Jeremy Musson, ‘Jane Austen and Joseph Bonomi’, The ...

text © the authors 2013

Jeremy Musson, ‘Jane Austen and Joseph Bonomi’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. xxI, 2013, pp. 137–150

Jane Austen (‒) (Fig. ) is one of a handfulof novelists who has helped to shape the image of

the English country house in the popular imagination –her novels are enjoyed and picked over for every detailof late Georgian life. She never included a fictionalportrait of an architect, unlike Dickens who created theglorious portrait of the haughty booby of an architectMr Pecksniff in Martin Chuzzlewit. But she didmention one contemporary architect: Joseph Bonomi(–) (Fig. ), an Italian who had been broughtto England by the Adam brothers.Did she think

Bonomi a booby or a brilliant architect of the day?This article considers the motive and significance ofthis singular appearance of a named architect of thegrander type in the work of a novelist who couldhappily exclude notice of the great events of the day,such as the Napoleonic Wars. I would suggest thatAusten did not seek to ridicule the man Bonomi butrather that she uses him an example of a well-knownarchitect whose work she actually knew, and whowould be immediately recognisable to her own familycircle, always the first audience for her story-telling.

T H E G E O R G I A N G R O U P J O U R N A L V O L U M E X X I

JANE AUSTEN AND JOSEPH BONOMI

J E R E M Y M U S S O N

Fig. . Engraved portrait of Jane Austen, after a sketch by Cassandra Austen.

Fig. . Portrait of Joseph Bonomi, by William Daniell afterGeorge Dance. (© National Portrait Gallery, London)

It is true that the language used by Austen todescribe the houses in her fiction is sparse andconventional. Even Pemberley in Pride and Prejudiceis described only as ‘a large, handsome building,standing well on rising ground’, while LadyCatherine de Burgh’s Rosings is ‘a handsomemodern building, well situated on rising ground,’which phrases, as Pevsner pointed out, could, in fact,easily have been descriptions of the same house.

Mansfield Park is described only as a ‘spacious,modern-built house’ and is said to ‘deserve to be inany collection of engravings of gentlemen’s seats.’These ‘collections’ would have been the popularaccounts of country houses published usually withsubscriptions from the owners of the houses:William Angus, Seats of the Nobility and Gentrypublished in and William Watts, Seats of theNobility and Gentry, published a decade later in, which crystallised the descriptive language ofarchitecture used in genteel society at the time.

These were the kind of books which providedthe relatively modest range of descriptive phrases forarchitecture employed by Austen.The descriptionsaccompanying the plates are universally couched inadjectives such as ‘noble’, ‘beautiful’, ‘remarkablyneat’ and ‘situated upon rising ground’. Godmershamin Kent (Fig. ), often thought to be, at least loosely,the model for Mansfield Park, was described inWatts’ Seats as ‘situated in a pleasant valley’. ThomasKnight, the Austens’ cousin, who adopted herbrother Edward, was a subscriber, but died in .

Watts’ Seats was published just the year beforeEdward took up residence at Godmersham, so itwould be surprising if a copy had not passed underAusten’s notice, even perhaps finding a place in herfather’s library of books. There were certainly anumber of architectural books in her brother’slibrary at Godmersham, including Gibbs’s Book ofArchitecture (), and numerous country histories.

Perhaps Austen’s most evocative description ofMansfield Park in the novel itself actually comes bycontrast with the deprivations of another house.

Architecture, like landscape, is ever-present inAusten’s novels and yet while landscape descriptionsare numerous and enthusiastic, the architecture ismore elusive in detail. Despite the nature of thestories – studies of the emotional preoccupations ofsmall groups of ‘county’ families – full descriptions ofthe key country houses are relatively few. This wasnoted with interest by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner in TheJournal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes in. Austen, he wrote, was ‘without exceptionvague, when it comes to describing buildings. . . .But in spite of this contrast between precision indialogue and imprecision in the description ofsetting there is enough to be got out of the novels foranyone eager to know what life was lived by thenarrow range of classes which Jane Austen knew welland which she wisely confined herself to.’Was thisvagueness only true of her fictional works? NigelNicolson considered it was also true of hercorrespondence, writing that ‘one never finds in herletters close descriptions of a building and seldom anexpression of delight at its appearance.’

