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Jane Austen Society of Australia

‘Sickness is a dangerous Indulgence at my time of Life’

In the Letters Deirdre Le Faye recalls a family tradition that when Mr Austen retired and they all moved to Bath in 1800, both Cassandra and Jane were upset. One compensation for this, above their persistent disinclination for Bath, was that each summer the Austens planned to make a holiday trip to the seaside. Over the next five years, they visited Sidmouth, Dawlish, Weymouth, Worthing, Lyme, and perhaps other resorts. These resorts have been well explored in talks by members during this weekend. However, while the Austens saw the resorts as holiday destinations, they were frequently seen as cures for illnesses, imaginary or otherwise.

In the 18th century, the English upper classes seemed concerned with frailness, listlessness and lack of vigour. They felt cut off from the rhythms of nature. This melancholy, or ‘spleen’, could only be beaten by changing one’s style of living, or landscape, by exercise, and taking a few therapeutic baths. This was the great age of inland spas and their warm medicinal mineral springs.

A Disseration of the Use of Sea-water in the Diseases of the Glands By the mid-18th century, medical men began to recommend cold baths, and what better cold bath than the ocean? In 1792 Dr Richard Russell published a treatise on the benefits of seawater – ‘The Sea washes away all the Evils of Mankind’, said he. He became known far and wide for the miraculous cures from drinking seawater and bathing in the ocean. How much benefit it had is hard to say, but daily bathing must have had some effect upon any disease resulting from plain dirt. From a modern point of view the treatments had some merit, just for the exercise element. Seawater therapy included bathing early in the morning, drinking at least half a pint of seawater, and massage with freshly collected seaweed. The bath was followed by half an hour of rest in bed, and then outdoor exercise.

People went in search of the perfect beach, and the south coast of England, especially Sussex and Devon, had some superior locations. They were sheltered from northerly winds but exposed to sea breezes. Some resorts were considered especially bracing; others were more soothing and preferred for convalescents. Once all that ‘picturesque’ nonsense started the search was on for splendid seascape views, a legacy we have today. It was a ‘developer’s heaven’ at some seaside resorts as a frenzy of building took place in the last decades of the 18th and early 19th century.

It was believed that when bathing, ‘it was necessary to plunge vigorously into the water, to suffer the force of the waves, to feel a momentary sense of suffocation, to experience the shock of the cold water.’ But it was stressed that, ‘it was essential that bathing should be perfectly safe.’ The safety of bathing, even in summer, was always emphasized: medical advice and supervision were considered necessary.

The earliest of the seaside resorts was Scarborough, in Yorkshire. It was a prominent coastal spa town, with mineral springs, and it was logical to combine cold sea bathing with the amenities already there. It must have been icy cold jumping into the North Sea surf. The history of almost every resort begins with the statement that it was ‘a small collection of fishermen’s cottages scattered along the beach until sea bathing became popular.’ Then local businessmen started to prepare for the visitors. A spare room in a fisherman’s cottage opened as a B&B, then a lodging house; later hotels and lodgings were built especially to provide accommodation for tourists; later still, when visitors liked their surroundings and decided to make longer stays, or live at the seaside, villas were built for new residents. Later more fashionable houses were built on wide crescents and terraces, parallel to the beach, with large windows to afford the best view of the sea.

In the early days sea bathing wasn’t associated with pleasure, and drinking the water was purely medicinal. Doctors regulated the time and extent of the ‘dip’ strictly. Medical opinion considered any unnatural opening of the pores of the skin to be dangerous, and hence the bathing took place when it was cold, the cold season being considered the most beneficial. Eliza de Feuillide, Jane Austen’s cousin, took her delicate little son Hastings to Margate for sea bathing in January. So if your gout or arthritis wasn’t cured you could add pneumonia to your store of medical conditions.

Human nature being what it is, people soon found a way to liven things up. Pleasure became associated with seaside holidays, and a more appropriate time of year was adopted. But too much sun was still a matter of apprehension, and early autumn was considered best. The Austens took their own holiday trips usually between September and November.

What did visitors do at these seaside resorts? The first item of the day was sea bathing, followed by the prescribed rest period, and then exercise. Walks could be leisurely strolls on the sea front, on the sand or stone promenade; for the more energetic, there were almost always long walks up to the headlands for beautiful panoramic views of the ocean and coastline, or inland to attractive little unspoilt villages.

Carriage drives up the Downs along the cliff edge or through the woods, and riding on the hard sands or woodland trails took the visitors farther afield. They could watch boat-building, or vessels arriving and departing, and the bustle of loading and unloading cargo. There were visits to be made to Saxon camps or Iron Age forts in the neighbourhood. The new fad for natural history encouraged people to collect shells or fossick for fossils in the eroding cliffs. Boats could be hired for little excursions around the harbour. With the proper connections you could arrange an inspection of one of the warships anchored off shore.

Just as it does today, shopping called loud and clear to ladies everywhere, to pass the time. Gentlemen might be lucky enough to receive an invitation to shoot at a nearby estate. In the evenings, there were visits to the theatre, card parties and musical gatherings, and balls at the Assembly Rooms. And for everyone, the lending library was a social centre. Advertisements for the seaside resorts emphasized the pleasure and pastimes of holidays by the sea.

