Content provided in partnership with
Jane Austen in Bath
Spectator, The, Dec 13-Dec 20, 2003 by Nicolson, Nigel
A year ago I gave a lecture at the Holburne Museum in Bath, and began with the provocative statement, 'I am glad I don't live in Bath' (audience dumbfounded), 'because', I went on after a pause, 'if I did, I would miss the excitement of returning here once every five years to rediscover its extraordinary beauty' (audience mollified).
Jane Austen lived here for five years, 1801-06. The city meant many things to her, but not once did she remark, in her letters or novels, on the loveliness of its architecture. Bath was then in its pristine glory, the golden stone immaculate, the river unpolluted. But she had no eye for this. In fact, she had no eye for any of the visual arts. She was interested in buildings only for their conveniences or lack of them - too damp, too cramped, too tall - and although she described in some detail great houses like Pemberley, Rosings or Mansfield Park, it was never to praise them as works of art. To her a house was an indication of the owner's wealth and status, never of his taste. While in Bath she never once mentioned the Circus, the most graceful piece of civic design in Britain, nor the mediaeval Abbey nor the Roman baths, and the Royal Crescent was to her simply a pleasant place to walk in after Sunday chapel.
If the city meant so little to her, was she discontented there? I set out to contradict the accepted theory that she was so miserable in Bath that she stopped writing. Not one of her six completed novels was even begun there. So it has come to be assumed that she was a country girl who hated towns. David Cecil set the theme: 'She had grown actively to dislike both Bath and the life there', followed by Park Honan, 'she was uprooted and crushed', Claire Tomalin, 'the ejection from Steventon depressed her deeply enough to disable her as a writer', and Carol Shields, using the same word, 'as a writer she was disabled and profoundly discouraged'. The consensus was that she could write fiction only in the country, and it has affected every biographer's concept of her life, character and tastes. It is misguided.
Let us look at the evidence. We have ten of her letters written at the start of the Bath period, and five at the end. In between there is a gap of three and a half years from which only one letter survives, written in 1804 while she was on holiday at Lyme Regis. The early letters record her dismay at her parents' decision to leave Steventon, where she was born, and settle in Bath. 'Family tradition', of which we first hear in a memoir written a century later, was that she was so appalled by the news that she fainted. Now, healthy girls of 25 might protest at such news, but they don't faint. After an interval, she wrote to her sister Cassandra, 'I get more and more reconciled to the idea', and gave as her reason, 'We have lived long enough in this neighbourhood.' Her father's rectory at Steventon was so decrepit that it was pulled down a few years after Jane's death, and with the departure of her four remaining brothers on their different professions life there was no longer much fun. Local society was limited, and the Basingstoke balls had lost their appeal. Moreover, Jane had stopped writing. After the rejection of Pride and Prejudice and the non-publication (after an initial acceptance) of Sense and Sensibility, she was discouraged. She had attempted nothing new for the last two years. Bath might provide a fresh stimulus, even a husband. If she had met a Darcy there, I suggested to my audience, she would have married him like a shot.
So they made the move, selling all their furniture except their beds, and, inexplicably, George Austen's library of 500 books. After searching Bath for a suitable house, they settled on 4 Sydney Place, at the far end of Great Pulteney Street. It was one of 14 identical houses facing Sydney Gardens. It was not a particularly fine house, but it had graceful Georgian proportions, large enough to contain a double drawing-room on the first floor, a dining-room and study below and bedrooms above. The house was redecorated for them while they went on holiday, and refurnished to suit their taste and income, which was about £600, or £35,000 in today's money. They could afford three servants and an annual holiday by the sea. This does not suggest a life of penury and exile. They expected to enjoy themselves, and so, in my reading of the evidence, they did.
They were a very united family. Their interests were much wider than Jane Austen's letters and novels suggest. Her father was a broadminded man, and encouraged her to write, even seeking on her behalf a publisher for a novel which in the person of the Reverend Collins lampooned his own profession. They were interested in politics, religion, literature, and the war. Two sons were serving in the navy, and only missed Trafalgar by a chance that they never ceased to regret. One can imagine a typical evening at No. 4 - sewing, reading, cards, cribbage, letter-writing, conversation and a little music. Outside, there were the immediate attractions of Sydney Gardens (the Ranelagh of the west country), the shops, and a radiant countryside where she loved to walk. Given her known character, that she was alert to new experiences and, like Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, had 'a playful disposition which delighted in anything ridiculous', it is difficult to imagine her moping at home. She was convivial, 'very lively', said a contemporary, 'and full of humour', and although some parties were tedious, many were not. Surprisingly, she preferred crowds to tete-a-tetes. 'Another stupid party,' she wrote to Cassandra on first arriving in Bath, 'perhaps if larger, they might be less intolerable.' She wanted movement and fun.