But Austen certainly had some interest inarchitecture. First, a degree of understanding andinterest in architecture would have been regarded asone of the essential accomplishments of politesociety, and, secondly, country houses provided thesocial hub of the landed and clerical world in whichshe moved. These houses were difficult to avoid, andthe quality of their appointment was of continuedinterest. New buildings and improvements to housesare also at least alluded to in her letters. Thirdly,Austen gives sufficient hints of an intelligent interestin architecture. In her correspondence she describesdining with the Holder brothers, Hampshireneighbours who had made money in the West Indiesand who rented Ashe Park, near to her parents’ home.Of that visit, she wrote: ‘to sit in idleness over a goodfire in a well-proportioned room is a luxurioussensation.’ This is not an observation which wouldbe made by someone without some interest andindeed real pleasure in architecture.

J A N E A U S T E N A N D J O S E P H B O N O M I


Film adaptations of Jane Austen have created alargely ‘Georgian’ vision of the fictional houses of hernovels. It is true that the grander country housesAusten knew in Hampshire and in Kent were mostly‘modern’, that is to say built during the eighteenthcentury and early nineteenth centuries. InHampshire, she attended balls at Lord Dorchester’sKempshott Park, as well as Hurstbourne Park, homeof the Earl of Portsmouth, and designed in the sby James Wyatt, and Lord Bolton’s Hackwood Park,remodelled in by Lewis Wyatt. In Kent, sGodmersham Park, with pavilion wings added in ,was the family seat of the Knights. Austen’s brother,Edward (later Knight) made his home at Godmershamfrom , and Austen wrote of her impressions ofthe house and her brother’s various improvements tothe interiors. Another cousin, Lady Knatchbull, livedat Mersham-le-Hatch, also in Kent, a house designedin the s by Robert Adam – his first entirely newhouse completed after his return from Rome.

Fanny Price is staying with her own parents andsiblings in a cramped house in Portsmouth: ‘Theelegance, propriety, regularity, harmony – andperhaps, above all, the peace and tranquility ofMansfield, were brought to her remembrances everyhour of the day, by the prevalence of every thing thatwas opposite to them here.’These words echo (ifnot actually reproduce) the traditional architecturaldiscourse on the qualities of good building whichhad been used by Alberti and Palladio, and whichwere in turn derived from the Classical treatise ofVitruvius. In Isaac Ware’s mid eighteenth-centurytranslation of Palladio, ‘utility, duration and beauty’ –observations of decorum – made a building‘beautiful, graceful and durable’.Ware’s was amongthe architectural works listed in the GodmershamPark library catalogue, dated , and it is the space,order and serenity of the architecture of MansfieldPark that is celebrated by Austen rather than thecharacter of the inhabitants.



Fig. . Godmersham Park, Kent from Edward Hasted The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent (–).

of London, where I might drive myself down at anytime, and collect a few friends around me and behappy. I advise everyone who is going to build, tobuild a cottage. My friend Lord Courtland came to methe other day on purpose to ask my advice, and laidbefore me three different plans of Bonomi’s. I was todecide on the best of them. “My dear Courtland”, saidI, immediately throwing them all in the fire, “do notadopt either of them, but by all means build a cottage.”And that I fancy, will be the end of it.’

So in this scene, from the pen of Austen, poorBonomi’s plans were consigned to the fire. Was thisreally inspired by a dislike of Bonomi’s work, whichshe clearly knew? Nigel Nicolson thought she had anunfavourable opinion of Bonomi, because she was‘not sympathetic to change. She was also axenophobic. Bonomi was born Italian.’ MaggieLane, in Jane Austen’s England (), again thoughtBonomi’s appearance was ‘in a somewhat unfavourablecontext’ and quoted John Summerson’s disapprovalof Bonomi’s work from his Architecture in Britain:– (). Lane added: ‘Jane Austen’scontempt of foreigners was not likely to be lessenedby such flaunting (sic) of the rules,’ referring to someof Bonomi’s architectural quirks.

