The fifteen-minute Heathrow Express from Paddington Station is expensive, but ever so much better than dragging four bags (two of them at fifty pounds each) on the Tube with its long halls, sometimes-working escalators, and three transfers. At the Hertz rental center, we walked our luggage out to parking space 67 to load up our car just in time to see the little blue car we had supposedly rented drive away! Not sure what happened there, but as a result, we were given an upgrade (another of those serendipitous events) to a white Kia Soul. We set up the GPS (Al’s decision to buy a TomTom with international navigation was brilliant, as you shall soon see!) and embarked on our 700-mile pilgrimage.
Driving on the left side of the road in a right-handed driver seat is, shall we say, an adventure of its own. I spent much time gripping the seat when we cut a little close to whatever was right outside my left-side passenger window: another car, a curb; most often, when we were not on an M or an A highway, those lovely but unforgiving hedgerows which border the usual one and a half lane roads with walls ten feet high or more – no shoulders on either side. And while it was breathtaking to ride on country roads over which the trees meet in glorious vaulted cathedral ceilings over our heads, it was rather more breathtaking to come around a curve of hedgerow and meet a car coming in the opposite direction. In such cases we either tucked in under the hedgerow or did a very slow and wary dance of one car past another, praying in either case. Before too long, we caught the rhythm of which car was better able to stop and let the other go. But there were many times when I wished for Harry Potter’s bus (here’s where I show my ignorance of HP!), the one which had the capacity to “inhale” as it squeezed through traffic ???
The TomTom, now dubbed Gladys (don’t ask!), took us into Steventon, and after turning around a few times , we finally discovered the left-hand turn that led past fields which still looked remarkably 19th C to St. Nicholas Church, where Jane Austen’s father and brothers were the rectors and where Jane worshipped until she was 25.
Although a former rector of the church had confided to me in an email that the church was never locked, it seemed to be when we tried the door. Disappointed, especially since it had (of course) begun to rain, I began to take outdoor pictures of the church, the graves of several of her family members, and the iconic 900+ year-old yew tree. At this point, Al, refusing to be deterred, discovered that if one turns the large metal ring in the door before trying to pull it, the door will open – just in time, as the skies opened as well.
The 12thC church is small, whitewashed with dark wood beams, and little changed since Jane’s time. Ironically, the changes include the remnants of a medieval painting, uncovered during restoration of the church wall, and a three-foot-high piece of a ninth-century Saxon cross, discovered in the nearby manor in the 19thC and placed in the church in 1952. There was a plaque commemorating Jane on a side wall and some of the individual needlepoint kneelers below the pews were worked in a full-length silhouette of Jane. There was a stack of programs in the back, left over from the previous night’s Evensong, a celebration of Jane during the week of her death.
I sat in the first pew, trying to conjure up Jane, the second youngest of eight children, sitting and listening to her rector father’s sermons each week. My picture was more of a seven-year-old trying hard to sit as appropriately still as would have been expected, particularly from the rector’s daughter. I didn’t think of her as a 20-something, in the same pew, still listening. Did her father vary his sermons? Did she ever sit there conjuring Lizzie or Elinor or Marianne instead of listening?
Outside again, we explored the yew tree a second time, its tortuously twisting trunk, and its great hollow in which the church key was kept for years until it was stolen. A tree that probably existed when the church was first built, and was already 700 years old when Jane played under it. Incredible.
From Steventon, we drove 30 minutes to Chawton, where Jane lived with her mother and sisters in a cottage given by their brother Edward, then heir to the Knight Family estate. Jane was 33 when she moved to Chawton on July 7, 1809 (having lived for the past 8 years in Bath – more later!)
I had imagined the cottage, even from the pictures, as being in a more rural setting, but it was at an intersection in Chawton, right on the street. We lunched at The Grey Friar pub across the street, then joyfully explored the bookstore. We chose to wander in the garden before entering the house; discovered, as previously mentioned, the dyeing garden where I discovered the blue woad plant and several other plants that I photographed for the 7th grade Gathering Blue unit.
I will probably let the pictures speak for the inside of the house: drawing room with piano, the dining room set with some of the china she helped pick out, which looked remarkably like our cobalt and gold dishes, and her desk, round, worn, obviously loved… I had to run my hand over it to feel – what? The penmanship, the pages, the thoughts, the characters….? There have been times when I have felt the presence of an author most palpably outdoors, in the garden (Shakespeare, Thoreau), but with Jane it was indoors, at this little table…. There was a door near where she wrote which, in her days, creaked; she asked that it not be repaired so that she would have notice of anyone coming, whereupon she slid her novel draft under a letter to keep her work secret….
The title pages of the first editions, also exhibited here, read as follows:
Sense and Sensibility. A Novel. By A Lady.
Pride and Prejudice. A Novel. By the Author of Sense and Sensibility.
Mansfield Park. A Novel. By the Author of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice.
Emma. A Novel. By the author of Pride and Prejudice, etc., etc.
Seemingly a matter of importance not to reveal her identity. Was this only because a real lady did not dabble in fiction?
Cabinets which displayed locks of her hair, a topaz cross brought to her by her brother, a needle case which she made for her niece. In her bedroom, a sewing table, a water closet, a facsimile of the parish registry pages in which she (much to her father’s dismay, I’m guessing!) recorded the banns of marriage between herself and two or three fictitious men. Bedrooms devoted to displays of her admiral brothers although they never lived in the cottage.
We then walked in increasing rain to St. Nicholas Church (somehow St. Nick is popular in this area) to see the graves of Jane’s mother and sister, both named Cassandra. The church was the first of several buildings we saw in this area that were finished with flint. At first we thought the stones were oyster shells, but a lovely lady in Winchester explained the use of flint to us on our Tuesday visit there. When the rain subsided, we walked to the gate of Chawton House. This was the 16th C manor inherited by Edward Austen, Jane’s brother, when he was adopted by the Knight family. A large, elegant estate. I can see clearly where Jane might have drawn her inspiration for the dichotomy between Barton Park and the cottage given to the Dashwood ladies in Sense and Sensibility. No matter how often they may have been asked to dine at the manor by her brother, Jane and her mother and sister would always have felt themselves second class. Blessedly, the manor has since redeemed itself: it is now, thanks to the work of American philanthropist Sandy Lerner and others, a library dedicated to early English women writers 1600-1830. I took pictures of it in a threatening rain; I got no closer than the gate. If I had been able to make an appointment for a visit, I would have been in my third or fourth heaven of the trip. Someday.
We puddlejumped to our Kia and reset Gladys to take us to the Holiday Inn, outside of Winchester, where we spent the night.
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