All language subtitles for BBC Jane Austen Behind Closed Doors.srt - eng(2)

August 1806.

Jane Austen found herself squeezed
alongside her mother,

her sister and a lawyer, rushing
into Warwickshire in her cousin's
carriage.

It's like a scene from one of Jane's
own stories.

She was full of expectation,

about to play her part in a
real-life Austen family drama.

Jane's destination was the ancestral
home of the Leigh family.

It was Stoneleigh Abbey.

It's a story about money and
inheritance and marriage -

the very things at the core of
Jane's novels.

The honourable Mary Leigh, reclusive
mistress of the house,

had just died, unmarried and
childless.

Who was going to get the house and
the cash?

Jane's elderly cousin,

one of the possible heirs, rushed
over to stake his claim,

bringing the Austens along for
support.

When Jane arrived here, she was 30
years old.

She was unmarried and unpublished,
despite her best efforts.

And she was homeless.

She'd just been forced out of the
city of Bath through lack of funds.

She was really hoping that some of
the riches of this place would come

in her direction.

She needed an inheritance.

But for Jane, the aspiring novelist,

Stoneleigh Abbey also promised
bounty of another sort -

inspiration. Fragments of the Abbey
made their way into her books.

In Pride And Prejudice, Elizabeth
Bennet is shown around Pemberley by

the housekeeper, just as Jane was
shown around Stoneleigh.

And Mansfield Park gained Stoneleigh
Abbey's chapel.

"The profusion of mahogany and the
crimson velvet cushions appearing

"over the ledge of the family
gallery above."

In the end, Jane went away without
an inheritance,

but Stoneleigh Abbey left its legacy
in her work.

Jane Austen's novels revolve around
homes lost and mansions gained,

the threat of poverty and the
promise of wealth.

And Jane's own life gave her a
unique insight.

In her 41 years, she stayed in many
houses.

At times, she was tantalisingly
close to riches.

At others, a step from destitution.

I'm going to follow where Jane
stayed.

I'll visit the scenes of her
romantic adventures and see where

she struggled with her social
obligations.

This is the parlour with drawing
room where the women would come
after dinner.

I'll try out some home economics,
Austen style...

Amazingly, that does look like real
ink.

..and explore the houses where she
flourished as a writer.

I think that knowing where Jane
lived can tell us who Jane really
was.

I'm travelling to where it all began
for Jane - Hampshire.

In 18th-century England,

your prospects for wealth and
security were typically set from the
moment

of your birth.

But Jane Austen wasn't raised in a
typical home.

Jane spent 25 years,

more than half of her life, living
in the house where she was born.

Let's go and see what's left of it.

Jane grew up in the sleepy village
of Steventon,

where her father was rector of the
local church.

She was born in 1775, in the reign
of George III.

The Austens were a bit unusual in
that Jane's father was considered to

be a gentleman.

But the family still struggled on a
limited income.

The Steventon that Jane knew has
almost vanished.

Its cottages were demolished in the
19th century.

Jane's home, the rectory she shared
with her parents,

sister and six brothers has gone,
too.

But luckily for me,

archaeologist Debbie Charlton has
been investigating the site and

building up a picture of Jane's
first home.

So, Debbie,

let's pace out the plan of the
rectory and find out roughly where
it was.

Right, so we're at the front, which
was north-facing.

So if you were to stay about
there...

This is the corner of the building?
In the west. It goes off like that?

Yes. OK, and how far that way does
it go?

I'll just try and walk over there.

Hey! So that's the other corner?

That is, yes. Where's the front
door? Is it in the middle?

It's in the middle. Meet you there.

OK, then.

Is this it? This is it.

Let me open it up. Is that right?

Yes, indeed. Let's step inside.

In we go. Where are we now?

We've come into the lobby. It was a
lobby-entry house.

What were the other rooms?

You had the front kitchen and then
you had the back kitchen.

The back kitchen's where all the
work went on, all the cooking.

What about over here? Over here,
you've got the main parlour,

so you'd have the dining parlour and
then the sitting parlour.

What about Mr Austen's study?

That was at the back, so he was
looking out over the cucumber
gardens.

Yeah, out over the gardens there.
Is that cos he was hiding away?

Yeah, he was, he was hiding away
from the rest of the household.

Oh, OK, lots of kids.

A lot of activity.

You need somewhere to go if you've
got eight children.

You did. I think it was a very busy
house, a lot going on.

It may seem like a big house, but it
was crowded.

Jane's father supplemented his
income by running a boys' boarding
school,

so the rectory was also packed with
his pupils.

Mr Austen even had a third job as a
farmer and the family kept cows,

ducks and chickens.