But surely it is the character of Ferrars that isunder scrutiny as he attempts to demonstrate hisstanding as a man of fashion to whom a younghapless peer turns for advice. Austen clearly drewhim as a self-important and pretentious fool, soBonomi may well not have been the intended targetof the satire. His inclusion may have been promptedsimply by the fact that he was the best-knownarchitect of the country houses she knew best, andone who must have been discussed within her familycircle. He was a builder of large-scale classicalmansions and certainly not a designer of ‘cottages’.Her letters suggest that, far from criticizing Bonomi’sarchitecture, she admired and even had a familyaffection for it. She herself suggested that hercharacters would not too obviously be people sheknew. She wrote: ‘I am too proud of my gentlemen toadmit that they were only Mr A or Col B. Besides it

Older houses also played an important role inAusten’s orbit and imagination. William Chute livedat The Vyne in Hampshire, one of the centres oftheir social scene, and it is likely that Jane would alsohave seen Knole when staying with her great-uncle atSevenoaks in Kent, as he was the lawyer for theSackvilles. As well as Godmersham her brotherEdward also inherited the venerable Chawton Housein Hampshire, and for that reason, after her father’sdeath, she and her mother and sister settled atChawton Cottage. One of her mother’s clergymancousins, Thomas Leigh, inherited the venerableStoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire (Fig. ).

These houses, ancient and modern, werementioned as the sites of social encounters in Austen’smany letters, and provided the experience for hernovels and the material for visualising the houses andfamilies she invented for her readers’ entertainment:the Dashwoods’ Norland Park and the Middletons’Brandon Park in Sense and Sensibility (published in); the Bennets’ Longbourne, Lady Catherine deBourgh’s Rosings Park and Mr Darcy’s Pemberley,in Pride and Prejudice (); the Bertrams’Mansfield Park (modelled on life at Godmersham)and the Rushworths’ Sotherton in Mansfield Park(); Mr Knight’s Donwell Abbey in Emma ();the Tilneys’ Northanger Abbey (); and the Elliots’at Kellynch Hall and the Musgroves’ Uppercross inPersuasion (also ). In only one of these is thename of an architect even so much as alluded to.

The scene in which Bonomi is mentioned comesin Sense and Sensibility. Bonomi’s ‘cameo’ appearancehas usually been taken to be a deliberately negativein intent.The foppish dandy, Robert Ferrars, ispontificating on the merits of the then newlyfashionable cottage style residence, presumably inthe cottage orné or early Gothic Revival style.

Ferrars describes himself as

‘…. excessively fond of a cottage: there is always somuch comfort, so much of elegance about them. And Iprotest if I had any money to spare, I should buy alittle land and build one myself, within a short distance



Prince Borghese; another early mentor was theMarchese Teodoli. A talented draughtsman, Bonomicame to the notice of James Adam, perhaps throughCharles-Louis Clerisseau.He was then employedby James Adam in Rome and brought by him toLondon in . Bonomi worked for the Adambrothers for the next fourteen years, after which heset up on his own account.His most memorableworks were at Packington Hall (Warwickshire) forLord Aylesford, Longford Hall in Shropshire andMrs Montagu’s ‘Great Room’ in Portman House inLondon – the last was widely admired at the time ofcompletion but did not result in the Londoncommissions which Bonomi had hoped for.

Bonomi nevertheless left behind a wonderfulcorpus of drawing, full of the colour, ornament, andthe mood and shadow associated with Piranesi andClerisseau.He exhibited regularly at the RoyalAcademy but never became an RA. It is possible thathis Catholicism and foreignness weighed againsthim, and despite having eager enough supporters,including Wyatt and Cosway, Joseph Farington andothers opposed his election. Bonomi was, however,elected to the Architects’ Club – founded in , byWyatt, Dance, and Cockerell – as were Soane,Brettingham and others.

Austen did not leave detailed descriptions of anyof Bonomi’s grand Neo-Roman mansion, any morethan she did of any of the ‘modern’ houses in hernovels. But she knew at least three of them personally– one in Hampshire (Laverstoke Park, –), andtwo in Kent (Eastwell Park, –, and theSandling, –, both demolished in the twentiethcentury) – and she may have known a fourth inWarwickshire (Barrells Hall, –).

Laverstoke Park (Fig. ) was built for HenryPortal (–), whose wealth came from thepaper mills founded by his Huguenot grandfatherwhich supplied the paper for banknotes.

Laverstoke lay only four miles from Steventon, thevillage of which Austin’s father was Rector. In ,Austen’s brother James was married to Anne, the

would be an invasion of the social proprieties.’ Sothe question raises itself: would she have risked anytoo close identification of a negative opinion of theworks of Bonomi in her novels?

