Afternoon tea, this time with Mr Darcy (or at least his picture) is also on offer at the Jane Austen Centre at No 40 Gay Street, where you can gen up on the novelist in the fascinating museum. It’s just steps from No 25 up the street, where Jane, her mother and sister rented rooms after Revd Austen died. Unlike my abode, though, this house isn’t open to overnight guests or indeed visitors, unless they have a toothache – a plaque outside the door simply reads ‘CJ Rushforth, JA Thompson, dental surgeons’.
Camden Crescent's End Balcony, Bath Jane Austen Centre, Bath
Although the Assembly Rooms, where high society came to dance, are closed for renovation, you can still visit the Pump Room next to the old Roman baths (also well worth a tour). This is where fashionable folk would gossip beneath the chandeliers as well as ‘taking the waters’ from the same fish-themed drinking fountain that’s there today. I take a few tentative sips of the mineral-rich waters but infinitely prefer the champagne served with yummy cakes and scones, accompanied by softly playing music.
Afternoon Tea at The Pump Room, Bath
42 Discover Our Way
Onward to Chawton It’s at her home at Chawton in Hampshire that you can really get under Jane’s skin. She moved to the quaint village in 1809 with her mother, sister and family friend Martha Lloyd after spending three years in Southampton, where many former Austen haunts were destroyed by wartime bombing. The modest red-brick house, on one of the estates her brother Edward inherited from distant relatives, has been carefully restored to resemble what it would have looked like at the time. I’m amazed at the diminutive 12-sided walnut table where she perfected earlier drafts of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey as well as writing Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion from scratch. Exploring the cottage, I can’t help being reminded of its similarity to Barton House in Sense and Sensibility, so it’s no surprise to learn that it was the blueprint for the Dashwoods’ home. I channel my inner Jane on the sitting room sofa, flicking through a copy of Pride and Prejudice where she first read the novel aloud to her friend, Miss Benn, whose cottage you can see in the village.
