An Austenite in Austenland

This past week has been something of a trip back in time... to the 19th Century, as a matter of fact.

Wednesday, I went to Jane Austen Dancers, where we learned all of the principle dances in the two "Pride and Prejudice" movies, which nearly made me swoon with excitement.  Unfortunately my partners were not exactly Mr. Darcys, but it was very fun to pretend for just a little that I was at a ball at Netherfield.

At the end of the evening, we discovered the purpose for this P&P-themed session-- there is a ball to be held at "Longbourne" on Dec. 11th... when we will still be in the country, at which the Jane Austen Dancers will be demonstrating the famous dances from the movies!!!  We were so excited, and resolved to get there by any means possible.  The price proved to be a bit of an issue--with the ball costing 50 pounds (reduced particularly for us), plus transportation, plus the price of dresses... but it's worth every penny.  I'm going to have a dress made (sooooo excited), and while I've decided on the dress (look at the Marianne dress), I haven't chosen a color yet.  I'm thinking either lemon (which the dress is pictured in), white, or pale blue... and I have NO IDEA which one to pick.  Your mission, dear readers, should you choose to accept it, is to help me choose a dress color-- weigh in with your opinions! (Yes, that's another invitation to comment-- only Dad and one anonymous commenter passed the test last time-- the rest of you have to make it up to me this time.)

Friday, I went on a trip with my Jane Austen class to Chawton and Winchester-- where Austen was born, lived most of her life, wrote, and died.  The trip mostly involved an awful lot of time on the bus, driving from place to place, and it was cold and rainy, but it was a lot of fun-- Andrew Butterworth came with us, and he and our tutor tag-teamed with the tour-guiding duties, and a lot of my friends were on the trip as well.  Ali and I spent the whole bus ride to Chawton laughing hysterically-- I think it was the earliness of the hour, but we thought that everything was a riot; and we acted similarly on most of the bus rides from place to place (for which I suppose we had no excuse-- but life's more fun when you find things to laugh about).

We started off at Chawton Manor, what Jane Austen called "The Great House".  This is one of the estates that her eldest brother, who was adopted by a rich family (the Knights) when he was 16 because they had no heir, inherited when he was 20 or 30 or something like that.  He did not live there year round, but instead of offering the Manor house to his impoverished mother and two sisters when he inherited it, he gave them a small cottage a short ways down the road, and frequent visiting rights at the Great House.  (He was much more of a jerk than history usually makes him out to be.)

Us: "That's a nice house-- is that where Jane Austen lived?"

Dr. Kelly: "No.  That's the stable for the Great House.  It's bigger than Jane's house."

Us: "Ah.  We get it now."

 This is the Manor House, where the people, not the horses, lived. 

We took a tour of the Great House, which was actually very lovely, despite Edward Austen-Knight's stinginess, and contained lots of elegant furnishings in beautiful rooms, as I have come to expect from pretty much every country estate.  However, it was really interesting to see the things that inspired Austen's portraits of the upper class-- this was her only first-hand knowledge of how the people about whom she wrote actually lived-- she herself was definitely middle class, and on the poorer end of it by the end of her life.  Certain portraits in the Long Gallery are echoed in the great galleries of Pemberly and Kellynch, and the names of their subjects become occupants of Highbury and Uppercross. 

The Great House also contains the Chawton Library of Women's Literature from 1600-1830. It is a beautiful library of rare books-- often in first editions--and we got to see a few books that were mentioned in Austen's works, or were particularly influential for her, which was quite cool.

Then we took a short walk down the road to Chawton Cottage, where Austen herself lived.

And oh, by the way-- Edward gave this cottage to his sisters after the estate's steward--the previous inhabitant--passed away. Yep, he was stingy.

This is what the other side of that nice brick facade looks like.

The Cottage is cozy (read: small), but was actually pretty nice-- it fit four (the usual number of occupants) nicely; however, there were often lots of guests, such as Austen's two brothers who were in the Navy.  It was in this house that Austen wrote most of her novels.

Supposedly, she wrote all of her novels at this little table.  I somehow don't quite believe it (it would have been rather noisy in the sitting room), but it's a nice thought.

This desk would be really nice to work at though...

Right, so-- lots of cool Austen-y stuff in Chawton.  After that, we got back on the bus and headed for Steventon-- the village where she grew up, and where her father was the rector for bajillions of years.  It was rainy and cold, so we mostly just checked out the church that her father worked in:

We finished the trip with a visit to Winchester Cathedral, where Austen is buried.  We read the memorial that her family had made for her, which may not talk about her writing, but does slip in a rather unorthodox line about "the extraordinary endowments of her mind".  Furthermore, the fact that she has such an expensive monument at all was very unusual for a spinster, and shows some foresight on her family's part, that they believed that her grave may one day be a place that people would like to visit.  

The Cathedral itself is pretty cool as well.

Also, there are like six Saxon kings buried here... and by buried, I mean they are hanging out in boxes up by the ceiling:

We had about half an hour after visiting the church to hang around in Winchester, so a few of us decided to get tea.  We wound up having to drink two cups of very hot tea each whilst scarfing down scones in the space of about ten minutes in order to make it to the bus on time, but we were determined to get our money's worth.  We dubbed the experience, "The Most American English Afternoon Tea Ever".

After arriving back in Bath, I went to my favorite fancy pub for dinner with Ali and Sarah (fish and chips with expensive wine.... love it), and headed home to kind of hang around and be unproductive.

Saturday was equally Austen-filled, but much more static.  I spent the morning reading Persuasion, then spent six hours watching the BBC Pride and Prejudice on tv (during which time I finished knitting my pair of gloves that I've been working on).  The highlight of the film was, of course, the Lake Scene; but the highlight of the movie-watching experience was having the tv announcer voice introduce that hour of the marathon by saying, "Coming up in the next installment of 'Pride and Prejudice'-- Colin Firth strips off in the most memorable scene in television history.  Stay tuned."  

How could you possibly not stay tuned?

Sunday, I attempted to do research for my second paper for my Jane Austen class, but wound up just reading chapters and not taking any notes... I wasn't in much of a working mood.  Oh well.  Clay and Ali and I did wind up making an epic family dinner though-- Hungarian goulash (beef stew) with gnocchi and beer bread!  

This week is R&R week here at ASE-- not "Rest and Relaxation", oh no-- "Reading and Recreation".  Today we went to the Cotswolds (post coming soon, I promise!), Wednesday we're going to see "Spamalot" at the Theatre Royal, and Thursday, we're headed to Wells and Glastonbury.  Oh, and we're supposed to get work done at the same time.  Oy.

So stay tuned for lots of exciting posts!  I leave you with this further incentive to leave me comments:

If you can tell me what the spine of this book in the middle says, you win epic brownie points (and maybe even actual brownies).  I'll give you a hint-- the language is Hebrew.  And... go!