A Walk with Jane Austen

by Lori Smith

  I was enthralled with the house this morning when I first arrived. You can't see the whole thing at first because you walk up to it from the side, and from that direction its hidden, so you discover its vastness gradually. But I quickly lost interest and decided I was in no mood to be entertained by an overdone 450-year-old homestead. I found myself turning up my nose at the elaborate paintings on every ceiling, the ornate furniture, the huge heavy silver chandelier celebrating the family's promotion to the dukehood, a room paneled with heavy oak carvings, stone tablets from ancient Egypt, a sculpture room full of delicate marble. The house is bigger and more magnificent than any I've seen, and at the beginning of the trip I could have given it its due, but at this point I've seen far too much to take in anything more. I found myself most interested by the views of the garden from the windows on the second floor.

  There was one surprise that enchanted me—a set of china that had belonged to Warren Hastings, head of the East India Company. I generally don't go for those fancy kind of things, but this was lovely, with all kinds of different birds painted in the center of every plate and butterflies scattered around the edge and on the tip of every knife and fork, which are also done in china. Hastings's connection to the Austen family is a bit complicated, and there are debates about exactly the role he played. Jane's aunt Philadelphia, her father's sister, who was also (obviously) orphaned at a young age, found herself at twenty-one without marriage prospects in England and decided to leave for India, where lots of men were making their fortunes in the growing East India Company and where women were relatively scarce. Phila accomplished her objective, marrying Tysoe Saul Hancock, an older surgeon—actually the marriage may even have been arranged before she left England. Hancock seems to have been one of the unluckiest men ever. Nearly every business venture failed, friends deserted him, nothing ever really worked out, and he found virtually no success in what seems to have been a very hard and hard-working life. One of the couples closest friends happened to be Warren Hastings—the very Warren Hastings who owned the lovely birds-and-butterflies china—who would rise through the ranks to eventually run the East India Company, be governor general of India, and make a fortune doing so.4

  Phila and Hancock went without having children for years, and when Elizabeth eventually came along—well, there is speculation that perhaps she was actually Hastings's child. It seems a bad thing to speculate like this about the dead, who cannot defend themselves. The whole story may have just been, as Le Faye suggests, concocted by a gossipy old woman in Calcutta with a grudge. But I can't help but wonder, what really happened? Hastings was young, good-looking, and kind, a grieving widower. He sent his young son to live with the Austen family at Steven ton in the early days when they had no children of their own, but the boy caught diphtheria and died, much to Mrs. Austens grief. At any rate, Hastings was officially Elizabeth's godfather. He gave her enough of a living to keep her and her mother comfortable, though he married again and doesn't seem to have had a great deal of contact with the family. His taste in china was better than Edward's.

  I cant do the garden justice. I've heard Chatsworth described as the Disneyland of manor houses, and there's an element ofthat (there are no free tours of the house, no free garden maps, and 2.75 pounds will buy you the tiniest roast beef sandwich ever). But a Disneyland of gardens— well, what's the harm in that? In addition to the Emperor Fountain, this huge jet of water over a long reflecting pool, there are kitchen gardens, a rose garden with Grecian columns, a sculpted maze, rocks and fountains and flowers throughout the hundred acres, all carefully placed. In the back are ponds with rambling (but no doubt managed) overgrowth, almost completely secluded from the rest. Everyone's favorite is the Cascade, a gentle, wide waterfall starting in a temple of sorts and flowing down toward the house over twenty-four sets of steps, all of different widths so that the sound of the water changes all the way down. Today it's full of parents and small children in their underwear (the children of course, not the parents). The garden rises behind the house, so there are spectacular views of the whole of Chatsworth and the rolling, sheep-strewn hills beyond.

