estate, Sotherton Court, "wants improvement," "Your best friend upon such an occasion," said Miss Bertram, calmly, "would be Mr. Repton, I imagine." [If you really mean all this fuss, prove it by hiring the top of the line.] "That is what I was thinking of. As he has done so well by Smith, I think I had better have him at once. His terms are five guineas a day." [Quite. Indeed, I have already looked into the matter.] Minimally, Repton's name in this exchange confirms a leading motive for Maria to marry Rushworth: to support her habits as conspicuous consumer. A Repton Redbook on your coffee-table is the country-house equivalent of letting all London know you reside on Wimpole Street. Other characters queue up at the trough: "Well, and if they were ten [guineas a day]," cried Mrs. Norris, "I am sure you need not regard it. The expense [since not hers!] need not be any impediment," and so on for a brilliantly self-caricaturing paragraph. "After a short interruption," the next three mentions of Repton also come from Rushworth, "though not usually a great talker." Minimally again, they demonstrate his happiness to...