CAROL KNIGHT SHARES HER MEMORIES OF MARRYING INTO JANE AUSTEN’S FAMILY AND ARRIVING AT HER NEW HOME, THE ANCESTRAL CHAWTON HOUSE.

I was named after both my grandmothers - Caroline Rose Cooper - but some error has my birth certificate showing Carol Rose. My mother blamed my father for this, as he was the one who went to register my birth, in London, England in March 1947. My only brother, Len, was born two years and one day after my birth. Such was the shortage of houses in post-war Britain that we lived in the top half of someone’s house.

When I was three years old, we emigrated to Australia and arrived in Adelaide in August 1950. The first two years were spent at Springbank Camp in Adelaide, which had been an army camp, and we lived in the small corrugated iron semi-detached houses which remained. We then spent three years in Port Augusta, and then finally a very small country town, Caltowie, where my family remained for many years until my mother was the last of us to live there. Within just a few years of our arrival, this little town lost its butcher, bakery, and other small shops, and was left with just a Eudunda Farmers clothing store, a grocers, a post office, pub, and garage, plus four churches and a primary school. My father was a builder and my mother a housewife whilst we children were at home. She was later to take over the post office for several years until it closed.

Myself, my brother, and two sisters all attended the primary school in Caltowie and later the high school in Jamestown, a seven-mile journey on the small school bus. The Caltowie school had one teacher for the infants and another for all the other classes - a total of just over 60 pupils. We had a brilliant teacher who managed to juggle the different age groups and we were in no way disadvantaged when we joined pupils from larger schools at Jamestown High School.

I was still at high school and Jeremy was working on a farm when we met at a local dance. The following year, we married and moved further south near Naracoorte where Jeremy managed a sheep station. I don’t think he mentioned his famous relative, Jane Austen. I had not read or even heard of her, and Jeremy, not being a reader, probably didn’t think it worth a mention! He did once show me a picture of his family home, Chawton House. I told my mother about this large house but her cynical response was, ‘He could have taken that picture anywhere’. Very true - but in this case, not correct. And in any case, it was the other side of the world and really had no relevance to our lives, so I didn’t give it any thought.

Towards the end of the year, my mother-in-law, Elizabeth (Betty) Knight, visited and we decided to return with her for a holiday and to introduce our new baby son, Paul Edward Knight, to his Grandfather Edward (Edward Knight III, Edward Austen’s great great grandson).  So it was that I left South Australia for the first time since my arrival as a small child.

After four weeks on board the ship from Australia to England, we finally arrived at Southampton on Wednesday 15th December 1965. We had spent a lot of the time on board with a small group of similar aged people, playing scrabble, cards, and enjoying the evening cabaret entertainment. Baby Paul was very popular with the stewards and other staff on the Greek ship – they had been away from home for some time and missed their own children. As I was, at 18, legally allowed to drink alcohol in England, but still under the legal drinking age of 21 in Australia, my mother-in-law took it upon herself to help me find a suitable alcoholic drink I would enjoy, so for the early part of the trip I was treated to quite a variety of drinks. She also helped tremendously with the care of our baby, who was only eight weeks old when we left Australia. Her help meant that Jeremy and I could enjoy the evening entertainment on board, and also had some free time during the day.

From Southampton we took a taxi for the journey to Alton, along the A31, with arrangements for luggage to be delivered later. In South Australia, there are roadside markers with the first and last letters of the next town that indicate the distance to it, so I mistakenly thought the signs with A31 marked on them meant Alton was 31 miles away. When I mentioned this, I was told, with some amusement, that this was in fact the road number.  

As it was winter, by the time we arrived it was beginning to grow dark - so the drive through the village and up to the house was somewhat muted. So much was happening – arrival, meeting Jeremy’s father, Edward, and his sister, Anne, looking after a baby - that I do not remember anything about stepping into the house for the first time. My first memory was the bedroom we were given, up two flights of stairs at the top of the house. This was the Cross Room, and as you might expect, it was shaped like a cross. I loved it, and it is still special to me today. The room had one window facing south with a view across the lawns towards the avenue of lime trees and another window facing east with a view of the lawns going uphill towards the top terrace and some huge beech trees. On the third wall was a fireplace with a wingback armchair and a small bookcase, and the fourth wall had the door. 

This was my first experience of stairs. I had never been in a house with more than one level, which is normal in the Australian countryside. On the few occasions I had been to Adelaide and into the department stores I had used the escalators, so I found the stairs a little unnerving and found myself counting as I went, each and every time. I still remember – twenty-two steps each level, forty-four in all.

The library, used by Betty and Edward as their sitting room, was the hub of the household and I could hardly tear myself away from it. I spent many hours happily enjoying the company and the novelty of everyone at home all the time. My own home until then was so different, with father working, sometimes away for weeks at a time, and we children going to school or out and about in the school holidays and my mother the only constant in the house. At Chawton House, with no specific events of people coming and going at set times, coupled with the short winter days bringing darkness in the late afternoon, I totally lost any sense of time. Once, when going shopping with my sister-in-law, Anne, I had thought the shops all stayed open late.

My father-in-law, Edward, had arranged a pre-Christmas drinks party for a few days after our arrival and at 6.00pm in the Library I met many of their friends from the nearby villages of Farringdon, Beech and the Dower House in Chawton. They were all so warm and welcoming to me - it was the most lovely experience. Betty had rallied as always, and, with only a few days at home after nearly three months absence, she produced the appropriate home-baked savoury nibbles for the occasion. Over the following weeks and months I met other friends of the family and, without fail, they were all kind and friendly to me. 

I gradually met Jeremy’s family. I met my sister-in-law, Anne, when we first arrived, then some days later my brother-in-law, Robert, when we drove in the old Land Rover to Milton Abbas, in Dorset, to collect him from the same private boarding school that Jeremy had attended not many years earlier. I was introduced to his old schoolmasters. The rest of the family gathered for the Christmas celebrations on the 24th and 25th of December, when the Great Hall, mostly unused in winter, was decorated with a huge Christmas tree and made good use of. Christmas Day was again a new experience for me with so many of the family present, as opposed to Australian Christmases with only my parents and siblings (five, then later, six of us in total). Then I was surprised to find that there were presents for me from everyone. At home, as a child of immigrant parents, we had no other family and I had never received a Christmas present from anyone other than ‘Father Christmas’, so to get something wrapped and addressed to me was a novelty. I hadn’t expected this, and hadn’t bought any presents with me at all. In my ignorance, it hadn’t occurred to me that gifts would be exchanged. I had no choice but to enjoy the occasion, and not let my embarrassment spoil the day.

The following day, I awoke to find it had snowed overnight and I rushed out to run about in it - so exciting! The family were somewhat bemused by my behaviour and watched through the window from the warmth of the Library.

Over the years, I have become extremely familiar with the house and gardens but in the early days I didn’t venture far at all. One day I walked up along the top terrace to go to the walled garden, and towards the end of the terrace I came to a hedge which I didn’t remember. I went round it to continue my walk. Later I discovered that the reason I hadn’t remembered it was because it hadn’t been there before – it was a fallen ivy-covered tree!

In those days, the Australian accent was not so commonly heard, so I was something of a novelty.  On one occasion, a very junior apprentice hairdresser did not understand my response to his query about what type of shampoo I used, and had to fetch his Swiss boss to interpret! With virtually no contact with the Australian accent in my early years in England, I have lost it, and only rarely will someone notice a slight hint of an Aussie twang.

© Carol Knight - mother of Caroline Jane Knight, Chair and Founder of the Jane Austen Literacy Foundation

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