It was a wet morning ( yes another ) but 52 members attended our September meeting. After the initial welcome there were reports of certain of our activities during the past month. The garden meeting in August was much enjoyed and the book, plants and bring and buy sales realized a good profit to be donated to charity. An outing to Mary Berry's garden in Penn and another to Bagpuize House and Denman College had received approval from the groups. One of our founder members Genevieve Usher had the distinction of becomimg second in the county for her monologue in the Lady Denman Cup competition. She received a round of applause and wll go on to the final. Genevieve also alerted us to the need for better diagnosis of ovarian cancer and Kath Pinto praised a solar heating hot water club recently started in Cookham Dean.
We welcomed our speaker Mr Tanner whose talk was entitled “ Living with Jane Austen “ , a subject dear to our hearts judging by the large turnout.
For his reminiscences Mr Tanner took on the persona of the Austen family gardener with a suitably bucolic accent. In his role of gardener he lived in Steventon where Jane's father was rector and where she grew up with her brothers and sisters. We can see from Jane's mode of life that it was very similar to some of her heroines: she took walks, visited the poor, danced at the local Assembly Rooms and if she was lucky was invited to one or two of the large houses in the area. She also went to Bath where she lived for a while with her father and sister Cassandra. She hated Bath and when her father died she and her sister took a cottage in the village of Chawton where she happily wrote the rest of her books. Our narrator in the guise of the gardener also went to Chawton where he gardened for Jane and also for her wealthy brother who lived in a mansion nearby.
Sadly Jane became ill at a relatively early age and spent her last days in Winchester County Hospital. She died there aged 41 and was buried inWinchester Cathedral, a productive life cut short. Who knows what other gems she might have written.
Our next meeting will be on Oct 7th and we will have a talk on “ The mysteries of the mind “
0 comments:
Post a Comment