Tracing the footsteps of Jane Austen

IF YOU'RE battling your way through the sales in Southampton today, you could well be walking in the footsteps of Jane Austen.

Not that Hampshire's most famous author went in for retail therapy as, apart from the last couple of years of her life, she was practically penniless.

But, between 1806 and 1809 she lived with her brother Frank, just round the corner from the Bargate, at 2 Castle Square.

Today, her clutch of books have been devoured by millions, acclaimed as works of genius and made into multi-million pound films.

The mere sight of actor Colin Firth playing Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice has prompted women to succumb to a fit of the vapours.

Yet all this excitement and female hysteria is in sharp contrast to Jane Austen's life, which was very much in the mould of thousands of other Hampshire ladies of good - but not aristocratic - birth.

This was a breed who passed their days quietly by today's standards - Jane, for example, liked nothing better than to play the piano for around an hour a day.

Property passed from father to son and any capital owned by women automatically went to their husbands on marriage.

Careers were not an option, so most girls were keen to get themselves swiftly married off by around the time they were 21.

Jane, who was in her early 30s by the time she moved to Southampton, was well past the age when she could expect to marry.

But few realised that this spinster aunt was discovering her rich seam of talent instead.

Even when her books began to be published, few matched the novels with this quick-witted lady, with dark curly hair and no carriage to call her own.

Most readers today know Jane lived in the village of Chawton, near Alton.

But they are less likely to be aware of her shortish stint residing by the sea.

On her arrival in Southampton, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey were already written.

The author did not pen any of her internationally famed stories during her three year residence in the city - though it is likely she would draw inspiration for later works during her time here.

It was only when she moved on to Chawton that Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion and the unfinished Sandition were penned.

The move to the south coast was unexpected.

Jane's father had retired from being rector of Steventon in 1801.

The family left the village near Basingstoke, where the children had grown up, and moved to Bath, planning to settle there permanently.

But when the Revd Austen died unexpectedly in 1805, it was decided Mrs Austen should move in with Jane's older brother, naval captain Frank Austen, who had opted for Southampton because it was within easy reach of the docks at Portsmouth. The sailor was enjoying a flourishing career in the navy, having joined up aged just 12.

He was eventually to live into his 90s and end up an Admiral.

The city looks nothing like it did then.

Many of the buildings which Jane would have known were levelled by German bombing raids during the Second World War.

The house they eventually moved into in Castle Square was a sizeable residence, which no longer exists.

What especially pleased Jane was that, although the building was old and rickety, it had a large garden, which ran right down to the city walls.

The home was rented from the Marquis of Lansdowne, who had built himself a slightly outrageous mock Gothic mansion complete with turrets for nearby.

Their landlord's household proved a source of interest to the Austens.

Lady Lansdowne was not generally approved of as she had been her husband's mistress prior to their marriage and (gasp) she painted her face.

But they quite liked her carriage, pulled by eight tiny horses, especially selected for their size and exact colouring.

The letters Jane wrote are one of the prime sources historians have found to draw information about her character.

In missives to friends and family from this era, Jane displays the shrewd - and barbed - social observation which are the hallmark of her hugely successful novels.

And, in between curtain-twitching on the neighbours, Southampton social life proved hectic, leading Jane to grizzle in a letter: "Our acquaintance increase too fast".

In between nights out on the town, dances and the theatre, there would be friends to be visited, walks, dinner parties, and card evenings.

Good manners seem stiff and formal by today's standards and there would have been plenty of bowing and curtsying all round.

She always wrote about what she knew best and drew on the experiences of those closest to her.

For example, nowhere in any of her six completed books does a conversation take place between two men who are alone, with no-one else around them.

Given that she lived in Frank's household, it's not surprising that Persuasion has a naval theme, with the heroine Anne Elliot finally united with Captain Wentworth, the man who's marriage proposal she had misguidedly spurned.

He was called back to sea, after becoming captain of HMS St Albans and sailed off on convoy duty to the Cape of Good Hope, leaving his wife to endure a difficult but successful pregnancy, the first of 11.

When family members visited, there were boat trips to Hythe and Netley Abbey, with which Jane's niece Fanny was so impressed, she wrote warmly of being struck dumb with admiration at seeing the ruins.

There are also records of a trip to the New Forest, which Jane failed to go on.

This part of Jane's life was also marked by a sad event, which may well have made her relieved that she was not married and pregnant each year.

Her sister-in-law Elizabeth died shortly after giving birth to her 11th child, a boy.

Her two eldest sons, Edward and George, were sent to stay with their aunt in Southampton before returning to school at Winchester College.

The author set about diverting the grieving pair.

"We had a little water party yesterday; I and my two nephews went from the Itchen Ferry up to Northam, where we landed, looked into the 74 (a type of naval warship) and walked home."

She played card games with them, built paper boats, then attacked the craft with chestnuts.

That Christmas Jane fair whooped it up in early 19th century terms.

She and friend Martha Lloyd went to the theatre and attended a ball at the Dolphin Hotel, which still stands in the High Street.

"Our ball was rather more amusing than I expected. The room was tolerably full, and there were perhaps thirty couple of dancers.

"The melancholy part was to see so many dozen young women standing by without partners, and each of them with two ugly naked shoulders!

"It was the same room in which we danced 15 years ago! I though it all over - and in spite of the same of being so much older, felt with thankfulness that I was quite as happy now as then ...You will not expect to hear that I was asked to dance - but I was - by the gentleman whom we met with Captain d'Auvergne."

Jane Austen went on to move to Chawton Cottage in July 1809.

It was then that her literary career really took off, with the publication of her first novel in 1811.

In these final works the reader sees Jane produce some of her most likeable heroines, Emma and Anne Elliot.

Though they have their faults - Emma is a bit of a snobbish matchmaker and Anne had proved herself easily influenced - they are much easier to swallow than someone overwhemingly goody-goody like the yawnsome Fanny Price.

But Jane did not live long enough to enjoy anything but the very beginnings of the literary acclaim she has earned postumously.

Her health began to decline significantly in 1816, prompting her to move to Winchester the next year, so she could be treated by a surgeon.

She died on July 18, 1817 of a "wasting disease" and was buried in the cathedral.

Unfortunately, in recording her death, Winchester newspaper the Hampshire Chronicle failed to mention the fact that she was a writer.

That scoop went to what is now the Salisbury Journal.