Midshipman price at Trafalgar.

McMaster, Juliet

WHEN I WAS WORKING in a private archive, I came across a collectors' item that had been carefully preserved: a copy of The Times of November 7, 1805, containing the first full public account of the Battle of Trafalgar and the death of Admiral Nelson, in the form of copies of dispatches to the Admiralty, "from Vice-Admiral Collingwood, Commander in Chief of his Majesty's ships and vessels off Cadiz" (2). The Times of those days was a simple affair of a folded folio sheet, four pages in all. (1)

Collingwood's accounts have been mined by naval historians and elaborated in the dozens of books on Trafalgar that came out for the 2005 centenary celebrations. But there was one small item in that issue of The Times that has a special resonance for readers of Jane Austen, most especially for readers of Mansfield Park. It appears on the third page, in the bottom right corner, under the heading "NELSON'S LAST MOMENTS," and it includes accounts of other heroes of Trafalgar:

 A midshipman, of the name of PRICE was brought into the cockpit,
 with his leg cut off at the calf; he was an heroic youth of 17.
 The Surgeons could not attend him at the moment. He drew out a
 knife, and cut off a piece of flesh and the splinter of bone with
 great composure. "I can stay," said he; "let me doctor myself."
 When the surgeon attended him, it was found necessary to amputate
 above the knee. He submitted to the operation without a groan. "It
 is nothing at all," I thought it had been ten times worse. (2)

What a tale of courage and sangfroid! The account, with the hero's selfless undertaking, "I can stay," surely recalls the legend of Sir Philip Sidney; who, mortally wounded, still passed a cup of water to a dying soldier with the words, "Thy necessity is greater than mine." Like Sidney, this Midshipman Price was a hero to be remembered.

To what extent can we attach this account of a historical Midshipman Price to Jane Austen's midshipman, William Price of Mansfield Park?

We can be sure that the Austen family would have been eager readers of this Times report of Trafalgar, even though, to his lasting disappointment, Frank Austen had missed the fray (Southam 95). We know that Fanny Price's brother William, another Midshipman Price, is also heroic, with "good principles, professional knowledge, energy, courage, and cheerfulness" (MP 236). Moreover, if we accept Chapman's 1808-09 dating for the action of the novel (Wiltshire xliii), (3) William Price could well have been present at Trafalgar, for he has been "seven years" at sea (though he would be somewhat older than the historical midshipman's 17 years) and has "known every variety of danger, which sea and war together could offer" (236).

Should we understand Austen's William Price to be that heroic midshipman Price at Trafalgar and conclude that for once Jane Austen decided to mix history with fiction, in the manner of her great contemporary Walter Scott? No. It's a tempting speculation, but no. William Price at Mansfield Park, however like his historical namesake in courage and cheerfulness, is sound of body; with the full complement of limbs. And that's just as well, because he has a pleasure in dancing that matches that of Austen's sailor brother Charles (Southam 63).

I happen to have my own family connection to Trafalgar (I'm a collateral descendant of one Midshipman Louis Fazan on board the Achilles); so that in reading the Times report "I found my heart moved more than wit a Trumpet," as Sidney says (32). So I like to think that Austen too had read that report of the stoic Midshipman Price, and that his story might have had some influence in her choice of a name for her heroine's seafaring family.

WORKS CITED

Austen, Jane. Mansfield Park. Ed. R.W. Chapman. The Novels of Jane Austen. London: Oxford UP, 1953.

Sidney, Philip. Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie. Ed. J. Churton Collins. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1955.

Southam, Brian. Jane Austen and the Navy. London: Hambledon, 2000.

Wiltshire, John. "Introduction." Mansfield Park. The Cambridge Edition of Jane Austen. Cambridge: CUP, 2005. xxv-lxxxiv.

NOTES

(1.) After hearing John Wiltshire's fine paper on the contexts of Mansfield Park at the Tucson AGM, I provided a comment on this Times report on a heroic Midshipman Price; and the interest it stirred made me decide to make the information available to the readers of Persuasions.

(2.) The anomaly in punctuation at the end, where the quotation marks close before the speech is completed, is in the original.

(3.) B. C. Southam's dating of 1812-13 for the main action of the novel (Wiltshire xliii) would bring William Price into the navy in the same year as Trafalgar.

Juliet McMaster, University Professor Emerita at the University of Alberta, is the author of books on Thackeray, Trollope, and Dickens, and of Jane Austen the Novelist. A frequent speaker at JASNA meetings, she is also the co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, and the founder of the Juvenilia Press.