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We now know what early 19th century fireworks looked like…but what about the illuminations?
We did not go till nine and then were in very good time for the Fire-Works which were really beautiful and surpassing my expectations the illuminations too were very pretty.
(See Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 19th June, 1799)
Illuminations were often used in conjunction with fireworks, and were static structures lit by hundreds of small glass lamps fuelled with oil. The structures were often temporary things, but the illuminations (the small glass oil lamps) could also be affixed to “illuminate” more solid structures, as in this picture below by Rowlandson from Ackermann’s The Microcosm of London, showing the illuminated bandstand at Vauxhall Gardens( Do click on it to enlarge it to see the beautiful detail,and the effect of the individual lamps)
The term could also refer to the strings of lamps illuminating the walks of the pleasure gardens as was the case at many of the gardens in England throughout the 18th century and up to the middle of the 19th century.
At a time when the brightness of electric light was unknown and candles used en masse was terrifically and prohibitively expensive, the sight of coloured lights illuminating the gardens at night, among the trees, must have been breath-taking.
An Irish gentlemen visiting Vauxhall Gardens in 1752, whose name is not recorded, wrote about the astonishing effect of the illuminations:
The garden strikes the eye prodigiously; it is set with many rows of tall trees, kept in excellent order, among which are placed an incredible number of globe lamps, by which it is illuminated, and when they are lighted the sound of the music ravishing the ear, added to the great resort of company so well dressed and walking about, would almost make one believe he was in the Elysian fields.
The method of lighting the lamps at Vauxhall was very dramatic. During supper a whistle was blown as a signal to a number of servants placed in strategic parts of the garden. Each servant touched a match to pre-installed fuses, and, instantaneously over a thousand oil lamps were illuminated, bathing the gardens in a warm light that would have been visible for miles around.
These illustration from the Duke of Richmond’s firework display also show examples of illuminations:
Some illuminations were rather more elaborate than others.
This one designed by the architect, Robert Adam for King George III not only included 4,000 individual oil lamps but also two large transparencies pictures painted on gauze and lit from behind to produce a luminous effect:
This design is the more elaborate of the two proposals submitted by Adam for a temporary structure to be erected in the garden of Buckingham House in June 1763 at the time of the celebrations to mark the start of royal occupation of the house, purchased in the previous year. In the event Adam’s other design, for a much simpler structure, was used. A detailed description of the party, which took place at night and employed 4,000 lamps, is included in the Gentleman’s Magazine. It was arranged by Queen Charlotte as a surprise for the King, at the time of his twenty-fifth birthday. Adam also made perspective views of both versions of the screen, which clarify the importance of the ‘transparencies’ (large back-lit pictures, within the main architectural features) in the design. The subject of the transparencies alluded to the King’s role as peace-maker – following the signing of the Treaty of Paris and the end of the Seven Years War in the same year. This style of decoration had been popular on the continent for many years: in France, Rome and also in Mecklenburg, where a small-scale ‘illumination’ had been staged to celebrate the forthcoming marriage of the future Queen Charlotte in 1761. It appears that some of the materials used in Adam’s 1763 screen were reused by Chambers in 1768, for the pavilion erected in Richmond at the time of the visit of the King’s brother-in-law, Christian VII of Denmark.
(see George III and Queen Charlotte: Patronage Collecting and Court Taste edited by Jane Roberts).
Sadly we have no record of the type of illuminations which were in operation at the Sydney Gardens but we can be assured that because of their rarity and very special effect in a world where the light from a few wax candles was thought of as miraculous, Jane Austen was quite right to be impressed.
And that concludes this series of posts on Jane Austen in Bath. I do hope you have enjoyed our time travelling to this particular part of Jane Austen’s past.
So.. continuing from our last post on Music in the Sydney Garden wherein we discovered that Jane Austen did everything in her power to avoid listening to it…for whatever reason…(which she did not share with us )…we now turn to the fireworks…..which we know she did enjoy :
We did not go till nine and then were in very good time for the Fire-Works which were really beautiful and surpassing my expectations- the illuminations too were very pretty.
(See Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 19th June, 1799)
The advertisement for the evening states that:
There will be a most
CAPTIAL DISPLAY OF FIREWORKS
By Signor INVETTO
Who will exert the utmost of his ingenious skill to produce new and astonishing effects;to enumerate the particulars would be too long for an advertisement
Signor Invetto was one of a few itinerant firework masters who traveled around England creating firework displays at the pleasure gardens in different towns during the 18th and 19th centuries.
I thought you might be interested to see this advertismentle from the Norfolk Chronicle of 1782, which gives us a little more background to the firework master from Milan who seems to have made a good living in England by supplying fireworks to various pleasure gardens .
At BUNN’s Pantheon, On Tuesday, June 18, 1782, (being Guild-Day, will be performed a Concert of Vocal and Instrumental Music.
First Violin, Mr Abraham STANNARD, jun.
The Vocal Part, by Mr LEVI, (After the Manner of Mr LEONI, of the Theatre-Royal, Covent Garden.) Act.1. “Auld Robin Gray” Act 2. The Soldier’s Tir’d, etc ” The Evening to conclude with a Brilliant Display of Fire-Works, by Sig. Baptista PEDRALIO; Consisting of many new Designs, Emblematical and Picturesque, beautifully ornamented with all the various coloured Fires, representing Suns, Cascades, Rockets, illuminated Balloons, Horizontal, Vertical, Pigeon, and Balloon Wheels, etc etc.
The Concert to begin at Eight o’Clock.
Admittance One Shilling; Sixpence to be returned in Liquor, etc QUANTRELL’s Gardens Will be illuminated on Tuesday, June 18, (being Guild-Day) when there will be a Concert of Martial Music; the Evening to conclude with a capital Display of Fire Works, by Sig. Antonio INVETTO, from Milan, who has had the Honour of exhibiting in the Presence of the principal Part of the Nobility and Gentry in these Kingdoms, and likewise at QUANTRELL’s Gardens on the 4th Instant, and gave more Satisfaction than any Person that has exhibited there for nine Years past. In the Course of the Fire-works will be exhibited the Battle and Capture of Count DE GRASSE by the gallant Admiral RODNEY, executed in a Stile (sic) far superior to any thing ever seen in this City.
Admittance at the Gate One Shilling; Sixpence to be returned in Liquor, etc.
Note. The Artist makes and sells all Sorts of Fire-works for Rooms, Wholesale and Retale (sic), in a neater and genteeler Manner than any Person in this City, and on the most reasonable Terms.– Enquire at the Gardens.
Certainly from 1780 at the pleasure gardens in England the firework displays were a prominent feature. For most of these the “ingenious Signor Invetto, the celebrated Italian Artist from Milan,” was responsible, and invariably each successive exhibition was ” the most superb display ever exhibited in this City.”
The advertisment for the postponed gala sadly does not give details of the fireworks Signor Invetto produced. However this advert, again from the Bath Chronicle of 1799, for another Sydney Gardens gala ( this time to be held to coincide the Bath Races on July 16th ) gives details of the type of fireworks which Signor Invetto, the Italian who supplied fireworks to the Sydney Gardens might have used when Jane Austen was there:
(Please do enlarge it by clicking on it in order to see the detail)
And if we cross reference these with both 18th century illustrations and descriptions in a contemporary book on fireworks - Artificial Fireworks Improved to the Modern Practice from the Minutest to the Highest Branches (1776) by Captain Jones -we should be able to get a fairy good idea of the type of fireworks Jane Austen would have seen at the Sydney Gardens that evening.
The picture above is of the firework display held by the Duke of Richmond at Richmond House near the Thames in Whitehall, London and shows both the whole effect of all the fireworks and also, very interestingly, gives individual details of the individual fireworks which made up the whole display.
The “frame” of the picture shows details of the individual fireworks.
The ones that tally with Signor Invetto’s display at the Sydney gardens are as follows:
1. Marrons and Battery of Marrons
These were named from the French word for chestnuts, because of their size and shape before they burst open. They burst into fire with a loud report. The firework was a small box of flash powder covered with a base of flame powder. As a result they flared brilliantly before they burst and exploded.
The illustration above shows a battery( i.e. more than one) of Marrons.
Captain Jones advises these are useful in musical displays:
If well managed will keep time to a march or a slow piece of music. Marron batteries are made of several strands with a number of cross rails for the marrons, which are regulated by leaders, by cutting them of different lengths and nailing them tight or loose according to the time of the music. In marron batteries you must use the large and small marrons and the nails of the pipes must have flat heads.
3. Fixed Sun (a brilliant sun fix’d)
This was a circular firework, which was fix’d to a pole and blaz’d like the sun.
This was spectacular but very dangerous: Captain Jones warns:
To make a sun of the best sort there should be 2 rows of cases which will shew a double glory and make th rays strong and full The frame must be very strong…In the centre of the block of the sun drive a spindle on which put a small hexagonal wheel whose cases must be filled with the same charge as the cases of the sun…a sun thus made is called a Brilliant Sun because the wood work is intierly covered with fire from the wheel to the middle so there appears nothing but sparks of a brilliant fire…
3. Pots de Bruin
These were rolls of paste board filled with basic gunpowder which shot vertically into the air many showers of stars, snakes, rains and crackers.
Captain Jones advises:
A number of these are placed on a plank thus: having fixed on a plank 2 rows o wooden pegs in the bottom of the plank cut a groove the whole length under each row of pegs; though the centre of each peg, bore a hole down to the grove and on every peg fix and glue a pot whose mouth must sit tight on the peg…
2 or 300 of these pots fired together make a very pretty show by affording a great variety of fires…
4. Sky Rockets
Self explanatory!
but the illustration above also shows Water rockets: which look terribly difficult to manage…
5. Pigeon
These were small rockets propelled along an horizontal rope, and sometimes they were used to ignite other parts of the display.
6. Chinese Fire
This was gunpowder which was mixed with fine cast-iron filings .The effect produced was a very brilliant and intense flame.
The recipe is as follows( but please do not try this at home…)
Saltpetre 12 oz, meal powder 2 lb, brimstone 1 lb 2 oz and beat iron( cast iron fillings-jfw) 12 oz
7. Serpents
These were small rockets without rods, so that they rose obliquely and descended in a zig-zag manner. They could also be added to the charge inside a large rocket, so that they would explode at the summit of the rocket’s climb, thus heightening the effect.
So there you are, and I hope this has enabled you to enjoy as Jane Austen did some extraordinary early 19th century fireworks.
To conclude the series of posts about the life of Jane Austen in Bath I thought I would lighten the mood by ending with some details of the music, the type of fireworks and illuminations Jane Austen would have seen and heard at the galas she attended at the Sydney Gardens.
In her letter to Cassandra dated 19th June 1799 , written while Jane Austen was staying in Bath with her brother Edward and his family in Queen’s Square, she recorded her impressions of one such event:
Last night we were in Sidney Gardens(sic) again as there was a repetition of the Gala which went off so ill on the 4th- We did not go till nine and then were in very good time for the Fire-Works which were really beautiful and surpassing my expectations- the illuminations too were very pretty.
The Sydney Gardens usually held three Gala Evenings each season: one on the 4th June to celebrate King George III’s Birthday; one on the 12th August to celebrate the Prince of Wales birthday and another in July- a moveable feast – to coincide with the Summer Horse Race Meeting at Bath.
The fireworks to celebrate the Kings Birthday on the 4th June-which went off so ill-were postponed due to bad weather. They were rescheduled for the 18th June and that is the evening Jane Austen attended.
Here is an advertisement from the Bath Chronicle giving details of the re- scheduled date:
( If you care to you can click on the illustration above to enlarge it, so that you can read the detail)
The gardens opened for the Gala at 5p.m. The food and drink available included :
cold ham, chicken, lamb, and tongue, wine, spirits, bottled porter, cider, perry all as reasonable as possible the prices of which will be affixed on the bills of fare and placed in every conspicuous part of the Garden.
The reason the prices were so conspicuously affixed throughout the gardens was that this system prevented the waiters overcharging, a problem that was prevalent in the London pleasure gardens of Vauxhall and Ranelagh.
You could eat in the Banqueting Room in the Sydney Gardens Tavern or in the canvas booths outside.
If you look carefully at the engraving above, (do enlarge it !) you can see people sitting in the booths to the right of the picture. Those eating in the outdoor booths did have the option of staying in them the whole evening, and I would imagine on a chilly English summer’s evening this would have been a very tempting proposition!
The concert began at 7p.m. Note that Jane Austen managed to avoid it by arriving at 9p.m The galas generally went on till 10 p.m. which meant that Jane Austen was only there for one hour, probably only to see the illuminations and the fireworks!
