You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.

Guess what, Mango?

What's that?

Well?

All right, let's say I invite you over for ice cream and give you a dessert spoon to eat it with.

I also offer you coffee from a coffee urned.

So who would we be celebrating here?

Mango?

Can I have another clue?

Sure, if you don't want a coffee, I'll serve you tea with a tea ladle, which.

Sounds nice, but I still have no idea what you're talking about.

You get one more clue, Mega, You know I never get more than three clues.

So I'm throwing this party for someone who's two hundred and fiftieth birthday just so happens to be on December sixteenth.

Jane Austen nailed at mango, You're so smart.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Austin was the first person to use these terms in writing.

She didn't necessarily coin them, but she definitely helped codify them.

For example, the dessert spoon first appeared in a letter she wrote back in eighteen oh eight.

Apparently no one had ever bothered writing about dessert spoons before.

In fact, the OED credits her with around two hundred different words, and they run the gamut from the verb to chaperone.

The noun existed before that, but she verbed it.

Have you ever verbed something?

I have?

Pretty impressively.

So to the phrase if I've told you once, I've told you one hundred times, which I think is like the eternal mom phrase.

Right, that's pretty amazing that what Austin actually wrote was if I have spoken once to Rebecca about that carpet.

I am sure I have spoken at least a dozen times, but you know it's the gist.

Yeah, that carpet.

Second, well, thank you to Jane Austen for all of those terms.

But uh, you know, I definitely used the if I've told you once a bit, quite a bit, but I don't really talk about coffee earns something.

No, not me either, but it's just nice to know they're out there.

But today we have eight more facts about the Great Jane Austin in honor of her two hundred and fiftieth birthday, So let's dive in.

Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius.

I'm Will Pearson, and as always i'm here with my good friend Mangesh hot Ticketter and over there in the booth just brooding on a more as our friend and producer Dylan Fagan, just brooding.

It is remarkable how you fit that more backdrop into that booth, and also just how brooding he looks.

He really does it well, so will.

Today is a very special birthday celebration of Jane Austen.

And I'm cure, are you a fan?

Like, were you familiar with her work before we started working on this episode?

Don't you feel like there was sort of mandatory two three Jane Austen titles in AP English.

I don't know that I could recite much.

From them at this point, but I know we read a decent amount, how about you.

Yeah, I mean I have definitely skimmed Jane Austen.

I don't know if I've read Jane Austen, but my mom was a huge fan, so she and my sister had not only read everything, but like also watched every single PBS and BBC adaptation and there's so many of them, and then all the movies of course, and then the variations like A Clueless and whatever.

Yeah, but I do feel like she's one of those authors that you read too young in life.

Right, Yeah, let's make a commitment.

Let's return to Jane Austin after this episode in our sixties, right exactly.

But I actually remember this one time.

I was in Washington, DC and I was riding the Metro and I saw this guy who had clearly just worked out and was coming from the gym.

And he looked roided up to me, and he was like wearing a tank top, and he looked really gruff, and he was like tatted up, and he seemed so intimidating.

But I could tell he was reading a book.

And you know, I'm a curious cat.

There are also like so many people on the train that I was like kind of like poking around trying to figure out what he was reading.

And I finally caught a glimpse of the cover and it was Emma.

But it's perfect.

You're totally profiling this guy a picture.

You actually like climbing up over his muscles to see the book.

I remember thinking I like this guy more now.

Yeah, you know, anyway, let's get back to the fact.

So one thing I did not realize is that Jane Austen only completed six novels in her lifetime, oh way, and four of these were actually published anonymously, but she finished all her books in the same location, a place called Chotten Cottage.

Chotten Cottage is located, unsurprisingly in Chotten, Hampshire, which is a small village.

It's around fifty miles or so sod of London, and Jane lived there with her mom, her sister and her friend for eight years.

This was from eighteen oh nine until she died at the age of forty one in eighteen seventeen.

Now I noticed you said finished her novels there.

Does that mean she started them somewhere else?

She did.

She wrote the first drafts of three of her novels, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility in north Anger Abbey at Steventon House, the country home where she was born, but she finished those and also Mansfield Park, Persuasion and Emma all at Chotten and Shotten is actually a must visit spot for Austin fence.

It is maintained as her house museum and much of it has been restored to look like it would have been in the early eighteen hundreds.

