Listen to the silence
Over the last six months, my newsletter has looked at communication and relationships among people this side of the big divide. This month, I venture into another connection, exploring an encounter with a well-known person on the other side. Technically, I could say ‘dead’, but somehow ‘dead’ does not describe Jane Austen.
A visit to Chawton Village and Jane Austen’s house last month yielded much more than the pleasure of a weekend outing, immediately forgotten as the demands of a new week elbowed it to one side. I took over a hundred photos, looked through them again and again since, and let the house –or rather Jane through the house and its objects– speak to me. Over the last few weeks, her wisdom percolated at a leisurely pace, like a walk to Meryton.
She had a lot to say.
Message no 1: Write wherever you are, with what you have.
Jane wrote in the corner of the dining room at a small side table positioned between the fireplace and the window. A door hinge was deliberately left creaking to let her know that someone was coming, so that she could hide her writing under some blotting paper.
For over two years I have also been writing in a corner of the living/dining room at times when the rest of the family weren’t here. I identified with Jane’s protectiveness towards her writing, as if it were a delicate flower to be withered by a mere askance look. Still, the corner of the dining room is where her masterpieces were born — my creations are too humble to even be mentioned in the same sentence, but still…I felt inspired.
Message no 2: People and their comings and goings are your concern and rough material.
Jane sat facing the window sideways, unseen herself by the village street, but looking on to it, and observing passers-by. From where she sat, she would be facing the Cassandra’s Cup teashop — I wonder what the building was in her time.
One more parallel: since March 2019 and throughout the lockdown, my writing desk has been facing the back garden, and I was facing inwards. But in around a month’s time I will have the (long overdue!) Room of My Own looking on to a London street. A few hundred yards to the west, a tube station, a sub-post office, a sushi bar, a Japanese delicatessen, a dry cleaner and a couple of estate agents. A few hundred yards to the east, a primary school and a large playing field. A bus passes every 10–15 minutes until past midnight, commuters rush to the tube, parents pushing buggies take the older children to school, mothers hang about chatting after school, every now and then a runner passes through, panting. Although I won’t necessarily draw inspiration from the goings-on outside my window, I will now be facing outwards, at a tableau vivant of the world that keeps spinning round.
Message no 3: Life is made up of interwoven strands that make up a whole.
I was attracted to the wallpaper pattern in an upstairs room, which struck me as an extended metaphor of my memoir. This is a project I’ve been at for more than I can remember: I keep hitting on the realisation that there are too many strands I can’t extricate, lose heart, and put it aside for a bit. But I can’t just leave it, it must be told. The places I have lived make up the warps; the stories of the loves, the hurt, and the losses put together the intricate pattern.
Message no 4: Make the best of what you have: it is often good enough.
The empty spaces on the wallpaper are dotted with a shape looking like an insect. It turns out that this unrecognizable shape was meant to be the stem of a rosebud, and that through the printer’s mistake, the whole wallpaper print-run was missing the actual bud. The wallpaper was hung upside down so that the fault would not be too obvious. It is assumed that the wallpaper was bought as a ‘second’ at a time when wallpaper was very expensive. Even if not perfect, it serves its purpose. It told me, it doesn’t matter where you start from, or even the wrong way round: getting on with it is more important.
Message no 5: Completing anything requires patience, love, commitment and sheer determination to keep at it, bit by bit.
In another upstairs room, I came across Jane’s quilt. It has a centrepiece of a basket of flowers and was made up of more than 3,000 pieces handstitched by Jane herself, Cassandra and their mother.
Who worked out the master plan? Did they source and prepare all the patches before starting? Did they start from the central panel and worked towards the edges? What about the trellis of the white with the polka dots bands? How many hundreds of hours did Jane expend on this project, her hands busy and the mind likewise plotting out stories and refining descriptions?
The patchwork shone a light on my writing. Instead of being daunted by the enormity of the task, and the tangled strands of the fabric, I will keep in mind the centrepiece of the book. Then I’ll put together the pieces, one by one: it will take a long as it needs to, but it will be done.
Message no 6: We are united through a common object of love
Finally, I saw this message on a small landing at the back of the house:
“As we often see here, at her house, a love of Jane Austen really can bring people together. In this spirit, we would love to hear your Jane Austen story — what she means to you, when you first read her books, and how they bring you comfort. Please share your Jane Austen story with us on our social media channels using the hashtag #MyJaneStory”.