She appears to have disliked the music played there, for she made this caustic comment in her letter to Cassandra of the 2nd June 1799, when writing of the planned visit to the original gala:
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.
I would have thought that Bath with its rich orchestral and musical tradition-The Linley family begin just one example of the musicians attracted to living and working in Bath- had fine music and orchestras.
One of the musicians mentioned in the advertisement was Alexander Herscel,the violoncello playing brother of William Herscel composer and amateur astronomer, who was appointed court astronomer to George III in 1782 a year after he had discovered the planet Uranus.
He was the first person to accurately and correctly describe the Milky Way and found two new satellite of Saturn in 1789. Caroline Herscel in her Memoirs described her brother’s playing on the violoncello as “divine”… dare we suggest she may have been biased?
Another performer at the gala was a Miss Richardson, a singer: she had performed at Vauxhall Gardens in London but this diary entry by John Waldie of Edinburgh from 1805 seems to hint she may have been,well,… not the best singer in the world:
While the Minstrels were playing their weary staccato harmony all on one key I addressed myself to Mr Elliot, the singer, and we soon entered into conversation, which was to me highly entertaining and useful…We also discussed the merits of all the singers and composers. He agreed with me I thinking Braham, Harrison, Bartleman, Viganoni Mrs Billington, Mara, Banti ,Mrs Mountain and Storace the phalanx of vocal talent in the country.
He also much admires Grassini and Mrs. Tennant who I have not heard. Miss Daniel Miss Parke and Mrs Ashe are only second rate, and also Miss Sharpe and Miss Richardson
(See: The Journal of John Waldie Theatre Commentaries, 1799-1830: no. 13 [Journal 10] May 14, 1804-March 12, 1805)
Poor Miss Richardson…. I’m quite fascinated by Jane Austen’s comment and deliberate avoidance of the concert. I wonder what it was about the music that so irritated her apart from the possibility of them not being the best rate performances ? Did she not like professional singers ? She made a similar comment about a performance of Thomas Arne’s Artaxerxes in her letter to Cassandra of 5th March 1814:
I daresay “Artaxerxes” will be very tiresome.
and later…after the performance
I was very tired of “Artaxerxes,” highly amused with the farce, and, in an inferior way, with the pantomime that followed. Mr. J. Plumptre joined in the latter part of the evening, walked home with us, ate some soup, and is very earnest for our going to Covent Garden again to-night to see Miss Stephens in the “Farmer’s Wife.” He is to try for a box. I do not particularly wish him to succeed. I have had enough for the present.
We shall in all probability never know what upset her so much…..?
Next post: Fireworks.
We do not know exactly when the Austen ladies quitted their rented accommodation in Gay Street but it must have been sometime at the end of 1805.
We do know that Mrs Austen, Cassandra, Jane and, by this time, their friend and sister of James’s wife, Martha Lloyd took a trip to Steventon Rectory in January 1806,and it is possible that they quitted number 25 at that time.
They visited their old home in order to visit James and Mary and their family in January 1806. Martha became part of their household on the death of her mother Mrs Lloyd in April 1805 They returned to Bath at the end of January.
When they arrived back in Bath from Steventon the Austen sisters did have some welcome news. An old friend of the Leigh Perrots , Mrs Lillingston, had left them a legacy of £50 each, which funded Jane Austen’s whole expenditure for a year. Mrs Lillington indeed, may have inspired part of the character of Lady Russell in Persuasion.
The Austen ladies then took what they hoped would be temporary lodgings right in the very heart and bustle of Bath in Trim Street.( Number 7 on the annotated map, above) A place Cassandra Austen had once hoped they might never inhabit….
In the meantime she 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 dated 3rd January 1801)
This position was rather confined-right in the heart of the town- and had no prospects of views to the surrounding countryside. It was also old, noisy and as the street was narrow possibly dark and consequently, not a little smelly….
The street was named after George Trim, a wealthy clothier of Bath, whose mother is reputed to have been related to the architect Inigo Jones. Writing about the design of the original Guildhall in Bath (which was replaced by the present Guildhall designed by Thomas Badlwin in 1776), reputedly by Inigo Jones, John Wood in his book, A Description of Bath noted :
For if my information be true, Mr Jones not only thought it a Duty incumbent on him as Kings Architect to examine what had not many years before been repaired by the Board of Works, to see if anything remained to be done from that Office; but was led by a natural inclination to render the City all the service in his Power; he having been a near relation to Mrs Trim the Mother of Mr George Trim the founder of Trim Street…
Page 316
Mr Trim was a member of the Bath Corporation (the ruling council in Bath) and he was one of the first to support the plans for the city’s expansion against much opposition as detailed by John Wood, again in his book, A Description of Bath:
But notwithstanding this Mr. George Trim a worthy Member of the Corporation thought it expedient to augment the Building of the New City and in the year 1707 that Gentleman began a new street at the North West Corner of it; His Example stirred up another Citizen to purchase a Lease of some Land at the South East Corner of the Town and to promote building there; So that as the City now began to shew graceful suburbs the Inhabitants were desirous of Promoting a trade for the better support of it; and with this view, they not only proposed to make the River navigable to Bristol but the later end of the Year 1710, they applied to Parliament for a Power to carry their design into Execution and obtained an Act accordingly…
As above, page 226
It has often been remarked that this time spent in Bath was Jane Austen’s “barren” period- years in which she did not write or achieve much by way of composition. I’m not sure. I think she used her mind like some form of word processor and “worked” on her texts, revising and composing continually , not necessarily committing it to paper before she was on to almost the final draft.
But, to my mind Jane Austen needed peace and quiet and a settled routine to be truly effective in her composition and writing : I think her life in Bath, when she was at the beck and call of the Leigh Perrots, her mother , visiting cousins etc and making a delicate balance between those with whom they could afford to keep company and those who had a far wealthier lifestyle and accordingly the Austen ladies couldn’t afford to allow “in”, was a constant vexation and distraction. I also think she found the constantly changing population of Bath- many people only stayed a matter of weeks to take the waters-totally exhausting. Just look at this telling extract from her letter to Cassandra Austen of 8th April 1805:
They want us to drink tea with them tonight, but I do not know whether my Mother will have nerves for it. We are engaged tomorrow Evening. What request we are in! Mrs Chamberlayne expressed to her niece her wish of being intimate enough with us to ask us to drink tea with her in a quiet way. We have therefore offered ourselves & our quietness thro’ the same medium. Our Tea & sugar will last a great while. I think we are just the kind of people & party to be treated about among our relations; we cannot be supposed to be very rich.
Her walks were probably the only peace and quiet she could command, and I think they were consequently rather important to her. They are certainly mentioned a lot in her letters. If you look at this section from John Cary’s map of the Environs of Bath from Cary’s Traveller’s Companion or a Delineation of the Turnpike Roads of England and Wales etc. (1812)
you can see some of the places she waked to during her stay in Bath. Do click on the maps(as you can all the images here) in order to enlarge them:
….notably Lyncombe and Widcombe: mostly uphill out ward journeys as Bath is situated in a sort of pudding basin terrain
Some of the places she visited on foot are marked on the annotated map as follows:
1 Charlecombe
2 Lansdown
3 Twerton
4 Widcombe
To return to Trim Street. By April Mrs Austen if we can judge from the address written on her letter to her daughter in law Mary, wife of James, was feeling exasperated at still living there:
Trim Street Still.
I had a letter the other day from Edwd. Cooper, he wrote to congratulate us on Frank’s Victory and to invite us to Hamstall in the ensuing Summer., which invitation we seem disposed to accept…we are disappointed of the lodgings in St James’s Square, a person is in treaty for the whole House, so of course he will be prefer’d to us who want only a part- We have look’d at some others since but don’t quite like the situation-hope a few days hence we shall have more choice as it is supposed many will go from Bath when this gay week is over…
The St James Square house did not materialize:
which was a pity as it was a far more congenial area of Bath- on rising ground in the Upper town on the outskirts, overlooking open countryside. But obviously far more expensive accommodation than they could afford: the reality of their financial situation I think was now beginning to set in.
And though the Austen ladies did eventually make the trip to visit their cousins, the Coopers, at Hamstall Ridware in Stafffordshire , they decided it was time to leave Bath and give up the hunt for elusive good accommodation for ever…..because Jane‘s brother, Frank, fortuitously suggested they set up home with his new bride, Mary Gibson in Southampton.
And thus ended Jane Austen’s time in Bath: we shall never know if it was a wholly happy time. I tend to think it was not: a mixture of a busy period, a period of sorrow, frustration and perhaps, some pleasure for her…but Im sure she used her time there to her eventual advantage,watching and learning a lot about human behaviour in all its manifestations while she lived in that busy place.
She certainly used her knowledge of the topography of Bath to great effect in Persuasion, and also knew how to portray the lives of the seemingly rich (the Elliots in Camden Place )and those clinging onto gentility by a very slender thread (Mrs Smith in Westgate Buildings).
But I think, on the whole she was glad not to be there any more for, as she wrote to Cassandra Austen in 1808
It will be two years to-morrow since we left Bath for Clifton, with what happy feelings of escape!
(See Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 30th June 1808)
After Mr Austen’s death in Green Park Buildings in January 1805, Mrs Austen gave up the lease there sometime towards the end of March of that year, and moved with Cassandra And Jane to number 25 Gay Street, numbered 6 on the above plan which, along with all the other illustrations in this post can be enlarged by clicking on it
Gay Street was part of John Wood’s original plan for the development of a new upper town in Bath, which began with his construction of Queens Square, then led up the hill via Gay Street to the Circus, and along Brock Street to the Royal Crescent.
In his book, A Description of Bath,
John Wood the architect tell us of his plans to buy land in Bath from Mr Robert Gay, an eminent Surgeon of Bath and London in order to build this important connecting street:
After my return to London I imparted my first design to Mr Gay an eminent Surgeon in Hatton Gardens and Proprietor of the land; and our first Conference as upon the first day of December 1725….
Page 232)
Business calling me twice not the North of England in the summer of the Year 1726 my designs for Improving Bath lay under Consideration till the following Autumn; and Mr Gay’s Land appearing then the most eligible to begin buildings upon, I therefore on Wednesday the 18th of November 1726 fixed my Preliminary Articles with him; and the Saturday after he empowered me by his Letter of Attourney, to engage with anybody that I could bring into the scheme for Building a Street of one thousand and twenty five Feet in length from south to North by fifty Feet in Breadth from East to West for a way to the grand part of the design.
(pages 240-1)
Here is a print of The Cirucs, which is situated at the top of Gay Street, as it appeared in 1773:
You can see that Gay Street steeply descends the hill towards Queen’s Square in the break in the circle of houses in the middle of the picture. You can also see Beechen Cliff looming above it in the distance:
You can also see many chairs. They were the most practicable manner of getting around some of the areas of Bath as they are very steep and, something I can confirm from personal experience of toiling up the hill that is Gay Street, when pregnant and also later with a pushchair containing my deceptively heavy son, it is not easy terrain. The alternative route ,via the Gravel Walk as used by Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth in Persuasion is much preferable, being of a gentler gradient.
The Austen ladies were of course at this time beginning to find that their financial position was not particularly secure. By his will Mr Austen left everything to Mrs Austen. But of course his main source of income was the money from his livings of Deane and Steventon and any entitlement to that money ceased at the moment of his death. Mrs Austen had a little independent income and Cassandra had the interest on the £1000 left to her by her late finance Tom Fowle, but Jane Austen had nothing whatsoever in the way of income.
The letters sent between the Austen brothers at this time indicate quite interesting attitudes to the economic and social fate of the Austen ladies. Frank -who is quite my favourite of the Austen brothers – had just been appointed to the 80-gun HMS Canopus. He generously offered £100 per annum towards the upkeep of Mrs Austen and his sisters, and did so in a letter to Henry Austen requesting that he keep this offer secret from the ladies.
Here is part of Henry’s illuminating reply to him:
It was so absolutely necessary that your noble offer towards my Mother should be made more public than you seem’d to desire, that I really cannot apologize for a partial breach of your request. With the proudest exultations of maternal tenderness the Excellent Parent has exclaimed that never were Children so good as hers. She feels the magnificence of your offer, and accepts of half. I shall therefore honor her demands for 50 pounds annually on your account. James had the day before yesterday communicated to me & Her his desire to be her Banker for the same annual assistance, & l as long as I am an Agent shall do as he does. – If Edward does the least he ought, he will certainly insist on her receiving a £100 from him. So you see My Dear E, that with her own assured property, & Cassandra’s, both producing about £250 per ann., She will be in the receipt of a clear £450 pounds per Ann. – She will be very comfortable, & as a smaller establishment will be as agreeable to them, as it cannot but be feasible, I really think that My Mother & Sisters will be to the full as rich as ever. They will not only suffer no personal deprivation, but will be able to pay occasional visits of health and pleasure to their friends..‘
I cant help but hear some resonances of John and Fanny Dashwood of Sense and sensibility in that extract.
