Syrie James and Diana Birchall in their play “What Lucy Steele?” at the Victoria JASNA AGM.
As Shannon Winslow said yesterday, in her delightful post about her own adventures at the JASNA AGM in Victoria, B.C.: “Frequent attendees say that every AGM has its own personality and flavor, and there will be something uniquely special about each one.” I am nothing if not a frequent attendee, having attended my first Annual General Meeting of the Jane Austen Society of North America as long ago as the Chicago meeting in 1988. It was stupendous and sold me on AGMS for life! That said, I haven’t managed to go every year since, but I’ve attended a goodly number – sixteen! (I’ll append my personal list as a footnote, as that is the proper place for it.) All were splendid and stimulating beyond words, there’s no such thing as a dull AGM, and each one had its special pleasures, in addition to those common to all: burgeoning friendships, exploration of diverse and fascinating locations, and joyful shared celebrations of Jane Austen.
Flowers at Butchart Gardens
JASNA has long been a real home to me, socially, creatively, in fandom and friendship. It’s given me a constant sense of belonging, with a community in agreeable sympathy about Jane Austen! Among all these spectacular AGMs dedicated to the author and her works, I naturally have some very top favorites: I can never forget climbing a glacier to a mountain teahouse at Lake Louise, led by Juliet McMaster; or having my first JASNA publication, In Defense of Mrs. Elton (illustrated by Juliet) as the conference gift in Colorado Springs. Then on my own home turf of Santa Monica I listened to discussions about the founding and formation of both the Chawton House Library (where I presented a play years later), and the Jane Austen Centre at Bath. I ate maple sugar pie in Quebec City, Montreal bagels in guess where, and visited Louisa May Alcott’s house in Concord, a side trip at the Boston AGM. Perhaps the most personally exciting for me was the enormous thrill of the play I wrote with Syrie James, “The Austen Assizes,” rocking the room in Brooklyn! Afterwards I remember crossing the bridge on foot, and feeling on the very top of the world. I could go on for ever, but will refrain, as it is my object here to tell about the particular experience of the Victoria conference, which was every bit as charming and satisfying as all the rest.
Tea at Burchart Gardens
Flying from Los Angeles to Vancouver, I traveled by ferry to Victoria, passing some of the beautiful Gulf islands. Eventually reaching the lovely conference headquarters at the elegant Empress Hotel in Victoria, I found comfort and welcome, falling in with Janeite friends for a very jolly evening before retiring to my comfortable room at the nearby Doubletree. In the morning the conference proper began for me, with the opening lecture by Dr. Emma Clery, who gave a beautiful talk about the pleasures of reading the poet William Cowper, a favorite of Jane Austen, perfect in this garden city. Then began the breakout sessions – the only difficulty at an AGM is that there are so many choices in each time slot. I elected to listen to Juliet McMaster talk about bodily manifestations of feeling in Sense and Sensibility, especially interesting to me as she talked of Lucy Steele’s lying with words and body, which was close to my own topic.
Next came my presentation, in which I was joined by my frequent writing partner Syrie James. This opened with a semi-academic paper I wrote (“What Did Lucy Steele?”) which served to introduce a short play that Syrie and I wrote together, under the same title. Syrie portrayed Lucy, the young villainess, while I was her equally villainous mother-in-law, Mrs. Ferrars. We explored their fraught relationship, deviously manipulating each other, and culminating with an all-out fight with our fans! (See below.) We had an audience of approximately 350, and I can scarcely convey what satisfying fun it was to perform for this very knowledgeable Janeite audience!
Fan fight!
Afterwards we could relax, and Syrie and I had dinner with a wonderful group of friends at a lovely seafood restaurant overlooking the harbor at sunset. I returned to the conference as a judge for the Young Filmmakers Contest awards, and then many other conferees attended the showing of the 1993 Emma Thompson Sense and Sensibility, but I was justly tired and removed to my room.
Dinner at the harbor – courtesy Erna Arneson
Saturday there were more talks; I am afraid I slept through the most controversial one, apparently Dr. Robert Morrison had some advanced theories about sex and romance in Sense and Sensibility, which raised the ire of some scholars. Sorry I missed that! I did love the talk Hazel Jones of the English Jane Austen Society gave, “Within Four Miles Northward of Exeter,” focusing on the landscape of Sense and Sensibility, which was of great interest to me, again because of my research on Lucy Steele, and the fact that Hazel is so familiar with the exact countryside. In the afternoon I had the pleasure of tea at the Empress with friends; and in the evening there was the banquet and ball. Shannon described those so well I won’t try, as like Mr. Darcy, I do not dance! However, here are these two Austen Variations authors in our costumes:
Diana and Shannon
Sunday there was an authors’ book signing, at which Syrie and I signed books (I have a piece, “Passion and Pastiche” in a new anthology called Jane Austen, Sex, and Romance, which Jane Austen Books is selling at a healthy discount). Afterwards, Susannah Fullerton, author and President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia, gave a wonderful keynote talk about dueling in the Austen novels. The only actual duel happens offstage, between Col. Brandon and Willoughby, but there are many other kinds of dueling, and Susannah assured me and Syrie that our duel-with-fans in our play definitely fits right in.
