To understand better the life Jane Austen lived and the subtle setting of the Bath novels, we can visit the villages of her life and the locations relating to her life and novels in Bath. This is a tour which I have researched and prepared for JA-loving American visitors, and I shall describe it to you. Jane Austen, born in 1775, wrote of the world she knew, her early years in the country; and in Bath and the occasional visit to London. She describes her writing as ‘the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labor’. Jane wrote poems and short stories from an early age, and the first drafts of Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility were written between 1796 and 1798, when Northanger Abbey was written. None were published at that time, and in 1801 the family went to live in Bath for five years. During this time she wrote no novels. Her father died in Bath, she and her mother moved several times in Bath, leaving for Clifton to Southampton to stay with her brother and finally being settled in Chawton, in a house provided by another brother. It is here that she was at her most prolific producing and publishing four novels, Pride & Prejudice (revised), Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion, and the unfinished Sanditon and revising Northanger Abbey. She died at the height of her powers, from a fatal illness of the kidneys, and Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published as one volume after her death. These two novels are set in Bath. George Austen, Jane’s father, was the vicar of a small village called Steventon in Hampshire for some 40 years until his retirement aged 70 when the family moved to Bath. Jane was the seventh of eight children, and had one sister, Cassandra, to whom she was very close. Much of what we know of her thoughts come from letters to Cassandra, but it is not a complete record because Cassandra censored or destroyed many letters after Jane’s death to protect her sister; and of course there were no letters when the two were together, in Bath and later at Chawton. To reach Steventon, we leave London and drive south west on the motorway for just over an hour, and turn off the motorway onto the old main road. This has not been extensively widened as the motorway runs parallel to and replaces it. In a small dip in the road is the turn north to Steventon, marked on the corner by the Wheatsheaf Inn. It is to here that Jane walked to collect the mail, which came by stagecoaches which changed horses here. The building has been extended to provide a restaurant and accommodation, but the southern part of this red brick building is original and much as Jane would have seen it. Go inside, pass the modern bar servery and enter the original part of the building to see old low beams, fireplaces and the very low door. Interior walls have gone but it is still possible to see how the rooms were divided, and the old front door. Outside, cross the road and walk twenty paces south. From here you can get a good photo of the front and side of the Inn. Compose your picture carefully to exclude a road sign, and it will be as if seen through Jane’s own eyes. The village of Steventon is about two miles up a winding lane. It is a village spread out, with some old houses and some more modern. The church is up a dead end lane to the left, and the end of the road is not tarmacadem. As I turn off the car’s engine and open the doors, we step back over two hundred years in time into a world of peace and silence. The rectory, home of the Austens, was in the fields beyond and to the right of the churchyard. It was demolished after a fire and the only thing visible is a fence around a well in the middle of the field, where there was a pump. The rectory had a garden and a small farm worked by the family, who would have been self-sufficient in many things and this would have taken up much of their time. In addition to the eight children of the family, it is known that Mr. Austen educated other children who stayed in the house. Other than a short time away, Jane acquired all her education here, from her parents and by much reading. She played the piano and sang, and learned sewing and embroidery. Both parents were from families of the gentry, and the household was lively and stimulating company. They put on theatrical displays, for example. If there is nothing to see of the old rectory, why come here? A half-hour walking around this peaceful place allows you to calm down from the modern pace of life and reflect on the rural life of two hundred years ago. It was a hands on existence with few servants’ helping hands, and you made your own entertainment. Jane is famous for living in Bath, but she was a country girl from her childhood times. It was a time of polite exchanges and visits, teas and dances with other families. When you have taken in the rural atmosphere, visit the 700-year old church. The interior is plain, and there are tablets to the Austens near the altar. Two family graves are in the churchyard, to the left from the entrance near the rear churchyard fence. Next to Steventon are the two villages of Deane and Ashe, visited by Jane. At Dean we see the church and the grand rectory, where she went to dances. At Ashe the church is down an unmettled road which ends in a farmyard. George Austen was the rector at Deane for the first three years whilst the rectory at Steventon was worked on. Walk down the road and to the left of the farmyard is a footpath into a field in the middle of which is a large pond with an island in the centre. This is the source of the river Test. The Hampshire rolling chalk hills soak up rainwater and it flows in little streams quickly building into the river Test and its tributaries. It flows fast as a clear, wide shallow river, often dividing into many streams, in a shallow valley 40 miles to the sea at