Greater Chicago Region
Annual Jane Austen Birthday Tea
December 12, 2009
The Greater Chicago Region’s Annual Jane Austen Birthday Tea was the culmination of our commemorations of the bicentenary of Austen’s move to Chawton Cottage in July 1809 with her mother, her sister Cassandra, and her friend Martha Lloyd.
Amidst the beautiful seasonal decorations of the distinguished club, The Fortnightly of Chicago, we toasted with champagne our beloved Jane Austen (led by Rebecca Dolin) and one of her great admirers and longtime GCR member, the late Margarete “Maggie” Cantrall, (led by Ronnie Jo Sokol).
Jane Hunt enlightened us with the history of The Fortnightly. Delicious delicacies were eaten and Austen raffle prizes won.
GCR Readers’ Theatre performed the debut of Williams Phillips’ original work, First Find a Good Place to Plant Potatoes: Tales of Chawton Cottage, 1809-2009, a celebration of the move so “momentous for the history of the English language.” At Chawton “5 novels were written or put into final form” with more than 730,000 words. Not only were we entertained, but educated. Who realized that Martha Lloyd, as a result of her later marriage to Jane Austen’s brother Francis, would, after his 1837 knighthood, be the only one entitled to be called “Lady Austen”?
—Elsie Holzwarth
GCR Readers’ Theatre: Anna Cooper-Stanton, Jeff Nigro, Anne Davis, Lori Davis, William Phillips