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Jane Austen lived at Number 4 Sydney Place in Bath from the summer of 1801 until the summer of 1804, together with her parents, the Reverend George and Mrs. Austen, and Cassandra, her elder sister. I’ve written about it in the past and you can access those posts here and here.
It was then on the outskirts of Bath and was near to the Sydney Gardens where Jane enjoyed visiting the pleasure gardens, though she was not always too keen on the music performed there, as evidenced by this comment in her letter to Cassandra of the 2nd June 1799 
There is to be a grand gala on Tuesday evening in Sydney Gardens-A concert with Illuminations and Fireworks; to the latter Elizabeth and I look forward with pleasure, and even the concert will have more than its usual charm with me, as the Gardens are large enough for me to get pretty well beyond the reach of its sound.
The garden to a house a few doors down from Number 4 is open to the public to visit on Saturday 19th may and again on the 1st July. So if you can manage to go you will get an idea of the type of garden the Austens would have enjoyed while they lived at Number 4, and also get a view of the rear of number 4 in the bargain.
The garden is opened to benefit a local charity, The Dorothy House Hospice Care, and all the details of how to ge to the garden plus opening times and price of entry can be accessed here. I do wish I could attend!
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Last week I reviewed Vauxhall Gardens: A History by David Coke and Alan Borg. That book, while fascinating, gigantic in size and scope, and well worth its price, is rather expensive and I wanted to point you in the way of a more reasonably-priced soft cover book on the same topic, The English Pleasure Garden by Sarah Jane Downing, published by Shire.
This is not a very large book, only 64 page in all, but it manages to be a comprehensive overview on the subject of those lost pleasure gardens, which were such a feature of 18th /early 19th century life. It does not concentrate on one garden, but gives the reader a clear view of the rather short history of these gardens from their Stuart beginnings to their sad Victorian end.
There are chapters on the London gardens, and you may be interested to know that Vauxhall and Ranelagh were not the only gardens to visit. There were 64 pleasure gardens in London and its environs during this period. Here is a picture of one of the more rural pleasure gardens, Sadlers Wells, in Islington, then a small village just outside the city of London.
In the 18th century it was a place to take the waters, hence the name “wells” but today it is rather more well-known as the site of a theatre famous for staging dance in all its forms.
The seedier side of 18th century life that these gardens attracted is also addressed; here is an image from the late 18th century illustrating an intoxicated woman returning home very late (or, more probably, early in the morning!) from a masquerade. This type of image illustrated the growing concern for the immoral effect of masquerades, an entertainment that Ranelagh was famous for promoting.
A fascinating section of the book is its chapters on provincial pleasure gardens. Sydney Gardens in Bath is included, of course, and we all know that Jane Austen lived opposite them at Sydney Place when she first moved to Bath from Steventon in 1801.
But is it very interesting to read of other, less famous gardens in Norwich, Liverpool, Newcastle-upon-Tyne- so at least Lydia Wickham had one to attend to enjoy its weekly concerts!-and the lost pleasure garden of Duddeston in Birmingham, seen below, in a very rare image:
In so small a book something has to give: and that is first, the size of the illustrations. However they are many and varied and very useful. And the details can be easily seen by the use of a magnifying glass. Second, citations. It would have been helpful to have more sources listed other than the occasional acknowledgement to a museum or library. But, that would had added to both the size and cost of the book. Some things we have to forgive.
Overall, it is a very useful starting point for understanding these lost but once magical places. I can throughly recommend this book to you.
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The BBC FOUR TV series, If Walls Could Talk concluded last night with a fascinating episode on the development of the kitchen throughout history.
I’ve not mentioned this programme to you before, because it is not primarily concerned with the era in which Jane Austen lived, being a general over-view of the development of key rooms in the house: the Living Room, the Bedroom, the Bathroom and in last night’s episode, the Kitchen.
The Kitchen, of course, developed apace during the 18th century and so I think you might like to see the interpretation of its history as it applies to our era, from last night’s show.
The series is presented by the rather endearing Dr Lucy Worsley who is the Chief Curator of the Historic Royal Palaces. She has come in for quite a lot of criticism for her presenting style, in particular for her habit of donning historic dress in every episode. Having now seen all the episodes I feel that when she did this in the company of other historical reenactors it made sense. She would look out of place in the swanky Victorian kitchen at Shugborough Hall, black leading the grate in modern dress when all about her were in pink maids uniforms and flounced aprons. But then I didn’t understand the need to dress up in a Georgian sack dress, when she was in the company of other experts, such as Professor Amanda Vickery, who were sporting modern dress. Ah, well….to Georgian Kitchens.
The great technological developments in our era, cast iron ovens raised from the ground fueled by the more efficient coal were considered. Dr Worsley experienced the hot and hard work of being a turnspit (dressed as a boy) in the Tudor kitchen at Hampton Court, and then the programme jumped to our era to consider one of the most intriguing labour-saving devices of the 18th century, the turnspit dog.
In West Street Lacock ( or Meryton or Highbury, given your choice of favourite adaptation!) in Wiltshire there still exists a public house , the George Inn,
which has retained a working turnspit which was once powered by the special turnspit dog, a breed of dog now extinct, shown below:
During the 18th century and until the early years of the 19th century this special breed of dogs were used, particularly in Bath, to turn the spit to roast meat, while running on a wheel attached to a wall, a subject that I’ve written about previously here. I wonder if any of the houses in which Jane Austen lived while in Bath had a similar contraption in their kitchens? I’ll bet they did….there is still one at Number 1 Royal Crescent.
Ivan Day, our friend of Historic Foods, was in charge of the operation. The dog they used to replace the turnspit was a modern border terrier, Coco.
She was placed in the wheel, shown above on the side of the chimney in the pub, and fed sausages hidden on the ledges in the wheel. Needless to day,Ivan Day’s doubts, that as Coco was not bred to the job and had longer legs than the original breed of dog, did prevail and she did not perform the job at all efficiently.
Dr Worsely, had to take over the job of turning the spit by hand via the wheel.
( And do let me rush to confirm and assure you that no dogs were hurt at all by the filming process: Coco was fed rather a lot of spit roasted mutton as payment for her valiant and good natured attempts to turn the wheel by Ivan who is a very lovely man and a confirmed dog lover!).
The next part of the programme took us up to Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire,
Robert Adams’ stern confection of a house built for Lord and Lady Scarsdale in the 1760s. Here we met with the fabulous food historian Peter Brears, who explained that the layout of this grand , up-to-the-minute country house was so designed that no cooking smells would ever permeate the rest of the house from the kitchen.Heaven forfend that aristocratic nostrils should be assaulted by cooking smells, like lesser motals who lived among their cooking pots !
If you look at the floor plan of Kedleston, below, you can see that
©The National Trust
it was first envisaged that the house would have a central block with four pavilions connected to the house by gently curved corridors, rather like the design for Holkham House in Norfolk.
Sadly only two pavilion wings were built.And you can see from the plan that the pavilion to the right housed the kitchen. This is now the National Trust tea room and in the programme though nearly everything tea room related had been cleared, you can just make out one of the large vending machines which was obviously plumbed-in in some way and could not be removed.
The kitchen with its stern warning shot to the staff, above,
and its high ceilings and modern ventilation, above, was physically sufficiently far away from the dining room to prevent food odours from seeping into the other parts of the house.
The state dining room was decorated not with tapestries and carpets which would retain food odours, but with plain stuccoed walls and in the 18th century there would have been an oil cloth covering the floor. No aristocrat of this era wanted to be confronted with food smells unless the food was actually on his rather grand table.
And Robert Adam thoughtfully provided incense and pastille burners in the dining room to further cleanse the room of any lingering food smells.
Of course , it is a widely held belief that kitchens thus separated from dining rooms could only serve luke warm food at best.
Dr Worsley encouraged Mr Beares to run, while holding a tureen full of that Georgian staple, hot Pea Soup, along a route from the kitchen on the ground floor upstairs to the state dining room ( see the route above on the annotated plan) in order for him to prove that the food would not have arrived cold. Quite a sight to see….
He speed up the stairs with a determined vigour and Dr Worsley served herself some still warm soup from the silver tureen.
This episode was one of the best of this series of four programmes. I’ve warmed to Dr Worsley’s presenting style as the series progressed, and hope you watch the four installments on series link on the BBC I player, linked above in the first paragraph, if you have missed it. Or look out for the DVD, which is sure to come. There is a book to accompany the series but I cannot comment on it as I’ve not read it, but do bear in mind that it covers periods before and after that in which we are interested if you have a mind to buy it.
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We know that Trim Street in Bath was the last place the Austen ladies- Jane,Cassandra and Mrs Austen- lived while they were in Bath because of the evidence from a letter sent by Mrs Austen to Mary her daughter- in -law. Here is a link to a post that I wrote about it last year.
Their Trim Street home was supposed to be very temporary accommodation in which to stay while they were looking at other properties in which to settle on a more permanent basis. They arrived there in January 1806 but were still there in April, and most probably stayed there till they finally left Bath for Clifton and on to Gloucestershire,Warwickshire and Staffordshire in the summer of 1806.
Mrs Austen’s exasperation with her situation and inability to find more suitable lodging was expressed not only in the tone of her letter but in the way she wrote her address
Trim Street Still
The letter, part of which is quoted in Deirdre Le Faye’s book, Jane Austen: A Family Record, gives some hints of the trials of searching for lodgings which suited both their social aspirations and their much reduced pockets, for at this time Mr Austen had been dead for over a year, and they were very dependant upon the charity of the Austen sons. And remember when the family were first searching for lodgings in Bath in 1801 Jane Austen wrote to Cassandra that
In the meantime she (Mrs Austen- Jfw) assures you that she will do everything in her power to avoid Trim Street although you have not expressed the fearful presentiment of it which was rather expected.
(See Letter to Cassandra Austen, 3rd January 1801)
So…why was Trim Street so exasperating? Well, last summer I had the very enjoyable but slightly odd experience of staying in Trim Street, in a Georgian house rented out as holiday let by a nearby hotel, and may have found some of the reasons which explain Mrs Austen’s desperation to move away.
This view of trim street shows the house where we stayed- on the bottom left by the parked car .It is a typical small, slightly narrow, single fronted Bath town house, and it was rather plainly built with no internal architectural features of note.
But it had been altered into a wonderful suite of holiday accommodation on four floors,with a sleek modern kitchen, roof terrace, shown above, four bedrooms, excellent bathrooms and sitting room.
