concerned speculation and types of capitalism. Can what is now called neoliberalism work for everyone in society or will it benefit only the few? Is speculation inevitably precarious? Is profit alone ever a worthy motive? Would the country prosper most under a laissez-faire system or should there always be welfare and paternalistic controls, so that development does not despoil an organic community? How does the constant need to buy new things, to enjoy purchasing then throwing away, impact on society and its traditional crafts? How does consumption affect morality? Under the urge to buy and sell, will the country dwindle into tourist haunts and shopping malls?
The Empire too was controversial. Was the home economy skewed by wealth coming from the colonies or was the Empire a drain on the Mother Country?
The characters in Sanditon debate these questions from their differing social positions – though they resemble each other in all being well-to-do. The traditional, stay-at-home landowner Mr Heywood (who however has his London investments paying ‘dividends’) is kind and welcoming to a stranger of his class, but he keeps the lower orders in their place. He leaves lanes beyond his house unpatched and his tenant cottages, pretty enough on the outside, unmodernised. Change erodes class divisions, he believes, and disturbs the tested ways of the past. The new resorts are bad for everyone because they cause inflation: they raise prices and ‘make the poor good for nothing’.
Mr Parker, the traveller and projector, disagrees with this reactionary view. He accepts the working of the market place: it may disturb the old order, turning traditional fishermen and farmers into commercial sellers, but the new economy in the long run will benefit all. He believes in what Adam Smith had termed ‘the invisible hand’, that capitalist activity can benefit all. When the rich spend, they ‘excite the industry of the poor and diffuse comfort and improvement among them’. Rich and poor are symbiotic: butchers, bakers and traders cannot prosper without ‘bringing prosperity to us’. In many respects, however, Mr Parker remains an old-fashioned gentleman and his capitalism is tempered. The rich have a duty to support the unfortunate poor, and he cares for and patronises his unsuccessful traders as once he cared for the tenants on his estate.
His partner, ‘mean-spirited’ Lady Denham, sides with Mr Heywood, wanting to retain the privilege, status and security of the old order. In her sitting room, Sir Harry Denham, baronet, has a full portrait in pride of place over the mantelpiece, while the untitled but moneyed Mr Hollis is present only in miniature. At the same time, she supports Mr Parker through greed, being avid for the spoils of the new order. Like Mr Heywood, she worries about inflation, believing that visitors raise prices of local produce. Propelled by ‘calculation’ and desire for instant profit, she opposes any move of Mr Parker’s that does not instantly bring in money or which has indirect consequences. A doctor in town would not simply attract invalids but also let servants and the poor fancy themselves ill. As Charlotte primly comments, Lady Denham degrades and makes mean those who depend on her – much like the inconstant and rich Mrs Ferrars in Sense and Sensibility.
Where did Jane Austen stand in the debate on speculation? The answer would depend on what fate she was proposing for Tom Parker of Sanditon. Perhaps he was heading for a crash, ominously foreshadowed in the opening pages by his overturned carriage. The very name of Sanditon recalls Jesus’s parable of the builders, in which the wise man builds a house on rock and the foolish one on sand, only to see it swept away by wind and water. The Parkers in their cliff-hugging Trafalgar House have already been rocked by storms unfelt in the valley. In the context of Jane Austen’s Anglican world view, it might have been better if Mr Parker had been seeking a parson for his unstable new town rather than a surgeon when he insisted on pushing his hired horses up the treacherous road in Willesden.
The two previous books Jane Austen wrote, Persuasion and Emma, both concern landowners and stewardship and subtly connect them with national stability. Given the criticism of Persuasion’s Sir Walter Eliot as a poor landlord who lets out his ancestral home, and praise for Mr Knightley, the good, traditional one in Emma, it might seem that Mr Parker, who has abandoned and rented out his family estate, set like Donwell Abbey in a sheltered valley (‘a hole’ Mr Parker calls it with ominous disrespect), is in the line of spendthrift Sir Walter.
Without a conclusive ending, where ideological clarity is often found and subversive tendencies summarily reined in, we cannot be certain. Perhaps Mr Parker is not intended as simply the butt of conservative satire. His energy is attractive, and the real sense of change and new order that blows through fresh and sparkling Sanditon makes Jane Austen’s view equivocal. The wind buffeting the cliff-top houses and deterring the timid lifts the spirits of those energetic enough to brave it – and, in Persuasion, similar sea wind restores bloom to the cheeks of drooping Anne Elliot. Although nothing suggests financial success for Sanditon, if Mr Parker does face a crash, perhaps he might be helped by his individually solvent siblings, especially the wealthy Sidney – rather than taking them down with him, as Henry had done his family. If Jane’s beloved brother is pressing against the character, it is hard to imagine generous, open-hearted and reckless Tom Parker quite humbled or condemned for his delusions.
The passion for salt water
The British love affair with sea cures began in earnest in 1753 with Dr Richard Russel’s A Dissertation on the Use of Sea-Water in the Diseases of the Glands. Believing in nature as the best healer, it claims that sea bathing eases stiff joints and helps against tuberculosis, leprosy, venereal diseases and ulcers. Sea water has the healing qualities of ‘Saltness’, ‘Bitterness’,‘Nitrosity’ and ‘Oilyness’.
By ‘bathing’ is not meant ‘swimming’, especially enjoyed by men and boys, but ‘dipping’ for a minute or two in the cold sea water from a horse-drawn wooden box or machine. This dipping for health was undertaken by both sexes, especially if they were ‘lax fibred’. For ladies, the box had a canvas modesty hood to avoid anyone seeing the bather. The contraption cost a shilling to hire and was trundled, rather uncomfortably, into the sea. Inside the box, the lady – a gentleman could dip in the nude – changed from ordinary clothes into a flannel bathing costume, attended by a ‘dipper’ who might well be fierce in ‘helping’ her patient put her body into the freezingly cold sea to ‘charge the system’.
From mid-century on, claims for sea bathing accelerated: Dr Robert Squirrel declared it efficacious for ‘Indigestion, Gout, Fever, Jaundice, Dropsy, Haemorrhages, Violent Evacuations, or any other disorder’, while ‘inspiring’ or breathing sea air recovered health more than breathing anywhere inland. The literature dwelt on miracles. A Mr Sanguinetta, paralysed from the head down, took regular dips at Margate, then ‘threw away his second crutch, and walked with a cane, took up his German flute and played’. He fathered seven children.
Coloured etching by William Heath, c. 1829
Nearer home, Jane Austen’s glamorous cousin Eliza de Feuillide, future wife of Henry Austen, carried her ailing young son to Margate for a cure in December and January, having been told that ‘one month’s bathing at this time of the Year was more efficacious than six at any other’. Remarkably, the child survived: ‘The Sea has strengthened him wonderfully & I think has likewise been of great service to myself, I still continue bathing notwithstanding the severity of the Weather & Frost & Snow which is I think somewhat courageous.’ Although it is summer in Sanditon, delicate Miss Lambe from the West Indies will still find the sea immensely cold when she finally goes through the box into the water, with vigorous Diana Parker beside her to ‘keep up her spirits’.
After half a century of seaside puffing, some medical men tried to moderate
