The Inkwell

Transports of Delight
How Jane Austen's Characters Got Around
by Ed Ratcliffe

I've often wondered about the carriages in Jane Austen's stories. What was a landaulet? Why was Mrs. Elton so proud of her sister's barouche-landau? What kind of travel system did Catherine Morland use on her trip from Northanger Abbey to Fullerton?

First let's get the terminology straight. "Carriage" was the general term for almost any horse-drawn passenger vehicle. A chariot, chaise, coach, stagecoach, curricle, barouche, gig, or landaulet is just a kind of carriage. There was an immense variety of such vehicles, each with its own name; an English friend says that there has probably never been a complete list of all the kinds and names of horse-drawn vehicles of the period. In the discussion that follows I have used qualifiers such as "often" and "usually" in descriptions of carriages because of the variations in construction that were so common. Although we do not read about them in the stories, some carriages were built without a buyer on hand, and buyers could walk into a showroom and inspect them just as we do in an automobile showroom today. But most were built to order, to suit the exact wishes of the buyer, so that there could be wide variation from vehicle to vehicle of the same type and one vehicle might have the characteristics of several types. The naming of vehicles was just as flexible, as we shall see.

Hacks were rented carriages, and traveling in one was not quite the thing. As our narrator remarks of Catherine Morland's homecoming, "A heroine in a hack post-chaise, is such a blow upon sentiment, as no attempt at grandeur or pathos can withstand." In a letter to her sister Jane asks, "Is there a charm in an hack postchaise?"

Nor was it quite the thing to ride a horse instead of using one's own carriage. Mr. Knightley does "not use his carriage so often as became the owner of Donwell Abbey," in Emma's opinion, so when he arrives in it at the Cole's party, she approves: "This is coming as you should . . . like a gentleman."

A similar awareness of difference appeared in travel for ladies (as distinct from women). Ladies could not travel alone-they had to wait until someone in the family, preferably a male relative or at least a servant, could accompany them. When Lady Catherine De Burgh sent her daughter to Ramsgate she was accompanied by two male servants -- nothing less would do. Jane Austen's letters often mention that she was waiting for one of her brothers to arrive so that he could escort her on a trip. Of course there were exceptions. Catherine Morland traveled 70 miles "unattended, alone!" and the fact that General Tilney sent no servant with her was felt as an additional and deliberate insult.

Ladies rarely traveled in stagecoaches.

Ladies such as Emma Woodhouse, who took their social roles seriously, could not even walk alone for any considerable distance and feel comfortable about doing so. "She had ventured once alone to Randalls, but it was not pleasant; and a Harriet Smith, therefore, one whom she could summon at any time to a walk, would be a valuable addition to her privileges." Elizabeth Bennett, who cared less for the social niceties, walked alone for three miles to visit her sister at Netherfield and drew this response from Miss Bingley: "To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ancles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! what could she mean by it? It seems to me to shew an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country town indifference to decorum." It was tough being a lady.

Imagine that you are living in an English village 200 years ago. You have only a little money. How will you travel if you leave the village? You might walk, even if the trip is a great many miles. Most English people of that time walked much more than they, or we, do today. Drovers walked as they herded their flocks from Scotland to London every year, then walked back to Scotland, and itinerant peddlers walked every day of the year. Examples of this kind could be multiplied over and over. English people walked for health and pleasure also: Mr. Knightley, the Dashwoods at Barton, Frank Churchill in the gypsy incident, even Mr. Woodhouse with his turns in the shrubbery, and Jane Austen herself, are examples. But walking as a means of transportation is rare and brief in Jane Austen's stories.

Walking did provide one advantage: walkers were probably less inconvenienced by the bad roads than those who rode in vehicles. One traveler, shortly before Jane Austen's birth, noted in a letter to a friend that she had encountered a pothole five feet deep. The highway engineers Telford and MacAdam were active in Austen's time, but improved only a tiny part of the British road system while she lived. The overturnings and the casual way they were treated in Emma, Persuasion, and Sanditon give ample evidence of the state of the roads.

The cheapest form of public transport was the long wagon, a large, slow, clumsy, primitive wagon with a cloth top. It was similar to the American covered wagon and carried both passengers and goods.

