Embarking On A Course of Study

An Emotional History of Britain (w/ a Jane Austen bit)

I happened upon this great series called Ian Hislop's Emotional History of Britain. It's in three parts but, alas, only part one is on YouTube. Still, it's the part that covers Austen so, hurray!

Ian doesn't only touch on S&S, but also P&P, and Emma. And the curator of the Jane Austen House Museum has some great advice for ladies to follow when choosing who to give your heart to. (Hint: Knightley to Emma: "If I loved you less, I could say more."

Ian walks a bit through the house, which is lovely to see. There's a wonderful peace to this six minute section. I miss her house!

But don't just watch the Austen bit, watch the whole thing. It begins discussing how Brits used to be considered very emotional by other Europeans. And how a romantic sensibility was to be cultivated and prized, in the early to mid 1700s. Then he traces how the tide turned to the 'stiff upper lip'.

The part related to Austen is 42:43 - 48:36.  

(If you can't watch the video, there's a great summary of the segment, with pictures, over at Austenonly.)

Pride & Prejudice Board Game (and apologies for not posting)

Swoon! There is a Pride & Prejudice boardgame!

From the publisher's site, Ash Grove Press:

Step into Pride and Prejudice
Will you linger in Meryton or pine for the amusements of London?  Perhaps you’ll astound your opponents with your superior knowledge of the book.  Alas, your progress may be deterred by anything from a bit of slipped lace to a scandalous elopement.

Marriage is the Object
Elizabeth and Darcy, Jane and Bingley, Lydia and Wickham or Charlotte and Mr. Collins--pick one of four couples from the novel and maneuver them separately or together through town and countryside.  Be the first to collect all game tokens, then race to the Parish Church to marry and win the game!"

$39 plus $6 shipping in U.S.

Buy it!

And, my apologies for not posting more. I wanted to complete a novel I was writing by the end of 2012, which I did, and now am revising another. I will get back to my reading project. I have read the Castle of Otranto, another one of the books mentioned in Northanger Abbey, but not sure it's worth a post!

Sandy Lerner Visits Goucher - Second Impressions

Sandy Lerner, savior of Chawton House, now Library, author of the P&P sequel, Second Impressions, visited Goucher last night to give a talk, a reading, and sign copies of her book.

(Two comments on the picture. Sorry so small. I had to peer between two people. Comment #1 - why do people with big hair (and/or tall) always sit in the middle? Sub-comment: why are they always in front of me? I was already seated when she came in. Comment #2 - isn't that an adorable hair clip on the right?)

If you’re not familiar with Lerner:  “Lerner in 1992 bought and restored an estate once owned by Jane Austen’s brother, called Chawton House, in Hampshire, England. She has transformed it into the Center for the Study of Early English Women’s Writing, and is currently underwriting the digitization of the works of female authors who lived in England between 1600 and 1830. The 10,000 volumes, not all of them novels, include works by Austen, Mary Shelley, Frances Sheridan and Maria Edgeworth, among many others, as well as a collection of cookbooks by Quakers.” (Piedmont Maverick by Suzanne Gannon). Lerner co-founded Cisco Systems with her (now ex) husband, and later a cosmetic company called Urban Decay, which sold unusual (at the time) nail colors like green and blue. Their slogan was ‘Does Pink Make You Puke?’ She once posed naked on horseback for Forbes Magazine. In short, she is an interesting, eccentric, wicked smart woman who owns a farm in Ayrshire, Virginia. She bought a 125 year lease on Chawton House in 1993.

My friend Clare and I went to the talk at Goucher College in the (still shiny and new!) Athenaeum. This is where Alberta Burke’s famous Jane Austen Collection is housed. The Batza Room, where the Jane Austen Scholars talk every two years was packed. So were the chairs. We were all pretty much sitting on top of each other, so that made it rather unpleasant when a man reeking of onions and gin sat down next to poor Clare. She bore it bravely, but we joked about how much we wished women still carried lavender scented handkerchiefs to bury their noses in.

Goucher’s president Sanford (Sandy) Ungar was there, which always signals that the visitor is a big deal, as if we didn’t know! Outside the door, the table was laden with the very prettily bound books (sort of blue and leathery looking) and elaborate bookmarks from Chawton Library, which you received when you bought the book. I couldn’t get a clear shot of the table because of the swarm of people.

When Lerner took the podium, the first thing she said was that she had just decided what she was going to talk about, which might give you an indication of how well prepared she was. Clare and I enjoyed the talk, for what it was, a quick summary of her love of Austen and buying Chawton and what it is today, and a quick recap of writing the book, with some lamenting about not receiving the proper reviews, how agents and editors won’t talk to her, because she self-published. I think she spoke for, maybe 15 minutes?  (My notes on her talk will follow the post.) There was an awkward pause and she offered to read, but didn’t have a book (!). One was borrowed from the audience and she read for 10 minutes, a very quick scene between Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Colonel Fitzwilliam.

Then there were questions, which were mostly answered briefly, with a few exceptions. The gathering closed in under an hour. The crowd was a little subdued and didn't ask many questions, which is not like the Jane Austen Lovers Crowd that comes to these events, so I chalk it up to the bewilderment and surprise of some of the audience members at how quickly her talk was over, how quickly the reading was over, how quickly the event itself was over. I felt rather disoriented and disappointed myself.  Clare was just happy to get away from the onion guy.

