Southern Oregon Region

Jane Austen Birthday Celebration
December 16, 2009

The JASNA Southern Oregon Region held its first annual Jane Austen birthday party on December 16, 2009 from 2 to 5 pm at the home of Hillary Tiefer in Ashland.

Pouring tea

Patricia Sempowich led off our celebration with a toast to Jane’s birth 234 years ago, with sparkling cider for our sparkling writer, courtesy of Patrick.  With Tea with Jane Austen as a guide, Hillary provided us with a stunning high tea: strawberry birthday cake, mini-corn muffins stuffed with egg salad, British toffee and candies, three teapots of British, Swedish, and herbal teas, and three kinds of little sandwiches — cucumber, walnut bleu cheese pear, and tomato pesto avocado.  Patricia baked exquisite scones, which many of us ate with Hillary’s whiskey marmalade.  Mary Ferrari brought crudités and a lovely dip couched in a purple cabbage leaf.  Linda Thomas brought the ginger cakes from The Jane Austen Cookbook.  Mary gifted us with lovely Jane Austen bookmarks, each with a quote and an inkwell & quill charm attached with a ribbon, a wonderful keepsake of the party and Jane’s life.

We had no sooner assembled at the dining room table than a great discussion broke out about Mansfield Park.  “What if Edmund had married Mary Crawford, how happy would he have been?”  “Mary Crawford is the first post-modern character in literature.”  “Fanny showed strength inside of a lifelong dependent situation.”  We were still talking at 3 pm when the cuckoo-clock sounded with a tape of a real bird.

The group then moved into the breakfast room to learn Quadrille.  Hillary had created 1 1/2 pages for each of us that described the value of each of the cards, the 8’s, 9’s, and 10’s being removed from the deck.  We used a facsimile of a 1700 German deck, with botanical drawings for the numbered cards and theatrical performers for the face cards.  Hillary demonstrated the first game with all the cards revealed, formed an “alliance” with Patricia, and succeeded.  In the second game we all passed, which required Patricia to form a “forced alliance” since she had the “spadille.”  Hillary had the “allied” king, and together they made their quota of tricks.  We were still playing at 4 pm, when the clock sounded again with the nature sounds of a bird.

After cards, we moved into the living room to sing carols.  With Linda at the piano, we sang the following songs from the Oxford Book of Carols:

In parting, we passed out the 2010 AGM packets, thanked our gracious hostess Hillary, and made our good-byes.

—Linda Thomas