Above is the entrance hall…
The stairs…
One of the bedrooms….
And the sitting room on the first floor
This is the view from the sitting room looking out onto the most architecturally distinguished part of Trim Street, General Wolfe’s House.He was staying in Bath at this house when Pitt the elder commanded him to lead his famous expedition to Quebec.
The street that runs parallel to Trim Street contains the Royal Mineral Water Hospital, which is now the National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases. It was founded in 1738 and was known as The Mineral Water Hospital. It provided care for the many poor people who flocked to Bath desperate for a cure for their illnesses from either bathing in or drinking the famed mineral waters.This was the other side of the coin to fashionable Bath, the one that Mrs Smith in Persuasion was hovering above in genteel poverty in nearby Westgate Buildings.
As you can see from the map above, Trim Street is surrounded by other streets. When Baht is busy, this is a very busy street with many pedestrians cutting though on their way to the attractions of the main shopping area (then as now) -Bond Street
haunt of Sir Walter Elliot
and, of course…
Milsom Street, home to the status obsessed General Tilney…
are seconds away as are the Pump Room
and the Bath complex and the Abbey.
Perfect for a holiday break today in a rather funkily decorated, restored period house with all modern conveniences… except for some problems that would have been universal then as now.Do allow me to explain….
Trim Street is narrow and has rather tall buildings. As a result the rooms are sunny for a small period of time: once the sun moved over the rooms were not particularly light. Nor are there any views to be had save for other buildings. No trees, no greenery….and for someone like Jane Austen who seemed to crave the countryside, that would have been hard to endure.
And then there was the noise. The result of the tall buildings in a narrow street is that any noise is amplified and even one person walking along it echos intrusively into the house. So…if lots of people are waking around,that equates to a lot of noise. Women walking on metal patterns on the cobbled street would be heard all over the house.
We also found the modern phenomena of Hen Partys and etc meant that we heard revellers into the very early ( or late!) hours of the morning, and most nights we didn’t have any peace until at least 3 a.m. Im sure drunken revellers are not just a 21st century phenomena.
And I could imagine that in the not particularly sanitary early 19th century, the air would not be particularly good in such a confined street……Pongs would hang about.
So,while we relished the thought that we were staying On The Street Where She Lived, and indeed it may even have been in that particular house(!) what we didn’t relish were the sort of inconveniences that I am sure would have been experienced by the Austens. No wonder after four months of living there Mrs Austen was quite desperate to get away…..
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I thought you might enjoy a serendipitous collaboration between the BBC and the National Trust.
The National Trust has created a city skyline walk around Bath, and this week the BBC Radio 4 Programme Ramblings, now presented by the amiable Stuart Maconie, recorded him walking along the route in the company of some local police officers. The area covered in the walk is indicated in the section from John Cary’s map of Bath and its Environs (1812) above. It covers Claverton Down, Widecombe,and passes by Ralph Allen’s Prior Park: the landscape garden there is also a National Trust property.
The walk is a circular one of about 6 miles in length,and has marvellous views across the city, and if you are in Bath you might consider doing it for yourself.
However, wherever you are in the world, if you have a look at the National Trust’s map-which you can see here -while listening to the programme, you can easily follow the route and imagine the views that Jane Austen took on her walks to Widecombe and Beechen Cliff while she lived in Bath.
It’s a jolly programme, -accessible here- and is only 23 minutes long. I’m sure,with the additional aid of the map, you will have a great idea of the terrain as they walk the path.
Most of us are familiar with the architects of Bath - John Wood senior and elder- who planned Queens Square and the development of the Upper Town. Less well-known is the man who provided the raw material for these elegant squares and crescents,Bath Stone. He was Ralph Allen, and this small but very readable book by Diana Winsor, published by Polperro Heritage Press gives us a short but comprehensive account of his life. Diana Winsor uses his extant correspondence but also invents extracts from his” diary” to fill in the blanks of his story for us.
Born in Cornwall in 1693, he moved to Bath in 1715. He had trained in the running of Post Offices at Exeter. He became Deputy Postmaster at Bath aged 19 and went on to reform the whole English postal system, winning a lucrative government contract to organise the post for many successive decades. He became Mayor of Bath in 1742, and was M.P. for Bath from 1757 untill 1764.
He invested his profits from the Post Office in the stone quarries that surround Bath high up on the downs . In conjunction with John Wood the Elder he promoted the use of Bath stone as an excellent building material, and the developments of Queens Square, Gay Street The Circus The Crescent and the Upper Town including the Assembly Rooms were built in this material. Bath stone is honey coloured when underground, but once mined and exposed to the air it becomes pale, and grayer. Anne Elliot in Persuasion disliked its pale appearance very much:
Lady Russell, convinced that Anne would not be allowed to be of any use, or any importance, in the choice of the house which they were going to secure, was very unwilling to have her hurried away so soon, and wanted to make it possible for her to stay behind, till she might convey her to Bath herself after Christmas; but having engagements of her own, which must take her from Kellynch for several weeks, she was unable to give the full invitation she wished; and Anne, though dreading the possible heats of September in all the white glare of Bath, and grieving to forego all the influence so sweet and so sad of the autumnal months in the country, did not think that, every thing considered, she wished to remain. It would be most right, and most wise, and, therefore, must involve least suffering, to go with the others.
Persuasion, Chapter 5
Ralph Allen was an entrepreneur and an innovator. He built his impressive home, Prior Park on the outskirts of Bath as a testament to the excellent qualities of Bath stone as a building material and ornamented the surrounding landscape garden, which he designed with the help of “Capability” Brown and Alexander Pope, with delicious gardens features such as the famous bridge, below. All made of Bath stone, naturally.
© NTPL / Stephen Robson
The landscape garden is now owned by the National Trust and is open to the public.The mansion is now a boarding school and is not.
This book though small is an interesting read, and certainly filled in many blanks in my knowledge of this important figure in Bath history. The illustrations are mainly by Diana Windsor herself and I think are best in architectural pieces, as in this illustration of Ralph Allen’s town-house in Bath,
as her figures are, for me, sadly not as convincing as the buildings she portrays:
This is an inexpensive and entertaining book, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the life of one of the founders of Bath.
Today for the last of Lady Russell’s Winter Pleasures posts (although there is one more tomorrow in this series,a book review) we are going to look at the Pump Room. The Pump Room in Bath was built in the lower part of the town, and was where those taking the “cure” would drink copious amounts of the warm spring water in order to effect a cure.The first PumpRom was replaced in 1797 by the one which is still in existence today.
This is the description of it from Feltham’s Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places etc.,(1803):
FOR those who are unable or unwilling to join in more e and expensive amusements, the new Pump-room presents attraction unrivalled…
This noble room was built in 1797 under the direction of Mr. Baldwin, architect. It is 60 feet long by 46 wide, and 31. feet high. The inside is set round with three quarter columns of the Corinthian order, crowned with an entablature, and a covering of five feet. In a recess at the West-end is the music gallery, and in another at the East an excellent time-piece, over which is a marble statue of king Nash, executed by Hoare, at the expense of the corporation. In the Centre of the South-side is a marble vase from which issue the waters, with a fire-place on each side.
The exterior is furnished in a capital stile (sic) of architecture, having its architrave charged with the following inscription from Pindar, in gold letters which may be justly rendered,
“Bath-water is better than Bath-wine ;”
literally, water is, best.
This section of the map of Bath included in John Feltham’s book shows the position of the Pump Room,just opposite what was then the White Hart Inn in Stall Street.
This Victorian photograph, taken from the position of the White Hart shows the Pump Room in all its splendour
And this view, and engraving dating from the late 18th century shows it and the colonnade, with the inn behind.
It is set in the Abbey churchyard, and you can see the marvellous Bath Abbey set at right angles to the Pump Room, above in a photograph I took last year
As you can clearly see with comparison with the 18th century print, not much has changed since the late 18th century, though the White Hart Inn is no longer there.
This is one of the ante rooms to the Pump room and is where you now gain access to the room.
The plan below again from Walter Ison’s magisterial book, The Georgian Buildings of Bath shows the setting of the Pump Room amid the complex of Bath; the Kings Bath, the New Private Baths and the Cross Bath which is situated at the termination of Cross Street, which in its turn is beautifully colonnaded, and will be recognised by fans of the 1995 adaptation of Persuasion as the street along which the reunited lovers-Anne and Captain Wentworth- strolled along once the Circus (and the infamous kiss) had gone away…..
This is the view from the Cross Bath to the New Baths and the Pump Room :
And this is a close up of the ground plan of the Pump Room.
The Pump Room was also, in the early days of Bath, where the book was kept, known as the Subscription Book. This was where new arrivals in the town would enter their names. Something Catherine Morland found useful when she was trying to ascertain if Henry Tilney was still in town:
As soon as divine service was over, the Thorpes and Allens eagerly joined each other; and after staying long enough in the pump–room to discover that the crowd was insupportable, and that there was not a genteel face to be seen, which everybody discovers every Sunday throughout the season, they hastened away to the Crescent, to breathe the fresh air of better company. Here Catherine and Isabella, arm in arm, again tasted the sweets of friendship in an unreserved conversation; they talked much, and with much enjoyment; but again was Catherine disappointed in her hope of reseeing her partner. He was nowhere to be met with; every search for him was equally unsuccessful, in morning lounges or evening assemblies; neither at the Upper nor Lower Rooms, at dressed or undressed balls, was he perceivable; nor among the walkers, the horsemen, or the curricle–drivers of the morning. His name was not in the pump–room book, and curiosity could do no more. He must be gone from Bath.
Northanger Abbey, Chapter 5
Once new arrivals and added their names to the book, the Master of Ceremonies would then know they were in town and it was time to pay a visit of visit of ceremony to them, to inform them of the ways of Bath, should they not know of them. Having consulted this book the names of the new arrivals would also be published in the Bath newspapers. The book was kept in the early 18th century by the redoubtable Sarah Porter, shown below,
who was known for her uncanny ability to ambush new arrivals to town to ensure that their names were entered in the book(and her tip was received ).Putting ones name in the Subscription Book could also involve the outlay of serious money, for putting ones name there also “entitled ” you to subscribe to the Assemblies and concerts in the Pump Room and the Assembly Rooms, and also to the circulating libraries and bookshops.
