Our Chawton Home, how much we find
Already in it to our mind;
And how convinced that when complete
It will all other houses beat
That ever have been made or mended,
With rooms concise or rooms distended.
Letter from Jane to her brother James
Like thousands of
pilgrims before me, last spring, I journeyed to Chawton Cottage, the residence
of Jane Austen, her sister Cassandra, mother Cassandra, and friend Martha Lloyd,
during the last eight years of her life. It is a lovely house where Jane went
to work revising Sense and Sensibility
and Pride and Prejudice as well as
writing Emma, Mansfield Park, and Persuasion.
Prior to her brother,
Edward Austen Knight, providing his sisters and mother with the cottage, Jane
had lived in Bath for a few years, and biographers agree that she was not happy
there. Despite the pump room, assembly rooms, teas, dances, and gardens, Jane
longed for the country and left Bath with “happy feelings of escape.” Her
brother’s generosity of providing Jane with a house in the country is a gift to
all of us. The years between Jane leaving Steventon Rectory and her arrival in
Bath were fallow, but upon her arrival at Chawton, she more than made up for
it.
Chawton’s setting is much
more rural than it was in Jane’s time as the cottage was at the juncture of
three roads, so there was hustle and bustle right outside her door. I was
pleased to see just how roomy the house was. With Cassandra seeing to the
running of the household, Jane would have had the time, space, and solitude she
needed to write her brilliant novels. I especially liked how much the
floorboards creaked. As Jane worked, the movements of her family and friend would have served as a background to her writing.
While standing in Jane’s
bedroom, I found the house meant a good deal more to me than I had expected. I
have five sisters (four living), and growing up in a tiny two-bedroom apartment
in North Jersey, we all shared a bedroom (two bunks, two sisters in one bed,
and a folding cot in the middle). So there was nothing unusual about the idea
of Cassandra and Jane sharing a bed. The room oozed sisterly
affection, and it brought back good memories for me.
I had gone to Chawton
expecting to examine the artifacts of a great writer, but it turned out to be
so much more than that. I honestly felt Jane’s presence and her contentment at
being in a place she loved, with people she loved, and doing what she loved. It
was truly inspirational.
Congratulations on the 200th anniversary of the publication of Price and Prejudice. Your writing changed the world.
(This post originally appeared on the Austen Authors blog.)