  There is some question about whether Jane was ever here at Chatsworth. Some believe she visited with cousins on a trip north, that perhaps it could have been a model for Pemberley (how many houses claim that?), but there is no proof she was ever here. Leading Austen scholar Deirdre Le Faye believes the farthest north Jane ever got was Staffordshire,5 just west of Derbyshire, and that was after her father died, which would have been after she drafted P&P but before she edited it for publication. If she had seen it, it would have been quite different, but the Cascade would have been there, and the Seahorse Fountain, the long Cascade Pool, and the Grotto Pond. Capability Brown worked on the property in the 1700s at a cost of forty thousand pounds. Perhaps Austen was thinking of Brown when she wrote of the stream in front of Pemberley, “of some natural importance…swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance.”6 That seems to have been one of his trademarks.

  Lying here by the fountain makes me think of Elizabeth and Darcy. It makes me feel what she might have felt at seeing the evidence of the wealth she had only heard of before. When she and her aunt and uncle Gardiner apply to the housekeeper for a tour of Pemberley, Elizabeth finds herself looking out the windows at the river and valley, impressed by the rooms, which are done up with far more taste than Rosings Park, amazed by the vastness and elegant taste of it all. “Of this place I might have been mistress!” she thinks.7 Austen weaves this discovery together with the revelations of Darcy's character—first Elizabeth learns that the housemaid adores Darcy and has never had an unkind word of him, that she has never seen anything of pride in him, and that he is the best brother imaginable. It seems that Elizabeth fell in love with Darcy's character and his estate on the same day. I wonder, which had greater influence?

  Of course, we know that Elizabeth never could have loved him for the house and grounds and exalted position alone. Without some indication of better substance, Darcy would have been only a horrible man with a great house. But the discovery of the one must have made the other easier to swallow. And as they happen together, Austen leaves the motives a bit mixed, as they are in real life—do any of us know for certain why we really do anything we do?

  We will never actually know what happened with Warren Hastings and Phila Austen Hancock. And we will never entirely ferret out our own motivations for anything we do. For my part, I want to believe that Hastings was innocent.

  Nineteen

  Over Hill and Dale

  Nobody can tell what I suffer!

  —MRS. BENNET, PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

  Sitting outside a smelly pub in Youlgreave, eating in spitting rain, I watched the sun peek out from time to time, and it was a little too cold. I'd given up thinking about Jack, as it seemed I'd never get home and never see him again, stuck as I was in a youth hostel in England. I was feeling incredibly discouraged that my trip actually would come to an end. I wasn't ready to leave.

  The view out my dorm room window is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen, green hills under a wide sky, but one of my roommates snores, and the window rattles, and I cannot sleep.

  Yesterday there were drama-queen tears, but I felt them even though I knew I was being slightly dramatic. I had carried my ridiculous suitcase up three of the steepest flights of stairs possible, thinking I should have stayed at the pub in Pilsley. I was incredibly disheartened to find that I can't do laundry here, can't check my e-mail, and the very helpful staff member who was determined to help me get to Ham Hall—the whole point of coming here—now seems to think it “quite a trek,” enough of a trek as to be seemingly impossible. I'd determined to take a day off and rest anyway, not wanting to tackle another three hours worth of buses through Bakewell and Ashbourne or whatever, but on being told it is nearly impossible to do this, I was heartbroken all over again—like breaking up with someone only to have them tell you they didn't want to go out anymore anyw
ay. All my clothes are vile. I washed my socks and underwear in the sink and had a tiny pity party in my bunk, surrounded by wet things. I was on the edge of an emotional cliff when the clerk at the front desk reached out and pushed me right on over. I don't have the heart for this.

  Ham is supposed to be beautiful, quieter than Chatsworth or Lyme Park and with grounds that remarkably resemble Jane's Pemberley description, though I sort of doubt she was ever there.

  I spent an hour walking through the dale this morning. You have to hike down a steep path to get to the main walking path, which runs by a little stream around hills and cliffs, with occasional breaks for panoramic views of cliff-side towns miles away. I was nearly alone, save for the horses and sheep. I am determined to think it is not a bad place to be stuck for the day.