The fashionable time to visit the Pump Room was in the morning:
Her an excellent company of musicians perform every morning, during the full season and a numerous assemblage of ladies and gentlemen walking up and down in social converse during the performance, presents a picture of animation which nothing can exceed…
(A Guide to all the Watering and Sea Bathing Places etc by J Feltham ,1803.
In the photographs above and below you can see the rounded apse and the musicians gallery within it:
The Pump Room is now a restaurant(and a pretty good one too!) and very often musicians play there.
But nowadays they don’t play from the gallery, but on a raised dias.
This is the view towards the other end of the room….
With its magnificent Thomas Tompion timepiece
And statue of Beau Nash,the King of Bath and the original Master of Ceremonies.
Half way along the room, over-looking the Kings Bath is the King’s Spring
Where you can still purchase glasses of the water to drink,served to you by a porter. It is surprisingly warm (and no doubt that added to its purgative qualities when one was taking “the cure”)
Of course it was when she was over looking the Pump Room from the Musgrove’s Room at the White Hart Inn that Mary Musgrove discovered Mr Elliot meeting Mrs Clay in a rather clandestine manner:
They found Mrs. Musgrove and her daughter within, and by themselves, and Anne had the kindest welcome from each… with intervals of every help which Mary required, from altering her ribbon to settling her accounts, from finding her keys, and assorting her trinkets, to trying to convince her that she was not ill-used by anybody; which Mary, well amused as she generally was, in her station at a window overlooking the entrance to the Pump Room, could not but have her moments of imagining.
Persuasion Chapter 22
and
“Do come, Anne,” cried Mary, “come and look yourself. You will be too late if you do not make haste. They are parting; they are shaking hands. He is turning away. Not know Mr. Elliot, indeed! You seem to have forgot all about Lyme.”
To pacify Mary, and perhaps screen her own embarrassment, Anne did move quietly to the window. She was just in time to ascertain that it really was Mr. Elliot, which she had never believed, before he disappeared on one side, as Mrs. Clay walked quickly off on the other; and checking the surprise which she could not but feel at such an appearance of friendly conference between two persons of totally opposite interests, she calmly said, “Yes, it is Mr. Elliot, certainly. He has changed his hour of going, I suppose, that is all, or I may be mistaken, I might not attend”; and walked back to her chair, recomposed, and with the comfortable hope of having acquitted herself well.
Persuasion, Chapter 22
Hmm… Mr Elliot, proving himself to be quite the slippery eel…..
Here is a link to another panoramic view of the Pump Room, if you go here and look on the right,click on “View the Pump Room Tour“, it is almost as good as being there. Almost….
And that concludes this small series of Winter Pleasures posts. I do hope you have enjoyed them.
So…yesterday we had to pretend that Lady Russell was a great dancer and enjoyed spending winter evenings at the Ball-Room at the Upper Rooms. It was fun though….I do hope you agree.
Today, we do not have to pretend for we know that she attended a concert at the Upper Rooms in Persuasion,and so would have visited the Tea Room which was where the subscription concerts were held. But before we get there we should really take a look at the Card Room or Great Octagon as it was known which separates the Ball Room from the Tea Room.
In the film of Persuasion (1995) written by Nick Drear, this ,below, the Small Octagon or Octagon Anti-chamber, was where the Elliot’s stood waiting for Lady Dalrymple and her daughter and where Anne had the unexpected opportunity of meeting Captain Wentworth for a deliciously revealing conversation.
It was more likely that this meeting took place in the Octagon shown below.
When the Upper Assembly Rooms were first opened in 1771, this was used as the card room. A card room where gambling took place was one of the necessary rooms in a suite of Assembly Rooms, for gambling by those not wishing to dance was entirely acceptable practise. Indeed Mr Allen retires to play cards,after he has safely deposited Mrs Allen and Catherine Morland at the Ballroom in Chapter 2 of Northanger Abbey. A separate card room was added to this room in 1777.
The Octagon was again set out for a wedding when I visited .It would be in this room that the actual wedding was performed. A quite spectacular setting, you must admit.
The chandelier in this room was made up of the remnants of the discarded chandeliers that used to hang in the Ball Room and were made by Jonathan Collett. It is very beautiful, and it is a wonder that they were able to make something so beautiful out of wrecked pieces!
The portrait that dominates this room is one by Thomas Gainsborough of Captain William Wade . He was the first Master of Ceremonies of the Upper Rooms. He had to quit his post in 1777 after he was involved in
an affair of gallantry
as Pierce Egan in Walk’s Though Bath (1819) coyly describes it.
He had also been the Master of Ceremonies at Brighton since 1767 .After quitting Bath in 1777 he retired to Brighton where he was Master of Ceremonies till he died in 1809. Mr James King whom we know as the Master of Ceremonies at the Lower Rooms, indeed, as the very gentleman who effected the successful introduction of Henry Tilney to Miss Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey, became the Master of Ceremonies at the upper Rooms in 1805 until his death at Cheltenham in 1816.
From the Octagon we can progress directly into the Tea Room. It was in this room that refreshments were served during Assemblies and where Public Breakfasts were taken. And it was also where the subscription concerts were held.
The three magnificent chandeliers in this room are the originals made by William Parker, supplier of chandeliers to the Prince of Wales at Carlton House.
This room is one of my most favourite rooms in the country. I love its restrained stone decoration.
And the gallery with its Corinthian Columns that run the length of the room,with the swags of flowers and fruit decorating the space in a quiet but very elegant way.
Again my photographs do not do justice to these wonderful chandeliers.They fail to capture the prisms of light that dart from the crystal…
The concerts in this room were first under the direction of Thomas Linley,shown below in a portrait painted by his friend, Thomas Gainsborough.
He was the father of the soprano Elizabeth Linley, seen here with her sister, again in a portrait by Gainsborough( she is on the left)
She of course was infamous for marrying teh playwright Sheridan after a scandalous elopement. Thomas Linley Junior known as the English Mozart,also performed here
seen here portrayed in a portrait by Gainsborough, above,and who perished in an untimely manner at Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire in 1778.
From 1777 the Italian castrato and composer,Venanzio Rauzzini , below,was the director of the concerts. He was of course the man for whom Mozart wrote Exultate Jubilate.
In the Winter he lived in Bath in a town house Number 13 Gay Street, but in the summer he lived at nearby Widecombe and many famous musicians and composers were tempted to come to Bath to collaborate and perform with him. Possibly the most famous visitor was Joseph Haydn who on his visit in 1794 even wrote a canon in praise of Rauzzini’s deceased dog,Turk- “Turk was a faithful Dog“- while he was staying at Widecombe with the composer.
Here is an example of his work- a Sonata- Duetto, perfomred on a period instrument:
He died at his home in Gay Street, on 8 April 1810, while preparing for the Bath June music festival. Four days later the Bath Chronicle wrote:
In private life few men were more esteemed; none more generally beloved. A polished suavity of manners, a mild and cheerful disposition, and a copious fund of general and polite information, rendered him an attractive and agreeable companion. … In Mr. Rauzzini, this city has sustained a public loss.
He was buried in Bath Abbey, where there is a memorial to him erected by ‘his affectionate Pupils Anna Selina Storace and John Braham’.
Here is a copy of a programme for a subscription concert held in 1798. If you enlarge it by clicking on it you can see that the lyrics of the arias are clearly printed on the programme sheet,and this explains why Anne Elliot was able to translate lyrics at the behest of Mr Elliot and Miss Carteret much to Captain Wentworth’s annoyance.
And this concludes Lady Russell’s Winter Pleasures at the Upper Rooms..next, the Pump Room.
So..when Lady Russell ventures from her elegant lodgings in Rivers Street,what pleasures could she seek in Bath? She could go a short journey along River Street to the New Assembly Rooms for a ball. Now, today you will have to indulge me on this, for there is no evidence in Persuasion that Lady Russell visited the Assembly Rooms for a ball, but she did of course go there for a concert (more on that next time).
As you can see from this annotated section of the map of Bath dating from 1803, taken from my copy of A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places by John Feltham, The Assembly Rooms ,numbered “2″on the map,
and known in the early 19th century as the Upper Rooms in order to distinguish them from the Assembly Rooms in the older lower part of Bath near the river (the Lowers Rooms),were not far from Rivers-street.
This engraving of the imposing Upper Rooms, above, was taken from my copy of Walks though Baht by Pierce Egan (Do note all the illustrations in this post, as ever, can be enlarged by clicking on them.)
This is the floor plan of the rooms ,which were designed and built by John Wood the Younger between 1769 and 1771. This plan is taken from Walter Ison’s magisterial book on Georgian Bath, “The Georgian Buildings of Bath”, which I reviewed here.
But however reluctant Lady Russell may seem on dancing… let’s concentrate on the ballroom in this post…above is the entrance,with its severe portico…
Chairs were an important from of transport in Georgian Bath, for due to its very steep,hilly terrain, it was not easy for carriages to negotiate its steep and sometimes winding roads. So, Lady Russell may have arrived at the Upper Rooms by chair…as Catherine Moreland did, arriving at the Theatre Royal in Bath in one in Northanger Abbey.
This is a rather elegant and luxurious example which is on display in the vestibule of the Upper Rooms today.
To gain access to the ballroom, Laady Russell would first process along the vestibule having quitted her chair there, progress into the Small Octagon, and then turning left would enter the Ball Room.
When I visited the rooms to take this photographs this room was set up for a wedding reception: what a wonderful place to celebrate a marriage! However, it did limit the photographs I could take…I’ll jsut have to go back yet again(what a trial!) But if you go to the Fashion Museum website and click on the link on the bottom right here, View the Assembly Room Tours you will be able to virtually visit the Rooms,and especially to see the details of the ballroom with its wonderful musicians gallery which I was unable to photograph.
To give you some idea of the massive scale of this room, let me quote from Pierce Egan’s Walks though Bath, 1819 for a view of someone who visited it in the early 19th century:
The elegance of the ball-room astonishes every spectator, it is 100 feet 8 inches long, 42 feet 8 inches wide and 42 feet 6 inches high. ~The ceiling is beautiful ornamented with pannels(sic) with open compartments, and from which are suspended five superb glass chandeliers; and the windows from which the rooms receive daylight are on a ball night covered with boards painted with ornaments on them to correspond with the uniformity on the other side of the room. The walls are also painted and decorated in the most tasteful style; and the Corinthian columns and entablature resemble statuary marble. At each end of the room are placed in magnificent gilt frames, the most splendid looking glasses to give effect to the general brilliant appearance.
