At the end of 1800, Mr. Austen made up his mind to put his son James into the rectory at Steventon as locum tenens, and himself retire to live at Bath. In those days parents were not quite so communicative to their children as they are now; many things were decided without being discussed in full family conclave, as propriety dictates at present, and the change of plan does not seem to have been mooted to the girls at all, so that, “coming in one day from a walk, as they entered the room their mother greeted them with the intelligence: ‘Well, girls, it is all settled. We have decided to leave Steventon and go to Bath.’ To Jane, who had been from home, and who had not heard much before about the matter, it was such a shock that she fainted away ... she loved the country, and her delight in natural scenery was such that she would sometimes say it must form one of the delights of heaven.” (From Family MSS. quoted by Constance Hill, in Jane Austen, Her Homes and Her Friends.)
The break up of the home of one’s childhood is no trifling matter, and it often carries with it removal from many friends and neighbours whose society has become an integral part of life. It is no wonder that the blow was severe, yet Jane was of a cheerful disposition, a disposition that could make its own happiness anywhere, [213] and it was not long before she entered with alacrity into all the needful preparations.
She wrote not long after, “I get more and more reconciled to the idea of our removal. We have lived long enough in this neighbourhood; the Basingstoke balls are certainly on the decline; there is something interesting in the bustle of going away, and the prospect of spending future summers by the sea or in Wales is very delightful. For a time we shall now possess many of the advantages which I have often thought of with envy in the wives of sailors or soldiers. It must not be generally known, however, that I am not sacrificing a great deal in quitting the country, or I can expect to inspire no tender interest in those we leave behind.”
Mr. Austen was perfectly justified in his decision to stop work; he was then seventy, and had held the two livings for thirty-six years, his son James was ready to take them up, he was living in the neighbourhood, and had been of assistance to his father for some time past. We learn this from many casual sentences in the letters, such as the following: “James called by my father’s desire on Mr. Bayle to enquire into the cause of his being so horrid. Mr. Bayle did not attempt to deny his being horrid, and made many apologies for it; he did not plead his having a drunken self, he talked only of a drunken foreman, etc., and gave hopes of the tables being at Steventon on Monday se’nnight next.”
Mr. Austen died in 1805, only four years after the removal, which shows that he had not withdrawn from active life at all too soon. In giving up country life he had to give up also many of the hobbies in which he had taken delight; his pigs and his sheep could not accompany him to Bath. References to these animals often occur in his daughter’s lively letters. “My father furnishes him [Edward] with a pig from Cheesedown; it is [214] already killed and cut up, but it is not to weigh more than nine stone; the season is too far advanced to get him a larger one. My mother means to pay herself for the salt and the trouble of ordering it to be cured, by the spareribs, the souse, and the lard.”
“Mr. Lyford gratified us very much yesterday by his praises of my father’s mutton, which they all think was the finest that was ever ate.”
“You must tell Edward that my father gave twenty-five shillings apiece to Seward for his last lot of sheep.”
In Bath, pigs, poultry, and a garden would be impossible, but there would be compensating advantages. The country life had but narrow interests, and trifles had to be made the most of.
Jane’s letters for the last few years before leaving Steventon show some of the decadence due to trivial surroundings, and her remarks are apt to be spiced with unkindness. Evidently her sister-in-law, James’s wife, was not a favourite; she objected to her husband’s being so much at Steventon, though Jane notes that he persevered in coming “in spite of Mary’s reproaches.” But Jane’s sharpness is also extended to her remarks on her acquaintances. “The Debaries persist in being afflicted at the death of their uncle, of whom they now say they saw a great deal in London.”
Poor Debaries, it is quite possible that his death had showed them how much they had cared for him, at all events, after his death they could have had nothing to gain by any display of affection!
After a small ball Jane writes: “There were very few beauties, and such as there were were not very handsome. Miss Iremonger did not look well, and Mrs. Blount was the only one much admired. She appeared exactly as she did in September, with the same broad face, diamond bandeau, white shoes, pink husband, and [215] fat neck. The two Miss Coxes were there; I traced in one the remains of the vulgar, broad-featured girl who danced at Enham eight years ago; the other is refined into a nice composed-looking girl like Catherine Bigg. I looked at Sir Thomas Champneys and thought of poor Rosalie; I looked at his daughter, and thought her a queer animal with a white neck.” And later she adds: “I had the comfort of finding out the other evening who all the fat girls with long noses were that disturbed me at the 1st H. ball.” It is obvious that a wider horizon would do the writer of these remarks no harm.
The income which the family would have is indicated in the following remark of Jane’s made about this time: “My father is doing all in his power to increase his income, by raising his tithes, etc., and I do not despair of getting very nearly six hundred a year.”
Once the great fact of the removal was settled, there remained the minor difficulty as to which part of Bath would be the best to live in; of this Jane writes: “There are three parts of Bath which we have thought of as likely to have houses in them—Westgate Buildings, Charles Street, and some of the short streets leading from Laura Place or Pulteney Street. Westgate Buildings, though quite in the lower part of the town, are not badly situated themselves. The street is broad and has rather a good appearance. Charles Street, however, I think is preferable. The buildings are new, and its nearness to Kingsmead Fields would be a pleasant circumstance. Perhaps you may remember, or perhaps you may forget, that Charles Street leads from the Queen’s Square Chapel to the two Green Park Streets. The houses in the streets near Laura Place I should expect to be above our price. Gay Street would be too high, except only the lower house on the left hand side as you descend. Towards that [216] my mother has no disinclination; it used to be lower rented than any other house in the row, from some inferiority in the apartments. But above all others her wishes are at present fixed on the corner house in Chapel Row which opens into Prince Street. Her knowledge of it, however, is confined only to the outside, and therefore she is equally uncertain of its being really desirable as of its being to be had. In the meantime she assures you that she will do everything in her power to avoid Trim Street, although you have not expressed the fearful presentiment of it, which was rather expected. We know that Mrs. Perrot will want to get us into Oxford Buildings, but we all unite in particular dislike of that part of the town, and therefore hope to escape.” This was from Steventon in January 1801.
