Miss Bates Bobs Her HairELINOR LIPMAN
“Oh! very well,” exclaimed Miss Bates; “then I need not be uneasy. ‘Three things very dull indeed.’ That will just do for me, you know. I shall be sure to say three dull things as soon ever I open my mouth, shan’t I?—(looking round with the most good-humoured dependence on everybody’s assent)—Do not you all think I shall?”
Emma could not resist.
“Ah! ma’am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me—but you will be limited as to number—only three at once.”
Miss Bates, deceived by the mock ceremony of her manner, did not immediately catch her meaning; but, when it burst on her, it could not anger, though a slight blush showed that it could pain her.
“Ah!—well—to be sure. Yes, I see what she means… and I will try to hold my tongue. I must make myself very disagreeable, or she would not have said such a thing to an old friend.”
Jane Austen,Emma
My choice of Miss Bates is embarrassingly pragmatic:Emmawas my oldest and most tattered Austen, a paperback published by Washington Square Press in 1966. I knew I could make notes in its margins, highlight, and underline without feeling guilty. Inside the book was a clipping that advertised the PBS showThe American Short Story. Among its adapted titles was “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” broadcast in 1976. That was that. A fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald’sCollected Stories, of alliteration, of underdogs, and of happy endings, I chose to write about Miss Bates.
In real life, could there be a more annoying woman than the one ridiculed on the uncharitable pages ofEmma?
I believe not. Most regrettably, that character’s name is Miss Bates, and unfortunately she is me.
Her ceaseless prattling is an exaggeration, a composite, an unfair fiction created by Miss Jane Austen, who—as she writes about her eponymous heroine—“is used to having too much her own way and a disposition to think a little too well of herself.”
But it is my honour to announce that, with the help of Emma Woodhouse herself, literature’s most famous matchmaker, my goodwill and contented temper vouchsafed a happy ending: mine.
As a devoted reader of novels, I was no stranger to romance. Could a handsome, God-fearing, landowning man with a fine house—with gardens, servants, a handsome coach—ever ask for my hand? Didn’t every heroine deserve a happy ending?
I was less and less hopeful.
The middle of my life had been devoted to the care of my mother. We lived in a very small way, in reduced circumstances. My clothes were hand-me-downs, offered to me, the late vicar’s daughter, by widowers eager to make room for their new wives’ frocks.
Despite Mother and me being the second or third tier of Highbury society, we were frequent guests at the Woodhouses’ stately home, Hartfield. If I was at times “a great talker upon little matters,” it was merely nerves, due to the privilege and possibilities of spending time with Highbury’s grandest family.
When Mother died, and after a proper period of mourning, I was able to resume social intercourse. I often sat down to cards with Mr. Woodhouse, who fancied himself neglected by hisdaughters, fretting over all matters large and small. His was a nervous system that made no sense because older daughter Isabella was safe and happy in London, and Emma and her lovely husband, Mr. George Knightley, stayed at Hartfield after their wedding to keep her father sane.
It was these paternal anxieties that gave the Woodhouse daughters ideas. I sensed a campaign underway: to make Miss Bates their father’s boon companion. I did not resist, having experienced, to my surprise, urges that were new to me, sitting opposite the widowed master of this great house.
At first I thought it was just Emma atoning for a slip of the tongue, a rather famous barb that humiliated me in public and on the page: the unpleasantness on Box Hill. But amends were made with softer words, with subsequent visits, and with sweet cake. Given my lesser social standing and my proclivity for forgiveness, I was hardly going to hold a grudge.
The daughters set to work. If they could turn their father’s gaze onto me in a less platonic fashion, the first hurdle was my appearance. I had tried on my own, adding bows to my bodices and aromatic herbs to my wrists. It wasn’t enough. Emma’s mother had been a beauty. I knew this because a portrait of the late Mrs. Woodhouse in lavender silk and Alençon lace, with ropes of pearls and with Emma’s luxurious yellow hair, painted by the talented Mr. Gainsborough of Bath, greeted visitors in the entrance hall, dampening the nuptial hopes of many female visitors.
Luckily, considering their father’s age and idiosyncrasies, Emma and her sister realized that he had no need for a wife who turned other men’s heads. Miss Bates would do.
Still, I required enhancement.
The word that best describes the rites and rituals I was obliged to undertake would be amakeover. It started with clothes. Enoughtime mourning in black; enough linen and wool and muslin as evening wear!
When they led me to their late mother’s closet, I protested. Wouldn’t Mr. Woodhouse recognize the provenance of these gowns and question my judgment?
No, he would not, they insisted. Pishposh. He was the last man in Highbury to notice what a woman was wearing.
“Then what is the point?” I asked.
They prevailed. The vintage dresses were still beautiful, the fabrics luxurious. Adjustments were needed, gussets added; voile panels stitched above the immodest necklines.
But it was my hair that provoked the most discussion. It had never been cut. My life could be measured in pigmentation, from the original chestnut (as my kind papa had described it) to duller and duller browns, and, now prevailing, brown streaked with gray. Emma, frowning, asked what I did with these braided ropes when I took to my bed at night? I admitted that so much heavy hair gave me headaches. But what does one do with it?
“It must be cut, and cut right,” Emma ordered, and then, more softly, “it does you no favours.”
How and by whom? It was Mr. Knightley’s idea that we go to London. Surely someone who dressed the hair of gentlemen would cut a woman’s, too. He wrote to Mr. Frank Churchill, whose journey the sixteen miles from Highbury to London for a haircut had been cited as an example of his vanity and profligacy. But needs must. An obliging letter arrived with our answer: a Mr. Fletcher on St. George Street, off Hanover Square.