James Austen also wrote to Frank about the financial situation:
Her (Mrs Austen-jfw) future plans are not quite settled, but I believe her summers will be spent in the country amongst her Relations & chiefly I trust among her children – the winters she will pass in comfortable lodgings in Bath. It is a just satisfaction to know that her Circumstances will be easy, & that she will enjoy all those comforts which declining years & precarious health call for. You will I am sure forgive Henry for not having entirely complied with your request for secrecy upon one very important subject in your letter … You would indeed have had a high gratification could you have witnessed the pleasure which our Dear Mother experienced when your intention was communicated to her.
So poor old Jane Austen was also now an object of charity .I’m sure this did not sit well with her. it’s one thing to be kept by ones parents, but ones married brothers?
There are some hints in the two letters written at this time by Jane Austen that still exist, that life in Gay Street without the kindly and benign influence of Mr Austen might have been rather trying: Mrs Austen was most definitely in charge:
The Mr Duncans called yesterday with their Sisters, but were not admitted, which rather hurt me.
(See Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 8th April 1805)
Jane Austen found few congenial souls to bond with in the transient society of Bath: to have some friends turned away by your mother when you were actually “at home” and ready to engage must have been hurtful indeed.
We know very little about the house as it was at the time when Jane Austen lived in it. Gay Street was a very busy street, full of chairs carrying people from the Upper to the Lower town, and would have been noisy. It was firmly set into the centre of town with very little chance of good views of the surrounding countryside. But Jane Austen obviously absorbed all the details and was perhaps fond of it for Gay Street is the setting for a very important meeting between Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot in the Cancelled Chapters of Persuasion, at the home of the Crofts in Bath..in Gay Street.
I’ve tried to decipher these cancelled chapters on many an occasion when I’ve seen them on show in the British Museum, the British Library and at Jane Austen’s House in Chawton but with not much success: I’ve scanned these in for you form a recent “translation” : here is part of the meeting between Anne and Frederick in Gay Street:
It was altogether a confusion of Images & Doubts–a perplexity, an agitation which she could not see the end of–and she was in Gay St & still so much engrossed, that she started on being addressed by AdmL Croft, as if he were a person unlikely to be met there. It was within a few steps of his own door.–”You are going to call upon my wife, said he, she will be very glad to see you.”–Anne denied it “No–she really had not time, she was in her way home”–but while she spoke, the AdmL had stepped back & knocked at the door, calling out, “Yes, yes do go in; she is all alone. go in & rest yourself.”–Anne felt so little disposed at this time to be in company of any sort, that it vexed her to be thus constrained–but she was obliged to stop. “Since you are so very kind, said she, I will just ask Mrs Croft how she does, but I really cannot stay 5 minutes.–You are sure she is quite alone.”–The possibility of Capt. W. had occurred–and most fearfully anxious was she to be assured–either that he was within or that he was not; which, might have been a question.–”Oh! yes, quite alone–Nobody but her Mantuamaker with her, & they have been shut up together this half hour, so it must be over soon.”–”Her Mantua maker!–then I am sure my calling now, wd be most inconvenient.–Indeed you must allow me to leave my Card & be so good as to explain it afterwards to Mrs C.” “No, no, not at all, not at all. She will be very happy to see you. Mind–I will not swear that she has not something particular to say to you–but that will all come out in the right place. I give no hints.–Why, Miss Elliot, we begin to hear strange things of you–(smiling in her face)–But you have not much the Look of it–as Grave as a little Judge.” –Anne blushed.–”Aye, aye, that will do. Now, it is right. I thought we were not mistaken.” She was left to guess at the direction of his Suspicions; –the first wild idea had been of some disclosure from his Br in law–but she was ashamed the next moment–& felt how far more probable that he should be meaning Mr E.–The door was opened–& the Man evidently beginning to deny his Mistress, when the sight of his Master stopped him. The Adml enjoyed the joke exceedingly. Anne thought his triumph over Stephen rather too long. At last however, he was able to invite her upstairs, & stepping before her said–”I will just go up with you myself & shew you in–. I cannot stay, because I must go to the P. Office, but if you will only sit down for 5 minutes I am sure Sophy will come–and you will find nobody to disturb you–there is nobody but Frederick here–” opening the door as he spoke.–Such a person to be passed over as a Nobody to her!–After being allowed to feel quite secure–indifferent–at her ease, to have it burst on her that she was to be the next moment in the same room with him!–No time for recollection!–for planning behaviour, or regulating manners!–There was time only to turn pale, before she had passed through the door, & met the astonished eyes of Capt. W—. who was sitting by the fire pretending to read & prepared for no greater surprise than the Admiral’s hasty return…..
There was time for all this to pass–with such Interruptions only as enhanced the charm of the communication–and Bath cd scarcely contain any other two Beings at once so rationally & so rapturously happy as during that eveng occupied the Sopha of Mrs Croft’s Drawing room in Gay St.
Jane Austen was famously unsatisfied with this scene and reworked it, making the scene of the presentation of The Letter and the reconciliation of Anne and Frederick take place in the Musgrove’s rooms at the White Hart Inn and let it continue on through the walk through Bath up to the heights of Camden Place, through the Gravel Walk, a gentler incline than Gay Street as I’ve noted and also …the longer way around….perfect for reconciling lovers who have been apart for far too long;-)
After quitting the lease of 4 Sydney Place, the Austen family had to find new premises in which to live. They found Green Park Buildings, and they lived at Number 3 Green Park Buildings East from 1804-5.
This was however a place Jane Austen had originally dismissed while on her search for accommodation in 1801:
Our views on G. P. Buildings seem all at an end; the observation of the damps still remaining in the offices of an house which has been only vacated a week, with reports of discontented families and putrid fevers, has given the coup de grace. We have now nothing in view. When you arrive, we will at least have the pleasure of examining some of these putrefying houses again; they are so very desirable in size and situation, that there is some satisfaction in spending ten minutes within them.
(See Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 21st May 1801)
(An old photograph of Green Park Buildings from The Buildings of Georgian Bath by Walter Ison,looking towards Seymour Street)
The situation was pleasant as the buildings didn’t look out onto the city to the north but out over a small park towards the river and across to the leafy heights of Beechen Cliff- so admired by Catherine Morland in Northnger Abbey(even if she did think it looked like France..where she had never been save in her imagination…)
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.
Northanger Abbey, Chapter 14
This part of the city- the Kingsmead area, was developed in the 1790s again to accommodate the expanding population of the spa town
One of the principal features of the layout (of the extension to Bath-jfw)was the formation of Green Park, a wedge-shaped open space lying between two great houses converging on Seymour Street designed as a wide continuation of the existing Charles Street
(See Walter Ison,The Georgian Buildings of Bath ,page 174)
This is a tiny engraving-its true size is 3 cms by 1 cm- from my copy of The Guide to all the Watering and Sea Bathing places etc (1816) by John Fletham, and it shows the view from Beechen Cliff looking towards Bath. You can just make out the disitincitve wedge-shaped buildings that were Green Park Buildings, just in front of the fashionable couple looking across at Bath from the vantage point of the cliff : do enlarge it to get the full effect ( by clicking on it and remember, you can enlarge all the illustrations in this post by doing this).
This is the setting from a section of the Environs of Bath map drawn by John Cary and taken from my copy of his book, Cary’s Traveller’s Companion or a Delineation of the Turnpike Roads of England and Wales etc. (1812):
This section shows the position of Bath among the surrounding hills and downs, rather like a pudding basin:
And though it is not marked on the map, I have annotated the same section to show where Beechen Cliff is situated:
This house was the scene of a sad and almost calamitous event for Jane Austen: the death of her father George Austen in January 1805, coming hard on the news of the death of her great friend, Mrs Lefroy on 16th December 1804, Jane’s 29th birthday . The two letters she had to write to Frank Austen , her brother, at this time,still exist. They make for painful reading: she being so correct but also so anxious for Frank reciving the news of the death of his excellent father by letter. Here is the text of the first dated Monday 21 January 1805:
My dearest Frank
I have melancholy news to relate, and sincerely feel for your feelings under the shock of it. I wish I could better prepare You for it.But having said so much, Your mind will already forestall the sort of Event which I have to communicate. Our dear Father has closed his virtuous and happy life, in a death almost as free from suffering as his Children could have wished. He was taken ill on Saturday morning, exactly in the same way as heretofore, an oppression in the head with fever, violent tremulousness, and the greatest degree of Feebleness. The same remedy of Cupping, which had before been so successful, was immediately applied to but without such happy effects. The attack was more violent, and at first he seemed scarcely at all relieved by the Operation. Towards the Evening however he got better, had a tolerable night, and yesterday morning was so greatly amended as to get up and join us at breakfast as usual, walk about with only the help of a stick, and every symptom was then so favourable that when Bowen (the Austen’s apothecary-jfw)saw him at one, he felt sure of his doing perfectly well. But as the day advanced, all these comfortable appearances gradually changed; the fever grew stronger than ever, and when Bowen saw him at ten at night, he pronounc’d his situation to be most alarming. At nine this morning he came again and by his desire a Physician was called–Dr Gibbs–But it was then absolutely a lost case. Dr Gibbs said that nothing but a Miracle could save him, and about twenty minutes after Ten he drew his last gasp. Heavy as is the blow, we can already feel that a thousand comforts remain to us to soften it. Next to that of the consciousness of his worth and constant preparation for another World, is the remembrance of his having suffered, comparatively speaking, nothing. Being quite insensible of his own state, he was spared all the pain of separation, & he went off almost in his Sleep. My Mother bears the Shock as well as possible; she was quite prepared for it, and feels all the blessing of his being spared a long Illness. My Uncle and Aunt have been with us, and shew us every imaginable kindness. And tomorrow we shall I dare say have the comfort of James’s presence, as an Express has been sent to him.-We write also of course to Godmersham and Brompton. Adeiu my dearest Frank. The loss of such a Parent must be felt, or we should be Brutes-. I wish I could have given you better preparation but it has been impossible. -Yours Ever affectionately
JA.
Capt. Austen HMS Leopard Dungeness New Romney
Sadly for Jane Austen she had to write another letter to Frank, virtually identical to the first, because Frank was not in Dungeness in Kent but at Portsmouth in Hampshire:
January 22nd 1805
My dearest Frank
I wrote to you yesterday; but your letter to Cassandra this morning, by which we learn the probability of your being by this time at Portsmouth, obliges me to write to you again, having unfortunately a communication as necessary as painful to make to you.Your affectionate heart will be greatly wounded, and I wish the shock could have been lessen’d by a better preparation;but the Event has been sudden, and so must be the information of it. We have lost an Excellent Father.An Illness of only eight and forty hours carried him off yesterday morning between ten and eleven. He was seized on Saturday with a return of the feverish complaint, which he had been subject to for the three last years; evidently a more violent attack from the first, as the applications which had before produced almost immediate relief, seemed for some time to afford him scarcely any.On Sunday however he was much better, so much so as to make Bowen quite easy, and give us every hope of his being well again in a few days.-ut these hopes gradually gave way as the day advanced, and when Bowen saw him at ten that night he was greatly alarmed.A Physician was called in yesterday morning, but he was at that time past all possibility of cure–& Dr Gibbs & Mr Bowen had scarcely left his room before he sunk into a Sleep from which he never woke. Everything I trust and believe was done for him that was possible! It has been very sudden! within twenty four hours of his death he was walking with only the help of a stick, was even reading! We had however some hours of preparation, and when we understood his recovery to be hopeless, most fervently did we pray for the speedy release which ensued. To have seen himlanguishing long, struggling for Hours, would have been dreadful!-& thank God! we were all spared from it. Except the restlessness and confusion of high Fever, he did not suffer- and he was mercifully spared from knowing that he was about to quit the Objects so beloved, so fondly cherished as his wife & Children ever were.His tenderness as a Father, who can do justice to? My Mother is tolerably well; she bears up with great fortitude, but I fear her health must suffer under such a shock. An express was sent for James, and he arrived here this morning before eight o’clock.-The Funeral is to be on Saturday, at Walcot Church.