Lerner was quite funny at times, she is obviously an intellectual and a scholar; her creation of the library to house and highlight 18^thCentury women’s literature is an amazing legacy we can all be grateful for, and I plan to read her book, but I found her ill at ease and unprepared and wished she had put more thought and effort into her talk, or even enjoyed herself (which it didn’t seem like she did). I teach writers and poets how to read their work for an audience, and so I’m hyperaware of a person’s presence when they talk and read, both good and bad. I wanted to pass her a note that said, "You're among friends. We are excited to see you! Please be excited to talk to us!"

That said, I do appreciate an actual talk rather than the reading of papers the Jane Austen Scholars do (sometimes they read quite fast!), fascinating as they are. And I certainly feel very lucky to be a Goucher alum and enjoy the benefits of having the Austen collection there. I would rather have talks of any kind than no talks at all!

Here are my notes from the event (there’s lots here because I’m pretty good at dictation so I wrote down just about everything but, trust me, the talk  was super short):

Many of you probably figured this out, but Lerner’s pseudonym for the book is Ava Farmer. If you parse that out, it’s A VA Farmer, or A Virginia (VA is that state abbreviation) Farmer. We all thought that very clever.

Her interest in Austen began with reading all the novels while at Stanford and watching the 1980 Pride and Prejudice.

These left her wanting more from women writers of the period. She found Dale Spender’s book, Mothers of the Novel and discovered a wealth of women writers writing from 1600-1820 that she’d never heard of because English literary criticism has been written without them.

Spender catalogued about 574 of these women, but Lerner found out there were really 2,000-3,000 of them who wrote 10,000-15,000 novels. Too many for her to physically collect at Chawton. Most of them are lost, we’ll only see about 25% of them. These women, mostly single and poor, were writing 150 years before Fielding and Defoe were dubbed the creators of the modern novel.

Some books she recommended that trace the antecedents of Jane Austen’s work:

A Revolution Almost Beyond Expression traces the cultural, literary, and historical context of Persuasion.  

Fact and Fiction of Jane Austen  - which I couldn’t find anywhere so maybe she got the title wrong. What I did find was Matters of Fact in Jane Austen.

When writing her sequel, Lerner used a lot of auction catalogues like Sotheby’s to find furniture of the period that she could describe accurately, and for paintings depicting landscapes and cityscapes long gone.

She also used 37 dictionaries including on for robbers, prostitutes, and thieves. (Where can I get that dictionary!) She used 1500 books from Chawton Library for her research/sources, and considers her novel a journey of homage.

Second Impressions is published by Chawton House Press, the Library’s own, new press. There are 4-5 other titles coming out soon and 4-5 more next year.

She says the book doesn’t really deal with Darcy as much as it deals with minor characters and she only killed those off when she needed to, or brought in another character from another Austen novel when she would have created that character anyway – so why not bring in one of Austen’s already created?

(Unfortunately, someone asked a question later about a character that was killed off that was a total SPOILER and elicited annoyed gasps from most of the audience because many hadn’t yet read the book.  I mean, really! You don’t ask a question like that without letting people know it’s a spoiler so we can protest, or don’t use a specific name so you don’t ruin the book for others. Notice how I’m not telling you the name of the character?)

Chawton Library has a Novels Online project and they are painstakingly typing the novels they want to post from Xerox copies. They can’t scan them because the paper and ink is too cheap and therefore fragile. The purpose of the online library (downloads are free, by the way) is to introduce these women writers and their works to a new and wider audience, and encourage critical scholarship. (What’s needed though, is for the author’s names to also be hyperlinked and lead to a bio page. Currently the links are just to the novels.)

Lerner, apparently, didn’t read any fan fiction or watch the movies. (Which I think we all found rather odd. She says it was because she didn’t want to be accused of stealing anyone else’s plot but since most of the fan fiction overlaps all over the place (take the Georgiana becomes strong and independent and marries Colonel Fitzwilliam plot, for example), that didn’t carry much weight for me. I think it’s better to have a sense of what is out there so you aren’t repeating the same plots, or at least give them unexpected twists.)  

She had much help with the novel from some ‘heavyweight’ Janeites, and said Deirdre Le Faye, famed Austen scholar, only found one inaccuracy in the novel, which Lerner debates and thinks is more a half-inaccuracy. 

Like Jane Austen in the writing of Persuasion, she had a rare fit and also threw out her last two chapters and rewrote them.

She was always working on the book even when she couldn’t write – reading, mostly. Her mid-life took a turn and she decided to buckle down and finish the book rather than have a mid-life crisis.

She feels she knows more about English history than she does American history, now and thought about a sequel that follows the Wickhams to America but felt they were too boring. She’s thinking of writing about John Wallis, who was the chief cryptographer for Parliament and later the royal court in the mid-1600s.

She plans to make a movie of Second Impressions, she can afford it, and will write the screenplay herself.

Two things she said about two beloved characters raised my ire a little. One was about the significant character (at least I think most would think of this character as significant, to a degree), that she killed off in the book. She said ‘it was the work of a moment’. Hmm. Could a true lover of Austen actually say that? Oh, it wasn't Mr. Collins. I think we could all agree that would be the work of a moment.

Lerner also called Elizabeth Bennet "naturally lazy" and thought it best that in her book Lizzy work to improve her marriage and be a partner to her husband. I found this completely baffling and was offended on Lizzy’s behalf. Elizabeth is prized by millions of readers for her independence, strength, wit, and good judgment (except where Darcy is concerned, at first). In P&P Darcy learns that she will be an equal partner (Lizzy will accept nothing less), and it is through this partnership that they can fully love and be loved and have a happy life where they contribute to the happiness of others.

And so ends my First Impressions of Sandy Lerner’s talk. If you’ve read her novel and want to weigh in on how it compares with the info she gave here, please do! I’d love to hear your comments.

