Great Bookham

After their marriage, Fanny and Alexandre remained in the area. First of all, they rented some rooms in a farmhouse on Phenice (Fenice) farm. A few months later, in November, they moved to a cottage rented from a Mrs Bailey in Great Bookham. Fanny called it The Hermitage (Lower Road opposite the church)

“We are now removed to a very small house in the suburbs of a very small village called Bookham. We found it rather inconvenient to reside in another person’s dwelling, though our own apartments were to ourselves. Our views are not so beautiful as from Phenice farm, but our situation is totally free from neighbours and intrusion. We are about a mile and a half from Norbury Park, and two miles from Mickleham.”

March 22 1794 letter to Dr Burney

‘Here we are tranquil, undisturbed and undisturbing. Can life, he often says, be more innocent than our, or happiness more inoffensive? He works in his garden, or studies English and mathematics, while I write. When I work at my needle, he reads to me; and we enjoy the beautiful country around us in long and romantic strolls…He studies to make his manual labours or some real utility.

This sort of work, however, is so totally new to him, that he receives every now and then some of poor Merlin’s “disagreeable compliments”; for when Mr. Locke’s or the Captain’s gardeners favour our grounds with a visit, they commonly make known that all has been done wrong. Seeds are sowing in some parts when plants ought to be reaping, and plants are running to seed while they are thought not yet at maturity. Our garden, therefore, is not yet quite the most profitable thing in the world; but M. d’A. assures me it is to be the staff of our table and existence.

I wish you had seen him yesterday mowing down our hedge – with his sabre, and with an air and attitudes so military, that, if he had been hewing down other legions than those he encountered – i.e. of spiders – he could scarcely have had a mien more tremendous, or have demanded an arm more mighty.

Such is our horticultural history. But I must not omit that we have had for one week cabbages from our own cultivation every day! Oh, you have no idea how sweet they tasted! We agreed they had a freshness and a goût we had never met with before. We had them for too short a time to grow tired of them, because, as I have already hinted, they were beginning to run to seed before we knew they were eatable.”

1794 Alexander Charles Louis Piochard d’Arblay born December 18 baptised April 11, 1795, godparents were M. de Narbonne and Dr. Charles Burney (jnr). The vicar of St. Nicholas Church who baptised Alexander was Samuel Cooke whose wife Cassandra was Jane Austen’s aunt. The vicarage was close to The Hermitage and the two families were friendly.

St Nicolas church painted by Petrie, around 1805

1794 Alexander Charles Louis Piochard d’Arblay born December 18 baptised April 11, 1795

The godparents were M. de Narbonne and Dr. Charles Burney (jnr). The vicar of St. Nicholas Church who baptised Alexander was Samuel Cooke whose wife Cassandra was Jane Austen’s aunt. The vicarage was close to The Hermitage and the two families were friendly.

Camilla

While M.d’Arblay gardened, Fanny wrote. She was very anxious to earn some money so she set forth on another novel hoping to have the success of her two earlier ones. Reluctantly she took up a suggestion of Burke’s that it should be published by subscription. An amazing list of subscribers (nearly 1100 listed in the prefix to the first volume) included Burke himself and his former adversary Warren Hastings. The lists were compiled and lead by a group of ladies including the Dowager Duchess of Leinster; Mrs. Boscawen, Mrs Crewe and Mrs Locke. Three Misses Thrale, the Blue Stockings (including Mrs Montagu and Hannah Moore). And of course, famously, Jane Austen who was at that time 20 but already an admirer of Fanny’s writing. There is a comprehensive account of the people who subscribed in an article in the Jane Austen Society of North America journal entitled “Jane Austen and the Subscription List to Camilla (1796). Fanny’s neighbour in Bookham, Mrs Cooke, Jane Austen’s aunt was assiduous in her promotion of the subscription for Fanny’s latest book. In July 1795, Fanny writes to her father:

Mrs Cooke, my excellent neighbour, came in with me from Church on Sunday morning, to read me a paragraph of a Letter from Mrs Leigh of oxfordshire, her sister (another aunt of Jane Austen)…after much of civility about the new work, & its author, it finishes thus, - “Mr Hastings (Warren Hastings) I saw just now; I told him what was going forward, he gave a great jump, - & exclaimed “Well, then, now I can serve her, thank God! & I will…

But before the publication, Fanny took the first editions to Windsor for the approval of the dedication to the king.

“Almost immediately up on my return to the queen and the Princess Elizabeth, the king entered the apartment, and entered it to receive himself my little offering.

‘Madame d’Arblay’ said her majesty, ‘tells me that Mrs Boscawen is to have the third set; but the first your majesty will excuse me – is mine.”…the queen then said

‘This book was begun here, sir’..

‘And what did you write of it here?’ cried he. ‘how far did you go? Did you finish any part? Or only form the skeleton?’

‘Just that, sir; I answered; ‘the skeleton was formed here, but nothing was completed. I worked it up in my little cottage.’

‘And about what time did you give to it?’

‘All my time, sir; from the period I planned publishing it, I devoted myself to it wholly. I had no episode but a little baby. My subject grew upon me, and increased my materials to a bulk that I am afraid will be more laborious to wade through for the reader than for the writer.’

Camilla was published 1796 – Friday October 1796 Fanny writes:

‘Sale truly astonishing. Charles has just sent to me that 500 only remain of four thousand and it has appeared scarcely three months.’

She writes more to Mrs Waddington:

“The sale has been one of the most rapid ever known for a Guinea Book: it is 4 times that of Evelina, & nearly double that of Cecilia. Of the First Edition, containing the immense quantity of 4000, 500 only remain: & it has been printed but 3 months.- We have parted with the Copy right, very reluctantly, as guarding it was our motive to the subscription: but all our friends interfered, representing our ignorance of money…The Publishers give 1000 pounds for the Copy – but this you must not mention…We know not, yet, what the subscription will prove…but we have reason to believe it will nearly, if not wholly, clear another thousand.”

With this money they hoped to house themselves more comfortably. Fanny writes

“We have not been able to find any small House that could replace this, & This requires a hundred pounds for repairs, tis in such bad winter plight. We have therefore resumed our original plan, & are going immediately to build a little Cottage for ourselves…”

My Trip to Great Bookham

It was nearly 5 pm by the time we arrived in Great Bookham and the narrow streets were filled with cars making the homeward journey. Lower Road at the intersection with Church Road was particularly busy. We were able to find a park in a back street and wandered around, looking at the church and searching for The Hermitage. There is still a house on Lower Road called the Hermitage and one assumes it is the one that the d’Arblays lived in though there was no sign of the neglect and disrepair referred to by Fanny. The church is lovely and beside it we could see over a high hedge a pretty house with roses and honeysuckle climbing over its walls. Maybe that is where the Rev. Cooke and his wife lived.

Looking along Lower Road towards The Hermitage