Inside a country house - the Great Hall, Chatsworth, provides a most splendid entrance for visitors. From Chatsworth, the visitors’ guide.

Country Houses - Essay | Norland | Northanger Abbey | Rosings & Pemberley | Hartfield & Donwell Abbey | Sotherton & Mansfield Park | Kellynch Hall

The Country House

• Last night I dreamt I went to Pemberley again…
• Inside the great country house
• Jane Austen’s lifetime was a period of transformation...
• The British architectural heritage - Nigel Nicolson writing in the National Trust Guide

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again… There was Manderley, our Manderley, secretive and silent as it had always been, the grey stone shining in the moonlight of my dream, the mullioned windows reflecting the green lawns and the terrace. Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls, nor the site itself, a jewel in the hollow of a hand. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier, 1938, Ch.1

Castles, palaces and great houses appear over and over in literature - Manderley for example has a presence as powerful, brooding and memorable as the first Mrs de Winter. Even when used as settings for satire there’s still a sense of nostalgia about them. Novelists may attack snobbery or the class system, but the descriptions of the houses and parks are nearly always tinged with love and beauty. Authors from Austen to Du Maurier and on to Dorothy L Sayers have represented the country house as a place of ‘glamour’ in its original sense - overtones not only of beauty but of deception. A place of attraction, wealth, privilege, of ‘otherness’. A place where people live intrinsically more interesting lives than we do.

Like Catherine Morland I have a passion for ancient buildings, but I must confess that as a child of Sydney’s great western suburban sprawl, it is for me in reality more an appalling curiosity about rich peoples’ homes than something as noble as a passion. I’m not alone: every summer the stately homes of England throw open their doors to thousands with a similar passion, and those houses that have managed to survive centuries of decay and warfare, now confront the ferocious onslaught of the senior citizens’ coach outing. The enormous cost of maintaining these houses has forced them to open to packs of tourist wolves who devour the art, the culture and the entire contents of the souvenir shop.

The grandest of these houses is Blenheim Palace. It was a gift from a grateful nation to a conquering hero, the Duke of Marlborough, and covers a gigantic 5 acres - that’s the house, not the grounds. When you stand on the front steps your eyes are drawn up the hill to the ceremonial column with the triumphant duke atop. He keeps a watchful eye over the grounds, but your eyes are drawn to the signs directing you to the model railway, the gents or the kiosk, next to the car park.

What creates this fascination? Why do rock stars, footballers and jockeys aspire to own a country house? Perhaps it’s an attempt to capture some of the grandeur of a Chatsworth or Kenwood within the confines of the latest Landcom development. ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’. I can only be relieved that the majority of these three bedroom brick veneer ‘Devonshires’, ‘Palladians’ and ‘Tudors’ don’t come with mock drawbridges and moats.

In The Great Good Place Malcolm Kelsall talks about the literary origins of the country house. In Roman times writers such as Horace and Pliny developed images that have been absorbed into our culture so deeply that they remain evident up to the present day. Motifs of pastoral bliss have been woven into everything from poetry to garden ornaments. Kelsall tells us that ancient writers made a clear distinction between the villa rustica (the working farm) and the villa urbana (the country house). Even 2,000 years ago the wealthy were creating fantasy worlds, idyllic civilised places for wealthy men to enjoy the company of their friends surrounded by expensive artefacts, fine libraries and great wine. Such places were the very pinnacle of comfortable civilisation. Kelsall points out that the estate is portrayed as only remotely, even symbolically, agricultural. The master rejuvenates his body and soul while his library enriches his mind. His bailiff is honest and the slaves are content, obedient and well fed.

This epicurean country retreat burnt to the ground when the Roman Empire crumbled. The Vandals, Huns, Goths and other such neighbours from hell overran Rome. Tribal feudalism replaced the courtesies of Empire. Civic works became earth works, and the great marble building schemes of the Empire ceased.

