CH 28
There’s no other POV that shifts everything the way Jane’s does. Which makes sense, of course, Since she is the one hidden.
Being Jane Fairfax
The appearance of the little sitting-room as they entered, was tranquillity itself; Mrs. Bates, deprived of her usual employment, slumbering on one side of the fire, Frank Churchill, at a table near her, most deedily occupied about her spectacles, and Jane Fairfax, standing with her back to them, intent on her pianoforte.
Good rule of thumb: If something is happening in a scene that is any way related to Jane Fairfax’s storyline and Miss Bates is silent, **pay attention.** Make Jane the center of the scene. Knock away the nonsense. And most of all, make Emma the last layer of importance. Only give her enough room to testify to characters’ movements and actions—which you will very often need her for—but if it is a scene where Jane actually is, try to be Jane.
But you may say, “Jane Fairfax is talked about all the time when Miss Bates isn’t around.” She’s actually not. Miss Bates, in thought or word, almost always shows up.
What I mean by “Miss Bates is silent”:
- Miss Bates is physically close to Jane but not talking
- Miss Bates is, by some unusual measure, physically separated from Jane, or
- Jane is being talked about or thought of and Miss Bates does not intrude
She never “leaves” for long and when she does some important information is always being conveyed, but especially when there’s some focus on Jane and Miss Bates is in the same physical space and is silent, try to turn Emma way down, and try to be Jane.
Then watch the scene change shape.
What made the assembly shine?
“Robin Adair“ ❦ The song bearing her Irish husband’s name was written by Lady Caroline Keppel in the 1750s as a rebuke to her family for what she perceived as their snobbery regarding her handsome and accomplished lover.
Robin Adair.
What made the ball so fine?
Robin was there:
What when the play was o’er,
What made my heart so sore?
Oh! it was parting with
Robin Adair.
In what I call “the piano scene” what changes most after you see Jane, is Frank.
First, I completely and unapologetically refuse not to acknowledge how happy Jane is about the piano—so obvious by her smiles and the songs she plays—even with its complications. Jane is a musician! She now has her own piano. For the rest of her life, it is hers.
And I want to try to remember what a central part of Jane’s sense of self music is, what a central part of Jane and Frank’s relationship is wrapped up in music, and that music, not dialogue, is most of what is happening in this scene.
“Pray take care, Mrs. Weston, there is a step at the turning. Pray take care, Miss Woodhouse, ours is rather a dark staircase—rather darker and narrower than one could wish. Miss Smith, pray take care. Miss Woodhouse, I am quite concerned, I am sure you hit your foot. Miss Smith, the step at the turning.”
So, everyone is just entering the little apartment and it’s like Frank is waving a laser light around for Emma to chase so that Jane has the time she needs to get herself together and they can go back to saying their (now secret) “I love you’s.” Jane takes up so much space in Frank’s head that for everything else he simply falls back on his innate charm and ability to “talk nonsense” easily.
“No description can describe her.”
Frank Churchill about Jane ❦ “ ”Emma,” Chapter 50
Now, let’s dispense with the thought that Jane has any idea yet of what Emma suspects. You’ll see in the scene that Frank sticks with the accepted explanation of “Colonel Campbell,” including in his “Irish” references, and it becomes clear that “Colonel Campbell” must mean Frank, himself. (But that is also the thin ice, because he knows how Emma is interpreting it, at least at the end.) Nonetheless, we’re Jane. So with no other contradictory evidence, do you believe that Frank spent his precious time alone with Jane in the few moments they just had—their first time alone since the piano came—talking about Emma?
Of course not.
“Stop, my love!” *gracefully placing well manicured hand in front of face* “Wait! Do not yet throw your arms around me, for I must first tell you what Emma said!”
Bah.
“so thoroughly from the heart”
“Very thoughtful of Colonel Campbell, was not it?—He knew Miss Fairfax could have no music here. I honour that part of the attention particularly; it shews it to have been so thoroughly from the heart. Nothing hastily done; nothing incomplete. True affection only could have prompted it.”
Don’t believe Emma! Whatever she’s hearing, Frank is certainly not talking about Mr. Dixon—who he never names—but neither is he talking about Colonel Campbell, who he does. Frank is talking to Jane about himself.
