A Pilgrimage to Jane Austen Country

Thirteen years ago, in Paris, I went spiraling into a deep middle-class depression. I was recently divorced, my finances were a mess and the new true love of my life had just left me.

He had toyed with the idea in 11 countries during a miserable marathon of a European tour on which we had mistakenly embarked. To top it off, I had forsaken my work for this travel adventure.

My pockets were empty, my heart was broken and I was unconvinced I had a future. I wasn’t often able to read, but when I could, Sylvia Plath suited me just fine.

One particularly sad evening in Paris, for no apparent reason I bought a copy of “Pride and Prejudice.” I had for nearly a third of a century unintentionally avoided Jane Austen. Now she was going to change my life.

I don’t mean to give it the tenor of a religious conversion and an apotheosis, but perhaps that’s what it was. I returned from Europe and for the next eight months worked a meaningless job to pay the rent and steeped myself in Jane Austen nightly to keep me sane.

Her characters were all the friends I required. I finished one book and moved on to the next. When all six were read, I read about the author. Then I read her novels again.

Clue to Life

Her sharply focused portrayals of the manners and daily concerns of early 19th-Century society clued me in as no psychiatrist could have to the contemporary pickle I was in. Her scalpel-wielding wit depicted intelligent, headstrong, often foolish, society-conscious, gossipy, lovable, middle-class women . . . like me, whose lives revolved around getting married and getting rich, as mine had.

I saw myself in each of her creations. It cut close to my heart and enabled me to laugh and cry at my own not-so-new predicaments. Had it not been for Jane, I shudder to think that Sylvia Plath might have served as my model.

As heartless as it seems in retrospect, it was her passion for ridiculing inferiors that implemented my cure. She showed no mercy for boors, blatherers, bad books, pretentions or general ignorance.

Proper pithy speech came out of the mouths of “lively minded” intelligent women; excessive foolish verbiage was left to the dull-witted characters at whom we were meant to laugh.

As a reader my superiority was never in question. Simply because I had chosen to enjoy her books, Austen automatically assumed me to be a clever individual rightfully scorning all that was silly in this world.

I was on to everything. There was nothing I needed more just then than someone who believed in my worth. That was the ego-healing gift Austen gave to me.

After eight months of intense “Janeian” therapy, I was well. I was laughing not merely at her witless characters, but at myself.

Inexpensive Therapy

The therapy cost 22 francs for the first novel, and subsequent heavy use of my library card in San Francisco. No other money changed hands, but a debt of gratitude was owed Austen and I intended somehow, one day, to pay her back.

As all worthy Austen women eventually do, I met and married a man I not only loved, but more important, respected. My life was full and my debt was forgotten. Then last spring I returned to Europe.

Our holiday began in England where my husband and I had carefully choreographed a tightly packed, whirlwind tour for his parents. We were to serve as guides for these first-time visitors and we wanted no flabbiness in our scheduling.

Through months of reading and weeding we honed our trip to major attractions outside London. We would take them to Bath, Oxford and the Cotswolds, with brief stops at Stonehenge, Salisbury and Wilton House.

I imagine it was because we didn’t want to appear inferior as tour guides that we left no room for improvisation. Months before we were to leave I sent my father-in-law a pocket-size guide to England to whet his appetite for the places we had selected. The itinerary was agreed upon. The four of us knew exactly what to expect.

My architect husband and I arrived in London several days before his parents. He chose for our first-day outing Kenwood House, an 18th-Century, Robert Adam-redesigned country estate in very great need of repair.

I was left wandering alone through the water-stained, nearly empty rooms when I noticed, as part of a loan-art exhibition, one of those green baize-covered, free-standing cases of which the British are so fond.

Unexpected Find

I was mildly curious and I lifted the cloth. There, on my first day in Europe after 13 years, not 10 inches under my astonished eyes, was the original of a portrait long ago etched in my mind from countless reproductions . . . Jane Austen by her sister Cassandra!

Dear Jane, with arms crossed and mouth set, was staring up at me with a sideways glance. She had found me out and those brown eyes weren’t missing a bit of the funny business going on just above her.

She had quite a show. The unexpected confrontation mustered up my long-ago sadness and she watched it overflow into the empty room. I held onto the case to remain standing and mopped my tears off before returning the cloth. The debt had become due along with the knowledge of how to repay it. I must find and visit Chawton--our itinerary be damned.