Proceeds from the sale of Second Impressions go back to Chawton Library to further its work.

Oh Dear: Jane Austen's Rogues and Romance Game on Facebook

Ladies and Gentleman (are there any gentleman following Austen-related blogs?) - Facebook, along with the BBC, has a new game: Jane Austen's Rogues and Romance.

My first reaction after watching the trailer - yikes. I want to be excited, because you can enter the world of Austen's Pride and Prejudice in a way, short of a hologram deck like on Star Trek, but it's also a game - with points and items to collect and stuff and it just feels - ick.

And you know, at some point, there's money involved if you want to play at a certain level. Which, technically, is what Austen's time period is about. If you wanted to 'play' at a certain level of the marriage market, you had to have money.

I'm going to try it out and maybe my icky feeling will go away. We'll see.

I do think there's a point when Austen can become too commercial and I don't want that to happen. That said, I would definitely pay good money to go to an 'Austenland' like in the Shannon Hale novel (which I read once a year and still absolutely love - if you loved it too, there's a sequel out now: Midnight in Austenland!).

You can call me a stick in the mud. It's okay. I deserve it.

Here's the trailer and the link to the game. Let me know what you think of it!

 

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries on YouTube

I was reminded of this new version of Pride and Prejudice by a friend on Facebook the other day. I should have shared it with you much sooner! It's been up on YouTube and Tumblr since April. There are about 25 episodes; they have just finished Chapter 6 if you'd like to follow along with Austen's text.

What is it, you ask?

It's a modern adaptation of P&P told by Lizzie Bennet (The spelling should be Lizzy; it so annoys me when people spell it with an 'ie' but perhaps they are trying to set this character apart. Whatev.) via a video diary, and supported by the characters' social media streams. The only characters we see are Jane, Lydia, and Charlotte. In the modern adaptation, Charlotte is the videographer/editor of the videos and there are only three sisters, with Lydia being the youngest. Lizzie is a grad student going for a degree in mass communications, so the videos are sort of a project.

You can find the website here.

I wasn't taken by the first video, but thought I should watch all, even the ones I'd already seen, again, before reporting to you. I can see that the younger crowd would find it cute and funny, but I have to say I didn't. There's something about it that seems forced. The humor especially. Characters say and do sort of exactly what you expect when it comes to going for the laugh.

There are a few surprises, but not enough for me. The best parts are when they don costumes and read from scripts Lizzie writes to reenact scenes between her parents or Bing Lee, Darcy, and Caroline. Since they are self-conscious by nature because of what they are, a reenactment, they worked.

I just couldn't get into the one-sided aspect of the diary. In the book, we do get Darcy's and Bingley's perspective somewhat and that's missing from these diaries. Palpably, by the time you get through 10 or 15 of the videos and keep hearing about dinners or parties via Lizzie's perspective or Jane's or Lydia's. There are ways that that could be achieved in these videos - at one point Bing Lee (that's what they're calling him) Caroline are at the Bennet home for dinner. It would be very easy for Lizzie to have taken her phone down and surreptitiously filmed part of the dinner or the predinner conversation. Or part of the bar scene when they went to a bar after. Or leave the camera on, throw a sweatshirt over it and give Bing Lee and Caroline a tour of the house, including her room.

I find the perpetual filming in her bedroom in the same spot with a sister running in now and again repetitive and boring. Others have mentioned this in their comments on the videos and the creators have said there will not be a Darcy or Bing Lee diary. I wouldn't want yet another onesided diary, but they could make an appearance now and again. It would be welcome.

The sisters themselves are also stereotypically portrayed. In this day and age, for Jane to be so wide-eyed and innocent and Pollyanna just seems unbelievable and silly. Lydia is portrayed as a wild child (underage drinking, stealing her mother's Xanax) and slut.

Maybe I'm off on what the 'kids today' are saying but her 'wh-at?' and 'holla' and holding her hand up for high fives, also her winking, pouting, bare shoulder, and hair tossing for the camera are beyond over the top and painfully lame. Lizzie is a bit too sarcastic. Austen's Lizzy had more heart and humor. Only Charlotte, though just as sarcastic, seems to come off true. The actress captures the character's no nonsense, realistic attitude.

There are also the worrying Q&A videos where some questions and comments sound like people have no idea that this is a take on Austen's novels.

Feel free to disagree. I have impossibly high standards when it comes to fan fiction or, now, fan video, related to Austen. If the project brings new readers to Austen, wonderful. But they should read the books, not depend on these videos as giving them the whole story.

(POSTSCRIPT, 7/13/12 - Due to calls for it by fans, Episodes 26 and 27, and it looks like the upcoming 28, have featured Caroline and Bing Lee. I watched them, but they felt tacked on and didn't really flow. There was a super weird dynamic to the one with Jane and Bing Lee. He was funny and animated and she seemed even more weirdly, inhumanly angelic and subdued.)

Here's a fun game you can play - one of my friends, who also is an avid Austen fan (we've both read the novels many times and enough fan fiction to choke a horse, whatever that means), said she couldn't stop watching how Lizzie's eye making is constantly changing. She said it was highly distracting. See if it bothers you too!

Decide for yourself. Here is the first video: 

Jane Austen's Grammar Trick for Creating Character

A pair of academics, Mary Margolies DeForest and Eric Johnson at Dakota State University, wrote a computer program to analyze the frequency of Latinate words in Jane Austen's novels.

Let's just pause here to admire how these two think and have chosen to spend their time.