Debbie, I imagine a lot of people
would think of Jane Austen growing
up in

some lovely country house situation,
but that's not right, is it?

No, no, I think she was definitely
doing a bit of work on the farm.

There is an instance where she's
overjoyed that the new dairy maids

arrived, which gives you the
impression she was probably having
to do it.

Until that point? Yeah. Ah!

Tell me about some of these little
finds that you've excavated.

Right, so obviously, when you're
doing an excavation,

a lot of it is the rubbish - what's
been discarded or broken. Yes.

So, we've built this back together,
but it's a lovely little egg cup.

Look at that.

It's beautiful.
So this is the Willow Pattern.

So it's blue and white transferware.
Yes.

They'd just come out, they'd just
learnt to do the transfer print.

Everybody who was anybody had to
have transferware. Yes.

They're from the perfect time, so
about 1770.

Now, Debbie, we don't have any
evidence, do we,

that Jane Austen didn't eat an egg
out of this egg cup?

We don't, no. So she may well have
done.

Jane Austen's egg cup!

It's pretty, but it's mass produced.

The Austens may have aspired to the
latest tableware,

but there wasn't that much money for
luxuries.

Jane's letters give a detailed
account of everyday life at
Steventon Rectory,

with its unfashionable mealtimes,

but a wealth of intellectual
sustenance.

We dine now at half after three and
have done dinner, I suppose,

before you begin.

We drink tea at half after six.

I'm afraid you will despise us.

My father reads Cooper to us in the
evenings, to which I listen,

when I can.

Reading was a big part of life at
Steventon, and Jane had free access

to her father's library, which
contained many works of fiction.

I think that this room set Jane on
her path as a writer.

The books here inspired her.

From the age of 11, she wrote plays,
satires, poems and novels.

But how could her talent thrive in
such a crowded house?

Jane Austen's father realised
that his daughter was becoming a
serious writer.

So he marked this by getting her,
as a 19th birthday present,

this expensive and beautiful
mahogany writing desk.

It hinges open like this so you can
write on the slope of it.

Now, for millions of Jane Austen
lovers, this item is a holy relic

because, under this flap, she would
have kept drafts of all of her
novels.

Until the very end of her life,
everywhere that Jane Austen went,

this box went, too.

Think of it as a tiny little
office -

the only space in her crowded home
that Jane had completely to herself.

But she didn't spend all of her time
shut up in the rectory.

Jane was a keen walker.

She had to be. For most of her life,

the Austen family couldn't afford a
carriage.

And she often travelled miles on
foot,

visiting a network of friends in the
villages around Steventon.

Some of their houses still survive,
like Ashe Rectory.

Here, Jane would call on her close
friend, Mrs Anne Lefroy.

Music was a big part of these
women's social lives.

I'm meeting Professor Jeanice Brooks
to learn about Jane Austen,

the piano player.

Was music something that girls
did together?

Yeah, there's lots of evidence
that young women

were communicating around and
through music,

in the same way that we think about
how teenagers today

communicate through music and by
exchanging music, by swapping things
round, by saying,

hey, listen to this, this is my
favourite right now.

It sounds like we don't know exactly
how proficient she was,

but Jane Austen does strike me as
somebody who really loves music.

Would you agree? Yes, yes.

And I think it's important that, if
you look at the novels,

in all of the novels,

intelligent conversation is always
about music and books.

It's not just books - it's music and
books.

It's something that she sees as part
of a kind of normal,

cultured education, something
that people can talk about,

something that is important.

And she seems to, in later life,
have played every day for herself.

It's a thread that weaves right
through all of Jane's novels
as well.

There are always characters who play
in every single novel,

there are some very important scenes
that happen while people are
playing.

With music came dancing, which Jane
also loved.

Many of her plots centre around the
excitement of encounters at balls,

and Jane felt that thrill herself.

Deane House, newly built at the
time,

was the scene of one particularly
eventful ball for Jane.

She came here on the night of
January 8th, 1796.

She'd just turned 20.

And I've got the chance to see
inside the very room where Jane
danced.

Now, this might not be the big and
glamorous ballroom that you were
expecting,

but it was possible to hold a ball
in just an ordinary house.

You'd push back the furniture and
invite around the neighbours for
a dance.

This meant that, when Jane went to
balls, she wasn't always meeting

new people. There were a lot of
familiar faces but, one night,

in this very room, she did meet
somebody new.

He was a young law student called
Tom Lefroy.

He and Jane got on awfully well

and, pretty soon, they were flirting
outrageously.

Tom was the nephew of Jane's friend,
Mrs Lefroy.