In – when Austen was revising Sense andSensibility, first composed as ‘Elinor and Marianne’,Bonomi was at the peak of his career but he died in, long before the book was finally published in. Bonomi was not a cheap architect. Hisstandard rates were recorded in a letter he wrote toF.F.Turville in , after he had been approachedto design an addition to Bosworth Hall,Leicestershire: ‘My terms are, my Journeys paid; twoguineas per day, during my stay in the Country; andthe plans, front, sections, parts at full size for theexecution, and estimate (which I do in London) areto be paid separately, the amount of them, being aplain and small mansion, will be about thirty or fortypounds.’ So we can estimate that Ferrars’s hastygesture probably cost his friend Courtland morethan £, a fair sum in the early s. Austen knewsome clients of Bonomi’s and was aware of just howexpensive he was. And though she certainly knewhouses by Adam and Wyatt, she knew more byBonomi.

The clients who knew the Austens may alsopossibly have related the dramatic scene at theRoyal Academy in , one of Bonomi’s greatestdisappointments. Sir Joshua Reynolds, eager to haveBonomi elected as an RA, so that he could beappointed Professor of Perspective, had allowedBonomi to submit some of his perspectives on theday of the election; this action, and Reynolds’ high-handedness, irritated certain Academicians as anirregular practice, and they threw the drawings out ofthe room. Fuseli was elected instead. Is this in factthis scene being echoed in Sense and Sensibility?Bonomi was subject to a court case, which may alsohave caught the attention of the Austen family forreasons which will be mentioned below.

Bonomi was born in Rome in , and hadstudied under Mario Asprucci, the architect to the



Pompeian Gallery at Packington and a fine Neo-classical church there, in –.Designs forEastwell exhibited at the Royal Academy in and, and published in George Richardson’s NewVitruvius Britannicus in (Figs. & ), show aseven-bay mansion with thin, strip pilasters and alow attic. The entrance front had a two-storeyIonic pentastyle portico which served as a porte-cochère capable of allowing two carriages to passunderneath side by side. Richardson noted that the‘portico was added after the building was started’,and that the alignment of the columns ‘would haveoccasioned a very wide intercolumniation, contraryto rule and impossible to be executed in stone’, so anextra column was added in the centre. Two wingswith pavilions formed a semi-circular court, onecontaining domestic offices and warm and cold baths,the other a large greenhouse.The enormous principalreception room is described on the plan as a huge‘Drawing Room or Library’. Austen wrote to hersister Cassandra in August : ‘Our visit toEastwell was very agreeable; I found Ly. Gordon’s

daughter of General Mathew, former Governor ofGrenada, who was then the tenant of the old manorhouse at Laverstoke. So she would have had a closeinterest in the new house here. Bonomi’s design wasexhibited at the Royal Academy in (Fig. ), butthe house as executed is different in appearance fromthe designs, and was perhaps even remodelled later.A seven bay, two-storey, yellow brick house, it hasthree arched windows on the ground floor in thecentre of the park elevation, But instead of the firstand second floor loggia shown on the design there isa tetrastyle Ionic portico and no attic floor as builtand no strip pilasters. Inside there is a doublestaircase under an oval skylight.

Jane Austen once wrote of Kent: ‘It is the onlyplace for happiness. Everybody is rich there.’ Shecertainly visited Eastwell Park, one of Bonomi’smost important country houses, designed for GeorgeFinch-Hatton in .He was a relation of both theEarl of Winchilsea for whom Bonomi worked onnew interiors at Burley on the Hill in –, and ofthe Earl of Aylesford, for whom Bonomi created the



Fig. . Laverstoke Park, the south front. (Private collection)

Another intriguing possible link between Bonomiand the Austens is Barrells Hall in Warwickshire(Fig. ), designed for Robert Knight. A handsometwo-storey house, it had a grand two-storey porticoreminiscent of Palladio’s Villa Cornaro at PiombinoDese in the Veneto, the lower storey serving as aporte-cochère. Knight was the illegitimate son of thefirst Earl of Catherlough (formerly from ,Viscount Luxborough), son of the chief cashier ofthe South Sea Company. These Knights were notdirectly related to the Hampshire Knights, but LordCatherlough – whose Irish Earldom was granted in – had married in , as his second wife, LadyLe Quesne, the widow of a wealthy City merchant.