Frank was hoping for more time, and it sounds like he was not hoping for Emma. Which, although I think he likes her, still makes sense.
Emma watches Jane too closely and expects attention from Frank. If Emma is there, he has to pay less attention to Jane. Emma is a helpful blind in larger social situations, but here I suspect he would much rather have had just Mrs. Weston and the Bateses. Frank “was yet able to shew a most happy countenance upon seeing Emma again.” To me that sounds like even though it sucked he managed to smile.
Busy as he was, however, the young man was yet able to shew a most happy countenance on seeing Emma again.
“I was almost afraid you’d be hurrying home.“
“This was very kind of you to be persuaded to come. I was almost afraid you would be hurrying home.”
Yeah, the Bateses and Mrs. Weston alone would have been easier for Frank and Jane, for sure. Sending Miss Bates and Mrs. Weston off in a failed mission would have been preferable. But Frank is versatile. He adapts.
It takes Jane longer, and while she is recovering herself over by the piano Frank is talking all kinds of stupid to Emma. And as Jane I love him for it. It is completely romantic. Frank’s got Emma looking at apples that she doesn’t give a whit about. No one thinks Emma is going to pick out the best—or any—apple, snatch it from Jane, and take it home. He’s doing it all for Jane, and Jane must be thankful. Right now she feels about as warmly as she ever has about him. She just got out of his arms, it’s the first moment they’ve had together since he gave her the piano—which she is over the moon about, despite the fact that she would have prevented it if she knew beforehand. And he is so in love with her and so skilled with the flowery words to express those emotions that the two of them are essentially in an altered state of consciousness—they’re high—on all the feel-good hormones they’ve been pumping out and leaking all over each other.
And you can just see him here being all busy, busy, busy and keeping Emma’s eyes and attention away from Jane for as long as she needs.
He contrived that she should be seated by him; and was sufficiently employed in looking out the best baked apple for her, and trying to make her help or advise him in his work, till Jane Fairfax was quite ready to sit down to the pianoforte again.
And you can start to see that to Jane and Frank they’re the only two people in that room who really exist. Everyone else is just static. And Frank is doing for Jane something that she cannot do for herself. She cannot put on a song and dance. He can. And it’s an act of love.
Jane plays, feebly for the first bars, but “the powers of the instrument were gradually done full justice to.”
❝…the pianoforte, with every proper discrimination, was pronounced to be altogether of the highest promise.❞
Everyone is delighted and all join in Jane’s praise and especially the praise of the piano, which Frank loves hearing. He’s probably sticking his chest out a little. Basking in the praise of “Colonel Campbell’s” taste, relieved and proud of himself in front of Jane hearing everyone brag on his big, romantic present. He got it right. He is basically like, “Those upper notes are sweet, huh? See, I listened and paid attention and cared.”
…the powers of the instrument were gradually done full justice to. Mrs. Weston had been delighted before, and was delighted again; Emma joined her in all her praise; and the pianoforte, with every proper discrimination, was pronounced to be altogether of the highest promise.
So, everyone is praising the pianoforte. The pianoforte that the whole town agrees Colonel Campbell sent. Frank is very happy about this. He’s Mr. Weston’s son. He wants to bask a little.
And despite the fact that Emma thinks everything Frank is saying is for her, Frank could not care less about Emma in this moment. Emma is only a problem, and now she’s a problem who is acting like he’s saying “Mr. Dixon” every time he says “Colonel Campbell” or “friends in Ireland.” He totally does many questionable things, but what he does not do is say anything that could be taken by anyone but Emma as ”Mr. Dixon.” And when Frank says “Colonel Campbell” to Jane, he clearly means himself, because he’s declaring his love for her, not Colonel Campbell’s. Not to mention that literally every member of Jane’s adopted family is in Ireland.
Frank’s questionable behavior is not even close to what Emma thinks it is. Basically zero that Emma thinks is going on in this scene is real.
I think Emma’s ruse worked too well in this scene. Austen made her too clever. But still, preserved underneath is a beautiful portrait of a very in love, very excited, and very head-full-of-clouds couple painted with some of Austen’s finest brush strokes. Even once Jane is fully revealed, she’s still a mostly nonverbal communicator, but in this scene she is all there. And Austen gives her the precious pianoforte she’s just received to speak with, and I think that is so cool.
