All about the Upper Assembly Rooms

We go to a concert with Anne and friends as we tour the Upper Assembly Rooms in Bath. Just how accurate are the movie adaptations of Persuasion? Who is the inimitable Miss Larolles and why does Anne compare herself to this woman? Learn the answers to these questions and more in this episode of My Cousin Jane.

Welcome to My Cousin Jane. Today we’re going to be talking about Persuasion, Volume 2, Chapter 8, sometimes called Chapter 20 by its friends.

Chapter Summary

Let’s start today by listening to a clip courtesy of Karen Savage from LibriVox.org that sets the tone for the first part of this chapter.

Sir Walter, his two daughters, and Mrs Clay, were the earliest of all their party at the rooms in the evening; and as Lady Dalrymple must be waited for, they took their station by one of the fires in the Octagon Room. But hardly were they so settled, when the door opened again, and Captain Wentworth walked in alone. Anne was the nearest to him, and making yet a little advance, she instantly spoke. He was preparing only to bow and pass on, but her gentle “How do you do?” brought him out of the straight line to stand near her, and make enquiries in return, in spite of the formidable father and sister in the back ground. Their being in the back ground was a support to Anne; she knew nothing of their looks, and felt equal to everything which she believed right to be done. Persuasion, Chapter 20

What a great quote: “She felt equal to everything which she believed right to be done.” If only the world at large could feel that same resolve.

The Octagon Room

The Assembly Rooms in Bath, sometimes called the Upper Assembly Rooms to distinguish them from an older building in a different part of town, was the place to go for the upper class in Jane Austen’s time. There were a couple of balls held each week there during the high season, along with various concerts, card parties, and a variety of other social events.

The Assembly Rooms are still around today, and there are four main rooms to this building. The Ball Room is an enormous, high-ceilinged room that could hold between 800 and 1,200 people. This room doesn’t play a big part in Persuasion, but it is mentioned in Northanger Abbey.

The Tea Room, sometimes referred to as the Concert Room, was used both for serving refreshments during balls as well as for holding concerts. This is where the concert in the novel takes place.

Not to be confused with the Octagon Chapel we talked about last week (I’m not sure what it is about Bath and octagons), but there was an Octagon Room, which connects the Ball Room and the Tea Room to each other, as well as to a smaller Card Room.

Technically there are two octagon rooms, the small octagon and the great octagon. When you enter the Assembly Rooms building, you pass through this reception area into the smaller Octagon Room, and then you can pass through that room to the Great Octagon Room.

This room, the Great Octagon Room, was meant as a waiting area and mingling space where you could wait for your party, visit with friends outside of the crowded Ball Room, play cards, or just pass through on your way to get some tea.

Today, the smaller Card Room off of the Octagon Room serves as a café for visitors, and there’s a fashion museum in the basement which mostly has exhibits related to men’s fashion over the years.

If you watch the 1995 movie adaptation of Persuasion, you can see Anne speaking with Captain Wentworth in the small Octagon Room, and then it transitions to them attending the concert in the Tea Room, also known as the Concert Room.

In the 2007 movie adaptation, once again we have Anne and her family waiting in the small Octagon Room, but then the concert is held in the greater Octagon Room for some reason. I can only assume this would be for cinematic aesthetic, because it’s not historically accurate. That’s not where the concerts were.

Another key feature of the Assembly Rooms are the crystal chandeliers, which if you visit today are the same crystal chandeliers that were commissioned for the building in the late 1700s. They were initially lit by candles, then later fitted for gas lighting, and then finally electric lighting.

The chandeliers were constructed by Whitefriars Glassworks of London, a pretty famous glass shop which was owned by James Powell and Sons, and James Powell is a relative of Robert Baden-Powell, who was the founder of the Boy Scouts.

After the outbreak of World War II, the chandeliers were taken down and put into storage for safety, and that’s fortunate, because the Assembly Rooms building was bombed during the war, causing extensive damage, and repairs to the building didn’t start until 1956 and weren’t completed until 1963.

