Has the Bank of England governor actually read Pride and Prejudice? As Mark Carney posed in front of an enlarged mock-up of the design for the new £10 note, he spoke of Austen's greatness and indicated that there would be due attention to diversity in the choice of future bank-note characters. It was a small PR triumph for the new man at the top.
Yet surely there has been a blunder. The new note displays an image of Austen based on the only certain surviving portrait of her, a drawing by her sister Cassandra. Fine. It also blazons forth some of the great writer's immortal words. You can imagine being the Bank of England employee given the task of finding the telling Austen quotation. Something about reading, perhaps? A quick text search in Pride and Prejudice turns up just the thing: "I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!"
The trouble is that these words are spoken by one of Austen's most deceitful characters, a woman who has no interest in books at all: Caroline Bingley. She is sidling up to Mr Darcy, whom she would like to hook as a husband, and pretending that she shares his interests. He is reading a book, so she sits next to him and pretends to read one too. She is, Austen writes, "as much engaged in watching Mr Darcy's progress through his book, as in reading her own" and "perpetually either making some inquiry, or looking at his page". He will not be distracted, so "exhausted by the attempt to be amused with her own book, which she had only chosen because it was the second volume of his", she gives a great yawn and says the words that will appear on the bank note.
She is interested in books in one way. She and her brother are nouveaux riches, who have inherited their wealth from a father who was "in trade". Now they have a big rented house – but no books to put in it. You can display your status with an impressive library (Mr Darcy has one), so she is keen that her brother procure some volumes as soon as possible. "When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library." But she won't be reading any of its contents.
Duplicated many million times on the banknote will be a line in praise of reading that, comically, could only be used by someone who didn't mean a word of it. Time for a campaign to use a different quotation?