But until we can separate from Emma’s fantasies we can’t see anything. Because you need to be able to look at what Frank is actually saying to understand Jane’s reactions. Whether by blushing, smiling, or playing.
So, they’re praising the pianoforte, but Mrs. Weston is saying something to Jane.
“Whoever Colonel Campbell might employ,” said Frank Churchill, with a smile at Emma, “the person has not chosen ill. I heard a good deal of Colonel Campbell’s taste at Weymouth; and the softness of the upper notes I am sure is exactly what he and all that party would particularly prize. I dare say, Miss Fairfax, that he either gave his friend very minute directions, or wrote to Broadwood himself. Do not you think so?”
I think this is mostly just Frank still being proud of himself while he waits to get Jane’s attention back, which he is impatient for. Like Mr. Weston wanting to hear that his son is handsome.
Next to his father Frank is the absolute worst person to have to keep a secret. And I think Jane Austen did everything in her power to say that Mr. Weston and his son are very much alike in personality… but Mr. Knightley tempers that by basically saying that the addition of spoiled child and subtraction of serious, principled man makes a difference, and Frank’s got some character to build.
Nonetheless, it’s as if Austen said, “What if I made the worst secret keeper on earth have a secret engagement?” And I just do not think Frank gives a flip about Emma in this moment. I do not believe Emma is taking up more than a necessary corner shelf in Frank’s head. I do not think Frank wants Emma there at all. But I do think the first two lines are much more ambiguous than the rest.
Jane did not look round. She was not obliged to hear. Mrs. Weston had been speaking to her at the same moment.
So, friends in Weymouth.
“‘It is not fair,” said Emma, in a whisper…’” Emma says it was a random guess and for Frank not to distress Jane. But Frank has not said a word about her guess. He has only said, “Colonel Campbell” as a placeholder for himself.
Frank shakes his head with a smile, and then says:
“How much your friends in Ireland must be enjoying your pleasure on this occasion, Miss Fairfax. I dare say they often think of you, and wonder which will be the day, the precise day of the instrument’s coming to hand. Do you imagine Colonel Campbell knows the business to be going forward just at this time?—Do you imagine it to be the consequence of an immediate commission from him, or that he may have sent only a general direction, an order indefinite as to time, to depend upon contingencies and conveniences?”
He paused. She could not but hear; she could not avoid answering,
“Till I have a letter from Colonel Campbell,” said she, in a voice of forced calmness, “I can imagine nothing with any confidence. It must be all conjecture.”
This is a bit where I cannot really judge the tone. Jane may have answered in a tone of “forced calmness”—a reproof or a warning that Frank was pushing it—but Emma could also just be fantasizing again. And the only reason I even stop and consider doubting is because this is one of the few scenes where Emma appears to be wrong about everything. Like, layers of wrongness. (The first part of the ball, prior to dancing, definitely gives it a run for its money, though. And for the same reason. But with many, many more pins in the air.)
The amount that Austen just plays with us in this book is unbelievable. It really is like watching something between a magic trick and a circus.
“Conjecture— aye…”
The “conjecture” repetitions. I think it’s mostly just fun, but also a little more. The one thing I am convinced of—and you must be too by now—is that nothing here is accidental.
THE WHOLE BOOK IS A MAGIC TRICK.
A scene of complex interactions with multiple unreliable narrators created to credibly read at least two completely different ways, it truly is an incredible feat of engineering.
Isn’t this whole book just Jane Austen saying with an arch smile, “I’m tricking you”?
Is that why she created the heroine she thought no one but her would like? Because to trick us without betraying us, she had to create a narrator that we didn’t trust to get anything right?
So Jane Austen gave us one very funny, but self-deluded and self-important unreliable narrator. And Harriet is kind of the test drive, I think, while she’s fully cooking up Miss Bates, Frank, and Jane. And thank the heavens above, Mrs. Elton!
Like a juggler. Adding pins.
Oh, conjecture! Sometimes one conjectures right, and sometimes one’s imagination conjectures too fast and far off field.
