Before Jane Austen and her sister, Cassandra, and mother moved into Chawton Cottage, they lived in a “commodious oldfashioned house in a corner of Castle Square” in Southampton. In his Memoir of his aunt, James Edward Austen-Leigh writes this charming, although bittersweet description:
John Petty, 2nd Marquess of Lansdowne
At that time Castle Square was occupied by a fantastic edifice, too large for the space in which it stood, though too small to accord well with its castellated style, erected by the second Marquis of Lansdowne, half-brother to the well-known statesman, who succeeded him in the title. The Marchioness had a light phaeton, drawn by six, and sometimes by eight little ponies, each pair decreasing in size, and becoming lighter in colour, through all the grades of dark brown, light brown, bay, and chestnut, as it was placed farther away from the carriage. The two leading pairs were managed by two boyish postilions, the two pairs nearest to the carriage were driven in hand. It was a delight to me to look down from the window and see this fairy equipage put together; for the premises of this castle were so contracted that the whole process went on in the little space that remained of the open square. Like other fairy works, however, it all proved evanescent. Not only carriage and ponies, but castle itself, soon vanished away, ‘like the baseless fabric of a vision’. On the death of the Marquis in 1809, the castle was pulled down. Few probably remember its existence; and anyone who might visit the place now would wonder how it ever could have stood there. – A Memoir of Jane Austen
George IV’s spider phaeton (1790) Click on image to view a larger version.
Postillion by Thomas Rowlandson (18th century – 19th century)
Jane Austen's World 