A Walk with Jane Austen (23 page)

I am still learning to just experience my feelings, to allow my emotions to simply be what they are without being afraid of them or trying to force them quickly into something else, still negotiating this balance in the course of everyday relationships. It is not an easy thing, at least not for me.

I catch hints of Elinor in Jane's letters. Family tradition is that Jane fainted when she came back home to Steventon from visiting Martha Lloyd and was told that her parents had decided to move the family to Bath.
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She was twenty-five. It was the end of an era, the loss of her beloved family home (though it stayed in the family and went to her brother James, who took over as rector of Steventon from his father), her dear Hampshire countryside, and her small, steady group of friends. Moving furniture was not easy then, so they took very little with them, and Mr. Austen sold his library of five hundred books. In a sense, the Austens were repeating family history. Mrs. Austen's parents had moved to Bath
when they retired; her father had died here.
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She met George and married him shortly after her fathers death—the hope of many parents who took their older daughters to Bath (not that they themselves would die, of course, but that their daughters would find husbands).

But Jane wrote to Cassandra with characteristic cheerfulness in January, to talk about where they might live in Bath and what they would take with them when they moved, saying she was “more & more reconciled to the idea of our removal,” and maybe she was. Her letter is, as always, full of laughter. “We have lived long enough in this Neighbourhood, the Basingstoke Balls are certainly on the decline,”
⁶
she says. I wonder how deeply she felt this, how much she was exerting herself for the sake of her family. James Edward said that “depression was little in accordance with her nature,”
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so maybe she never fell into any lengthy emotional depths.

Tradition, though, is that if she ever was depressed, it was here, a suspicion bolstered by the fact that she seems to have written very little during the Bath years. She recopied
Susan
,which later became
Northanger Abbey
,and started to work on
The Watsons
⁸
but never finished it. She seems to have preferred not to be too much part of society, and living in Bath may have forced her out of her quiet daily routine. There were “tiny, stupid” parties that she hated because they required the exertion of talking to everyone and because the people were generally dull.
⁹
When she finally left five years later, it was “with what happy feelings of Escape!”
¹⁰

In spite of dear Jane's experiences, I have come to be happy at Bath. It is raining. Ah, rain in Bath! How lovely. It always rains in Bath. The honey-colored Bath Stone buildings seem to glow. My room is gorgeous, decorated in pale greens and deep reds and mauves, with thick wallpaper
and expensive bedding, which lacks the ring of dirt that was the particular distinction of the room in Lyme. The small
en suite
bath has lovely white tile, with only a bit of the kind of mold with which I am most familiar, the faint orange stuff that I cannot keep from growing on my shower at home.

My B&B—the Villa Magdala—is across Pulteney Bridge and just up the street from the stylish Laura Place,
¹¹
the square of town houses where Lady Dalrymple stays in
Persuasion.
(Readers don't get to see much of Lady Dalrymple, but apparently the best thing about her to most concerned—particularly to her vain Elliot cousins—is that she is, in fact, a viscountess.)

I walk over half the city, around the abbey and by the baths, up toward the Circus and Royal Crescent, feeling the luxury of being here and being halfway through
Persuasion.
In the evening, beyond exhausted, I am lured out by the chance to see the green pools of the Roman Baths by torchlight.

I am wearing my jeans again. I have worn them every day since Margaret's, and now they are filthy. Every outfit I packed, I was thinking of Bath—which exists for shopping and being fashionable—and now it is too cold to wear them. Last night I wore my whole ensemble—jeans (of course) with a T-shirt, fleece, and Gore-Tex jacket, and I was still cold. I have no idea what the temperature is because of the Celsius-Fahrenheit conversion, which I can't be bothered to figure out.

Jane did not particularly enjoy fashion, according to tradition. Her letters are full of references to this or that muslin gown, or a new dress
for a ball, or what she should buy for Cassandra in Bath for her new hat because fruit was now fashionable. So cherries or a plum?
¹²
Neither sounds like a particularly good idea. While she seems to have taken some pains, rumor is that she was not actually very good with clothes, and I think her main goal was simply to be acceptable. She doesn't seem to have hoped for—or unfortunately attained—anything more than that.

I think it took me thirty years to develop some sense of fashion, and I am officially mourning every outfit that will sit in my suitcase for the next four days while it rains in Bath. I used to think I had few regrets in my life, but now I realize that I have worn some very bad outfits, and particularly bad bathing suits, and I'm not sure what it says about my character that I regret this almost more than anything else.

I meandered aimlessly through Bath in my jeans and fleece, fighting off a bit of traveler's malaise. I sat in the abbey for the beginning of morning service, then headed back to the baths. There are multiple pools, the main bath with an open roof. Inside rooms include separate pools for men and women, an ancient hot tub, a massage room with heated floors. And all of this around the time of Christ. The Romans came here to worship the healing goddess Sulis Minerva, and there are remnants of the temple. They threw curses in the water, or prayers, but mostly curses it seems, for anyone who had offended them or who may have stolen their favorite amber pendant. Ridiculous but in some way satisfying I'm sure.