In 1066 the invading Normans set up a chain of military encampments throughout England. This first generation of country houses weren’t palaces but fortresses, and for centuries thereafter the fortified manor houses stood not as symbols of virtue and calm but as practical means of controlling and administering a land teeming with violence and discontent. Siege mentality gripped the country and nobles spent fortunes on military works, fortifying their homes and manors. The challenge for masons at the time was finding a balance between the conflicting needs for domestic comfort, fashionable display and military strength.

Before the early 16th century the general insecurity of the countryside meant that defence took precedence over fashion and display. Most of the gentry lived in semi-fortified houses and depended on the favour of the greater aristocracy for economic, social and political patronage. The great ones lived behind thick castle walls with arrow slits instead of windows, and lent their support to the King (or to removing the King, depending on the time). After the Battle of Bosworth Field (1485), to Jane Austen’s personal disgust, the Tudors arrived. You will of course all remember Jane’s abuse of Henry VIII in her The History of England: by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant Historian:

The Crimes and Cruelties of This Prince were too numerous to be mentioned, and nothing can be said in his vindication, but that his abolishing Religious Houses and leaving them to the ruinous depredations of Time has been of infinite use to the Landscape of England.’ (1)

Years of Tudor peace and prosperity however allowed landowners to forget about defence briefly - homes like Hardwick Hall and Longleat are clearly the product of peace and plenty. Only during peacetime can a gentleman move out of his defensible manor houses and into grand houses, with their hundreds of windows replacing the arrow slits of their fortresses. These nobles had their power secured by law, not by keeps and curtain walls. Changes in building materials also helped the building boom - bricks, once imported from Holland, were now locally mass produced, and were much cheaper than stone. The English glass industry also took shape during this time.

During the Civil Wars (1645 - 1660) there was another brief flurry of castle building, but the Restoration and Charles II brought a completely extravagant style of living. 18th century Georgian architects, following this extravagant Restoration Age, did not wish to be associated with the decadence of their immediate forebears, however. They emphasised ‘elegance’ in their classical and pictur-esque creations, but at the expense of the rural population, levelling entire villages, flooding valleys and building lakes.

Jane Austen’s journeys gave many opportunities to see a variety of country houses. She built up her own ideas about what made a good and worthy estate. If she had been a novelist like Eleanor Lavish in A Room With A View she would have sat in the carriage with a notepad scribbling down all the romantic details of these houses. But Jane isn’t Eleanor Lavish - she never makes an obvious copy of any house. There is now in fact a huge coffee-table book publishing industry that pronounces with great authority to hungry readers that a particular house is undoubtedly Pemberley or Rosings. Complete rubbish! Genius doesn’t rely on mere duplication but upon the transforming power of the imagination.

An example of this is shown in Nigel Nicolson’s book The World of Jane Austen. He says some have associated Chevening, in Kent, and Pynes, near Exeter (below), with Rosings and Barton Park. You be the judges. (2)

Inside the great country house

Arrival via a flight of stairs was designed to give a sense of awe. Inside the front door you found yourself in a lofty hall with an imposing staircase leading to the formal ‘rooms of parade’. This was where the owners put on grand theatrical displays of entertainment for their guests - usually social or political contacts, or those who would enhance the host’s image.

Benjamin Franklin commented that fish and visitors ‘stink’ after three days. Hosts of the 18 th and 19th century would have agreed with him wholeheartedly. Roads were muddy, dark and often in bad repair so guests who travelled any great distance had to be put up for the night, and their servants too. This meant lots of spare bedrooms were necessary. Letters and novels show it was very common for friends and relatives to pay extended visits, lasting from a few weeks to a few months. This must have pushed everyone’s friendships to the limit! Especially if your long term guests were like Lady Susan Vernon, arriving virtually unannounced, staying interminably, and causing nothing but trouble.