“She is a complete angel. Look at her. Is not she an angel in every gesture? Observe the turn of her throat. Observe her eyes, as she is looking up at my father.”
Frank Churchill ❦ “Emma,” Chapter 54
“but we gentlemen labourers if we get hold of a word—”
Okay, first, repeating “conjecture” is purposeful. Nothing is an accident in these scenes, and Austen is randomly repeating “conjecture.” I think something that comes through most clearly once you see the strings is how much fun she is having contriving this mess. A circus really is the best metaphor. She has made a little circus that she can employ or remove, and yet she can also paint an impressively touching scene beneath the circus. So you will never, ever convince me that in a scene like this anything is an accident. Nothing is an accident, but most things are just little winks. And here I think conjecture is just Austen literally saying the word, “conjecture” over and over again next to a big arrow pointing at Emma.
Because Jane is about to start playing and blushing in direct response to Frank’s many barely-masked declarations of love in such a way that if we removed all the interference—all the conjecture—there could be no question that they’re in love. So, Austen is not going to remove it, but she is playful, and she will wink at us and let us know when we read it again that she was hinting at the truth all along.
“Conjecture—aye, sometimes one conjectures right, and sometimes one conjectures wrong. I wish I could conjecture how soon I shall make this rivet quite firm. What nonsense one talks, Miss Woodhouse, when hard at work, if one talks at all;—your real workmen, I suppose, hold their tongues; but we gentlemen labourers if we get hold of a word— Miss Fairfax said something about conjecturing. There, it is done. I have the pleasure, madam, (to Mrs. Bates,) of restoring your spectacles, healed for the present.”
Right? Sometimes one conjectures right and— *wink wink, pointing at Emma* —sometimes one conjectures wrong. What nonsense one talks!
And then the very next line is Emma saying that to escape Miss Bates, Frank went to the piano and said this to Jane:
“If you are very kind,” said he, “it will be one of the waltzes we danced last night;—let me live them over again. You did not enjoy them as I did; you appeared tired the whole time. I believe you were glad we danced no longer; but I would have given worlds—all the worlds one ever has to give—for another half-hour.”
Which, no Frank did not just tell a beautiful woman that he would have “given worlds —all the worlds one ever has to give—” for anything, let alone another half hour to dance, all because he wanted to get away from Miss Bates!
And Jane responds with maybe the most magical sentence of the novel, because it’s all right there.
She played.
So Frank is up by Jane at the piano who is playing a waltz that has meaning for them. Frank is feeling felicity. And so is Jane. She’s playing a song they danced to at Weymouth. A song that reminds them both of falling in love. So with Frank at his station by Jane next to the piano he just bought her, he’s talking to her in a way she completely understands. And she’s talking back with her piano.
These two are in heaven. And neither cares about Emma.
The piano has altered the sitting room, and it’s just Frank and Jane again. Like in Weymouth. Frank and Jane at a piano in front of whomever, it doesn’t matter. They fell in love in crowds, and this may not be perfect, but they still understand each other.
Like when they were singing together at the Coles’ and everyone was begging for more than the usual two, which made Mr. Knightley completely lose his cool and stop them. But Frank standing at the piano with Jane is probably how they’ve spent half their time together. Sometimes Frank sings, sometimes he doesn’t, but he’s comfortable there by her. It’s their little space. Together, no matter who else is around. It’s like a little force field, protective and self-enclosed. This is just Jane and Frank being Jane and Frank and doing their most in love thing while they can.
“What felicity it is to hear a tune again which has made one happy!—If I mistake not that was danced at Weymouth.”
She looked up at him for a moment, coloured deeply, and played something else.
And it can almost seem like she coloured deeply and played something else because she didn’t like what he was saying, at least until you realize the “something else” she now plays is his favorite. Robin Adair. (But we don’t learn that until up ahead a few lines.) Austen’s clues must be grabbed out of order and reassembled, and here I suspect that’s because she feared that if she put “his favourite” sandwiched between Frank talking about giving all the worlds for another dance and gifts from the heart, we would see too much, too soon.
And no, I do not think Frank has suddenly switched to talking about Mr. Dixon there. I do not think Jane is playing Mr. Dixon’s favorite, the song famously written by the daughter of an Earl “as a rebuke to her family for what she perceived as their snobbery regarding her handsome and accomplished lover.”
