The Roman Baths today don’t any longer function as usable baths. Waters are still pumped through ancient lead pipes into the bath, but they’re green with algae (pretty, actually!)–a sign that it’s not a good idea to try drinking it, or even trailing your fingers through it.
We last left Jane Austen at Chawton Cottage, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Jane’s most productive writing periods were pre-Bath (before 1801) and after the move to Chawton in 1809. The first produced Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey. During the second, she wrote Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. She also began publishing in this Chawton period, beginning with Sense and Sensibility first.
Chawton Cottage was the hub of comfort for the extended Austen family. Here, was Mrs. Austen, the mother of Jane and her siblings and grandmother to their children, and the two beloved maiden aunts, Jane and Cassandra. And, the nieces and nephews came to stay, sometimes for a vacation, sometimes for longer when there was a death in the family and they needed a place to be and someone to cheer them up.
We blew into Winchester Cathedral at the end of a very long day, and I use that verb advisedly. We had spent the morning and afternoon in Austen country—Steventon where she grew up, and the St. Nicholas Parish Church (Part 1 and Part 2 on the blog) and Chawton Cottage (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) where I wandered around for far too long. So, by the time we got to Winchester Cathedral, there was, it seemed, just a teacup full of time left before the church closed for the day.
But, stepping inside was into a sea of calm. I paid my respects at the grave, and still had time to walk around the cathedral, breathe the air, and dwell on its history. And while Jane Austen is arguably its most important occupant, Winchester Cathedral was there for many centuries before her, and its mellow stones are steeped in legend…and some myth. Read on.
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Jane, her sister Cassandra, and their mother moved into Chawton Cottage in 1809, thanks to her brother Edward Knight’s generosity. One other person came to live with them. Martha Lloyd was a longtime friend, and a few of Jane’s surviving letters are written to her. She was the sister of Jane’s oldest brother James’ second wife, Mary. Got all that? (James took over the rectory at Steventon when their father retired; his son by his second wife, James Edward Austen Leigh, is the one who wrote Jane Austen’s first official biography. So both Martha and Jane were aunts to James Edward Austen Leigh). Continue Reading
(Part 1 here)
The front of Chawton Cottage, where Jane Austen spent the last eight years of her life. Source: Jane Austen: Her Homes & Her Friends, by Constance Hill.
How Edward Austen became Edward Knight: Austen’s Emma begins with a marriage between Emma’s governess, Miss Taylor and Mr. Weston, with Emma bemoaning the fact that her companion had now disappeared—moving a whole half mile away to her own house, her own husband, her own occupations. ‘…Emma was aware that great must be the difference between Mrs. Weston only half-a-mile from them, and a Miss Taylor in the house…’ Continue Reading
The Bath years, the writing falters, but the research doesn’t
George Austen had had it by 1801. He had been rector of two parishes, Steventon and Deane, for thirty-seven years. He had conducted two, maybe three services a week at the two churches. He had visited the poor, the sick, administered last rites to the dying, and buried them in the churchyards. He had home-tutored pupils who had lived in his house year-round to prepare for the university. His wife had to be their de facto mother, and she had fed them, washed their linens, and tended to their fever and chills. All this, to make extra money to supplement George Austen’s income. Now, his children were grown up, some were married (Jane and her sister Cassandra were not, and were still at home), he was old(er) and in poor health, and he wanted to live the rest of his life out in a relative peace. Continue Reading
(Part 1 here)
A half a mile south of the old rectory is the Church of St. Nicholas, where Jane’s father preached and led his flock, and where she attended services. It’s also another smooth, macadamized road today—in Jane’s time, it would have been a rough path, slushy in the rains, dusty in dry summers.
The church dates to the 12th Century, so it had been standing there, among the fields and the pastures, for almost seven centuries by the time George Austen came to Steventon to be rector. The warm southern wall of the church, right of the entry door, hosted purple and white sweet-smelling wild violets that bloomed in summer. The close-cropped green of the churchyard was shaded by elms, hawthorns and a mighty, aged yew, which had probably been there for as many years as the church itself. Continue Reading
I’m in a churn of delight when I glance at the GPS and see that the Church of St. Nicholas is not more than a half mile away from the turning. Like the best of anticipations, I can’t see the church as we drive along the road, only trees that clot the roadside and arc their branches over, letting little tatters of sunlight through. It’s a slim, country road, a one-laner. Eventually, we hit the end of the road, and the church raises its steeple on the left in a miniscule churchyard. Birds coo and chirp, bees hum in the sunshine; there’s one other car in the parking lot, whose occupants leave almost as soon as we get there. Continue Reading
