The Tall Girl from Somerset 26 Henry. Jane Austen's names and so on.

HENRY 

Jane Austen's names and so on.

I am going to ride a couple of hobby horses of mine now.  Miss this out if you like. I can't stop you. I can’t hold you with a stare as did the Ancient Mariner.  Nor are you obliged to stay and listen, as you would if you were sitting with me by a roaring fire in a pub in winter.  So scroll on, if you wish!  Scroll on!

I have been thinking about Somerset again. It is always there in the back of my mind even when I am in London.  Especially when I am in London. I shut my eyes in the rattling tube between Gloucester Road and South Kensington and I am back next to the oak tree and the crab apple on the hill looking across the fields to West Town on the coast and then beyond the water to Wales. Jane Austen liked Somerset, you know.  Not Bath, of course.  She hated Bath. In fact, she nearly fainted away when her father told the family that they would all would be moving to Bath when he retired.  But I don’t think she hated it all the time because she was the type to make the best of things.  An unmarried woman had to in those days.  Bath was a big city then, and she was a country girl at heart.  And there is no finer county in England than Somerset.

Churchill and Langford appear together in ‘Lady Susan’.  Lady Susan lives in Langford and writes to her brother who lives in Churchill.  In the novel the villages are some way away from each other but if you take the time to go, you will find them both there in Somerset nestling together by the Mendip Hills. The two villages join up, you see.  Just walk down Ladymead Lane from Churchill Gate and you’re in Langford before you know it. 

Fielding, by the way, was born in Somerset, in Sharpham near Glastonbury.  Yes, Glastonbury where the festival is, that’s the place.  It was a lovely little spot before the festival came.  Rather like life was before the computer.  Perhaps it still is a pleasant place.  I don't know.  Of course, Fielding is going back a bit.  Jane Austen liked Fielding, I think.  Robust common sense, and she was a great one for common sense! He died in Lisbon.  You can visit his tomb there.  Quite impressive.  It’s a little trip to make in the afternoon before listening to fado in the evening.  And don't be hard on Lisbon.  I know it all needs a coat of paint but it's a lovely city. 

Have you ever noticed how many of Jane Austen’s characters are named after places?  Well, perhaps not named after.  She didn’t pick up a map and say, ‘Well, let’s find some good names for the families in my next story!’ But the names of towns and villages were in her mind and when one name had the right sort of music she would beckon it forward and give it to a character. It makes a pleasant little job finding them out.  The aspiring academic would call it research, but it’s just fun like doing the crossword.  Just reading the newspaper seems to be called research nowadays!

I had half an hour to spare last Thursday, (well I had the whole day to spare but it doesn’t do to admit that) and I jotted some of them down.

Here are one or two.  You can make your own list.

Let’s start with Churchill, Lady Susan’s village.  There it is in ‘Emma’ as Frank Churchill.  Marianne, who was the sensibility part of ‘Sense and Sensibility’, ended up with the stolid, solid Colonel Brandon, and there is a Brandon in Suffolk.  For ‘Pride and Prejudice’, as far as I know there’s nowhere called Darcy but there is a Bingley.  And, for the villain of the piece, there is a Wickham Hill in Bristol and a Wickham in Jane Austen's own county of Hampshire.

Let’s digress. Perhaps we already have, but never mind!  I have the time and surely you can make a little time too. Bennet  was the family name of Elizabeth in 'Pride and Prejudice'.  So let's take Johnson’s friend, Bennet Langton.  What wonderful first names they had in the 18^th century!  Bennet!   And his friend was Topham Beauclerk.  Topham! Well, these two young men woke up Johnson in the middle of the night, and he was in his 70s then.  As they hammered on his door in the street, he shouted down from his upstairs window ‘What is it you, you dogs! I’ll have a frisk with you’, and the three of them set off on a spree in the inns of London and kept going till morning.  Anyway, to get back to Bennet Langton.  He lived in the village of Langton in Lincolnshire.  The squire had the same name as the place where he lived. That was style!

And Oscar Wilde?  Look at Jack Worthing.  He was clearly named after a place, there was no hiding that.  That was because Mr Thomas Cardew  had a first-class ticket to Worthing in his pocket at the time.  ‘Worthing is a place in Sussex.  It is a seaside resort.’   

Conan Doyle was a master of original names.   Wonderful names.  Thin of Charles Augustus Milverton, and he was a villain if ever there was one.  Strange that W. W Jacobs has a Charles Augustus as well.  It’s the baby in ‘Forced Labour’ in Light Freights. Sir Henry Baskerville was another of Doyle’s.   Umberto Eco was so impressed with the name that he made use of it himself!  Sean Connery’s Franciscan monk was William of Baskerville, wasn’t he? And Sherlock Holmes himself.  There’s a name for you. But we know Holmes so well we don’t notice how unusual the name is.  In England Holmes is part of every family. Along with Robinson Crusoe he is always around like a second cousin. It is like when our nieces and nephews choose strange names for their children, and at first we look askance and try to be polite, and we say ‘How nice!’ and we feel ‘How odd!’ but after a month we are using the name as naturally as anyone else. They’re part of the family, you see.

And now to change saddles and on to my second hobby horse.  But I don't want to bore you.  I really don't and so I will leave that for another time.  In a weeks' time perhaps. We'll see.