The Jane Austen Centre Tour: literature as lifestyle

The Jane Austen Centre, Bath, is squeezed into a Georgian house and spread over two floors with the third floor, up top, given over to a tea room. At the front door a middle-aged man in period costume, sideburns bristling, hovered around, occasionally waving at the passing tourist buses trying to drum up business. I could see how his job could easily become a soul destroying one if he invested too much of himself in it. I slipped past, got my ticket from a lady, also in period costume, who ushered me up onto the 1st floor.

There I waited for fifteen minutes until the next introduction to the centre was due to start. At first alone and then with a small but growing group, I watched a promotional video for the Jane Austen Festival, which takes place annually in Bath and features literary events, dances, walks, concerts and dinners. Much of it appeared to have next to nothing to do with literature except for the fact that Austen wrote about these things. There is, I realised, a big market for fans to enter into the world of the novels that they hold dear: they've already bought the books, the next step is workshops in the dances that Austen may have enjoyed.

A young woman entered and then ushered us into the next room where she gave us an introduction to the life and work of Jane Austen. I have to confess to not having read cover to cover any of her novels; I received a truly awful education in English literature that pretty much poisoned the entire English cannon for me. So, In order to get better acquainted with Austin's oeuvre, I have just watched an adaptation of Northanger Abbey. It looked like a good quality Mills & Boon story. Indeed, taking a look at the Mills & Boon website, like you do, I noticed that they have a 24-book Regency Society series of brassiere busters. I know that TV adaptations are almost always going to have a dumbing down effect on literature and I also see it was a vastly different thing for Austen to write novels back then than it is for the M&B stable of authors to pump out their slim tomes destined to fill charity shops. Still, it is ultimately girl meets boy stuff. That said, even though I was through with it by about 20 minutes and was then watching it mainly for the Bath angle, I did hang on till the bitter, or should I say saccharine sweet end, when they got married, had a baby and lived happily ever after. You can't leave things like that dangling in the air.

  

We were shown a picture of Austin's family home in Chawton, Hampshire which is today the Jane Austen's House Museum. I got the distinct impression that it was by far the larger and more prestigious establishment and that this smaller Bath centre, existed because the city is a major tourist destination and the setting of two of her novels. The Bath connection is, then, not wholly tenuous, even if it takes the form of a museum primarily because of tourist money. I noticed some much more opportunistic literary acquisition still in the shape of Birmingham's claim to some of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle glory on the basis of a few months' work there spread over 3 years. Portsmouth has their angle on his time there, Edinburgh can claim his birthplace, London has 221b Baker street and Crowborough, his home in Sussex, is in with a punt too. There's no reason why there should only be one museum to these figures, but in the case of Jane Austen and Bath, I felt it superfluous in that they didn't really have anything very original to show, the original objects are held elsewhere. The relationship between the author and city was, here, not that of the city showing off its finest sons and daughters but rather the city using its relations with famous figures to show off itself. Bath is in the enviable position of having been a society resort to which practically all of the 18th Century canonical English authors would have paid a visit. This opens up the possibility of many more museums where this one came from.

The introductory talk lasted no more than 20 minutes and we were then led downstairs into the exhibition space and left to it. There were displays like the one which work the Austen in Bath angle; both Austin the writer and the lives of her literary creations.

Following this was a video that explained it a whole lot more. There were some nice shots of the architecture and a spectral Georgian lady making her way along the streets. It looked a bit like a ghost walk but I suppose the idea is that the presence of Austen remains tangible in the city today. It was striking that the Bath of this video looked almost exactly like the Bath of the walking tours. No Primark and absolutely no Poundland.

An actor who had starred in one of the adaptations of her novels a few years back gave the authoritative narrative that strung the video together. It featured many clips from film adaptations and the whole package was politely short so that it didn't try the visitors' patience. If there are multiple levels and nuances to her work, as I'm guessing their must be, they were not evinced here. The centre, when taken as a whole, seemed to celebrate Jane Austin and the Bath lifestyle that she led and wrote about, while leaving her actual literary works more or less untouched.