At Jane Austen Books
Partners with our books
Then I took a ride in a little harbor boat to Fishermen’s Wharf for some good seafood, and returned to the Empress for the farewell reception. The conference was over, but on Monday I went to the famous Butchart Gardens, on an after-meeting tour; saw masses of brilliant autumn flowers, which struck me as stunning though rather Disneylandish in the way they magically pop them in and out of the beds! I also had the pleasure of a carousel ride. My flowered steed was high, my feet could not reach the stirrups, and the thing whirled alarmingly fast so I had to hold on tight, but it was quite fun! From there, it was a taxi to Swarz Bay, ferry ride back to Tswassen in Vancouver, and then the airport and home. A most refreshing holiday, that had pretty much everything: contact with old friends, sojourn in a lovely place, stimulation and entertainment galore. I do adjure all lovers of Jane Austen to try an AGM whenever they get the chance!
Carousel at Butchart Gardens
Ferry to Victoria
*The JASNA AGMS I have blissfully attended are:
1988 in Chicago – Jane Austen’s England
1992 Santa Monica – The Letters
1993 Lake Louise – Persuasion
1998 Quebec City – Northanger Abbey
1999 Colorado Springs – Emma
2000 Boston – Pride and Prejudice
2002 Toronto – Jane Austen’s World
2004 Los Angeles – Anne Elliot
2006 Tucson – Mansfield Park
2007 Vancouver – Emma
2010 Portland OR – Jane Austen and the Abbey
2012 Brooklyn NY – Sex, Money and Power
2014 Montreal – Mansfield Park
2017 Huntington Beach, CA – Jane Austen in Paradise
2019 Williamsburg VA – Northanger Abbey
2022 Victoria BC – Sense and Sensibility
16 comments
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You obviously had such a great time! I’m with you and Darcy in regards to dancing! I’m one of the ‘shuffle round your handbags’ brigade!
That carousel looks amazing, it’s been many years since I last rode one of those (and I doubt I could get on one now!)
I hope you’re able to attend many, many more.
Author
Thank you very much Glynis, I hope so too! Though the carousel brought my age home to me as nothing else could. It was really hard to climb up and get my leg over the thing; and I only could get down again with the determined help of the attendant! I’m only 5’1″ and it was a Large Horse. I’m pretty housebound these days, taking care of my husband and trying to avoid Covid, so you can imagine what a really exhilarating vacation Victoria was for me. It’s good fun to sit and watch the promenade and dancing, while talking to other onlookers. That, too, is like Darcy: “I can admire you much better as I sit by the fire.”
So fun sitting w/you at the reception and tea at the gardens!
Author
It sure was, Rose! Great fun to remember. Glad we did it.
I was glad to meet you, Diana! Your play with Syrie was fantastic, and you got so many fans for the fan fight from all your friends in JAFF, it shows how well you’re liked.
Author
That’s the delight of AGMs – you actually get to see, face to face, people you’ve known for so long, but not “met”! I’m overjoyed that you liked our play – it meant so much to me, to be out there in he world writing and performing, when my life at home is so quiet (due to husband caregiving, and dangers of Covid). A true holiday! Yes, the Fan Crisis was funny, I put my need on the “Hoot Board” and soon had all offers of enough fans for a lifetime of plays! People like to help 🙂
Hope to see you again for longer the next time. Will you be going to Denver? I’m hoping to.
Diana,
I attended your presentation with Syrie on Lucifer Steele and found it riotously funny! This was my first AGM, you can imagine the new delight of laughing out loud within a community of 350. For my first time I was surrounded by people who got all the Austen jokes and references, appreciated the wit and applauded and roared at the farce with the same enthusiasm as I did. Your razor sharp exchanges in the verbal duel deliciously captured the underlying combat behind the polite words Auten gave her characters to speak. The climax of the fan fight was a master stroke of a comedic finale, made even better because it sounded very much like young Jane wrote in her juvenilia work. I was wondering if you and Syrie thought about that.
Thank you for the fun!