The museum also holds many of Jane Austin's possessions like her jewelry, the first editions of her books, and one of my favorite things is the twelve sided wooden table where she worked at.

Gotta Love a Good Dodeca Gone Right, And besides writing these novels and letters at that she probably also used it to copy down some of her favorite piano scores.

You know, the Austin family and especially Jane, they were super into music.

In twenty fifteen, scholars at the University of Southampton digitized most of the Austin family music books collection and made them available to the public.

So they're around twenty volumes of music, and seven of them belonged specifically to Jane, including titles like Songs and Duets and Juvenile Songs and lessons for young beginners who don't know enough to practice.

That sort of reminds me of Derek Zulander's Well was School for kids who don't read good sort of thing.

This one's probably a little better than that.

But she actually copied out by hand.

That's amazing.

So this means she actually played piano.

She did, and this was a pretty common thing at the time, like the piano was considered an instrument that a woman of certain statures should know how to play, you know, to entertain a husband or potential guest.

Jane, however, did not play for company, but she did like to practice in the morning before anybody else woke up.

So what sort of stuff was she jamming on before anyone could wake up to hear it?

Well?

The family collection includes a lot of popular composers at the time, like friends Joseph Hayden, as well as you know folk songs like the Groves of Sweet Myrtle with lyrics by Scottish poet Robert Burns.

There's also some naval songs, which makes sense.

Jane had two brothers who served in the British Navy, and a song called Crazy Jane that scholars believe may have been actually a family joke.

Now, Jane may have played nursery rhymes for her nieces and nephews and sang for them too.

According to her family, she had a really nice singing voice, so even if she didn't perform them in public, music was a big part of her life.

Some experts actually say it influenced her writing too, like the rhythm of her language.

You can imagine that being the case.

Yeah, I believe that it's so funny though, like that she has a nice singing voice, like I've never thought about Jane Austen's voice.

Yeah yeah, And she could have like a terrible singing voice or ara, like, it wouldn't have been something I thought about.

Worn out.

But you know, I'm going to dedicate this next fact to Dylan, who's still over there rooting bad.

It's terrible, But it turns out that mister Darcy, the love interest of Elizabeth Bennett and Pride and Prejudice, may have been inspired by a real life nobleman that Jane knew.

So as a side note, I know mister Darcy is a beloved figure, So let me just issue the big caveat that all of this is conjecture and it's really on the part of Jane Austen scholars.

So I should also say there have been many possible contenders for this honor through the years, including a young, good looking and absolutely broke Irish law student.

His name was Thomas Lefroy, whom Jane met in the late seventeen hundreds.

It is unclear if they ever dated in the current sense of the term, like they made have gone on walks with things like that, but they definitely exchanged flirtatious letters, and whatever their situationship was.

It ended when Lefroy married a rich heiress instead.

Oh wow, Well, I'm not sure he deserved her anyway.

I know I don't think you did.

More recently, doctor Susan Law, a writer and Austin aficionado, came to believe that Darcy may have been based on a guy named John Parker, more commonly known as Lord Boringdon.

Now Jane knew Lord Boringdon through his second wife, Francis, who was a close friend of hers, but the word, at least in Southern England was that everyone kind of knew Lord Boringdon because of his very scandalous first marriage.

Okay, so you're saying Lord Boringdon was actually pretty interesting.

He definitely had a reputation as a ladies man.

Before he got married, he had a long and open affair with a married woman named Lady Elizabeth Monk, but she wouldn't leave her husband for him.

So Boringdon, who was in his thirties at this point, went ahead and married an eighteen year old named Augusta Faine.

But after a couple of years he started cheating on Augusta with a ballerina he'd met, and meanwhile, Lady Elizabeth was also back in the picture because she was still unwilling to fully cut things off with Lord Boringdon.

Man, that's pretty juicy, And.

It actually gets juicier because young Lady Augusta, she's aware her husband is, you know, Tom catting about, so she starts having an affair with a guy named Sir Arthur Paget.

And in a weird twist, Paget's brother is married to one of Lady Elizabeth's daughters.

But even more scandalous than that is that Paget is a college buddy of Lord Boringdon's.

Now I'm trying to keep up with this and to say, like, how weird that twist is, But I gotta be honest, I'm getting a little bit lost here.

So how about you just tell me if there's a happy ending to this?

There is?

