Austen Mania!
I keep forgetting to add new entries. But there’s something I’ve been wanting to write an account of for a while, which happened last fall, so here goes.
I spent a good part of 2006-07 in the UK, living in an apartment in Golders Green, North London, while doing dissertation research at the British Library and in several archives around the country. Among the archives I visited was the Jane Austen Memorial Archive, at the author’s former home in Chawton, Hampshire. The first day I spent there was magical from start to finish; I think the memory of that day will leave any Austen fan weak in the knees.
I took the train from London early in the morning. It’s about an hour’s journey to Alton, and once I arrived I had to wait a good fifteen minutes in the freezing November cold for a taxi to take me to Chawton, a neighboring village. The scenery on the train from London reminded me of a film I had seen as a kid called The Railway Children, which, granted, takes place far from Hampshire, in Yorkshire, up in Northern England. I couldn’t stop thinking about the movie, trying to remember details even though I haven’t seen it in probably close to twenty years.
I arrived at the cottage in Chawton by mid-morning. It wasn’t actually my first trip there; I had visited Austen’s home with my mom and sister less than two years before. Most of the cottage is a public museum, where visitors learn about Austen’s life and view her former possessions and those of her family as they wander from room to room. When I arrived, I met several of the staff who run the museum, including the chairman of the board of trustees, Tom Carpenter. We sat in a room downstairs, which used to be the kitchen, drinking tea and discussing my research interests as they related to the archive. I explained that I was chiefly interested in seeing Austen’s collection of sheet music; the author was an accomplished pianist, and her books of music have been preserved and catalogued by the Archive. Tom brought them out from the safe, eight volumes of music for solo keyboard, small ensembles, and voice. Two of the volumes are written in Austen’s own hand; she probably borrowed the sheet music from a friend or relative and, in the absence of a nearby Kinkos, made copies by hand so that she could continue to play the works after returning the scores. Wearing white gloves to protect the pages, I flipped through the volumes, impressed by Austen’s meticulously neat handwriting.
Throughout the day, I would leave the kitchen with one or two volumes, and wander upstairs to the drawing room to try some of the works on the Clementi square piano owned by the museum. Although the piano dates from Austen’s time, it is not the instrument that she learned on; the whereabouts of that piano are unknown. It was incredibly exciting for me to sit there, playing through music in the author’s own hand in the very room in which she used to play.
It grew dark early—one of the more depressing things about winter in England—and Tom popped his head into the kitchen as I was taking a break, asking me if I had any interest in attending a concert that evening down the street, which would include a few works from the collection. The music would be interspersed with readings from Austen’s novels, and, as it turned out, the narrator was Jenny Agutter, who had starred in the film The Railway Children. I felt ridiculous making a big deal out of the fact that I had been thinking of the movie all morning, but it was an amazing coincidence to have remembered the movie for the first time in years that morning, only to see its star later that day.
A few hours later we walked down the road—it was freezing!!--toward the church that Austen used to attend. It, like the cottage, are part of a larger estate which belonged to Austen’s brother; as we walked the half mile down the road, I kept thinking that this was the very same route Austen had taken, probably almost daily, to visit her brother and his family. Prior to the concert, Tom and I attended a reception in the huge manor house in which her brother had lived. While we were there, I talked for a long time with an elderly woman named Diana, who knew a great deal about Austen’s musical notebooks. I kept wondering how she knew so much about them, and after she had moved away to talk to someone else, I asked Tom who she was. He explained that she was actually the person who had donated the notebooks to the archive; she is Jane Austen’s great-great-great-great niece (I believe that’s the correct number of greats.) I nearly cried! I could hardly believe it!
The concert was wonderful, Jenny Agutter and the performers all fabulous, and afterwards a local couple gave me a ride back to the train station. I made it back to London by 11 or so, and home about 45 minutes after that, which wouldn’t have been a big deal, except that I had a train ticket to return to the archive early the next morning.
That first day in Chawton was amazing, not simply because I got to ooh and aah over Austen’s possessions, home, and even family members, but because all of that contact was part of my dissertation research. There are a million specifics and facts that you can take from books and primary sources, but there are other kinds of research too, and as I played the piano in Austen’s drawing room, I accumulated knowledge of another kind, which informs my research as much as anything.