The display and ostentation associated with keeping open house was an expensive obligatory chore. In 1826 a German visitor to England remarked that:

it requires a considerable fortune here to keep up a country house; for custom demands… a handsomely fitted-up house with elegant furniture, plate, servants in new and handsome liveries, a profusion of dishes and foreign wines, rare and expensive desserts… As long as there are visitors in the house, this way of life goes on; but many a family atones for it by meagre fare when alone; for which reasons, nobody here ventures to pay a visit in the country without being invited, and these invitations usually fix the day and hour… True hospitality this can hardly be called; it is rather the display of one’s own possessions, for the purpose of dazzling as many as possible.(3)

Life in the country meant lots of walking, riding, and hunting - the male outdoor entertainment of fox-hunting became a way of life. It demanded great stamina, and long chases helped pass the time. 18th century gentlemen indulged in horse-talk instead of car-talk (just think of John Thorpe). These equine Rolls Royces or BMWs needed flash new stables, so the old dirt floor stables were torn down.

According to the British Sportsman of 1796 fox-hunting became ‘the only chase worth the taste or attention of a high-bred sportsman’ (or ‘the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable’ according to Oscar Wilde). This English sport was only possible because the land was privately owned by a few huge landowners, and managed by a small number of large tenant farmers. It would not have been tolerated in areas of smaller peasant lots of mixed farming, like those on the Continent. The smooth grass and large pastures of sheep-rearing England, divided by hedges which had to be jumped, were perfect for hunting, but damage to crops was great.

Indoor activities were just as important and equally time consuming. During the 17th century billiards became popular, and by the 19th century there were few large country houses without a billiard-room, which with the library and the gunroom were male preserves. The ubiquitous card table is of course recorded by novelists.

Henry Fielding wrote that ‘to the upper part of mankind, time is an enemy, and (as they themselves often confess) their chief labour is to kill it.’(4) What did they do with themselves day after day? Many just managed their estates, acted as justices of the peace, hunted, or flitted from house to house. Many squires were busy improving their stock or crops. Some experimented with horticulture and avidly imported trees, shrubs and flowers from all over the world, a development that was already in full swing by the early 17th century. General Tilney’s pinery shows his fashionable interest in exotic horticulture.

Women were expected to care for their children, run households, and act as hostesses. Their leisure hours were spent at needlework, gossiping with visitors and friends, reading and playing endless card games. Increasingly, escape became the solution - to London, to Bath or the fashionable seaside resorts.

According to Lawrence Stone, many took the trouble to distribute minor charity to their distressed peasantry, either in the form of free food and clothing, or remission of rents in bad times, but ‘surviving account books suggest that none of this amounted to a significant sum in comparison with the overall income and expenditures. It rarely, if ever, for example, approached the amount of money - or time - spent on gambling.’ (5) I don’t like to think of the Woodhouses or Mr Knightley in that light.

The mania for collecting meant building libraries and galleries to house it all: the 18th century saw an explosive growth of libraries - no man of rank or fortune could be without one. The library became the largest and grandest room in the house and a convenient gathering point, serving as a family room if there were no guests, and a masculine preserve if there was a house party. Grand Tour acquisitions plundered from ancient civilisations were scattered about the house in dining-rooms, or drawing-rooms or sometimes the fashionably converted 16th or early 17th century long galleries. Perhaps that’s where Elizabeth gazed upon Darcy’s portrait at Pemberley?

Wealthy owners built huge public rooms with high ceilings and marbled floors because they didn’t have to live in them throughout winter. Heating these mausoleums must have been impossible, and it became routine for the fashionable set to go to London for the winter in November, to participate in the social whirl which lasted into April.

Widespread absenteeism amongst the landed gentry meant that tourism to country houses could flourish, tours being run by the servants during the master’s absence. Most owners were quite happy about this, some asking for letters of introduction and issuing tickets of admission. About twenty different guidebooks for visitors of country houses were published between 1760 and 1840. No gentleman or lady seems to have had difficulty in seeing over a country seat, as long as the owners were away. In the 19th century country seats were more frequently occupied, and visitors were a nuisance, so tourism died off, only to revive again this century under very diff-erent social and economic circumstances.

Jane Austen’s lifetime was a period of transformation...

