Elizabeth's mind was too full for conversation, but she saw and admired every remarkable spot and point of view.  They gradually ascended for half a mile, and then found themselves at the top of a considerable eminence, where the wood ceased, and the eye was instantly caught by Pemberley House, situated on the opposite side of valley, into which the road with some abruptness wound.  It was a large, handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills; -- and in front, a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance.  Its banks were neither formal, nor falsely adorned.  Elizabeth was delighted.  She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste.  They were all of them warm in their admiration; and at that moment she felt, that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!

Volume Three - Chapter One

Our Next Book Tea - Pride And Prejudice

“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.  If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other, or ever so similar before-hand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.”

                                                                   Charlotte Lucas, Chapter 6.

Charlotte Lucas’ thoughts on marriage are troubling to the modern mind.

Come to think of it, they were also troubling to Elizabeth Bennett’s mind.  She could hardly believe that her beloved friend, Charlotte could believe such things.

But on Charlotte’s behalf, she was a woman in a precarious position. At twenty-seven years old, her chances to marry were becoming significantly smaller with time.  Her parents would be able to pass along little if any inheritance to her and she felt the apprehension of her younger brothers that they would be left to care for her as the years went by. 

And for a woman of her time period, this was a precarious position.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Opening sentence of novel, Chapter 1.

First published on January 28, 1813, Pride And Prejudice recently celebrated its 200^th birthday.  It has captured devoted readers in every time period and almost every language and has a well-deserved place on any recommended reading list. Jane Austen has created a host of characters that have managed to retain acute identifiability for every generation, which is a remarkable achievement for any writer.

As a woman, I feel for Elizabeth and Jane, whose hearts hold out for someone who they can admire and love.  While women around them feel the pressure to marry for financial security, they continue to hold out for a relationship that is affectionate and respectful.

The characters created in Pride And Prejudice, the second published book by Jane Austen richly portray critical issues of the day, along with the importance of money, class structure and how these matters rule the novel’s characters, their choices and their inherent societal obligations.

The business of her life was to get her daughters married.

About Mrs. Bennett, Chapter 1.

Jane Austen wrote Pride And Prejudice between October 1796 and August 1797, after staying with her brother Edward and his wife at Goodnestone Park in Kent and originally  titled it First Impressions.  Initially rejected by a publisher, Austen made revisions between 1811 and 1812 and eventually renamed the story Pride And Prejudice.

It is possible that the title Pride And Prejudice was taken from a passage in one of Jane Austen’s favorite novels of the day, Fanny Burney’s Cecilia – “The whole of this unfortunate business,” said Dr. Lyster, “has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE… Yet this, however, remember: if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to PRIDE AND PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination…”

Jane Austen’s skill in irony, comedy and in vividly representing the intricate social mores of her time period combined with the richness and variety of the characters that she creates in her novels is all happily and abundantly displayed in Pride And Prejudice.

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! – When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”

Caroline Bingley, Chapter 11.

(For once, I agree with Miss Bingley.)

As leader of Britain during World War II Winston Churchill comforted himself during a bout with mid-war pneumonia by having his daughter Sarah read it aloud from the foot of his bed.  He had already read Sense And Sensibility and now enjoyed Pride And Prejudice.  “What calm lives they had, those people?  No worries about the French Revolution or the crashing struggle of the Napoleonic Wars.  Only manners controlling natural passion as far as they could, together with cultural explanations of any mischances.”

You’ve rightfully admired Mr. Firth as Mr. Darcy, enjoyed Judi Dench’s rendition of Lady Catherine De Bourgh or groaned at the failure of the Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier 1940 movie to stick to the actual novel – so make sure you take the time to check out the real work itself.

The Jane Austen Tea Society has happily returned to a study of our beloved Regency author’s works in the order in which they were published. Our second selection will be Pride And Prejudice with a High Tea and Book Discussion to take place on Saturday the 27th of April 2013 at 11am.