(And for what it’s worth, the name of Dixon is not mentioned here by either and will never be mentioned again —except in Emma’s mind— until the ABC Game.)
So, Frank is pouring his heart out in words and Jane is pouring her heart out on her piano. It’s the expression of her soul. And most of their bond and their romance seems totally wrapped up with music. The first thing Frank jabbers about to Emma when he gets in town is Jane’s piano playing. Not being careful at all. And then he gets up first thing the next morning, rides off to London, and buys her a piano! That’s the most romantic thing any Jane Austen character has ever done, and I am not going to let you be lazy enough to take Mr. Knightley’s opinion on romance or music! Mr. Knightley never would have done it, and I would prefer Mr. Knightley to Mr. Churchill, but Jane Fairfax loves Frank as Frank, and it is a beautiful gesture of love we never appreciate enough.
Indeed, the piano is an amazing, wonderful, romantic, and thoughtful gift. Frank knows his Jane. I spend a lot of time being hostile to Frank, but the surprise piano, with all its complications, was worth it. It is probably the only thing that saved Jane. It’s all she had—her one outlet—and Frank understood that she needed it.
He and Jane clearly sing together a lot, and when they were begged for encores at the Coles it was pretty clear they had their routine down, so Jane is not shy when it’s Frank, Jane, and a piano. They also love dancing together and I am certain that Jane’s “languid” dancing is just as bad as her “outree” curls that Mrs. Weston found so beautiful, and is why Frank is constantly trying to move heaven and earth to dance with her. Dancing is special, but either way their entire romance is intertwined with music, and Jane seems like one of those people who is uncomfortable talking but is different when music is the mode of expression.
“My heart was in Highbury, and my business was to get my body thither as often as might be…”
Frank Churchill’s letter ❦ “Emma,” Chapter 50
So Jane blushes, starts Robin Adair, and Frank —probably seeing Emma watching Jane blushing and smiling— grabs up the sheet music from the chair by the piano where he’s standing next to Jane, and still staying by Jane, turns to Emma and says the music was all sent with the instrument and here’s an Irish one— but remember, we know that Jane is at this moment playing a popular song about an Irish guy! “The song ‘Robin Adair’ was composed by Caroline Keppel in tribute to her Irish husband after her aristocratic family’s reaction to her proposed marriage.” And although it practically takes blocking out the scene to picture it correctly, it matters that Frank is still up at the piano with Jane who is playing one song after another for him, no matter what he’s waving around to keep Emma at bay.
So he waves the music and says, “Very thoughtful of (ahem) Colonel Campbell, was it not?—He knew Miss Fairfax could have no music here…”
”…I honour that part of the attention particularly; it shews it to have been so thoroughly from the heart. Nothing hastily done; nothing incomplete. True affection only could have prompted it.”
Any doubt who he’s talking about?
“So thoroughly from the heart.” I was really, really thinking about you. Everything about this piano is from my heart. I know what you’re doing for me and I love you.”
Jane certainly knows who he means. Because in response Emma sees Jane with “the remains of a smile” —“a smile of secret delight,” no less—and a “deep blush.”
I’m going to break my rule and go ahead and put all Emma’s nonsense in, because the description is too hard to slice and dice without losing Jane’s reaction to Frank’s words about, uh, Colonel Campbell. And also notice that one trick Austen uses almost too well in this scene is having Emma respond as if Frank is referring to Mr. Dixon, but he’s not. Frank always and only says “Colonel Campbell,” the person democratically chosen by the community as the gift giver. And Colonel Campbell always means Frank, himself.
[Emma wished he would be less pointed, yet could not help being amused;] and when on glancing her eye towards Jane Fairfax she caught the remains of a smile, when she saw that with all the deep blush of consciousness, there had been a smile of secret delight, [she had less scruple in the amusement, and much less compunction with respect to her.—This amiable, upright, perfect] Jane Fairfax was apparently cherishing [very reprehensible] feelings.
Again, Jane has heard Frank telling her how much he loves her, how the piano and sheet music was all from his heart. And she responds with the smile and blush he’s living for. It reminds me of Emma seeing Frank and Jane together at the Westons in chapter 54, how Frank is always watching Jane, and how he delights in catching her trying not to smile.
