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Category: Jane Austen

The Jane Austen Gazetteer at The Republic of Pemberley is a compendium of information about the locations in each of Jane Austen’s novels using period resources.  For example, the maps are from John Cary’s Maps of England from 1812 through 1818.  In putting these together, we also examined a great many travel guides and relied heavily on Kearsley’s Traveller’s Entertaining Guide through Great Britain.

Kearsley gives you the standard description of roads and cross-roads, distances from London and from other locations.  In addition it provides some historical and topographical information for many of the towns along the way.

bath-illusBath, for example, ” has been famous from the time of the Romans for its hot springs, the most remarkable in England and inferior to few in Europe: they are not only used as baths, but internally as a medicine; and great benefit is derived from them in gouty, paralytic, bilious and other cases. The reputation of these waters is so much increased that Bath is become the principal resort, next to the metropolis, for persons of rank and fortune and for the constant residence of opulent invalids as well as numerous votaries of dissipation. In splendour and elegance of buildings it exceeds every town in England, being constructed of a white stone of which the surrounding soil is chiefly composed. It is seated on the river Avon in a valley, and, from the reflection of the sun’s rays from the white soil, it is very hot in summer. The principal seasons for the waters are spring and autumn. The poor, who come here to drink them, may be received in a magnificent hospital. It is supposed to be very ancient. King Edgar was crowned here. On the l. is Prior-park, lord Hawarden.”  Then it goes on to list the York Hotel, White Hart, White Lion, Lamb as places you might want to stay.

brighton-illusAbout Brighton (or Brightelmstone as it was known), Kearsley writes, “Brighthelmston was a poor town inhabited chiefly by fishermen; but having for some years past become a fashionable place of resort, on account of its convenience for bathing, it has been enlarged by many handsome new buildings. The Steine , a fine lawn between the town and the sea forms a beautiful and favourite resort for the company. Here Charles II embarked for France in 1651 after the battle of Worcester. Great flocks of sheep are fed on the neighbouring hills . This town is sometimes called Brighton. It is the station of the packet boats to and from Dieppe in time of peace . The prince of Wales has a bathing residence here.”

oxford-1793

Oxford

Oxford, according to Kearsley, is “a celebrated university, and a bishop’s see. Besides the cathedral it has thirteen parish churches. It is seated at the confluence of the Thames and Cherwell, on an emininence. The town is three miles in circumference, and is of a circular form. It consists chiefly of two spacious streets, crossing each other in the middle of the town. The university is said to have been founded by the immortal Alfred, receiving from him many privileges and large revenues. Here are twenty colleges and five halls, several of which are in the streets, and give the city an air of magnificence. The colleges are Univeristy, Baliol, Merton, Exeter, Oriel, Queen’s, Nw, Lincoln, All-Souls, Magdalen, Brasenose, Corpus Christi, Christchurch, Trinity, St. John Baptist’s, Jesus, Wadham, Pembroke, Worcester, and Hertfrod. The halls are Alban, Edmund, St. Mary’s, New Inn, and ST. Mary Magdalen. All travellers agree in confessing that there is not such another group of buildings nor such another university in the world.” While there, you might stay at Star, Cross, King’s Arms, Angel, &c..

Kearsley’s is not the only guide to provide this kind of information.  Paterson’s Roads also interrupts the long lists of towns on each road with descriptions of various places of interest. Cary’s New Itinerary is mostly just an itinerary.  The descriptions found in Cary concern which buildings you’ll pass on a particular route (not unlike “take the second left after the Dunkin Donuts”).  Most guides also provide the traveller with a list of available inns.  And these are not all.  You might like to take a look at A Guide to All the Watering and Sea Bathing Places for 1813 or Crosby’s Complete Pocket Gazetteer of England and Wales.  Poke around Google Books.  You’ll be amazed at the number of travel guides to be had.

 


Have you ever seen the movie Topsy-Turvy? I LOVE this movie, which is a terrific behind-the-scenes look at Victorian theater life via the creation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. But I’m not here to talk about the music, or the costumes, or this great ‘rehearsal’ scene that revolves around the correct pronounciation of “corroborative.” I’m here to talk about another scene, where Gilbert (played by the great Jim Broadbent, who should have received an Oscar nod for this role, IMO) goes to have a diseased tooth extracted. There’s much screaming and cursing and kicking, as the dentist clamly chats away–“You know, my wife and I went to see Princess Ida, and we felt it was rather too long…”

I thought about this scene on Thursday afternoon, as I prepared to go in for my own emergency dental surgery. Luckily, I had nitrous, numbing agents, and lovely painkillers for after. But I do still hate to visit the dentist. So, I distracted myself by looking up facts about historical dentistry to share with all of you! (Just in case your next hero is going to be a dentist or something…)

Dentistry has been around as long as people have had teeth. Clay tablets from Sumeria, dated from between 5000 and 3000 BC, speculate that tooth decay was caused by the gnawings of a tiny worm. Despite this rather yucky theory, early civilzations still had surprisingly advanced dental knowledge. They even filled or extracted diseased teeth, and splinted loose teeth. Egyptian mummies have been found with teeth made of ivory, or even transplanted human teeth. And the ancient Greeks even figured out that sweet foods add to tooth decay.