Moving on, I came to a wardrobe of clothes and here I am playing at being the Georgian gentleman. Dressing up in period costume was more popular with the ladies: I was the only man attired this and the choice of men's clothes was far more limited. Looking at the picture now, I think I look a bit stranded in the 21st century, not quite able to make that leap back. I do have some pictures from my dim past working on TV period dramas, however, and in these I am a little more fully makeover for the 18th and 19th centuries. Thinking back to those costume drama experiences, I seem to remember the programmes almost always found themselves caught in the dilemma that the audience and actors didn't actually want to go too far down the line of historical accuracy. If it's done too thoroughly, the actors get stuck with weird haircuts and facial hair that interferes with their other work and they have to learn accents and mannerisms that today's audience struggle to understand. So that is how it was in the centre too: we all remained stranded in our presents, the costumed staff in the centre and tourists dressing up for Georgian dinners and dances.

This is a picture that was taken a few weeks ago when I visited the centre for the unveiling of their latest exhibit. I only had the time that day to see the final exhibit, this 'lifelike' waxwork model of Jane Austen based upon a single sketch and written descriptions of her. There are now 'no photography' signs up around it. I'm trying to understand the impulse to stop photography since taking pictures has become so much a part of what tourists do. No 1 Royal Crescent also has a picture ban as does Denis Severs House in London, which I reviewed a few months ago. There is an article in The Telegraph supporting a photo ban, but reading through the comments it is interesting to see how normal people are more inclined to allow photography, as indeed am I. While I think there is a problem of some people paying too much attention to artworks through the lens of their camera and not looking closely enough when lacking a screen, I believe educating people to look rather than banning this principal form of image distribution is the answer. The Jane Austen Centre banning just this single exhibit seems odd and it could have been done for two reasons, as far as I can see. The first was to protect the sculpture from flash photography. I don't know how it was made and if it is sensitive to flash, so maybe there's something there. The second reason is simply to protect postcard sales. This Jane Austen lookalike sculpture and the dressing up option in the previous room are practically the only two photo worthy moments in a visit to the centre. Having many pictures like the above double portrait in circulation brings more attention to the centre and Jane Austen more generally. A similar debate takes place in the performance field and I am of the opinion that it is better to embrace the camera as this then leaves records that provoke memories and spark conversations.

And then, spat back onto the street, I saw this: blokish humour co-existing with Georgian make believe. Faced with such a contrast I see how there is a space for a Jane Austen Centre. Bath is a divided city and the lines are only starting to become a bit more visible. If it is possible to find tours that can make these evident is a challenge, but I'm out every day with a new tour, so lets see.

The Bath Abbey Audio Tour

The Bath Abbey audio tour is free and can be downloaded from The Abbey's Website. It doesn't come with any instructions or map so I simply walked inside and pressed play.

What I was not expecting was that as well as beginning a half-hour audio tour I would also be walking into an organ concert! Screens positioned around the abbey showed the organist at work which meant looking at his legs dancing over the pedals. It's rare, I realised, to pay so much attention to a musician's legs unless he is a she, the skirt is cut short and the music doesn't distract you too much.

Breaking me out of the pedal dance was the audio tour which navigated me around the abbey and attempted to draw my attention up and not down. A man and woman speaking with clear, well-recorded and eminently civilised voices, talked about the chandeliers and their design, the roof and, of course, the history of the abbey. The directions for what to see and where to stand were good enough for what they were doing but I felt they lacked the precision that a live guide would have and with that, the ability to focus on very specific details which can be used to tell a larger story. I was usually brought to rather general areas and told about that part of the church, that statue or window but not, for example, to a single pane of a window or a specific doorknob. As such, I had the feeling of slightly floating through the space, carried on waves of Bach that were now reverberating throughout the abbey.

I then came across the church VJ who was editing the concert live, switching from leg shots to hand shots which inevitably reminded me of pictures of Rick Wakeman. This, of course, was not part of the audio tour but was quite fun to observe as I always like to understand how a show is put together.

From time to time the organ would get impressively loud and provoke a volume war with my tour. I have to admit that I am not normally one for organ concerts, nor heritage tours of churches, for that matter, so what I write here should come with this major caveat. The effect of experiencing these two stimuli together was curious and not entirely unwelcome. They did not cancel one another out and produce mere noise, nor did they exactly augment one another either. Rather, they allowed one other to exist and be heard without either of them becoming too demanding upon the attention.  