There is plenty of time – start reading!

And About Barton Cottage…

A small green court was the whole of its demesne in front; and a neat wicket gate admitted them into it.

As a house, Barton Cottage, though small, was comfortable and compact; but as a cottage it was defective, for the building was regular, the roof was tiled, the window shutters were not painted green, nor were the walls covered with honeysuckles.  A narrow passage led directly through the house into the garden behind.  On each side of the entrance was a sitting room, about sixteen feet square; and behind them were the offices and the stairs.  Four bedrooms and two garrets formed the rest of the house.  It had not been built many years and was in good repair.  In comparison of Norland, it was poor and small indeed! — but the tears which recollection called forth as they entered the house were soon dried away. They were cheered by the joy of the servants on their arrival, and each for the sake of the others resolved to appear happy.  It was very early in September; the season was fine, and from first seeing the place under the advantage of good weather, they received an impression in its favour which was of material service in recommending it to their lasting approbation.

Sense And Sensibility – Chapter Six

Who wouldn’t want to live in Barton Cottage?  As a fervid Janeite I want to understand the dismay with which Elinor, her sisters and her mother feel on moving into their small (for them) new abode - but I confess that I can’t.

I would relish the process of returning home by entering a small green courtyard through a neat wicket gate. A tiled roof, shuttered windows, cozy sitting rooms and a passage leading into a garden behind the cottage with high hills behind and lofty green downs nearby to walk and dream upon….  It all sounds blissful. Now these ladies were in a serious downsizing situation and it is true that none of us want to leave a beloved home – yet I find myself envying this set of Dashwoods.

But what’s this about the cottage being defective because the shutters weren’t green? And not only were the outside walls sadly honeysuckle-free, but the building was regular and the roof was only… well… tiled?    From William Wordsworth’s descriptions of moss-grown huts and Keats’ autumn cottages whose thatched eves were covered with fruited vines, it’s easy to see that Romanticism had leant a yearning for the rustic, the picturesque and the irregular.

Jane Austen wrote during the time of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Byron, and many of this Regency work’s characters and their reactions strongly echo the period’s Sensibility Movement.  The Regency Era (1811-1820) fell directly in the middle of what is considered The Romantic Period (1800-1840) and its literature reflected the thoughts and emotions of the time.  This reading of Sense And Sensibility has awakened me to a fresh realization of how much the Romantic Movement is reflected in Marianne Dashwood with her love of beauty, her pride in unbridled emotions and her admiration of passionate hearts.  

"It was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion; and upon Elinor therefore the whole task of telling lies when politeness required it, always fell."

Sense And Sensibility – Chapter 21

Next weekend we will meet to discuss Jane Austen’s first published work – Sense And Sensibility - over perfectly brewed tea, fruit, pastries and savories.  

Read on!

 "Meeting you was fate, becoming your friend was a choice, but falling in love with you I had no control over."

William Cowper

Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen

“Always resignation and acceptance. Always prudence and honour and duty. Elinor, where is your heart?”

      Sense And Sensibility

In 1811 Thomas Egerton of the publishing house Military Library (Whitehall, London) published a novel by “A Lady”.  The young nineteen year old author paid for its publication – the cost of which was roughly one third of her annual household income - and then paid the publisher a commission on sales. Entitled Sense And Sensibility, it was her first published work.

This young writer was to have four major novels published during her lifetime and two posthumously.  Sadly, it was only after her death that she was identified by name as author of her works.

Born a country clergyman’s daughter on December 16, 1775 at Steventon Rectory in Hampshire, Jane Austen was educated at home, drawing from her father’s extensive library and the educational atmosphere created with Mr. Austen’s live-in pupils.  Even as a child, Jane entertained her family with poems, stories and plays.  And she has continued charming countless readers ever since.