“Such an extraordinary dream of mine!” he cried. “I can never think of it without laughing.—She hears us, she hears us, Miss Woodhouse. I see it in her cheek, her smile, her vain attempt to frown. Look at her. Do not you see that, at this instant, the very passage of her own letter, which sent me the report, is passing under her eye—that the whole blunder is spread before her—that she can attend to nothing else, though pretending to listen to the others?”
“Emma” • Chapter 54
Jane was forced to smile completely…
But Emma sees it too, so Frank starts juggling again. “Uh, did I show you this sheet music yet?” And like with the spectacles and baked apples at first, this time he goes right to her with the music. (I know he’s not, but I picture him waving it in front of Emma’s face like she’s a puppy.) And Emma, in her own fantasy world, isn’t paying attention to how many times he’s tried to show her sheet music or anything else. As soon as he’s close enough she whispers that “he’s speaking too plain.”
“You speak too plain. She must understand you.”
“I hope she does. I would have her understand me. I am not in the least ashamed of my meaning.”
“Yeah, I hope so. I want her to understand me.”
So, he’s not ashamed of his meaning. Still good. His meaning is pretty clear by now.
Emma says she is “half ashamed, and wish I had never taken up the idea.” (Emma just owning “half” of whatever shame is going around is so completely in character that I want to salute.)
But Frank says Emma doesn’t even have to take half. Jane wants it. Leave it all to Jane. And he veers into indefensible for really the first time with the “leave shame to her” allusions.
“I am very glad you did, and that you communicated it to me. I have now a key to all her odd looks and ways. Leave shame to her. If she does wrong, she ought to feel it.”
The double entendres are there, but weaker, and the lack of propriety is fairly indefensible. There is a way to read it that keeps Frank’s basic theme going, but it never becomes excusable. I feel like Frank, as a character, could get loose and stupid like this without thought, never meaning anything bad. Words just getting away from him. At the same time, I’m not going to be the one to say this is fine.
Emma thinks she sees shame in Jane, though.
“She is not entirely without it, I think.”
And Frank answers, “She doesn’t look ashamed to me. In fact, she’s playing our tune.”
“I do not see much sign of it. She is playing Robin Adair at this moment—his favourite.”
I’m trying to make a case for “his” meaning anyone but Frank here, but it falls apart at every particular and is simply absurd. If anyone has a half-reasonable argument, I’m willing to listen, but I can’t come up with even a passable Devil’s Advocate parry at this point. Why would Jane play anyone else’s favorite? Why would Frank be talking about anyone else? And if Jane was playing someone else’s favorite, would he be so flippantly happy? Also, it’s about a super bright and talented guy who the composer’s noble family was snobbish about. It’s ludicrous at this point to attempt a rebuttal, right?
So, Frank is definitely not blameless in this scene, but he’s a lot less blameless than most people see at first. For most of the scene he’s just telling Jane he loves her and finding a way to say things about the piano that he wants to say while distracting Emma when required. But yeah, the bit at the end is weird and unjustifiable.
“Did you ever see such a skin?—such smoothness! such delicacy!—and yet without being actually fair.—One cannot call her fair. It is a most uncommon complexion, with her dark eye-lashes and hair—a most distinguishing complexion! So peculiarly the lady in it.”
Frank Churchill ❦ “Emma,” Chapter 52
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I also wonder if Austen simply feared she’d shown us too much—and possibly even enough—to guess the truth. I have to think that as the writer engineering these scenes, she must have seriously doubted her own ability to judge what readers might pick up on.
And what I remember most from my first read is that it was only some of Frank’s words to Emma about Jane that kept me from fully believing that he and Jane were in love. And they do help distract us from all the flowery things he had been saying.
But Frank’s ambiguous words don’t have to work alone for long, because the ultimate distraction has found her voice again, and Miss Bates in all her glory is going to start yelling out the window at Mr. Knightley. (Who will yell right back.)
Shortly afterwards Miss Bates, passing near the window, descried Mr. Knightley on horse-back not far off.
Mr. Knightley I declare!—
A scene I smile just thinking about. (And not only because it’s where I stop for today.)
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