This was one of the things that bothered me, too. The inconsistencies and info dumps regarding Mr. Elliot and Mrs. Smith, etc... I like how the BBC version handled Mrs. Smith's financial ruination at the hands of Mr. Elliot--they totally left it out! It seemed much cleaner and less convoluted that way.
This chapter is very much a "here's a tidy way of completely dispensing with Mr. Elliot" sort of thing (although she doesn't include the info about Mr. Elliot bedding Mrs. Clay here - that comes later.
Despite having read the book several times, I had completely forgotten that Mr. Elliot had anything to do with Mrs. Smith's financial ruin. So, yeah, that part probably could have used some editing.
Definitely needed to be seeded better earlier on, and/or pulled out. The financial ruin part is necessary, though, both to explain Mrs. Smith's situation and to give Captain Wentworth an even more heroic ending, since he sorts it out for her.
I'm positive that she'd have gotten rid of the inconsistency and either eliminated Mr. Elliot's knowledge of her visit or at least had Mrs. Smith acknowledge the acquaintance earlier on, even if she discounted it. Also that she would have somehow reduced the amount of info dump here. It's too sloppy for her finished work - even the stuff in S&S that shows its origin as epistolary (Colonel Brandon's revelation of his past relationship and his ward, for instance) aren't as ham-handed as this chapter.
Still, Jane's ham-handed is better than a lot of people's final product, so I'm really not complaining loudly.
I never quite trusted Mrs. Smith, and it took me until this chapter to really pinpoint it. Taking everything she says at face value, she didn't want to get in the way of a friend that she hadn't spoken to or written to in years marrying the man who could help her, because then she'd be able to use this renewed acquaintance to get herself out of her current situation. It didn't matter that the man was a complete jerk - Anne seemed to like him, might be able to handle him (or not - either way, not her concern), and was the key out of her predicament. The fact that she owned up to this made me feel a bit better about her and made it feel like less of an info dump and more of a character moment for Mrs. Smith.
Even with the character moment, there's far too much backstory crammed into this chapter-long conversation. You are right, though, that the justification for Mrs. Smith being in the story before this seemed shaky - readers were already convinced of Anne's moral correctness, so adding her sense of duty and friendship toward a woman whose lot had diminished over time really didn't add enough to fully justify her presence. She's in the story to impart this information - and I'm pretty certain that on further revision (had she lived long enough to see this one to print), Austen would have smoothed this out a bit.
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Still, Jane's ham-handed is better than a lot of people's final product, so I'm really not complaining loudly.
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