They discovered that Austen used more Latin-based words - classified as Latinate, the language of Ancient Rome.  As opposed to Germanic, from which the English language is derived (technically Anglo Saxon.)

The difference:

Germanic - abandon, ache, allegiance, anger, beseech, beacon,

Latinate - relinquish, pain, fidelity, rage, inquire, signal

You can see a chart of the words compared here.  Usually the longer the word - Latinate; the shorter - Germanic. But you can see in the chart that isn't always true.

BACK TO JANE AUSTEN:

Here's the abstract from the Oxford Journals:

"English has two main sources for words: German and Latin. Distinct from each other, they have polarized our language into high diction and low (‘diglossia’). Latinate words denote the intellectual world; Germanic words, the physical. Latinate words are indicators of status and education. Austen painted and delineated her characters by giving their speeches different densities of Latinate words. Higher densities of Latinate words sometimes indicate intelligence and moral seriousness, at other times, they expose a character's formality or hypocrisy. Lower densities indicate lesser intelligence or, in the case of sailors, humble birth. The characters whose densities are very close to the narrator are Austen's four great heroines, Elinor Dashwood, Elizabeth Bennet, Emma Woodhouse, and Anne Elliot."

So Darcy and Sir Thomas Bertram, for example, use a higher percentage of Latinate words, 28% and 29% respectively - to give a sense of their arrogance and how pompous they are.

The lower classes or people in emotional distress use less complicated sentences and smaller, often monosyllabic words. More Germanic. . For example, when Lizzy receives Jane's letter informing her of Lydia's 'elopement' with Wickham, Lizzy's percentage drops from 25% to 9%.

Marianne, during her time with Willoughby, slips almost seven percentage points. She's also at about 25%.

That's also an interesting note - Austen's narrators usually have the same percentage as the main character. In Sense and Sensibility, for example, the narrator is at 26% and so is Elinor.  Lizzy Bennet is at 25% and so is the narrator.  Same for Anne Elliot - 24.4%, narrator 24.3%. This was a very clever way of making the character sympathetic to the reader.

It's a fascinating project and I'm sure we all wish we'd thought of it. 

Though, we didn't really need more proof that Austen was a genius.

You can read their article here: Computing Latinate Word Usage in Jane Austen's Novels.

Meeting with Gillian Dow of Chawton House Library and Southampton University

GOUCHER JANE AUSTEN SCHOLAR LECTURE: "Translating Austen; Or, when Jane Goes Abroad"

Following are my notes from a fascinating lecture that takes place every other year at Goucher College, home of the Alberta H. and Henry G. Burke Papers and Jane Austen Research Collection. This year the scholar was Dr. Gillian Dow, Professor at Southampton University and of Chawton House Library.

Gillian has written a piece for Masterpiece on PBS that addresses my reading project:

What was "extensive reading" to consist of for Austen's female contemporaries and her fictional heroines? Certainly, a diet of pure fiction would not suffice. Indeed, many late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century novels employ the device of a warning from the narrator, directed at their female reader: beware of the dangers of fiction, the young woman is told, it enflames the mind and leads to romantic flights of fancy.

More of that article here if you'd like to read it. Let's continue on with my notes. It was a fascinating lecture!

(Note: if any of what appears below is incorrect, it is entirely my fault as I may have misheard as I tried to keep up.)

The talk took place in February, in the Alumni House at Goucher on an, if not warm, definitely almost-spring-like, evening. The room was packed. More than 100 people, with at least 20 students (a coup!). Her talk focused on the various translations of Jane in other countries. She began with a quote by T.E. Kebbel in The Fortnightly Review (1885): “Miss A could hardly be appreciated by anyone not thorough English.”

That said, Gillian told us that there’s a room in the Jane Austen House Museum where translations of Austen’s novels are kept on the shelves (wish I’d known this when I visited there last year – if you go, check these out).  About 70 of them, from Japan, Serbia, Iran, and other European countries – Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France for example.

The first translation was in a Swiss periodical in 1813 – Pride and Prejudice.

The French seem to be the only nation that has translated all six of the novels. Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice were translated into German; in Sweden Persuasion and Emma, and in Denmark, Sense and Sensibility.

The novels weren’t translated into all mainstream European languages until the early 80s and on through the 1990s and 2000s. For example, into Basque in 1996, and Latvian in 1997.

“Jane Austen doesn’t travel well, but she travels much.” Andrew Wright, Jane Austen Abroad, Jane Austen, Bicentenary Essays, 1975.  (Unspoken meaning: because of her inherent Englishness.)

Two models of translation:

Foreignizing Model (20^th/21^st Centuries):

The purpose of translation is to provide a guide to the original, an accurate sense of foreignness.

Domesticating Model (18^th.19^th Centuries):

Make the target language fit the horizon of expectations of the reader.  The above mentioned translation of P&P in the Swiss periodical followed this model – making P&P sound like the sentimental Swiss novel of the time.

 

 

Franco-Swiss author Germaine de Stael (who wrote Corinne) called P&P “vulgaire” for talking about money and marriage. Those parts were cut out in the Swiss version. Elizabeth Bennett was made to sound more orthodox and less forthright. Mr. Darcy was more anglicized. The Swiss added to his clothes – boots and a whip. Their heroes were sports loving and this brought him more in line with what a hero was expected to look like in England (on Swiss terms).

This must have stuck because, if you’ll remember, when Colin Firth is walking to Pemberley after his swim in the lake, he’s wearing boots and carrying a whip.