Jane Austen’s lifetime was a period of transformation in everything from agriculture to art, literature, dress and architecture; and the whole time the wars with France caused havoc in the economy. It is impossible to read Georgian novels and be unaware of the French revolution, though direct intrusion of politics into Jane Austen’s novels is rare. Many critics claim that her ‘gothic’ satires displace the ‘Terror’ of the Jacobin revolution and its threat to the country house. From The Castle of Otranto (1764) through to Mrs Radcliffe’s villains in ruined castles, novelists speak about the foreign tyranny and superstition lurking on their very doorsteps. The castle symbolises an oppressive landed aristocracy and Catholicism, yet readers know that these things don’t happen in England. They belong to the remote past, as Henry reminds Catherine, trusting in English law, the Protestant religion, freedom of the press, and education:

‘Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you - Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetuated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing… where roads and news-papers lay everything open?’ (NA, Ch.9)

Malcolm Kelsall believes that Jane’s English gothic fiction cleanses the world of superstition and tyranny from abroad. The architectural symbols of castle and manor house are purged of any potential evil by British law and can be enjoyed as the Picturesque.

Historians Lawrence and Jeanne Stone say in An Open Elite? England 1540 -1880 that there were about 5,000 country houses of all shapes and sizes scattered about England in some 9,000 parishes. The rise in the number of powerful resident squires and justices of the peace in the century before Jane Austen …

resulted in the greatest revolution in social control ever to have occurred in rural England. The country house thus symbolises a return to law and order in the countryside after a long period of social chaos and aristocratic factional violence.

…London was unusual in that the town houses of the nobility were mostly very modest in scale after about 1700, by which time most of the small number of really great town houses standing in their own groups had vanished. After 1700 the nobility lived lavishly in the country and in relatively cramped quarters around St James’s Square and other fashionable squares in the West End of the city. (6)

It makes you wonder whether Sir William Lucas would have been quite so impressed with St James’s if he had actually spent some time there! He may have had a very different view if he had seen that the courtiers were cramped into houses not much bigger than those he knew in Meryton.

It was in the countryside, not in London, that the real extravagance took place, much to the astonishment of foreign visitors accustomed to the great hôtels of Paris. John Mitford, visiting Paris in 1776 said:

As the French have little idea of the country residence, and the nature of their government makes popularity dangerous, their chateaux are not seats of elegance. They have no interest (in the country) to preserve, no voters in boroughs to treat, no inducement to display their riches to the peasantry, or to court the favour of a mob. The glare of a city residence is the only object of their ambition. Hence the magnificence of the Parisian hôtels. (7)

Banishment alone could induce a Frenchman to do what the English did for pleasure - live in the country.

Big houses could administer several thousand acres, making the steward’s room one of the most important on the whole estate. Responsible owners realised they must spend time with their stewards poring over the books. Jane Austen knew this: Mr Knightley says he would rather spend an evening with William Larkins and the accounts books than go to a ball. The first thing Sir Thomas does after returning from Antigua is to ‘reinstate himself in all the wanted concerns of his Mansfield life, to see his steward and his bailiff.’(MP Ch.20) A system of long leases renewed every seven years eventually reduced the administrative burden, so land owners felt free to allow their agents to run the estate, while they spent their time as they wished.

The size of the house had previously been determined by the farmland that generated the revenues. Grand Georgian houses however demanded acres of romantic green lawns and groves of elegantly clustered trees. Some of these fashionable houses had little or no agricultural estate attached to them, aside from a home farm. Older homes had been built in sheltered locations without a view, but by the mid 18th century the all-important imposing appearance meant the Georgians were building on a hill. This provided a good view for those looking out and a very impressive view for those looking in, and the compulsion for a vista remained the doctrine for the next three centuries - being still in existence today. Building had once been about unstudied convenience and improvisation, but classical architecture swept away the untidy clutter of farm buildings. Palladio put all these buildings into lovely symmetrical wings, connecting the main grand structure by corridors or fancy columned walkways, and established the fashion for exiling servants to low wings or basements. This power structure of above and below stairs is given an extra dimension at Mansfield Park, where Fanny Price, the outsider, lives in the frozen little attic room far away from the rest of the household; away from the care or notice of the servants. Her lowly status means she doesn’t even qualify for a fire.

