In this season of brutal political combat, it’s consoling to remember back to a less conflict-ridden past. And so it is that I felt a twinge of nostalgia recently when I ran across a reference to a famous Janeite of yesteryear—the late First Lady Barbara Bush.
Bush’s Austen fandom was no secret: At her 2018 funeral, the officiant imagined her in heaven, asking Austen herself for updates on the Darcy marriage. (As I noted at the time, he also highlighted a most . . . unfortunate Austen quotation. Well, we can’t all be Janeites. Although—why not?)
Apparently, Bush passed her Austenian enthusiasm down to at least one of her descendants--her granddaughter Jenna Bush Hager, a daughter of former President George W. Bush. Hager co-hosts the fourth hour of NBC’s Today show, and for the past five years, she has run a virtual book club, Read With Jenna, highlighting one title each month. This November, she picked a contemporary Mansfield Park update, This Motherless Land, by the Nigerian-British novelist Nikki May.
In addition to praising May’s book, whose protagonist is a biracial Nigerian girl sent to live with wealthy relatives in England, Hager also explained one of the reasons she feels an affinity for Austenesque titles.
“My grandmother Barbara was a huge fan of Jane Austen,” Hager told the Today show's website. “Even after she couldn’t see well enough to read, we would listen to Pride and Prejudice together. When I read Jane Austen, I think of her.”
Aww. I didn’t share Barbara Bush’s politics, but it’s a touching picture nonetheless: Two women, one young and one old, knitted together by their shared enthusiasm for Our Author. These days, I’ll take whatever consolation I can get.
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