 

 

 

 

 Isabelle de Montolieu (wrote Caroline de Litchtfield) translated Sense and Sensibility n 1815. She compares the sisters in S&S. Her version is more like Sense versus Sensibility. She makes so much of this approach that she changes characterization, makes caricatures out of Marianne and Elinor. It becomes a novel with a heavy moral message.

Her Marianne is dreamy and melancholic and has a beaten air. Her name is changed to Maria. Gillian told us she guessed “Marianne” had revolutionary connotations of excess, bare-breasted warrior women – a symbol of the republic).

Examples of how Isabelle changed the story: she has a scene where Maria comes across Eliza and her baby (Colonel Brandon’s ward and Willoughby’s baby, to refresh your memory) and swoons.  She also kills off Miss Grey (Mrs. Willoughby) and has Willoughby propose to Maria. He writes to Elinor who asks for her hand. But Maria refuses and wants the Colonel, if he will accept her hand, which he is happy to do.

Willoughby then marries Eliza, Brandon’s ward!

Montolieu’s translation is a classic example of the domesticating model.

“Translations from English are all over the place; translations into English are as rare as hen’s teeth.” David Bellose, Princeton University.

In Alberta Burke’s collection of Jane Austen works and related works at Goucher are translations the Burkes and their friends collected from all over the world. Many misread the period entirely, dressing the women as Southern belles, the men in Bowler hats, or like 1950s housewives or show Pre-Raphaelite models on the cover of the books.

So how to you rely on any one book for a true translation? Do you choose the most expensive? The best publisher? The year the book was translated? How do you choose from multiple translations?

Gillian concludes that the novels are read for their universal truths, quite as much as for their Englishness. She doesn’t want the translator to take liberties, however.

She likes the Emma Tennant continuations of the stories – they give the book a feminist reading (however these are mostly detested J)

As for movie adaptations, she considers there to be only one, the A&E Colin Firth version, of course!

And she thought the Billie Piper version of Mansfield Park was the worst she’s ever seen. Hear! Hear! (Though I do like Billie Piper.)

Gillian reminds us that, though the novels were written in English, we are now reading a foreign language ourselves – the language is 200 years old. The vocabulary is different. We don’t immediately understand all the references.

She would like to study early Indian editions because their education was in English. Unlike education in other countries where the works were read in the national tongue first then, later, English.

Gillian believes a translation should be accurate. Where the sequels are concerned, fiction should be fun – why not have zombies and vampires?

Unfortunately, Jane knew nothing about French translations and didn’t receive a penny from their sale (nor did the publisher).

______________________

A few days later, I drove out to Goucher again to meet Gillian before she left. She graciously gave me a half hour of her time. (Gillian on the right in pic.)

I’m very interested in applying to Southampton University, to the Masters program for 18C Studies. I told Gillian about this reading project (which is moving slower than a snail, if that’s possible, which is why I need the time and focus of an actual grad program, I think).

She was very encouraging and gave me some wonderful resources. Mary Wollstonecraft apparently has made lists of what women should read in her works. She also suggested A Dangerous Recreation by Jaclyn Pearson and Novel Definitions – An Anthology of Commentary on the Novel, 1688-1815 by Cheryl Nixon.

She was so charming and easy to talk to and very generous with her time and suggestions, looking up books on her iPad. She thought the program would be a great fit for me and, though on sabbatical, told me to contact her if I needed anything else or had questions about the program. She’d be back by the time I started there (if accepted). I would love it she could be my advisor!

It would be another great project to read these translations and compare and contrast but I'll leave that to another....

 

 

Jane Austen Pilgrimage Part III: Jane Austen House Museum and the Writing Class I Took There

We arrive at the magical day I'd been dreaming of for many years!

The day after my visit to Winchester I woke up in my charming little room at the Alton Grange so happy because I’d slept well but I had the best day of all ahead of me: a visit to the Jane Austen House Museum – Jane’s home – also known as Chawton Cottage.

This is where Jane’s writing life came back to life, after the grief over her father’s death and moving around to several places in Bath, the rectory in Adlestrop and also Stoneleigh Abbey. Finally she had a place that felt like home again—peaceful, beautiful, with a garden she loved. And it was here that she resurrected previous work and wrote new novels that were subsequently published, two posthumously.

It was a gorgeous day!

I thought I could take a taxi to Chawton (the map on the Jane Austen House Museum – JAHM from now on – site wasn’t at all clear about how to walk there, in my opinion. It looks easy, but once you're standing there with the map and no real street signage, it's not), but there was some conference in the area that was monopolizing all of them so I took the bus right outside the hotel.

I was told too late about the taxi problem to catch the right bus, so had to wait an hour for the next, fretting, I don’t mind telling you, all the while about how late I would be for the class. It started at 11:00 and the bus didn’t come until 10:50. I really didn't want to walk in late to the class and miss anything.

But, lucky me, the bus driver was the same gentleman who had dropped me off the night before! I told him where I was going and he said he’d get me as close as he could, which he did. I was dropped off at a roundabout (middle of nowhere it looked like) and told to cross it to the other side and keep going.

I managed to dodge the cars enough to follow this direction, saw the sign for Chawton and JAHM, and found myself on a pleasant path past gorgeous cottages (some thatched!), with a sign not long after indicating I was on the right track.

Here's a thatched cottage - isn't it lovely?

The walk was a little over five minutes and then: Jane’s house appeared!

I raced in, told them who I was and was directed to a building on the other side of the kitchens where the class was being taught. I arrived in time to be next to introduce myself and you could have heard a pin drop. Everyone was British except for me. I think I really surprised them, which I don’t mind doing! It was interesting to be the foreign person. As happened often on the trip, I found myself speaking more carefully, as if this would make up for not having their marvelous accent.