John Byng, Lord Torrington, in the 1780s complained about hill-top houses, which were cold and exposed to winds. He satirically commented,

If you should have purchased a good old family hall, seated low and warm, and circled by woods, and near a running stream, pull it down and sell all the materials… Cut down all the trees that are near your house, as they will spoil the prospect and obstruct the sun. Grub up all your hedges around you, to make your grounds look parkish. Build ha-has to open the view... Make the approach to your house as meandering as possible the better to discover the view. (8)

This sounds exactly what Henry Crawford had in mind.

Once local squires had lived close to the village, by Jane’s time they favoured splendid isolation in vast parks. New seats were built away from the village. Fashionably ambitious owners sometimes flattened whole villages, moving their tenants into new villages out of sight of the house, which is what happened at Castle Howard in Yorkshire. In some cases it was the greatest attention given to cottagers’ homes in centuries.

Maria Bertram has her own view about the relationship between the great house and the village.

Here begins the village. These cottages are really a disgrace. The church spire is reckoned remarkably handsome. I am glad it is not so close to the Great House as often happens in old places. The annoyance of the bells must be terrible. There is the parsonage; a tidy looking house, and I understand the clergyman and his wife are very decent people. There are alms-houses, built by some of the family. To the right is the steward’s house; he is a very respectable man. Now we are coming to the lodge gates; but we have nearly a mile through the park still. It is not ugly, you see, at this end; there is some fine timber, but the situation of the house is dreadful. We go down hill for it for half-a-mile, and it is a pity, for it would not be an ill-looking place if it had a better approach. (MP Ch. 8)

Yet this is Jane Austen’s utopia, with church, alms-houses, diligent clergyman, steward and the family in one happy bundle. Austen knows the difference between image and reality and shows us that the distance between the church and house is moral, whereas for Maria it’s a matter of convenience. But churches aren’t built to be handsome; clergymen shouldn’t be judged by their respectability; cottages shouldn’t be a disgrace, and if they are, they should be the first thing to be improved. The drive-way separates the village and the church. Out of sight then becomes out of mind.

Mary Crawford ‘had seen scores of great houses, and cared for none of them’ (MP Ch.9)-‘cared’ not in terms of taste, but in terms of the moral responsibility of the owner of a house, and believing London to be the centre of life. The Crawfords roam from one house to another: Henry hardly lives on his estate, Mary knows nothing about running one. Both see estates as playthings. It’s an expensive exercise in taste and money to dress up an old house, to cut down trees, and to help Mr Rushworth to transform Sotherton into a shining new toy.

Owners never lacked for advice. A steady flow of learned opinion came from architects, not to mention friends like Henry Crawford. My favourite comment on improvement comes from Mrs Norris:

The expense need not be any impediment. If I were you, I should not think of the expense. I would have everything done in the best style, and made as nice as possible. Such a place as Sotherton Court deserves everything that taste and money can do. You have space to work upon there, and grounds that will well reward you. For my own part, if I had anything within the fiftieth part of the size of Sotherton, I should be always planting and improving, for naturally I am excessively fond of it. (MP, Ch.6)

Fashion made them tear up old gardens to create broadacres. Artificial nature was brought right up to the windows by building ha-has. Avenues of trees stretched into the middle distance. The park once had deer, but was now home to sheep since fox-hunting had replaced stag-hunting. Walls or hedges gave way to temples and bridges.

Malcolm Kelsall cautions us:

the praise of Mansfield is perhaps the most powerful conservative defence of the country house written in a time of revolution because it does not pretend that any human institution has ideal status, merely that this order of things, rightly directed, has intense worth. For without its ‘master’, for all his faults, Mansfield disintegrates, and with it all moral principle. Let the Crawfords in, with all their talk about improvements, and the good customs of the house are broken up, and nothing put in their place. The resources of the estate are squandered, the proper function of the workers disturbed. (9)

So just what is an ideal Jane Austen house? Nigel Nicolson’s view:

Every property was subject to ‘improvement’, but none more so than the surroundings of the great house. Jane Austen was an expert on this. There had been improvements in every house that she had lived in, and fictional houses would not be exceptions.