Jane's letters to her sister,
Cassandra, tell of encounters
with Tom

over the course of a series of
balls.

It all started so promisingly.

You scold me so much in the nice
long letter which I have, this
moment,

received from you

that I'm almost afraid to tell you
how my Irish friend and I behaved.

Imagine to yourself everything most
profligate and shocking in the way

of dancing and sitting down
together.

After I'd written the above, we
received a visit from Mr Tom Lefroy.

He has but one fault, which time
will, I trust, entirely remove.

It is that his morning coat is a
great deal too light.

I rather expect to receive an offer
from my friend in the course of the
evening.

I shall refuse him, however.

Unless he promises to give away his
white coat.

But Tom's family didn't approve.

Their serious young lawyer was
having way too much fun with Jane.

At their final ball together, he
didn't propose.

Sometimes, people at balls drank too
much,

even Jane Austen.

One time, she wrote about a hangover
she had

and the shaking of her hands the
morning after.

And there would be a rude awakening
from her romance with Tom Lefroy.

Tom was sent away from Hampshire.

He had ten siblings - he needed to
be able to support them,

he needed to marry someone richer
than Jane.

The harsh truth was that, in Jane's
world, money usually came before
love.

No wonder this became a central
theme in her novels.

And I don't think it's a coincidence
that this is the year when Jane

wrote her first draft of Pride
And Prejudice.

In fiction, at least,

she could make sure that the poor
but clever heroine won both the
good man

and his impressive house and
grounds.

Poor Jane was dogged by worries
about money and status,

even when she visited members of her
own family.

I'm following Jane to Kent to her
brother Edward's house,

where she sometimes stayed for
months at a time.

Now, you might well wonder how
Edward ended up with the vast
Godmersham Park near Canterbury.

Well, quite simply, Jane's parents
gave Edward away.

Adopted by the childless but wealthy
Knight family,

Edward enjoyed an income of £15,000
a year.

Even Jane's fictional catch,
Mr Darcy, only had 10!

Life at Godmersham gave Jane a
window into a different world.

I think it had a huge effect on her.

Now it's a college for opticians.

But you can still feel its grandeur.

This might be the very room where
Jane stayed when she was at
Godmersham -

a whole room to herself.

She liked staying here because of
the luxury.

She wrote that she was going to eat
ice cream and drink French wine and

be above vulgar economy.

But it's quite hard for her, as the
poor relation.

She worried that she couldn't afford
to tip the servants properly.

And Jane's relatives here at
Godmersham were very different from
her.

They were hyper-social.

They were into their outdoor
pursuits.

They thought Jane was clever, but a
bit odd.

I think it's telling that she made
one very close friend here
who wasn't

a member of the family.

It was the governess.

Jane just wasn't in the same league
as her fortunate brother,

and even the visiting hairdresser
seems to have noticed.

Mr Hall walked off this morning with
no inconsiderable booty.

He charged Elizabeth five shillings
for every time of dressing her hair.

Towards me, he was as considerate as
I'd hoped for,

charging me only two shillings six
pence for cutting my hair.

He certainly respects either our
youth or our poverty.

Jane was expected to earn her keep,

helping to entertain a growing brood
of nieces and nephews.

One niece recalled spending entire
days acting out plays with
Aunt Jane.

Home theatricals were all the rage
at the time.

And Professor Judith Hawley is
helping me to put on a play that
Jane wrote

herself as a child.

Scene the first, a parlour.

Cousin, your servant.

Stanly, good morning to you. I hope
you slept well last night.

Er, remarkably well, I thank you.

I'm afraid you found your bed too
short.

It was bought in my grandmother's
time,

who was herself a very short woman

and made a point of suiting all her
beds to suit her own length.

Judith, if you lived in a lovely big
house in the country like this,

it must be very nice,

but do you think perhaps it got
boring and you just longed for

something to happen?

That's when you could put on a
private theatrical, and then you

had the whole sense of an event to
work towards,

and the whole household could be
involved.

One of the pleasures would just have
been that business of the bustle of

turning a house upside down,
rolling back the carpets,

clearing out all the furniture, that
sort of chaotic disruption.

Do we know what plays Jane Austen
wrote herself?

We've got three surviving
manuscripts in her Juvenilia.

Her second play, which is my
favourite, is called The Visit.

What happens in The Visit?

In The Visit, there's a brother and
sister who invite people to

their house, only nothing works
according to plan.

They're very apologetic about it,

but there are only six chairs for
eight people

because Grandmamma didn't really
like having people round.

Sir Arthur and Lady Hampton, Miss
Hampton, Mr and Miss Willoughby.

Ooh, that's a lot of people.

Here they all come.

