Landforms or Formed by the Land?

The concept of place in Austen & Austenesque Fiction

…their lives were linked and interwoven in innumerable and often intimate

Ways and because this…land shaped all who lived along its rivers, by its

Swamps and on its islands and sandy hills, even as those who lived there

Shaped the land itself.

Erskine Clarke, Dwelling Place

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I have been struck by how clearly and cleverly Jane Austen used the idea of place to define her characters. A myriad of places are used in the Canon—some to define persons, others to dictate actions.

Consider how Darcy may have been shaped if he had hailed not from cold, forbidding, and wild Derbyshire, but rather from southern Dorset or Hampshire. Would he have so easily assumed his austere Master of Pemberley mien? Or might he have offered a different aspect?

Hertfordshire, located only twenty miles from the great capital, was still seen as rustic compared to the glittering metropolis. Not suggesting that such imagery is eternal, Austen’s treatment of Meryton hearkens to the historian much as the towns scattered around the Plains outside of Rome must have seemed quaintly backward 2,300 years ago. Thus, Caroline Bingley could easily consider Meryton’s gentry as nothing more than country mushrooms. Elizabeth Bennet could be that hearty country girl who loves to walk.

My work—notably the Bennet Wardrobe Series and others—has led me to look more closely at the places that shape my characters and are, in turn, shaped by those same people. A sense of place features as much as the various concepts of love within the lives of my characters as they encounter the great mission of the Wardrobe. Consider the pre-eminent places that have grown from the first pages of The Keeper: Mary Bennet’s Extraordinary Journey.

The Hertfordshire estate of Longbourn, purchased by Christopher Bennet in the late 1680s, offers a central place that sprang from Jane Austen's imagination. Yet another, which has shone in many Austenesque works, is Oakham Mount. This bit of nature serves Elizabeth Bennet much as the northern shire does for Darcy. Oakham defines her—being her sanctuary—and explains her to readers.

How unusual it must have been for Regency readers…those of the ton…to discover a character who ran in the fields, scaled “mountains,” and was generally everything a well-bred lady was not. ’Tis essential for us to recall that Lizzy was not running away but rather escaping. I draw that fine semantic point because we all agree that Lydia would run away while her older sister merely sought quiet to examine her life and reflect upon her status.

That is why, although it is never clearly identified in the Canon, within the Wardrobe books, I consider Oakham part of the Longbourn property. While it is not tillable, the Mount offered early Bennets timber in exchange for their stewardship; that is, until young George Bennet, Elizabeth’s great-uncle, was killed in 1758 in a logging accident on Oakham’s slopes. After that, the Bennets turned their attention to crops of a less primary nature.

Other places have risen in the universe of the Wardrobe. While Madras House and Oakham House (see The Exile: The Countess Visits Longbourn) are essential in a transitory sense…much as the Villa Diodati, Darcy and Matlock Houses, Thornhill, Rosings, Pemberley, and Selkirk are featured in aspects of the stories…none is more important that the Beach House at Deauville, the fieldstone wall surrounding the House, and the dunes which shelter it from the rest of Normandy.

The Beach House defines all who inhabit, visit, and never see it. The Beach House was inspired in a young Georgiana Darcy by the Countess of Deauville/Dowager Countess of Matlock, Lady Kate Fitzwilliam. The Countess, having done her work in early 1812, was whiling away a few hours in Rochet’s Maison au Chocolat in Meryton before returning to her own time when she encountered Georgiana, Maria Lucas, and Mary Bennet. She suggested that Deauville would serve as a wonderful and relaxing getaway. That tidbit of advice stuck with the young spinster Darcy, who eventually constructed the Beach House to escape the rigors of her concert schedule. Things can be a bit circular in the Wardrobe’s Universe.

For “my” Bennets (and Fitzwilliams, Bingleys, Gardiners, and Darcys), the Beach House serves as that central place which helps shape these persons…much as we assume that Longbourn, Oakham, Derbyshire, and Pemberley formed Elizabeth and Fitzwilliam. Place carries so much freight and allows us to understand the context within which our characters have matured more deeply.