Everyone was giving a little background, then mentioning the character they considered the Ideal Heroine, which was the topic of the class. Or, how to write the ideal heroine.

I chose Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables. Every head nodded in agreement and I was no longer the American stranger.

I don't want you to think the other people were not being nice to me! They were welcoming and talked to me during the break, surprised that I'd come all that way for a class (until I explained the pilgrimage part, which they loved the idea of). One nice lady, when she discovered I'm crazy about dogs, launched into a long story about the strange medical needs of her two year old retriever - I won't gross you out with them here.

We made a list of qualities ideal heroines should have, then were sent off to do writing exercises. Many people stayed in the room, I made a beeline for the garden. How could one not write in the garden?

I sat in a bench to work on my assignment and spent several minutes just glorying in the fact that I was sitting in Jane’s garden, writing, and taking a class with her great-great-great-great-great niece, Rebecca Smith, also a novelist: Rebecca Smith - Amazon .

If you’d like more detail about the workshop and the exercises, go here for a post I wrote about it for The Writer’s Edge: Writing the Ideal Heroine

Back to the garden - this is where I sat to do my writing assignments:

 

I'm writing a novel about my great-grandmother, Rose, who took in a boarder who was a minister, 28 years her junior (she was 83) and fell madly in love with him! She was a rather cold woman, I'm told, so I'm fascinated by the story, how she gave in to her feelings at that age. I respect and admire that she did. So I'm exploring the possibilities of how it all happened and what it's like to feel one's sensual/romantic side awaken so late in life. The assigments were geared towards character and helped me dig into some good scenes related to her.

The class was four hours (lovely but much too long). I had about 45 mins for lunch during the break and spent it across the street in Cassandra’s Cup:

They would NOT sell me a cup from the fantastic display above:

Lunch was good except for the chutney in my sandwich (what is it with chutney???) and one of the women from the class who also came in for lunch stood at my table telling me every prize she'd ever won for her writing (I wouldn't have minded a good conversation but this was all her trying to impress me, which was so odd. As an American, I'd never heard of these prizes. Not to be mean, but I just wanted her to leave so I could enjoy my lunch!). I got away as soon as I could.

They have a full tea but I didn’t have enough time. AND, I discovered they are a bed and breakfast! So you can stay there if you are visiting the house. Will do next time. Here's their contact info: Cassandra's Cup.

More writing exercises, then I was free to explore. I wandered into the house and took my time checking out the rooms. As it was later in the day (after 3:00), it wasn’t crowded. Here are some pictures from inside:

Lock of Jane's hair!

The famous writing table:

Two women who walked into the room ahead of me touched the desk but I didn't. Too many things can be destroyed by the continued touching of human hands. If you go, please don't touch! That's what the plexiglass is there for.

This is the quilt Jane, Cassandra, and their mother made together. Also behind plexiglass so people won't touch.

The floors were very creaky. No sneaking around in that house. Whenever I had the good fortune to be alone in a room I stopped and thought about how it might feel to live there. The sounds of the staff moving about the house and courtyard, the sunshine seeping quietly through the windows onto the floor (there was a definite silent aspect to the sunshine, and I kept thinking that perhaps it had time traveled from her days there somehow. Like the house, it knew Jane). So peaceful there.

What I especially loved about the house was that there was SPACE. The rooms weren't cluttered with papers and books and furniture and electronic stuff like our houses are. There were three or four pieces of furniture. Small cases for books (there must be books, but they can turn into clutter too if not checked), a table and chairs, or just a few chairs. Simple. It allowed the space of the house to participate in a way my own house doesn't (must fix that). You could breathe and walk and there seemed to be more light.

Here's Jane's room - that's her lace (she made it!) over the fireplace:

Can’t you imagine sitting there before the fire, reading, sewing, or writing?

I saved Jane’s room for last. I had a gift from my goddaughter, Emma (she’s 9), made for me as a ‘safe travels’ talisman. Here's a pic of me wearing it the night before I left. Isn’t it cute? Purple, my favorite!

I was determined to leave something for Jane in her bedroom, and had planned to write her a note on some paper I made by hand during an 18^th Century Festival at Johns Hopkins earlier in the year in March, but I couldn’t find the paper before I left (later I saw it in plain sight when I returned home – I think packing produces amnesia so you can't locate items you need for your trip).

When I walked into her room, I decided I would leave Emma’s gift. As a namesake of Austen’s novel, I didn’t think she’d mind. I’ll tell her the story when she’s old enough to understand its meaning and I’m fairly certain she’ll be excited to know that her gift lives on in the house (the staff keeps these items left for Jane).

And here’s Emma’s gift to me, now a gift for Jane. I hung it on the doorknob where no one would see if for a while (I hoped):

Some shots outside:

Knowing I didn’t have long before I had to walk back (I was going to attempt it using the map) to Alton so I could get to the train station to head back to London, I started the walk up to Chawton Library, the Great House where her brother, Edward Knight lived.

Some houses and a farm along the way (about a 10 minute walk):

And the house!

No time to go up the drive, it had closed by then anyway. I stopped off at St. Nicholas Church instead, to visit Cassandra and Mrs. Austen’s graves:

The graves themselves (when you walk through the charming gate into the churchyard, pass the church on your left, then turn left into the yard there. The graves are at the back in a separate plot).

These made me sad also, but in a good way. There was something very steadfast and elegant about these two graves. Something indomitable about them.

