The Wykehamist
Winchester College Watercolour Collection Celebrating Jane Austen
A Devotional Tale of two Academic Institutions
Music played a significant role in Jane Austen’ s life. The era expected musical accomplishments of a young woman of her class. Jane Austen was a skilled pianist, taking lessons from an early age and practising daily well into her adult life. By 1796, the Austen family had acquired a piano and Jane was taking lessons from George Chard, the Winchester Cathedral organist and composer. Jane’ s piano and most of her copy books were sold when the family moved to Bath in 1801. Once a piano came back into her possession in Chawton,( where she lived from 1809-1817), she resumed playing and practised every day before breakfast. She played from manuscripts she copied herself – copies so neat, her niece said they were‘ as easy to read as print.’ Jane wrote;‘ without music, life would be a blank to me.’ She composed her own sheet music and during her time in Bath,( 1801-1806), attended concerts in the Octagon Room of the Assembly Rooms. The 18 albums which comprise the Austen Family Music Books have been preserved to this day and contain around 600 pieces that belonged to both Jane herself and her relations.
Music was central to social and personal life in the regency era. Jane’ s narratives include characters who love music but little mention is made of composers – the only composer mentioned is the publisher and pianist John Baptiste Cramer, who worked on the song Robin Adair, enigmatically sung by Jane Fairfax in Emma, as she accompanies herself on her new piano, a covert gift from her secret lover Frank Churchill.
Jane’ s love of music has been importantly transported to the strong female characters of her novels, portrayed as singers, pianists, or both – Jane Fairfax( Emma); Georgiana Darcy, Mary Bennet & Elizabeth Bennet( Pride & Prejudice); Anne
Elliot( Persuasion); and Marianne Dashwood( Sense & Sensibility). Interestingly, Catherine Morland, the flighty young heroine of Northanger Abbey, couldn’ t‘ have been more delighted when the music master was dismissed’ – tinkling on the spinet was amusing for her but she did not take to a serious study of music. Perhaps, when Jane was constructing Catherine’ s character, she had in her mind the title she ascribed in her own hand to a music book in the Austen’ s collection:‘ Jeuvinile Songs and Lessons – for young beginners who don’ t know enough to practise.’
The musical scenes in Austen’ s novels are rarely incidental – they are carefully constructed to advance storylines of courtship and social hierarchy. Music is a medium via which characters may perform socially, both in the literal sense of recitals at gatherings in respectable company and in the figurative sense of signalling admirable qualities to eligible bachelors. Jane demonstrates her love of music in the numerous times she talks of it as a source of pleasure – but she also uses it as a tool to accelerate the plot for those perceptive and sufficiently curious to be in step with Miss Austen.
My passion for History of Art, devotion to shrines and love of Jane Austen literature led to my Wykeham Day Art Exhibition,“ Winchester College Watercolour Collection, Celebrating Jane Austen – A Devotional Tale of two Academic Institutions”.
The exhibition drew upon the spiritual influence of Winchester’ s watercolour collection on Winchester College life, in conjunction with a selection of churches which had spiritual influence on Jane Austen’ s life and works. These included the following.
- William of Wykeham’ s formidable legacy: Winchester College – an academic institution of intellectual
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