The Real Jane Austen

by Paula Byrne

  Coaching inns provided accommodation and refreshment to travellers, as well as stabling and smithies for the horses. But of course the best way to travel, if you could afford it, was in your own carriage. Richer people wanting to avoid public transport could hire their own post-chaise, a small carriage usually pulled by one or two horses. These were small, light and fast. They were driven by a postilion or ‘post-boy’. Hired post-chaises were often travelling chariots that had been discarded by gentlemen – they were like a fleet of used cars serving as long-distance taxis. They could be hired for about a shilling a mile.

  Genteel women were usually accompanied on the stage-coach. Jane Austen was no exception and her travel plans were nearly always scheduled around a male escort in the shape of her father or one of her brothers. She wanted to ride to London in a stage-coach in 1796, but her brother Frank would not allow it.4 By contrast, travel in a private post-chaise could be undertaken with a female friend, as suggested by a hilarious letter from Jane to Cassandra following a visit to Martha Lloyd in Ibthorpe: ‘Martha has promised to return with me, and our plan is to [have] a nice black frost for walking to Whitchurch, and there throw ourselves into a postchaise, one upon the other, our heads hanging out one door, and our feet at the opposite.’5 Lady Catherine in Pride and Prejudice is horrified at the idea of two young women ‘riding post’ by themselves.6

  The Reverend George Austen bought a carriage in 1797 and had the family crest painted on the panels. But he was forced to mothball it or ‘lay it down’ the following year as the result of the introduction of a new tax.7 Jane’s difficulties arose in returning from her visits to houses such as Rowling. She complained that waiting for Henry to bring her home was the equivalent of ‘waiting for Dead-men’s shoes’. Her visit in this instance was prolonged: ‘I am sorry for it, but what can I do?’ Her letters from Rowling and London in this period of her life hint at her frustration: ‘My father will be so good as to fetch home his prodigal Daughter from Town, I hope, unless he wishes me to walk the Hospitals, Enter at the Temple, or mount Guard at St James.’8

  In Mansfi eld Park, Fanny Price is left in the similar predicament of having to wait in Portsmouth until she is fetched by Edmund. Little wonder that Anne Elliot in Persuasion truly feels her independence only when she becomes the proud owner of her own ‘very pretty landaulette’.9 A vehicle of one’s own was a sign that one had arrived in society. In Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth’s aunt Mrs Gardiner imagines driving around the park at Pemberley with Mrs Darcy: ‘A low phaeton, with a nice little pair of ponies, would be the very thing.’10 A phaeton was a sporty open carriage, low-slung and fast. Jane joked about the dangers of the road, fantasizing that she might be abducted like a heroine in a sentimental novel if some friends failed to meet her at Greenwich: ‘for if the Pearsons were not at home, I should inevitably fall a Sacrifice to the arts of some fat Woman who would make me drunk with Small Beer’.11

  In the vellum notebooks, Austen loved making jokes about road accidents. In ‘Love and Freindship’ her two unscrupulous heroines are sitting on a turnpike road when they have the good fortune to witness the ‘lucky overturning of a Gentleman’s Phaeton’: ‘Two Gentlemen most elegantly attired but weltering in their blood was what first struck our Eyes – we approached – they were Edward and Augustus –. Yes dearest Marianne they were our Husbands.’12 She could not know when writing this that she would lose two of the people closest to her in road accidents. Austen’s final unfinished novel, Sanditon, begins dramatically with a stage-coach being overturned.