It lumbered along, often at less than walking speed, its tires were at least 18 inches wide to avoid sinking into the road surface, it had no suspension system, and its passengers must have been exceedingly uncomfortable. But it was cheap for passenger travel: about one-fourth the cost of a stagecoach. The long wagon does not appear in Jane Austen's stories, but may have been used by some of her lower class characters offstage and Mary Crawford's harp may have been sent down from London in a long wagon. Unfortunately its low load capacity made it expensive for the transport of goods. One estimate from 1818 was that it cost as much to haul a tonne of payload 30 miles by road as it did to move it across the Atlantic by ship. When Jane Austen's father retired and the family moved from Steventon to Bath, a distance of 80 miles, they sold their furniture in Steventon and replaced it in Bath instead of transporting it to Bath by wagon. The reason was not stated, but it may have been the cost of transport. When Mrs. Dashwood and her daughters moved from Norland to Barton Cottage "the furniture was all sent round by water." The beginning and end of that journey were near the Channel. Inland, the main trade routes between 1750 and 1830 were the canals. A map of Great Britain drawn about 1340 exaggerates the width of rivers and shows the roads as mere threads, an indication of their relative importance. There had been no very great change by 1800 except in the appearance of canals.

Most English people above the poorest class, including some of the gentry on occasion, traveled by stagecoach.

Here is the Cambridge coach setting off from La Belle Sauvage on Ludgate Hill, a coaching inn in the middle of London that stabled 400 horses. Only a few of Jane Austen's characters used stagecoaches. William Price used them for his trips to and from Mansfield Park. Robert Martin returned from London by stagecoach with news about his engagement to Harriet Smith. Mr. Elton used stagecoaches for his wife-hunting trips to Bath. Some of Jane Austen's servants and hired musicians traveled by stagecoach. Several of her brothers used stagecoaches. Jane's letters show that she used stagecoaches occasionally to carry her trunk, and she traveled in them now and then in her later life. Earlier, at the age of 20, she wrote thus to her sister about a proposed trip to London: "As to the mode of our travelling to Town, I want to go in a Stage Coach, but Frank will not let me."

Beginning in 1784 Englishmen depended on Royal Mail stagecoaches to carry their letters, and the coaches carried passengers too. Edmund arrived in Portsmouth "by the mail" after an all-night trip from London.

The Royal Mail coaches made a revolutionary improvement in the English mail service, establishing a tradition of excellence in speed and reliability that endures to this day. They were not, however, above being caricatured, as this cartoon shows.
Mails from London to Edinburgh often arrived within five minutes of their scheduled time. Do we do as well today? Before the Royal Mail coaches the mails had commonly been carried by "a very low or worthless boy, mounted on a miserable hack . . . too often suspected of being in collusion with the robber." Post boys were robbed so frequently that, a contemporary account says, the mail "is very unsafe, and to avoid loss, people generally cut Bank Bills in two, and send the parts by a different post. The Postmasters General advertised directions to the public how to divide a bill, in such a manner as to prevent its being of any use to a robber." In contrast, the Royal Mail coaches "are protected by the coachman and a guard, armed with a blunderbuss and brace of pistols each. . . . These posts are made daily to 320 towns." Royal Mail trips cost about a penny per mile more than stagecoaches and required traveling at night, but their reliability and safety made them popular.

Stagecoaches used the posting system described below. They disappeared slowly as the rail system spread, beginning in the 1830s. They vanished in England in 1908 and in California in 1918.

A step up from the stagecoach in some respects was the common practice of riding a horse for trips of moderate length. Mr. Knightley owned no horses and surely hired one from the Crown Inn when he went to visit his brother in London to avoid witnessing Frank Churchill's attentions to Emma. He hired a horse for the return journey. He hired a horse for his ride to Kingston when he and Miss Bates had that shouted conversation through her upstairs window. Although Highbury was not on a post road, the Crown Inn kept "two pair of post-horses" and at least one chaise to rent.

Mr. Elton rode a horse 16 miles from Highbury into London to take Harriet Smith's picture to be framed. Maybe we should not take that 16 mile distance too seriously, even though Jane Austen mentions it five times. Chapman says that although she was scrupulously accurate about most distances, she has set up a geographic impossibility here. Chapman claims that no place can be 16 miles from the West End of London, 9 miles from Richmond, and 7 from Box Hill. He says Jane is probably trying to prevent the reader from identifying Highbury with any real town. I used my detailed modern maps to try to verify what Chapman says. It's a marginal matter, and he may be correct, but I can't be sure without knowing which roads existed south of London in the early nineteenth century. I'm also uncertain from just which point in the West End he began to measure distance toward a possible Highbury. The West End is a considerable district, not a tiny neighborhood.