It was also, technically, the last part of my trip. My Jane pilgrimage was, technically, over. It was very quiet and green in that churchyard. I almost wanted to just sit there and miss my train and never go back! But, of course, one must be responsible and return to one’s house and job. I just hate that.

I raced back and attempted the walk. I ended up going around the roundabouts (two of them, connected) twice, always ending up back where I started. So I went back to Chawton to try the bus but it had already left.

Hot, tired, annoyed, I crossed the street to the Greyfriar Pub to use their phone. Here's the pic from their website, mine was too dark:

Serendipity found me again. I asked the bartender for a phone so I could call a taxi and a gentlemen standing at the bar offered to drive me instead. He was about late fifties, gray hair, tall and lean, nice, polite. My mother would have been horrified because I didn’t hesitate to say yes!

The bartender, who had come back with the phone found out I was catching a ride with Trevor, as he introduced himself, and told me, ‘It’s okay, he owns the place,’ so I knew I was in good hands.

It was also 5 p.m. and I had to catch a rail replacement bus (the train problems followed me all the way to Alton on this trip!) with a stop in – can’t remember now - and then to Waterloo.

Trevor had a very nice car, a Lexus, I think, and it was my first time sitting on the wrong side. It made me quite dizzy on the roundabouts. He was very considerate and engaged me in conversation about Jane’s novels, telling me he liked Mansfield Park the best as Fanny was a sensible girl who didn’t get caught up in emotional drama. Though I’m not a huge fan of MP, I appreciated that view and agreed she was very sensible. His second favorite was Persuasion.

So when you visit the JAHM, make sure to have lunch or dinner at the Greyfriar and tell Trevor I sent you. I’d love to send people to him to repay his generosity. It’s right across the street from JAHM, next to Cassandra’s Cup (you can have tea at CC's instead of a meal and do both!):

Greyfriar Pub - Chawton

Here’s a link to the Chawton Library site, the ‘how to visit us’ part. You’ll find the maps, suggestions for places to stay and a link at the bottom to the Stagecoach website for bus timetables for the 64 and X64. There is a bus stop right outside the JAHM. Literally, right next to the house.

How To Visit Chawton (bus, rail, walk, hotels) 

One last thing - here's the plaque on the Jane Austen House Museum. It got me teary because it talks about how British and American fans got together to put up the plaque. I'm such a geek.

 

It was such a marvelous day. If you've considered going, just go. You won't regret it. It just feels so satisfying to 'visit' her. I'm sure she would love to sit and have tea with us and talk books and writing. Even if she can't meet us there, it's nice to stop by anyway!

One last look:

A day later I had an absolutely lovely tea at the Orangery next to Kensington Palace with Jane Odiwe who wrote Willoughby's Return and Mr. Darcy's Secret. Here's her website to check out her work: Jane Odiwe. So I thought I'd write about that in a final post, and include a magical exhibit about secrets in the gardens, related to the Enchanted Palace exhibit that was going on.

Until then, Happy New Year!

Was Jane Austen Poisoned?

I doubt it, but the idea that she died of arsenic poisoning is a plausible one since it was used for many complaints, inlcuding rheumatism, which Jane did have.

Decide for yourself: Jane Poisoned?

 

Jane Austen Pilgrimage Part II: Winchester Cathedral and College Street

The day after visiting Jane’s writing desk and portrait in London, I went to Paris. Yes, for the day. It was there so I popped over to squeeze in what I could - a long, exquisite day of mostly walking and a trip up the Eiffel Tower (okay, more like hobbling because I walked everywhere in Reykjavik and had two days of London walking behind me as well. My ankles looked like I was 85 years old. But it was worth it for the view):

View of the Champ de Mars and Ecole Militaire

Paris turned out to be a 20 hour day, so I slept in and caught a later train to Winchester and had just enough time to see the Cathedral and the house on College Street where Jane died before catching my bus to Alton (near Chawton) to reach my hotel.

(May I just say how fabulous the English trains are. I always had seats to myself, the trains arrived on time, and had a wonderful ticker tape like screen to tell you the next stop. They also seemed roomier to me. Frankly, Amtrak could take a page....)

Winchester is delightful. Twisty turny stone or brick streets, archways , streets tucked between the backs of houses with gates and wooden doors. It felt like one big secret garden to me. I could have wandered for hours.  The sky was grayish when I arrived at the Cathedral - perfect for photographs. I took many pictures of the outside as there were so many interesting vantage points but here’s the main one:

Inside it’s beautiful and majestic (huge). Jane’s grave is right beyond the desk where you buy tickets, but is cordoned off so you have to go all the way around the Cathedral the other way to reach it. And the walk is fascinating – crypts and paintings and sculpture and stonework. Before I’d been there five minutes the wedding march started and a bride came in the side door with her father, walking behind the  - hmm, vicar? Doesn’t sound grand enough.

The bride's name was Sarah. She floated in, pinkcheeked and smiling and lovely. Her groom was German and I just couldn't catch his name during the vows. (I have to say again that I highly recommend touring a church when there's a wedding going on. It adds a certain spirit!)

So I sat down with everyone else and watched her walk up the nave and past the altar back through the where the choir would be, where the ceremony took place. There were about thirty of us in the Cathedral and I followed as many walked towards the back to peek through to watch the wedding, but I focused on the Cathedral itself. I was happy to let it take as long as it took to get to Jane’s grave, to delay the moment. And there was so much to see. Winchester Cathedral is the longest medieval church in the world at 554 feet:

It’s home to Saint Swithun’s tomb:

According to Wikipedia: "or Swithin, Old English: Swīþhūn; died c. 862) was an Anglo-Saxon bishop of Winchester and subsequently patron saint of Winchester Cathedral. His historical importance as bishop is overshadowed by his reputation for posthumous miracle-working. According to tradition, the weather on his feast day (15 July) will continue for forty days."