The Serenity of the Corpse is most delightful! It preserves the sweet, benevolent smile which always distinguished him. They kindly press my Mother to remove to Steventon as soon as it is all over, but I do not believe she will leave Bath at present. We must have this house for three months longer, and here we shall probably stay till the end of that time.We all unite in Love, and I am affec:’y Yours
JA.
Capt. Austen HMS Leopard Portsmouth
Poor Jane Austen- to have to written two, let alone one such letter.
Mr Austen was buried in Walcot Church…and so began a period of wandering for the Austen ladies. Their income immediately being reduced- the income from Mr Austen’s living ceased on his death: James Austen was the new incumbent of the Steventon living-they had a period of uncertainty before them.
We shall look at this in more detail on our next post on their home in Gay Street.
A final note about the Austen’s home in Green Park Buildings: Green Park East was bombed and destroyed during an air raid in the Second World War: it was rebuilt but in a different style to the original houses, so while it still exists, the Number 3 Green Park Buildings we can see now is not the house in which Jane Austen lived and her father died.
After months of house hunting –searching for and dismissing houses that might have damp and other problems….
Our views on G. P. Buildings seem all at an end; the observation of the damps still remaining in the offices of an house which has been only vacated a week, with reports of discontented families and putrid fevers, has given the coup de grace. We have now nothing in view. When you arrive, we will at least have the pleasure of examining some of these putrefying houses again; they are so very desirable in size and situation, that there is some satisfaction in spending ten minutes within them.
(See Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 21st May 1801)
…the Austens took the lease of number 4 Sydney Place. This was, as you will recall, one of the places Jane Austen favoured when they were house hunting, in her letter of January 1801.
Why? It was on the outskirts of Bath, looking out onto the open countryside as you can see from the view of the surrounding hills in this acquatint of the Sydney Gardens.
This was, I feel vitally important to Jane Austen, used as she was to the gently rolling countryside of Hampshire. As I’ve noted in my post about the Paragon, we sometimes forget when we see pictures of the large airy squares and graceful crescents in Bath how some of the buildings in the steeply terraced areas of Bath could convey a sense of oppression and constriction. I feel sure this lack of an open aspect is one reason why Jane Austen disliked certain parts of Bath- notably The Paragon and Axford Buildings.
As you can see from the plan of Bath of 1803, this part of Bath was developed on the far side of the Avon River.Do note you can enlarge all the illustrations in this post by clicking on them .
It was called Bathwick-after the original settlement there- and until the buildings of the Pulteney Bridge it was only accessible by ferry. Here is a detail of a map of Bath dating from the 1750s which shows, quite charmingly, the ferry from the developed part of Bath to the Spring Gardens, which with the city prison, market gardens and watermill, together with the undeveloped hamlet of Bathwick, was the only developed part of the city on that side of the river until the 1770s.
The Bathwick area was developed by its owner, William Johnstone Pultney-after whom Robert Adam’s magnificent bridge-which contained shops in imitation of the Ponte Vecchio in Florence or the Rialto in Venice-was named.
Thomas Baldwin was the main architect/ planner of this area. The master plan was to build an entire neo classical suburb on this side of the river, complete with wide gracious streets of houses of neo-classically inspired design and with a new pleasure garden- the Sydney Gardens- for the residents to enjoy.
By the 1790s the wide main thoroughfare of this side of the river- Pulteney Street and Laura place- were under construction. The Sydney Gardens and the Sydney Tavern, which terminated the view along Great Pulteney Street from the Putney Bridge
as seen here in a still from 2004 the film production of Vanity Fair, were opened in 1795.
The gardens were, as you can see, hexagonal in shape and it was intended to build a series of terraces surrounding the gardens. Of the planned terraces only two were actually built, and were completed in 1794.
The Austens were keen on this area. An important point to consider was that it was on level ground, unlike the majority of the new buildings in the Upper Town in Bath, on the other side of the river, which were built on very steep slopes. This may have played a part in their decision to live there, with the centre of town an easy level walk along the wonderfully wide Pulteney Street and over the Pulteney Bridge
It was also near to the Sydney Gardens and its Labyrinth, which so attracted Jane Austen:
It would be very pleasant to be near Sidney Gardens-we might go into the Labrinth every day…
(Letter to Cassandra Austen,dated 21st January 1801)
The advertisement in the Bath chronicle dated 28th May 1801, for the lease of number 4 Sydney Place obviously caught their eye:
TO BE DISPOSED OF, THE LEASE OF No 4 SYDNEY PLACE three years and a quarter of which are unexpired at Midsummer.
The situation is desirable, the rent very low and the landlord is bound by covenant to paint the two first floors this summer-a premium will therefore be expected.
For Particulars apply to Messrs. Watts and Forth in Cornwall-Buildings, Bath.
The Reverend Austen’s income at this time was £600 per annum. According to an article written by the present owners of 4 Sydney Place( see JAS Report 1997, page 96) the rent for Number 4 was £150 per year, a very sizeable amount of his income.. The article also gives this description of number 4’s interior:
(The Vestibule at 4 Sydney Place from Constance Hill’s book, Jane Austen, Her Homes and Her Friends (1923))
4 Sydney Place has four stories plus a basement The ground floor has an entrance hall and two rooms: the front room would have been the parlour and dining room used for everyday entertainment and the rear room would most likely have been Mr Austen’s study. On the first floor there is a magnificent drawing room covering the full area of the house which looks south over Sydney Gardens; the windows are large and it is a very sunny room.
(A Corner of the drawing room at 4 Sydney Place from Constance Hill’s book, Jane Austen, Her Homes and Her Friends (1923)
On the second floor there are three bedrooms; the parents would have slept in one and another would have been occupied by the two sisters- they shared a bedroom all their lives. The top floor has another three bedrooms, where the servants would have slept. The kitchen in the basement is reached by stairs from the ground floor. There is a small walled garden in which there would have been an earth closet..there was piped water to the house.
Prior to moving into Sydney Place the Austen holidayed in Sidmouth in Devon. Eliza de Feuillide, Jane’s cousin wrote to Phylly Walter, another cousin, on the 29th October 1801:
I conclude that you know of our Uncle & Aunt Austen and their daughters having spent the summer in Devonshire-They are now returned to Bath where they are superintending the fitting up of their new house
The Austens remained at number 4 for three years.The lease was due to expire in September 1804: a renewal of it, albeit on a longer term, would have no doubt necessitated a rise in the rent for the property. Obviously this could not be countenanced on their limited income: and so they left their new found and pleasant but temporary home in 1804 to live in Green Park Buildings…the first of three such removals while they remained in Bath, and the subject of our next post.
Before I post about Sydney Place, I thought it might be useful to see the quandary the Austens had to face when they moved to Bath in 1801…Where, oh where to live in fashionable and expensive Bath on not a particularly large income , while still maintaining some semblance of status and happiness?
Jane’s letter to Cassandra Austenof the 3rd January 1801 details all the places she thought might or might not suit.
Here is the 1803 plan of Bath from The Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places by John Feltham annotated with the locations she mentions in the letter:
(Please do click on this to enlarge it so you can see all the details..)
And here is the extract from the letter:
There are three parts of Bath which we have thought of as likely to have houses in them — Westgate Buildings,(A)
Charles Street,(B)
and some of the short streets leading from Laura Place (C)
or Pulteney Street (D).
Westgate Buildings,(A) though quite in the lower part of the town, are not badly situated themselves. The street is broad, and has rather a good appearance.
Charles Street, however, I think, is preferable. The buildings are new, and its nearness to Kingsmead Fields
would be a pleasant circumstance. Perhaps you may remember, or perhaps you may forget, that Charles Street(B) leads from the Queen Square Chapel (F)
to the two Green Park Streets (G).
The houses in the streets near Laura Place (C) I should expect to be above our price.
Gay Street (L) would be too high,
except only the lower house on the left-hand side as you ascend. Towards that my mother has no disinclination; it used to be lower rented than any other house in the row, from some inferiority in the apartments.
But above all others her wishes are at present fixed on the corner house in Chapel Row (H) , which opens into Prince’s Street (I).
Her knowledge of it, however, is confined only to the outside, and therefore she is equally uncertain of its being really desirable as of its being to be had. In the meantime she assures you that she will do everything in her power to avoid Trim Street,(J)
although you have not expressed the fearful presentiment of it which was rather expected.
We know that Mrs. Perrot will want to get us into Axford Buildings,(K)
but we all unite in particular dislike of that part of the town, and therefore hope to escape. Upon all these different situations you and Edward may confer together, and your opinion of each will be expected with eagerness.
You can cleary see Jane Austen’s preferences are for places that have the opportunity of open views…making her feel that she is not too far from the countryside, and importantly, with access to the hills for walking…The expense involved also weighs heavily on her mind. She also opts for those locations that were not so close to the Leigh Perrots to be uncomfortable. They were inevitably going to be part of their social circle in Bath, and no doubt were a very keen attraction for Mrs Austen to be retired near to her brother and his wife, but for Jane Austen I think, paraphrasing Elizabeth Bennet, it was possible for a woman to be settled too near her family….
Jane Austen’s aunt and uncle James Leigh Perrott and his wife lived during the winter season, at Number 1, the Paragon which they rented from 1797 until 1810 when they moved to a house they had purchased in Great Pultney Street.
The Paragon is shown as number 3 on the map,and this can be enlarged-as can all the other illustrations in this post, merely by clicking on it.
Jane Austen stayed with them there in 1797 and also in 1801 when the Austen’s first left Steventon upon Mr Austens retirement, so that they could have a base while they were house hunting for a suitable place to live in Bath.
The Paragon was built on ground originally owned by a Mrs Hooper who had granted a lease of it for 99 years to Thomas Warr Attwood, who intended to develop it. The Mayor and corporation of Bath approved Attwood’s plan in 1768. As you can see from the section of the 1803 map of Bath, above, the site is long and narrow-set between two roads. It was also a difficult site, and this is something the map cannot convey: it was set on a very steep slope-the land falls away quite dramatically towards Cornwall Road.
The Paragon ..begin sites on a narrow strip of land sloping between two roads having a difference of some 40 feet in their levels, and while the main front towards London Road presents a normal appearance, at the rear is a great substructure of vaults supporting the hanging gardens entered from the basements of the houses.
(Walter Ison,The Georgian Buildings of Bath, page 109)
It has to be admitted that Jane Austen was not in a good fame of mind when she stayed there in 1801. She had been rather forced to leave her beloved Steventon home, their friends and neighbours and the surrounding countryside, against her will. She was a self confessed “Desperate Walker” and being hemmed in, in a town, by houses and buildings, however grand , must have felt oppressive to her.
It appears she and Cassandra were not privy to the conversations Mr and Mrs Austen held regarding the move to Bath, (both being absent from home at the time) and family tradition has it that on hearing the news put rather brutally to her by Mrs Austen, Jane fainted :
As she and Martha arrived from Ibthorpe early in December( 1800-jfw) they were met in the rectory hall by Mrs Austen, who greeted them with : “Well, girls, it is all settled, we have decided to leave Steventon in such a week and go to Bath”- and to Jane the shock of this intelligence was so great that she fainted away. Mary Lloyd( wife of James Austen-JW) who was also present to greet her sister, remembered that Jane was greatly distressed”
(See Page 128 Jane Austen: A Family Record, Deirdre Le Faye)
Her letters written during this period seethe with discontent in my opinion, and she feared remaining in the vicinity of Axford Buildings and the Paragon, for its closeness to her Aunt Leigh Perrot with whom she always had strained relationship , Mrs Leigh Perrot being , in my view,a manipulative and difficult character:
We know that Mrs. Perrot will want to get us into Axford Buildings, but we all unite in particular dislike of that part of the town, and therefore hope to escape…
(See Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 3rd January 1801)
Why did Jane Austen (and presumably Mr Austen and Cassandra)dislike that part of town so much ? I think it seems she felt the situation was restrictive. Look at this extract from her letter of 1799 written from the more open surroundings of Queen’s Square:
I like our situation very much; it is far more cheerful than Paragon, and the prospect from the drawing-room window, at which I now write, is rather picturesque, as it commands a prospective view of the left side of Brock Street, broken by three Lombardy poplars in the garden of the last house in Queen’s Parade.
(See Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 17th May, 1799)
The houses in Paragon and the adjoining Axford Buildings looked out on to a busy road –the Paragon and Axford Buildings led down to the London Road , the main connecting thoroughfare with London which would have been very busy with horses, private coaches, waggons and, of course, mail coaches.