According to James Payne’s nineteenth-centuryArmorial of Jersey, Sir John Le Quesne was anAlderman of London, and ‘in the Registers of S. Peterle Poor, is noted his marriage, by the Bishop ofNorwich, with Miss Mary Knight, of Hampshire, alady with a dowry of twenty thousand pounds.’

It has not proved possible to identify this lady’srelationship with the Knights of Chawton and

manners as pleasing as they had been described, andsaw nothing to dislike in Sir Janison, excepting onceor twice a sort of sneer at Mrs Anne Finch. . . [TheMisses Finch] were very civil to me, as they alwaysare; fortune was also very civil to me in placing Mr E.Hatton by me at dinner.’

Jane Austen also knew something of SandlingHouse (or The Sandling) near Hythe in Kent, builtto Bonomi’s designs for William Deedes and hiswife Sophia, an aunt of her sister-in-law. It wasanother austere neo-Classical mansion, with thehouse and the household offices connected by agrand porte-cochère (Fig. ). In she wrote toCassandra: ‘In talking of Mr Deedes’ new house,Mrs Bramston told us one circumstance . . . one ofthe sitting-rooms at Sandling, an oval room with aBow at one end, has the very remarkable andsingular feature of a fireplace with a window, thecentre window of the Bow, exactly over themantelpiece.’ Later, in October , she recordedher brother’s warm opinion of the house: ’Jamesadmires the place very much’



Fig. . Laverstoke Park, Hampshire: perspective view by Bonomi .

(RIBA Library Drawings & Archives Collections)



Fig. . Eastwell Park, Kent: plan as published in George Richardson, New Vitruvius Britannicus, , I, Plate XXXIX. (Atlas ../

Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library)

Fig. . Eastwell Park, Kent: perspective view by Bonomi .


On December Farington’s diary mentionsmeeting James Wyatt who was on his way to give anopinion in Bonomi’s court case with a Mr Knight, inwhich he noted that Bonomi was successful. JohnSoane, James Wyatt and another architect wereengaged as arbitrators, and Wyatt’s observations onfee structure provide a valuable insight into workingpractices in the emerging architectural profession.

The possible family connection may be slight, and itis difficult to imagine where Austen’s sympathy wouldhave fallen in that tangled web. However, the wealth,title and intrigue of the Knights of Warwickshirewould surely have been of passing interest to theAustens, related as they were to one of the leadingWarwickshire families, the Leighs. The court casebetween a carpenter Mr Knight and another MrKnight, a ‘gentleman of fortune’ would surely havecaught the attention of, and amused, the Austens’circle. There is however, no documentary evidenceto prove any link.

Steventon, as the estates passed between cousins andthere were several changes of name.This secondunion does not seem to have been a happier marriagethan that of the first Lady Luxborough, Henrietta,half sister to Viscount St John. Lord Catherloughhad several children by a mistress, including Robertwho inherited the estate at Barrells, and wassufficiently secure in his social position to serve lateras a High Sherriff to the county.This Robert wasBonomi’s client and his commission was to extendsubstantially and modernise the house Knight hadinherited from Lord Catherlough, leaving the olderhouse as the service wing. The new house was builtin – but there was a serious falling out, overpayment of fees, first with the carpenter, WilliamKnight, and then by association with Bonomi, asarchitect. The carpenter who was managing thebuilding project had threatened to arrest Mr Knightfor non-payment and been ejected from Knight’shouse. The case went to arbitration.



Fig. . The Sandling, Kent, in . (Private collection)

commanded Elizabeth Bennet’s attention was notso much the architecture as the setting: ‘a large,handsome, stone building, standing well on risingground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills; –and in front, a stream of some natural importancewas swelled into greater, but without any artificialappearance. Its banks were neither formal, nor falselyadorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She had neverseen a place for which nature had done more, orwhere natural beauty had been so little counteractedby an awkward taste.’

