Visiting Lady Jane

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Ah, time to leave Oxford and head to the home of one of my readers’ most favorite writers—the invaluable Jane Austen. We took a coach out from Oxford to the house where she revised Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility and wrote her other novels. It was the house she began her career as an author from. The house is very well preserved with lots of original Austen artifacts, but at the moment much of the house is filled with costumes from the new movie Becoming Jane, which is already out here in England and will be out in the states come August I here. I can’t vouch for the movie—the tour guides warned us of its historical flaws—but the costumes were quite beautiful. The house warmed me a bit to Jane. It was interesting to consider her life and to see how elements of it fit into her novels. I’m really becoming quite impressed with her as a female writer, though I don’t particularly care for the books she wrote. Lots of quirky things in the gift shop, like a Jane Austen guide to lady’s etiquette (taken from situations in the books) and a beautiful bud vase with her cameo on it—which I would have bought for my sister if I could have contrived to get it home without fear of smashing it.

We ate lunch in the garden of the house, which was small but well kept with lots of lilacs and other purple flowers, and prepared for our 15 mile ‘short walk’ out to New Arlesford. I was seriously glad to have a long walk before me again since we’d been a few days without one. The walk was gorgeous, though we got lost a few times. Once we waited in a graveyard for John went to figure out which way to go. All of us were highly disappointed to find no graves older than 1800—hardly even worth bothering, though I did see this cool moss-covered stone book there.

Our pathway led us through fields of dandelions and furrowed fields. We got lost again and asked a lady out gardening with her two chickens for directions. I’m sorry I didn’t get a picture of the chickens, but these were seriously the most hilarious looking chickens I’ve ever seen: black with a big white mane-looking mass of feathers around their heads. They reminded me of poodles. Poodle chickens, hmm. I think Paris Hilton will be getting one any day now.

Another night in a hotel, this time the Swan Hotel in Arlesford. I love hotels: so nice not to have to make your own bed!

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