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For all eight volumes of The Bennet Wardrobe, please go to Amazon (US—other markets, please see your local Amazon store) at

Bennet Wardrobe Series 8 Volumes US

Please enjoy this excerpt from “The Grail: The Saving of Elizabeth Darcy.” This excerpt is ©2022 by Donald P. Jacobson. Any reproduction of this material without the author's expressed written consent is prohibited. Published in the United States of America.

Chapter Fifty-seven

Katsura Imperial Villa, Kyoto, Japan, October 27, 1964

The breeze sweeping up from the lake wrapped Darcy in pine’s spicy aroma and cleansed him. Cares and worries drained away. Time did not slow, but it mattered not. Standing still, he heard the rattle of drying leaves not as a death knell but rather as nature’s rusty wind chimes. He smelled the richness rising from the grove’s damp floor as shafts of afternoon sun broke through gaps in the canopy to paint tree trunks, ferns, and outcrops in ever-changing highlights.

William’s attendant had left him here beneath the overhanging branches. He was firmly abjured not to move from this spot, for it was here that his preparations for the ritual began. With that whispered injunction, the young man left Darcy moored to the hillside to contemplate a tumbling freshet’s shallow gorge scoured through spray-slicked basalt.

Pemberley’s master often had been able to isolate himself in a crowded room. However, he was no longer in Derbyshire but rather an unknown country. This dislocation made Darcy the gaijin an uninitiated stranger awaiting the mysteries of the tea ceremony. He felt particularly exposed, wearing nothing but flowing black silk and gray cotton rather than his usual armor of wool superfine. He stood bareheaded with a pair of simple straw zōri on his feet. A sandal strap between his first and second toes was unfamiliar and uncomfortable, but he soon grew accustomed to the sensation.[i]

The noisome modernity and stimulation of the last several months had left him weary. Beneath the fatigue, though, lurked a sense of dissatisfaction. Inchoate at first, this discontent now took form and revealed itself to be rooted in his ancient self—his inborn inclination to complicate affairs, to consider the sides to the detriment of the heart of the matter. And his paralysis frequently led to heartbreak.

Ockham’s Razor! I avoid the idea that one should never multiply entities without necessity. I find endless ways to complicate my path. Perhaps it is rooted in my restless nature. I must discover how to stop and appreciate the innate greatness in the smallest things.[ii]

Once before, he had ignored his habitual behavior: when Elizabeth opened her heart to his. Their love was no small matter, to be sure, but hints of its overarching glory came not in grand gestures that scorched the heights but instead in common occurrences that limned a valley’s undulations. Like flecks of gold glittering in a streambed, they were revealed in the nibbling of her lower lip when deep in thought or wrapped in the gentleness of her mother’s song when cradling one of their children. Others looking at the Darcy double star might have argued that these were fragments making up a finite whole. However, if Darcy had only one piece, he would still own the totality of their love. Every expression of their affection contained their total devotion before, during, and after the instant of observation: ’twas infinite and universal.

There, under the drooping boughs, still bejeweled with the morning’s rain, Darcy again waited for she who had always been his paramount. However, this time, there was no impatience. The seeds of his anticipation fell upon fertile ground. At his core, Darcy longed to discover another of her gems. Yet, if he did not, it would not be because she had deigned not to give, but, rather, it was not yet time for him to receive.

The breeze stilled, and the bowl through which the stream frolicked held its breath.

Roseate tints shimmered on the glen’s opposite slope as they slipped behind, between, and around moss-covered trunks. Silk hissed softly as it slid against itself, replying to her gentle movements along the stepstones. A wave pulsed on the edge of his sight as a ray slipped between branches to catch and highlight her figure.

They would join at the junction of her path and his, two tightly milled stones lying beneath the toes of his zōri. From here, Elizabeth and William would make their way toward the lake through the remains of the dell, following the trail picked out between nodding ferns.

