Where Rick reigns

Over the past couple of years, my husband and I have become fans of the travel maven Rick Steves, whose lucid and well-organized guidebooks have steered us through Reyjkavik, Barcelona, and Lisbon. In a Madrid tapas restaurant, we struck up a conversation with the Americans at the next table, after spotting the Steves guide they were carrying. Steves is accompanying us later this summer on a trip to Switzerland and Vienna.

A Rick Steves mention is anointment by the travel gods, so it's a big deal that, following in the New York Times’ footsteps, he found occasion to note the Jane Austen 250th birthday celebrations going on in England this year, via a web post titled “Where Jane Reigns.”

Steves’ places-to-go recommendations (Bath, Steventon, Chawton, Winchester, Chatsworth) are unexceptionable, and his warnings about bigger-than-usual crowds seem sensible. Some of his incidental claims, though? Hmm. . .  

Chatsworth as the inspiration for Pemberley? Well, maybe--or maybe not. It’s a claim you’ll encounter at half the stately homes in England, it often seems.

Bath as "the mecca for Austen devotees" and the place where Austen spent “five tumultuous-yet-foundational years”? Sounds like the Bath tourist board at work: Austen wasn’t a fan of the city and wrote almost nothing while she lived there. Bath is lovely, but Austen’s foundations lie elsewhere, and the Janeite mecca is Chawton.

Austen playing “an outsize role in the evolution of England's social norms by featuring strong, independent heroines whose views often mirrored her own”? She’s a great writer, but crediting her with shaping social norms is way over the top. (While we’re talking: which views does she supposedly share with her heroines? And which heroines?)

Still, however dubious some of Steves’ claims, he’s got one thing right: This is a great year for any Janeite to visit England. Accordingly, on the day you read this, I’ll be on my way to London. The double pull of spousal business trip and Austen 250 celebrations has proven too strong to resist.

On the agenda are return pilgrimages to Chawton cottage and Chawton House, tours of lesser-known Austen locales in Reading and Southampton, and—squee!--a first-ever visit to the Winchester house where Austen died.

If I run into someone carrying a Rick Steves guidebook, I’ll try to refrain from pointing out that Chatsworth may well not have been the inspiration for Pemberley.