Edward Ferrars arrived at Barton on horseback to propose to Elinor Dashwood. It could not have been his own horse-no prudent man living on 100 a year would attempt to own a horse. He probably traveled by stagecoach to Exeter, then rented a horse for the last four miles to Barton Cottage.

When Col. Brandon, at Barton Park, received news of the discovery of Eliza, he sent for his "horses" and rode to Honiton, then went post to London. At least two horses were required for a speedy trip to Honiton, 40 miles away, but the text does not make clear how the horses were used. No servant of his is mentioned in this incident or at any other time.

A horse was Henry Tilney's customary means of transport for the "almost twenty miles" between Northanger Abbey and his parsonage in Woodston. The gypsy incident shows that Frank Churchill rode horses between Highbury and the Churchills in London.

Women occasionally rode horseback for transportation. The proper Jane Bennett rode three miles from her home to Netherfield and her conversation with her parents shows that she was doing nothing out of the ordinary, although, as she said, "I had much rather go in the coach." The city- bred Mary Crawford could not have done such a thing until Edmund taught her to ride, and it seems doubtful that the tremulous Fanny Price ever rode except for reasons of health. (A remarkable English lady named Celia Fiennes rode horseback hundreds of miles across England, on several trips for pleasure, in the late seventeenth century.)

Another rung up the economic ladder brings us to the chaise. This was a closed carriage popular for traveling. It was usually small, with seats for two people, occasionally one, but a side seat could pull out to hold three, and with two seats, both facing forward, it could hold four.

The very existence of the single-passenger chaise tells us a great deal about the state of English roads: the purpose of the chaise's quite narrow body was to prevent the passenger from being thrown about too violently on the rough roads. The horses of a chaise were controlled, not by a driver seated on a box on the vehicle, but by a post-boy, or postilion, who rode the near, or left, horse. On a large chaise four horses were used, often with postilions on both lead horses in addition to the near wheel horse. When General Tilney and his party set off from Bath for Northanger Abbey we read about "the fashionable chaise-and-four-postilions handsomely liveried, rising so regularly in their stirrups, and numerous out-riders properly mounted." It is not clear why a chaise used a postilion instead of the usual driver on a seat . A carriage builder of the time called the use of postilions "an absurd practice." Chaises must have been among the commonest vehicles on the road. Some of them were the hack post-chaises we read about, traveling on the network of post-roads that had spread all over England by Jane Austen's time.

Here's how Catherine Morland used post-chaises and post-horses for her unhappy trip from Northanger Abbey to her home in Fullerton. When General Tilney arrived at the Abbey on Saturday night, he must have sent a servant to the nearest post station or coaching inn with orders for a chaise and pair to arrive at the Abbey at 7 o'clock the next morning. (A Sunday morning, you will note, though it could hardly be called a trip of pleasure.) The chaise took Catherine one stage, typically ten to fifteen miles, to the next post station, where she shifted into another chaise with fresh horses and was quickly off again to the next post. Her trip may have looked something like this.

The narrator's statement that she stopped "only to change horses" must mean that she did not stop for meals or rest, because Mrs. Morland's remark ("now you must have been forced to have your wits about you, with so much changing of chaises and so forth . . .") indicates that she changed vehicles too. Since Catherine's 70 mile trip took "about 11 hours," she averaged a little more than 6 miles an hour, twice a walking pace. The process was called posting, or traveling post. It provided privacy impossible in a crowded stagecoach.

We hear Miss Steele's gleeful response after such a trip:

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Jennings, "and how did you travel?"
"Not in the stage, I assure you," replied Miss Steele, with quick exultation; "we came post all the way, and had a very smart beau to attend us. Dr. Davies was coming to town, and so we thought we'd join him in a post-chaise."