  So I sit here in the occasional rain, eating a ham and cheese toastie with chips and a salad with no dressing. The idea of a toastie does not bother me—sort of like grilled cheese without the butter—but I don't understand why no one here uses salad dressing. They sell it apparently, every kind you can imagine, only they forget to actually use it.

  I'm tired of eating. I love food, but all the being hungry and constantly having to figure out where the next meal will come from—I mean, not financially, though there are enough questions about my finances to keep me occupied if I start to think about them, but practically. I've had some of the best meals here. Margarets salmon with cream sauce with new potatoes and peas. At the abbey, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and the best lemon meringue pie I've ever had, with a creamy, custardy top—and I don't even like lemon meringue pie. Bath buns—light with chunky sugar on top, with lemon curd and clotted cream. And last night I got dinner at the Chatsworth farm store and ate at a picnic table in Pilsley— cold vegetable quiche and the best, softest strawberries I've ever had. Ours in the States are tough and vulgar by comparison.

  Wouldn't you think that after thirty-some years of eating every day, three meals a day plus extra, you could take a couple of days off without consequences? I never actually realized how much I eat before I came over here. I always seem hungry at night when I go to bed because I don't have constant access to a refrigerator for my regular late-night bowl of cereal or ice cream.

  Sandwiches are mostly bready things with the smallest amount of meat possible. At every opportunity they will put cucumbers on them. Or you can have something like cheese and onion, held together with mayonnaise. After a few days, I began to wonder how anyone gets enough protein in this country.

  It's impossible to get a good cup of coffee. Most everyone considers coffee to be the powdered instant stuff and even that they manage to make weak. (Although, I started to almost like this in the evenings in my cozy little room in Bath.) Starbucks is the same, I suppose, but half-and-half does not even exist here and they don't put out cream, so you have to make do with milk. Even at a restaurant, if you attempt to order decaf, they'll bring you watery instant with milk. Blech.

  I have always loved the idea of England, meaning that I watch a lot of BBC America, love Trinny and Susannah (well-known fashion gurus and journalists), and Bridget Jones, and Austen of course, and the idea of afternoon tea. Until this trip I couldn't tell an Earl Grey from a Lip-ton, and now I've become a bit of a tea snob because in America we just don't know how to make good tea, and after a month of not being able to get good coffee I can tell the difference. Also, one should never use cream in tea; it's far too rich. Or so they tell me. When I've been watching too much BBC America and too many costume dramas, the voice in my head (you know, the running commentary that goes on all day, or when you do something like imagine yourself as a guest on Oprah or The Daily Show—and should I be embarrassed to admit that? Perhaps it's a particular fault of writers, or maybe only writers with a great deal of pride)… Anyway, when I've been watching too much British stuff, that voice in my head actually has a British accent.

  So sometimes I'm dismayed to find myself in a place that actually does feel foreign to me. There's a general coldness. Hotel staff and restaurant workers and people on the street can seem rude. They don't really want to know how you are; they just want to do their jobs. And to be honest, in America, we don't want to know how you are either really, but we're going to ask to make you feel like we are concerned and caring and open. Please just tell us you're okay, and then everyone can keep being happy and polite in this little social construct we've set up.

  Sometimes I think people here find me too open. I asked questions the other night at the tour of the Roman Baths. It was a small group, and there were things I wanted to know—I don't even remember what now, but things like why don't they still use it and how high would the water have come in the King's Bath, which was open in Jane's day, just below the Pump Room. I really enjoyed it and got the sense that some of my British companions did not appreciate my open enthusiasm and would rather I'd just kept my mouth shut. But it's the Roman Baths for crying out loud. It was evening, and it was almost empty, and there were torches. How cool is that?

  Mark and Gill said that when Gill's father came over to the U.S. and they were driving around the East Coast, he thought it was hysterical how even the tollbooth change-collectors asked him how he was. And he got to where he would ask them back and just laugh. Because in England, you would only ask someone that if you really knew them well—and really cared about the answer. And now I realize I've gone around England for a month smiling and asking people how they are.

