The Age of Elegance
“Nothing was allowed to be slovenly; everything was planned to give the highest possible return in elegance and comfort. The gardens of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey had countless walls, villages of hothouses and potting-sheds, and a whole parish at work on them. Nor was the author drawing on her imagination; when she and her mother visited cousins at Stoneleigh Abbey the house was so large that they were unable to find their way about. It had forty-five windows in front, several drawing-rooms,... dining-rooms, parlours, galleries and staircases, all hung with velvets, brocades and family portraits, twenty-six bed-chambers in the new part of the building and more in the old. "Every part of the house and offices' wrote Mrs. Austen, "is kept so clean that were you to cut your finger I do not think you could find a cobweb to wrap it up in. In the kitchen garden the quantity of small fruit exceeds anything you can form an idea of. This large family, with the assistance of a great many blackbirds and thrushes, cannot prevent it from rotting on the trees.MoreLess
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