The intriguing feature of the buildings in this area was that they were built with the best and largest rooms facing the rear of the property, not the road, as was more usual in Bath. The reason was of course to be able to give the best rooms the best view, down the hill towards the River Avon:
Upon this long and narrow site sloping between two curving roads of different levels Attwood built the fine crescent of twenty one houses which he named Paragon Buildings, a costly speculation involving a massive substructure of retaining walls and vaults which were intended to be let for storage purposes. As in the similarly sited range of Belmont, the houses were planed with staircases rising towards the street front so that the principal rooms at the back overlook the extensive prospect of the Avon valley.
(See Walter Ison, The Georgian Buildings of Bath page 157)
The rooms at the front, facing the road were likely therfore to be darker, smaller, noisy and having a prospect only of the rear of the houses built in Belmont .
I feel almost certain that as the youngest unmarried daughter who was somewhat prickly towards her Aunt, Jane Austen may have been given one of these dark and noisy rooms when she stayed at the Paragon ……as someone who appreciated open views and space she must have felt very oppressed by the situation and I sympathize with her.
Another building that may have irritated her in the Paragon area was the chapel of the Countess of Huntingdon, now the premises of the Building of Bath Museum owned and organized by the Bath Preservation Trust
Go here to read a description of the history of this Evangelical church,which was organised by the indefatigable Countess,and which still exists.
Jane Austen disliked the evangelical movement,especially that within the Church of England.
I do not like the Evangelicals.”
(See Letter to Cassandra dated January 24, 1809)
The closest she could get to openly admiring it was this rather grudging admission expressed in this extract from her letter to her niece, Fanny Knight, written when Fanny was considering marring an Evangelical gentleman:
“I am by no means convinced that we ought not all to be Evangelicals, & am at least persuaded that they who are so from Reason & Feeling, must be happiest & safest.”
(See letter to Fanny Knight , dated November 18, 1814 )
Being in the very close vicinity of The Countess of Huntingdon’s chapel may have also added to her dislike of the area. In my humble opinion. It would have been a constant irritant…..
But luckily for Jane, the Austens did not settle there at all…they moved almost as far away as they could, to the very outskirts of Bath in Sydney Place, which will be the topic of our next post in this series.
This is a very elegant church and I’ve always loved seeing it on its hill, on the approach to Bath from the A4…
Here is its position in Bath,
shown on a section from this larger map of Bath in 1803 from John Feltham’s Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places etc
The church is number 1 on this map, which can be enlarged if you click on it. You can see the position of the church -marked as a black section of the top of the piece of land between Walcot and Cornwall Buildings: if you look carefully you can also see the site of the Walcot burial ground to the south-east of the church.
This church holds very special Jane Austen associations, as it was the church where her mother and father married and also where the reverend George Austen was buried.
The building we can see now-still a functioning church-
was rebuilt after the Austen’ wedding, because of the boom in the Bath population in the mid 18th century. The parish of St. Swithin’s decided to demolish the old medieval church on the site and to rebuild, employing the architect of St James ,Bath, John Palmer as their architect for their more spacious and modern church.
This is how Walter Ison in his wonderful book, The Gregorian Buildings of Bath, describes the exterior and the interior of the building:
The exterior is adorned with a giant order of Ionic pilasters with plain shafts ,which rise from a deep plinth and divide the side elevations into six equal bays. The two tiers of widows, low segmental-headed lights to the ground floor and tall arched lights to the galleries, are framed by heavily moulded architraves. A plain strongcourse marks the gallery level and the fronts are finished with an entablature and plain parapet. Low wings containing vestries and staircases, flank the of the tower, which forms the centre of the west front…
The interior measure approximately 68 feet by 52 feet and is similar to that of St James’s Church except that here three widely spaced columns stand on each side of the nave and the gallery is independent of them. The alter stands in a shallow bay corbelled out over the lower road and the side walls are adorned with many interesting memorial tablets including one to the architect, John Palmer.
Back to Jane Austen…Jane’s mother, Cassandra Leigh was living in Bath at the time of her marriage to George Austen in 1764. Her father had retired to Bath in the early 1760s, and had died there in January 1764, and was then buried in the subject of our post today, St Swithin’s Church.
The Austens married on the 26th April 1764 by special license at St. Swithin’s
This is a copy of the register recording their marriage, which you can enlarge as you can all the illustrations in this post, simply by clicking on it.
In a characteristically practical manner, Mrs Austen did not appear at church arrayed in any special wedding dress of fine embroidered silk. Instead she wore a typical mid 18th century travelling dress -a habit-of red worsted wool.
Her dress must have been very similar to this one held by the Victoria and Albert Museum in their collection. If you go here you can see a 360 degree view of the dress and a short description of it.
This dress was indeed very practical garb for the wife of a country rector. And it gave good service to the family for when no longer fit to be worn as a dress, it was adapted as clothes for the Austen children.
Frank Austen , one of Jane’s sailor brothers, was by all accounts a fearless little boy and had an instinctive gift for horse trading. When he was seven years old he bought a pony for £1, 11 shillings and 6 pence, which he trained and hunted and at the end of two years ownership sold for £2 12 shillings and 6 pence, thereby making a profit of over one guinea. The wedding dress was finally used up to make Francis a jacket and a pair breeches so that he could appear in style in the hunting field as a child.
When Jane Austen was staying with Edward Austen at Queen’s Square in June 1799 she was of course commissioned by her sister, Cassandra, to buy articles of clothing, and in particular to find out what the latest fashion was so that they could keep up with the times in rural Hampshire.
Bath was (and still is) a wonderful centre for shopping: it impressed the fashion-obsessed Mrs Allen in Northanger Abbey :
“Bath is a charming place, sir; there are so many good shops here. We are sadly off in the country; not but what we have very good shops in Salisbury, but it is so far to go — eight miles is a long way; Mr. Allen says it is nine, measured nine; but I am sure it cannot be more than eight; and it is such a fag — I come back tired to death. Now, here one can step out of doors and get a thing in five minutes.”
Northanger Abbey,Chapter 3
But in Jane Austen’s case, the shops proved disappointing:
Flowers are very much worn, and fruit is still more the thing. Elizabeth has a bunch of strawberries, and I have seen grapes, cherries, plums, and apricots. There are likewise almonds and raisins, French plums, and tamarinds at the grocers’, but I have never seen any of them in hats. A plum or greengage would cost three shillings; cherries and grapes about five, I believe, but this is at some of the dearest shops. My aunt has told me of a very cheap one, near Walcot Church, to which I shall go in guest of something for you.
(See :Letter to Cassandra Austen dated June 2nd 1799)
The search for fruit in Walcot was not very productive: Jane Austen’s Aunt, Mrs Leigh Perrot typically sending Jane on a fools errand in search of cheap decorative fruit, sending her to a cheap shop where annoyingly only flowers were to be had:
We have been to the cheap shop, and very cheap we found it, but there are only flowers made there, no fruit; and as I could get four or five very pretty sprigs of the former for the same money which would procure only one Orleans plum — in short, could get more for three or four shillings than I could have means of bringing home — I cannot decide on the fruit till I hear from you again. Besides, I cannot help thinking that it is more natural to have flowers grow out of the head than fruit. What do you think on that subject?
(See: Letter to Cassandra Austen dated June 11th, 1799).
I tend to agree…flowers and not fruit sprouting from the head seems far more natural, but I am not sure exactly why…
The last Jane Austen association with St Swithin’s is rather poingnant: Jane’s father, Geroge Austen was buried there after his death in Bath on the 21st January 1805, and this is a picture of the original ledgerstone, which indicated the place of his burial.
This was re-sited and renovated by the Bath and Bristol branch of the Jane Austen Society in 2000, and a new sign recording George Austen’s associations with the church was erected:
You might like to note that Fanny Burney –one of Jane Austen’s favourite novelists-
and her husband who lived in Bath in the early 19th century, were also buried in the Walcot burial ground and at a later date a memorial was erected near the church commemorating them.
Like this:
Jane Austen first visited Bath in 1797, staying with her uncle, James Leigh Perrot and his wife at their home in Paragon. They spent every winter in Bath, to take the waters and enjoy the fashionable social life there.
No letters that Jane Austen wrote survive for that year -1797- and so we have little evidence of her first impressions of Bath.
We can, however, guess that she saw things in this crowded, fashionable place with her unerringly clear eye for it was in 1798-99 that she wrote what was to become Northanger Abbey,a satire not only on the rage for Horrid books, but also on the busy but ultimately vacuous life to be found in Bath, husband hunting, shopping and entering into the round of fashionable entertainments…
However, some of her letters written during her second stay in Bath do survive. She travelled to the spa to stay there in some style with her brother Edward, his wife and children, Fanny and Edward, and her mother, Mrs Austen, in number 2 on this annotated 1803 map of Bath (above-do click on it to enlarge it)- in Queen’s Square.
The Austen family’s arrival in Bath was noted in the Bath Chronicle for Thursday 23rd May , 1799. A “Mr and Mrs Austin”(sic) were noted among the new arrivals to the city. On arrival in the house, Jane immediately set down to write to her sister Cassandra and it is her letter of 17th May 1799 which provides us with much information about the house, number 13 on the south side of the square :
which was to be their base for their stay of just over a month:
Well, here we are at Bath; we got here about one o’clock, and have been arrived just long enough to go over the house, fix on our rooms, and be very well pleased with the whole of it.
(One of the buildings on the south side of Queen’s Square from John Wood’s Description of Bath etc.,1765)
Queens Square was one of the first parts of Bath to be developed in the early 18th century by the architect, John Wood. It took seven years to complete – from 1728-1736- and was the first stage in the creation of the new Upper Town of Bath(the remainder was the creation of Gay Street and the Kings Circus). The concept behind the creation of the square was to provide a unifying façade to the houses so that they looked like one massive mansion on the south facing side (and indeed this range did contain a very large house for John Wood himself)
Walter Ison in his magnificently detailed book The Georgian Buildings of Bath writes about the development:
Queens Square is sited to the north-west of the old city boundaries on the high southward sloping ground which Robert Gay granted to John Wood in a series of 99 year leases…Wood envisaged the north, east and west ranges of buildings as forming a palace forecourt, the ensemble to be viewed from the south side. The magnificent north front, elaborately modeled to gain the fullest advantage of light and shade offered by a south aspect, fully realizes the body of this supposed palace, to which the east and west sides were to form wings…While the east side was carried out to this design at an early date, circumstances arose later which prevented Wood from building the complementary range. The buildings on the west side eventually took the form of a large mansion…The south side was built more or less in accordance with Wood’s original intentions
This is the plan of the square from Wood’s own book which detailed the history and the early 18th century architectural innovations designed by him, A Description of Bath etc ( 1765)
Jane Austen was pleased with the house, characteristically noting it quirks along with its good points:
We are exceedingly pleased with the house; the rooms are quite as large as we expected. Mrs. Bromley is a fat woman in mourning, and a little black kitten runs about the staircase. Elizabeth (Edward’s wife-jfw) has the apartment within the drawing-room; she wanted my mother to have it, but as there was no bed in the inner one, and the stairs are so much easier of ascent, or my mother so much stronger than in Paragon as not to regard the double flight, it is settled for us to be above, where we have two very nice-sized rooms, with dirty quilts and everything comfortable. I have the outward and larger apartment, as I ought to have; which is quite as large as our bedroom at home, and my mother’s is not materially less. The beds are both as large as any at Steventon, and I have a very nice chest of drawers and a closet full of shelves — so full indeed that there is nothing else in it, and it should therefore be called a cupboard rather than a closet, I suppose.
She also very much preferred the views over the square towards the rising ground of the Upper Town, to the rather enclosed and dark situation of her uncle’s house in the Paragon:
I like our situation very much; it is far more cheerful than Paragon, and the prospect from the drawing-room window, at which I now write, is rather picturesque, as it commands a prospective view of the left side of Brock Street, broken by three Lombardy poplars in the garden of the last house in Queen’s Parade.
Though she didn’t mention it, Jane Austen’s view across the square also took in the small square of grass in the centre of the square and its obelisk, commemorating Frederick, Prince of Wales the father of George III:
Queen’s Square is charmingly situated and composed of elegant buildings which display all the grandeur of architectural excellence. It was designed by Wood, to whose professional taste and spirit Bath owes so much. In the area is a pleasure-ground, enclosed by iron palisades, adorned in the centre with an obelisk seventy feet high shaped and pointed like a bookbinders needle and charged with the following inscription:
In memory of humours conferred,
And in gratitude
For benefits bestowed
In this city
By his Royal Highness
FREDERICK PRINCE OF WALES
and his
ROYAL CONSORT
in the year MDCCXXXVII.