  There were other dangers involved in travel, chief among them the dreaded footpad or highwayman. Jane Austen’s aunt and cousin crossed dangerous Bagshot Heath, renowned as a haunt for highwaymen, alone in a post-chaise. Austen’s mother sent an account of the ‘courage’ of her plucky sister Hancock:

  She set out in a Post Chaise with only her little Bessy [Eliza] … in the middle of Bagshot Heath the Postilion discover’d She had dropped the Trunk from off the Chaise. She immediately sent him back with the Horses to find it, intending to sit in the Chaise till he return’d, but was soon out of patience and began to be pretty much frightened, so began her Walk to the Golden Farmer about two miles off, where she arrived half dead with fatigue, it being in the middle of a very hot day.13

  In Northanger Abbey, Catherine is left ‘breathless and speechless’ with shock upon learning that she is to be turned out of the house to return home in a carriage on an eleven-hour journey unaccompanied even by a servant: ‘A heroine in a hack post-chaise, is such a blow upon sentiment, as no attempt at grandeur or pathos can withstand.’14 The General’s private carriage carries her only as far as Salisbury, and from that point she endures the indignities and dangers of a hack post-chaise: ‘after the first stage she had been indebted to the post-masters for the names of the places … so great had been the ignorance of her route’. In other words, she has to take responsibility for getting herself home by public transport and she is utterly reliant upon the post-masters to tell her where to travel at each ‘stage’ of the journey home. Catherine’s parents express indignation at her ‘long and lonely’ journey, forcing them to conclude that ‘General Tilney had acted neither honourably nor feelingly – neither as a gentleman nor as a parent.’15 They also worry that she might have left some of her belongings in the pockets of the post-chaise.

  Among the other anxieties associated with carriage rides was the possibility of inappropriate words or behaviour in the unusual situation of men and women being pressed tightly together in an enclosed space. One might, for example, find oneself courted by an inebriated clergyman on the way home from a party. Mr Elton follows Emma Woodhouse into a carriage and to her dismay she is forced into a ‘tete-a-tete drive’:

  [Emma] was immediately preparing to speak with exquisite calmness and gravity of the weather and the night; but scarcely had she begun, scarcely had they passed the sweep-gate and joined the other carriage, than she found her subject cut up – her hand seized – her attention demanded, and Mr. Elton actually making violent love to her: availing himself of the precious opportunity, declaring sentiments which must be already well known, hoping – fearing – adoring – ready to die if she refused him.

  The abduction of young heroines in a carriage is a cliché that Austen exploits here to great effect, as this becomes a scene of comic misunderstanding. Emma is horrified by Elton’s conduct as she mistakenly believes he loves Harriet, while he believes that Emma has given him romantic encouragement:

  If there had not been so much anger, there would have been desperate awkwardness; but their straightforward emotions left no room for the little zigzags of embarrassment. Without knowing when the carriage turned into Vicarage-Lane, or when it stopped, they found themselves, all at once, at the door of his house; and he was out before another syllable passed.16

  It is typically brilliant of Jane Austen to apply to the encounter in the carriage the word ‘zigzags’, so suggestive of the vehicle’s motion as it bumps its way along the country road.

  Carriages used for abduction and ultimately rape feature in many of the sentimental novels that Austen loved, particularly those of Richardson, who has two of his heroines abducted by coach. There’s a good joke in Northanger Abbey to the effect that Catherine would not be the victim of abduction by Frederick Tilney: ‘He cannot be the instigator of the three villains in horsemen’s great coats, by whom she will hereafter be forced into a travelling-chaise and four, which will then drive off with incredible speed.’17

  A privately owned vehicle, the ultimate example of conspicuous consumption, is often a guide to status, and sometimes to character, in the novels. Jane Austen’s most wicked villain is John Willoughby. He drives the Regency equivalent of a sports car, a curricle. It was a fast, two-wheeled open carriage for two people. Jane’s brother Henry bought one when he became a banker and started moving in a fast set in London – he took Jane for a drive in it in 1813.

  Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibi
lity exposes herself to gossip when she rides out unchaperoned in Willoughby’s curricle. Gentlemen who drove their own carriages were often considered to be both glamorous and dangerous. Foolish John Thorpe in Northanger Abbey can’t quite aspire to a curricle but he owns a ‘well-hung’ gig: ‘What do you think of my gig, Miss Morland? a neat one, is not it? Well hung; town built; I have not had it a month … Curricle-hung you see; seat, trunk, sword-case, splashing boards, lamps, silver moulding, all you see complete; the iron-work as good as new.’18 In the same novel, Henry Tilney drives Catherine around Bath in his curricle, which she finds a rather erotic experience, and a great contrast to being in the gig of the buffoon Thorpe:

  A very short trial convinced her that a curricle was the prettiest equipage in the world … But the merit of the curricle did not all belong to the horses; – Henry drove so well, – so quietly – without making any disturbance, without parading to her, or swearing at them; so different from the only gentleman-coachman whom it was in her power to compare him with! … To be driven by him, next to being dancing with him, was certainly the greatest happiness in the world.19

  Chawton Cottage stood hard against the road itself, opposite the inn and close by the village pond. From its windows Jane Austen could see all of human life. She wrote to her nephew Edward, with her uncanny insight into the mind of a child: ‘We saw a countless number of Postchaises full of Boys pass by yesterday morn – full of future Heroes, Legislators, Fools, and Villains.’20 Each day a number of coaches passed through nearby Alton – three up and three down each day between London and Southampton and London and Gosport. Two were called the Age, two the Times and two the Red Rover. There were also two night coaches, one of which carried the mail.21 It made Alton a busy town.

  Austen was also alive to the joys and travails of travel. In one of her letters she gave her brother Frank details of a large family exodus in various modes of transport:

  My Br[other, Edward], Fanny, Lizzy, Marianne and I composed this division of the Family, and filled his Carriage, inside and out. – Two post-chaises under the escort of George conveyed eight more across the Country, the Chair brought two, two others came on horseback and the rest by Coach – and so by one means or another we are all removed. – It puts me in mind of the account of St Paul’s Shipwreck, where all are said by different means to reach the Shore in safety.22

  On another occasion she went alone on Yalden’s stage-coach. It was unusual for a genteel lady to be unescorted. Mr Yalden, who was based in Alton, ran a business in which he drove to London one day and back the next. It seems surprising that she travelled alone to London in a public stage-coach, but she clearly relished the experience:

  I had a very good Journey, not crouded, two of the three taken up at Bentley being Children, the others of a reasonable size; and they were all very quiet and civil. – We were late in London, from being a great Load and from changing Coaches at Farnham, it was nearly 4 I believe when we reached Sloane St; Henry himself met me, and as soon as my Trunk and Basket could be routed out from all the other Trunks and Baskets in the World, we were on our way to Hans Place in the Luxury of a nice large cool dirty Hackney Coach. There were 4 in the Kitchen part of Yalden – and I was told 15 at top, among them Percy Benn; we met in the same room at Egham, but poor Percy was not in his usual Spirits … We took up a young Gibson at Holybourne; and in short everybody either did come up by Yalden yesterday, or wanted to come up. It put me in mind of my own Coach between Edinburgh and Sterling.23

  Her reference here is to a scene in her early novella ‘Love and Freindship’, which is set inside a busy public stage-coach. The heroine is left alone after the untimely deaths of her nearest friends and relations, whereupon she boards the coach from Stirling to Edinburgh. She takes her place in the dark, where she is disturbed by snoring:

  ‘What an illiterate villain must that Man be! (thought I to myself) What a total Want of delicate refinement must he have, who can thus shock our senses by such a brutal Noise! He must I am certain be capable of every bad Action! There is no crime too black for such a Character!’ Thus reasoned I within myself, and doubtless such were the reflections of my fellow travellers.24

  To the heroine’s surprise she finds herself among friends and relations both inside the coach and out:

  Great as was my astonishment, it was yet increased, when on looking out of Windows, I beheld the Husband of Philippa, with Philippa by his side, on the Coach-box and when on looking behind I beheld, Philander and Gustavus in the Basket. ‘Oh! Heavens, (exclaimed I) is it possible that I should so unexpectedly be surrounded by my nearest Relations and Connections?’ These words rouzed the rest of the Party, and every eye was directed to the corner in which I sat. ‘Oh! my Isabel (continued I throwing myself, across Lady Dorothea into her arms) receive once more to your Bosom the unfortunate Laura.’25

