Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
houses, Nash's great Regent Street scheme had yet to begin, and the Thames ran uncon-
fined by the Embankment.
Gas lighting was a novelty in a few streets, privies were still cleared by night-soil men,
vast herds of animals were driven daily through the streets to reach the markets, and thou-
sands of horses filled the city with the noise of their hooves and mired the streets with piles
of dung. The air was thick with coal smoke from a million chimneys.
Jane never lived for more than a few weeks at a time in London, but she passed through
it often on her way to visit friends and family and she stayed on many occasions with her
banker brother Henry. Her publishers were in London and her vivid letters are full of detail
about shopping expeditions and visits to galleries and theatres.
Despite her protests - '…the truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody
is healthy in London, nobody can be.' (
Emma
) - her excitement in coming to Town shines
through. 'Here I am once more in this Scene of Dissipation & vice, and I begin already to
find my Morals corrupted,' she jokes to Cassandra in August 1796.
The eight walks in this topic explore three Londons: London at the turn of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, the London of Jane Austen's personal experience, and the London
of her novels. They are organised east to west and will take you from grand aristocratic
mansions to squalid prisons, and from the theatres where Jane admired the great actors of
her day to the place where she found 'a great many pretty Caps.' Following these routes we
tread in the footsteps of sulky Lydia Bennett, heartbroken Marianne Dashwood, and lovers
Harriet Smith and Robert Martin.
THE LENGTH OF THE WALKS
The length is given at the beginning of each walk, but not the time taken, as this will vary
depending on whether or not you visit any of the museums, theatres and churches along
the way. However, those aside, all the walks can be accomplished in about two hours at a
leisurely pace.