In its heyday, during the late 18th century, this room could hold as many as 800 dancers,the sort of crowds poor Catherine Morland had to contend with on her first visit there:
Mrs. Allen was so long in dressing that they did not enter the ballroom till late. The season was full, the room crowded, and the two ladies squeezed in as well as they could. As for Mr. Allen, he repaired directly to the card–room, and left them to enjoy a mob by themselves. With more care for the safety of her new gown than for the comfort of her protegee, Mrs. Allen made her way through the throng of men by the door, as swiftly as the necessary caution would allow; Catherine, however, kept close at her side, and linked her arm too firmly within her friend’s to be torn asunder by any common effort of a struggling assembly. But to her utter amazement she found that to proceed along the room was by no means the way to disengage themselves from the crowd; it seemed rather to increase as they went on, whereas she had imagined that when once fairly within the door, they should easily find seats and be able to watch the dances with perfect convenience. But this was far from being the case, and though by unwearied diligence they gained even the top of the room, their situation was just the same; they saw nothing of the dancers but the high feathers of some of the ladies. Still they moved on — something better was yet in view; and by a continued exertion of strength and ingenuity they found themselves at last in the passage behind the highest bench. Here there was something less of crowd than below; and hence Miss Morland had a comprehensive view of all the company beneath her, and of all the dangers of her late passage through them. It was a splendid sight, and she began, for the first time that evening, to feel herself at a ball: she longed to dance, but she had not an acquaintance in the room.
Northanger Abbey, Chapter 2.
At the end of the season,the rooms could be quite deserted, as Jane Austen noted in her letter to Cassandra, dated 12th May 1801:
In the evening, I hope you honoured my toilette and ball with a thought; I dressed myself as well as I could, and had all my finery much admired at home. By nine o’clock my uncle, aunt, and I entered the rooms, and linked Miss Winstone on to us. Before tea it was rather a dull affair; but then the before tea did not last long, for there was only one dance, danced by four couple. Think of four couple, surrounded by about an hundred people, dancing in the Upper Rooms at Bath.
and by the time she wrote Persuasion, in 1816,the fashion was definitely shifting towards private parties not great formal assemblies open to all and sundry. And lest we think that these elegant places were always inhabited by decourous people, in the same letter, Jane Austen also noted drunken goings on:
Mrs. B. and two young women were of the same party, except when Mrs. B. thought herself obliged to leave them to run round the room after her drunken husband. His avoidance, and her pursuit, with the probable intoxication of both, was an amusing scene.
The chandeliers as Pierce Egan noted above, are spectacular. The orignal chandeliers were supplied to the Upper Rooms Furnishing Committee by Jonathon Collett,at a cost of £400 for the five which were to hang in the ballroom. In October 1771, a month after the rooms opened a disaster concerning them was luckily avoided. One of the arms of the chandeliers in the ballroom fell, narrowly missing (and injuring) Thomas Gainsborough the artist. The chandeliers were found to have severe defects, and were replaced by five commissioned from William Parker, supplier of chandeliers to The Prince of Wales, whose trade card is shown below.
He had already provided the Furnishing Committee with chandeliers for the Tea Room, and now was commissioned to make replacements. His work is simply amazingly and breathtakingly beautiful. It cost the owners of the Rooms £556, 3 shillings and 6 pence to provide candles and oil for the lamps in the other rooms, in the first season of 1771-2.
The assembles of the 18th century were new social phenomena.They allowed, in the main, people from different classes to mingle, the Master of Ceremonies entrusted to introduce previously unknown parties. Beau Nash, the first Master of Ceremonies in Bath drew up a series of rules for governing behaviour in assemblies which were adopted, in one way or another, as a good method of keeping order by nearly all the other assemblies in England.
The rules for the Assembly changed with each successive Master of Ceremonies-and I will be writing more on them in the next post .In 1816 the were as follows:
That the Balls at these Rooms do commence at eight o’clock in the evening; a quarter o f a hour before which time the Rooms shall regularly and properly be lighted up;and that the dancing shall cease at half -past eleven o’clock precisely, except on the night of the King’s Birthday and on the nights of the two balls given for the Master of Ceremonies when the time of dancing shall be unlimited.
That every person on admission to these Rooms on ball-nights shall pay sixpence for their tea.
That the three front benches at the upper end of the room be reserved for ladies of precedence, of the rank of Peeresses of Great Britain or Ireland
That a reasonable time shall be allowed between the minuets and Country-Dances for ladies of precedence to take their own places in the dance; and that those ladies who shall stand up after the dance shall have commenced must tale their places successively at the bottom
That no lady after she shall have taken her place in the set do permit another to come above her in the dance.
That ladies are to be considered perfectly free in regard to accepting or declining partners
That it is the positive order of the Committee that no servant whatever shall be admitted into the vestibule or gallery on any occasion or on any pretence whatever on ball-nights.
That no gentleman in boots or half boots be admitted into the Ball-Room on ball-nights except Officers of the Navy or of the army on duty in uniform; and then without their swords.
Trowsers(sic)or colored pantaloons not to be permitted on any account.
There wer also rules regulating the Master of Ceremonies and his duties:
That the Master of Ceremonies do attend at a quarter of an hour before eight o’clock on ball nights to receive the company.
That the Master of Ceremonies on observing or receiving information of any persons acting in opposition to these resolutions do signify to such person that as Master of Ceremonies it is his duty to see that proper decorum be preserved, and these orders obeyed; in the proper and impartial execution of which duty he will be supported by the subscribers at large
Resolved that these regulations be printed, framed and glazed and fixed in a conspicuous part of the Room for public information; not to be taken down on any pretence whatever on order that they may remain as a pubic document.
Here is an advertisement for a series of Subscription Dress Balls for the season 1811-1812
In my next post… Concerts and the Tea Room in the Upper Rooms( and which we can be certain that concerts are something that Lady Russell did attend !)
It is the bleak midwinter, cold and dark, and, siting here in Darkest Lincolnshire what I am really desiring is a little quiet cheerfulness. I could do worse than to emulate Lady Russell of Persuasion and take a little sojourn in Bath:
When Lady Russell, not long afterwards, was entering Bath on a wet afternoon, and driving through the long course of streets from the Old Bridge to Camden Place, amidst the dash of other carriages, the heavy rumble of carts and drays, the bawling of newsmen, muffin-men, and milk-men, and the ceaseless clink of pattens, she made no complaint. No, these were noises which belonged to the winter pleasures: her spirits rose under their influence; and like Mrs. Musgrove, she was feeling, though not saying, that after being long in the country, nothing could be so good for her as a little quiet cheerfulness.
However, I can’t to do this in reality as I have duties to fulfill,and so do you, I suspect. So, shall we shall visit Lady Russell’s (and Anne Elliot’s ) winter pleasures in Bath digitally. Shall we? Yes, let’s…
Lady Russell and Anne Elliot travelled to Bath from Kellynch Lodge which was probably near to the market town of Crewkherne in Somersetshire from the evidence in the text of Persuasion .Here, below, is their most likely route, delineated in red, and which would have taken them from Crewkherne (1) to Bath (2) via Glastonbury and Wells. This map of Somerset by John Cary is taken from my copy of his Travellers Companion of 1812: (Do note you can enlarge all the illustrations here by simply clicking on them)
The market town of Crewkherne was probably the first place where Lady Russell’s carriage horses were changed on the journey. This would allow her groom or other servant to take her horses back to her stables at Kellynch Lodge. Horses could be hired at inns along the route,and were probably changed every 20 or so miles. The next change would probably take place at Glastonbury, famed now for rock concerts, but then for its fine ruined abbey. Here it is below,taken from my copy of the Somerset volume of The Beauties of England and Wales by the Reverend J Nightingale (1813):
According to Cary’s Travellers Companion(1812) there were two inns at Glastonbury : the White Hart, opposite the Abbey, which dated from the 15th century and still exists, and the George Inn in the High Street. This is a view of the centre of the town also from The Beauties of England and Wales. It shows the George Inn, which also still exists( it is the building with the sign hanging from it, on the left.
I wonder which inn Lady Russell chose ? I should imagine Anne Elliot liked the antiquity of the place…
This is a description of the town from the same volume:
THis town is situated in the Isle of Avalon so called from its apples or from Avallac a British chief said to have first pitched his residence here..Like Wells Glastonbury is indebted for its origin to its monastic institutions which claim the hour of having existed from a period nearly coeval with Christianity. According to the monkish annuals Glastonbury was first instituted by St Joseph of Arimathea who buried the body of our Saviour, and whom Phillip the apostle of Gaul sent to preach the gospel in Britain….
The next interesting place on their route would have been Wells, again the home of a famous abbey
The town of Wells situated in the hundred of Well’s-Forum, is said to have been at one time the first city in the county of Somerset. Even at this day though far inferior to Bath in splendour of appearance and fashionable elegance, it has considerable claims to the attention of the topographer and possesses many charms for the lover of social retirement…Wells is very pleasantly situated under the Mendip Hills which recede from it in the form of an amphitheatre sheltering it to the north, while fertile and extensive meadows range themselves to the south…the Cathedral is in the form of a cross…
Leaving Wells, the journey to Bath would be a distance of about 20 miles. Anne Elliot and Lady Russell would approach the city from the south, having the upper town before them as in this view taken from my copy of A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places by R. Phillips (1803).
They crossed the Old Bridge, the old medieval bridge shown below (as opposed to the new Pulteney Bridge which gave access to the new developments in Bathwick).
This is the immediate view of the bridge that they may have seen from their carriage:
Here you can se the bridge crossing the River Avon on this section of the map of Bath dating from 1803
They then made their way through the noisy lower reaches of Bath till they reached the elegant Upper Town,
where Anne Elliot was deposited at Camden Crescent , that place that held the cold welcome of her odious father, sister and the foul Mrs Clay…..
while the luckier Lady Russell went back downhill to her solitary but elegant lodgings in Rivers Street, shown here looking towards the Upper Rooms in Bennet Street.
And when we and they are rested, we will visit some of the places that constituted their Winter Pleasures in Bath.
