Open Writing

We all know the most famous opening lines in the whole of English literature.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

We all know it because we watch Mastermind or University Challenge. We probably don’t know it because we go to Quiz Night at The Royal Oak, though we would if we attended similar events at The Athenaeum. If they have such things, that is.

We know that these are the opening lines of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

What we don’t know - well, most of us don’t know - is that Jane Austen never wrote them. What actually happened was this.

Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813, but she finished writing it seventeen or eighteen years earlier when she was twenty years old. She had earlier written stories and playlets for the entertainment of her family and never had any intention of giving Pride and Prejudice a wider audience. She told her sister Cassandra something about it and, at her insistence, read to her extracts from the work in progress, at that time called First Impressions.

Cassandra was eager to make her own suggestions and contributions, most of which Jane found either too fanciful or too vulgar to accept. Cassandra, for instance, more than once expressed the view that the work needed an arresting opening sentence and suggested: When a man has got a lot of money, he often wastes it on drink and gambling, but if he gets married he cannot do that.

“I think not, Cass,” said Jane. “But thank you anyway.”

“Why not?” asked her sister.

“Because I write literature, dear, and, believe me, what you have suggested doesn’t fall into that category.”

“But it’s true”

“That’s as may be, but truth alone is not enough. It has to be dressed up.”

“You’re being a bit precious about this writing stuff, Janie. After all, it’s only a book.”

“It’s not ‘only a book’. And don’t call me Janie.”

Then they both sniffed and started to talk about something else.

Jane often reminded her sister that she was free to write her own stories, which would be better than commenting critically on her own work. She was particularly incensed by the pettiness of some of her remarks.

“I don’t think Daneford-Yersley is a good name for this family you’re writing about. Sounds too, well, pretentious,” said Cassandra.

”So you would call them ...?”

“Something much more simple, say, Robinson or - I know! - Bennet. That’s it: Bennet. That would fit in very nicely, I think. Certainly not Daneford-Yersley. People would laugh at that.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, now that you mention it, you’ve got your Mr Daneford-Yersley hiding in his greenhouse in the garden to get away from his women.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“A greenhouse, Janie! A cold, wet place in inclement weather. No. A study would be a better place, don’t you think?.”

“No, I don’t think so, Cass. And I keep telling you not to call me Janie.”

But, as we know, she took some notice of her sister’s views. In fact, she took a lot of notice of them.

That is why instead of Edward Batbroke we have William Collins, instead of Baroness Mountkreisen we have Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Sir Denzil Potts became plain George Wickham.

There was considerable discussion about the man we now know (and either love or hate) as Fitzwilliam Darcy, who, at various times, was plain John Smith (believe it or not), Roderick Random (an invention of which Jane was particularly proud until she was told by Cassandra that someone had got there first), the Earl of Strawberry (a very short-lived conceit) and Romany Pertwee. The last occasioned heated argument between the girls, Jane defending the name on the grounds that it sounded ‘grand, aristocratic and at the same time mysterious’ and Cassandra condemning it as ‘ludicrous, redolent of the gutter and the unwashed classes of society’.

Other changes to the original manuscript came about until the tension between the two reached a point when Jane, believing, as she put it, that ‘enough is enough’ obstinately refused to make any more concessions and despatched her sister with the final text to the publisher John Murray, already impatient to start the printing process.

Which was the point at which that famous first line was created.

Cassandra was anxious that First Impressions should be a huge success, but feared that her sister’s obduracy was standing in the way. She set out for London with the manuscript, which she read carefully during the journey. She stayed overnight with a distant cousin in Southwark and it was there that she effected the change she had been thinking about for some time.

She looked at her notes and pondered long over When a man has got a lot of money, he often wastes it on drink and gambling, but if he gets married he cannot do that.

“No,” she said to herself. “Not elegant enough. A true and alluring thought, but too crude for our readers.” Although she was alone, she smiled proudly at the words ‘our readers’. It was half an hour and several redrafts before she was satisfied with the words we have today, nearly two hundred years after she wrote them.

It was some weeks later that Jane had a letter from John Murray in which he congratulated her on her latest work, expressing particular satisfaction with the opening. “Your genius shines through those first lines,” he wrote enthusiastically, “and goes on to inform the rest of the book. It is in the detail that you excel - the names of the characters, the precisely observed minutiae of their lives and thoughts. I am, as ever, lost in admiration.”

“Cass,” said Jane over breakfast as she read the letter. “Do you know anything about this?”

“About what, Janie?”

“Don’t call .. Oh, never mind.”

She paused for a moment.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said thoughtfully. “I think I’d like to write a book about a young woman who’s a bit of a matchmaker.”

“Oh, yes ! That would be fun, “ said her sister. “She could be called ... “

She paused.

“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to interfere.”

“No, I‘d like your advice, Cass. What sort of a name do you think she should have. Julia? Sarah?”

“Oh, no. You want something down to earth, simple, a name people can warm to right from the start. What about Emma?”