Creaky Floors and Creaky Doors

Is there any felicity in the world superior to the day I've just had?

I know I'm stealing Marianne Dashwood's impassioned speech ( I can't remember reading it in the novel but oh well ) but I truly did experience felicity today. This morning, Mr. Phil Howe picked me up and took me on a morning tour of Jane Austen's neighborhood. The lovely countryside spanned far and wide as we drove down tiny streets and muddy drives to reach the old houses she danced and laughed in. There are many very dramatic stories she tells in her letters pertaining to village life at the time.

One instance was when Jane recounted to her sister Cassandra about the "fewer than ten minutes" she spent alone in a dining room with the owner of a mansion who had a reputation with the ladies. Mr. Howe told it much better than I can, but Jane did tell Cassandra that she thought about ringing for the housekeeper, and kept her hand firmly on the door knob in case she needed a quick escape. The upper crust could do what they liked back then, so I'm sure he never got into trouble for being a touchy feely kind of guy.

The Austen's younger son, George, was known to have fits which historians say probably was epilepsy. Jane mentions speaking to George with her hands, which tells us he was also deaf. At the time, it was normal for family who had someone with a disability to send them off to an asylum or be kept far away from "normal" society. People even paid to visit these asylums and poke sticks at the patients. Just a bit of fun, you know. But the Austen family were merciful in this aspect. They sent George to live a little way outside of Steventon with an uncle who also suffered from some type of disability. In this house, he and his uncle were cared for by a village woman and both worked in the fields during harvest time each year. This view of the disbaled from my modern perspective is quite unbelievable. These peopke went to church for goodness sake! They were Christians! Yet the overwhelming mentality of the day was to keep up appearances so that one could marry well, without having a suitor be frightened away by the sight of an odd family member. Breeding was key. But I am glad the Austen's were more sensible and they obviously acted out of love for their son.

But I don't think it is George they should have tucked away from society. One of the lords who lived near the Austen's had a son whom everyone thought was crazy. He staged morbid funerals in his manor house and frequently spent time torturing the animals at the village slaughterhouse for his own pleasure.

Sick, huh? Sounds like he needed more sunshine in his life.

Mr. Howe showed me one of the biggest houses in Hampshire which is now owned by a Middle Eastern banker. The lawn, rolled out and as big as a football field, used to have a "haha" at the and of it. A haha was a low wall that did not permit sheep and other animals to climb over, yet when viewed from the porch of the house, made it seem as though the lawn had no break, like an infinity pool. And if you were really pretentious as Mr. Howe informed me, you had a Grecian statue erected at the top of the lawn so that your guests could enjoy it.

At Steventon church, I saw graffiti engravings in the door frame dating back to medieval times. Three dots for the Holy Trinity, and a cross. In the church which contains the oldest pulpit in England, the medieval engravings were of infinity circles. If someone believed themseleves to be possessed by a demon, they need only touch these circles and send the demon into eternal turmoil, spinning round and round forever.

John Wesley famously preached from this pulpit, apparently crossing the Atlantic seventeen times to do so. He called the parishioners heathens several times, which understandably caused the local's feathers to be ruffled.

Well what do you expect from people who put the disabled into asylums, yet allow the gentry to womanize and torture animals? I think perhaps Wesley was in the right.

And on to Jane Austen's house...

It was beautiful. The creaky floors made me feel as if Jane herself would be calling Cassandra in to tea at any moment, where the two of them would titter over village gossip and read letters aloud to one another. Standing beside her desk was quite a heavy moment. I've seen it so many times in pictures, but they just don't do it justice. It is small, unassuming, and shows signs of wear from many years of use. It was quite inspiring and may take me a few days to get over. If then.

The artifacts collected upstairs are rings belonging to the Austen family. One a mourning ring, worn in remembrance of someone lost, and also locks of hair braided and set inside a ring. Jane's father's hair is pure white, and braided so intricately, I thought it was an opal stone before looking closer. On the wall was framed a piece of blue stenciled wallpaper. I asked one of the staff what it was, and he informed me that that was the wallpaper, hand stenciled, which hung in this room during Jane's life here. He moved a shutter back from the window and revealed the rest of it, still plastered to the wall.  Again, I was in awe. That paper heard her voice and watched the Austen family's daily comings and goings. If only walls could talk.

The hallways are small, the rooms intimate. I feel that I would have been at home in these rooms because I don't like big, drafty houses. Small and close knit is my kind of comfort. Jane and Cassandra must have felt the same. They shared a room their entire lives, thus their relationship was that of closeness and trust. We don't know what was in the letters Cassandra and Jane's favorite neice, Fanny, destroyed after her death. Mr. Howe believes they contained deeply personal confessions from Jane to Cassandra, while the museum staff believe that Jane wrote scathingly about family members and friends in their village. So Cassandra and Fanny did not want their beloved sister and aunt to be seen as a crusty old lady. They wanted to preserve her memory as it was.

I prefer to believe the latter. I don't think Jane had any secrets that she didn't want anyone to know. I don't see her as a mystery. She was witty, loving, fiercely devoted to her family, and tried successfully to convey English village life during a time in British history when war was all anyone talked about. Napoleon threatened to invade, America was slowly getting to her feet, and yet Jane Austen was scribbling away at a tiny table in the front room of Chawton cottage, breathing life into the tall and quietly severe Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, and slowly but surely mapping out Emma's ill-fated plans for Harriet and Mr. Elton.

I feel I know them now. They have always been good friends, but now I adore them more than ever. They have truly come to life for me and will remain, if not more so now, constant companions on my road into life.

Thank you God, for Jane Austen.