…to her the garden and the park were extensions of the house itself, and in Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park she analyses their qualities and capabilities. Pemberley, of course, was already too perfect to be further improved. (10)

Do you recall Elizabeth Bennet’s first sight of Pemberley?

Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste.
(P&P Ch. 43)

Nicolson believes that Jane is describing a Capability Brown park. Jane cannot help asking us to admire it, by sharing Elizabeth’s thoughts that ‘to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!’ But it was more than the fantasy of becoming chatelaine of such a place. She was un-wittingly attributing to Darcy the dignity, propriety and nobility of the scene before her. No man could create, or inherit, such beauty without being worthy of it.

Sotherton was very different. It kept the old formality, and James Rushworth, with £12,000 a year, wanted to chop down his trees. He was following Humphry Repton.

Jane Austen’s taste wavered between the classical and romantic. She liked gardens, but she seems to have belonged to the Brown rather than the Repton school. She remained sceptical about the Picturesque. Edward Ferrars speaks for Jane:

I like a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles. I do not like crooked, twisted, blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are tall, straight and flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles, or thistles, or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a snug farm-house than a watch-tower - and a troop of tidy, happy villagers please me better than the finest banditti in the world. (S&S Ch. 18)

Jane Austen never falls into sentimentality about cottages. She was well acquainted with the difficulties of cramped cottages full of women with no money. The Sense and Sensibility film vividly shows the dramatic shift in the lives of the Dashwood women - leaving the vast marble expanses of Norland and arriving at the scrubbed wooden floors of Barton Cottage. The romanticism voiced by Willoughby and his complete lack of understanding about their living arrangements is ridiculed when he makes a nonsensical, romantic comment about pulling down Combe Magna to rebuild it as a cottage, despite Elinor’s reminder of dark narrow stairs, and a kitchen chimney that smokes.

The historical analysis of the social and economic behaviour of the English upper classes in Stone’s work An Open Elite? gives us an interesting insight into Jane Austen’s perspective. Their Hertfordshire research explores the different types of landowners who lived in the county, largely Londoners buying a Hertfordshire country house for its rural charms, closeness to London meaning they didn’t need to break their ties with business. Some of them might even have rented rather than purchased if they had the choice. The categories seem mainly to be those active in London political or administrative life, or members of the social and occupational categories, including lawyers, or middle class Londoners, bankers or merchants, soldiers or naval officers.

Naval and army officers lived where their careers took them, which might allow them to spend a few years in a country seat similar to the one they had been born and raised in. These officers needed a house close to London to enable them to keep in touch with the Admiralty or War Office. (The Crofts don’t follow fashion but choose far-off Somerset because it’s home.)

All this change made landowners determined to protect their families and estates. A squire’s main aim was to pass on his estate intact, hopefully with improvements. He hoped to pay marriage portions for his daughters or to provide for his younger sons. The solution was to keep the estate tied up in perpetuity for the eldest male; but to have other properties for easy disposal to allow him to raise mortgages.

The contemporary name for the estate was the ‘seat’. The ‘house’ meant the family lineage. When the word ‘house’ is applied to something other than the family line, it is a reference to an urban residence. The seat was the physical embodiment of all ancestral traditions. This was where one was born, got married, ran the estates, played and eventually died. The aim was to keep everything together - the seat itself, the land which provided the income, the heirlooms within the house, and the family name. It was felt to be disastrous if the male line failed and the house passed to a mere female. There were ways to prevent, or at least lessen the damage caused by an heiress. Sometimes the husband took on her family name and allowed himself to become a surrogate heir. A similar change of name solution was used by the Knight family when they adopted Jane’s brother Edward.

The usual way to keep everything ‘in the family’, or at least the male side of the family, was the entail. A deed of entail settled the estate upon the descendants of an individual owner in a specifically described order of precedence. This deed made the current owner a tenant for life, and responsible for passing the estate on to ensuing male generations, of which the familiar example is of course the entail of the Bennets’ Longbourn estate to Mr Collins.