It might at first appear strange that I am reviewing a book that was first published in 1948, but it has recently been re-printed in facsimile foom by Spire Books Ltd in association with the Bath Preservation Trust (whose property, Number 1 The Royal Crescent, is used to illustrate the cover of this book)
Walter Ison’s book is in fact an established classic and a deserves to be read and enjoyed by anyone who has visited Bath and has fallen under the spell of its Georgian Buildings; or, indeed, by anyone who has never been lucky enough to visit but has likewise fallen under its spell after reading about the city in such books as Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, where the buildings and city of Bath are essential elements of the book, the city being a character in its own right.
The first copy of this book that I owned was the edition that was revised and published in 1980 (see below) where the photographs were embedded in the text. The new edition is much more clearly set out, as was the original 1948 edition, with two distinct sections -text and line drawings in part one, then photographs and reproductions of contemporary engravings in part two: I much prefer it.
The new edition has an informative foreword by Michael Forsyth who is the Director of Studies in theConservation of Historic Buildings at the University of Bath and is also the author of another book on the architecture of Bath, the Yale Pevsner Guide to Baht, an excellent work, which was first published in 2003.
Walter Ison was born in another spa town, Leamington Spa in Warwickshire in 1908.He became a draftsman in an architectural practice in London where he first read Mowbray Green’s study of Georgian Bath, “Eighteenth Century Architecture of Bath“,which fired his imagination. It is no lie to say that he became obsessed with the city and the history of its development and its buildings. Bath degenerated as a spa town from the mid to late 19th century. It was not until the 1930s that it was realised that something had to be done to stop the city decaying completely and such treasures as the Assembly Rooms were at last recognised as being buildings of merit and, as such, were deserving of restoration and protection. In 1934 the Bath Preservation Trust was established and in 1936-8 the Assembly Rooms were restored. The Second World War then intervened and Bath was badly damaged by the so-called Baedeker offensive of 1942: 400 lives were lost and 329 buildings were destroyed in those air-raids, including the newly restored Assembly Rooms. A further 732 buildings were demolished as a result of damage in later air raids,and another 20,000 buildings were recorded by the City Engineer as having been damaged in some way as a result of the attacks.
Ison moved to Bath after his war time service with the air force ended, on the encouragement of his wife, Leonora. She also donated an important personal legacy to him, so that he had the funds with which to be able to research,write and finish his proposed book. Taking his inspiration from earlier histories of the buildings of Bath, including John Wood the Elder’s own version(see above) his resulting book is a comprehensive history of the building of the city and all its major buildings, and the architects responsible. The book was rather touchingly and appropriately dedicated to his wife.
The book is divided into chapters which deal with the development of the city, the pubic buildings,domestic buildings and representative buildings of the period 1700-1725, 1726-1750, 1750-1775, 1775-1800 and finally 1800-1830. The text of the book is also studded with magnificent plans and line drawings of the important buildings. Above is his ground plan, section and elevation of the Hot Bath where Mrs Smith in Persuasion went to receive her treatment, living close by in the lowly Westgate Buildings.
The second part of the book is filled with contemporary engravings -such as this, above of the Pump Room and the new private baths from Stall Street and photographs( all in black and white) taken mostly in the late 1940s
Now, it has to be remembered that when Jane Austen knew Bath the buildings were not yet blackened with industrial grime. This photograph of Great Pultney Street from Ison’s book shows the buildings as I first remember them from my first visit to the city aged 5 in the early 1960s. The soot and grime of the Victorian era -coal fires and grime from the nearby industrial town of Bristol- had turned most of the buildings black, and it was only from the mid 195os that a programme of cleaning and the effects of the Clean Air Acts enabled them to be returned almost to the white glare of the newly recreated limestone buildings that so distressed Anne Elliot in Persuasion. But the photographs now have a period charm of their own-the cars and sometimes the 1940s fashions of the people shown in them are now as fascinating to me as the sedan chair and muslins of the inhabitants of the 18th century prints and engravings
(My photograph of Pulteney Street taken this summer)
Interior views are also inlcuded: not only of the great public buildings like the Guildhall, but of more domestic settings as such as this first floor drawing room of number 41 Gay Street: Jane Austen, remember, lived briefly at number 25 Gay Street after the death of her father, and in Persuasion it was the home of The Crofts.
The book is easy to read and comprehensively covers every aspect of the creation of the famed Georgian buildings in the city. Walter Ison died in 1997, and this new edition ensures that his book will live on as a classic, in his memory. I can highly recommend this magnificent book, and do hope that some of you are tempted by this review to rush out and buy it.
On my recent jaunt to Bath I paid my usual visit to the Museum of Costume which is to be found in the basement area of the Assembly Rooms. This place is always a delight to visit: the staff are helpful and knowledgeable and the collection is magnificent.
Because of its situation-in the heart of the rooms peopled by the fashionable set of 18th century Bath- there are always examples of 18th century/early 19th century costumes on show to satisfy people obsessed with our era, but there are always many other interesting clothing related exhibits too. This year the exhibits (which are constantly changing to give the dresses time to rest and to provide different points of interest to frequent visitors) have no examples of costumes prior to the 18th century on show other than a marvellous exhibit of 17th century gloves,so I missed seeing my favourite 1660s dress made of shimmering silver tissue: but there were special exhibits of The Diana Dresses showing some of the late Princess of Wales’ iconic clothes, which brought back many memories, and as ever, the fascinating Dress of the Year exhibit, a dress chosen by the staff as being most representative of that particular year.
This picture shows the current winner for 2009 by Antonio Baradi. All the previous winners are on show: including the winner for 2005, by Versace and made famous by Jennifer Lopez
and this beautiful Karl Lagerfeld ensemble which won the accolade in 2008.
The museum was founded in 1963 by the scholar, designer and collector, Doris Langley Moore
She favoured a phorensic approach to researching fashion history and encouraged examining real examples of clothing to discover the truth about fashion from the pst. She also encouraged the collecting of modern classics, as well as collecting and preserving clothes from the past. She was friends with Anne Buck and C. Willet Cunningham and their combined scholarship has transformed our understanding of historic clothes.
The 18th and early 19th centuries were well represented in the galleries, and I would like to show you some of the dresses that were on show.
A marvellous sack dress made with silver thread: this would have surely fascinated quietly in the candle-lit assembly rooms of Bath of the 1760 and 70s
A pair of stays circa 1775, the year Jane Austen was born. Worn over a linen sift and made of stout linen.The corset was stiffened with whalebone and a rigid busk of wood or horn or even ivory was inserted into the centre front to keep it rigid. No, thank you…..
A sack back gown of silver-embroidered silk circa 1770
Some more dressed from the 18th century
A court dress of brocaded silk circa 1760-1765.
Though wide skirts of this very rectangular shape had passed out of fashion in the early 1750s the style was retained for court dresses. This is an example of such a dress made of French silk covered with a gold strip and brocaded with coloured silks and chenille thread.
A printed cotton dress of the circa 1795, fashionable at the time Jane Austen was writing her first draft of Pride and Prejudice, First Impressions. A late example of the 18th century style of dress, of the open robe and petticoat type which was to be superseded by the type of dresses seen below, a one piece dress, put on by placing it over the head of the wearer, unlike this style, which the wearer put on like a coat, sleeves first.
These are two embroidered cotton muslin dresses, one having tambour work embroidery , both circa 1800
The dress on the left, above, is made from plain and undecorated white cotton, which reflects a shot lived fashion for severe plainness in dress in England dating from around 1800. Cotton, grown in America was imported into England and produced in mills such as those owned by Samuel Oldknow of Stockport( more on him later in the year!)
This is a stunningly simple dress, circa 1806, made of cotton muslin embroidered with tiny sliced cylinders of white glass which produced a shimmering effect: marvellous in a candle lit room, don’t you think?
Additional fabric has been pleaded into the centre of the back of the dress to create a small train and to allow the skirt of the dress to drape gently around the legs of the wearer.
These are interesting dresses date from 1815. They are both made of brown silk gauze with yellow and blue stripes. They are reputed to have been worn by the Misses Percival at the Duchess of Richmond’s Ball held in Brussels in June 1815 immediately prior to the Battle of Waterloo. There is no conclusive evidence to support this claim but the museum ‘s curator did make the point that long-sleeved dresses were fashionable as evening dresses at the time so they could quite possibly qualify as having been worn at that event. If only they could talk!!
This is a wedding dress from America made at the turn of the 19th century which took my eye…
And because the staff understand that everyone likes to dress up, children’s sporting clothes from the 1880s are available for all to use…
As are some wonderfully swish-y crinolines and different types of corsets from differing eras. We had great fun trying them out and watching other people play….
So there it is, my impressions of a trip to the Costume Museum in the summer of 2010. Do go if you ever have the chance, for you will not regret it. And of course you can also visit the Assembly Rooms at the same time. More on those next week
The Georgian Garden in Bath is a marvellous and very rare example of the type of garden that many of Jane Austen’s characters and, indeed, Jane Austen herself may have experienced while living in a Georgian town house, not necessarily only in Bath but in London too. This town house garden is now to be found situated to the rear of Number 4,The Circus ( the house is not open to the public, note).
Let’s see where in Bath this garden is to be found. Here is part of my 1802 map of Bath taken from John Feltham’s book, A Guide to all the Watering and Sea Bathing Places ,
showing the area of the Circus and the Gravel Walk, and here is it annotated with the approximate position of the Garden (1) and the House (2).
To gain access to the garden you have to walk along the Gravel Walk, which connects the Royal Crescent with Queen’s Square, and which was, of course, the secluded, gently rising walk that Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot of Persuasion took when they were finally reconciled, engrossed in each others revelations but not so blind as to realise that the path they were taking was the long way round to Sir Walter’s home in Camden Crescent
These insignificant doors set into the wall surrounding the gardens (seen to the left of the photograph)are the rear entrances to the gardens to the houses.
They hide many treasures and due to the benevolence of the Bath and North East Somerset Council , anyone visiting Bath can now experience what the gardens of these townhouses were like. Access to the garden is totally free of charge and the garden is open all year round. How truly admirable.
Number 4 the Circus was completed in 1761, part of John Wood the Elders scheme for the new Upper Town. In February 1754, Wood laid the foundation stone of the very first house, but, sadly, just three months later, he died. It was left to his son, John Wood the Younger, to complete and oversee the construction of the King’s Circus, as it was originally called. The frontages of the 33 houses are uniform ( though as you can see from the photograph below, the rear of the houses are an entirely different story).