Okay, good, Well, after finding out about Augusta's affair, Lord Boringdon divorced her, which was fined by her.

She actually got married to Sir Paget three days later, and a couple of months after that, Boringdon marries Jane's friend Francis, and to everyone surprised both of these marriages actually last.

All right, so you were talking about how Lord Boringdon could actually be the inspiration for mister Darcy.

Right, but if you remember, like, they don't sound anything alike.

So how is that?

Yeah, so the academics admit they don't have any actual proof of this, Like this Darcy comparison is based mostly on his appearance, even though the physical description of mister Darcy in the books is pretty minimal if you remember so.

Austin actually writes quote that he drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features and noble maine.

Apparently Lord Boringdon had all of those qualities, and because Jane was good friends with his second wife, she probably spent time with him and could have used this experience to inform her depiction of mister Darcy's a lore.

But here's a bonus Darcy fact for all of you Darcy lovers out there.

Colin Firth made a huge splash literally when he played the role in the nineteen nineties BBC mini series.

There is a famous scene where he goes swimming in the lake, and just last year, that same costume he wore in that scene sole at auction for twenty thousand pounds.

Wow, that's a lot of money for some like wet used clothes, but just goes to show people are passionate about these characters.

All Right, we have to take a quick break, but when we come back, we'll talk about Jane Austen's famous fans, the last piece she wrote, and so much more.

So stay tuned, Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're celebrating Jane Austen's two hundred and fiftieth birthday.

Yes, and before we get back into Jane Austin facts, I want to share one of the greatest facts a listener just sent us.

Remember you can get an official Part Time Genius membership card for free if you send us your name, your address, and a fun fact.

So Christine and Washington wrote in to tell us that according to microbiologist Peter Gurgis, the number of microbes in the world is ten to the twenty seventh power, and if you laid them all end to end, they'd be one hundred and five light years.

Wow, Christine, that's so impressive that you laid them all in to end.

That's it.

Those numbers are so big they.

Actually kind of make my brain hurt, but I actually love it when people send us facts and cite their sources, So so good on you, Christine.

I think the ven diagram of people who've listened to the show and people who appreciate footnotes is definitely a total circle.

So anyway, Christine, your membership card is on the way, and if you want one to all you other listeners, email us at high Geniuses at gmail dot com.

That's Hi Geniuses at gmail dot com.

You can also dm us on Instagram or blue Sky, or leave a voicemail at three O two four oh five five nine two five.

We cannot wait to hear from you and will Just so you know, we have friends of the show in Malaysia who sent us a photo of not only the membership cards but also the atomic fire we sent them, oh and they said it was too spicy for the kids, but.

Made it all the way in Malaysia.

That's fantastic.

Good job, and I love fireballs.

I've ever mentioned that before, I don't think so.

All right, So back to Jane Austin.

You know, one of the things that really struck me when I was doing the research for this episode was that despite her novel's popularity, she didn't make that much money from book sales while she was alive.

In fact, one scholar estimated that Austin made around six hundred and thirty one pounds before tax or five hundred and seventy five pounds after tax, which would work out to about fifty six thousand dollars in today's money.

Now.

Obviously, since then the books have sold a lot more, but it's safe to say that writing did not make Jane rich in her lifetime.

Part of the reason for this is that she died quite young.

Now, I remember, she was only forty one, and her debut novel, Since Insensibility, wasn't published until eighteen eleven, just six years before she died, and her last two novels were published posthumously, which means she was only alive to see four books published over the course of six years.

You know, I get all that, but I'm still kind of surprised that there was such little money involved.

Yeah.

Well, like many writers, she had a couple of less than favorable deals, particularly for her most popular book, Pride and Prejudice, which was first published in eighteen thirteen, and for whatever reason, she agreed to a one time payment of only one hundred and ten pounds.

The publisher, of course, made a lot more money than that, but by the time she died, her publisher had made more than four times what they'd paid for that book.

Luckily, she made better deals with her other novels.

Instead of a flat fee, she was able to get a percentage of her profits.

But there was one other snag to this.

The profits for her fourth novel, Emma, were tied to a reprint of her third novel, Mansfield Park, and although Mansfield Park's first edition sold well, the second edition did not.

Because of that, she wound up only making about thirty eight pounds on Emma, and she died before she could see any additional money from that.

That is insane.

You know, it's funny.

