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Passage Illustrated: Mr. Elton out of sorts on such a broiling morning

“When I got to Donwell,” said he, “Knightley could not be found. Very odd! very unaccountable! after the note I sent him this morning, and the message he returned, that he should certainly be at home till one.”

“Donwell!” cried his wife. — “My dear Mr. E., you have not been to Donwell! — You mean the Crown; you come from the meeting at the Crown.”

“No, no, that’s to-morrow; and I particularly wanted to see Knightley to-day on that very account. — Such a dreadful broiling morning! — I went over the fields too — (speaking in a tone of great ill-usage,) which made it so much the worse. And then not to find him at home! I assure you I am not at all pleased. And no apology left, no message for me. The housekeeper declared she knew nothing of my being expected. — Very extraordinary! — And nobody knew at all which way he was gone. Perhaps to Hartfield, perhaps to the Abbey Mill, perhaps into his woods. — Miss Woodhouse, this is not like our friend Knightley! — Can you explain it?” [Chapter LII, 411-412]

Commentary: Poor Mr. Elton! Knightly has not apprised him of the scheme to move to Hartfield

In Chapter LII, we have apparently shifted from considering the impact of the impending marriage upon Emma and Knightley to the flustered, egocentric Mr. Elton, who that morning had gone on foot through the fields from Highbury to Donwell Abbey to see Knightley, who was (inexplicably) not at home. Unable t confer with the great landowner and magistrate, Elton returns to his wife in town quite dispirited, partly because Knightley had left no message for him with the housekeeper. That the Rev. Philip Elton found Larkins out of humour as he approached the house suggests that Knightley has already broached to his estate manager the subject of his removal to the Woodhouses’.

Related Material

• Illustrations of the novel by Charles Edmund Brock (1906)
• A Review-Essay of Film Adaptations of Jane Austen's Novels from 1940 to 1997

Bibliography

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.

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.

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