Comments on: The "real" Meryton? (Updated)

By: Caroline

Caroline — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:24:24 +0000

I just want to add two things to the confusion;

1) Hertford (the town) and Ware have between them a real house called Netherfield.

2)Ware was the main staging town despite the fact that Hertford was actually more important (as the county town) in Jane Austen’s time. And it was Ware that historically had an inn called “The George”- the same name as the place where Lydia and Kitty ordered a load of food and then couldn’t pay for it…

One other thing…it’s my personal theory that our authoress deliberately mixed up features of various towns and villages in order to create her fictional ones. Whether she just liked to imagine them, or whether she did it so that she wouldn’t get sued by anyone I leave up to others to discover.

What I do know, as an Englishwoman, as a geographer , and as a former resident of a small village near Basingstoke is that the busy, pretty, Basingstoke that Jane Austen knew (and which doesn’t exist, now)could easliy be part of the mix. I am even more certain that it got plundered to the be the Surrey town of D________ for The Watsons, too. But that is another argument.

Mags, you are right- all this is pie in the sky. But it is fun!

By: Mags

Mags — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:12:34 +0000

Peter, thank you for the reference, but please don’t copy THE WHOLE THING, especially since it’s online–just put a link to it, as I’ve done above. There are copyright issues involved. Certainly you can copy and paste a paragraph or two, but not the whole thing. For instance, I liked this bit:

The text will undoubtedly be of use for the usual suspects—quiz makers or trivia mongers—but will also provide a ready reference for “the interested.”

Yes, exactly–there are people who are indeed interested in that sort of trivia. I tend to read Jane Austen from a writer’s perspective as well as a reader’s, and it interests me to get a glimpse of her process, as I said above.

(to make the boxed quotation as I did, type

before the quotation and

after it.)

I’m sure I don’t know why “Austenian” and “Janeites” would make you wince. Let’s not pull bonnets over perceptions of what a “Janeite” might be or start with the “I like Jane Austen but I’m not a JANEITE” nonsense. I’m a Janeite, and proud to be one.

By: Peter Willsohn

Peter Willsohn — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:43:54 +0000

This book may be a help. [The link is to] an on-line review. The words "Austenian" and "Janeites" made me visibly wince however.

By: Mags

Mags — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 06:29:40 +0000

Trust me, there are lots of other Austen-related places to see, like Steventon, Chawton, Bath, even Portsmouth–all of which I’ve visited and have tons of interest to Janeites. We don’t need to be hunting out Meryton. It’s really all just an intellectual exercise.

By: Peter Willsohn

Peter Willsohn — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 05:41:28 +0000

I hope that readers of this blog are not planning a Jane Austen pilgrimage to England based on the above geographical information.

Basingstoke is renowned in the UK as a sad joke. It is a supreme example of appalling modern town planning. It is quite simply now a dreadful place.

All English towns must have been pleasant in their way, but many people over sentimentalise. Charles Dickens’ London is far from reality – it was grubby and unpleasant.

Most English towns and cities have evolved from villages dating back 100s of years. Most have attractive town centres or ‘old towns’ still – apart from Milton Keynes which is a 20th century monstrosity built on green fields with no heritage.

Jane Austen was probably inspired by parts of many English towns, some of which still stand. For this exercise I recommend you “Shut Your Eyes And Think Of England” (which is in a different literary genre) – in other words I recommend being an armchair traveller to avoid disappointment in real life. But do visit Harpenden, it’s much the same as it was! I live here.

By: Mags

Mags — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:04:19 +0000

I think while writing it also helps to have a map to work with so you know, for instance, how long it would have taken them to travel from home to London or Kent or Derbyshire. So while Harpenden and Hertford aren’t necessarily Meryton (and as has been pointed out, for the specifics Jane could have been inspired by Basingstoke), it seems quite logical to me that Jane used those or some other places on the map to aid in her novel plotting. I think that’s the point of all these articles–not that she had a definite, specific place in mind, but it gives a little insight into how Jane’s writing process might have worked.

By: Karenlee

Karenlee — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:55:46 +0000

“Pride and Prejudice is a work of fiction, of course, and the Bennet family no more actually lived at Longbourn than Sherlock Holmes lived at 221b Baker Street.”

WHAT??!!

*goes into shock*

Heh, heh… just kidding. As far as the Hertford-Harpendon-Basingstone argument, I guess it depends on how you define what ‘based on’ means. It seems to me difficult to ‘base’ a fictional village you create on one you have never even visited. On the other hand, Jane’s extreme scrupulousness in matters of landscape, geography and travelling has been noticed by very many scholars. It could well be that her Meryton and what it was like was based on her memories of Basingstoke, but I can also well imagine her poring over a map and ‘placing it’ in her imagination – for accuracy’s sake – somewhere that was the proper number of miles from London.

By: Kosh

Kosh — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:21:18 +0000

Personally I believe it’s simply based on the then market town of Basingstoke where she regularly attended the balls/assemblies when she lived at Steventon.

By: Jane Odiwe

Jane Odiwe — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:17:20 +0000

Yes, sorry, I did mean Lacock and Mags intrepreted what I was trying to say perfectly, as well as stating also quite sensibly that whilst all this conjecture is great fun, Pride and Prejudice, is after all, a work of fiction! I’m not sure Jane had anywhere so specific in mind but it does help when you are writing a sequel to have places in your head on which to hang descriptions and place the characters. I always enjoy the research into the areas that Jane wrote about, even if she is not specific. It’s even more fun when she does write about specific places such as Bath. Isn’t it wonderful to walk in Anne Elliot’s steps in Bath, for instance?

By: Joan R Vancouver

Joan R Vancouver — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:42:59 +0000

I grew up in Hertfordshire, so leapt on Dr Smith’s article when it appeared in Persuasions, and then sent it over to my retired English Lit teacher who happens to live in Harpenden. She was doubtful and implied there were as many good theories identifying other Hertfordshire villages as Meryton, and in fact Dr Smith has some facts and distances wrong.
To add some additional wrinkles to this tale, there is the following quote on a site for a book called “Hertfordshire memories” regarding my old hometown of Hatfield, Hertfordshire: “In ‘Pride and Prejudice’ Jane Austen calls Hatfield ‘a busy little street that leads to my Lord Salisbury’s house’.” Well, I can find nothing to back this up – no such mention in P & P that I could find. Does anyone have any other information? Anyway, the site for the book has one feature of interest in that it contains a number of photos of Hertfordshire villages, including Harpenden.

http://www.francisfrith.com/pageloader.asp?page=/shop/books/bookdetail.asp&bookcat=&isbn=1-85937-524-3&start=&subcatid=