“There was no possibility of taking a walk that day” – would have been a better opening line to “Pride and Prejudice” on 16th August, when the Chapterhouse Theatre Company performed Jane Austen’s novel in the beautiful setting of the sunken lawn of Knebworth House Gardens. But – bucking the trend of this summer that only began in July – we got lucky with the weather! Having rained all day, it turned into the perfect evening with a glorious sunset and the 500 Jane Austen fans, celebrating the novel’s 200th anniversary, enjoyed the perfect picnic with Mr. Darcy. Unless of course they were hoping he would get his shirt wet!
That opening line, for those who aren’t champion quiz-nighters, is actually the opening line of “Jane Eyre”. Charlotte Bronte’s novel is more my kind of book. If girls in bonnets are fretting about marrying a bloke in a big house – ask my wife – they are more likely to find hard graft and melodrama than dancing with Mr. Darcy! I have always been surprised that my ancestor Emily Bulwer Lytton, aged nineteen, did not like “Jane Eyre” when it was published in 1847. She would surely have related to Jane’s schooldays and traumatic childhood? Then, this summer, I read Sarah Wise’s book “Inconvenient People” which has a whole chapter on Emily’s mother Rosina Bulwer Lytton, the “mad” wife who wouldn’t divorce her husband and who threatened to appear at any moment and ruin everything… and then I understood why Emily did not like “Jane Eyre”!
Henry Lytton Cobbold
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