A traveler who owned a carriage and horses would travel the first stage with them, send the horses home with servants, and travel the rest of the way with his own carriage and a series of horses rented from posting stations. No traveler used his own horses for a long trip unless it was necessary; the trip would have been far too slow. An example of the delay, even for a trip of moderate length, is the trip by Catherine Morland and the Tilney family from Bath to Northanger Abbey. General Tilney's chaise may have been large and ponderous, festooned with as many servants as possible, and the Cotswold hills northward from Bath may have been difficult, but it was only a thirty mile trip. Even so, it had to be interrupted after just fifteen miles, at the village of Petty-France, to give the horses a two-hour rest. We know that the trip in the same vehicle from the Abbey to Woodston for dinner with Henry, a distance of "nearly twenty miles," was done without stopping to rest the horses, because its average speed over the whole distance was 7 miles an hour. Perhaps there were fewer servants on festoon duty that day, or maybe the road to Woodston was in better condition, and we know that Woodston lay in the flatter country to the east of Northanger, as shown by Catherine's traveling along most of the Woodston road on her way east and south from Northanger to Salisbury.

Willoughby's trip from Barton Cottage to London, after his disastrous farewell to Marianne, shows what happened when a traveler insisted on using his own horses for a long trip. He traveled "so tediously" because, as he said, "I was traveling with my own horses." The trip was somewhat longer than two hundred miles and must have taken several days.

Frank Churchill rented a chaise from the Crown Inn to ride to London and purchase a piano, and rented one to go to Richmond when Mrs. Churchill was gravely ill. These rentals show that he probably traveled from Enscombe to Highbury in a post-chaise, certainly not in his own vehicle.

Mr. and Mrs. Suckling owned a chaise in addition to their barouche-landau. It was surely in the light-weight chaise, not in the heavier vehicle, that Mr. Suckling took his friend "twice in one week to London and back again with four horses." The total distance was precisely 500 miles, but it wasn't the spectacular feat Mrs. Elton felt it to be. Sunday travel for pleasure was forbidden, but even in six days they could have made the trip by traveling 12 hours a day at an average speed of less than 7 miles an hour, only a little faster than Catherine Morland traveled from Northanger Abbey to Fullerton. Mr. Suckling and his friend do deserve a prize for persistence. If they were able to travel on Sunday as well, everybody, especially the horses, must have been grateful.

When he heard that Marianne was dying Willoughby used his chaise to travel in haste about 120 miles in 12 hours from London to Cleveland. He averaged about 10 miles an hour, a very good speed, and probably left a string of exhausted horses behind him. Notice that although he heard about Marianne's desperate plight one evening and was anxious to be on his way at once, he did not set out for Cleveland until the next morning. It was a wise delay. Carriage lights consisted only of a pair of candles or small oil lamps, sometimes with reflectors, which gave notice of the vehicle's presence but shed little useful light on the road. A carriage builder of the time noted the deficiencies of the system, possibly with a little commercial tilt in his remarks: "Oil has proved objectionable by the smoke it creates, and being also filthy to use about a carriage: candle is what is always used, and is certainly best, being clean and easily applied." He then informs the public that he has "procured a candle made of a superior composition, with a burner, which gives a light more clear than any yet ever used for lamps," sold "only at his Office." Travel at night on unfamiliar roads could result in serious accidents. Evening social activities in the country, even in familiar territory, were usually confined to the moonlit nights of the month.

The newly-wed Mr. and Mrs. Robert Ferrars traveled down from London to Dawlish in a chaise. Both Mr. Bingley and Sir Walter Elliot owned a chaise-and-four. Mrs. Jennings used her chaise to take herself and the Dashwood sisters from Barton to London and from London to Cleveland.

The curricle was another popular vehicle, a kind of early sports car.

It was a light two-wheeled carriage, sometimes open but often with a top that could be lowered, and it was usually drawn by two horses. Willoughby drove Marianne in his curricle all over the neighborhood of Barton.
This is the Prince of Wales driving a curricle, and I'm sure Willoughby looked just as dashing. Notice how high the passengers sit, as they did in other vehicles of the time also. The large rear wheels were necessary because of deep ruts and potholes, and the front wheels were smaller only so that they could pass under the carriage body when the vehicle turned. The carriage body hung from long vertical "Cee" springs which helped a little to smooth out the rough ride. Horizontal elliptical springs, invented in 1804 and just beginning to appear, eventually made much lower carriage bodies possible, and might have reduced the number of overturnings we read about in the stories.