Sense And Sensibility was originally written sometime around 1795 in the epistolary style and was called Elinor And Marianne. Jane Austen then worked on and completed another novel, First Impressions that her father sought to have published but which was met with a rejection letter.  Returning to Elinor And Marianne, she changed the form to third person narrative and after much revision the work became Sense And Sensibility. There is not enough information to know for sure how much of the original work was retained but we do know that a depth of philosophical thought was added.

Set in the Southwest England of the 1790s Sense And Sensibility explores the necessity of finding a workable mid-ground between passion and reason.  Over the years biographers have questioned what Ms. Austen herself believed in regards to this question…  Should sensibility triumph in the end? And what of passionate love and romantic hope?

Filled with satire, humor and sharp social commentary, Sense And Sensibility carries us into the heart of a family and the devoted love and friendship between two sisters – a fertile ground that Jane Austen thoroughly understood herself.

Our next High Tea and Book Discussion will take place on Saturday the 19th of January 2013.  After happily exploring British Victorian Authors from 2010 through 2012, we are now returning to revisit Jane Austen and her six major works in the order in which they were published.

Our first selection will be Sense And Sensibility and there is plenty of time to walk the lovely path that this book offers.  Don’t pass this masterpiece by and miss the experience!

Current Read - Sherlock Holmes

'Come, Watson, come!' he cried. 'The game is afoot. Not a word! Into your clothes and come!'

Sherlock Holmes Quote from The Adventure of The Abbey Grange

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1859, Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle fought his way through a childhood filled with the instability that his alcoholic father brought to the family and, supported by wealthy uncles, was given the opportunity to receive an education that then enabled him to begin his medical school studies at the University of Edinburgh in 1876.

And it was during that time that Arthur Conan Doyle began to write. 

His experience, talents and medical studies contributed to his creations but although he began to submit short stories to magazines, nothing gained him any significant recognition until A Study In Scarlet was accepted by Ward Lock & Co on November 20, 1886.  It then appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual to good reviews and brought Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson into the literary world and permanently into reader’s hearts for generations to come.

There are thought to be several inspirations for the inimitable detective Sherlock Holmes, but Joseph Bell, one of Conan Doyle’s university professors, is generally recognized as having introduced ideas regarding deduction, observation and inference that found their way into Sherlock’s personality and methods of detection.

After A Study In Scarlet, The Sign Of The Four was commissioned, followed by other successful and popular short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.  With a writing career that continued to be far more successful than his medical career, Conan Doyle began to dedicate himself to also writing historical novels which he considered to be more “important works”.  To clear the path for his new passion, he decided to send Holmes and his nemesis, Moriarty, to their deaths in the story “The Final Problem”. 

Bad idea.

Needless to say, public outcry brought Sherlock Holmes back in more stories – 56 short stories altogether and four novels produced between 1887 and 1927.  Dr. Watson narrates all but four stories but Holmes tells the story himself in “The Blanched Soldier” and “The Lion’s Mane”. The stories  “The Musgrave Ritual” and “The Gloria Scott” feature Holmes relating the storyline to Watson through his memories as the Doctor narrates between. Both “The Mazarin Stone” and His Last Bow are related in third person and A Study In Scarlet and The Valley Of Fear include additional narration both of events known and unknown to either Sherlock and Watson.

The personality of Sherlock Holmes has intrigued and inspired readers ever since their publication and have influenced other works of  fiction, film and television shows.   In London the famous address of 221B Baker Street is as important to lovers of literature as 10 Downing Street is to polititians and Sherlockian fans can even visit the Sherlock Holmes Museum at the well known location. http://www.sherlock-holmes.co.uk/

Members of The Jane Austen Tea Society – you still have plenty of time to read one of the Sherlock Holmes novels or short stories so that we can meet and discuss over tea & scones on Saturday, October 6th.  You may do as I am doing and read “A Study In Scarlet” so that you can discover how Holmes met Dr. Watson.  But you might choose “A Scandal In Bohemia” if you want to read about Sherlock’s love interest or “The Final Problem” to as he crosses paths with Professor Moriarty.