The only really grand historic mansion thatAusten knew through direct family connections wasStoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire, an ancient housebuilt on a monastic site in the late sixteenth century,with a grand façade of – by Francis Smith ofWarwick (Fig. ). In , Stoneleigh was inheritedby a cousin of her mother’s, the Rev Thomas Leigh,rector of Adlestrop in Gloucestershire. In a sceneworthy of one of Austen’s own novels, Leigh invited

Given Austen’s own obvious admiration forolder, historic architecture – ‘noble’ or ‘venerable’ inthe words of the collections of gentlemen’s seats – itcould be argued that she preferred old to ‘modern’houses. It would be hard for a creation of Bonomi’sto compete with a picture like that which Austencreates for Mr Knightley’s country house in Emma:‘rambling and irregular, with many comfortable andone or two handsome rooms. It was just as it oughtto be, and it looked like what it was – and Emma feltan increasing respect for it, as the residence of afamily of such true gentility, untainted in blood andunderstanding.’ The setting often seems almost moresignificant than the house: ‘It was a sweet view –sweet to the eye and the mind. English verdure,English culture, English comfort, seen under a sunbright without being oppressive.’Mavis Batey hassuggested that the portrait of Pemberley in Pride andPrejudice was inspired by Ilam Hall in Staffordshire,a Gothic Revival house, but the quality that really



Fig. . Barrells Hall, Warwickshire: perspective view by Bonomi .


Mansfield Park, a novel composed in – andpublished in . Sotherton is Elizabethan, ‘alarge, regular brick building, heavy but respectablelooking – and has many good rooms’; Mrs Norriscalls Sotherton the ‘noblest old place in the world.

A tour of young people is guided round by thechatelaine herself, the widowed mother of the youngsquire, Mr Rushworth. Some rooms are describedas fitted up in the late seventeenth century andothers in the early Georgian period. Furniture andpictures all suggest one family’s long occupation:‘The whole party [was] . . . shewn through anumber of rooms, all lofty, and many large, andamply furnished in the taste of fifty years back, withshining floors, solid mahogany, rich damask, marble,gilding and carving, each handsome in its way. Ofpictures there were an abundance, and some fewgood, but the larger part were family portraits, nolonger anything to any body but Mrs Rushworth,who had been at great pains to learn all that the

his cousins, including Jane and her mother, to staywith him after he moved in to the house even beforethe resolution of a contested will, partly no doubt toassert his ownership. It must have been anenervating house party. A letter survives by Austen’smother, describing her visit, with a presumably parttongue-in-cheek observation on that the ‘statebedchamber with a dark crimson Velvet bed; analarming apartment just fit for a heroine’.Thisechoes the girlish excitement of Catherine Morland’svisit to Northanger Abbey in the novel of that name,fully in the spirit of a parody of a Gothic novel.That novel contains one of the longest fictionaldescriptions of a country house in Austen’s writings,as Miss Morland struggles to find the ancientreligious house under layers of fine modern work:‘very noble – very grand – very charming’, when allshe wanted to see was something of earlier date.

Stoneleigh Abbey has been suggested as themodel for the lengthy description of Sotherton in



Fig. . Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire, the west range. (Country Life Picture Library)

reference to Bonomi in Sense and Sensibility. Reptonis the only other living designer mentioned inAusten’s novel – and just as Ferrars is depicted as anass, Rushworth, who wants to improve his familyhome, is empty-headed, and Henry Crawford’senthusiastic mental redesigning of EdmundBertram’s property in the manner of Repton isimpertinent. Austen knew Bonomi’s workpersonally, and Repton had worked for her family atStoneleigh. Repton’s appearance in the novel as anamed designer seems only to have been promptedas a shorthand for the landscaper ‘man of themoment’: a name that, in the simple act of itsinclusion, plunged the contemporary reader fullyinto the world of landscape improvement. Perhaps itwas, in essence, a private joke with her family, forRepton was active in the extravagant but admiredimprovements by their Leigh cousins at Adlestropand Stoneleigh – her family were always the firstaudience for her stories. The presence of Bonomi inSense and Sensibility surely springs from a similarincentive. He was a known quantity and a costly, butwell-proven, specialist in grand Neo-Roman houseswith colonnaded libraries and sweeping top-litstaircases, curved wings and service courtyards. Thescene in Sense and Sensibility surely says more aboutthe folly of the man who burnt Lord Courtland’splans than the esteem in which Austen held thearchitect. After all, when Ferrars pontificates on thesocial amenities of the cottage for elaborate parties,Elinor, surely representing the voice of Austen,‘agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved thecompliment of rational opposition’.

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

Peter Meadows, Sarah Parry, Eleanor Marsden,Jacqui Grainger, Susan Palmer

housekeeper could teach, and was now almostequally qualified to shew the house.’