Southampton. It is the finest trout fishing river in the south of England. We drive down this valley on tiny lanes past little thatched cottages three or four hundreds of years old, and the countryside and buildings are just as Jane would have known them. No tourists or tours come here and my guests, the Americans are the only visitors here. We can walk across the river streams on boarded bridges, and I remembered to bring some bread to feed both the fish and the numerous ducks. The country lanes take us to the old market town of Stockbridge, with its very wide single street and old buildings. From here larger roads take us up and down the rolling hills to the main road to Bath, passing Stonehenge on the way. It is a pretty drive with much to see and comment on all the way. Like Venice, the joy of Bath as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts, beautiful though these may be; and the best view of Bath is on the south east approach up the Avon valley. As we close in on the town, the crescents and terraces of the warm sandstone become the reality of Georgian classical houses. It was in one of these that the Austens lived for three years. First they have to find their house, and so do we have to find our accommodation. One of the joys of the Bath tour is staying at Marlborough House, a small private hotel in walking distance of all the town centre. It is stylishly modernised in an end of terrace Victorian house, with modern fittings and antique furniture. It is run by Laura, a delightful lady from LA, and family and friends. Rooms are all en suite, have fresh flowers, coffee and tisanes, home-made cookies and sherry. Some have four poster beds. Gentle jazz plays all day, and Laura likes you to relax so don’t expect breakfast before 9 o’clock. Everything in the house is organic and vegetarian, with imaginative cooked breakfast manus, and evening dinners can be arranged. You can have an organic beer in the dining room which is open plan to the modern kitchen. It is more like being a house guest than saying in a hotel, at half the price. Bath is great for eating out and you’ll have Charley and Laura’s restaurant picks. There is Italian, continental, Thai, Mexican and Indian, including one with a red rosette – there aren’t many of those. Everything except English, unless you include Cornish pasties. At the Eastern Eye Indian restaurant, in a wonderful room, 100 feet long on the first floor, I lost count of the number of green chillies in my jalfrezi dish, until the next day! There is jazz in a Bistro on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and on Sundays in the back room of a small, real pub where ‘Anyone smoking in here will be battered to death with a wet fish, by order of the management.’ After a relaxing evening and lovely breakfast, it is time for a walking day in Bath. What is there to see of Jane Austen’s Bath? The city is much as she knew it, but has been extended from those days. The canal was being dug in her stay and the railway arrived a century later. The town was quite new in her time, and the new Theatre opened in her last season (the winter) there, and the upper Assembly Rooms a few years before. The Austens’ first house was six years old when they moved in. Since those days there has been time for the town to decline in fashion, become filthy from smoke, be bombed in the war, and see a later renaissance with the buildings cleaned and modernised to 20c standards. Bath is a popular place to live and popular tourist town. Almost all the houses are modernised, doors and windows newly painted. The result is that to the initial gaze it all looks much alike, united by its Georgian classical architecture and yellow stone. It was not so in Jane Austen’s day. It is clear from the comments made whilst house-hunting how every little part of the town had its particular place in society and advantages or disadvantages. ‘We all know that Mrs. Perrot will want to get us into Axford Buildings, but we all unite in a particular dislike of that part of town.’ The family settled on a four-storey house, no. 4 Sydney Place, an early Georgian terrace with doorways surrounded by vermiculated rustifications. It is 10 minutes level walk south of the centre across Pulteney Bridge, overlooking Sydney Gardens and at that time with open countryside beyond. It reflects the family’s country origins. They lived there for the three years of their lease spending the summer months on the coast. It may have been too expensive, for at the end of the lease they moved to Green Park Gardens, rejected earlier as too damp. George Austen died here and the three women moved to smaller accommodation at 25 Gay Street, taking rooms on the first floor. There would be other occupants on the ground and second floors, all sharing the servants who lived on the top floor and worked in the basement. Finally they moved to Trim Street, but we do not know in which building. Jane was happy to leave to Clifton, Bristol. ‘It is two years tomorrow since we left Bath for Clifton… with what happy feelings of escape.’ Our day’s walk views all these places and the other principal sites of Bath. Society life started in The Pump Room after morning bathing, and here the lists were published daily of the newly arrived members of society. Balls were held in the evening several days a week, with a master of ceremonies to introduce people to dance. Walcot Church is a where Jane’s parents were married and George is buried, his tombstone being moved to the front of the churchyard for easy recognition. They worshipped in the wonderful Abbey and at Laura Chapel, where only the entrance remains to be seen. The Abbey has wonderful fan vaulting. Our tour includes viewing the Royal Crescent, the finest Georgian terrace in the land, and the sloping lawns below where society walked and talked in Jane’s days especially on a Sunday. ‘As soon as divine service was over the Thorpes and Allens eagerly joined each other; and after staying long enough in the Pump-room to discover that the crowd was insupportable, and that there was not a genteel face to be seen, which every body discovers every Sunday throughout the season, they hastened away to the Crescent, to breathe the fresh air of better company.’ Just beyond this is the Circus, the first of its kind in the country, and below the Circus Gay Street leads to the earlier Queen Square, where the Austens stayed at no 13 before moving to Bath. This was the first square built in the country and the forerunner of all London squares. The shopping streets are much as in Jane’s days, and now again pedestrianised. Remove modern shop fronts and goods and you can picture the streets populated by shoppers in costumes like those in the Costume Museum, which we see when visiting the enormous Assembly Rooms. The main ballroom has five huge chandeliers, the card room three and the tea room one, insured in all for £35 million! The time spent house-hunting and living in Bath gave Jane the insight as to where to place her characters. ‘Sir Walter had taken a very good house in Camden-place, a lofty, dignified situation, as becomes a man of his consequence.’ The choice of Camden Crescent with its subtle yet glorious symbolism, for Sir Walter Elliott is surely unsurpassed. To see it, stand in Laura Place with your back to the bridge and look up the hill to your left. Here is Camden Crescent with a pedimented, collonaded house dominating the terrace. It is not in the centre as the planned right hand part of the Crescent could not be completed due to subsidence. It was in Bath Street that her aunt was accused of shoplifting in the famous scandal which led her to being taken to jail for six months before clearing her name. Jane uses this street in both Bath novels, and both times in connection with unprincipled characters. Bath comes to life in a day’s walking, and taking tea in the Pump Rooms after visiting the excavated Roman Baths gives time to reflect on life there two hundred years ago, the politeness and subtlety of society life, and the experience of taking tea in the very same manner and place as all that time ago. From Bath and Clifton the Austens moved to live with a brother in Southampton, and next we move to here to stay at the Dolphin Hotel, a part of the life of Jane Austen who went to dances there. The house was in Castle Square, and the site is now The Castle pub. Although heavily bombed in the war, Southampton has interesting medieval buildings and city walls. Once settled in at the Dolphin with its huge bay windows, it is time to visit Chawton. Another of Jane’s brothers inherited an estate that included a sizeable cottage in the village of Chawton, and here her mother and Cassandra moved from Southampton. The house was bought in 1949 by an American philanthropist as a tribute to his son killed in the second world war and is now a museum. It was living here in the peace of a quiet village, and again playing the piano, that Jane Austen was at the height of her creative work. She saw her novels published, initially as ‘by a lady’ and eventually after her death under her own name, and finally made some money from her works, albeit only a little. Opposite is a friendly local pub which can provide a plate of mixed sandwiches – excellent refreshment before an afternoon investigating the memorabilia in the house. It makes a fascinating collection, better seen than described. However, you can picture Jane seated in the front room, writing on small pieces of paper at a little table. Paper was an expense so letters were written in close lines and then turned upside down to write again between the lines. The letter was folded and addressed on a portion, sealed with wax and the cost of delivery paid by the recipient. The novels were written on small pieces of paper and hidden when anyone came into the room through the creaking door. In her bedroom is the wash cupboard she used – a moving illustration of the simplicity of life at that time. The whole gives a very good impression of the latter part of her life. Her mother and Cassandra lived on here after her death, both to a good age, and you can see their graves in the churchyard, and Chawton House behind it is unaltered since before Jane’s days. The church was recently damaged by fire in the 1980s and rebuilt. And finally, and sadly, to Winchester, to see the house in College Street where Jane lived her last few weeks. Her last writing was a poem, just three days before her death. She died in her sister’s arms, aged just 41. Asked the day before if she wanted anything she replied she wished now only death. In the cathedral is her grave, with a moving tribute on the tombstone. There is a plaque on the wall. My American guests and I have now travelled down a time-walk of Jane Austen’s life, in a real way and with so much to see along the journey. Did they enjoy their tour? The tip at the airport told me so in Spades, but this is the first time I have been kissed on both cheeks by a client of just four days. The emotion of the tour had got to us all! My tours are personally conducted for up to four people with luggage or up to six with hand luggage, and I charge per day not per person. Clients pay directly for accommodation and entrances, meals etc In this tour we have travelled a total of 555 miles and spent one whole day walking in Bath. Each tour is individually planned, so an itinerary can be created especially for you. There is a booklet with much detail and pictures of Jane Austen’s life and Bath, and the other towns and villages. This can be ordered by post from: Exclusive Travel Price, to include post and packing to the USA: £10 per copy in sterling or $15 ECHO TANGO |
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