Linda Miller
San Diego JASNA
Dear Linda, I can’t tell you how happy your comment made me – it made my day, my week, and longer, and I have been literally wriggling with delight, at hearing that you enjoyed exactly the very things we were trying to do with our play. I am so glad you have come to JASNA, and to an AGM, you can see I’m right in my praise about them, aren’t I! That is just the excitement I felt when I first joined. And now it is my greatest pleasure, with Syrie, to be the ones making people laugh! We have both had our sorrows, and I can hardly express how these joys are savored and appreciated now. There are so many influences that go into our playing with Austen ( so to speak!): A lifetime spent with her, close study as minute as that bit of ivory and genius deserves. And certainly part of our debt is due to the Juvenilia. To me, that represents the uninhibited humor she freely unleashed in her youth, and as an adult artist, grew to cleverly conceal, so as to be socially and literarily acceptable – but did she not still retain a spice of wickedness? The “duel” also harks back to a scene in the first play Syrie and I collaborated on writing, The Austen Assizes, in Brooklyn, 2012. Austen’s villains were tried by a judge and assigned to their various fates. In the course of the play, Lady Catherine (Marcee Chipman) and Mrs Bennet (Miriam Rheingold-Fuller) burst into frenziedly beating each other up, to the surprise and ecstacy of a very large audience, who howled! Syrie wanted to hark back to that with this “duel,” I was afraid people might think “that’s what they always do,” but it turned out quite refreshed and different. much more a culmination of the characters’ own intense and constant dueling – and the fans really added a frisson, didn’t they! Funnily enough, I left my own fan home in Santa Monica (still haven’t found it), and I put a request on the Victoria Hoot Board for anybody who’d lend me one for an hour. I could have opened a fan store with the offers! Well, thank you again for taking the time and trouble to write and tell me what you thought, and also for having such thoughts in the first place! I hope our paths cross sometime – after all, we are only two hours down (or up) the road. All best, Diana
Wow, Diana! I am so impressed at your dedication to sharing your creativity and wisdom with others at the various AGMs you have attended! This conference sounds like it was enriching, fun, and thought-provoking — the very best kind of conference. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us!
Thanks, Christina. Somehow doing plays and talks for the AGMs feels to me like a very good size and scope for manageable projects that I can handle, and also a most excellent way of sharing the things I want to write and say about Jane Austen. I love writing books too, but the publishing, organizing, publicizing processes I find so dispiriting and exhausting. You can’t launch a book without all that work, and I haven’t the energy or desire to both write AND sell anymore. Whereas skits and essays, stories and plays, can be showered on the world in a relatively carefree way! Thanks for commenting, and may I say how much I admired your “Which witch” – it is both compelling and masterly, not to mention elegant and intense. Making Darcy call him Mr. Wickham! The description of Darcy belittling the young Wickham! That laugh that had once enchanted her, what a detail. Her being truly invisible now that she knows herself – wow. It’s wonderfully done and I can’t wait to see what you will do with the next part!
Warmly,
Diana
Hi Diana,
I’m glad my comments helped you feel happy, that’s double, double, plus plus of positive energy! It would be lovely if our paths cross. I live in Carlsbad, not too far from the southern part of your region, and may attend an event sometime.
Your fan fight reminded me of an exhibit at the Bath Jane Austen Center on “the language of the fan. ” I didn’t watch you and Syrie closely enough to note if you used specific fan gestures to communicate before the violence of the fans broke out! It seems opening and shutting a fan means “You are cruel” and placing it on the left ear means “I wish to be rid of you.” We can be confident Eleanor would resonate with that sentiment toward Lucy, tho of course never explicitly express it. That’s the value of the fan, right? And that’s why the fan fight was apt and comedic and pitch- perfect!
Speaking as we have been of duels, here’s a quote likening the duel to fan communication. “Women are armed with fans, as men are with swords.” Joseph Addison 1779
All the best wishes,
Linda Miller
Dear Linda, I am sure we will meet when there is something you come up here for, or I go down there for: because I for one will never forget you and the things you have said here! An intelligent reader/listener who truly “gets” what you are doing and expresses herself so well, is pure gold. That said, it is an amusing phenomenon that over the years people have occasionally attributed MORE than I actually meant, to what I have written (especially when they do serious academic critiques) – and that is hilariously the case in your wondering if Syrie and I knew about “the language of the fan.” We knew, and know, nothing of the sort! I really would love to read up on that fascinating subject, though, and I wish I’d seen that exhibit. (Years ago, when I was going to England annually, as I did for 40 years – before pandemic of course – I used to be friends with some of the people involved in getting the Jane Austen Centre started, and it is amazing to me now to look back on those times, and see the Centre as such an established fixture of Bath. Ah, time, time!)
Thanks also for the most apposite and delightful Addison quote.
Your sworn devotee,
Diana Birchall
You’re obviously a very talented writer and actress. Two big accomplishments acting and your new publishing which I cant wait to get in the mail. Hooray Diana. Much more times like this in the future.
Is there any video of your previous dramatic performance in NY, 2012? Would love to see that!
Linda Miller
Linda, there once was a video of Austen Assizes (Brooklyn, 2012) on YouTube but it disappeared, and we need to find it again. Meanwhile, Syrie and I with my son Paul (he’s the librarian at Catalina Library with an acting history) presented a short newer version of Austen Assizes during an Austen Variations festival about two years ago. Here is the link to the entire presentation; our playlet, with Paul as the judge and me and Syrie as Mrs. Bennet and Lady Catherine respectively, begins at 3 hours 1 minute in, exactly. It’s kinda cute, I hope you enjoy it! Best wishes, Diana
Linda, whoops, don’t know why that link didn’t work. But on YouTube, just search for Austen Assizes and the link will come up properly. Let me know if you can’t reach it.