Pray, pray be seated.

Bless me! There really ought to be
eight chairs, but there are but six.

However, if your Ladyship will take
Sir Arthur in your lap and, Sophy,

my brother in yours, then I believe
that we shall do pretty well.

I beg you'll make no apologies.
Um...

Ooh, Sophy! Oh, yes, please!

Your brother really is very light.

This is better than a chair.

Now, if you've read Mansfield Park
by Jane Austen,

you might think that she doesn't
approve of theatricals

because they're a cover for
flirtation and all sorts of
inappropriate behaviour.

Well, Fanny, who's sort of the
centre of the moral consciousness of
the novel,

certainly refuses to act - Fanny
will not act -

but it's simply not the case that
Jane Austen herself disapproved of

either play-reading or theatre-going
or involving herself in private
theatricals.

She's absorbing things from her life
and transforming them in
artistic ways.

In Mansfield Park,

the amateur theatricals help to
expose the conflicts and jealousies

within a great house -

just the sort of thing that Jane
might have witnessed at Godmersham.

I think that this was the house that
had the biggest influence on Jane's
writing.

Some of Jane's other travels were
rather more relaxing.

As the 19th century dawned,

Jane's parents embraced the fashion
for tourism.

They took Jane to Sidmouth, to
Dawlish...

..and then to Lyme Regis.

Jane couldn't swim,

but she was dipped in the sea by a
local woman called Molly.

She probably didn't bathe nude,
whatever this picture might suggest.

But it is true that Lyme was a free
and easy sort of a place.

This book is a guide to the
sea-bathing places,

and it's pretty frank about the
advantages of Lyme -

advantages that would have appealed
to the Austens.

The "lodgings at Lyme are not merely
reasonable, they are even cheap."

It's a budget resort.

"There's no need to dress up in
fancy clothes,

"no need for extravagance of
exterior show."

The boarding houses in Lyme are
graded.

At the top of the hill, you've got
pleasant houses with nice views

for "persons of consideration".

Down in the lower town, though,
you'll find "the lower orders".

And I'm sorry to say that the
Austens were right at the bottom of
the hill

in Mr Pyne's house, just there.

Even on holiday, you had to know
your place.

And you got what you paid for.

The accommodation rented by the
Austens was strictly no-frills.

Jane wouldn't have given a very good
review to the various lodging houses

of Lyme. Of one of them, she wrote,
"The inconvenience is exceeded only

"by the dirtiness."

And she had a bit of a ding-dong
with the owner of this place,

Mr Pyne, about the ludicrous sum he
wanted to charge for something that
got broken.

But Jane didn't care at all because
she could look out of this window

and watch the sea.

Jane thought that travel to the
seaside was very delightful -

a taste of the itinerant life she
envied in the wives of sailors or
soldiers.

And there was a wildness here.

Jane was most drawn to the sea wall
called The Cobb.

She once spent a whole hour walking
along it.

You're not allowed to walk up here
when it's windy because the big
waves

come jumping up over the edge.

And I think that, for Jane,

being at the seaside was all about
cutting loose and letting go.

She did have a holiday fling at the
seaside, and her sister later said

that this mysterious man had been
the love of Jane's life.

Jane saw the seaside as a place for
passion, and Lyme became one of

her most memorable literary
settings.

In Jane's novel Persuasion,

the high winds drive some ladies to
come down from the Upper Cobb to

walk on the lower part, but one of
them, Louisa,

gets so excited by the wind and the
waves that she wants to jump down to

the bottom and into the arms of a
dashing sea captain. She slips,

she falls, she's lifeless on the
ground.

In this case, the exhilaration of
the seaside has led to danger.

Jane herself liked the idea of a
leap into the unknown -

that's what holidays were for.

But a permanent move was quite
another matter.

In 1801, aged 25, Jane had to leave
her home in Steventon forever.

Her father decided to retire and
relocate, taking his wife and
daughters

with him to start a new life
in Bath.

It's said that, when Jane first
heard she was moving here, she
fainted.

Bath was a flourishing spa town with
an incredibly busy social scene.

It was probably the last place that
Jane would find peace and quiet to
write.

But she had no choice.

She decided it was best just to get
on with the move.

Jane and her mother threw themselves
into house-hunting.

This was their headquarters - the
house where Jane's aunt and uncle
lived.

Jane's aunt wanted them to settle
in this part of town,

but it was no good - it was too
noisy,

there wasn't enough greenery and
Mr Austen now had arthritis.

He walked with a stick and couldn't
manage the steep hills.

Even more than in Lyme, where you
lived in Bath reflected your status.

There was a thriving rental market
catering to wealthy visitors.