I walked up to the Royal Crescent, still the most fashionable address in Bath, a magnificent semicircle of grand Bath Stone town houses from the early eighteenth century, close to the top of the hill on which the city is built. Number 1, Royal Crescent is now a museum fitted up the way it would have been when the Duke of York,
George Ills second son, lived here in 1776.
¹³
It is gorgeous, of course, but the thing that most struck me was a tiny little marble scratcher, like a back scratcher on a much smaller scale, that was used to help dig the bugs out from under ones wig. Apparently they rarely removed them and rarely washed their hair, and little things flourished under there. Wigs were going out of style in Jane's day, and men were laying off from powdering their hair, as well, and beginning to wear it short. When Jane's younger brother Charles opted to go cropped without any powder, it was an item of concern to his rather more posh brother Edward.

There are Austen remembrances around every corner. The center square contains the abbey and baths and Pump Room, which is now a restaurant and still has the fountain drawing up water from the baths for drinking—I don't think I will drink the water, though you still can—and a few little cafés. And then there are small alleys and wide streets with boutiques and restaurants and town houses. (I don't think there are any actual houses here in Bath, only town houses.) Most of the spots I know from Austen—Laura Place, the Circus, the Royal Crescent, Queen Square, where Edward stayed when he came to town—are all just various shapes of town house assortments. The Circus is a circle, of course, around a central green. (Doesn't the name make it sound like it should be more than just a place to live? Or like they all must live raucous lives there? It's terribly sedate for being called the Circus.) It seems like it would be a lovely thing to live in Bath.

Late in the afternoon I walked through Sydney Gardens and right by 4 Sydney Place, where the Austens first lived on coming here.
¹⁴
Sydney Place seems luxurious, as does most of Bath to me, but I was too tired to do more than venture into the edge of the park. Alas, there are
none of the public breakfasts in Sydney Gardens that there were when Jane lived here, at least not this week. I expected there to be more entertainment in Bath—fireworks or concerts in the gardens. I've not found any outdoor entertainment (perhaps because of the rain) and nothing in the Assembly Rooms either. And nothing is free.

I sat on a bench eating fast food, watching a family play Frisbee, feeling very alone.

Saturday night I plan to go to the theater. They say I should be able to get a half-price ticket for ten pounds beforehand. They also say it's okay to wear jeans.

Sadly, I am unable to take a bath in Bath as my en suite has only a lovely tiny shower. One may visit the Baths, one may purchase all sorts of soaps and salts and gels, but one may not actually bathe.

Am completely and utterly distracted with thoughts of Jack. Afraid I've begun to think of him entirely as my own. Can barely read
Persuasion.
I'm too distracted with my own story—at times edging on panic, but mostly blissfully happy, ready to laugh for no real reason— like Anne, with “exquisite, though agitated sensations…, disposed.…to be courteous and kind to all, and to pity every one, as being less happy than” myself.
¹⁵

At times I have been more in dread and fear than anything else— that something should happen so quickly and surely, that my life could change so suddenly. Here I am jumping to conclusions again. I am afraid of either possibility, if it works out as it seems destined to or if it falls apart. I am entirely comfortable when I'm with him; why I should
be uncomfortable apart from him I don't understand. He's given me no reason to be comfortable though.

I think we are incredibly, unbelievably blessed. To be in love with someone you believe in, whom you respect and who respects you back, with whom you share all basic values, who welcomes your intelligence, who shares your laughter. To have it be a sure thing, not something that is strong enough to convince you to hold on to it and weak enough to keep you from commitment, not caught in that horrible middle ground. If my experience bears out what my heart perceives, I expect to be able to love him quickly and without reserve.

Perhaps I am foolish to think that experience will fall in line with what I have imagined over the last two weeks. I had one week to get to know him and conclude that he was my ideal; he will have months to disappoint. (It may not take months to disappoint; a week will be sufficient if I don't hear from him.) I'm certain if he knew how much I think of him now he would be horrified. He's been in Jordan. I've been traipsing around England following Jane Austen and reading her novels. Argh! Try falling in love and then taking weeks to delve into Austen with the prescription that you really ought not to think about the guy you're in love with.

I really need to be more like Elinor, but Elinor had a reason to put all her hopes aside. She had Lucy; she knew for certain Edward was unavailable. I'm sure with that kind of certainty I could be brokenhearted and steely and move on. But I have no devastating certainty— only a girl in North Carolina he may or may not be dating.

I don't have to know any of this now, any of the things my heart seems to be certain about. I can just relax and enjoy right where we are, which is just a beginning, and see where things go. I expect things to
go swimmingly. I expect to laugh. I expect to have great conversations. I expect him to be kind and gentle. I expect my family to love him and my mother to be giddy and everyone else to wholeheartedly approve.

I will be home in ten days, and my time here is too valuable to be consumed thinking only about him. One way or the other, when I get home something will happen—or not happen—and I will have my answer.

I think about Jane meeting someone at the coast, finding him a match, Cassandra expecting him to be successful, Jane waiting to hear from him and only getting notice of his death. Jack flew home today, and I prayed for his safety. I can't imagine if that were the end of it all. I can't imagine what Jane felt.