My experiences of the Jane Austen Festival 2017 in Bath
My lovely husband gave me the best present ever for my 30th birthday this year and took me to the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, which has been a dream of mine for some time, and it did not disappoint!
Thursday 7th September
Although technically the Festival had not started yet, we journeyed down from the north and decided to take a detour to the village of Lacock as "the distance is nothing when one has a motive". For avid fans, you may recognise this as being the village of Meryton in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice, and the village was also used as Highbury in the 1996 Emma adaptation.
The village itself is beautiful and I can see why it has been used for Jane Austen adaptations, as well as many other television series and films. It is almost completely untouched, a very picturesque village - although the pictures include quite a few parked cars!
As we arrived around tea time, we decided to have tea in Lacock - where else but at the Red Lion! The exterior of which was used for the Meryton assembly in Pride and Prejudice.
Friday 8th September
As we only had one pre-Festival event booked today, I decided to squeeze in visits to two very important museums in Bath - the Jane Austen Centre and the Fashion Museum. I have been to both before on a trip to Bath five years ago, but couldn't pass up the opportunity to visit again.
The Jane Austen Centre is small but well worth a visit. On this visit, they provided a small booklet when we purchased our tickets containing some brief information about Jane and her family, which was a lovely new addition. Before you go to the exhibition, you are given a talk about Jane Austen and her family, and a brief history of where she lived. Whilst I knew from research everything the guide mentioned, they were enthusiastic and it was a joy to listen to. It was good for my husband too, a non-Janeite, as he picked up a lot of things that he didn't know before.
Following the introduction, we were taken down to the exhibition, where the guide talked through confirmed and unconfirmed images of Jane for anyone who wanted to listen (which was everyone from the group), then we were free to make our way through the rest of the exhibition, which included a video with Adrian Lukis (otherwise known as Mr Wickham) talking mostly about Jane Austen's time in Bath. We also got to try on some regency clothing ourselves and my husband quite enjoyed it so I hope to persuade him to dress up with me one year!
The Fashion museum held many beautiful pieces from history, and you are provided with an audioguide at no extra cost. They have several pieces of Regency dress on display and it was also fascinating to see the change between the early 1700s into the Victorian era. All of the pre-1900 pieces captured my imagination of what life must have been like many years ago. As the museum moves into more modern pieces, I gradually began to lose interest, but the lace exhibition on at the time held some beautiful pieces, including a gown that may have been Princess Charlotte's (the Prince Regent's daughter).
Our one and only event for the Friday was a talk by Paula Byrne. I have read her book Belle (about Dido Elizabeth Belle), the Real Jane Austen, and I am part way through the Genius of Jane Austen, so I was excited to see her in real life. She was extremely passionate about Jane Austen and it was refreshing to hear her say that her favourite novel of Austen's is Mansfield Park. To hear her talk with so much enthusiasm really ignited my own passion for Austen's works, and made me want to re-read the novels all over again.
Following the event, I was very cheeky and queued to have her sign two of my books. I was a bit starstruck to be honest, so I was a little shy! I didn't have the courage to tell her that she actually follows me on Twitter! She complimented me on my skirt, which was lovely and off I trotted happily with my two signed books!
Saturday 9th September
Today was the official opening of the Jane Austen Festival, with the grand event, the costumed Regency promenade. I made sure we got an early start to ensure we had the best vantage point. There were some amazing costumes. I was really quite envious that I had not had the time or the funds to join them!
We watched all promenaders leave the Royal Crescent, and then hot footed it to the Circus to watch them all go past again. We then headed to Milsom Street to watch them pass again. In order to beat the crowds, we headed to the Guildhall to catch the first 20 minute comedy performance of Pride and Prejudice. It was very funny. Particularly when they brought out the very "handsome" Mr Darcy doll (more resembling Chucky) and sprayed him with water for the "wet shirt scene".
Following the performance, we made our way up to the Guildhall Regency market. There were several stalls with a variety of goods, including haberdashery, jewellery, hats and hairpieces, but the star feature of the market was the Roving Artist, a talented silhouette artist who cut out out silhouette's on the spot. His talent was incredible, taking a matter of minutes to cut freehand your silhouette. Both me and my husband had our likeness taken in silhouette form and the results were astonishing. The other exciting feature of the market was getting to meet Karin Quint who recently launched her book Jane Austen's England, which I contributed to on Kickstarter.