In medieval England, dentistry was practiced by barbers, until the 17th century. George III had his own dentist, William Green. And in England and France, women practiced dentistry, such as a Madame Silvie, who made and fitted artifical teeth and also made snuff-boxes and tweezer cases. In 1771, John Hunter, an English anatomist and surgeon, published A Natural History of Human Teeth. In 1799, Joseph Fox was appointed dental surgeon at Guy’s Hospital.

I also found a couple of interesting letters from Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra from September 1813 (from Jane Austen’s Letters, Deirdre Le Faye, ed.), where she details a visit she made to the dentist with their nieces Lizzy, Marianne, and Fanny. The dentist, a Mr. Spence, is obliged to extract two of poor Marianne’s teeth. “When her doom was fixed,” writes Austen, “Fanny, Lizzy, and I walked into the next room, where we heard each of the two sharp hasty Screams.” In Dr. Johnson’s London, Liza Picard has an even lovelier account of how one extracted teeth: “The fearsome instruments designed to extract teeth usually wrenched them out sideways, once they had been loosened by careful hammering. Pulling perpendicularly without damaging the surrounding teeth and gums seems to have been beyond an eighteenth century dentist, even when he flexed his muscles, put the patient on the floor, and took his–the patient’s–head between his–the dentist’s–knees.”

There WERE some methods of cleaning teeth at the time. There were various powders and pastes on the market, which (much like Crest and Aquafresh today) makes great claims to brilliance and whiteness. But they were also made of things like gunpowder, lead, pitch and beeswax, which could wear away enamel. Pierre Fouchard (1676-1761, often called the “founder of modern dentistry”) recommended urine as a good cleaner. (BTW, those are some of his instruments in the pic. They look just like the pliers in my toolbox here at home). It was a common practice to scour the teeth with the end of a wooden stick, though I think this would leave splinters. And the wealthy sometimes had pretty little gold-handled brushes. There were also false teeth and even transplantation, should cleaning fail (I even came across a tale of a young and destitute Emma Hamilton, dissuaded from selling her teeth to make some money. Instead she went with a less repuatble method of fundraising, but one that preserved her looks a bit better!)

In the end, Jane Austen said she would not let Mr. Spence “look at my teeth for a shilling a tooth and double it!” Very sensible of her.

BTW, if I haven’t bored you enough here, I found an interesting (albeit rather “technical”) article in The British Dental Journal about an archaelogical dig in the 1990s concerning a church in Kent. This is the dental history of one of the unfortunate “specimens” found in the vault, a Viscount Whitworth, who died in 1825 aged 71. Now, I think I’ll go take one of those pain pills. All this thinking about teeth has made mine ache again. 🙂

Breaking news! According to the Irish edition of The Sunday Times, the upcoming Northanger Abbey television adaptation (scripted by Andrew Davies, the screenwriter of the beloved Firth/Ehle Pride and Prejudice) will be filmed entirely in Ireland. Apparently, Ireland gives much better tax breaks for television productions than Britain does, which led to the decision. So next year, when Northanger Abbey airs on ITV, all the backgrounds and buildings and assembly rooms will be Irish.

I must admit, this decision disturbs me greatly!

I do adore Bath, but that’s not the only reason I’m upset that the new Northanger Abbey will not be filmed at all there. It’s that I cannot imagine the story of naive Catherine Morland, sprightly Isabella Thorpe, boorish John Thorpe, satirical Mr. Tilney, and all the rest taking place anywhere else! (I refer, of course, to the first [and better] half of the novel. The last bit can be filmed anywhere at all, for all I’m concerned.)

Jane Austen gives our heroine the true Bath experience! She attends the Pump Room, the Upper Rooms (pictured here), the Lower Rooms, she shops on Milsom Street, she stays on Pulteney Street, she “breathes the fresh air of better company” up at the Royal Crescent. The first half of the book is truly about Bath. And Bath is immediately recognizable. How can they possibly film it anywhere else?

So, in honor of Bath, so cruelly slighted, I am sharing with you some of the photos I took of Bath during my recent trip there. In fact, I have so many pictures I want to share, that I’ve put them in two different blog posts. (Blogger gets touchy about a post with too many pictures!)

My question for today: what do you think of the decision to film Northanger Abbey entirely in Ireland? Do you think Ireland’s Georgian buildings can pass for Bath with some clever photography? Do you think it doesn’t much matter where the story is set? Do you think the previous Northanger Abbey adaptation was so dreadful that anything will be an improvement?

All opinions welcome!

Cara
Cara Kingwww.caraking.com
MY LADY GAMESTER — Booksellers’ Best Finalist for Best Regency of 2005!

Here are some more of my photos of Bath taken during my recent trip. I love just wandering around Bath, looking at everything, and taking pictures.