They seem like such unglamorous and contemporary problems like negotiating contracts and tracking book sales.

But you know, lucky for us, that did not stop Austin from writing, especially because it's fun to see how her fan base has grown, Like did you know that Dwayne Wade, the NBA star is a huge fan Musician BB King and Kelly Clarkson, they are just massive.

Jane Austin fans.

I did not know that.

No.

Kelly Clarkson is such a big fan that she bought one of Austin's rings at auction in twenty twelve, but the Brits weren't happy about it, leaving the country.

In fact, so much so that after Clarkson won this auction, the UK government put a temporary ban on the rings export, which gave enough time for other fans, presumably British ones, to raise enough money to buy the ring from Clarkson and give it to Jane Austen's House museum, where it still is today.

You know, it's also impossible to overstate the impact Jane Austin had on English culture.

Her books were actually given to British soldiers in World War One to help recover from PTSD.

Oh interesting, yeah, and along similar lines.

After Rodyard Kipling's son was killed in the First World War, he actually read Austin's novels to his wife and daughter as a bit of levity and solace during their grief.

And in nineteen twenty four Kipling wrote a short story called The Jay Knights.

It's about a soldier serving in France during World War One.

He finds out about this secret club, the Society of the Jay Knights, which he can join, but he's only allowed entry after he reads every single one of Austin's novels.

So he starts reading them, and he really isn't into it at first.

He has this great line where he says her books quote, weren't adventurous, nor smutty, nor what you'd even call interest in.

But he gets through them all.

He passes the Society's tests and he is officially accepted.

But the companionship he finds in the society, plus all their conversations about Jane Austin, actually helped him get through the dilace.

And then when their bases attack, the guy gets wounded and he's struggling to board this crowded hospital train and he meets a nurse and quotes Jane Austen to her and she recognizes it and then takes pity on him and gets him on the train.

And so Jane Austen in this book saves his life.

Wow.

Yeah.

Towards the end of the story, he says, quote, I read all her six books now for pleasure.

You take it for me, brethren.

There's no one to touch Jane when you're in a tight place.

That's actually pretty sweet, even though it's a funny quote.

I mean.

One of the things that soldiers might have been drawn to was Austin's distinctive style of writing, especially her use of something literary scholars call free indirect discourse.

You know, it's one of those styles that you may be familiar with now you may see it pretty frequently.

She didn't invent this style, but actually she was one of the first writers to use it, so, you know, consistently and effectively, and that's when you know it really pulls you into the inner lives of her characters.

Actually read one paper that described it as kind of like a kind of ventriloquism by the narrator.

So it allows Austin, as the third person, omniscient narrator, to dip in and out of the character's inner dialogue and thoughts, which makes you feel like you understand them and know them a little bit better.

Here's actually an example from Emma, which is about a young woman who has, you know, shall we say, an unwarranted confidence in her ability to read a romantic situation.

And so early on there's this scene where Emma and a guy named Frank are alone together We the readers already know that Emma thinks Frank is in love with her, but we also understand Emma may not be seeing everything so clearly.

So Austin, you know, kind of plays with this.

So here's what she says.

He stopped again, rose again and seemed quite embarrassed.

He was more in love with her than Emma had supposed.

And who can say how it might have ended if his father had not made his appearance.

So it's kind of subtle, and that bit more in love with her than Emma had supposed.

Like that's Emma's voice, not the narrators.

That's exactly right, and like all of our own inner voices, it doesn't always assess the situation accurately, because later in the novel, Emma will learn that no, Frank is not in love with her.

And even if we the readers already know this, we get to be part of the drama as she starts to kind of figure this out.

Free and direct discourse lets us empathize with a character but laugh at them a little bit at the same time.

Well, on a sado topic, we should talk about how Jane Austen died.

And the thing is even today, no one knows the cause.

Her sister destroyed most of Jane's letters, anything that talked about medical stuff, So all we have to go on are some known symptoms, and one of them was discoloration of her skin, plus some of the contextual clues.

Over the years, many scholars have aligned with the belief that she died from Addison's disease, which is an autoimmune disease that affects your adrenal glands, but other speculations have ranged from tuberculosis to various cancers including hotgkin lymphoma or lupus, or even complications from drinking raw milk.

I mean, that's not the laugh at it, but that's a really wide assortment of potentially fatal conditions here.

So I don't know that we really know.

