Jane Austen geek
Okay, yes, I am.
To prove it, I’ve come all this way across the ocean, sitting upright overnight on a plane for 10 hours, enduring 4 days of constipation (so far) (no one’s reading this, right?), so that I could go on this 3-day Jane Austen tour in the countryside of England.
Good thing I only sort of like Doestoyevsky.
First of all, maybe this marks me as a hick, but I just really prefer the English countryside to London. London has all the excitement and body-crush of New York City, but with the drawback of funny money and traffic that keeps going the wrong way. Yesterday I had to pull Sue out of the way of a giant red bus, and she had to save me from two muggers (let’s humor her–I say they were just two young lads out for a pint, who happened to split up and get on either side of me and eye my purse while I was distracted at the corner trying to figure out whether to look left or right for another killer bus with Sue’s name written on its grille).
So this morning we waited in the lobby of the hotel where the tour was meeting, and I scoped out all the other Americans who were going to be on our trip. Gave them their helpful nicknames so I could refer to them on the blog: The Woman with the Perpetual Sneer and the Hideous Pink and Orange Purse, the Fat Man Who’d Be Having a Heart Attack on Day Two, the Over-Spoiled Rich Kid and his Loud American Parents–etc.
Then it turns out all those people were just innocent strangers who’d have to labeled by someone else on some other tour, because the only people on this one are Sue, my stepdaughter Emily, and me.
Sweet! No obnoxious Americans to deal with but us!
So then it was off to stalk Jane Austen.
After visiting a silk factory that supplied some of the costumes for the most recent Pride and Prejudice movie (yes, I bought a ball gown just like the one Elizabeth wears. I’m wearing it right now and will not take it off) (okay, it’s really just a scarf, but it’s symbolic of a ball gown), we drove to Winchester, a small city that is only called a city instead of a town (I learned) because it has a cathedral.
And that’s where I fell in love with this trip. Because being in that cathedral today was like smoothing some spackling over my heart. There was all these little holes in it from my generally hectic attitude, and today I found a reason to slow down and sit and be quiet and just shut up about it already.
We stayed for Evensong, which was a short sermon punctuated by the most angelic songs from a boys’ and men’s choir. I don’t think I’ve ever heard voices like that in person. I don’t think I realized how beautiful boys’ high voices can be in a setting like that. It makes me sad for them that they ever have to go through puberty–especially since I found out they get to come to the very expensive private school in Winchester simply because of their voices. Once they go through their Peter Brady “when it’s time to cha-ange” moment, they’re out on the streets with the other hairy teenagers.
Turns out the cathedral was the site of some filming for The Da Vinci Code, which Sue and I happened to see last night (because we are wild women, free to do whatever we like in a mad city like London, so of course we went to a movie) (and escaped death by bus) (then met two muggers/innocent lads). It was a funny dilemma the church seemed to have: on the one hand, they were happy to advertise their participation in the movie and do all sorts of tie-in displays, but on the other hand, they made great efforts to refute the ridiculous claims made by Dan Brown. “That’s not Mary in the The Last Supper. Pshaw! The disciple John is always depicted as very effeminate. Anyone without a beard would look like that.”
Um, excuse me, I don’t have a beard, and I look WAY manlier than whoever is sitting next to Jesus in that painting. But maybe that’s my own problem.
Tomorrow we’ll be driving to Steventon, where Jane spent most of her happy years. We’ll go to the place where she attended dances. I will, of course, still be wearing my silk ball gown and will put all the other tourists to shame.
Do you think it’s wrong/odd/totally appropriate that much of the talk today was about that scene in the A & E version of Pride and Prejudice simply known as “the wet shirt scene”? If you’ve seen it, you know exactly what I’m talking about. In the same way that if you’ve seen the most recent movie version, you know what I mean by “the scene where he’s walking with the coat.” I think it’s all of our hope/fantasy that somewhere along the way on this tour, we might get a glimpse of either version of Darcy. Why do you think I bought the ball gown/scarf?
Have to get my rest now. As you know, it’s the future here–after midnight for me, while all the rest of you are still plodding along during a daytime that’s already happened 5-8 hours ago from where I sit. Why do you bother? It will all be okay–go on with tomorrow.
Now that I’ve confessed my own literary fantasy geekishness, I want to hear what literary or movie fantasies you guys have. I know one friend who who goes to The Star Trek Experience in Las Vegas every chance he gets just so he can stand on the bridge of the Enterprise and feel like he belongs there. I respect that. It’s why some day I need to go stand on that hilltop where Eowyn stands getting her hair blown all over the place, and looks down to see Aragorn for the first time (Lord of the Rings, for those of you who don’t know). Coming to Jane Austenland is only one of my fantasy trips. There are plenty more on the list.