I spent a good part of 2006-07 in the UK, living in an apartment in Golders Green, North London, while doing dissertation research at the British Library and in several archives around the country. Among the archives I visited was the Jane Austen Memorial Archive, at the author’s former home in Chawton, Hampshire. The first day I spent there was magical from start to finish; I think the memory of that day will leave any Austen fan weak in the knees.
I took the train from London early in the morning. It’s about an hour’s journey to Alton, and once I arrived I had to wait a good fifteen minutes in the freezing November cold for a taxi to take me to Chawton, a neighboring village. The scenery on the train from London reminded me of a film I had seen as a kid called The Railway Children, which, granted, takes place far from Hampshire, in Yorkshire, up in Northern England. I couldn’t stop thinking about the movie, trying to remember details even though I haven’t seen it in probably close to twenty years.
I arrived at the cottage in Chawton by mid-morning. It wasn’t actually my first trip there; I had visited Austen’s home with my mom and sister less than two years before. Most of the cottage is a public museum, where visitors learn about Austen’s life and view her former possessions and those of her family as they wander from room to room. When I arrived, I met several of the staff who run the museum, including the chairman of the board of trustees, Tom Carpenter. We sat in a room downstairs, which used to be the kitchen, drinking tea and discussing my research interests as they related to the archive. I explained that I was chiefly interested in seeing Austen’s collection of sheet music; the author was an accomplished pianist, and her books of music have been preserved and catalogued by the Archive. Tom brought them out from the safe, eight volumes of music for solo keyboard, small ensembles, and voice. Two of the volumes are written in Austen’s own hand; she probably borrowed the sheet music from a friend or relative and, in the absence of a nearby Kinkos, made copies by hand so that she could continue to play the works after returning the scores. Wearing white gloves to protect the pages, I flipped through the volumes, impressed by Austen’s meticulously neat handwriting.
Throughout the day, I would leave the kitchen with one or two volumes, and wander upstairs to the drawing room to try some of the works on the Clementi square piano owned by the museum. Although the piano dates from Austen’s time, it is not the instrument that she learned on; the whereabouts of that piano are unknown. It was incredibly exciting for me to sit there, playing through music in the author’s own hand in the very room in which she used to play.
It grew dark early—one of the more depressing things about winter in England—and Tom popped his head into the kitchen as I was taking a break, asking me if I had any interest in attending a concert that evening down the street, which would include a few works from the collection. The music would be interspersed with readings from Austen’s novels, and, as it turned out, the narrator was Jenny Agutter, who had starred in the film The Railway Children. I felt ridiculous making a big deal out of the fact that I had been thinking of the movie all morning, but it was an amazing coincidence to have remembered the movie for the first time in years that morning, only to see its star later that day.
A few hours later we walked down the road—it was freezing!!--toward the church that Austen used to attend. It, like the cottage, are part of a larger estate which belonged to Austen’s brother; as we walked the half mile down the road, I kept thinking that this was the very same route Austen had taken, probably almost daily, to visit her brother and his family. Prior to the concert, Tom and I attended a reception in the huge manor house in which her brother had lived. While we were there, I talked for a long time with an elderly woman named Diana, who knew a great deal about Austen’s musical notebooks. I kept wondering how she knew so much about them, and after she had moved away to talk to someone else, I asked Tom who she was. He explained that she was actually the person who had donated the notebooks to the archive; she is Jane Austen’s great-great-great-great niece (I believe that’s the correct number of greats.) I nearly cried! I could hardly believe it!
The concert was wonderful, Jenny Agutter and the performers all fabulous, and afterwards a local couple gave me a ride back to the train station. I made it back to London by 11 or so, and home about 45 minutes after that, which wouldn’t have been a big deal, except that I had a train ticket to return to the archive early the next morning.
That first day in Chawton was amazing, not simply because I got to ooh and aah over Austen’s possessions, home, and even family members, but because all of that contact was part of my dissertation research. There are a million specifics and facts that you can take from books and primary sources, but there are other kinds of research too, and as I played the piano in Austen’s drawing room, I accumulated knowledge of another kind, which informs my research as much as anything.
posted by ENM | 11:23 AM
1 Comments:
What an amazing experience - I am such a fan of Jane Austen.
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