  The absurdity increases as Laura relates her ‘history’, and is told by Augusta that she is taking a tour to Scotland after having read Gilpin’s Tour to the Highlands. Rather than travel in a relatively comfortable and private postchaise, Augusta and her father take the public stage-coach to support their friends who have spent their fortune and taken up a coaching business:

  She told me that having a considerable taste for the Beauties of Nature, her curiosity to behold the delightful scenes it exhibited in that part of the World had been so much raised by Gilpin’s Tour to the Highlands, that she had prevailed on her Father to undertake a Tour to Scotland …

  ‘It has only been to throw a little money into their Pockets (continued Augusta) that my Father has always travelled in their Coach to veiw the beauties of the Country since our arrival in Scotland – for it would certainly have been much more agreable to us, to visit the Highlands in a Postchaise than merely to travel from Edinburgh to Sterling and from Sterling to Edinburgh every other Day in a crowded and uncomfortable Stage.’26

  Gilpin’s book cited here is Observations, relative chiefl y to Picturesque Beauty Made in the Year 1776 in Several Parts of Great Britain, particularly in Scotland.

  The Reverend William Gilpin, Rector of Boldre in Hampshire, was a pioneering travel writer whose books encouraged an interest in natural beauty. He was one of the originators of the ‘picturesque’ movement, defining the picturesque, of course, as ‘that kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture’. He granted that nature was good at producing textures and colours, but argued that it was rarely capable of creating the perfect composition. Some extra help was required from the artist, perhaps in the form of a carefully placed tree. A ruined abbey or castle would add ‘consequence’. In one much quoted passage, Gilpin suggested that ‘a mallet judiciously used’ might render the insufficiently ruinous gable of Tintern Abbey more picturesque.27 Playwrights and novelists couldn’t resist satirizing Gilpin: ‘It has just cost me a hundred and fifty pounds to put my ruins in thorough repair,’ says a vulgar merchant in Garrick and Colman’s comedy – a favourite of Austen’s – The Clandestine Marriage.28

  There was a symbiotic relationship between the improvement of roads, the increased availability of carriages and the fashion for picturesque tourism. Jane Austen was a great satirist of Gilpin, much as she admired him. In ‘A History of England’ she wrote of Henry VIII, ‘nothing can be said in his vindication, but that his abolishing of Religious Houses and leaving them to the ruinous depredations of time has been of infinite use to the landscape of England in general, which probably was a principal motive for his doing it’: the point was that Gilpin considered nothing to be more picturesque than a ruined abbey.29 In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet notably refuses to join Mr Darcy and the Bingley sisters in a stroll. She justifies her absence with the teasing observation, ‘You are charmingly group’d … The picturesque would be spoilt by admitting a fourth.’30

  In all sorts of respects, then, Jane Austen’s own knowledge and experience of travel gave her opportunities for pointed comment in the novels. ‘My dear Edmund,’ says the ghastly Mrs Norris in Mansfi
eld Park, ‘taking out two carriages when one will do, would be trouble for nothing; and between ourselves, coachman is not very fond of the roads between this and Sotherton; he always complains bitterly of the narrow lanes scratching his carriage, and you know one should not like to have dear Sir Thomas when he comes home find all the varnish scratched off.’31

  There is nothing like a trip out in a carriage for stoking jealousy between rivals. The Bertram sisters quarrel over who gets to sit next to Henry Crawford when – very ostentatiously – he takes the reins of the barouche:

  Wednesday was fine, and soon after breakfast the barouche arrived, Mr. Crawford driving his sisters; and as everybody was ready, there was nothing to be done but for Mrs. Grant to alight and the others to take their places. The place of all places, the envied seat, the post of honour, was unappropriated. To whose happy lot was it to fall? While each of the Miss Bertrams were meditating how best, and with the most appearance of obliging the others, to secure it, the matter was settled by Mrs. Grant’s saying, as she stepped from the carriage, ‘As there are five of you, it will be better that one should sit with Henry, and as you were saying lately that you wished you could drive, Julia, I think this will be a good opportunity for you to take a lesson.’