Breakfast at Chawton House
Jan Dalley of the Financial Times has breakfast with Sandy Lerner at Chawton House. Among the many revelations was that Ms. Lerner, one of the founders of Cisco Systems, does not use the Internet:
At one point I mention something that interests Lerner, and I say I’ll e-mail her the reference. She looks almost startled. “I quit reading e-mail two years ago,” she said. It is my turn to be surprised. The woman whose company was one of the first and most successful pioneers of commercial applications of the internet - and the source of all this wonderfully applied money - never logs on now. If she does, she’s horrified at what she finds.
We are extremely disappointed that such a dedicated Janeite can only see the Internet as painted in terms of black and white; that if there is pornography or flaming on the Internet, there must needs be nothing good about it. That is hardly a position that we can support; we like to think that our humble effort here provides a service to Janeites, certainly not of the same scope as the Chawton House Library, but of some value nonetheless.
The fit of temper, in which Lerner phoned her secretary and told her to buy Chawton House, sight unseen, came after an argument at the Jane Austen Society about whether to acquire the house in Bath where Austen had stayed briefly (she hated Bath) or the empty Chawton, in the village she loved.
We hope that some other rich Janeite purchases that house in Bath. Did Jane Austen really hate Bath, or just hate living there?