  I think that I am not entirely well. I mean, there are lots of ways in which any one of us could probably be said to be not well, but physically I think my body is not healthy.

  I am tired too much—all the time. Today there's a hum of exhaustion under everything, louder than usual. I usually feel like I am pushing myself. I think people don't see it. But physically I am always on edge, always without reserves.

  I push myself because I refuse not to, because I want to have a life.

  I think the chocolate here is better. There is a convenience store across the street, and I'm going to get a Cadbury Flake on my way home. I will probably ask the salesclerk how she is. And tomorrow I'll wear my jeans for the fifteenth time since they were last washed, ride on the sticky leather seat of a cab, sit at a deserted train station that smells of urine, dragging my suitcase and overstuffed backpack through the grime and dirt of public transportation. I don't want to go home, and at the same time I do, and that's the rub of it all. Always.

  Stoneleigh Abbey is lovely, a grand, white classical front that has been marred a little by smoke, with rows of windows looking out on a broad green lawn, with the slow River Avon running alongside. The house is built around an old abbey, so that one wing is completely “new” as of the early 1700s. Much of the rest dates back to the Tudor period, but there are parts of the twelfth-century abbey still in existence. Which makes it awfully similar to Northanger Abbey, where Catherine visits the Tilneys and is terribly discouraged to find so little of the original abbey left and so little in the way of romance and horror. I took the train here today on my way to Gill's cousin Niki's in London, and once again I have all of my suitcases and look like I am moving in.

  This was the Leigh family's—Jane's mother's family's—ancestral home. Jane and her mother came to visit shortly after her father's death. The fifth Lord Leigh had died twenty years previously. He went mad apparently, left no heirs, and left the estate to his sister, but her recent death meant the inheritance of the estate was much in question. Jane and her mom went to visit her cousin, Thomas Leigh, who wanted to go to Stoneleigh to help make his claim for the estate. Mrs. Austen called the state bedroom—now a rather dark library—“an alarming apartment just fit for an Heroine,”1 and it seems that it is similarly situated to the room that was the deceased Mrs. Tilney's in the book, which Catherine visits on her own, hoping to find a scandal, hoping to find the poor abused wife hidden away, being starved to death by her secretly cruel husband. Jane would have written Northanger Abbey long before she came to S
toneleigh, although she did revise it later.

  Humphry Repton, already working on Thomas Leigh's estate in Adiestrop, did the grounds after Jane's visit, which they say to some extent model those of Sotherton Court in Mansfield Park. I couldn't remember the description enough to tell, and I didn't have time to explore. But Repton—possibly the most influential landscape gardener England ever produced2—is much discussed in Mansfield Park as the one Rushworth wants to get to improve Sotherton.

  There is a simple chapel as well, which seems to fit the description of the one there, though Jane didn't go into great detail with it. Jane took a great deal of pride in making her characters up from scratch— she was certainly inspired by people she knew, but her creations were all her own. There are so many great houses that claim to have inspired her, but I imagine she probably invented country estates the way she invented people, though she may have taken pieces from one and pieces from another.

  In the midst of all the other history and non-Austen information (like the tiny bathtub Queen Victoria used when she stayed here), I was struck by a picture in one of the parlors of a pretty woman named Elizabeth Wentworth with dark hair, kind eyes, and a gentle smile. It seems she was a friend of the family who came to visit for five days and ended up staying forty years. I immediately wondered if there was any connection to Captain Wentworth of Persuasion,and they told me Anne's story is actually based on her. I've never heard of her before, but they say that Betty Wentworth's maiden name was Betty Lord. As a young woman, she fell in love with a naval officer whom her mother forbid her to marry. But love won, and she married him anyway in secret. Not until years later, when she was being pressured to accept another suitor, was the whole thing revealed. Different from Anne, but perhaps this was Jane's inspiration. The timing would have been right since she wrote Persuasion well after her stay at Stoneleigh.