Henry Tilney, driving Catherine from Petty-France to Northanger in his curricle, made her "as happy a being as ever existed." All the curricle owners were young men: Mr. Darcy, Mr. Walter Elliot, Charles Musgrove, Henry Tilney, John Willoughby, and Mr. Rushworth.

A gig was similar to a curricle.

Sometimes the names seem interchangeable, and a carriage-builder of the time, in a treatise on carriages, captioned this drawing "Gig Curricle." A major difference between the two was that a curricle was usually drawn by two horses and a gig by one-less speed, more staid.

Admiral and Mrs. Croft acquired a gig while at Kellynch Hall, and we know it could seat three in a pinch because the Crofts were able to give Anne Elliot a ride to Uppercross. Jane Austen's description of the incident shows how flexible the terminology was. Careful writer though she was, she calls the Croft's vehicle a "gig" and, nine lines later, a "one horse chaise."

John Thorpe, Mr. Collins, and Sir Edward Denham also owned gigs, and so did Jane Austen's brother Henry.

An even lighter and smaller vehicle was called a chair, or whiskey, because it could whisk around other carriages and pass them quickly.

It was a small chaise without a top, it was drawn by one horse, and was often used in large parks and gardens. A chair appears only in The Watsons, where it was owned by the Watson family, probably because it was inexpensive.

We must not confuse this kind of chair with the seat enclosed in a box carried on poles by two men. Such a vehicle was usually called a sedan chair.

Here is a sedan chair in Bath with the White Hart Hotel in the background, overlooking the Pump Room colonnade on the left. Sedan chairs appeared in Restoration London and were passing out of fashion in Jane Austen's time, although there was still a stand for about half a dozen in fashionable and conservative St James's Street in 1800. (Don't pass lightly over that view of the White Hart-it's the only picture of the building I've ever seen, and it's where Captain Wentworth wrote his passionate proposal to Anne Elliot. Practically sacred ground.)

Large families-the Bennetts, the Musgroves, and the Edwards-owned coaches, large vehicles which regularly held four to six passengers and on occasion even more.

A coachbuilder of the time provides some illuminating comments on this vehicle: "Strength and convenience are the most essential properties of this carriage, it being principally intended for continental journies, nothing should be omitted that can contribute to either; plain, strong-built, crane-neck carriages are to be preferred on this occasion, as the roads on the continent are very rough, and, in the towns, very narrow. The great expence of these carriages is principally on account of the many conveniences for luggage necessary for the passengers' accommodation, it depends on the knowledge of the intended route, to proportion the carriage and conveniences thereto." Travel on the continent was not undertaken lightly. The "crane-neck" was a long curved fore-and-aft iron bar that connected the front and rear axles and supported the body of the carriage. Its curves were believed to provide a spring effect, desperately needed.

A lighter kind of vehicle was the chariot. It was pulled by four horses and usually carried four people on two seats facing forward, as in an automobile.

Outwardly it was similar to a large post-chaise except that it had a coach-box, or seat for a driver, so the horses were not ridden. But here is a vehicle with postilions, described as a chariot by an early nineteenth century authority on carriages.
Another example of flexible naming. Private posting chariots like this were used for long-distance travel by those who could afford them. They provided the most luxurious and rapid travel of the period.

Mrs. Jennings had a chariot as well as a chaise. Her ownership of two vehicles is surprising in such a down-to-earth person who lived alone, and Chapman remarks that it may have been forgetfulness on Jane Austen's part.

The dowager Mrs. Rushworth "removed herself, her maid, her footman, and her chariot, with true dowager propriety, to Bath" shortly before her son's marriage. Mr. and Mrs. John Dashwood also owned a chariot.

Phaetons were another class of light vehicles, generally used for pleasure.

A phaeton had either no top at all or one that could be thrown back in good weather. The name was applied loosely to several kinds of carriages: a Stanhope, a mail, a park phaeton, a dog-cart, and so on. Mrs. Gardiner suggested that she and Elizabeth use a "low phaeton" for riding around the park at Pemberley. Quotes in the OED show that in Pepy's time a dog-cart was actually pulled by dogs, but by Jane Austen's time a dog-cart was pulled by one or two horses and carried a sportsman's dogs in a box under the seat.

In Jane Austen's novels only Miss DeBourgh owned a phaeton.