It might be argued that Bath, which was already part of our plan, should have sufficed. Austen lived in numerous places there and it figures prominently in her books. No, it was in Chawton, where she lived from 1809 until just before her death in 1817, that her genius flourished. It was there that she either wrote or revised each of her six therapeutic novels.

I remembered that her Chawton house was cared for by the Jane Austen Memorial Trust and that it was open to the public. It was my pilgrimage and I understood where I had to go.

The following day we picked up Helen and Carl and our rental car at Gatwick Airport and headed toward Bath. I was in a quandary. I had been aggressive in blocking out every moment. Now I wanted to include an unscheduled visit to a significantly less than three-star attraction whose location I did not even know.

We chatted of flights, foreign country first-impressions and the drizzle that pleased my in-laws and gave them a sense of place. Cowardice helped me decide to wait until lunch to advance my scheme. We stopped at a pub in Petworth, a village whose charm quotient I felt was nearly enough to disarm any opposition.

Summoned New Talents

My powers of persuasion are no greater than the next fanatic, but the smoke-filled room in which we sat had been there during Austen’s life, and in it I became as strong-willed as Lizzy Bennet and as manipulative as Emma Woodhouse.

Within 10 minutes of putting forth my argument, a vote was called for. It was unanimous. Bath, Oxford, the Cotswolds and the middle-class cottage where Austen did her most important work were the not-to-be-missed attractions of the British countryside.

Even in my victory, however, I was handicapped. I did not know where Chawton was. Carl, always the optimist, produced from a fold in his raincoat the slender guide to England I had sent him months before. I told him that Chawton was tiny and unimportant and it most decidedly would not be in his pocket-size Baedecker. Prejudice was once again neatly proved unfounded and the sharp-tongued heroine was, for the moment, made to feel the fool.

After lunch the drizzle became a downpour. As we detoured the surprisingly short distance to Chawton, worst-case scenarios clouded my thoughts.

Fearing the Worst

I envisioned enormous crowds paying hefty admission fees to file past animated wax figures of my beloved friends, souvenir stands selling bumper stickers and Austen joke books, and eateries with cute names and waitresses in period costume (little caps on their heads and their bosoms pushed up).

Most distressing of all, I imagined the din of modern times filling the air. After all, what right had I to claim her so personally, to insist that things remain as they were 170 years before? By the time we reached Alton, the village one mile from her home into which she rode her donkey cart for shopping, I was ready to turn back.

The sign that announced our destination was so small that we nearly drove by. We were decidedly off any main road, and the “cottage” (really a red-brick house on a broad lawn) was on the Y of the road we traveled.

Because of the bypassing highway the tiny village had escaped the modern world’s notice. We parked; ours was the only car. We opened its doors against the rain and my family ran for shelter into an outbuilding where Austen’s donkey cart also took refuge.

Into Her House

I left them in its company and ran off alone onto the path, around to the front and into the house. I paid a few pennies admission to a matron who was obviously alone on the property. She presided over a small table laden with books for sale. I might have selected each of them myself. She didn’t say a word--this woman had seen my kind before and knew exactly how to behave.

The substantial two-storied Georgian house was much larger than I expected, and I walked briskly through the halls lined with books and hung with framed letters and important papers.

I went into the rooms. Each was filled with abundant domestic treasures: furniture, crockery, pictures, ribbons, clothing. What had brought me here? A houseful of museum-like memorabilia turned out to mean nothing to me.

I decided to walk a second time through each low-ceilinged room, upstairs and down. At the end of this more leisurely tour I found myself in the little parlor where “Emma” and “Persuasion” had been written.

Much has been made of this room, with its creaky door hinges, that warned Austen of impending company and allowed her to hide her writing under a blotter. My patience had been tested and a second tour was necessary because I knew the moment I entered that this room was why I had come.

After all those years I was ready to properly thank Austen for saving my life and giving me pleasure again and again. I would ever after, I was sure, have Austen’s approbation, for I did just what I set out to do 13 years before.

I stood alone, at peace, in the stillness of her writing room and I thanked her. I thought I heard a hinge creak, and there was a smile on at least one of our faces.