This Obelisk is erected
by RICHARD NASH esq,
(See The Guide to all the Watering and Sea -bathing Places etc (1803) by John Feltham)
For Mrs Austen,the Square-so called for it was the first of the important squares to be built in Bath, remained THE place to stay: in 1801 when they were trying to find somewhere to live in Bath upon the Reverend George Austen’s retirement, Jane wrote almost despairingly to Cassandra that:
My mother hankers after The Square dreadfully and it is but natural to suppose my Uncle will take her part…
(Letter to Cassandra Austen, dated 21st January 1801)
Of course by the time Jane Austen was writing Persuasion – in 1815-16- The Square was one of the oldest of the new developments in Bath: it was far more fashionable to live higher up in the new town with its crescents and pleasant outlooks across the city and the river. Which allowed her to make a small joke at her mother’s expense when the fashionably minded Musgrove girls declare that Queens Square is too old-fashioned for them to contemplate as a place to stay in Bath for the winter season:
I hope we shall be in Bath in the winter; but remember, papa, if we do go, we must be in a good situation: none of your Queen-squares for us!
Persuasion, Chapter 6
The Austen’s stay in Bath ended in late June and Jane Austen returned to Steventon-away from the glare of Bath in the summer. And she could joke to Cassandra that she had better prepare a good meal for them as they were used to high level of living in Bath:
You must give something very nice for we are used to live well
(See Letter to Cassandra dated 19th June 1799)
I daresay had she been presented only with a dish of bread and cheese, the fact that she was back in her beloved Steventon home would have made it seem like a feast.
Like this:
This is a map of Bath as it was in 1803 from my copy of John Feltham’s Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places etc, of that year, and I have annotated with the locations of places very much associated with Jane Austen-and ones that we shall be visiting over the next few days. You can, as ever, click on the map to enlarge it.
They are as follows:
1. Walcot Church
2. Queen’s Square
3. The Paragon
4. Sydney Place
5. Green Park Buildings
6. Gay Street
7. Trim Street
8. Great Pultney Street
Jane Austen lived in Bath from 1801-1806. During this time her father had died and was buried there and the Austen ladies - Cassandra, Mrs Austen and Jane- had begun to realise exactly what living as quite poor, dependant, unmarried and widowed women meant in the early 19th century…Her intimate know ledge of Bath was used to great effect in her novels Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, where Bath is a ’character” of the novels in its own right. Eventually in 1806 the Austen ladies left bath, visited nearby Clifton and took a summer tour of relatives in Gloucestershire, Warwickshire and Staffordshire before settling in Southampton.
Prior to settling in the city in 1801 Jane Austen had visited Bath, staying at Queen’s Square and it is there that we will begin our tour of Austen related sites in Bath in the next post. Do join me, won’t you?
From Sunday we shall begin a series of post about Jane Austen and the places with which she was associated in Bath- primarily the places in which she and her family lived.
So do join me to find out more about Queen’s Square, Sydney Place, Walcot Church….and much, much more
Elliston, she tells us has just succeeded to a considerable fortune on the death of an Uncle. I would not have it enough to take him from the Stage; she should quit her business, & live with him in London
Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 20th Feburary ,1807
This of us who may occasionally be keen to hear some gossip about out favourite actors and actresses can take hart: Jane Austen like to gossip about her faves too. As this tiny snippet of gossip referring to Robert Elliston, rather confirms. He was it appears one of her favourite actors.
And his rise to fame coincided with Jane Austen’s stay in Bath from 1801-6.
He was born on the 7 April 1774 in Orange Street, London, the only child of Robert Elliston , a watchmaker, and his wife. Sadly, his father was an alcoholic,and Elliston was cared for by two uncles, Dr William Elliston, master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, and Dr Thomas Martyn, professor of botany, of the same college. And it was form one of these uncles that in 1807 he inherited £17,000……but we are getting ahead of ourselves in his story….
Under his uncles supervision he was educated at St Paul’s School, London, where he took a special interest in oratory. It would appear that his uncles intended him for the church but spurning this role they had mapped out for him, he “ran away to the theatre” at Bath. Scandalous!
A this time as we have already noted, the Orchard Street theatre in Bath was second in importance in the English dramatic world only to the two London patent theatres- the Theatre Royal Drury Lane and Covent Garden. In conjunction with the theatre at Bristol the Bath company provided a very fashionable and knowledgeable audience with entertainment suitable for the most discerning of tastes.
Eliston made his first appearance at the Orchard Street Theatre in Bath in 1791. He stayed at the Bath theatre till 1804, performing many roles in plays with which Jane Austen was very familiar. Of particular note is the fact that he played the part of Frederick in Mrs Inchbald’s adaptation of Kotzebue’s Lover’s Vows at least ten times in that period.
In 1796 he eloped with and married Elizabeth Rundell, a Bath dance teacher. They had ten children before she died in 1821. Through her dancing academy she helped Elliston’s productions when he later became a theatre manager. Interestingly, she continued her occupation after her marriage despite Ellistons sucess as a leading actor. She first, from 1801, had premises in Trim Street and then from 1812 in Milsom Street. Hence Jane Austen’s rather interesting comment above…..
Elliston finally left Bath for London in 1804, as Richard Sheriden wanted him to appear at his Drury Lane theatre . Initially Elliston had refused a permanent postion in Sheridan’s company but gradually the lure of the London theatre and the riches it could command sucked him in. On 20 September 1804 Elliston began appearing as the leading actor at Drury Lane. He had played successfully in London during the summers of 1796 and 1797, mainly at the Haymarket Theatre, run by the playwright George Colman, but cannily waited until his reputation in Bath was secure before making a complete break with Bath and Bristol in order to move to London.
Although he was versatile, Elliston’s appearance was thought rather against him for the playing of tragedy, for his face was described as:
…the very Mirror of Comedy. His countenance was round and open, his features small, yet highly expressive; laughter lay cradled in his eye, and there was a muscular play of lip, so pregnant of meaning, as frequently to leave the words that followed but little to explain.
(See G. Raymond, Memoirs of Robert William Elliston,(1844)
He seems to have been best in the Charles Surface sort of role from Sheridan’s play The School for Scandal: rakish but generous and warm-hearted chaps, versions of which character were available by the score in the comedies of this era.
He was known as a great lover on stage, just as he was a notorious womanizer off stage……The theatrical critic Leigh Hunt has left us an interesting analysis of Elliston’s skill in this area, when Elliston played opposite Dorothy Jordan in 1805 in the facre Matrimony by James Kenney . They provided
‘altogether the most complete scene of amorous quarrel that I have witnessed’
(see Leigh Hunt Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres (1807)page 190.)
When Drury Lane was destroyed by fire in 1809, Elliston looked around for new worlds -or rather theatres- to conquer and hit upon theatre management. He became known as ‘the Great Lessee’ and ‘the Napoleon of the Theatre’ for his interest in acquiring new property. He also tried very hard to break the monopoly held by the two patent theatres on performing plays. In this aim he was not successful.
He began his theatrical property empire with the Royal Circus in St George’s Fields, which he transformed and managed for five years. At the same time he leased the Manchester Theatre Royal from 1809–10 then purchased Croydon in 1810 but it was seized by creditors in 1826. He leased Birmingham from 1813–18,
to which he added Worcester and Shrewsbury in 1815 to make up a midlands area theatrical circuit, where his company of players could perform.
He then purchased the Olympic Pavilion in London-also known as Astleys for it was built by none other than Phillip Astley- in 1813,and this may have been the site of Harriet Smith and Robert Martin’s reconciliation in Emma!
Elliston leased Lynn in Norfolk from 1817–18, Leicester, and Northampton both from 1818 and Leamington (where he also had a lending library and assembly rooms!!) from 1817, and Coventry in 1821.
When he became the manager of the newly built Drury Lane in 1819 Elliston was indeed “king of the theatre”, and was soon to play that role in his magnificent coronation spectacle of 1821. During his “reign” at Drury Lane, Elliston had many successes with spectacular melodramas, operas, and pantomimes but with not a single new ‘legitimate’ play of any significance ,even though he was at last the manager of a patent theatre which could legitimately perform plays. Theatrical extravaganzas, not drama, and novelty of every kind were what the public now demanded. Edmund Bertram would clearly not have approved 
Following a severe stroke in August 1825, by which time the now sadly severely alcoholic Elliston was but a shadow of his former self, his place as manager was taken over by his eldest son, William Gore Elliston, who formed a successful partnership with his brother, Henry Twissleton Elliston. The results of his pressured lifestyle and alcoholism were making themselves felt earlier than this, however. Certainly in 1814, Jane Austen-that very acute observer- on seeing him perform in London had noted that something was taking a toll on his performance and his appearance:
(Elliston in 1813)
We were quite satisfied with Kean. I cannot imagine better acting, but the part was too short; and, excepting him and Miss Smith, and she did not quite answer my expectation, the parts were ill filled and the play heavy. We were too much tired to stay for the whole of “Illusion” (“Nour-jahad”), which has three acts; there is a great deal of finery and dancing in it, but I think little merit. Elliston was “Nour-jahad,” but it is a solemn sort of part, not at all calculated for his powers. There was nothing of the best Elliston about him. I might not have known him but for his voice.
(See Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 5th March 1814)
Elliston returned to the stage, however, to create his last original role, “Falstaff” in The First Part of King Henry IV, in May 1826. As sometimes happens, he was brilliant in the final rehearsal but unable to reproduce that quality in public. Elliston finished his career as a theatrical manager of the Surrey theatre , where he also acted out his last appearances.His last appearance was as “Sheva” in Cumberland’s The Jew, one of his most popular characters, on 24 June 1831. Two weeks later, on 8 July 1831, Elliston died of an ‘apoplexy’,which was, presumably, a cerebral haemorrhage, and was buried at St John’s Church, Waterloo Road London’
Given his womanising reputation, it would seem that Jane Austen’s advice to his wife was, as ever, quite perceptive….
“Well, mother, I have done something for you that you will like. I have been to the theatre, and secured a box for to-morrow night. A’n't I a good boy? I know you love a play; and there is room for us all. It holds nine. I have engaged Captain Wentworth. Anne will not be sorry to join us, I am sure. We all like a play. Have not I done well, mother?”
Persuasion Chapter 22
When Jane Austen wrote about attending the theatre in Bath in Persuasion the old Orchard Street theatre in Bath had been closed for some years. Its last performance was on the 13th July 1805.
As we have seen in a previous AustenOnly post, this small theatre, during its fifty year history, built a solid reputation for good if not excellent performances, and had established itself as the best and most influential provincial theatre, rivalling the two London patent theatres-Covent Garden and Drury Lane-for the quality of its performances, actors and actresses.
No, in Persuasion, Jane Austen was writing about the theatre that replaced it, the Theatre Royal, Beaufort Square.
Here is a map of Bath in 1803 from my copy of A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places(1803) by John Feltham:
And this is a section of it which shows the position of the new theatre:
Proposals to build a new theatre in Bath to replace the tiny, old-fashioned Orchard Street theatre were first mooted in 1802. In August 1804 a final decision was taken to build a larger, modern theatre on land forming the south side of Beaufort Square. Here is part of the history of the old theatre and the decision to build a new theatre from A Guide to all the Watering Places etc (1816):
The liberal and enterprising spirit of Mr John Palmer, father to the yet more entertaining and truly amiable John Palmer Esq. and grandfather of one of the present representatives of his native place, prompted him, amidst various other extensive concerns and speculations, to engage very deeply in the risk and expense of building a new and commodious theatre here, which had long been extremely wanted. In 1760 he obtained His Majesty’s patent for this purpose; and from him the property devolved on his son (the late amiable and intelligent gentleman who invented and successfully carried into execution the popular plan for the improvement of the posts of this kingdom by mail coaches etc), who rebuilt and considerably enlarged the house and, having connected the Bristol theatre with it, disposed of the greater part of that valuable concern. The old theatre at Bath was superior to any out of the metropolis; when the increasing population of Bath, and the rank of the company, seemed to require a new one, more capacious than the old and to which the access should be more commodious.
The funds needed to build the theatre were raised by way of a tontine. The tontine-named after Lorenzo Toni a Neapolitan banker who introduced this device- worked in this way: members of the tontine bought shares, and when they died their shares were shared between the surviving members of the tontine, and in theory the last standing survivor inherited it all.
On hundred first shares were issued of the theatre tontine, each costing £200 each. Each shareholder received income on that share of 3 per cent per annum, plus free admission to all performances at the theatre once it was built. A secondary issue of shares at a price of £150 per share did not entitle the holders to free admission, just to the income.