Yeah, we didn't really narrow it down, and these are obviously all theories.

But one possibility that stuck out to me was arsenic poisoning.

Oh really, all right, like an Agatha Christie novel.

So where does that theory come from?

Yeah, So, about a decade or so ago, the British Library was given three pairs of Jane Austen's eyeglasses, or at least the family says they were hers, right, and they were found in her desk.

The library was surprised to learn that each pair had a different prescription and quite a bit stronger than the last, meaning if these are the glasses of one person, it suggests that Austin's vision deteriorated really rapidly in the last couple of years of her life.

The library spoke to an optometrist who also took a look and said, well, one reason that her vision got so bad so quickly could be cataracts, and that's odd for someone who's so young.

And something that can cause that is arsenic poisoning.

I mean, I get that, but that also feels like a lot of hypothesizing.

Yeah, I mean, the library was quick to add that they weren't suggesting she'd been murdered, but also, arsenic was found in water and medication, even wallpaper back then, so arsenic poisoning actually wasn't that uncommon for the time, and it also comes with unusual facial pigmentation.

So it's a theory.

It's not a sure thing.

That said, I'm sure it could inspire like a really great bestseller if someone took it up.

Yeah, that's true, all right, we got one fact left.

So to close this out, I want to tell you about the very last thing she wrote.

Wasn't a story or even a letter.

It was actually a poem.

So what was the poem about?

All right?

Well?

Jane died on July eighteenth, eighteen seventeen, in Winchester, which is a town near Chawton.

She and her sister had rented a room there to be closer to medical care.

July fifteenth, just a few days before she died, happened to be a big day for Winchester.

It was not only the feast day of Saint swithin the patron saying of winch Chester Cathedral.

It was also the Winchester Races, which sound pretty fun and fancy, and you know, these folks would come dressed up in their nicest clothes and parade around town.

Besides the horse races, there were fairs, There were balls, public breakfasts, lots of musical performances, just this big celebration.

But there was also this religious element to it, and Jane wrote about that juxtaposition in her poem.

She wrote about Winchester's crappy summer weather because there's a superstition that if it rains on Saint Swithin's day, it'll rain for forty more days, which sounds very Groundhog Day like, exactly right, except worse and way more British, I guess.

So.

Anyway, in the poem, Saint Swiften shows up in Winchester and is annoyed that everyone's more focused on the festivities than on him, so he curses the city with bad weather, effectively raining on their parade.

So I'll read you a few lines which he writes from Saint Swithin's perspective.

All right, here it is these races and revels and dissolute measures with which you're debasing a name.

Bring Plaine, let them stand.

You'll meet with.

Your curse and your pleasures set all for your course.

I'll pursue with my reign.

You know, I'd have thought Jane Austen would be more interested in all the like flirting and fun at the social festivities than the religious aspect of this thing.

Although I mean, I guess her dad was a clergyman.

Right, Yeah, her dad and her grandfather actually they were both Church of England clergy so you're right, there's not much explicitly religious content in her novels, but it was a big part of her life.

Her family went to church and prayed together.

Jane read the Bible and other common religious texts of the day, and some of the values she upholds in her novels fit right in with the Enlightenment era church, things like honesty, charity, duty, and good character.

So if you ever visit Winchester, do Jane Austin a favor.

Don't get so caught up in the fun that you forget Saint Swiften.

Oh I'll never forget so that either ever.

Again.

We are taking a break next week for Christmas, so we'll be sharing a fun holiday themed episode from the vault, but be sure to tune in on December thirtieth for the forty fourth annual Part Time Genius Awards.

Forty four.

Yeah.

It is one of our favorite traditions and has been for a very long time apparently, and a great way to close out the year, so please don't miss it.

This episode was written by the wonderful of Marissa Brown.

Thank you so much, Marissa, and from Will Dylan, Gabe, Mary and myself.

Thank you so much for listener.

Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.

It is hosted by my good pal will Pearson, who I've known for almost three decades now.

That is insane to me.

I'm the Utaco host, Mangeshatikular aka Mango.

Our producer is Mary Phillips Sandy.

She's actually a super producer.

I'm going to fix in post.

Our writer is Gabe Lucier, who I've also known for like a decade at this point, maybe more.

Dylan Fagan is in the booth.

He is always dressed up, always cheering us on, and always ready to hit record and then mix the show after he does a great job.

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