Actually, I did that one better and actually went into the Jane Austen house. Well, it wasn’t her house exactly. Here’s her house, which is a dentist’s right now--
The museum proper is a few flats down. For the record, Miss Austen didn’t even live in the entire house, as her family was on hard times during the Bath years, and frugally only rented the top floors of the above flat. But I am being cynical. I have now walked upon the very streets and cobblestones that one of the greatest character writers of the English language walked upon. I would disagree with the staff of the Austen Museum on the point of her “inventing” the novel, however/ I really dislike it when people feel the need to create laurels where none are needed. There is no question that she revolutionized how character psychology was treated in novels. Isn’t that enough? Good Lord, if she had only written Northanger Abbey, she still would have been great.
Having said all that, I found myself uncomfortable with my pilgrim ways. Perhaps it was the canned hagiography we were handed by the guide, who kept painting Good Jane’s life as a hard one of horror and non-recognition. Come now. She got ripped off by the publishers and died relatively young at 41 (but not that young for the times), and it is sad that the bit with the unknown young man of her twenties didn’t work out (not her later less than than 24 hour engagement—everyone’s entitled to be foolish once, and she caught herself before that went too far). But really, she led a comfortable middle class existence, loved by her family and lived to see her novels find wide acclaim. I mean, if the Regent himself asks you to write a book for him (Emma), you’re doing okay.
I think it’s that we want a bit of drama in our artist’s lives. Jane had none of that. Drama for her consisted of being forced to live in Bath for five years. She was said to have fainted at the notion. She wasn’t exactly Hemmingway, but she wrote a thousand times more complexly. Yet audiences seems to prefer the lives of Hemmingways and Hunter Thompsons. I think this is because they want to have some feeling of veracity in their writings. They don’t understand that writers lie. Jane wrote some of the greatest romance novels in history, yet she never even married. But she was a supreme observer, and could translate that into her scribblings. Her great adventures occurred here at this writing desk, between her ears, and related through a simple goose-feather quill.
As I say this, I have to think of Catherine Moreland of Northanger Abbey, who was such a voracious reader, and saw gothic romance/drama wherever she went. Like all of Jane’s heroines, she ends up paired up at the end with a very sensible fellow and seems fated to lead a nice, calm, domestic existence. Perhaps Miss Austen was trying to tell her readership something here.
Well, I can’t be prevented from my own flights of fancy, however, and I am not exactly the most domestic girl in the world (although I still miss Puppy). Unlike Jane, I was thrilled to wander the streets of Bath, which in the late 18th and early 19th century was a sort of English Las Vegas without the tackyness.
I love to think of men and women dressed like this (costumes from the Austen Museum), flocking to the Circus and the Assembly Hall for their dances and card games.
The Circus
The Assembly Hall
And the lady’s fans waving in the heat of the dancers
After the walking tour, we headed over to the Pump Room, where until recently, people would come to “take the waters” of the ancient Roman Baths (if you see the movie version of Northanger Abbey, that’s where everyone is soaking themselves).
At ten pounds a pop, it seemed a bit much to tour, so instead we lounged outside, nibbling at meat pies and listening to the St. Petersburg Percussion Club play Mozart, Handel and Bach on xylophones. Really a fantastic pair of performers, although their CD was a bit disappointing. Maybe it was just the recording studio, which could hardly measure up to the ancient walls of the Bath courtyard and Abbey.
Filled with such restraint, I actually walked past this shop--
To be honest, I know such places are largely overpriced and oft the quality of the provided vices doesn't measure up to the marketing. Before anyone can congratulate me too much, however, let me add that dinner that evening was a huge pile of home-cooked curry with more wine and chocolate (courtesy of the local) than I really ought to have noshed on. But we did save some money.
Filled with Senses and a modicum of Sensibility,
V