There came a moment when I was walking around with my headphones on that I realised I was the only person doing so and most other people there were glued to the concert. What's more, if they were to look at me it would probably not occur to them that I was listening to an audio tour but instead they'd probably take one look at me and think, what a stupid moment to be listening to music. I partly like audio tours because of the subversive potential they hold, namely that the person taking them can be listening to a commentary that could not possibly be given out loud in that site yet can appear as if they are simply listening to music. In this instance in the Abbey however, it was I who became noticeable.

The audio tour continued regardless and got thick into the history of the abbey. It really is a content heavy audio tour packed full of names and dates that I have pretty much all forgotten. The historical detail was great but I was unable to hold onto it as there was no clear narrative. That, I think, is a common problem when telling the history of an old building, as they often have an excess of stories that defy any single narrative. Still, the effect was to transform a place that is rather beautiful and does have some things worth seeing into a standardised heritage site with less and not more uniqueness as a result of the commentary's framing. It may be that in trying to tell everything it becomes increasingly difficult to say anything.

This brought me to the source of the music: the organ. I remember hearing some surprising stories about church organs and even more surprising ones about organists performing subtle acts of sabotage on their rivals by reassigning keys and tubes an hour before Sunday mass. Even if these nefarious deeds are exceptions and not the rule, they nonetheless offer ways into an understanding of the instrument, musicians and church that stay in the head a lot longer than the date of the restoration of the roof.  

In general I found the Abbey and audio tour to be very accommodating to tourists. Unlike some places which remain primarily a place of worship, the abbey seems to recognise its appeal to visitors, allows almost complete access to them and is happy with people using flash photography. The only area that it said we should not enter, but could look inside, was a small chapel on the side of the altar. My guess is they rightly view tourists as both a source of revenue (there is a suggested entrance donation) and that they can also offer a religious point of contact in an otherwise secular tourist experience. The audio guide does encourage visitors to return for a church service and so has an evangelical role but does this in an understated way that would not turn off the average visitor in a way that a more 'now get down on your knees and repent your sins' message would. 

As well as history being a running theme of the tour, architecture also played a significant role, and it was no surprise why. As is often the case with churches, there is a lot to be said about the roof. 

The concert ended and the organist emerged to take applause. He did so slightly self-consciously and did not milk it at all. This was entirely fitting with the spirit of the place as it came through on the audio tour: accomplished and dignified. This was one of the moments when the two worlds of the tour and concert came together in a pleasingly harmonious way. 

I was then brought to this tapestry and explained its significance. The flags were not discussed in the audio tour, however, and given the current Israel / Gaza conflict which led to the resignation of a government minister yesterday over Britain's position, they immediately grabbed my eye. On a guided tour I would have asked the guide what the intention behind placing them here was but here, instead, they simply hovered on the margins of the audio tour.

An interesting moment came when the tour came to this statue and talked about it being vandalised during the English Civil War. This was one of the parts of the commentary that situated the church's history within the wider history of the country. Being a building tour, however, we then moved onto the next point of interest and dropped this story like a stone. In this respect the tour was not a history of the building but rather a tour of various historical and architectural points of interest dotted around the building. It's a subtle distinction but a real one and in this respect it reminds me of the Undiscovered East End Tour which takes you to points of interest that can be found in that part of London. History, in both tours, is treated as a marker of significance but the tour as a whole lacks a coherent narrative that places its history, or rather histories, on a single timeline.

The tour showed how the walls of the abbey are lined with plaques commemorating the people who have been buried here and it drew my attention to this one in particular. It is, as the guide states, testament to the growth of empire and, if I can put it this way, shows that the abbey was clearly the place to be seen dead in Bath. The walls are crowded with the great and good and as the tour amusingly notes, poorer people were buried further away preserving a class distinction in death. 

And then when it came to an end there was the classic exit through the gift shop. Curiously, after I took this picture I was then asked not to take any more pictures in the gift shop. While welcoming pictures in the abbey they had decided there was nothing to see here. Maybe they were right, but I prefer to be the judge of that. In any case, I then stepped outside and in doing so realised that the tour did not take me around the exterior of the building, it was solely focussed on the interior. I was left reeling with a head full of numbers, a jumble of names and the memory of the bass organ shaking my stomach. It was definitely a full experience, yet it was one which now leaves me with very little I can hold onto except the very civil atmosphere that is Bath Abbey.