In the afternoon we headed for a walk Rummaging through the Reticule, which was surprisingly held at Jane Tapley's home. She was a very lovely and gracious host who took us through some of the items that a Regency lady may have carried with her in her reticule. The most surprising of which was a portable cutlery set and something resembling a gravy boat for a lady to relieve herself! I asked a question about how much coinage/money they would have carried around with them, and the answer was not a lot as things were more often bought "on the books", where a family like the Austens would have had accounts with companies, which someone cleverly pointed out why it was so easy for people to fall into debt.
In the evening we had the pleasure of a beautiful reading of the Pride and Prejudice story along with music by Carl Davis on the piano and violin, which featured in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice. It wasn't what I expected, but it was a delightfully relaxing and pleasant evening.
Sunday 10th September
Another early start took us on a Beaux and Belles, Breakfast and Balls walk around the centre of Bath. Our guide was very knowledgeable about figures that had lived in Bath around the time of Jane Austen and she was very lively and engaging. In her enthusiasm to tell us a lot of information (and we were quite a big group), the walk was a lot shorter than it had been intended to be and overran.
We had a table booked at the Pump Rooms as I remembered visiting 5 years previous and had my very first Bath bun and the room was beautiful with live music. Unfortunately, this time my experience was not the same this time around. Whilst the room is as beautiful as ever, the waiters were rude and looked down on us. We were presented with a very small set menu, with no full menu so we had very limited choice that cost a minimum of £25 each. Rather than waste money on food we were not going to eat, we decided to leave and had a much nicer time at the modest Bath Bun round the corner, where I had a delicious afternoon tea for a much more reasonable price.
My disappointment was not long lasting because I got to see the Assembly Rooms in person for the first time. The rooms are beautiful and it was exciting to imagine what might have been. We found out from our tour guide in the morning that the Assembly Rooms, back then known as the Upper Rooms, attracted a more rawcous crowd, whereas the Lower Rooms (which no longer exist), attracted a much more civilised crowd.
We then ventured to catch some of the reading of Northanger Abbey at Waterstones, but unfortunately as we were a few minutes late we were right at the back, and the reading had been unfortunately situated on the same floor as the café, the noise of which overpowered the reader's quiet voice. As we couldn't hear, we decided not to stay and headed over to our next event - Meet the Director with Simon Langton.
It is hard to believe that Pride and Prejudice was released 22 years ago, but Simon Langton recounted many memories of how the production came about and a few stories about the production. It was really interesting and I wish Andrew Davies could have been there as well, as I think it would have been interesting to have the two of them in a room together. The only thing I didn't enjoy was when ladies in the room got a bit overexcited about the "wet shirt scene" and one girl asked Simon to "spill the beans". I've never been excited about the scene myself, so I did find it strange and felt sorry for Simon, because after all, what else is there to say about it!
Monday 11th September
By Monday I was exhausted from miles and miles of walking around Bath. We had two talks today, the first of which was Austen and the architectural imagination in Northanger Abbey by Dr Amy Frost. I have to admit a lot of this talk went over my head as I didn't understand a lot of the words she used, so I made a mental note to research more into architecture. The talk itself was held in the Bath Museum of Architecture, the perfect venue for the talk, and I spied a couple of books in the giftshop that I added to my Amazon wishlist! It was however, lovely to hear passages read from Northanger Abbey, and it made me want to read it again.
After we hotfooted it across Bath to make the next talk by historian Catherine Curzon entitled Jane Austen and the King of Bling. Catherine read from her folder passages from one of her books, but I found it really interesting. Having an interest in royals, this was much more understandable to me, and Catherine presented facts in a fun and interesting way. After hearing her writings, I am very excited to read her books now and have added them to my wishlist too!
Overall
Overall, my experiences of the Festival were amazing. It really lived up to (and even surpassed) my expectations. I did not encounter the ageism I sometimes do locally and it was lovely to meet such a variety of people from different ages, cultures and backgrounds who had all come together to celebrate the life of a great author.
The weather was changeable to say the least, but it didn't spoil our enjoyment of the weekend. The most important time it needed to be fine, it was, for the costumed promenade.
On the negative side, I would say that some events could have been better spaced out and some were difficult to find. It was a rush to get from some events to another.
"Who can ever tire of Bath!".... well we could! I would have loved to stay for the whole festival, however, we were so exhausted after the many events and miles of walking around the city, we were ready for home & a long sleep, because after all "there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort".