Of course, as Jane Austen pointed out, it does rain a lot in Bath. (Then again, it rains a lot everywhere in England. I have always thought it a bit odd that Austen seemed to believe it rained more in Bath than anywhere else. I suppose her general unhappiness in Bath may have something to do with it. Or perhaps it just happened to rain more when she was there? Or perhaps when she was indoors at Bath, she could hear the rain on the pavements much more than she could hear the rain in the countryside.)

As I was going to say, I just walk around Bath, wait for a break in the rain if it’s rainy, and wait for a break in the cars. Then I wait longer, hoping for a break in both at the same time. Or for blue sky. But in spite of all these difficulties, I’ve gotten a lot of lovely Bath pictures over the years! Here’s a “chair” — carriages weren’t very suitable for Bath’s hilly roads, so you would take a chair (carried by chairmen) up and down the hills, to the Baths, to the Pump Room, to the Assembly Rooms, etc. The fares were set and published, so the chairmen couldn’t cheat you!

Here we have the interior of the Pump Room. Just lovely. Here Catherine Morland strolled arm in arm with Isabella Thorpe. And of course, to be truly healthy, one would drink the mineral water here. (Nowadays one can have a cream tea instead. Much less healthful, I fear, but much more enjoyable.)

Here’s the outside of the Pump Room — the area here was known as the Pump Room Yard. It’s bordered by the Abbey Church (quite lovely, and much restored since the Regency, when it wasn’t nearly as nice as it is now) and right in the middle of everything — now nearly as much as it was two hundred years ago — at least for visitors to Bath!

And how could I forget a picture of Pulteney Bridge, surely one of the prettiest sights in Bath? A bird happened to fly through the picture as I was taking it — you may be able to make him out if you look closely.

Ah, Bath. What would Mr. Tilney ever do without you? You supply him such a variety of people to make witty remarks about. And you supply Mrs. Allen with a wonderful choice of fabrics. And Catherine Morland with more books than she could imagine.

Ah, Bath!

Cara

Posted in Jane Austen, Research | Tagged , | 1 Reply


So, tomorrow is Father’s Day, and I still haven’t found a gift for my dad. He is the hardest person in the world to shop for–he already owns every electronic gizmo there is, plus every DVD and CD he might want he’s already bought for himself. I wonder if people in the Regency had this problem? Oh, yeah–they didn’t HAVE Father’s Day then. Lucky them. 🙂

Besides scanning the Internet for possible gifts, I’ve been trying to decide on a good theme for this post. In college, I once wrote a paper on fathers and daughters in Shakespeare. To borrow from that idea, here is a selection of fathers from Jane Austen:

From Mansfield Park, there is the uncle/father figure Sir Thomas Bertram. Now, he benevolently takes Fanny in and raises her alongside his own offspring, but Sir Thomas is really pretty distant in her life, a fearsome figure of authority. He is not outwardly affectionate, and is definitely highly concerned with outward appearances, but in the end he does acknowledge that he should have really spent more time overseeing his children and not left them to his lax wife and crazy Mrs. Norris.

From Pride and Prejudice, of course there is Mr. Bennet. He spends most of his time reading and hiding out in his study, which really who can blame him, but he also comes across as a bit careless to his family’s ultimate fate. With Elizabeth he is concerned and loving, but with his three younger daughters he lumps them together as the “silliest girls in England” (and again, who can totally argue with him?)

From Sense and Sensibility, I guess you can say there is Mr. Dahswood, who dies at the beginning. Yet it appears he loves his wife and daughters and wants to provide for them, hence he makes his son promise to take care of them. That the son breaks that promise isn’t really his fault, I guess…

From Emma, there is Mr. Woodhouse, the invalid. It’s said “she loved her father, but he was no companion to her.” He sees no fault in his daughter, and they spend a comfortable life together indulging each other in their whims and self-delusions.

From Northanger Abbey, we see Mr. Morland, a respectable, well-enough-off clergyman, with “considerable independence, besides two good livings.” But he is not much of a presence, probably because he has two livings and ten children. His wife appears equally distracted, leaving Catherine lots of time to do stuff like roll down hills and read horrid novels.

There is also General Tilney. He is very wealth-obsessed, boasting, annoying, and preoccupied with himself (when not meddling in his children’s lives). I sometimes wonder how Catherine is going to handle having him for an in-law…

And, from Persuasion, Sir Walter Elliott. He spends all his time reading the peerage and probably looking in the mirror. He loves his daughter Elizabeth, who is like a reflection of him in female form, but is quite indifferent to Anne and probably to Mary. “Vanity was the beginning and end of his character.”

And that is my thumbnail sketch of fathers to be found in Austen. They’re kind of a pitiful lot when looked at like that, aren’t they? 🙂 I thought of many other things that could go into this post–fathers in romance novels, fathers in the real-life Regency (btw, the picture is George III, Queen Charlotte, and their Six Eldest Children by Johann Zoffany. Thanks for the tips on uploading pics to Blogger!). But I really do need to get to the shops and find a gift for my own dad, who luckily is no Mr. Elliott or General Tilney. What are some of your favorite examples of fathers in books or histories? Or comments on Austen fathers, either fictional or Rev. Austen himself?

Happy Father’s Day!