Jane Austen's Visit to Stoneleigh Abbey

"There is no such thing as real life for an author of genius: he must create it himself and then create the consequences.  The charm of Mansfield Park can be fully enjoyed only when we adopt its conventions, its rules, its enchanting make-believe.  Mansfield Park never existed, and its people never lived."

- Vladimir Nabokov

With a most respectful nod to another author of genius: Not so.  Mansfield Park--its setting and its inhabitants--was based on Stoneleigh Abby, for four hundred and thirty-five years the county seat of Jane Austen's relatives, the Leigh Family. 

In August of 1806, Jane Austen, her mother and her sister visited their relatives, the Leighs of Stoneleigh Abbey, very properly chaperoned by their cousin, the Reverend Thomas Leigh.  The  purpose of the journey was to secure the Reverend's inheritance from the fifth Lord Leigh. 

While at Stoneleigh, Jane wrote a letter to her niece describing the elegant house and beautiful grounds. Many of the rooms and furnishings, and even its view appear in Mansfield Park and Persuasion.

"Now I wish to give you some idea of the inside of this vast house - first premising that there are forty-five windows in front, which is quite straight, with a flat roof, fifteen in a row. You go up a considerable flight of steps to the door, for some of the offices are underground, and enter a large hall. On the right hand is the dining-room and within that the breakfast-room, where we generally sit; and reason good, 'tis the only room besides the chapel, which looks towards the view. On the left hand of the hall is the best drawing-room and within a smaller one. 

These rooms are rather gloomy with brown wainscot and dark crimson furniture, so we never use them except to walk through to the old picture gallery. Behind the smaller drawing-room is the state- - an alarming apartment, with its high, dark crimson velvet bed, just fit for an heroine. The old gallery opens into it. Behind the hall and parlours there is a passage all across the house, three staircases and two small sitting-rooms. There are twenty-six bedchambers in the new part of the house and a great many, some very good ones, in the old. There is also another gallery, fitted up with modern prints on a buff paper, and a large billiard-room. Every part of the house and offices 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. I need not have written this long letter, for I have a presentiment that if  these good people live until next year you will see it all with your own eyes."

In Mansfield Park, Fanny Price notices the "crimson velvet cushions on the ledge of the family gallery in the chapel."  According to the official Stoneleigh Abbey website those same velvet cushions can still be found in the chapel at Stoneleigh. Fanny's description of the rooms, "all lofty and many large, amply furnished in the taste of fifty years back, with shining floors, solid mahogany, rich damask, marble gilding and carving" sound very similar to Jane's of Stoneleigh.

Fanny's view from the house's west front "looked across a lawn to the beginning of the avenue," just as it is at Stoneleigh. And Jane's mention in her letter of the subtly-put excesses of Stoneleigh's "forty-five windows" sounds suspiciously like the tone she takes with her character, Henry Crawford, who clucks over the many windows: "more than could be supposed to be of any use than to contribute to the window tax."

The Abbey's impressive array of ancestral portraits includes one of Jane's Aunt Betty, Elizabeth Lord, a bit of a rapscallion whose scandalous career resolved with a happy ending.  She may have been the inspiration for Anne Elliot, the heroine of Jane's novel Persuasion.

Jane was also quite taken with the personalities, habits and especially the intrigues of her much wealthier relatives. Much of her fiction's comedy concerns the relations between the middle and upper classes.  Austen, a genteel "poor cousin" to the Leighs, just as her heroine Fanny Price is to the Bertrams, transformed the Leighs of Stoneleigh into the Bertrams of Mansfield Park, liberally deploying what Nabokov called her "little gems of ironic wit."

The Stoneleigh Edition of the Novels and Letters of Jane Austen wa published in 1906 to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Jane's stay at Stoneleigh Abbey.  These twos volumes are from the 909th set of 1250.  Emma, by Jane Austen. For more information, please go to my bookstore, Old Ink, Inc. Rare Books