This makes you realise how capricious Lady Susan was when she sold Vernon Castle to a complete stranger. She refused to sell the ancestral family home to her brother-in-law because she disliked him. She flew not only in the face of social convention but of several hundred years of rigidly enforced legal practice.

Established families were extremely tenacious in clinging to their seats. They sold outlying estates fairly freely. The Stones found that very few sold because of known financial difficulties. Only a small number got into trouble due to over-ambitious building.

The number of clear-cut cases of disaster being so small is convincing evidence that the phenomenon was a rarity, which perhaps accounts for its high publicity value … Very few families at this relatively exalted level fell into ruin between 1540 and 1879, and when they did they were the talk of the town and country alike for many years to come.(11)

Netherfield Park for example was rented rather than purchased by Mr Bingley. He wanted all the trappings of a country house but had only recently inherited the means to do so. Was it a retrenched home from a family who had lived beyond their means? Probably not, otherwise Mrs Bennet would have gossiped non-stop about the family who had left. Instead, Mrs Bennet reports with great glee and surprise that Netherfield is ‘let at last’. My guess is it was someone’s second property.

If the estate was substantial and debts not too extensive, a period of retrenchment could help. Sir Walter’s attempt:

‘Can we retrench? Does it occur to you that there is any one article in which we can retrench? ‘ - and Elizabeth, to do her justice, had, in the first ardour of female alarm, set seriously to think of what could be done, and had finally proposed these two branches of economy: to cut off some unnecessary charities, and to refrain from new-furnishing the drawing room; to which expedients she afterwards added the happy thought of their taking no present down to Anne, as had been their yearly custom … There was only a small part of his estate that Sir Walter could dispose of; but had every care been alienable, it would have made no difference. He had condescended to mortgage as far as he had power, but he could never condescend to sell. No; he would never disgrace his name so far. The Kellynch estate should be transmitted whole and entire, as he had received it. (P, Ch 1)

Sir Walter failed in his sacred duty to manage his estate, and his irresponsible spending forces them to leave Kellynch. It is his mismanagement which catapults the whole family into change. Each house Anne visits shows a new development in English society: from the old Musgroves with modern children, to the delightful no-nonsense Crofts who manage Kellynch so well, to the Harvilles living simply but comfortably, and finally the decadent, lazy lifestyle of Camden Place with its two fine drawing rooms.

Northanger Abbey also is about a changing England, showing society undergoing some very unattractive changes. Power, money, title and position are all that matter to men like General Tilney. He fills his house with expensive furniture, not because he likes it but because it will make the right impression. Northanger Abbey is an ancient house with a modern core, with General Tilney representing those who thought money to be the sole measure of value, ignoring good morals and good manners.

The country house of Jane Austen’s time was thus an evolving institution, an environment which Jane used with her usual deft and perceptive touch to demonstrate the values and worth of her characters and their society.

Meghan Hayward

References:
1. Jane Austen - The History of England: by a partial, prejudiced and ignorant Historian.
2. Nigel Nicolson The World of Jane Austen Phoenix Illustrated 1997 p118.
3. H L H Puckler Muskau Tour in England, Ireland and France Philadelphia 1833 P 28, reprinted in Lawrence Stone and Jeanne C. Fawtier Stone, An Open Elite? England 1540 - 1880 Oxford UP 1984 p216.
4. Henry Fielding An Enquiry into the Causes of the late Increase of Robbers. London 1751
5. Stone p 317
6. Stone p 297
7. Quoted in Stone.
8. John Byng The Torrington Diaries London 1934 i, pp 107, reprinted in Stone p335
9. Malcolm Kelsall The Great Good Place, Columbia University Press New York 1993 Ch 12
10. Nicolson Ch 5
11. Stone.

What's New | About Jane | About JASA | JASA News | Sensibilities | Calendar | Conference | Book Reviews |  JASA Library | Writing Competition | Mrs Goddard's School | Regency Fair | LINKS

FEEDBACK: info@jasa.net.au

7 July  2000