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‘Oh, now you are looking very sly’
Hugh Thomson
1905
Photomechanical reproduction of a pen-and-ink drawing
12 by 8.5 cm (4 ⅜ by 3 ⅝ inches), vignetted
Jane Austen, Emma, facing page 311.
See below for passage illustrated and commentary.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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“Oh! leave all that to me. Only give me a carte-blanche. — I am Lady Patroness, you know. It is my party. I will bring friends with me.”
“I hope you will bring Elton,” said he: “but I will not trouble you to give any other invitations.”
“Oh! now you are looking very sly. But consider — you need not be afraid of delegating power to me. I am no young lady on her preferment. Married women, you know, may be safely authorised. It is my party. Leave it all to me. I will invite your guests.”
“No,” — he calmly replied, — “there is but one married woman in the world whom I can ever allow to invite what guests she pleases to Donwell, and that one is —”
“— Mrs. Weston, I suppose,” interrupted Mrs. Elton, rather mortified.
“No — Mrs. Knightley; — and till she is in being, I will manage such matters myself.” [Chapter XLII, pp. 318-319 ]
In the middle of June, with good weather for exploring the region around Highbury, the newly-arrived Mrs. Elton must endure the inconvenience of a lame carriage-horse: "Mrs. Elton's resources were inadequate to such an attack" (318). However, Mr. Knightley offers her the delightful and far simpler course of exploring his Donwell Abbey estate, where they might readily organise a strawberry picking expedition, followed by dinner — inside the great house rather than al fresco in order to induce Mr. Woodhouse to make one of the party. Mrs. Elton tries to take the opportunity to take complete charge of an early summer Highbury social event, which Knightley broaches to her at the vicarage.
The scheming Mrs. Elton looks archly at Knightley in the illustration as she tells him to delegate the organisation to her, and although his remark about inviting only her and the Reverend Philip Elton amounts to a rejection of her offer (and indeed she is "rather mortified"), this is softened by his saying that one day he will indeed allow a married woman to take charge of such an event — his future wife. The artist does not permit us to judge the expression on Knightley's face, but Mrs. Elton describes it as humorous.
The reader wonders how Emma, growing more and more critical of Mrs. Elton, will respond to news of this forthcoming strawberry "gypsy party."
Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. Austin Dobson. With forty pen-and-ink illustrations by Hugh Thomson. The Novels of Jane Austen. London: Macmillan, 1896, rpt. 1905.
Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. R. Brimley Johnson. With coloured illustrations by C. E. Brock. The Novels and Letters of Jane Austen. 2 vols. New York & Philadelphia: Frank S. Holby, 1906. 2 vols.
Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. George Justice. 4th edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011.
Austen, Jane. Emma: An Annotated Edition. Ed. Bharat Tandon. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard U. P., 2012.
Last modified 30 May 2026