Fanny Price is clearly delighted, as Austen musthave been at Stoneleigh Abbey, with the Royalistconnections – Charles I stayed at Stoneleigh andennobled Austen’s Leigh ancestor who received himthere. In Mansfield Park, Fanny Price is the onlymember of the tour party who shows any realinterest in ‘all that Mrs Rushworth could relate of thefamily in former times, its rise and grandeur, regalvisits and loyal efforts, delighted to connect any thingwith history already known, or warm her imaginationwith scenes of the past.’ Young Mr Rushworth,however,despairs of his own house looking like a‘dismal old prison’. The solution suggested by hisfriends is not architectural but one of landscapeimprovement. Elegant Miss Crawford suggestsHumphry Repton, the leading landscaper of the day,would be his ‘best friend upon such an occasion.’Mr Rushton replies he has already thought of it, andmentions his daily rates of ‘five guineas a day.’

Repton is mentioned eight times in the novel.Now Repton’s work was also well known to Jane

Austen – even better than that of Bonomi, since hewas employed by her cousin Thomas Leigh atAdlestrop in Gloucestershire in . Reference tothe completed work is made in Observations on theTheory and Practice of Landscape Design, ,where he recorded that the new landscaping hadbeen made ‘in full view of both mansion andparsonage’.The rectory where Thomas lived wasmerged into a single parkland around the mansion,Adlestrop Park, designed by Sanderson Miller andhome of his young nephew James Leigh.Hercousin’s experiences seem likely to have been drawnupon to create the scene in Mansfield Park whereHenry Crawford advises Edmund Bertram to create anew garden and divert the stream in order to turn hisrectory into a ‘residence of a man of education, taste,modern manners, and good connections’.

The established link between Austen’sexperience and her imagination is relevant to the



For screen adaptations, see Sue Parril, Jane Austenon Film and Television: A Critical Study of theAdaptation (Jefferson, NC, and London, ).

Pevsner, loc. cit., p. . Tomalin, op. cit., pp. –. Nicolson, op. cit., p. . Ibid., pp. –. Ibid., pp. –. Tomalin, op. cit., pp. –. Pevsner, loc. cit., ; Le Faye, World of Jane

Austen, pp. –. Nicolson, op. cit., p. . Sense and Sensibility, II, Ch., p. . Nicolson, op. cit, pp. –. Maggie Lane, Jane Austen’s England (London,

), p. . Nicolson, op. cit., p. . Le Faye, World of Jane Austen, p. . Meadows, Bonomi., p. . Nicolson, op. cit., pp. –. Peter Meadows, ‘Drawn to Entice’, Country Life,

April , pp. –. Meadows, Bonomi, p. ; Sir John Soane’s Museum,

private correspondence, VIII.J, includes theexamined accounts for Eastwell and depositionsand notes of the arbitration.

Meadows, Bonomi, pp. –. Ibid, p. . Meadows, ‘Drawn to Entice’, p. . Ibid, pp. –. Meadows, Bonomi, pp. –. John Martin Robinson, James Wyatt, Architect to

George III (London, ), pp. –. Nicolson, op. cit., pp. –. Tomalin, op. cit., pp. –. RIBA Drawings Collection, SA/(–). The house

was remodelled and extended in the mid nineteenthcentury.

Letters, p. . Letters, p. . Colvin, Dictionary, p. ; Meadows, ‘Drawn to

Entice’, pp. –. RIBA Drawings Collection, SA/(–). G.Richardson, New Vitruvius Britannicus (London

), Plates XXXIX– XLIII. Ibid, p. . Meadows, Bonomi, p. ; RIBA Drawings

Collection, SA (–). Letters, pp. , –. Letters, p. .

N O T E S

Howard Colvin, Biographical Dictionary of BritishArchitects, – (New Haven and Londonand, ), pp. –; Peter Meadows, JosephBonomi: Architect – (RIBA exhibitioncatalogue, London ); Peter Meadows, ‘Bonomi,Joseph’ (–), Dictionary of NationalBiography, Oxford, –. M.E.Wye, ArchitecturalInfluences on Jane Austen’s Narrative ( Lewiston,NY] ), considers the influence of architectureon Jane Austen’s narrative, especially of Bath, butdoes not explore the presence of Bonomi; KarneValihora, Austen’s Oughts (Newark, ), includes achapter on ‘’The Orchestration of Spectacle inSense and Sensibility’. See also Philippa Tristram,‘Jane Austin’s aversion to Villas’, in Dana Arnold(ed,) The Georgian Villa (Stroud, ), pp. –.Citations to Austen’s novels throughout are to TheCambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen.