The chandeliers were put back, and they are still hanging there today, the originals from the late 1700s, most of them original to when the building was built. A couple of them, when the building was first built, were created by a different glass maker, but they fell, almost hitting one of the designers of the building, and so all of the chandeliers were commissioned to be built by the Whitefriars Glassworks of London.

The “Concert” Itself

Let’s take a minute to listen to a brief description of the concert itself.

The party was divided and disposed of on two contiguous benches: Anne was among those on the foremost, and Mr Elliot had manœuvred so well, with the assistance of his friend Colonel Wallis, as to have a seat by her. Miss Elliot, surrounded by her cousins, and the principal object of Colonel Wallis’s gallantry, was quite contented.

Anne’s mind was in a most favourable state for the entertainment of the evening; it was just occupation enough: she had feelings for the tender, spirits for the gay, attention for the scientific, and patience for the wearisome; and had never liked a concert better, at least during the first act. Towards the close of it, in the interval succeeding an Italian song, she explained the words of the song to Mr Elliot. They had a concert bill between them. Persuasion, Chapter 20

There were lots of different styles of concerts in the Regency era, ranging from the purely musical to what we might today call a variety show.

From Anne’s description of the varying feelings and emotions she needs throughout the show, I’m inclined to think that this trended more towards the variety show format, particularly with her comment about needing “attention for the scientific.”

Scientific displays were often present at such shows, such as the famous glass harmonica display that Benjamin Franklin records as having witnessed at a concert in 1761. He then went on to try to create his own version of the glass harmonica by doing some different arrangements of the glasses that he thought would make it more pleasing.

Regardless of what was or was not at the concert, though, there are two phrases that Austen uses in this chapter that I want to talk about.

“A Bowing Acquaintance”

The first is Sir Walter’s dismissive description of Captain Wentworth as a “bowing acquaintance.” As you can probably infer, this term means a slight acquaintance, one who you wouldn’t know well enough to necessarily want to speak to, but would know well enough that you would bow to them if you saw them, out of respect.

In our day, men in particular still experience this phenomenon, though with more of a head nod than a bow. It’s pretty common for men to nod casually to their bowing acquaintances when they pass them in the hallway or see them in public or at a store, and they don’t want to say anything, but you don’t want to pretend like you didn’t see them, so you give a head nod, and that’s still done quite a bit today.

The Inimitable Miss Larolles

The final thing I want to talk about in this chapter is when Anne maneuvers the seating arrangements following an intermission to sit at the end of her bench in order to try and have a chance to speak to Captain Wentworth.

In re-settling themselves there were now many changes, the result of which was favourable for her. Colonel Wallis declined sitting down again, and Mr Elliot was invited by Elizabeth and Miss Carteret, in a manner not to be refused, to sit between them; and by some other removals, and a little scheming of her own, Anne was enabled to place herself much nearer the end of the bench than she had been before, much more within reach of a passer-by. She could not do so, without comparing herself with Miss Larolles, the inimitable Miss Larolles; but still she did it, and not with much happier effect; though by what seemed prosperity in the shape of an early abdication in her next neighbours, she found herself at the very end of the bench before the concert closed. Persuasion, Chapter 20

The Miss Larolles comment is a reference to the novel Cecilia, Memoirs of an Heiress by Frances Burney, who was a contemporary of Jane Austen, and she was one of Jane Austen’s favorite novelists.

Many people believe that the title for Pride and Prejudice came from a famous speech in this novel, where a man named Dr. Lyster says:

…if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination. Frances Burney, Cecilia (1782), Book X, Chapter X

Miss Larolles was a character in the novel, given to a fair amount of hyperbole and frivolity, and in one scene she arranges the seating at a concert so that she’s at the end of the row, so that she can talk to one Mr. Meadows that she’s interested in.

If you like Jane Austen, many critics cite Frances Burney as one of Austen’s greatest influences, and the two women did have quite a bit in common both in life and writing style, though there are some pretty big differences. It might be worth looking into her books if you’re interested in this type of writing.

Conclusion

That wraps up this episode of My Cousin Jane. As always, if you enjoy the show and would like to help support us, please consider clicking the little donate button or subscribing to our newsletter. Either way, thanks so much for listening.