Lay aside your preconceived notions about Sherlock and Watson and go back to the source – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original works!  After all, as Holmes said in “A Study In Scarlet” – 
“There is nothing like first-hand evidence.”

"To see my soul!" muttered Dorian Gray...

... "Your name was implicated in the most terrible confession I ever read.  I told him that it was absurd - that I knew you thoroughly, and that you were incapable of anything of the kind. Know you? I wonder do I know you? Before I could answer that, I should have to see your soul."

"To see my soul!" muttered Dorian Gray, starting up from the sofa and turning almost white from fear.

"Yes," answered Hallward, gravely, and with deep-toned sorrow in his voice -"to see your soul. But only God can do that."

A bitter laugh of mockery broke from the lips of the younger man.

"You shall see it yourself, to-night!" he cried, seizing a lamp from the table. "Come: it is your own handiwork. Why shouldn't you look at it? You can tell the world all about it afterwards, if you choose. Nobody would believe you. If they did believe you, they would like me all the better for it. I know the age better than you do, though you will prate about it so tediously. Come, I tell you.  You have chattered enough about corruption.  Now you shall look on it face to face."

Chapter XII
The Picture Of Dorian Gray

Our Book Tea for The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde will take place this coming Saturday, July 14th at 1pm at our favorite Tearoom over high tea delicacies, steaming, seductively fragrant china cups of Cream Earl Grey and shared & savored analysis.  

You may be with us in person or you may leave us comments here at our blog.  In either case, you hopefully enjoyed this Victorian classic by the singular and quite indomitable Oscar Wilde.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

 “I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland on October 16th, 1854 and died impoverished in Paris on November 30th, 1900.

"I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china."

He was often ridiculously flamboyant and a brilliant conversationalist.  Celebrated and praised by glittering London society and the fashionable elite, he energetically expressed his own daring, personal style through long hair, colorful clothes and a habit of carrying little bouquets when lecturing.

"The only thing worse in the world than being talked about is not being talked about."

Mostly known as a playwright in the early 1890s, Wilde also exercised his writing talents & wit into works of poetry, epigrams, essays, dialogues and his one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.

“With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?”

First appearing in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in the summer of 1890, The Picture Of Dorian Gray was the only published novel by Oscar Wilde. From the magazine version, Wilde amended and revised the story into the novel that was then published in April of 1891 by Ward, Lock And Company. The craving to stay young and beautiful is certainly not foreign to our present age… but what lengths will you go to preserve it. Leading a double life is a dangerous and tricky path to walk.

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.”

Fame, a fourteen-year marriage to the wealthy Constance Lloyd and various law suits, combined with unprincipled friends and a growing double life of his own to send Wilde into a decline that finally carried him into a prison sentence at Pentonville and then Wandsworth Prison in London. 

His health ruined, Oscar Wilde went into exile in Paris and spent his last days there in a dismal room -  about which he quipped – “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death.  One of us has got to go.”   Originally a pension house called Hôtel d’Alsace, this renovated Left Bank luxury hotel now offers a stay in various rooms famous for their former occupants – including The Oscar Wilde Room.

http://www.luxurytravelbible.com/Product.asp?ProductName=Oscar%20Wilde%20Room,%20L'Hotel,%20Paris%20&ProductCode=&ProductID=114&CategoryID=15

"Never trust a woman who tells you her real age; a woman who tells you that would tell you anything."

Buried in Père Lachaise cemetery, Oscar Wilde’s monument was kissed so many times with red-lipsticked smooches that to prevent further damage, it has been encased in glass.  It remains a favorite grave in the famed Paris cemetery.

The next read for The Jane Austen Tea Society will be – The Picture Of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.  Find a copy to start reading now!  Our book tea to discuss this enjoyably discussable read will be July 14^th, 2012!