Jane Austen: Keeping a Georgian Christmas

maandag 26 december 2011

Keeping a Georgian Christmas

The current exhibition, The Keeping of Christmas (November-December 31, 2011) being held at Fairfax House. provides a wonderful view of Christmas decorating and celebrating as it would have appeared in the time of Jane Austen.

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Edward Austen Leigh wrote down this description of Jane's appearence in the years just after the family left Southampton.

"She was tall and slender; her face was rounded with a clear brunette complexion and bright hazel eyes.

Her curly brown hair escaped all round her forehead, but from the time of her coming to live at Chawton she always wore a cap, except when her nieces had her in London and forbade it."

Henry Austen said of his sister, " Her stature rather exceeded the middle height; her carriage anad deportment were quiet but graceful; her complexion of the finest texture, it might with truth be said that her eloquent blood spoke through her modest cheek." Henry applied these lines to Jane: " Her pure and eloquent blood spake in her cheeks and so distinctly wrought that you had almost said her body thought."

Portraits of Jane

There have been only two authentic surviving portraits of Jane Austen, both by her sister Cassandra, one of which is a back view! (A poor-quality greycale JPEG and a poor-quality color JPEG of this are available.) The other is a rather disappointing pen and wash drawing made about 1810 (a somewhat manipulated JPEG of this original sketch is available). The main picture of Jane Austen referenced at this site (JPEG) is a much more æsthetically pleasing adaptation of the same portrait, but should be viewed with caution, since it is not the original (for a more sentimentalized Victorian version of this portrait, see this image, and for an even sillier version of the portrait, in which poor Jane has a rather pained expression and is decked out in cloth-of-gold or something, see this image -- for some strange reason, it is this last picture which has been frequently used to illustrate popular media articles on Jane Austen). Here's the silliest version of this portrait ever.
For a fun modern re-creation of the Jane Austen portrait, see the "Photograph" of Jane Austen lounging at a Hollywood poolside (as seen in Entertainment Weekly). See also a deliberately contemporized (but not silly) version of the portrait by Amy Bellinger. The silhouette included at the top of these files (if you have a graphic browser) is not actually known with certainty to be Jane Austen's. Here is another silhouette said to be of Jane Austen, taken from The Illustrated Letters of Jane Austen edited by Penelope Hughes-Hallett (formerly published as My Dear Cassandra: The Letters Of Jane Austen).
Silhouettes of Jane Austen's father and mother (that of her father apparently taken at a rather earlier age), a silhouette of Cassandra, and Cassandra's portrait of their niece Fanny Knight (JPEG) are also available.
In 1994, another portrait, claimed to be of Jane Austen, has been discovered among Mr. Clarke's papers, and published in a limited edition (this portrait was reportedly printed in the Daily Telegraph book section of Saturday, March 4 1995). Go to this site for more information (and a scanned image) of the portrait.
A picture of the Austen family coat of arms is also available (both the original greyscale and a rudimentary colorization). The heraldic "blazon" (description) is "Or, a chevron gules between three lions' gambs erect, erased sable armed of the second. Crest: on a mural crown or, a stag sejant argent, attired or." (Note that the ornamental winged child's head at the bottom of the heraldic shield is not actually part of the coat of arms.) The Latin motto, "QUI INVIDIT MINOR EST", can be translated as "Who(ever) envies (me) is lesser/smaller (than I)".

Trifle

Original recipe from Jane Austen's sister-in-law Martha Lloyd:
"Take three Naple biscuits. Cut them in slices. Dip them in sack. Lay them on the bottom of your dish. Then make a custard of a pint of cream and five eggs and put over them. Them make a whipt syllabub as light as possible to cover the whole. The higher it is piled, the handsomer it looks."

Cheesecakes
"Our journey yesterday went off exceedingly well; nothing occurred to alarm or delay us... At Devizes we had comfortable rooms and a good dinner, to which we sat down about five; amongst other things we had asparagus and a lobster, which made me wish for you, and some cheesecakes, on which the children made so delightful a supper as to endear the town of Devizes to them for a long time."
—Jane Austen writing to her sister Cassandra, Queen's Square, Friday (May 17) 1799

Jane Austen

maandag 26 december 2011

Keeping a Georgian Christmas

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