Each house is decorated with elements of the three great Classical orders of architecture: the ground floor decorated in the style of the Doric order , the second in the Ionic order , and the third floor, the Corinthian.
The Circus was, as you can see from the section of the map, above, built in three segments of 11 houses.The circular area that the houses encircle was originally cobbled and had a covered reservoir which supplied water to the houses. This central island is now covered with grass and five great plane trees, which were planted in the early nineteenth century provide shade, but do block the views. Above is the view of the Circus looking towards Gay Street. Sadly no plans exist to show us how the gardens to the rear of these houses appeared in the Georgian era. As you can see from the map of the Circus above, only approximations of the gardens behind these houses were made by the then mapmaker.
However as a result of recent extensive excavations it has been possible to reconstruct how the garden would have appeared in the late 18th century. Walled on four sides, it provided a private, decorative space for the occupier of the house.
Here is a plan of the garden as it appeared when it was first built. Do note that all the photographs and plans in this post can be enlarged by clicking on them, so that you may enjoy the detail.
And here is a key of the plan showing the different elements of the garden:
And a photograph with which to compare the plans:
The Bath Archeological Trust undertook excavations of the garden in 1985 for by then the original Georgian structure of the garden had been lost under later improvements. The walled garden that was then to the rear of Number 4 the Circus was Victorian in the main, and boasted a lawn, a rockery, a classical pavilion and a fish pond which both dated from the 1920s. This is a plan of the garden as it was before the excavation began (again, please use the same key above to discern the different elements of the garden).
The Georgian garden as revealed by the excavations had no grass or lawn at all. It was a very formal design and most of the garden was covered with a surface of gravel mixed with clay. This would have needed to have been rolled regularly to keep it in order,and was much kinder to walk on than wet grass to the fashionable fabric shoes of the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Here is a period roller, placed in the garden to remind you that while it is practical, this surface is not maintenance fee.
Here is a view of the garden of 10 Downing Street by George Lambert , circa 1736-1740,
and this close up of part of the painting showing the roller in use at that time:
As you can see from the plan and the photographs, the walled garden to Number 4, the Circus also has small flower beds around the walls, and three flower beds along the central axis of the garden. All are now edged in box. Its design was very similar to this one by J. A. Smith dating from 1807.
The geometric design of the garden was quite deliberate: it was to be seen to its best advantage when viewed from the upper windows of the house that over looked it. Around 1770 a flight of steps was added to the rear of the garden to give access to the newly created Gravel Walk.
It has now been completely renovated and planted with only shrubs and flowers that would have been available in the 18th century.Which means that at this time of the year, early August, there are few flowers available -no repeat flowering roses for example.Luckily, the structure is interesting in itself and of course the fashionable would not be in town or Bath at this time but away on their country estates An appropriate garden seat has also been added which faces the house:
We ought to perhaps recall that the small domestic private gardens of the 18th century town house were innovations. At the beginning of the 18th century, town houses often had nothing by way of a garden but a simple paved yard, but by the advent of the early 19th century a walled garden, home to flowers and shrubs was to be found at the rear of the terraced house homes of the middling and upper classes who lived in English cities. The Georgian Garden in Bath is a remarkable survivor of this type of garden, and if you are visiting Bath do not miss it. It is not advertised much at all and is almost hidden in the corner of the Gravel Walk. But do seek it out: its secluded peace is great to explore and the atmosphere is very different to the walled gardens to be found in towns today.
Like this:
I won’t be posting over the next few days, but I will be Twittering, and Twitpic-ing especially. The subject? My jaunt to Bath.
So if you are on Twitter and want to accompany me to the city where Jane Austen lived, where Catherine Morland met Henry Tilney and where Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth finally came to an understanding then do join in and follow me from my Twitter page here for all the details.
If you are not on Twitter, then you can access the latest tweets on this page, under the AustenOnly icon, shown below,
which you can find in the right hand column to this page (again, if you click on the icon it will take you directly to the AustenOnly Twitter page).
I’ll be back this time next week with many Austen-related travellers tale to tell Adieu!!
Melissa Averinos of the inspiring Yummy Goods Blog recently visited our shores and had a marvellous time in London rubbing shouders with some of our most eligible actors, then had a fun filled day in Bath.
She has written about her day,where she walks( or runs!) in the footsteps of Jane Austen here and there she has also posted some beautiful and quirky photographs of the city.
Her partner in criminally enjoying themselves, Beth Dunn, has also written about their day in Bath on her blog, An Accomplished Young Lady, here
I thought you might like to share
Laurel at Austenprose has begun her mammoth Pride and Prejudice without Zombies Group Read, and has asked me to join in by contributing a couple of pieces on early 19th Century Tourism. So next week (the 25th June) I will be posting about Tourism and Pride and Prejudice in a rather general but hopefully interesting way, and then the following Friday (the 2nd July) I will be posting about William Gilpin and Jane Austen with r particular reference to his influence on her writing of Pride and Prejudice.
So to ease us in to this theme, I’m going to be posting about a couple of grand houses with Jane Austen connections over the next week. And both are still open to the public as they were in the early 19th century ( though now it is done on a rather more egalitarian and commercial basis) . In a few days I will be writing about Chatsworth but today I am writing about a much less well known but, in my opinion, equally spectacular country house, Grimsthorpe Castle in Lincolnshire.
Grimsthorpe is an ancient building, and has had a long association with the Bertie and Willoughby families. In 1516 it was given to William Willoughby, the 11th Baron Willoughby d’Eresby by Henry VIII on the occasion of his marriage to Maria de Salinas who was lady in Waiting to Queen Katherine of Aragon. In the early 18th century, the castle’s appearance was altered and it was given a fabulous baroque north front by Robert Bertie the 4th Earl of Lindsay who had become the first Duke of Ancaster in 1715.
The new front was commissioned to reflect his new ducal status. He employed Vanbrugh the playwright/architect of amongst other housesCastle Howard and Blenheim, to undertake this work, which as you can see is fantastically overblown. I adore this style of architecture, even though it was short-lived in popularity. Indeed, by the time the front was finished in 1726 it was already out of fashion….
What is Jane Austen’s association with this beautiful place? The connection is made though her eldest brother James,
who while living in Overton,near to Steventon as curate to that parish, made the acquaintance of General Edward Matthew and his wife who also lived there. The General’s wife was Lady Jane Bertie the daughter of the 2nd Duke and Duchess of Ancaster of Grimsthorpe.
(The 2nd Duke of Ancaster)
(the 2nd Duchess of Ancaster)
The Matthews had three daughters and James married Anne the eldest, who was over 30 years of age when they married.
As Deirdre le Faye shrewdly notes:
Anne Matthew must have seen in James Austen her last chance of matrimony, and he had a weakness for elegant aristocratic young women. The General and Lady Jane “could not have considered the young curate a good match for their daughter though as his uncle Mr Leigh Perrot had no children and he was his father’s eldest son, it was possible that he might some day have a comfortable income.” But for Anne’s sake they gave their consent to the marriage and made her an allowance of £100 a year.
(See: Jane Austen: A Family Record, pp71-2)
The sole issue from this marriage was, of course, Jane Austen’s niece, Anna Austen who was born on 15th April 1793,
and who arrived with a great deal of help from her indomitable grandmother Mrs Austen :
Mrs Austen rose from her bed in the middle of the night and walked by the light of a lantern a mile and a half of a muddy country lane to attend her [daughter in-law] and to usher into the world a new grand child.
Sometimes I can’t but admire Mrs Austen however exasperated I might be by her in general…..
Anna’s godparents were the 5th Duke and Duchess of Ancaster.
(Brownlow,the 5th Duke of Ancaster)
(The 5th Duchess)
Anna Austen remembered meeting the 5th Duke and Duchess , while visiting the Austens in Bath in February 1803:
I remember the last Duke and Duchess of Ancaster and being presented to the former (who was my God Father) in the Pump Room at Bath being then about 10 years of age. My Grandmother Austen with whom I was staying took upon herself the introduction, after which I was invited once or twice to spend the day in Great Pultney Street where the Duke had a house…This Duke and Duchess had had one child a Daughter who married a handsome agreeable but dissipated Irish Peer and died early leaving one Son. This child was brought up by the Ancasters . He was rather younger than myself but I well recollect spending a day with them at Bath and giving him his first lesson in dancing
(See A Family Record page 138)
Ah, that Mrs Austen…… back to Grimsthorpe…
The castle maintains its fabulously irregular Tudor South front,
which overlooks the topiary gardens
and the East front
which in turn overlooks very formal gardens
and a formal potager.
The west front over looks the lake
which was the place where in 1778,the English Mozart, Thomas Linley
met his untimely death while he was staying at Grimsthorpe with the 3rd Duke and Duchess of Ancaster ( who were of course Anna Austen’s aunt and uncle).
The Bath Chronicle of 13th August reported the accidental death as follows:
Mr Linley and Mr Olivarez an Italian Master and anther person agreed to go on the lake in a sailing boat which Mr Linley said he could manage but a sudden squall of wind sprung up an overset the boat; however they all hung by the masts and rigging for some time till Mr Linley said he found it was in vain to wait for assistance and therefore though he had his boots and his great coat on, he was determined to swim to shore for which purpose he quitted his hold but he had not swam above 100 yards before he sunk. Her Grace the Duchess of Ancaster saw the whole from her dressing room window and immediately despatched several servants off to take another boat to their assistance but which unfortunately came only time enough to take up Mr Olivarez, his companion not being able to find the body of Mr Linley for more than 40 minutes.
The church where poor old Thomas Linley is buried was the parish church used by the Ancasters, in the neighbouring village of Edenham. You can just see its tower though the trees in this picture taken from the south front of the castle.
The parish church of St Michaels and all Angels, is open to the public too
and contains many fine monuments to the Ancasters.
This is a picture of the 3rd Duchess. Poor lady, witnessing such a scene.
Here she is in masquerade dress, standing before the rotunda at Ranelagh, the great pleasure garden in London.
Back to Grimsthorpe.
The interiors of the castle are wonderfully intimate , on a very humane scale, unusual in this type of house. One of my favourite rooms is the magnificent chapel, begun by Vanburgh but thought to have been completed by his assistant, Nicholas Hawksmoor.
