So, the tour I went on in the UK was a Pride-and-Prejudice pilgrimage, where we were going to study the text, in-depth. It was operated by the people who do the podcast '
Harry Potter and the Sacred Text', a company called 'Common Ground' which does pilgrimages based around literary texts (and may have been influenced or created by the podcast creators), and was hosted by Sarah Stewart-Holland of the
Pantsuit Politics podcast, who was my initial point of interest in the pilgrimage.
In the course of the pilgrimage, we would wander the fields of Derbyshire, visit Chatsworth House (which substituted as Pemberley in the 2005
Pride And Prejudice movie), walk past a number of influences in the English literature of the era, and explore the characters while ruminating on the text.
Over the week, we climbed hills and hiked fields, climbed over stiles, and skirted rivers.
It was...pretty good.
In essence, it's doing what fandom often does - picking apart the characters and their motivations, their thoughts, and internalities, and reading into the canon. Sometimes more than the canon allows for.
We were headquartered at the Rutland Arms in Bakewell, a small town in Derbyshire, about 50 minutes from the town of Chesterfield. Ever heard of 'Bakewell tarts'? Welp, this is apparently the town.
The Rutland Arms is an old hotel, which is divided into two parts with a road running between. I suspect one was the stables and the other was the main house/hostel - and they've done both up with rooms in which to stay. I was in the 'old stables' part, sharing a room with another woman, and we got along pretty well.
They've done a great job of keeping it in a certain style, and it's warm. So warm. I can sit around in my sleeping stuff in the evening, instead of having to rug up. That's something I'm going to sincerely resent next winter.
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Day 1 was meeting and greeting, a brief explanation of how the next few days was going to work, and then a brief class before we had a little free time and dinner.
Day 2: Chatsworth House & Darcy
Day 2 was a 4 mile walk up hill and over dale to Chatsworth House (the externals were used for Pemberley in the 2005 movie version of P&P). The participants were warned about fitness and about walking capability, and given advice on what to pack, and pretty much everyone was ready and able for it. One person struggled a little bit - she was older, and I don't think she'd really considered how much strain the walks would put on her body, but she got through the entire week.
Chatsworth House is pretty impressive, no matter what you think of the 2005 P&P movie. That said, thinking about the degree of wealth that allowed people to build (rebuild, renovate, decorate, develop) places like this boggles the brain.
Everything gleams with artistry and skill, whether the portraits, art, or sculpture through the house, or the design of the rooms or gardens.
Notable things: a portrait of Elizabeth Spencer, portrayed as Diana emerging from the clouds. Leaves from an Australian tree to furnish an artwork by a Sydney artist. The Cascade and Fountain, both of which are gravity fed from a natural reservoir in the hills above the estate.
And then there was THE ROCKERY. I don't have words for how amazing this was, so have a couple of pictures:
Our study topic the first day was Darcy. Who he was and who he became. The weight of what had happened the summer previous to the story, and the underlying reasons (but not excuses) for his behaviour and sense of pride. Going to the location used as Pemberley for the 2005 movie gave us insight into the kind of family the Darcys might have been, and into how Elizabeth might have felt marrying into such a family. Day 3: the Long Walk
I started the day with a full breakfast. The hotel offered a hot breakfast as part of our package and rather to my susrprise, given how much I'd eaten the previous day, I was hungry enough to eat it all.
Since it was still before we were due to leave for the day's walk, I headed up to see the church on the hill: All Saints Bakewell. The next day, I discovered there were old Celtic cross stones discovered in the foundations, suggesting its been a place of worship since before the middle ages.
Some of the headstones, though... Multiple children dying before they reached 5, and even those that did teach adolescence of adulthood could be cut off in the prime of life so easily. There was also a set of what looked like coffins, with Human-shaped carvings out of them and a hole in the bottom. Somewhat macabrely, I realised they were probably morgue boxes, made to keep corpses cold, with the hole in the bottom to drain the fluids...
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Our class contemplation today was on Lizzie Bennett, on the kind of heroine she was, on the choice she made to refuse Mr Collins, and how it came before they learned that Bingley had quit Netherfield (for until that point, it was half-expected that Jane would have married him). With a pilgrimage theme of "status" and a consideration of the precarity of a woman's situation in past eras, there were a lot of thoughts being aired, and we continued to discuss them as we hiked across the countryside with a fantastic local guide, Chris.
There were some lovely oddities along the way: a rubber chicken and a toy t-rex eyeballing us along a laneway, a call to deliver a household of excess appleage, and pears growing over a garden wall. A heifer cow grazed on a hill rather as a goat does, before we walked in silent contemplation by the river swelling past us, while the ducks use it like a roller coaster!
The hike was long and they warned up - 5-6 miles over the course of the day - and up hill and down dale! But also in the realm of so much beauty and wilderness (and also sheep shit and cow shit), an ancient Roman settlement, and several weirs and cascades.
It ended up being closer to 8 miles! WHEW.And after dinner, there was the P&P 2005 rewatch, which I skipped and regretted skipping as per an earlier post.
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Day 4 and 5 of Derbyshire
Our character studies were Mrs Bennett, and Charlotte Lucas, with a little bit of time spent on the sisters. It was an interesting conversation, not least for the variety of opinions given about their motives, their extrapolated history, and the choices they had vs the choices they made.
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Stannage Edge is a ridge of rock in the Peak District, and is best visually known from the 2005 P&P movie with Keira Knightly standing atop it while the wind swirls her dress around her. I'm sure people have dome the hike in delicate regency-style dresses, but all I had was my emerald green raincoat and Daniel.
Oh, and clinging to the rock at the top of a hike is a small family joke, c/o B1 who did something like this when she ascended a massive hill in Wales.
There was an old church where Little John was claimed to be buried, which was still locally used. It had a full setup for kids down one side of the church, including toys and books to keep them entertained during the service. So I went to look at the music on the organ to work out what kind of stuff they sang. It was a hymn that I knew, and I checked the tune by humming it.
Several people (mostly from my tour group) gave me slightly shocked looks. And I pointed out (in a normal volume voice) that this is an actively used church because of the 'nursery' space which would be very noisy during the course of a standard church service in which there were families.
It was kind of funny, but also a bit sad. They might have just dismissed it as 'that irreverent Aussie', which is also fair. But my faith isn't in a distant, serious God, but a God who made cats and octopus to slide through ridiculously small spaces, stuck gold and steel and carborundum in rocks, and electricity in frogs' legs (okay, that's where they started to realise it could be harnessed), and created the wide and starry universe, but incarnated to the limitations of a human being.
That's not the norm of religious upbringing, I know. But damn, it's a fun one.
Finally, as we left the church area, I noticed some gentlemen maintaining a local cricket pitch... I suspect this passed the Americans by entirely.
The final dinner was quite good. For once, they set the tables up with nametags, picking people to go into groups rather than letting everyone choose for themselves. There were topical questions, and I think they'd done a careful job of making sure there were introverts and extroverts mixed together so there was no one person stuck trying to manage all the conversation at a table.Overall, the pilgrimage was enjoyable.
And there's another one organised by the same group (and featuring Sarah Stewart Holland) happening on
Emma next year. Which I can't afford, because it's in May which is only 9 months away, and I don't even know if I'll be working then. I surely can't afford as long a holiday as I did this time either. Which is a bummer, because I like
Emma rather more than I do
Pride and Prejudice and I suspect the profile of the people who go is going to be distinctly different from the P&P group...
But the UK! In May! Again! GRARGH.
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