I'm off to see some of the places
that Jane considered.

There are an awful lot of them!

"I went with my mother to help look
at some houses in New King Street,

"towards which she felt some kind of
inclination.

"They were smaller than I expected
to find them."

Quite monstrously little.

Jane's mother kept setting her heart
on the most unsuitable places.

"Above all others, her wishes are,
at present,

"fixed on the corner house in Chapel
Row which opens into Princes Street.

"Her knowledge of it, however, is
confined only to the outside."

The houses in Green Park Buildings
were...

"So very desirable in size
and situation..."

but they were also very damp.

The Austens looked at Charles
Street, Seymour Street,

Westgate Buildings,

the streets off Laura Place -
too expensive -

Gay Street - too steep.

At least Jane and her mother agreed
on one place they absolutely would
not live.

"She will do everything in her
power to avoid Trim Street."

Eventually, the Austens decided on
4, Sydney Place.

Newly built and a flat walk
from the centre,

it had the right sort of
neighbours -

a baronet,
a Major-General and a lady.

And it was just about affordable
at £150 a year -

that's a quarter of Jane's father's
income.

These days, it's a holiday let,
which means that I get to stay
the night.

The Austens had rather longer -
a three-year lease - to enjoy its
comforts.

Up here are the bedrooms.

Mr and Mrs Austen had the lovely
view over the park...

..while Jane and Cassandra shared
the room at the back.

This fantastic and utterly
ginormous document contains

the original deeds of 4,
Sydney Place.

Here's a beautiful elevation showing
exactly how the builder should

construct the house, and over here
is the contract, which specifies
that

he's got to put in street lighting
and running water.

It's all terribly grand.

But sitting here, in Jane and
Cassandra's bedroom,

what strikes me is that your
experience of a Georgian house
like this

really does depend on your position
in society.

The girls are tucked away upstairs
in the back bedroom and, out of
their window,

what you can see today are the
slightly rubbish backs of the houses
behind.

In fact, this document doesn't
specify what the back of
Sydney Place was to

look like because nobody cared.

Bath was all about the first
impression.

First impressions mattered because
most people didn't stay in Bath
for long.

The whole social scene
was constantly changing.

Jane had to embark on a complex
schedule of visits and engagements,

and there was always the hope that
she might find a husband.

I'm paying a call, just as Jane
would have done, to a rather grander
house

than her own in the Royal Crescent.

Professor Elaine Chalus has left
her card for me, so I'm now
returning the visit.

Good morning, Elaine. Hi, Lucy.

Thank you for having me.

You're very welcome. I'm paying you
a morning call.

What are the rules for that?

You will come in and you'll find me
in my morning drawing room.

In this house, it happens to be on
the ground floor,

but often it's upstairs.

If you're somebody that I don't know
particularly well or you're paying
me

a courtesy call, you may come in,
stay 10-15 minutes,

maybe half an hour maximum, and go.

If you're somebody that's intimate
with me and we're good friends,

we haven't seen each other for
a while, we could then spend the
rest of

the morning together, basically,
gossiping and having chat over tea.

And what would you do if you didn't
want to see me?

You can keep me out, can't you?
Oh, yeah.

That's rather fun. You basically
tell your servants that you're not
in.

So, Elaine, the morning's over,
what's next in the Bath schedule?

Once you've changed and you're ready
to go out, then you'll go out and
you'll maybe go

for your walk,

you might go shopping,

then you come home and you're going
to change again, of course.

And you'll get ready for dinner.

And that wouldn't take place in this
room,

that would actually take place on
the other side, and it was really

important that you had a good dining
room because a dining room is one

of the places where people get
together over food and drink,

it's more intimate than the morning
visits.

That is a fantastic display,
isn't it?

It is. Lovely dinner.

Yeah, and it's a wonderful place to
show off your best china,

to show off the skills of your cook.

'After dinner, the guests moved
upstairs for tea, where they were
often

'joined by second-tier visitors -
that's people like the Austens.'

This is the parlour withdrawing room
where the women would come

after dinner, and things would be
set out all ready for tea, as they
are here.

You would find all kinds of things
going on.

You would have some people reading
and you could be, of course, playing

on whatever musical instruments were
available. We've got a harpsichord
here.

By the time of Austen, often,
you would have had a piano,

there might have been a harp,

but these kinds of things so that
you've got something to do to keep
your hands occupied.

Did Jane enjoy these tea
drinking sessions?

Some of them she did,

some of them she enjoyed because
she liked the people,

but there were certainly some events
that she found desperately difficult

in terms of being really,
really boring.

