Work in Progress: Jane Austen and Lord Byron, a play by Diana Birchall

The publisher’s office

As my first post for the new Austen Variations blog, I thought I’d share an excerpt from the climactic scene in my short play about an imagined meeting between Jane Austen and Lord Byron. This historic meeting (I suppose I must make the disclaimer) never actually took place, but I have set the scene at the moment in the two authors’ lives when it was closest to being possible. It is the winter of 1815/16, a time when Jane Austen and Lord Byron are both in London. She is enjoying her first taste of publishing success (which sadly will be the last in her lifetime), and he has not yet departed for the Continent forever.  Imagine now that we are in the offices of their mutual publisher James Murray. The two writers have been brought together by a stratagem between her brother and the publisher. After mutual compliments, they begin to discuss their work…

A BROTHER’S STRATAGEM: JANE AUSTEN MEETS LORD BYRON

Excerpt from Scene Three – Jane and Byron

BYRON

Miss Austen, I am afraid that I do not like the moralizing strain you are fallen into, in Mansfield Park.

JANE

Is that so? You are not the only man not to admire my heroine.  She is not as charming as my Elizabeth.

BYRON

I should say not!  Never was there a more dismayingly virtuous woman. Stubborn, dull, preachifying – oh!  I do beg your pardon, Miss Austen.

JANE

I am not affronted. Pray continue.

BYRON

It is only a reflection of how very real your characters are. They become as much friends as one’s own friends, somehow. I don’t know how you do it, I wish I had that particular gift.

JANE

And I wish I had your wonderful suppleness of tongue, Lord Byron. As one of my characters in my new novel, Emma, says, “What a perfect character you and I should make, if we could be shaken together. My liveliness and your solidity would produce perfection.” Only in our case, I believe, it would be your liveliness.

BYRON

Ah, no, you are perfection already. Only you have overdone it with your Miss Fanny. How I hate prudes! I am glad your enchanting Mary Crawford ends up with her own brother, and you have left Fanny and her dull Edmund to bore each other to death.

Lord Byron

JANE

Mary – ends up with Mr. Crawford, you say?  But, they are brother and sister.

BYRON

I thought that was a masterpiece of subtlety Miss Austen; as to be sure you could not say it straight out. You know very well – I know you do – that it is possible to love a brother or sister as a man loves a woman. Do you not say, yourself, “A strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie is beneath the fraternal.”  And, “Fraternal love, sometimes almost everything, is at others worse than nothing.” You see I have committed these wondrous sentences to my heart and mind.

JANE

Yes, but you cannot think I meant –

BYRON

How often have I read those precious passages, and in a book I disliked, too! Yes, yes, Miss Austen, I know you understand the human heart in all its varieties. You understand Henry Crawford – how like he is to me!  How he reads Shakespeare! What an actor Crawford is!  And he can find no other woman to equal his sister. It is nonsense to believe that he could ever be truly in love with a Fanny Price!

JANE (bewildered)

Good Heaven. What are you saying?

BYRON

I am saying that as you are the most intelligent woman in the country, perhaps the universe, you and you alone can understand my heart. You have portrayed me in a thousand guises before you even met me. Willoughby! Crawford! You may be a virgin, but you understand men. How is that?  You have had no experience, you have not lived. But yet, you know!

JANE

Lord Byron, you forget yourself. This is not a right sort of discussion. I think I must beg to withdraw at once.

BYRON

No, no, don’t go. Only a few more moments. You are a witch, there is nothing you do not know. Your Fanny, as much as I hate her, is the most living character you ever drew!

JANE

What do you mean?  Am I to suppose that you have ever known a girl like my Fanny Price?  I should find that hard to believe, in the circles in which it is said you move.

BYRON

Of course I have, damn it. Oh, excuse me, Miss Austen, for my language and general behavior, but I am undone. You must forgive me; it is absurd for there to be any reticences between two such minds as ours.

JANE

I hope you do not expect me to imitate your openness.

BYRON

Fanny Price is my wife, Miss Austen. Lady Byron is Fanny Price made flesh. You have painted her to the life, and it is no wonder that Mansfield Park is her favorite of your books.  And to think, I gave it to her myself!

JANE

Did you? I am glad that she enjoyed it, if you did not.

BYRON

It was too close to home for me. Miss Austen, I will tell you what I have never spoken aloud to any human soul – only your mind, that of the greatest student of human nature that has ever been known – you, alone, will understand, my love, and my sin. I have made love to my sister. We love each other.

JANE

Lord Byron! You must not tell me such things, even if they are true, and I am very sure they are not. You are only intoxicated, and will be bitterly sorry for your language tomorrow.

BYRON

Intoxicated!  I wish I were. If only it were as easy as that. Miss Austen, my wife and my sister are at each other’s throats about me as it is – my wife threatens scandal and ruin – I shall be forced to divorce her, and to leave England, entirely and for ever!

JANE

What fantastical ideas, Lord Byron!

BYRON

Every word is true, I swear it. And now, Miss Austen, tell me – what is your opinion of me? Do you think I may be redeemed, or am I damned for all eternity? For I am a superstitious fool, as all men of great imagination are. Half the time I think there can be no evil in any love between a man and a woman, and the rest of the time I believe I will burn for what I have done.

JANE

These are things which you must talk over with a clergyman. I am not competent.

Publisher John Murray II

BYRON

Better you than any clergyman! You are the only woman in England who can help me, or else I must go to the devil. You don’t think I’d seek solace in some great cold clever worldly mind alone, do you?  But you – as clever and clear-eyed a genius of the human heart and its foibles as ever existed – yet withal, a kind woman, and religious – sane, and good as you are: You, and you only, can help me.

JANE

Lord Byron, no! Prayer and prayer alone can help you. I will pray for you. But if I may advise –

BYRON

Yes?

JANE

Do your work, and find your happiness in that, not in sin.

BYRON

Spoken like a spinster without a stain on her character. But I do have something in hand, in the way of work. A long poem, a life work…a portrait of our time, I intend it to be. When my present troubles are over, I shall commence it.

JANE

I believe you will be glad for that, it is your right course. And surely – things will improve, with your wife. Did not I hear from Mr. Murray, that you have only just become a father?

BYRON (wearily)

Yes, my daughter was born just a few days ago.

JANE

Well!  That explains…My brothers are always quite distrait at such times. I shall think no more of what you have said. It means nothing of course.

(Silence)

BYRON (bowing ironically)

If it must be that way.

JANE

I think it had better be.

– FINIS –

A portrait in the sketchbook of James Stanier Clarke, thought to be Jane Austen, 1814

From the author:  Comments and speculation welcome!  Would you imagine a meeting between Austen and Byron differently?  Do you think he would say the things he does to her, and would she stay and listen?  Is he too outrageous, she too prim?  I know I will have offended Byronists, as there is no evidence that Byron ever behaved as he said he does here; but my aim was to be, as Jane Austen had Elizabeth call Darcy, a “teasing, teasing [wo]man.”  For the sake of Lord Byron’s reputation, I state:  this is fiction!  What would you have had them talk about, had they met?