Let’s hear what you’ve got. I know I am not alone.
Technorati Tags: Jane Austen, England, Winchester, London, Books, Pride and Prejudice, Literature, Literary Travel, Jane Austen Tour, Reading
June 23rd, 2006 at 7:13 pm
okay, let me make sure i understand–you are on a JANE AUSTEN tour, you have traveled thousands of miles and paid thousands of dollars (or at least tens of hundreds), you have a native guide that presumably does nothing but escort like-minded, stangely fanatic individuals (except of course when he/she is assigned to the “totally bond, james bond”, “life and times of the queen mother” or “martha grimes pub crawl” tours) and you wonder if ANYTHING is wrong/odd/or totally appropiate???? my answer; all of the above.
in response to your inquiry re literary fantasies–i must admit to not exactly a fantasy, it was far too real for far too long to be a “fantasy” and i quess it depends on your definition of “literary” (nose in air) but if that includes the most full-on kick-a__ little red head on the planet than here it goes.
i think most of you, particularly those who follow norse myths and heroes (ummm, heroines) will know i’m talking about pipi, that’s right, of the the longstockings. i was so pipi obsessed that i became pipi– requesting, no, demanding, that my family honor my decision to change my name, and refusing to answer to anything except pipi for an obnoxiously long time. (many is the night i layed awake rueing my parent’s utter lack of ceativity; for god’s sake if they couldn’t have named me pipi at birth, why not at least anika??) long after i thought i had left the pipi within behind the siren song of that darling girl called again. i was giving birth to my third child, a girl child. as her head appeared the nurse exclaimed, “she’s a blonde”–i literally screamed, “what are talking about, she’s supposed to be a redhead, are you sure she’s not a redhead!? the nurse replied, “i’m positive, she’s a blonde–why is there red hair in your family?” “no”, i replied. she turned to my husband, “so there’s red hair in your family? “no”, said my husband. “then i don’t understand,” said the nurse, “why would you think you’d have a redheaded baby.” to which my husband replied, “because she wants one, goddamnit.”
June 23rd, 2006 at 11:18 pm
Annette, thank you for your confession. Now don’t you feel better? I know I do, because obviously I’m only sort of odd, whereas you . . .
June 26th, 2006 at 6:41 am
Can wolves say ‘Pipi’? Ben Browder. Claudia Black. It’s actually a law that if you say one name you have to say the other.
You may be curious why I know all these names. Quite simply, I think of them as guys who could take second place.
During my son’s extraction(C-Section) the nice little doctor lady said exactly what I was thinking. “Uh-oh” which she then followed with the proper response to saying uh-oh in surgery. She turned to me and said “Oh, I didn’t mean uh-oh so much as, huh, would you look at that, his head is larger than I thought and that incision is going to be tight.” Then she jumped on my wife’s rib cage to try and stretch the incision. Brilliant recovery. I think they teach that in the third year.
My wife is a redhead, but boys look funny like that, so I made him a blonde, like me.
And yes, you two are odd with these literary fantasies. Now, please excuse me while I plan my trip to Tunisia to visit my homeworld of Tatooine.
June 26th, 2006 at 11:48 am
patrick, at least ours are “literary” fantasies. not surprisingly, i had to google ben, claudia and tatooine. from the looks of claudia it appears your fantasies may be of a more, shall we say, literal nature. (also explains your query re lip licking and bosom clutching).
June 26th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
Sean Connnery, Kevin Costner, Don Johnson, Jay Gatsby… Help me here. You must be aware of some men.
Would you prefer I visit the planet Arrakis? It’s another desert planet. Yes, I open books and have people read them to me. Sure, I’d like to visit the Gold Coast sometime, too. I’ll call it West Egg while I’m there. IS that better?
And Re: Claudia - Yes, there is a rule somewhere that alien women must be portrayed as busty and underfed and always wear a skin tight body suit. I’d didn’t make the rule up, but I certainly don’t object.
But, I prefer redheads. NATURAL redheads. There’s a difference.
June 26th, 2006 at 6:25 pm
one other thought patrick–i can’t believe you stole your baby’s birth right to red hair. i may not know ben, claudia, et al, but i know red hair rocks, ask your wife, ask eric the red, ask carrot top (no don’t ask carrot top, don’t even think of carrot top). you did him a great disservice, and if you also robbed him of freckles, may you never be forgiven!