Posted by Caroline on Monday, 6 July 1998, at 11:15 p.m.
As some of you already know, my recent trip to England wasn't actually meant to be a Grand Tour, I was going to see my family and deal with some family business. But since I was Hampshire-raised, and much of my to-ing and fro-ing was done where Jane Austen places were "not five miles out of my way", it would have been extremely remiss of me, as a good citizen of Pemberley, not to make a little - just a very little - attempt to find some traces of her, wouldn't it?
Accordingly, accompanied by my sister, I drove down to Alton and followed the signs for Chawton and Jane Austen's House. The big brown signs are easy to follow, the roads are wide and fast, the hedgerows were full of elderflowers and wild roses and five-foot foxgloves, the fields full of blue flax flowers, yellow rapeseed and red poppies. The village itself is glorious - loads of cottages with roses round the door, the parking is easy, and the house easy to find.
The House itself? Well, it was quiet, dignified, even. It was bigger than I expected, too. I won't say too much about what I saw there, as most of it is covered by last year's journals. But I did learn that Jane had a right to be proud of her needlework as, the examples there are of a tremendously high standard.The stitches are so neat, and so tiny! (They reminded me of the Tailor of Gloucester!). And if the brown pellisse. is really hers, then she was truly a thin, spare person. I liked the dining room with the griddle to boil a kettle on, and the bakehouse/washroom at the back. The garden, when freshly washed by a thunder-shower, is pleasant and cool, but not in itself, a typical 19th century garden. I ended up chatting to a Mexican lady about the Quebec Conference in October, and we 'fell in' with a lovely lady from New Mexico called Frances with whom we explored the rest of the village. I wanted to find out what is happening to Chawton House, home of JA's brother Edward, which is apparently being turned into a centre to study women writers, and which seems to be going through the normal planning and environmental hassles associated with turning a listed building into a viable enterprise. If anyone gets to Chawton and sees anything more about this, I'd be very glad to know about it! I spent ages in the gift shop at the house, of course, and when I signed the visitor's book, I gave my address as www.pemberley.com. It'll be interesting to see if there's a response to that!
On another day, sister and I went to a great house called The Vyne, at Sherbourne St John, just north of Basingstoke. JA's brother James was vicar of Sherbourne, and Diane Tomalin, in her biography, draws parallels between the household of William and Elizabeth Chute, and some of Austen's characters. The Chutes adopted a niece, Caroline Wiggett, who seems to have been the inspiration for the young Fanny Price, for example. The Vyne is owned by the National Trust. It has been closed for two years undergoing a 2 million refurbishment, and opened up again just this month. The house, which has Tudor, seventeenth century and eighteenth century bits was redecorated inside by Caroline Wiggett's brother and their descendants, but it is still possible to see the house as Jane Austen would have done.
So what do you see? Well, you can see a brick house with added classical portico. You see a "Gallery, upstairs" made with lovely linenfold panelling, and a Gallery downstairs which is stone, and which was Caroline's playroom. You see an ante-chapel designed by Horace "Gothick" Walpole which is, in my opinion, rather tacky, especially compared to the genuine Gothic Chapel next to it, which is rather spectacular. In JA's time the ante-chapel was used for storing wood and coal!. You'll see a staircase in the neoclassic mode, all blue and white and encrusted with plaster which looks like Wedgewood China on Steriods, but which, as the guide rather huffily informed me was "an excellent use of the restricted space" making the room seem really huge. Great fun, and I really loved it!
You see rooms where Henry VIII stayed after doing his bit for the English landscape, and where there are botanical illustrations by Elizabeth Chute. You can see Tapestries that gave three-year- old Caroline nightmares, and the (unheated ) bedroom that she shared with her adoptive mother. Some rooms have been left in the eighteenth century style, others in the Victorian. You see lawns and a lake, which is really the Sher Bourne, "swell'd to greater importance", flower gardens, (the roses! the lavender! the vines!)the barn /brewhouse (now the tearoom) a brick summerhouse, lots of woods to walk in, a spacious drive on both sides of the house, and impressive iron gates.
There's a lot more to the Vyne than just the Jane Austen connection, of course. The guide in each of the rooms is very knowledgeable and I managed to sidetrack one of them into talking about the new environmental control system designed for the comfort of the antiques, not the visitors.(I think this was the point at which my sister disowned me ;-) ) At the end of the tour we were addressed by the house steward, a Mr Faulkner, who got quite enthusiastic about JA and balls and things when I told him why I was there.(I don't think she actually went to any there, but never mind, eh?)
Another big house associated with JA is Stoneleigh Abbey, near Coventry. I wanted to see it if I could, not only because I'd seen some lovely old pictures of it, but like the Vyne it has Mansfield Park connections. The chapel was supposed to be very plain, like the one at Sotherton. Also, Humphrey Repton 'did' the grounds, and JA would have been aware of the 'before' and 'after' of his schemes. Apparently many of the garden changes discussed by MP characters were executed here. Someone I know, who is rarely wrong about such things, told me that there was a fire at Stoneleigh Abbey a few years ago, and the Leighs had moved out, and although the house had been partially repaired, it was up for sale and not open to the public. The grounds are now the National Agricultural College. Nevertheless, since the house was not five miles out of my way on yet another trip I had to do, I made a detour, travelled a few miles down a very narrow country lane, and reached a barred gate. It was late, it was starting to rain, and I'm getting a bit too dignified for clambering over gates just to get a peek at a house, so I gave up at that point. But I'm trying to find a contact number for the place as I'd love to be able to see it some day.Again, if anyone knows anything about this house, call me!