One of his miracles was to restore to wholeness a woman's basket of eggs maliciously broken by a workman. A little more useful than water into wine, in my opinion, but it depends on which you value more: eggs or wine.

More gorgeousness:

Back through this entrance (above) was where the wedding took place.

Finally I made it around to the grave. To the right is the memorial window.  There was a big basket of yellow daisies at the base.

Very different from the grave itself, which is black stone, faded, the letters softened from the feet of tourists and parishioners. I turned from the window and saw the stone. I read it slowly from start to finish:

Reader, I cried.  A sudden and unexpected response. I stood dumb, eyes swimming with tears, feeling my reaction a little silly, but also appropriate. She deserved better than a forty something single writer on holiday getting emotional over her bones but there I was.

Maybe it happened because I was tired and hungry (hadn’t eaten lunch), and everything hurt from walking. But in my heart I know it was because I felt like I’d reached Austen Ground Zero. Especially because the church bells started ringing for the wedding. That seemed appropriate too. That she was here where so many people would visit to worship and wed. Her books ended in weddings, so now she would always be in attendance at those in Winchester.

It might have had something to do with the reality behind the words in the information panel nearby (and here I found the only thing I didn’t like – these baby blue boxes with pictures and text inside describing her life and her work. They were very silly looking and weren’t even worthy of a good museum, let alone to clutter the space by her grave):

"Jane's body lies under the floor here in a brick vault." It doesn't get more real than that.

I stood there a long time. Fortunately many in the Cathedral had gotten waylaid by the wedding so I was alone there for ten minutes. I found I just couldn’t leave the spot, so I sat down in the chairs that were for the congregation before the altar and just stayed with her. That’s how it felt. That something of her was there. I’d come so far to see her grave, I wanted to absorb as much of the feeling and space as possible because I was saying hello and goodbye all at once, in a very short period of time.

Despite the majesty of the church, it felt tucked away and intimate. There weren’t that many people. It was around two-thirty. It was still stormy skies outside (a light rain fell throughout the day) but the light was bright and clear. I could have stayed all afternoon but I wanted to find the house nearby where Jane spent her lasts days. I left the Cathedral and walked across a small parking area and through a massive door:

I couldn't believe I didn't end up in another dimension after passing through this door. It was amazing. 

Down through the archway you see here, which had a charming bookstore right underneath to the left – so tempting but no time! – then immediately to the left onto College Street. I saw the house ahead on the right and slowed down. In instances like these, when you have so many things to see, there’s a danger of checking them off as complete and going on to the next rather than being in the moment.

So I paused and sat on the wall with a garden across the street and hung out. This is a private residence so a plaque has been erected to note its significance:

But as you can see, the curtains of the first floor rooms are closed. These were Jane and Cassandra’s rooms. The Cathedral is just over a high wall on the side of the street where I sat thinking of Cassandra sitting with Jane’s head on her knee, stroking her hair in the middle of the night long after she was gone.

Here's a picture of the room where she died which I found on, of all places, the BBC's Antique Roadshow's website. Apparently they were there in May of this year and were able to enter the house:

Here's the site: Antiques Roadshow - Winchester

As I headed back to the Cathedral the bells were still ringing for the wedding. 

Returning the way I came, I passed the happy bride and groom:

And continued on to the back of the Cathedral looking for the bus station. I then followed the most magical walk – here is the series of photos:

The stone walls had shells mixed in. Wonderful.

This garden appeared when you walked through the door in the pic before it. And over the wall was the Cathedral:

At the end of that street, to the right, I came out near the Guild Hall which was across the street from the bus station. I missed the 4:10, but caught the 4:50 to Alton – the X64. You buy your ticket on the bus – the driver has a machine that prints a receipt and everything - a double decker –so  I sat on the top for the 45 minute ride.

I had the ask the driver to let me know when I should get off as he stopped at places not on the list I’d printed off before I left (yes, I printed timetables and bus schedules, I’m a freak). Lucky me – there was a stop right across from the hotel!

Loved the hotel. The Alton Grange. Here is my room:

With a trouser press (?):

I went straight down to dinner – starving – hadn’t eaten lunch. Here is the dining room that I had all to myself:

My waiter was also named Chris. He was from Canada and so nice. He got me a pot of tea though it wasn’t on the menu, and an extra order of mashed potatoes. I had a wonderful orzo with eggplant and squash and artichokes:

After dinner I walked out into the garden taking pictures. There was much to admire:

The wedding theme persisted – I noticed that one of the other rooms downstairs was set up for a wedding reception in purple, my favorite color:

Upstairs I put on pajamas and indulged in my guilty pleasure – British TV.  The comedy I watched had a Pride and Prejudice theme so it was a perfect end to the day - Miranda, starring Miranda Hart, who was in Hyperdrive and a couple of French and Saunders shows if I'm not mistaken. I enjoy her so much. She just strikes a chord with me. I couldn't find the episode on YouTube ("Excuse"), but I found the preview. It's not on Netlix, unfortunately, but you can watch many episodes on YouTube if you dig her as well:

Miranda Episode - Excuse

This visit to Jane's grave and her home (the next day) was the part of my trip that I’d most been looking forward to and it did not disappoint.

But there's more! 

Part III: Jane Austen House Museum, the class I took there called The Ideal Heroine, Cassandra’s and their mother’s graves at St. Nicholas Church. Coming next month.