It is a pale, peaceful confection of a room, still used for services, and is such as would not have satisfied Fanny Price in Mansfield Park at all…
They entered. Fanny’s imagination had prepared her for something grander than a mere spacious, oblong room, fitted up for the purpose of devotion: with nothing more striking or more solemn than the profusion of mahogany, and the crimson velvet cushions appearing over the ledge of the family gallery above. “I am disappointed,” said she, in a low voice, to Edmund. “This is not my idea of a chapel. There is nothing awful here, nothing melancholy, nothing grand. Here are no aisles, no arches, no inscriptions, no banners. No banners, cousin, to be ‘blown by the night wind of heaven.’ No signs that a ‘Scottish monarch sleeps below.’”
“You forget, Fanny, how lately all this has been built, and for how confined a purpose, compared with the old chapels of castles and monasteries. It was only for the private use of the family. They have been buried, I suppose, in the parish church. There you must look for the banners and the achievements.”
“It was foolish of me not to think of all that; but I am disappointed.”
(Mansfield Park, Chapter 9)
Crimson cushions abound, however……
One feature of the interiors is that there are number of thrones kept in the castle, once used by various monarchs in the House of Lords. They are kept by the family as one of the “perks” of being hereditary Lord Chamberlain. This is George IV’s throne which he used at his Coronation Banquet.
So, there we have it: a marvellous and relatively unknown country house with some interesting Jane Austen connections. I do hope you have enjoyed this short tour and that if you are in the vicinity you are able to tour this fascinating house and estate.
To conclude my series posts with an Irish theme this week, as a tribute to Jane Travers of the Jane Obsessed with Jane blog, I thought you might like to read about Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth. Both alive at the same time, both authors of novels, both possibly influencing each other-perhaps even subconsciously- and both with some surprising connections to each other.
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Most people are aware, I think, that Jane Austen read Maria Edgeworth’s books, and vice versa. During her life time Maria Edgeworth was feted and was a much more successful celebrated and published author than was Jane Austen. And that is usually the sum of most peoples knowledge of the two. But there is much more to their story and connections than that…
Lets examine what is known about them shall we?
The Austen and Edgeworth families were connected via Jane Austen’s aunt and uncle, the Leigh Perrots. Richard Edgeworth, Maria’s father, though born in Ireland, became neighbours of the Leigh Perrots when he moved to the village of Hare Hatch in Berkshire in 1766. Scarletts, the home of the Leigh Perrots was situated in that village, and Mr Edgeworth soon became part of their social circle.
(Section from map of Berkshire (1797) by John Cary, showing the position of the village of Hare hatch, which along with all the other illustrations in this post,can be enlarged merely by clicking on them)
“Among those who sooner or later were neighbours of the Leigh Perrotts were Richard Lovell Edgeworth (amateur scientist and father of the novelist Maria Edgeworth) who acknowledged the help he received from Mr Leigh Perrot in his experiments of telegraphing from Hare Hatch to Nettlebed by means of windmills…”
(See le Faye, Jane Austen: A Family Record , page 118).
Maria Edgeworth was born in Hare Hatch in 1768. She moved back to Ireland with her father and his third wife Elizabeth, in 1782 in order that he might run more efficiently the family estate, Edgeworthstown, which he had inherited.
Jane Austen and Maria seem to have shared the same tastes in literature: in 1796 both Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen’s both names appeared as subscribers to Fanny Burney’s novel, Camilla.(Indeed this was the only time that Jane Austen’s name appeared in print during her lifetime)
This novel was published by the London publishing house of Cadell and Davis who were of course the same firm that refused the Reverend George Austen’s offer to publish First Impressions, Jane Austen’s first daft of the novel that was eventually to become Pride and Prejudice. Of course, the title of Jane Austen’s most famous novel was inspired by this passage from Camilla :
The whole of this unfortunate business,’ said Dr Lyster, ‘has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE. Your uncle, the Dean, began it, by his arbitrary will, as if an ordinance of his own could arrest the course of nature! and as if he had power to keep alive, by the loan of a name, a family in the male branch already extinct. Your father, Mr Mortimer, continued it with the same self-partiality, preferring the wretched gratification of tickling his ear with a favourite sound, to the solid happiness of his son with a rich and deserving wife. Yet this, however, remember; if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination: for all that I could say to Mr Delvile, either of reasoning or entreaty, – and I said all I could suggest, and I suggested all a man need wish to hear, – was totally thrown away, till I pointed out to him his own disgrace, in having a daughter-in-law immured in these mean lodgings!’
In 1800 when Mrs Leigh Perrot stood trial for larceny being accused of stealing a quantity of lace from a shop in Bath,
one of the first letters they received to congratulate them on Mrs Leigh Perrot being found not guilty was from their friend Richard Edgeworth, now living in Ireland :
My Dear Sir,
I do not think that I ever felt so much astonishment or indignation as at the abominable transaction which was related in the Star of March 31st.
Among my numerous friends and acquaintance if there was a couple whom I could have selected as the farthest removed from being the objects of such a villainous attack it would have been yourselves! But I know too well that neither perfect innocence nor consummate prudence are sufficient shields against conspiracy and folly and that bankrupt fortune and bankrupt character prepare men for the most desperate attempts.
I trouble you, my Dear Sir, with a few lines to express the deep sense that I have of regard and esteem for you and the amiable partner of your happiness; for so many as thirty-four years we have been acquainted, and during that time I do not think that I have met any man of such singularly nice feelings of honour and justice.
I am sensible that there is some impropriety in this address-but you must excuse it as I snatched this piece of paper the moment I had read the paragraph I allude to-with tears of indignation in my eyes-aye,Sir!-with actual not sentimental tears in my eyes as I sat down to write to you….
(See: Letter written from Edgeworthstown to Bath dated 7th April 1800, quoted in Jane Austen : Her Life and Letters ,A Family Record by William Austen Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen Leigh, 1913, page 139 )
By 1801 when Jane Austen was living in Bath, with her retired parents, in close social proximity of the Leigh Perrots, who were living in the Paragon, Maria Edgeworth began to enjoy enjoyed considerable publishing success. Her novel, Belinda was held up to general public and critical acclaim, and it is tempting to think that Jane Austen, whose social life revolved around the Leigh Perrots must have heard of the news of their friends daughter’s success- perhaps with not a little envy-Jane being an unpublished and a totally rejected author at this time.
It was of course Maria Edgeworth’s disclaimer in Belinda that she was not writing a novel but a moral tale,
‘Every author has a right to give what appellation he may think proper to his works … the following work is offered to the public as a Moral Tale, the author not wishing to acknowledge a Novel.
that Jane Austen later mocked in Chapter 5 of her revised Northanger Abbey:
….they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together. Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel–writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding — joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine–hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens — there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. “I am no novel–reader — I seldom look into novels — Do not imagine that I often read novels — It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss — ?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best–chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.
Maria Edgeworth read Northanger Abbey ( published posthumously in 1817) and did not so far as I can find, comment on Jane Austen’s criticism of her in that passage. But she didn’t seem to think much of the novel in general. Writing to her aunt, Mrs Ruxton on January 24th 1818 she had this to say:
I entirely agree with you my dearest aunt on one subject as indeed I generally do on most subjects, but particularly about Northanger Abbey….The behaviour of the General in Northanger Abbey, packing off the young lady without a servant or the common civilities which any bear of a man, not to say a gentleman, would have shown, is quite outrageously out of drawing and out of nature’
She also later dammed Northanger Abbey with feint praise, dismissing it as
‘milk and water’
Perhaps the criticism by Austen of her calling Belinda a moral tale and not a novel had finally stung her a little ?
Presumably unaware of Maria Edgeworth’s criticism-(there is more made during Jane Austen’s lifetime-see below), Jane Austen appears to have admired Edgeworth’s novels. In her letter to Anna Austen dated 28th September 1814 she wrote, tongue in cheek but not without a grain of truth I suspect:
I have made up my mind to like no Novels really, but Miss Edgeworths, Yours and my own…
She also chided Cassandra Austen gently ( but seriously I think) in her letter of the 23rd August 1814 for not liking Maria Edgeworth’s novel, Patronage;
I got the willow yesterday, as Henry was not quite ready when I reached Hena. St. I saw Mr. Hampson there for a moment. He dines here to-morrow and proposed bringing his son; so I must submit to seeing George Hampson, though I had hoped to go through life without it. It was one of my vanities, like your not reading “Patronage.”
Maria Edgeworth appears to have enjoyed Jane Austen early works immensely. She advised her step brother, Charles Snyed Edgeworth, to buy Pride and Prejudice, writing to him on the day she had visited the Cambridge Colleges, a day spent partly in the company of Dr Clarke the brother of James Stanier Clarke who was, of course, the librarian and chaplain to the Prince Regent who had fallen under Jane Austen’s spell:
“Now we are again on the London Road and nothing interrupted our perusal of Pride and Prejudice for the rest of the morning. I am desired not to give you my opinion of Pride and Prejudice but desire you to get it directly and tell us yours…”
(Letter dated may 1st 1813)
The Edgeworths also admired Mansfield Park. A family friend, Lady Anne Romilly wrote to the Edgeworths at Edgeworthstown with lukewarm praise of it:
‘Have you read Mansfield Park? It has been pretty generally admired here, and I think all novels must be that are true to life which this is, with a good strong vein of principle running thro’ the whole. It has not that elevation of virtue, something beyond nature, that gives the greatest charm to a novel, but still it is real natural every day life, and will amuse an idle hour in spite of its faults’
but they made up their own minds about it nevertheless.
During Christmas 1814 the Edgeworths read it aloud amongst the family as was their custom, and thought it excellent:
‘We have been much entertained with Mansfield Park,’
and indeed in 1823 Maria was still talking of the characters in the novel as if they were real( a habit many Janeites fall into !):
‘Be pleased, therefore, to go back to Moulinan, and see us eat luncheon; for in spite of Mr. Grant’s contempt of these bon-vivant details, habit will not allow me to depart from my practice of giving the bill of fare’
(Letter to Lucy Edgeworth dated July 23rd 1823)
Jane Austen sent a presentation copy of Emma via her publisher John Murray, to Maria Edgeworth in Ireland, but she seems not to have valued it at all as a novel . The wondering acknowledgment of her receipt of the presentation copy,which seems to suggest to me at least that she did not know of Jane Austen’s connection with the Leigh Perrots,
‘The authoress of Pride and Prejudice has been so good as to send me a new novel just published, Emma’
(Letter dated 10th January 1816)
was followed by this statement:
‘There was no story to it, except that Miss Emma found that the man whom she designed for Harriet’s lover was an admirer of her own – & he was affronted at being refused by Emma… and smooth, thin water-gruel is according to Emma’s father’s opinion a very good thing & it is very difficult to make a cook understand what you mean by smooth thin water gruel”
Persuasion she seems to have generally liked much better than Emma:
‘Persuasion – excepting the tangled, useless histories of the family in the first fifty pages – appears to me, especially in all that relates to poor Anne and her lover, to be exceedingly interesting and natural. The love and the lover admirably well drawn; don’t you see Captain Wentworth or rather don’t you in her place feel, taking the boisterous child off her back as she kneels by the sick boy on the sofa? And is not the first meeting after their long separation admirably well done? And the overheard conversation about the nut? But I must stop; we have got no farther than the disaster of Miss Musgrave’s (sic) jumping off the steps.