The subscribers to the shares included the great and the good. And the not – so – good .The Prince of Wales headed the list along with his brother, the Duke of York.
The foundation stone of the theatre was laid in 1804 and less than a year later the building, built in accordance with a design by George Dance, then the professor of architecture at the Royal Academy, was complete:
The following description of the sumptuous new theatre appeared in The Beauties of England and Wales (Volume XIII) by Edward Weylake Brayley and John Britton:
There are three entrances, in as many directions, the grand front being in Beaufort Square. The audience part is somewhere less than that of the late Covent Garden Theatre, but the space behind the curtain is much larger. The length, within the main walls is on hundred and twenty feet; and breadth, sixty feet; and the height seventy.
The exterior buildings including dressing rooms, scene room, wardrobe and every other convenience for the artistes, servants etc; the ante rooms and saloons to the boxes, rooms to the numerous private boxes; taverns etc ; are very extensive.
There are three tiers of boxes excessively lofty and affording a depth of rows towards the centre.
Cast iron bronze pillars are placed at a distance of two feet from the front, by which the first row of each circle appears as a balcony, independent of the main structure, and as inconceivable lightness is communicated to the tout ensemble.
The private boxes are inclosed with gilt lattices; the entrance to them is by a private house, part of the property connected with the theatre, and they are accommodated with a suite of retiring rooms.
The decorations are very splendid, particularly the ceiling, which is divided into four compartments, each of which is adorned by one of those exquisite paintings by Cassali, formerly belonging to Fonthill ,Wiltshire.
The wreathes of flowers etc which connect these paintings are executed with great skill and taste. The walls are covered with stamped cloth stuffed of a crimson colour and are papered above to the tops of the boxes with paper of the same colour; and Egyptian pattern fringed with gold stripe. The seats and edges of the boxes are also covered with cloth. The front is painted of the same colour with four broad stripes of gold and the centre ornamented with tasteful scrolls of gold.
This is the description from A Guide to all the Watering and Sea Bathing Places (1816) by John Feltham:
The whole south side of Beaufort-square was accordingly purchased in 1804, and such was the activity employed that in twelve months a theatre was opened, which, in elegance of structure, and magnificence of decoration, may vie with any in Great Britain. Its size is considerably larger than that of the little theatre in the Haymarket, being one hundred and twenty-five feet in length, sixty wide and seventy high. Four private boxes are taken from the first tier, on each side next the stage, and handsomely fitted up. There is an air of warmth,comfort and ease, about the house, not to be found in any other theatre in England; and two of the back rows of the front boxes, with similar conveniences as in many of the theatres in Italy. The scenery and stage-apparatus are not inferior to those of the London houses, and the actors are considerably the best out of the metropolis.
The Bristol theatre now belongs entirely to the same proprietors and it is needless to observe that these theatres have been long held next in consideration to those of London; and that there have arisen under their fostering care, the greatest ornaments of the British stage: we need enumerate only the names of Henderson, King, Edwin, Abingdon, Crawford, Siddons, Murray, Incledon and Kean; and though last, certainly not least in the esteem of the public, Elliston.
When the company is at Bristol, the performances are on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays there and on the Saturday at bath; and, during the season at the latter place, the performances are on Monday at Bristol and Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at Bath…
As you can imagine from the descriptions, the new theatre was altogether a very different and larger theatre than the intimate Orchard Street playhouse where Henry Tilney really has no excuse for not seeing Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey.
Let’s compare the interiors. Here is the Orchard Street theatre drawn by Rowlandson circa 1790:
And here is the interior of the Beaufort Square theatre, ready for a ball, circa 1820.
It was much larger,and very ornate, as you can see. Do remember you can enlarge all the illustrations here merely by clicking on them. The new theatre had its first performance on 12th October 1805, nine days before the battle of Trafalgar.
This is the playbill for that opening night. Sadly, it was a flop- the role of Richard III was given, rather unwisely as it turned out, to an unknown actor who was overcome with stage fright and forgot his words….Poor soul.
Jane Austen was living in 1805 at 25 Gay Street, where the Austen ladies lived after the death of Mr Austen. In 1806 they lived in temporary accommodation in Trim Street- both not far from the new theatre as you can see on this map.
The theatre is still in existance, though it is somewhat changed from Jane Austen’s day for it was destroyed by fire in 1862: go here to see it as it now appears.
Back to Persuasion….
Sadly because of the prior engagement at the Elliot’s evening party the Musgroves and Anne could not go to see a play at the relatively new Bath theatre. Charles Musgrove is not impressed:
“Phoo! phoo!” replied Charles, “what’s an evening- party? Never worth remembering. Your father might have asked us to dinner, I think, if he had wanted to see us. You may do as you like, but I shall go to the play.”
He is eventually persuaded to go to the Elliot’s…..My sympathies are with him. I’d much rather have spent time in congeal company at the theatre than spend a night-with not even a dinner in sight- in the company of the coldly elegant Elizabeth and the idiotic, egotistical Sir Walter…not to mention Mrs Clay.
Did Jane Austen ever base her characters on real people?
I’m not sure she ever did.
And she certainly told her friend, Mrs Ann Barrett of Alton that her creations were all her own:
On one occasion soon after the inimitable Mr Collins had made his appearance in literature and old friend attacked her(Jane Austen-jfw) on the score of having pourtrayed (sic)an individual: in recurring to the subject after wards she expressed a very great dread of what she called an “invasion of social proprieties.” She said she thought it fair to note peculiarities, weaknesses and even special phrases but it was her desire to create not to reproduce and at the same time said “I am too proud of my own gentlemen ever to admit they were merely Mr A or Mr B…..
(See Deirdre le Faye Jane Austen : A Family Record page 233.)
However, recent research by Deirdre le Faye, published in Bath History, Volume VII seems to suggest that Lady Russell, Anne Elliot’s sometimes exasperating mother-substitute in Persuasion, may have been based on the facts surrounding a member of Jane Austen’s acquaintance in Bath.
We have had Mrs. Lillingstone and the Chamberlaynes to call on us. My mother was very much struck with the odd looks of the two latter; I have only seen her. Mrs. Busby drinks tea and plays at cribbage here to-morrow; and on Friday, I believe, we go to the Chamberlaynes’. Last night we walked by the Canal.
( See: Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 5th May 1801)
and
We met not a creature at Mrs. Lillingstone’s, and yet were not so very stupid, as I expected, which I attribute to my wearing my new bonnet and being in good looks.
(See: Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 12th May, 1801)
and
Were to have a tiny party here tonight; I hate tiny parties-they force one into constant exertion-Miss Edwards and her father, Mrs Busby and her nephew, Mr Maitland and Mrs Lillingstone are to be the whole
(See: Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 21st May 1801)
My evening visit was by no mean disagreeable. Mrs Lillingstone came to engage Mrs Holder’s conversation and Miss Holder and I adjourned after tea to the inner drawing room to look over Prints and talk pathetically.
(See : Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 26th May 1801)
There are not many mentions of Mrs Lillingston in Jane Austen’s letters from Bath: these quoted above- reflecting a little flurry of activity concerning her slightly - are all that survive. But she does merit our attention…..
She was a member of the Leigh Perrots’ circle of friends, and her story is an interesting one, so If you will allow it I will tell you it and of her relationship with Jane Austen.
When Jane Austen met her in 1801 she was 60 years old and was a widow, living at 10 Rivers Street in Bath where she lived alone save for her little dog, Malore and her staff. She was attended by her faithful maid, Molly Stowe , her man servant, Francis Varley and a seeming endless succession of cooks.
I think both Jane Austen and Cassandra must have met Mrs Lillingston before the dates of these letters quoted above _ probably on a previous visit to Bath?-because Jane Austen does not mention her or describe her to Cassandra as a new acquaintance.
We do not know exactly how Mrs Lillingston became part of the Leigh –Perrots’s circle of friends. But Mrs Lillington was born Wilhelmina Johanna Dottin in 1741 in Barbados. This may have been the link between her and the Leigh Perrots, for Mrs Leigh-Perrot was born Jane Cholmeley also in Barbardos. At the time of writing her letter’s, quoted above, Jane Austen was living with the Leigh Perrot’s at their home at Number 1, the Paragon,
which as you can see was not far from Rivers Street.
Poor Mrs Lillington’s nearest relations seem to have made her the subject of much litigation, and much legal dispute seems to have taken place regarding her late husband’s will ; there may have been legal disputes arising from marriage settlements made in favour of her daughter and her husband.
The exact nature of these claims is not known, but there still exists a letter from Mrs Lillington’s London lawyer, a Mr Coulthurst of Bedford Row who was very happy to inform her that the Lord Chancellor had thrown out the case in Chancery against her and her late husband’s estate:
…your Cause was heard yesterday & I am happy to add that the Chancellor has dismissed so much of the Bill as seeks to set aside the Release saying there was not the least Pretence for it, and that the Bill was filed from Spleen and ill Humour, but he thought that as you had executed the deed of August 1797 which from the Purport of it might be so construed as to induce a Belief in the Husband that no debt was due from the daughter to you, the Chancellor thought that you was not from the Words of the Deed intitled to call upon the plaintiffs for any money due at the time of the marriage- the Chancellor and everyone present were perfectly satisfied with the purity of your Conduct and the general opinion was that the Bill was a most unjust and unnatural one.
After all the trials her own family put her to, when she made her will on the 11th July 1804 she, quite understandably, cut out her family completely. She appointed Mr Leigh Perrot to be her chief executor and residuary legatee : and in the will also made provision for her servants: Molly Stowe was to have £90, a wide selection of the lesser valuable household effects and to take care of
my favourite Little dog Malore ,a faithful Companion though all my suffering. Francis Varley was to have £220 plus all his bedroom furnishings plus Mrs Lillingston’s old black mare “Sissy”
requesting that she shall never be Road worked or Shod but enjoy the same indulgences she has done the last eight years of her life.
Mrs Lillington’s library was a treasured possession and she had taken care to label each volume with a direction confirming the name of its final recipient under her will.
Now, here we come to the interesting part of the story.
She must have taken a shine to Jane and Cassandra, for in her will she left them the then rather large sum of £50 each. Mrs Lillington died on the 30th January 1806.
(Remember you can enlarge all these illustrations merely by clicking on them)
This is the balance sheet drawn up by Mr Leigh Perrot, made when he was settling all Mrs Lillingston’s estate.
This is the an extract from it detailing the legacies paid to Jane and Cassandra Austen
Mr Leigh Perrot organised her funeral ( the undertaker’s account of which makes for fascinating reading) and then set about disposing of her estate according to the instructions in the will.
Her house at 10 River Street in the fashionable upper town in Bath was sold privately to …..a Mr Russell. Hmmmmm….doesn’t that set you thinking?
So- what did Jane Austen do with this welcome and very large lump sum of £50 which she received in late 1806 ? Remember that unlike Cassandra who had a little annual income from the £1000 capital left to her by her fiancé Tom Fowle (who sadly died prematurely while on service in the West Indies as the chaplain to Lord Craven in San Domingo in 1797) at this time in her life Jane Austen had absolutely no independent income. She relied at this time totally on income from gifts from relations or friends. Her father had died in 1805, and so the female side of the Austen family were finding it particularly difficult to live in their somewhat straightened financial circumstances.
Well, in this case we do know what happened for, luckily and almost unbelievably for us, there is still in existence Jane Austen’s account of her expenditure for the year 1807 from her pocket book and the Jane Austen Society published it (See the article Jane Austen’s Piano by Patrick Piggot ,Jane Austen Society’s Report 1981)
This page is now in the possession of the Pierpoint Morgan Library of New York.
One item that is of note is that the legacy enabled Jane Austen to hire a PianoForte in 1807 at a cost of £2 13 shillings and 6 pence. Her piano at Steventon had been sold along with most of the other Austen articles of furniture and library at Steventon when they left to live in Bath in 1801. We know that playing the piano was important to Jane and so it appears that Mrs Lillingston’s legacy enabled her to indulge her interest by hiring a piano while she lived in Southampton.(The Austen ladies left Bath in 1806 and from the autumn of that year lived in Southampton until 1809 when they removed to Chawton).
So I do wonder if Lady Russell, sometimes of River Street, Bath an intellectual and ,IMHO, mostly kindly widow sometime subject to the indifference of youth was based on this kind benefactress of Jane Austen and her sister? We shall never know for sure,but it is fun to speculate upon it.
