Rosings
Elizabeth Jenkins
This is a book full of interest for lovers of Jane Austen. The idea that she lived a cramping and deprived existence has been exploded long since; Lord David Cecil (A Portrait of Jane Austen, 1978) made the point impressively that her milieu was the cultivated middle class; Sir David Waldron Smithers underlines it, not only with a painstaking following-up of her interesting and prosperous relations, but especially by a series of pictures of some of their houses, in Kent alone: Kippington, Court Lodge, the Red House, Goodnestour, Godmer- sham: solid, stately mansions, standing at a distance in their smiling parks.
The practice of trying to identify the country houses in Jane Austen's novels with actual houses is usually unsatisfying and unconvincing; the palm in this respect must be awarded to a lady who became possessed by the idea that Pemberley 'was' Chatsworth, drawn by Jane Austen from personal observation; that she put up at the Rutland Arms in Bakewell in 1811, where she revised Pride and Prejudice, making the room in which she sat 'the scene of two of the most romantic passages' in the novel; all of which, and more, has been lettered out and hung up for gospel truth on a wall in that otherwise excellent hotel, notwithstand- ing that there is not a shred of evidence to show that Jane Austen was ever in Derby- shire or, as Dr R. W. Chapman said, anywhere north of the Trent.
This makes it the more surprising and fascinating that Sir David Waldron Smithers has come up with what appears to be an absolutely unmistakeable origin for Rosings and Mr Collins's parsonage at
Hunsford: the latter an invented name, to which the nearest real place is Westerham. The scene presented by Sir DaVid is Cheven- ing Place, then the seat of Lord Stanhope, and the parsonage on the other side of the lane, immediately opposite the park gates. The cure of Chevening was referred to by Jane Austen's brother Henry as 'the family living'; it was held from 1774 to 1803 by Samuel Preston, and on his death it was given to Jane's second cousin, John Austen. Her uncle, Francis Motley Austen, owned three properties in the neighbour- hood, and though Jane herself is not men- tioned as going to stay with him, her father and two of her brothers are, and the family va-et-vient is enough to, explain her accurate picture. On the journey made by Elizabeth Bennett with the Lucases to stay with the newly married Mr and Mrs Collins, the wind- ing lane at last discloses the parsonage just opposite the great gates of Rosings. These, like the gates of Chevening, had lodges beside them. Mr Collins, anxious to know of the arrival of Mr Davey and Colonel Fitzwilliam, 'was walking the whole morn- ing within view of the Lodges opening into Hunsford Lane'.
The most exciting part of the discovery is the ground-floor plan of the parsonage (the house was demolished in the 1940s), for the plan tallies exactly with one exception with what Jane Austen said of the Collins abode. She said that Mr Collins's book-room (an annoying mis-print says 'back room') look- ed out on to the lane. The room in which the ladies sat was 'backward'. Since they sat there it was Charlotte's drawing-room and of course the lane could not be seen from it. The dining parlour was a better-sized room `and had a pleasanter aspect' (i.e. it looked on to the lane). This was beside Mr Collins's book-room and had the same outlook. The plan shows two large front rooms over-looking the lane, and two, smaller, back ones, either of which could have been the drawing-room. Sir David thinks that the dining parlour with the verandah was the drawing-room, and that the verandah was the reason that nothing could be seen from its window, but the verandah would hardly obscure the view, and I submit that my reading is the proper one. The detail in Pride and Prejudice which does not square with the plan is that the front door in the latter is in the side of the house at right angles to Chevening Lane; but when Miss De Bourgh stopped her phaeton at the parsonage gate, the Col- linses stood at the gate conversing with her, while Sir William Lucas was 'stationed in the doorway, in earnest contemplation of the greatness before him, and constantly bowing whenever Miss De Bourgh looked that way'. This thumbnail sketch required that the front door should be visualised as on the side of the house facing the lane.
Sir David suggests that at Chevening Jane Austen may have found the idea of LadY Catherine De Bourgh in the formidable Grizel, second Countess Stanhope, while the neighbourhood seems to have produced several hints for names: the first Lord
Stanhope's mother was Catherine Burghill, West Wickham was in the vicinity, the Rev. John Austen's nephew was called William Fitzhugh, his daughter married a Colonel Fitzhugh, whose names put together Perhaps produced Darcy's cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam.
I have dwelt on what I thought the most engrossing part of the book, Pride and Pre- judice being what it is, but the illumination of the journeys through Kent made by Jane Austen and her relations, the roads, the inns, the weather, the scenery, the routes themselves for those who have a head for topography, are all highly enjoyable.
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