I love the time when she says
nothing much is happening,

so the entertainment is a reading
from a pamphlet about smallpox.

Yeah, that kind of thing can happen.

I think smallpox tells you it was
a really slow evening.

The subtext to all this social life
is husband-hunting,

isn't it? How did that go for Jane?

What sort of a catch was she?

Not a great catch, actually.

She wouldn't have had a huge amount
of money to bring with her.

She's a vicar's daughter.

She's not superbly beautiful.

She does have a GSOH -

a good sense of humour.
She does have that,

but that's actually double-edged

because having a witty woman
who could sort of

take the mick out of the men isn't
necessarily going to win you a lot

of plaudits with some men, for sure,
it will put them off.

Jane may not have been to the liking
of the Bath bachelors

but, while she was living here, she
did receive a proposal from a highly

eligible country gentleman.

In 1802, Jane and Cassandra

visited some old friends,
Catherine and Alethea Bigg,

back in Hampshire.

They were joined by the Biggs'
younger brother,

21-year-old Harris Bigg-Wither.

Harris Bigg-Wither proposed to Jane,
and she accepted him.

She must have been relieved - she
was nearly 27, getting on a bit.

And while Harris wasn't a looker,
he was very respectable.

And he was going to inherit Manydown
Park, long since demolished.

But the next morning, having thought
it over, Jane broke it all off.

It must have been excruciatingly
awkward.

She had to flee from Manydown Park
in embarrassment.

It was probably for the best.

Harris didn't have much
conversation,

he could sometimes be outrageously
rude and Jane clearly didn't love
him.

And I believe there was another
reason Jane was feeling confident
enough

to turn down the mansion
and the cushy lifestyle.

She thought that she was soon going
to become a published author.

And she knew that, if she got
married, she'd have to give birth
to babies,

not books.

Sure enough, in 1803, Jane sold the
manuscript of her novel, Susan,

to a publisher for ten whole pounds.

This book would eventually become
Northanger Abbey,

and it's all about Bath society.

Its young heroine, Catherine,

arrives here with eager delight,
ready for the pleasures of

the public dances and the pump
rooms.

It seemed that Jane had finally made
it as an author.

Except, it all came to nothing.

The novel wasn't printed in her
lifetime,

and Jane had lost her chance
at independence.

Single women have a dreadful
propensity for being poor...

..which is one very strong argument
in favour of matrimony.

It was the start of a difficult
time.

The Austens were going down
in the world.

When the lease expired
on Sydney Place,

they were forced to take a house
in Green Park Buildings,

even though they'd previously
ruled it out.

Then, in 1805, Jane's father became
seriously ill with a fever...

and he died.

When the Austens had first been
house-hunting in Bath,
they'd rejected

Green Park Buildings because,
although the houses were cheap,

they were damp. You can see that
they've been built up on a platform

because the river used to flood
just here.

The people in the houses complained
about putrid fevers.

Now, when you get a lot of water
standing around, you get mosquitoes.

And Mr Austen's waves of fever
are consistent with the disease
of malaria.

It could be that Green Park
Buildings killed him.

Whatever the cause, his death
was a disaster.

Jane and her mother and sister

now found themselves in reduced
circumstances,

reliant on the charity of Jane's
brothers.

They moved again, to Gay Street,

and then finally to the dreaded
Trim Street.

In Trim Street, there weren't any
titled neighbours, just a milliner's

and a fire insurance office.

Jane's mother was really fed up
of living here.

She addressed her letters from
Trim Street, still. Rr!

In Persuasion, Jane's heroine,
Anne Eliot, persists in a very
determined,

though very silent, disinclination
for Bath.

You could certainly go off a place.

The truth was that the Austens
couldn't afford to stay there.

In 1806, after five years in Bath,
Jane was packed off again,

this time to a rented house in
distinctly down-market Southampton.

Jane's brother, Frank, was in the
Navy.

He moved his mother and sisters in
with his young wife while he was

away at sea.

Southampton was the lowest point
in Jane's fortunes.

It was described by one contemporary
visitor as a dirty town

with unsurpassably smelly
side streets.

Southampton has changed quite a lot
since Jane's time.

But she would still recognise
the ancient stone ramparts.

All this used to be the sea. It came
right up against the old city walls.

You could see dolphins from this
spot.

It's now dry land and a ginormous
building site.

Jane's house has gone, too.

But luckily, a contemporary artist
included it in his painting.

This is Jane's house, right next
door to this rather eccentric
castle

that had recently been embellished
with extra turrets.

I think that the Austen ladies chose
this house because it had a lovely
garden.

They were missing greenery.

And you can see the garden's trees
poking up over the old city walls.