The Mrs. Perrot is the aunt, Mrs. Leigh-Perrot, before mentioned, she was sister-in-law to Mrs. Austen, and her husband had taken the additional name of Perrot. It was from him that Mr. Austen-Leigh inherited the additional name of Leigh when he came into the estate. The Austen family seem to have been almost as much in the habit of changing their names as of marrying twice.
The topography of the letter can only be appreciated by those who know Bath, and requires little comment. The various streets mentioned are still existing, and we can pass through the despised Trim Street, survey the house in Gay Street lower rented than the others, or cross over the river to Laura Place to see the neighbourhood Jane feared would be too expensive, just as well now, as she could then.
In May of 1801, Jane, with her father and mother, went to Bath and stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Leigh-Perrot at Paragon, in order to hunt for a house. [217] Paragon remains unchanged, the doorways enclosed by pent-house and pilasters remain the very type of late eighteenth-century architecture.
It is easy to imagine the difficulties that had to be encountered by the Austens in their quest.
“In our morning’s circuit we looked at two houses in Green Park Buildings, one of which pleased me very well. We walked all over it except into the garret; the dining-room is of a comfortable size, just as large as you like to fancy it; the second room about fourteen feet square. The apartment over the drawing-room pleased me particularly, because it is divided into two, the smaller one, a very nice sized dressing-room which upon occasion might admit a bed. The aspect is south-east. The only doubt is about the dampness of the offices, of which there were symptoms.”
“Yesterday morning we looked into a house in Seymour Street which there is reason to suppose will soon be empty; as we are assured from many quarters that no inconvenience from the river is felt in those buildings, we are at liberty to fix on them if we can. But this house was not inviting; the largest room downstairs was not much more than fourteen feet square, with a western aspect.”
“I went with my mother to look at some houses in New King Street, towards which she felt some kind of inclination, but their size has now satisfied her. They were smaller than I expected to find them; one in particular out of the two was quite monstrously little; the best of the sitting-rooms not as large as the little parlour at Steventon, and the second room in every floor about capacious enough to admit a very small single bed.”
“Our views on G.P. Buildings seem all at an end; the observation of the damp still remaining in the offices [218] of a house which has only been vacated a week, with reports of discontented families and putrid fevers, has given the coup-de-grace. We have now nothing in view.”
Anyone who has ever been house-hunting will sympathise with the difficulties sketched in these remarks. It was finally decided that the family should go to 4 Sydney Place, and later they removed to the despised Green Park Buildings after all.
The sale of the effects at Steventon had begun before the family left, and continued after.
“My father and mother, wisely aware of the difficulty of finding in all Bath such a bed as their own, have resolved on taking it with them; all the beds, indeed, that we shall want are to be removed.... I do not think it will be worth while to remove any of our chests of drawers, we shall be able to get some of a much more commodious sort, made of deal, and painted to look very neat ... we have thought at times of removing the sideboard, or a Pembroke table, or some other piece of furniture, but on the whole it has ended in thinking that the trouble and risk of the removal would be more than the advantage of having them at a place where everything may be purchased.”
In another letter she imagines that the appraisement of the furniture for sale will amount to about two hundred pounds, and when actually at Bath she sends the following details:—
“Sixty-one guineas and a half for the three cows gives one some support under the blow of only eleven guineas for the tables. Eight for my pianoforte is about what I really expected to get.” “Mr. Bent seems bent upon being very detestable, for he values the books at only seventy pounds. Ten shillings for Dodsley’s Poems, however, please me to the quick, and I do not care how often I sell them again for as much.”
[219]
Sydney Place is on the east side of the River overlooking Sydney Gardens, which had been opened for public entertainment in 1795; the following description of the Gardens is given in a guide contemporary with Jane’s residence in Bath. “The Kennet and Avon Canal runs through the garden, with two elegant cast-iron bridges thrown over it, after the manner of the Chinese. There are swings, bowling greens, and a Merlin’s swing in the labyrinth. During the summer are public nights, with music, fireworks, and superb illuminations.” Before Jane herself lived here, while she was staying in Queen Square with her brother and his family, she had been to a grand gala in Sydney Gardens, with illuminations, and fireworks which “surpassed” her expectations. It was a pleasant part of Bath, and probably the Austens were comfortable enough here. The house is still standing; it is one of a solid uniform row facing nearly due east, and bears a plate stating “Here lived Jane Austen from 1801-1805,” an inscription not quite accurate as the Austens left in 1804. It is one great charm of Bath that, electric trams and modern buildings notwithstanding, the place is so very much the same as it was when Jane knew it. The narrow intricate streets, the little courts and passages, and jutting houses are everywhere to be seen. The town is essentially late eighteenth century, and the modern buildings are mere additions that do not in any way interfere with its character.
The beautiful abbey had in her time been more or less repaired, and the choir was used as a parish church. But the pinnacles were added to the spire only in 1834, and the complete restoration took place in 1874. The Pump Room, near at hand, was built in 1796, replacing one which had existed for forty-five years. If we except a few trifles, such as electric [220] pendants to the great central chandelier, we see it as it was in Jane’s day. The fluted pilasters running up to the ceiling are very characteristic of the florid Georgian taste. In a print of the interior of the Pump Room, dated 1804, we see all the women, even the attendants, with bare arms and necks, quite un............