Tuesday, July 19: Jane Austen II

On Tuesday, we unexpectedly fell in love with Winchester, although we almost killed ourselves in the process!

Having been given directions down the hill to the most convenient car park in Winchester, we blithely decided that we did not need Gladys for such a short trip. Mistake!

Winchester is a city of many one-way streets.  In order to navigate, I needed to process street signs more quickly than Al was driving.  Not possible.  Let’s just say that we ultimately wound up, in our car, one block too far on the High Street – that is to say, in a block that was only a pedestrian walkway.  We were a bit confused by the sight of an armored car on the pedestrian walkway, but by the time we realized that we were in a real mess, the only alternative was a right turn onto Upper Brook Street, a one-land pedestrian walkway with (gasp!) a barricade at the end!  Meanwhile, we had a sweet little old lady chasing us with “What are you DOING?” and a less-than-sweet young man chasing us with “What the f___ are you doing?”  Al made the only possible choice; he turned right onto the sidewalk, squeezed through the barricade, and landed on an actual automobile-compatible street.  From then on, we never travelled without Gladys.

We finally found a parking garage and proceeded, a bit exhausted already, to explore the city.  Winchester was the 9^th C Saxon capital of Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, who united many of the disparate Anglo-Saxon kingdoms against a series of Danish invasions.  We wandered through streets which featured medieval buildings as well as later buildings finished with flint, up the hill beyond the medieval Westgate to the Great Hall.  The Hall, described as “the first and finest of all 13th century halls,” is the surviving remnant of the castle that dated back to William the Conqueror.  In itself it is gorgeous, with its Gothic arches, inner gates which appear to be made of chain mail, the jewel-toned stained glass windows featuring the arms of the major players in English history who either contributed to the hall or who were Hampshire natives.  One entire wall was so perfectly painted with a “family tree” of Hampshire Members of Parliament that it might have passed for printed wallpaper.  But of course, the main attraction in this space is the Round Table of King Arthur, a massive oak table (18+ feet in diameter) hanging on the main wall of the Great Hall.  The table was built in the 13^th C, a time when the mythical Arthur was becoming a symbol of all that was great in Britain.  It was repainted on the orders of Henry VIII for a 1522 visit from the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V; the painting features the Tudor colors, green and white; the Tudor rose as a centerpiece; and a portrait of Arthur which looks remarkably like the young Henry himself.  Not King Arthur’s Round Table, but awesome nonetheless!

We also spent time in Queen Eleanor’s Garden, named for two queens of that name.  I was particularly intrigued because the garden was planted only with 13^th C plants and reconstructed as a pleasaunce, or pleasure garden (as opposed to a kitchen garden):  flowers, color, fragrance, water.  Many surprisingly familiar plants, a number of hideaway seats, a tunnel fashioned of woven tree branches….  I was sharply reminded of the pleasaunces in Anya Seton’s Katherine, and in particular, the line spoken in that novel about the saint and mystic Julian of Norwich:  “God has made a pleasaunce in her soul.”  This is a digression, but I (although the complete opposite of a mystic!) have often imagined the place in my soul where God dwells as a pleasaunce: much red and purple and yellow and white; fragrance of roses and lilies and lavender and, of course, boxwood; paths and a maze and tiny garden rooms with fountains and places to sit and BE.  Something rather like Queen Eleanor’s Garden….

At this point in our journey, we realized that we would be a half-day behind on any given day of our itinerary. (Those of you who know me:  isn’t that exactly how I teach???)  From the Great Hall we descended back through the town to the marvelous cathedral which evolved from an early 7^th C Anglo-Saxon church to the 16^th C masterpiece we were privileged to visit.

For me, of course, the high point of the visit was the grave of Jane Austen.  We found the grave rather quickly, in the floor of the left aisle.  Someone had left a small yellow flower on the slab which marks her grave. 

 

I sat for a while (yes, I suppose people had to walk around me) out of a need to be with, to feel her presence.  The epitaph spoke of “the benevolence of her heart, the sweetness of her temper, and the extraordinary endowments of her mind,” as well as “her charity, devotion, faith, and purity.”  Nothing about her writing.  I have since learned from the cathedral website that her early-morning funeral was attended by only four people.  It was not until 1870, when she was more highly regarded as a writer, that her nephew Edward had a brass plaque installed in the cathedral that acknowledged Jane as a writer; by 1900, according to the cathedral website, she was famous enough that a window was installed in her memory above the plaque.  But I was most deeply touched just sitting on the floor and reading, on the simple slab, how much she had been loved by the people who mattered most to her.

I discovered two other people of note in the cathedral.  Isaak Walton, author of The Compleat Angler, is buried in The Fishermen’s Chapel (marvelous wooden altar carved with, of course, fish).  Then there was the burial chapel of Henry Cardinal Beaufort, Chancellor of England, but important to me because he was the son of John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford, heroine of one of my absolutely favorite historical novels, Katherine (see the reference to pleasaunce, above!). 

The rest of the cathedral itself --  the Great Screen, the choirs, the ceiling – was breathtaking.  The 12^th C Winchester Bible, a glorious illuminated manuscript (gold, lapis, corrections inserted) was a miracle of art and stamina, written by a single scribe, edited by a second, and illustrated by six visiting artists – until the noble sponsor died and the money ran out.  Unfinished – a victim of the economy.  We can relate.

At this point in our exploration, we were acutely conscious of the clock ticking in our parking garage, so we left the cathedral, rounded the incredible flying buttresses and the Chaucerian-era Pilgrims’ School in search of Jane Austen’s final home on College Street, the place where she moved to be near her physician, the place where she died.

We ran back to Friarsgate carpark and arrived with one minute to spare.  And so, having immersed ourselves in Jane Austen’s Hampshire, we proceeded to explore the Wessex of Thomas Hardy.