Most visitors were delighted with their experiences beside the sea. But these seaside resorts had a dark side. Brighton and other south coast ports had military camps that may have been considered entertainment by the visitors, and warships the object of pleasant water excursions. In truth, they were a warning about the possibility of invasion. With one brother in the militia and two on active service in the navy, Jane Austen could not help but be aware of the potential danger.

Seaside resorts and spa towns were in the business of providing pleasure for idle young men like Frank Churchill, as well as pandering to the real or unreal whims of invalids. Mr Knightley believed that such places offered idle young men only a cure for boredom. Roger Sales develops an argument on sickness of a different sort at the seaside:

For Mr Knightley, if not quite for Emma, it is Frank’s cosmopolitan, salon (sic) values which are in real danger of producing sickness in England itself. These values have been acquired at watering places which, in Mr Knightley’s view, produce as much sickness as they cure. It is sickness which, specifically associated with French manners and morals, he sees as threatening to destroy the English village. He is clearly articulating a form of Francophobia.

(Sales p.146)

Watering places were also amongst the favoured refuges for French émigrés during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and Knightley believes that Frank’s lifestyle is that of a French aristocrat rather than one appropriate for an English gentleman:

No, Emma, your amiable young man can be amiable only in French, not in English. He may be very ‘aimable’, have very good manners, and be very agreeable; but he can have no English delicacy towards the feelings of other people; nothing really amiable about him.

Sales (p.145) says:

The implication of Mr Knightley’s argument is that the decadent behaviour of Frank and his kind might trigger off a revolution in England, just as the selfishness of the French ruling-class helped to precipitate revolution across the Channel.

Strong words indeed!

Lyme is an example of a resort that at least had medical practitioners on hand, as Mr Parker later believed necessary for his Sanditon. More medical attention was therefore available for Louisa after her fall from the Cobb than there would have been at Uppercross, for which Louisa must have been grateful.

In Sanditon, we can see a seaside resort developing exactly like the real ones all along the coast. It began as ‘a cluster of fishermen’s houses’ at the mouth of ‘an inconsiderable stream’. It gradually developed into ‘a quiet village of no pretensions’ at the foot of a hill ‘a church, some shops and a few cottages’. Then the modern development began: the cottages were smartened up with white curtains to attract lodgers, new homes had trendy contemporary names like ‘Prospect House’ and ‘Bellevue House’ and ‘one short row of smart-looking Houses, called the Terrace with a broad walk in front’ to take advantage of the view.

Sanditon has a library, a milliner’s shop and a shoemaker’s. Jane concentrates on the mercantile aspects of the town, and virtually ignores the beauties of the area.

Mr Parker sounds just like the many advertisements for seaside resorts:

The Sea air & Sea Bathing together were nearly infallible, one or other of them being a match for every Disorder, of the Stomach, the Lungs or the Blood … Nobody could catch cold by the Sea, Nobody wanted Appetite by the Sea, Nobody wanted Spirits, Nobody wanted Strength … If the Sea breeze failed, the Sea-Bath was the certain corrective; - & where bathing disagreed, the Sea Breeze was evidently designed by Nature for the cure.

Jane Austen’s letters make fun of the medical fraternity pandering to people’s imaginary illnesses. In 1813 she wrote to Frank about the antics of Mrs Edward Bridges:

They have been all the summer at Ramsgate, for her health, she is a poor Honey – the sort of woman who gives me the idea of being determined never to be well – & who likes her spasms & nervousness & the consequence they give her, better than anything else.

Le Faye, Letter #90, p.231
25 Sep 1813

Roger Sales says that the ‘letters show an awareness, which is serious and political rather than trivial, that invalidism is a part that women were encouraged to play. Their frail bodies complemented their fragile minds’ (Sales p.48). Jane certainly doesn’t like this sentimental cult of dangerous stupidity.

Austen herself emerges as someone determined to be well, but playfully confesses to acting the part of the sick woman when staying at Lyme in 1804: ‘It was absolutely necessary that I should have a little fever and indisposition which I had: it has been all the fashion this week in Lyme’ (Le Faye, Letter #39 Sep 14 1804 p.92). She caricatures invalids in the letters, and sometimes makes very rude comments about pregnancy. Sales says these show that she believes a sick woman is not just a product of social acceptance of the sentimental construction of weakness. She sees them as parts in someone else’s play. A script, over which they have no control, determined that they should never be well.

Austen’s determination to be well gave her power not just over her own body, but over the bodies of all the grotesque caricatures and ‘poor animals’ who littered her stage. She mocked her role as a sickly woman to the very end:

Sickness is a dangerous Indulgence at my time of Life.

Le Faye, Letter #155, p.325
23 March 1817

Meghan Hayward

References:

LeFaye, Deirdre, Ed, Jane Austen’s Letters, OUP 1995
Sales, Roger, Jane Austen and Representations of the Regency, Routledge, London, 1994.

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05 July 2003