Again notice, in this drawing from a fashion magazine from 1794, how high the passengers sit. The seating looks, and was, precarious on rough roads.

Anne Wentworth owned "a very pretty landaulet."

It was a small two-passenger vehicle with a top that folded back. Captain Wentworth surely bought something larger and sturdier for the two of them, probably a chaise.

Now let us rise in the world, look about among our peers, and see who owns a barouche: Lady Dalrymple, Mr. and Mrs. Palmer, and Henry Crawford.

The barouche was something of an aristocratic vehicle; three of the four quotes in the OED refer to barouches used by a duchess, by titled ladies, and by dowagers. The fourth quote is from Emma: "Their barouche-landau holds four perfectly." No wonder the "little upstart, vulgar" Mrs. Elton took such relish in parading her sister's barouche-landau.

The barouche was a heavy four-horse vehicle in spite of its light appearance. Without the bracing provided by a roof structure the body had to be stiffened by "heavy iron plates" underneath to make the vehicle sufficiently rigid. Modern convertibles are heavy for the same reason.

Now we approach, with proper awe, the barouche-landau. If Mrs. Elton is our guide, it was the ultimate vehicle of the period unless you happened to be the monarch or Lord Mayor of London. How did a barouche-landau look, and how did it differ from vehicles for the riff-raff? The pictures I have included so far were found mostly in social histories and in reprints of contemporary books on carriages. Such sources are fairly easy to locate, but finding a picture of a barouche-landau was another matter entirely. My dozen or so books on early nineteenth century English carriages, some of them classic works by carriage builders of the period, with pictures and descriptions of scores of vehicles-these books provide not even a hint of the existence of the barouche-landau. An appendix in Chapman's 1934 edition of Mansfield Park discusses and illustrates carriages and travel, and shows that Chapman has not been able to find a picture of a barouche-landau:

For barouche-landau, Mr. W. H. Helm refers me to the Morning Post, 5 Jan. 1804, where it is announced that 'Mr. Buxton, the celebrated whip, has just launched a new-fangled machine, a kind of nondescript. It is described by the inventor to be the due medium between a landau and a barouche, but all who have seen it say it more resembles a fish-cart or a music-caravan.'

In Times Literary Supplement 29 Oct 1931 a letter refers to Le Beau Monde for Nov. 1806 and March 1807, where the new carriage is described and illustrated.

Chapman had no more to say, no picture to present, and I was at a dead end (I had mislaid my copy of Le Beau Monde for November 1806, as well as that for March 1807). I was frustrated for months until one day, browsing near the end of Chapman's 1954 edition of Minor Works, I found a copy of that Beau Monde illustration of 1806. Here it is.

Chapman apologized for the twenty-year delay in publishing the picture. The OED has no separate entry for "barouche-landau" and refers to it only in the quote from Emma. It must have been quite a rare vehicle.

While the barouche has a folding top that covers only the back half of the passenger area, the barouche-landau top covers the entire passenger area when raised and is arranged in two parts: the front part folds forward, the back part folds to the rear. The driver's seat is covered with a long, elaborate "seat cloth," an object of much attention at the time. The seat cloth (and presumably the seat itself) could be removed and replaced with a barouche seat. These are the major differences I see between the barouche and barouche-landau.

In most of her stories Jane Austen calls a vehicle by its specific name: chaise, or gig, or curricle, for example. But in Emma all private vehicles are "carriages" except those owned by the Sucklings: they own a chaise and a barouche-landau. We read that Mr. George Knightley, Mr. John Knightley, Mr. Elton, Mr. Woodhouse, Mr. Weston, Mr. Cole, "a family of old friends," and "a cousin" all own "carriages," and Mr. Perry may set up his "carriage." In fifty-seven instances in Emma where I expect the narrator to call a carriage by a specific name, she calls it a carriage instead. This consistent usage appears in no other story, and I believe it occurs here because Jane Austen wished to emphasize the uniqueness of the Suckling's barouche-landau.

Copyright © 2002 by Edward Ratcliffe

Before retiring, Ed Ratcliffe was a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, doing computer simulations of physical processes. He became interested in Jane Austen in 1980 when he saw the BBC-TV production of Pride and Prejudice. He joined JASNA and JASNA NorCal in 1981.