And despite the size, it soon got
full up.

There was Jane, her sister, their
mother, their friend, Martha,

their sister-in-law, Mary, add in
three or four servants,

and you have a household of eight or
nine women.

It was cramped.

The castle's been replaced by a
tower block and Jane's garden by
a pub.

Time for a pint.

Jane had to spend her money very
carefully

because it was all gifted to her.

Earning money was inappropriate
for a gentlewoman.

Jane's actual accounts from 1807
survive.

Her mother and brother covered food
and rent,

but everything else was down to her.

This is Jane's discretionary
expenditure, and she's feeling very
flush

because she's just received a legacy
from a little old lady that she met

and got to know in Bath.

This is payback time for all of that
hard socialising.

So what's she spent it on?

On getting her clothes washed, on
letters and parcels -

that's very characteristic -

and there are treats here, too,
because she's feeling rich.

She's hired a piano for £2.

She gives away a quarter of her
money in tips to servants, in
charity

and in presents.

Someone else had given her this
money.

Now she was giving it to people who
were even more in need.

It's a very feminine form of
economics.

And it's a very precarious way of
living.

Jane had no income except from
family and friends.

She didn't have time or space to
write.

Stuck in Southampton in her
mid-30s, she had no prospects at
all.

But then, along came another chance
to move. Jane's brother, Edward,

the rich adopted one who lived in
Kent,

also had a little bolthole in
Hampshire.

Chawton House - a glorious
Elizabethan manor.

When Edward's wife died, his
thoughts turned to his home county

and to his mother and sisters.

Why not move them all back to be
near him?

So, in 1809, Jane found herself
heading again for a prime property,

but Edward wasn't quite as generous
as he might have been.

Jane wasn't moving here...

..but to the former bailiff's house
down the street.

Chawton Cottage was on a main road.
In fact,

passing Stagecoach passengers could
see right in through the windows.

But at least it was an end to all
the uncertainty.

And here, Jane settled down into
a daily routine.

We're told that she got up early to
play the piano before anyone else

was around. Then, at nine o'clock,
she made the tea.

This seems to have been about the
limit of her household duties.

It's as if the rest of them realised
she was no good at housework

and shielded her from it so that she
could get on with her writing.

Jane now worked hard,

rewriting the novels she'd started
years earlier at Steventon.

And, in 1811, she finally had a book
published -

Sense And Sensibility.

It's the story of sisters who are
forced to leave their spacious home

and move to a modest cottage
in the country -

one with dark, narrow stairs
and a kitchen that smokes.

The book made Jane a respectable
£140 -

enough to cover her expenses
for three years.

She sold the rights to Pride And
Prejudice for a similar amount.

But when it came out in 1813,
it was a huge bestseller.

It made Jane's publisher more than
three times what he'd paid her.

Jane still lived frugally at
Chawton Cottage with her sister,

mother and friend, Martha.

This is a collection of recipes put
together by the Austen ladies with

their friend, Martha Lloyd.

They're not very ambitious in their
cooking plans.

The first recipe is for pea soup.

And they're thrifty.

If you turn to the back of the book,
we've got recipes for household
products.

Here's one for "a cure for
a swelled neck".

And here's one that seems
particularly appropriate - a recipe
"to make ink".

I'm going to have a go at that one,

but possibly not while I'm holding a
priceless historical artefact!

First, you take galls.
These are little nodules

that are produced when an insect
lays its egg in an oak tree.

Next comes...oh, the gum.

This is gum arabic.

And my gum has been pre-powdered.

Next comes the green copperas.

This stuff is basically iron
sulphate.

Next you put in the strong, stale
beer.

Now, there's no real chemical reason
for the beer,

but I think it's really in the
recipe to make ink-making more fun.

You add some sugar and stir.

Then you stand the ink in a
chimney corner

for 14 days, and you shake it

two or three times a day. Hm.
14 days!

Unfortunately, I don't think we have
one that we made earlier!

Amazingly, that does look like real
ink.

The original recipe makes two pints
of ink.

Jane needed plenty of it.

She wrote a brand-new novel -
Mansfield Park.

Her books were bringing her freedom
and confidence.

The nitty-gritty of publishing often
took Jane to London,

where she stayed with her brother,
Henry, who was now a banker.

Henry had been working his way up
the London property ladder.

And by 1814, he owned a fancy
bachelor pad in Hans Place,
Knightsbridge,

now replaced by mansion flats.

You might not think of London as
Jane Austen land,

but I reckon that this was the place
that suited her best of all.

Henry's house had a lovely garden
right next to his study.

It was August and, when Jane got
hot and tired of writing,

she could come out here for a
restorative stroll.

