Party on, Jane
April 27, 2007
(Go ahead, say it. You know you want to. “Party on, Garth!”)
The Dolphin Hotel in Southampton is for sale. The article says that Jane Austen celebrated her 18th birthday there; we are not sure that is true, but according to Irene Collins’ excellent book Jane Austen: The Parson’s Daughter, Jane spent the end of 1793, when she would have turned 18, in Southampton and danced at a ball at the Dolphin.
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I was there on Wednesday night having free cocktails in the bar! I had no idea they were selling up. I hope the place passes into suitable hands, it’s one of the few listed buildings that we have left in the city (and the restaurant does great food!)
If Jane Austen had really visited all the hotels in England that claim her as a visitor, she would have had to live to be a hundred. The Rutland Arms in Bakewell, Derbyshire, for instance, identifies the room she stayed in, and describes in detail what she did during her stay. Then there’s a (former) nursing home in Sevenoaks, Kent, that claims Jane Austen once lived there. The place was built in the 1840s… the Dolphin’s claim is genuine though (that she visited, I don’t know about the 18th Birthday Bash.)
She did dance at the ball there but in the winter of 1808 and again in January 1809 when whe was in her thirties.