Surprise was the strongest emotion raised by their appearance; but Anne was really glad to see them; and the others were not so sorry but that they could put on a decent air of welcome; and as soon as it became clear that these, their nearest relations, were not arrived with any views of accommodation in that house, Sir Walter and Elizabeth were able to rise in cordiality, and do the honours of it very well. They were come to Bath for a few days with Mrs. Musgrove, and were at the White Hart. So much was pretty soon understood; but till Sir Walter and Elizabeth were walking Mary into the other drawing-room, and regaling themselves with her admiration, Anne could not draw upon Charles’s brain for a regular history of their coming, or an explanation of some smiling hints of particular business, which had been ostentatiously dropped by Mary, as well as of some apparent confusion as to whom their party consisted of.
Persuasion Chapter 22
I’ve been researching The White Hart Inn, Bath for some time.
The reason why it excites my curiosity is that, for such a famous and celebrated place, it was demolished in 1869 and never rebuilt. And information about it is hard to find. In its heyday it was one of the most famous inns in the country let alone Bath and was duly celebrated for its style and efficiency
Images of it are scarce.
In this print of the Pump Room, you can just discern the roof of the inn appearing over the colonnade running to right angels of the Pump Room.
And this very early photograph is of the view from the site of the White Hart after its demolition.
You can imagine my delight when, a few years ago, I found this picture of it in its busy glory days
….with all its amazing detail…The White Hart -a deer- standing proud above the entrance. The print also conveys just how very busy it was-(do I count 7 coaches?)
It must have been very noisy. Something Jane Austen alluded to in one of her letters:
Poor F. Cage has suffered a good deal from her accident. The noise of the White Hart was terrible to her-They will keep her quiet I daresay…
(See: Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 15th September 1813)
Hopefully, you will be able to envisage its situation, just to the north of Bath Street ( see the colonnade running to the left of the print). You can also guess its size and how many visitors it must have accommodated. It says a lot for its organization and for its proprietor that I have never been able to find a bad review of the facilities
Here is my map of Bath of 1803 from A Guide to all the Watering and Sea-Bathing Places etc by John Feltham
Here is a section of it showing Stall Street
and this is the same section annotated with the positions of the Inn and the Pump Room
The Guide from which this map was taken gave the Inn a good review:
The principal inns and Taverns are the White Hart in Stall-street where the accommodations and treatment are excellent.
Here are a few of the other reviews I have collated over the years. Parson Woodford, from Norfolk, in his dairy gives us these two brief but glowing mentions of the inn:
28 June 1793
About 10 o’clock this Evening, thank God, we got safe and well to Bath to the White Hart Inn, where we supped & slept – a very noble Inn
and
11 October 1793
We got to Bath … about six o’clock this Evening, to the White Hart in Stall Street, kept by one Pickwick, where we drank Tea, supped and slept, a very good, very capital Inn, everything in stile.
Louis Simond , the rather puritanical American who wrote his Journal of a Tour and Residence in Great Britian during the years 1810 and 1811 ( published in 1815) wrote in detail of the White Hart. He was clearly impressed:
January 8th 1810.
We arrived at Bath last night. The chaise drew up in style at the White Hart. Two well-dressed footmen were ready to help us alight , presenting an arm on each side. Then a loud bell on the stairs, and lights carried before us to an elegantly furnished sitting –room where the fire was already blazing. In a few minutes a neat looking chamber maid with an ample white apron pinned behind, came to offer her services to the Ladies and shew the Bed-rooms. In less than half an hour five powdered gentlemen burst into the room with three dishes etc and two remained to wait. I gave this as a sample of the best or rather of the finest inns. Our bill was £2 ,11 shillings sterling dinner for three, tea, beds and breakfast. The servants have no wages-but depending on the generosity of travellers, they find it in their interest to please them. They (the servants-jfw) cost us about five shillings a day.
Here is a link to the portrait by John Saunders of the proprietor of the inn-sadly in black and white and rather small. He was one Eleanzer Pickwick, who would have been the owner of the inn when Jane Austen knew of it (and when the Musgroves stayed three). The portrait shows him as a bluff ruddy-cheeked man in simple riding habit, clearly at ease in a country setting.
Eleazer Pickwick was the son of Moses Pickwick and his wife, Sarah Smith, and was baptized at Freshford parish church, Somerset, on 2 February 1749. His parents were from the village of Limpley Stoke just outside Bath.
Eleazer was the grandson of a foundling, baptized Moses Pickwick in 1695 due to his being discovered as a baby at Pickwick in Corsham, Wiltshire He was immortalized in Charles Dickens’s Pickwick Papers, which made his name a household word.
In 1780, building on his experience as serving as a postboy at the Bear Inn, he was able to provide the services of a post-coach to London from the Angel Inn in Bath whose license he held. He soon enlarged his business by increasing the number of services scheduled, especially to London, from Bristol as well as Bath, and by transferring his base to the White Hart, which was, as we have seen, a major inn in the city
He was made a freeman of Bath in 1799, and a member of the common council in 1801, becoming mayor in 1826. In 1797 he purchased the manor house and lands in the parish of Bathford in Somerset. To this land he added Hartley Farm in Batheaston, Somerset, as well as a manor house and lands in the parish of Wingfield in Wiltshire.
He owned a freehold property in Bath, in Bath Street, but actually resided in Westgate Buildings from 1800. He died on 8 December 1837. His wife had predeceased him, dying in 1835; they were both buried at Bathford parish church.
I have one last “review” to add to all this and it is from my copy of John Cary’s Itinerary etc. (1798).
This book originated from the library of John Ruskin at his Lakeland home of Brantwood.
Authentication of the handwriting in the book is ongoing at present, but the owner of this book in the early 19th century was a sort of early “Egon Ronay” and he devised his own code to describe the places he was staying and their facilities.
(Do remember you can enlarge all the images here, merely by clicking on them)
Above is the page in the Itinerary for the White Hart, and you can see that he marks the entry for the inn with a lower case “a”.
I am pleased to report that, as you can see from his annotations above, this is his code for
“Excellent”
So we can rest assured that the Musgroves will have every attention , good food and that the service will never be “indifferent and inattentive” or (horrors) the pale will not be “doubtful as to beds”-two categories which he indicates by the use of the initials q and b.
They deserve no less, frankly.
And so tonight is the screening by PSB in America of ITV’s adaptation of Northanger Abbey , scripted by Andrew Davies, starring JJ Feild as a rather delicious Henry Tilney. My main problems with this production that it did not film crucial scenes in Bath but instead substituted Georgian Dublin for the city in the novel. I can fully understand the financial reason for doing this, but to me a lot was lost by substituting Bath for another place( albeit another sumptuous Georgian city). Bath is a very important part of Northanger Abbey and Persuasion and not to use these famous sites menas that , for me, a certain dimension was lost.
Next week PBS is screening ITV’s version of Persuasion, which in spite of its faults did use Bath (!) and so in honour of that, I will be hosting a short Persuasion season here at AustenOnly from tomorrow.
I do hope you can join me.
(The Crescent in 1780 by Thomas Malton)
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..
Northanger Abbey, Chapter 9
The Royal Crescent in Bath- which Jane Austen referred to only as The Crescent- was, and still is, a pleasant place to promenade. It has wonderful views across the city, being part of the upper town, due to the open prospect it commands. The lack of building immediately before it was due to the building restrictions imposed in the orignal leases for the site. Here is the map of Bath which appears in my copy of The Guide to All the Watering and Sea Bathing Places etc (1803) by John Feltham
(Remember, you can enlarge all the illustrations in this post by clicking on them)
And here is a section from that map which shows you exactly the position of The Crescent
The site was acquired as building land on December 20th 1766 by John Wood the Younger from Sir Benet Garrard. The lease contained a clause which would safeguard the amenities of the Crescent by the existence of a covenant which precluded any house being built on the ground immediately before the Crescent (then known as the Kingsmead Furlong, but eventually known as the Barton Fields ), nor did it allow any plant to grow on that land if it exceeded the height of 8 feet, thus preserving the view from the Crescent down to the river Avon.
The terrain is very steep in this part of the city, something which caused some initial problems with the foundations of the buildings – and these vertiginous slopes were a feature that Thomas Rowlandson couldn’t resist making fun of in this chariacture from his series of prints, The Comforts of Bath:
Here he shows the invalids, drawn to Bath to take the waters to effect a cure, in their Bath chairs etc.,staging their own version of The Bath Races. Wicked man.
Back to the Crescent……The Bath Chronicle dated 21st May 1767 noted that
on Tuesday last the foundation stone was laid of the first house of the intended new building above the Circus called the Royal Crescent
The Crescent was made up of 30 houses: though each house had a basement,three stories and roof garrets, each house differed in size, and internally the plans of each were different,as can be noted from the differences in the rear of the buildings from this modern areal photograph. Seven independent firms of building contractors worked on the house. Each house was finished to different degrees of sumptuousness. Some were magnificently decorated with elaborate plasterwork etc. Some, intended to be let permanently to visitors to Bath for the season, were plain.
But the façade facing the city was uniform, and no alterations were allowed from Wood the Younger’s master plan. Each house had a plain ground story face: the windows and doorways are spaced at equal intervals set in plain square headed openings. Above this ground level, for the height of two stories, rises 114 Ionic order columns, each just over 20 feet tall.
The houses were separated from the lawn in front by a wide pavement-as you can see here in this print by Nattes,above. Perfect for that Sunday Promenade by people of fashion as Jane Austen describes it in Northanger Abbey- and a road which was cobbled.That road is now blocked to traffic and so if you visit the Crescent these days you can get some idea of the atmosphere as it was when Jane Austen’s characters walked around it.
Such a beautiful and prominent set of buildings, in the most fashionable area of Bath attracted many famous residents. Let’s look at some of them…Christopher Anstey the poet and author of The New Bath Guide-a poem satirising the visitors to Bath-lived there for 22 years
and the famous Linley family lived at number 11.
The Linleys were a very talented musical famly. Here is Thomas Linley Senior- portrayed by Gainsborough who was a family friend, and who also had a famous studio in Bath in the nearby Circus, where he “pickpotted the rich” by painting their portraits.
His composer son Thomas Linley junior, The English Mozart- again by Gainsborough, lived at the Crescent
but died prematurely while visiting the Duke of Ancaster ‘s Lincolnshire estate. While on on the lake at Grimsthorpe Castle a sudden violent storm below up,causing his boat to capsize. Here is Gainsborough’s wistfully beautiful portrait of his sister Elizabeth Linley, the singer:
She famously eloped from the Crescent with the playwright Richard Sheridan and eventually married him in quite scandalous circumstances, which he subsequently immortalised in his wildly successful play, The Rivals (which play of course was one of the plays performed at the barn at Steventon by the Austen family when they were infected with the itch for acting)
Frederick ,Duke of York lived at Number 1,The Crescent:
This is now a wonderful museum, owned by the Bath Preservation Trust, where many rooms are decorated as they would have been in the 18th century including the kitchen, which has (shade of our other posts this week) a model turnspit dog in his wall mounted cage (which you can clearly see by clicking on the link here) And of course, number 16, the central house in the Crescent is now a rather sumptuous and famous hotel. I’ve not stayed there but I have taken tea there and I can highly reccommend it ;-)
Jane Austen, a frequent visitor to Bath before she lived there from 1801-1806, knew the Crescent well, as is evidenced from her letters:
In the morning Lady Willoughby is to present the Colours to some Corps of Yeomanry or other in the Crescent
(Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 2nd June 1799)
And obviously walked there on Sundays after church like her characters in Northanger Abbey:
On Sunday we walked a little in the Crescent Fields but found it too cold to stay long.
(Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 13th May 1801)
and it was a popular thing to do, though sometimes the crowds were sparse:
We did not walk long in the Crescent yesterday, it was hot and not crouded enough: so we went into the field…
(Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 11th April 1805)
So there you are, a virtual stroll around the Crescent on this wintery Sunday . I hope you enjoy it.
A new month- a new site…..
I would like to introduce you all to a new project, one I have been working on for years- a Jane Austen Gazetteer.
The aim of the site is to allow you to virtually visit all the places associated with Jane Austen and her family. Though we can still visit many of those places to day, they have changed irrevocably in the intervening 200 years. Looking at them via the medium of maps, engravings and descriptions all contemporary with Jane Austen brings us closer to the places as she knew them.
At present only the main locations associated with Jane Austen have been completed, but in time I hope the site will grow to become a comprehensive guide to Jane Austen’s world as she would have known it.
Each page on the site gives details of a one particular location, and will usually contain a contemporary description, a map and possibly an engraving. In addition external links to current websites are provided where appropriate, together with details of all Jane Austen’s references to those places, for example details of all her letters which document that particular place,etc.
I do hope you will enjoy exploring the site, a glimpse into Jane Austen’s world .
Enjoy!