(Letter dated, February 21st 1818)
There is one final connection with Jane Austen which I find absolutely intriguing. In the Introduction to her edition of Castle Rackrent and The Absentee,(1895)
Anne Thackeray Ritchie wrote of a visit to Ireland to find Edgeworthstown, the home of Maria Edgeworth and while there she also made some trips out into the surrounding country side:
Our host took us that day, among other pleasant things , for a marvellous and delightful flight on a jaunting car, to see something of the country. We sped through storms and sunshine by open moors and fields and then by villages and little churches, by farms where the pigs were standing at the doors to be fed, by pretty trim cottages.
The lights came and went; as the mist lifted we could see the exquisite colours, the green, the dazzling sweet lights on the meadows playing upon the meadow-sweet and elder bushes; at last we came to the lovely glades of Carriglass. It seemed to be that we had reaches an enchanted forest amid this green sweet tangle of ivy of flowering summer trees of immemorial oaks and sycamores…
The great Irish kitchen garden, belonging to the house with its seven miles of wall, was also not unlike a part of a fairy tale. Its owner, Mr Lefroy, told me that Miss Edgeworth had been constantly there. She was a great friend of judge Lefroy. As a boy he remembered her driving up to the house and running up through the great drawing room doors to greet the judge.
This was of course none other than Tom Lefroy, the subject of Jane Austen’s youthful flirtation, who rose to become the Chief Justice of Ireland and had his estate at Carriglas.
Edgeworthstown and Carriglass are both in Country Longford and are only just over 8 miles apart.
I find it so intriguing that Maria Edgeworth should have known the same Tom Lefroy, who so charmed Jane Austen as a young girl( though I seriously doubt that Tom Lefroy was the love of her life , writing in her letters about him as she did). I often wonder had Jane Austen lived if she would have met the Edgeworth and possibly Tom Lefroy. Now, that would have made for an interesting letter home to Cassandra…
That is the sum of all I can find out about Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth…but I think most of it is interesting and does throw up some intriguing questions: the answers, however ,we are probably never going to find…
This week has been a whirl of interesting goings-on mostly in the company of Karen from BookishNYC, and should you consider it has all been devoted to mindless pleasure, then think again….a lot of the gadding about will eventually be shared with you, for nearly everything done this week had a link to Jane Austen (of course!).
I’ll be posting about the places we visited soon but today I thought I’d carry on where the last post left off.
This is the view of Bath that Catherine Morland,Eleanor and Henry Tilney would have seen when they reached to the top of Beechen Cliff in Chapter 14 of Northanger Abbey. ( Do note all the illustrations in this post can be enlarged merely by clicking on them.)
The Tilneys called for her at the appointed time; and no new difficulty arising, no sudden recollection, no unexpected summons, no impertinent intrusion to disconcert their measures, my heroine was most unnaturally able to fulfil her engagement, though it was made with the hero himself. They determined on walking round Beechen Cliff, that noble hill whose beautiful verdure and hanging coppice render it so striking an object from almost every opening in Bath.
Again the view is taken from my copy of John Britton and Thomas Shepherd’s book, Bath and Bristol illustrated with views of Somerset and Gloucestershire (1829)
This 1803 map of Bath is annotated with the route the Tilneys would have taken from their lodgings in Milsom Street
to Bathwick via Pulteney Street.
This is John Britton’s description of the walk and the view ; indeed he writes about the same route that Henry, Eleanor and Catherine would have taken, from Pulteney Street:
Among the pleasing excursions with which the neighbourhood of Bath abounds, none are superior in interest to those of its eastern vicinity; and of these the most attractive terminates near the pace where this view is taken. Our journey commences by passing over the Bridge to Laura Place Great Putney Street Bathwick and thence to Bath Hampton from which the village we are conducted either to the raceground by ascending to the right or pass through a range of beautiful meadows near the river to the village of Claverton…If the beautiful scenes which have given so much interest to this short excursions do not determine us to retrace our steps we shall proceed over Claverton Downs and after enjoying many pleasing views of the city, arrive at the noted station of Beechen Cliff, which commands and extensive view of Bath, with the Abbey Church nearly in the centre forming a most interesting object in the picture; and surrounding in every direction by extensive ranges of elegant houses: beyond the Abbey Church appears the Circus, The Crescent, Marlborough Buildings and St James Square with Camden Place to the right towards the London Road and other Splendid buildings
This map by John Cary of 1812 showing The Environs of Bath, is annotated with the route the Tilneys and Catherine would have taken.
John Britton is far less critical than Henry and Eleanor Tilney were of the view:
They were viewing the country with the eyes of persons accustomed to drawing, and decided on its capability of being formed into pictures, with all the eagerness of real taste. Here Catherine was quite lost. She knew nothing of drawing — nothing of taste: and she listened to them with an attention which brought her little profit, for they talked in phrases which conveyed scarcely any idea to her. The little which she could understand, however, appeared to contradict the very few notions she had entertained on the matter before. It seemed as if a good view were no longer to be taken from the top of an high hill, and that a clear blue sky was no longer a proof of a fine day. She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance…
Henry and Eleanor are, of course, talking the language of The Picturesque, as promulgated by one of Jane Austen’s favourite writers, the Reverend William Gilpin. In his series of books devoted to viewing the English countryside while on his travels, he describes the views to be seen in terms of how they should be recorded in art. Very useful, but while he does this he manages sometimes to make the most amazingly pompous statements dismissing certain magnificent aspects of the British scenery as unworthy of note as it did not comply with the rules demanded by adherents of the Picturesque
Here is a small but typical example of his style in an extract from his book, Observations on the Western Parts of England etc., where he explains with withering references to the rather beautiful Isle of Wight-The Isle- what he means by Picturesque Beauty:
Picturesque beauty is a phrase but little understood. We precisely mean by it that kid of beauty which would look well in a picture. Neither grounds laid out by art nor improved by agriculture are of this kind. The Isle of Wight is in fact, a large garden or rather a field which in every part has been disfigured by the spade,the coulter and the harrow. It abounds much more in tillage than in pasturage; and of all species of cultivation, cornfields are the most unpicturesque.The regualrtiy of corn fields disgusts,and is out of true with everything else….
I love his style. And I think Jane Austen did too. But I don’t consider she worshipped his every word, slavishly. Oh, no. I think she loved him for his pompous attitude ,which is unintentionally funny. He absolutely brooks no argument whatsoever and dismisses out of hand any natural feature that does not measure up to his ideal of the picturesque. The Tilneys are obviously Gilpin disciples: they were also able to dismiss a relatively stunning scene-the view of the city of Bath from Beechen Cliff-as not worthy of being captured by art. Jane Austen quietly pokes fun at them and him, for as she knew well, the view from Beechen Cliff is and was magnificent, frankly, having regard not just to natural but t also to man made beauty.
So there you are: a trip around Beechen Cliff in the critical company of the Gilpin inspired Tilneys.I hope you enjoyed it.
A new addition to my library is a copy of Bath and Bristol with the Counties of Somerset and Gloucester displayed in a Series of Views etc with original drawings by Thomas Shepherd and Historical and Descriptive Illustrations by John Britton.(1829) (Do note that you can enlarge all the illustrations here by clicking on them)
I shall be posting a series of posts inspired by this book, for though it is dated 1829 it contains much material of interest for students of Jane Austen, and has copious amounts of information on Bath, Bristol and the surrounding districts
Today I thought you might care to see the entry for Beechen Cliff, which was, of course, referred to in Northanger Abbey:
They determined on walking round Beechen Cliff, that noble hill whose beautiful verdure and hanging coppice render it so striking an object from almost every opening in Bath.
Chapter 14
and of course was known well by Jane Austen ( or indeed any inhabitant of Bath) especially when she lived within view of it at Green Park Buildings.
This map shows the position of Beechen Cliff ,(marked by the blue arrow) as delineated in a section taken from my copy of John Cary’s map of the Environs of Bath taken from the map included in his
Traveller’s Companion or a Delineation of the Turnpike Roads of England and Wales etc. (1812)
This is the engraving by Thomas Shepherd which shows the cliff looming over Bath and the river Avon: virtually the view Jane Austen would have had of it from Green Park Buildings:
And here is John Britton’s description of it:
Beachen Cliff(sic)
The area enclosing the Hot Springs of Bath is surrounded by Stupendous Hills of a much quicker ascent to the south and to the east,than to the west and north; and the surface of the river Avon is, at this place, at least forty feet above that of the Severn sea towards which as it flows numerous streams are carried off to mills of various kinds. Beachen Cliff rises upwards of 360 feet above this river, on the southern side of Bath. This hiill appears from the city like a vast heap of earth, whose northern side has been undermined, and made to slip down, leaving a semicircular cliff above it; which is covered with wood. Its original name was Blake Leigh and this name is yet retained by the upper part of it. The ancient names of places were always significant; which is evinced by this instance , the name denoting fertile or cultivated land, in a bleak and exposed situation.
is one of my favourite museums,and I’m off to visit it again in the summer…Hurrah!!!
Set in the magnificent Upper Rooms,a place Jane Austen and her characters knew very, very well, they have a vibrant attitude, and they concentrate on all aspects of fashion, not just the past, though its early 19th century collection is unrivalled, in my humble opinion.
A forthcoming exhibit is Princes Diana’s Dresses:,whose death sparked similar responses to when Princess Charlotte died. As I saw her wedding dress when it toured the country after THE wedding of the year in 1981,I am looking forward to seeing these.
Here is a link to a small but funky video which gives you a very good idea of what is on offer there- my personal favourite , the gloves collection features nicely!
Enjoy!
