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Society Report of a talk given on 27th April 2007 In a year when Jane Austen has had a high media profile it seemed totally appropriate that the Lynsted with Kingsdown Society should have chosen to invite Anthea Bryant to talk about this ever popular novelist. The appeal of this very English writer was evident when the Church Community Room had to be expanded into the main body of the church to accommodate the audience! Illustrating her talk with a large selection of interesting slides Anthea’s enthusiasm for her topic was obvious and infectious. She was keen to stress that Jane Austen’s well-rounded education and life experiences had left her well aware of all the social and political issues of the Georgian England into which she was born. In fact her brother, Francis, served with Nelson at Trafalgar so she would have known something of foreign history as well. It was purely by choice that she wrote only about middle-class provincial life, filling her books with characters such as the minor landed-gentry, country clergymen and their families and the importance of finding suitable husbands for their daughters. The talk led us through the various stages of Jane’s short life (she died in Winchester at the age of 41). It was pointed out to us that Jane had written about the locations in which she had lived or had visited (such as Bath, Lyme Regis and Sidmouth) and the type of people and houses that she had observed. Although poor herself she had many links with the gentry and was well qualified to write about them. In Anthea’s words “she was very good at looking in from the outside”. We were shown pictures of the stately homes that Jane knew and had used as a basis for houses in her novels and used in films of the same. We also learnt that she was a proficient pianist, practising for an hour a day before breakfast, and also an excellent seamstress. Members of the Bitch and Stitch Group present at the talk were interested to hear that Jane once made a quilt from her old summer dresses The talk and slides also concentrated on Jane’s links with Kent, including Goodnestone Park, Godmersham, Knole, Chilham Castle and Canterbury Gaol. She has, of course, links with Lynsted as well. One of her favourite nieces, Fanny, with whom she corresponded regularly, is buried in Lynsted with her husband Edward. The memorial plaque can be seen in the Hugessen chapel of Lynsted Church. Anthea, who had been unaware of the link prior to her visit, was delighted to be shown this. It seems sad that Jane herself never emulated any of her heroines by marrying, for example, a Mr Darcy! We did learn that she was engaged once, for all of twelve hours, to a man with the unlikely name of Harris Bigg-Wither! Norma Baxter |