Letters from Berringford 15 'A Day in Bath'

Erewhon

Berringford

21 March, 1979

A day trip

It is the first day of spring but the weather does not show much respect for dates on a calendar.  This morning a tremendous gale is blowing in from the Channel, and this afternoon I will have to get out the ladder and go on the roof to check that no tiles are missing.  But the daffodils are in flower under the hedges. While working in London, Shakespeare remembered the daffodils of Warwickshire.

They ‘come before the swallow dares and take

The winds of March with beauty’.

They still do, and the March winds are still blowing! Shakespeare got it right, as usual!

The day trip was the vicar’s idea from the start.  He suggested an excursion to Bath and after sorting out the best day to go and how many cars to go in and who was to drive them, yesterday we finally went. There were just five of us in the end. My Uncle put on his best suit for the occasion and I persuaded Theresa to come along with us too.

Bath is about twenty miles from Berringford on a winding road that crosses many other winding roads that skirt the Mendip Hills.  It is not a road to hurry on and we took the best part of an hour to get there.   

We started with the obligatory visits.  We walked to the Crescent and round the Circle and we visited the Roman Baths.  And then on our way down Milsom Street the vicar and my uncle started talking about Jane Austen and whether she was happy during the few years she lived in Bath.  She certainly wasn’t when she first arrived in the city. When her father retired and announced to the family that they were to move to Bath, Jane apparently fainted.  She had to agree to leave the village she loved and had grown up in and to go to live in the vanities of the city.  But someone like Jane Austen could not be unhappy all the time.  She was not one to mope and fret so I am sure that she made something of it. Still when she finally left Bath, with her mother and sister, it was “with what happy feelings of release!”

Go to Bath for it is not only worth seeing but also worth going to see, to use Dr Johnson’s distinction about the value of tourist destinations.  The Roman Baths and the Pump Rooms, the Crescent and the Circus are worth going to see. Mary Shelley wrote much of ‘Frankenstein’ in a room near the Abbey.  The astronomers, the Herschels, William and Caroline, lived there.  Fame has always given much praise to the brother but now time is finally righting the balance for it seems that much of the important work was done by his sister.  Only now are women being recognised for what they achieved in science, and it is about time too.    

We walked along Pulteney Street which is where Catharine Morland stayed on her first visit to Bath. She had been invited by the Allens to spend a few weeks with them there.  Read ‘Northanger Abbey’.  It is a light book and Catherine is perhaps the most engaging and attractive of Jane Austen’s heroines. Her six novels are basically the stories of heroines. If you have read ‘Northanger Abbey’ already, then pick it up once more. So many of the characters are really pleasant people, not in any dramatic way but in the little things of the day to day, which are in fact the important things.   We read of small acts of kindness which are so different from the grand gestures which often aimed to boost the moral scorecard of the person who does them rather than actually help anybody. On the other side, there is the greed of the General.  “I really have not patience with the General” said Mrs Allen several times. There is also the arrogance of the vacuous John Thorpe but these are outweighed by the genuine kindness of so many others.

There is Catherine herself, who thinks ill of no one, and is generous to a fault, though let us come back to Catherine later.

John Thorpe is a brainless nuisance. In her innocence Catherine does not know what to make of his comments about her brother’s gig.  He tells her “There is not a sound piece of iron about it.  I would not be bound to go two miles in it for fifty thousand pounds!”  And the next minute he says, “The carriage is safe enough if a man knows how to drive it.  I would undertake for five pounds to drive it to York and back again without losing a nail!”   Today he would have talked about second-hand cars.  “James’s car is a load of scrap. He can hardly drive it around the streets of Bath without bits falling off! But I could drive it up the M4 from here to London without a problem”.  In those days an arrogant, loud young man like Thorpe was called “a rattle”, and it is a pity the word is no longer used today.  It could be used so often.

When Catherine comes home after staying at the grand Northanger Abbey she is miserable to have left Henry Tilney. Her mother remembers a chapter in a magazine, ‘The Mirror’, which deals with “young girls that have been spoilt for home by great acquaintance” and goes upstairs to search for the magazine article.  When she finally comes downstairs she finds that Henry Tilney has arrived. She welcomes him kindly in spite of what his father has done. In fact, Henry came wondering if he would be admitted to the house at all. Little acts of kindness!  Read the book.

Take the Allens. Well, take Mr Allen, at least, because Mrs Allen is another of Jane Austen’s empty-headed people. In fact, a case can be made for dividing all her characters into intelligent or stupid.  Poor Mrs Allen definitely falls into the second group.  Today Jane herself would be teaching English at Corpus Christi, Oxford, or Trinity Hall, Cambridge and would appear regularly on chat shows on TV. She would have a weekly column in ‘The Independent’ or ‘The Times’.  She was clever, and so forgive her for being hard on less intelligent mortals in her novels.  It must have been frustrating to see the less gifted around her prosper just because they were men or had money.

Consider for a moment how she can express a thought. The Allens invited Catherine to Bath to give her pleasure and to introduce her to people and places she would never otherwise have known.  They go out of their way to make her happy and have a good time.  By doing that they also enjoyed themselves more than they would have done on their own. Goodness rebounds! How concisely Jane Austen says this. In a couple of sentences above, I used 31 words to say this. Now, don’t look at the next paragraph yet! Just rephrase the idea yourself and see how many words you have to use.  

Done that?  Here’s the solution.  Catherine has left the Allens when invited to Northanger Abbey. The Allens miss her “in the promotion of whose enjoyment their own had been greatly increased”.  How neat!  Just 12 words!

Take Catherine then, so genuine and open that she cannot imagine trickery and meanness in others.  She does not see through Isabella Thorpe until the end, and what a repulsive pair John and Isabella Thorpe make! She does not realise how attractive she is.  “But Catherine did not know that a good-looking girl with an affectionate heart, and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man.”  Henry Tilney does not stand a chance!  Read the book!

I can’t remember whether the Vicar and my uncle finally decided whether Jane Austen was happy in Bath but all in all, it was a day well spent.  We walked back to the car tired but happy. It had been a worthwhile day. I believe the vicar is planning another trip, this time to Wells.  We shall soon see.