***

The young woman first led Elizabeth to a secluded bathhouse that opened onto a vista of the villa’s gardens. The expanse gave every appearance of being ignored by Man; fallen leaves lay scattered about, anathema to generations of British groundskeepers. After bathing, Elizabeth dried herself with eucalyptus-scented towels and pulled on a cotton shift akin to another century’s chemise she wore to protect fragile muslins. At Katsura, the garment served the same purpose but preserved a delicate rose-silk kimono with tealeaf embroidery rising from the hem to her waist. Then her attendant wrapped an obi, off-white with roses—Mama’s peach-colored Rosa chinensis—stitched in lifelike color, about her waist and knotted behind in a complicated bow. Her hair was tightly styled with jeweled hairpins. As the young woman tucked a fresh gardenia above her left ear, Elizabeth smiled at the significance of the flower and its placement.

How did they know? Although my love for Darcy is hardly a secret, nevertheless, I appreciate the flower’s sign that I am taken.

After sliding on tabi socks and slipping into a pair of zōri, Elizabeth turned to the young woman, clasped her hands, and bowed deeply, showing her appreciation. Her attendant returned the gesture, then led her outside to the top of a path winding down into the grove. The shrine maiden whispered into Elizabeth’s ear.

Far away
in the country village of Katsura
the reflection of the moon upon the water
is clear and tranquil.[iii]

Then she added, “Follow the way of the stones through the trees. It will join another; at that intersection, you will discover your partner in this journey. Together you will walk the path in humility to the machiai—the covered waiting bench—of Shokin-tei teahouse.”

The leaves and grounds still glittered with morning dew. That, combined with the coolness of the forest, enveloped Elizabeth in a primal embrace. The zōri and rough-hewn flagstones forced her to abandon her usual pace. Instead, Elizabeth took shorter steps to safely land in the middle of each rough-hewn, dew-dampened flag. This denial of her typical nature led to a deeper appreciation of the grove. Muscle memory carried her over the paths around her homes throughout her life. Knowing that she would rarely put a foot wrong, she could withdraw into her thoughts as she moved through panoramas that vanished in their familiarity. In that way, Elizabeth had addressed her innermost feelings without contemplating the landforms that gave life to Hertfordshire and Derbyshire.

Not here and not now—the cleverly spaced stones insisted that she be present in the moment. That process led her to see the woodland rather than looking at it as she had done with Oakham Mount’s vistas over a century and a half ago.

Elizabeth paused. All too often, her life was about moving forward, leaving unpleasant history behind in anticipation of a more agreeable future. Instead, in the woodland surrounding the villa, she turned and gazed back up the trail into her past. The trees and thickets appeared different from this angle. The forest seemed to have been designed by a poet or, perhaps, a priest. Each aspect, near or far, left intimations of meaning, minute suggestions calling for further study. As precisely as she had been groomed in the bathhouse, the glades reveled in studied deshabille, the universe’s perfection displayed with an utter lack of symmetry. If Elizabeth looked hard enough, she could see the mind of Capability Brown’s Japanese avatar at work. This genius, though, moved gently to fulfill the villa’s oasis-like call for harmony with one’s surroundings rather than applying shovel and mattock to impose order upon nature's curves.

She bent and picked up a leaf, colored with its autumnal coat, and understood that it, too, like the branch from which it had fallen, contained every scintilla of creation’s secret glories. While the Russians and the Americans raced to use their scientific power to crack the cosmos like a ripe walnut, Elizabeth recognized that what they sought to plunder from the universe rested in her hand.

Then she slowly opened her fingers to allow the leaf to flutter toward the forest floor, to find its place, and to send reality into a new channel.

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[i] Gaijin in Japanese translates to “outside person.” Zōri are simple rice straw sandals usually worn with tabi (split toe socks).

[ii] While William of Ockham (c 1287–1347) is credited with the logical formulation that bears his name, no evidence of it can be found in his writings. That is not to suggest that he did not use it. Philosophers as far back as Aristotle employed the “principle of parsimony” in their work.

[iii] Tales of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu, a lady of the Japanese court wrote this novel in the eleventh century.