So it turns out there’s a cliffside hotel with amazing views of the Pacific where all the rooms are named after famous writers and, since no one gets a TV, a radio, a landline or even Wifi, there’s pretty much nothing to do all day except read.
Oh, and did I mention that one of the rooms is named for Jane Austen?
No, this is not my imaginary dream-fantasy vacation spot. This is an actual place in Newport, Oregon, called the Sylvia Beach Hotel. You can stay in a Virginia Woolf Room with a view of a lighthouse! How perfect is that?
I happened across this little slice of paradise via my daily Google alert for Austen mentions, which yielded a traveler’s tale of a stay in the Jane Austen Room. “Austen is right next door to the Melville room,” wrote Washington State gardening blogger Tangly Cottage.
I like to imagine sensible Jane running into brooding Herman in the hallway, perhaps on the way down to the dining room. (Did I mention that this hotel also serves breakfast and dinner?)
“Mr. Melville, I do hope you do not always write doomy seafaring stories,” she might say, in the polite yet firm manner that we Janeites know she must have had. “I think it is the misfortune of dread-filled allegorical tales with intense religious overtones to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoy them completely. The strong feelings which alone can estimate them truly are the very feelings which ought to taste them but sparingly.”
And then she would recommend some lighter reading promoting a greater faith in the ultimately just and well-ordered nature of the universe – the kind of thing found in the hotel’s Agatha Christie room, perhaps.
And he would listen attentively, seeming grateful for the interest implied, and – though with a shake of the head, and sighs declaring his little faith in the efficacy of any books on existential misery like his –would jot down the titles of Murder on the Orient Express and Peril at End House, promising to procure and read them.
Alas, such an encounter is only possible in fantasy, since Melville was born two years after Austen’s untimely death. Still, if I’m ever on the Oregon coast, I hope to stop by the Sylvia Beach Hotel’s Jane Austen Room.
2 comments
Mar 30 2015 05:49PM by J Wheeler
Thank you! I live in Oregon, but had never heard of this place! I know where I'm going for our anniversary this year!!
Mar 30 2015 11:03PM by Deborah Yaffe
Ooh, lucky you! Come back after you've gone and tell us all what it's like.