I've been in Worthing (a place in Sussex, a seaside resort) again, for family reasons. It's a place with literary associations – mostly with Oscar Wilde, about whose eventful stay in Worthing I have written before (here and here). There is also a Jane Austen association, which only came to light in recent times, as a result of research into the dairies of Fanny Austen, Jane's eldest niece. Jane spent a few months in Worthing in 1805, staying in Stanford's Cottage, a house on Warwick Street which then had uninterrupted views south to the sea and north to the downs. It no longer does, being hemmed in by later buildings, and is now, of all the unlikely things, a branch of Pizza Express – that's the exterior above, and inside there are many reminders of the Austen connection, in the form of portraits, quotations and graphics.
In Worthing, Jane and her party – sister Cassandra, brother Edward and his wife Elizabeth, and their oldest child, Fanny, with her governess – did the usual seaside things of the time: bathing in the sea and the warm baths, walking on the beach, buying fish, attending a raffle. Probably Jane wrote a fair copy of her early work Lady Susan, and added the 'Conclusion', but the main contribution of Worthing to the Austen oeuvre was that it very probably gave her the idea for Sanditon, the fast-developing seaside resort in the unfinished novel of that name. Jane and Cassandra were certainly on friendly terms with Edward Ogle, the speculator-developer who at the time of their visit was turning the once sleepy fishing village of Worthing into a fashionable resort with all the amenities – just as the energetic Mr Parker is doing to the fictional Sanditon.
Even Edward Ogle might be astounded to see Worthing as it is today, and if he could find Stanford's Cottage again, he would surely be bemused. 'What' he might ask, 'is pizza? And what does it express?'
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