Et tu, Auntie Beeb?
The Lefroy-as-Darcy meme has exploded across the press as every news outlet in the English-speaking world has picked up the story–including the BBC, which really should know better. We dare say it is a wire service report, but still. Even the Newspaper of Record falls for it. Does NO ONE confirm sources anymore?
The Telegraph got downright insulting.
The man thought to have inspired Jane Austen’s dashing literary hero Mr Darcy was a pale, skinny student with wispy grey hair and girlish looks.
GREY hair? Could it not be hair powder?
And we thought Lefroy as Darcy was bad…look what Portfolio.com has perpetrated:
The price is a reflection of how strong the market continues to be for Jane Austen. Her novels have always been popular, but lately Austen seems to have been rediscovered by audiences as something of an original “chick lit” novelist — a Plum Sykes or Candace Bushnell of the turn of the 19th century. Sense and Sensibility or Emma have all the allure of Sex and the City, minus the incessant label-mongering not to mention the baring of the flesh.
And one Austen hero - Mr. Darcy - has emerged as “Mr. Big” of the genre, with the commercial appeal to match.
We really shall retire to Bedlam, or open our jugular with a dull spork.
Seriously, the sellers of this portrait have cleverly crafted their marketing campaign by tying it to an enormously popular fictional character, and have been wildly successful, judging by the press coverage. In the minds of newspaper readers, and worse, editors all over the world, Darcy = Tom Lefroy, which means now the meme will be dragged out and aired on every possible occasion. We hope they enjoy the profit from their sale. The damage they have done to Jane Austen’s public reputation from this is enormous.
June 11th, 2008 at 9:31 am
Just wait for the article that starts: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man NOT in possession of a good fortune, was the inspiration for Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy—then you’re going to have to pass around your dull spork, Mags.
Wasn’t it the recent Jane Austen survey that posed a question of whether the latest Janeamania was good or bad for the literary reputation of Austen? I can’t remember how the question was worded, but I do remember answering in the negative.
June 11th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Ever since yesterday we have been flooded with this ignorant journalism. Not only the Beeb should have known better, but The Times too is reproducing the same kind of “news”:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4106601.ece
If the English speaking world is buzzing with the news, much regretfully the item is being translated and taken by other non-English speaking news agencies and newspapers for non-English speaking countries where knowledge on JA is even poorer. I have received Google Alerts with articles in Spanish reproducing the same, one even used the words “lover” and I am getting sick of it.
At this moment, if Jon Spence would within my distance, I would not respond for the consequences. Look what his stupid assumption could do!!!! Agrrrr!!!!
June 11th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Ever since yesterday we have been flooded with this ignorant journalism. Not only the Beeb should have known better, but The Times too is reproducing the same kind of “news”:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4106601.ece
If the English speaking world is buzzing with the news, much regretfully the item is being translated and taken by other non-English speaking news agencies and newspapers for non-English speaking countries where knowledge on JA is even poorer. I have received Google Alerts with articles in Spanish reproducing the same, one even used the words “lover” and I am getting sick of it.
At this moment, if Jon Spence would be within my distance, I would not respond for the consequences. Look what his stupid assumption could do!!!! Agrrrr!!!!
June 11th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Oops, sorry for the double posts.
June 11th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
As someone who is a journalist (games luv, not this sort of garbage)I am flabbergasted, but not surprised at the lack of work done by the majority of the journalists who have reported on this nonsense. Any child who is currently enrolled in school could discern gray hair from a powdered wig, and since when does being considered a thin, young man beget wimp? Sensationalism at it’s finest.
The art dealers would most likely have gotten a pretty penny or two for who the artist of the miniature was combined with the age of the item, compounded with Lefroy’s eventual position in life and the fact that items such as these are rare in this day and age regardless of whether the sitter had ties to Austen or not. The means they have gone to drum up publicity is utter blasphemy! For shame… I sincerely hope that it backfires.
I am 35 now, and I still have my cherished copy of “Sense and Sensibility” that my mother game me when I was 12. A bit torn and ratty, but cherished nonetheless like every subsequent novel of hers I purchased as an adolescent. This makes me sad indeed. I am tired of my (and the rest of the world’s) beloved Jane being part of the everyday goings on in the media - especially when what they have to say is no better than tabloid muck raking.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Um, if I remember rightly, Jon Spence actually mooted (briefly) the possibility that Tom Lefroy might have been a part of the inspiration behind ELIZABETH, not Darcy.
But I guess that really woudn’t make a good headline.
June 11th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
And it only gets worse -
Today, in the Arts Section of The New York Times:
“Austen’s Inspiration”
“A portrait of the man believed to have inspired the character of Mr. Darcy in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” is going on sale for (pounds)50,000 (about $98,000) at an antiques fair in London, the BBC reported. Thomas Lefroy, right, born in Ireland, met Austen in 1796, when both were in their early 20s. They had a flirtation, but Lefroy, whose family was poor, married an heiress. The watercolor portrait, 3 inches by 1 1/4 inches, was painted in 1798 by George Engleheart, and will be on sale at the Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair, which runs Thursday to next Wednesday.”
The brief mention includes a picture of the portrait.
June 12th, 2008 at 7:23 am
Re. the comparison to Sex and the city and its major characters, I concluded yesterday afrer watching an episode that Carrie and Big is a much more traditional 18 centure couple with te male in power, the women scheming, charming and begging, whereas Elizabeth and Darcy is a modern couple where he is the one that adjust.
I am also in wonder over the planned Lost in Austen with the time travel plot, because frankly what would be changed by sending Elizabeth to the modern world, where she would adjust in a second, perhaps only to conclude that scriptwriters today can not present as clever, witty and independant heroine as JA.
June 12th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Harriet, is not only the implication that Lefroy = Darcy. The whole book by Spence is written under the idea that JA work has hints from her to Lefroy, making it as if he had been the great love of her life. I do think she might have love him, but in the likes of a first love. Spence stated his ideas as if they facts, but are only factoids. Since that is source from which the Becoming Jane script was feed and then stretched it further, from that we have know the so ‘accurate’ news. Therefore, Spence becomes the original perpetrator of this mess IMNSHO.
June 12th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Darcy, dashing? It is to laugh. I must have missed the ‘rugged’ part too. And poor Tom Lefroy, doomed to be reduced to a fictional character! A fictional character he has next to nothing in common with, too.
Effy - I rather disagree on both points, since Darcy’s change (as well as Elizabeth’s) has absolutely nothing to do with adapting to another person’s values, but living up to his own. And Elizabeth IMO is very much a creature of her own time - and class - and not given to adjusting well in the first place. I suspect Jane would do better in many ways.