Virginia Woolf, ‘The Leaning Tower,’ in TheMoment and Other Essays (San Diego and NewYork, ), pp. –.

Nikolaus Pevsner, ‘The Architectural Setting of JaneAusten’s Novels’, Journal of the Warburg andCourtauld Institutes, (), pp. –; JaniceKirkland, ‘Austen and Bonomi’, Notes and Queries,NS (March ), pp. –. For wider context inAusten’s life, Deirdre Le Faye, The World of JaneAusten (London ).

Nigel Nicolson, The World of Jane Austen (London,), p. .

Deirde Le Faye, (ed) Jane Austen’s Letters (th ed,Oxford ), p. (afterwards, Letters).

Pevsner, loc. cit., p. . William Angus, Seats of the Nobility and Gentry(London, ); William Watts, Seats of the Nobilityand Gentry (London, ).

Pevsner, loc. cit., , p. . Watts, op. cit., , opposite plate xxiv. For life atGodmersham, see Claire Tomalin, Jane Austen:A Life (London ), pp. –.

Tomalin, op. cit., pp. , . The catalogue forGodmersham Park, , mentions a later collectionof seats edited by Neale. This catalogue is in theChawton House Library; thanks to Sarah Parry fordirectly me to this and other material relating to thelibrary at Godmersham Park.

Mansfield Park, III, Ch , p. . Isaac Ware, Four Books of Architecture (London,

–), I, pp. –.



order to inherit. Elizbeth Knight died childlessin and the estate passed to a cousin, ThomasKnight. Thomas was born a Brodnax but changedhis name to May to inherit the Godmersham estateand then changed it again to Knight to inherit theChawton estate. Elizabeth was the only daughter ofMichael Martin of Eynsham, Oxfordshire.’

Emma, III, ch , p. . Mavis Batey, Jane Austen and the English Landscape

(London, ), pp. –. Pride and Prejudice, III, Ch , p. . Colvin, Dictionary, p. . Batey, op. cit., pp. –. See also Gaye King, ‘The

Jane Austen Connection’, in Robert Bearman (ed.),Stoneleigh Abbey: the House, its Owners, its Lands(Stoneleigh Abbey and Shakespeare BirthplaceTrust, Stratford-upon-Avon, ), pp. –

Lane, op. cit., pp. –. Tomalin, op. cit., p. . Northanger Abbey, II, Ch , pp. –, –. Batey, op. cit., pp. –; La Faye,World of Jane

Austen, p. . Mansfield Park, I, Ch , pp. –. Ibid., I, Ch , p. . Ibid., p. . Ibid., I., Ch , p. . Batey, op. cit., pp. –. Ibid., pp. –. Ibid., pp. –. Mansfield Park, II, ch , p. .

Geoffrey Tyack, Warwickshire Country Houses(Chichester, ), pp. –.

Vicary Gibbs (ed), The Complete Peerage, III(London ), p. .

Bertrand Payne, Armorial of Jersey (London ),p. .

The name changes in the Knight family were sofrequent that one MP suggested an Act be passed toallow them to choose whatever name they likedwithout the need for a private Act of Parliament.

Tyack, op. cit., p. ; RIBA Drawings Collection,SA/(–).

Sir John Soane’s Museum, papers relating to thearbitration between Knight and Bonomi, VIIIJ; withthanks to Sue Palmer, archivist for arranging access.

K. Garlick, A. Mackintyre, K. Cave, E. Newby(eds.), The Diary of Joseph Farington, III (NewHaven and London, ), pp. –.

Robinson, op. cit., p. . There is no material in Deirde Le Faye, An Austen

Family Record (Cambridge, ). Nor has SarahParry, archivist of Chawton House Library, beenable to identify any link, and wrote ( E-mail toauthor, August , ): ‘this is a period of change atthe Chawton Estate following the death of ElizabethKnight, who changed her name from Martin toKnight in order to inherit. It was stipulated in thewill of Sir Richard Knight, who died in and thelast of the direct male line, that subsequent holdersof the estate must change their name to Knight in



Jeremy Musson, ‘Jane Austen and Joseph Bonomi’, The ...

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