In Mary’s Footsteps
Have spent the evening looking up various things: the Currie family, the doll house of Bertram Wodehouse Currie’s boys (more on that later!), the Seymours of Kinwarton, and always trying to find something new on the Goslings…
I keep looking for new pictures – remembering some early photographs of GROVE HOUSE that Roehampton University used to have online and are now long gone. (Makes you learn to SAVE pictures to your hard drive!) I found these, which put me quite ‘in the picture’.
Visiting The Vyne (in Hampshire), I could imagine Eliza Gosling (Mary’s mother) arm-in-arm with Eliza Chute, or my two girls — Mary and Emma — running up the stairs. But Roehampton Grove was Mary’s home – she went there when she was ill in the months before her death; her girlhood diaries always have the family leaving on trips from Roehampton, for this is how I first met her: “We left Roehampton on Monday the 27th of August, at eleven o’clock our party consisting of Papa, Mamma, my Sister, and myself: we went with our own horses to Salt hill, a distance of 19 miles.” 
<<< Mary seems especially alive in such an evocative setting
And surely this was the domain of William, her father >>>
There is a Wedding ‘show’ being held at the estate on 22 November 2009 — oh, to be able to go there! It’s free! If anyone goes and has eyes for something OTHER than wedding bits and pieces, do tell me about it (or better yet send pictures!).
Portland AGM
For the *few* who might be interested: I enclose here my proposal for the next Annual General Meeting of JASNA. Never thought to stress the *mayhem* of a young girl’s first “season”…
Augusta deserves to have her tale told, but I’m not holding my breath that it gets accepted. (AGM2010_McDonald)
A Swiss Journey
Having attended the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) last weekend, Thursday through Sunday, I came home with some fresh perspectives on Austen, a few new acquaintances, and a bag of books!
One of those I have been enjoying on this grey-with-sunny-intervals Saturday morning: Jane Austen’s Brother Abroad: The Grand Tour Journals of Edward Austen, edited by Jon Spence. Thanks to the AGM ’boutique’, Austen Books appeared as a vendor – and offered many books I knew of but was always too lazy to mail order (all that additional cost). That goes doubly for this book, which was published by JASA – the Jane Austen Society of Australia.
There was an excerpt online, but JASA’s website seems to be having some problems: I can’t manage to get off their homepage!
Few who study Jane Austen solely for herself or her novels will be intrigued about this slim volume; but those with an interest in diaries — especially travel diaries, will be enchanted by the pictures drawn of two parts of a grand Grand Tour; Edward Austen Knight spent nearly four years on the Continent! One journal is owned by the Hampshire Record Office; the other by Yale University. I will have more to say of this book at a later date — and maybe by then I can find or scan a copy of the cover.
[next day] Scanned in this lovely cover and here it is…
Two Teens in the Time of Austen 