Henry was out all day at his bank.

He was now a widower, he only had
one maid.

There was nobody to bother Jane.

Here, at last, was a life free from
social obligations.

And here, she got on with what I
think is her most brilliant book -
Emma.

This new heroine was rich and
confident.

But she wasn't a woman of the world.

Although Emma lived 16 miles from
London, she never actually goes
there.

Jane was more intrepid.

For this latest novel, Jane's
brother, Henry,

had found her a more prestigious
publisher - John Murray.

But then Henry fell ill

and Jane was forced, for the first
time,

to start dealing with her business
herself.

This is John Murray's office and
home, at 50 Albemarle Street.

This was a place where Lord Byron
and Sir Walter Scott would come.

I can imagine Jane sitting
impatiently in this waiting room...

..before being sent upstairs to John
Murray's famous drawing room.

Murray had offered to publish Emma,

but he wanted the copyright of both
Mansfield Park and

Sense And Sensibility thrown in,
too.

Jane thought that Murray was
offering her a bad deal.

She decided to seize control of her
affairs at last.

So Jane started to negotiate,
first by letter,

then in visits to this office.

It was hard work.

She wrote that John Murray was
a rogue, if a very civil one,

and he offered her £450.

Now, Jane had been stung before by
this selling the copyright thing.

That's how she'd published
Pride And Prejudice.

And when it sold much better than
expected, it meant that the
publisher

kept all the cash.

So she refused that.

Instead, she went for what we'd call
self-publishing,

where she ran the risk but would
get the reward,

minus 10% commission to Murray.

Now, the really heartbreaking thing
is

that this was a terrible business
decision of Jane's.

None of her later books would sell
as well as Pride And Prejudice.

And by the time she died,

she'd actually only earnt just over
£650

from all her books.

But for a few years, during her
visits to London,

Jane glimpsed a different life.

The life of a successful novelist,
shopping, visiting exhibitions

and plays, and travelling in her
brother's carriage.

The driving about, the carriage
being open, was very pleasant.

I liked my solitary elegance very
much

and was ready to laugh all the time
at my being where I was.

I could not but feel that I had
naturally small right to be parading

around London in a barouche.

Jane was no longer dependent,

to be passed about from one place
to another like a parcel.

She was an author.

She could go where she liked.

It didn't last. Less than a year
after Emma was published,

Jane was back at Chawton Cottage
and seriously ill.

She was suffering from aches
and pains, from fevers and bilious
attacks.

One of her nieces remembers visiting
Aunt Jane and being shocked to find

her up here in her bedroom,

wearing a dressing gown and sitting
in a chair, just like an invalid.

Things were looking bad for Jane.

And she was only 41.

On 24th May, 1817, Jane and
Cassandra made the 16-mile journey

to Winchester in their brother
James' carriage.

They came to be near a doctor -
Jane's last chance for a cure.

But she'd already made her will.

For two months, College Street
was their home.

These rented rooms in the city
centre were just the sort of place

that genteel old maids ended up.

My attendant is encouraging

and talks of making me quite well.

I live chiefly on the sofa...

..but I'm allowed to walk from one
room to the other.

I've been out once in the sedan
chair, and am to repeat it,

and be promoted to a wheelchair
as the weather serves.

The upside was that Jane was living
here with the family that she'd

selected for herself, spinsters
looking out for each other.

She got this house because of her
two good friends who live just

around the corner. And as Jane got
sicker and sicker,

she was looked after here by her
sister and her sister-in-law.

Jane spent the very last hours of
her life with her head in her sister
Cassandra's lap.

And then, very early in the morning
of 18th July, 1817,

she slipped away
in that room, just up there.

Six days later, Jane's body was
borne along College Street.

Cassandra wrote,

"I watched the little mournful
procession the length of the street.

"And when it turned from my sight,
I had lost her for ever."

Walking alongside the coffin were
three of Jane's brothers and a
nephew -

the only mourners.

Jane was brought here, to Winchester
Cathedral,

and placed in a vault on the
North Aisle.

It was a prime location at last.

A black marble gravestone was laid
over her.

The inscription mentions
"the benevolence of her heart,

"the sweetness of her temper,

"and the extraordinary endowments of
her mind."

That's as close as it gets to
mentioning her novels.

When Jane died, she was just a
youngish, unknown, frail woman.

Her name wasn't even printed in her
books.

All this would change.
A few years later,

one of the vergers of the cathedral
was heard asking,

"Who is this Jane Austen woman that
everybody's talking about?"

And now her fame almost eclipses
that of the cathedral.

Today, Winchester Cathedral is
perhaps best known as Jane's
final home.