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  In May, Jane went to stay with him in Sloane Street. Henry took her to town in his carriage, and the journey, in perfect weather, was delightful. The Chawton family had provided for their refreshment on the way; they ate three of the buns that had been put up, and when they arrived at Sloane Street, Mr. and Mrs. Tilson drank tea with them and were offered the remaining three.

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  Now, when Henry was out, Jane had the house to herself, except for two French servants, Madame Bigeon and her daughter, Madame

  Perigord. She said: "I am very snug with the front drawing room all to myself, and would not say thank you for any companion but you.

  The quietness of it does me good."

  But Henry was proposing now to leave Sloane Street and live over the bank at 10 Henrietta Street; preparations were being made

  already to fit up the upper floors for him. Jane went down there the following day, and told Cassandra: "I . . . walked into No. 10, which is all dirt and confusion, but in a very promising way"; she was present "at the opening of a new account, to my great amusement."

  After that she and Henry went to an exhibition of water colors in Spring Gardens. Jane amused herself by seeing if any of the portraits would do for Jane or Elizabeth Bennet. She said: "I was very well pleased--particularly (pray tell Fanny) with a small portrait of Mrs.

  Bingley, excessively like her. I went in hopes of seeing one of her sister, but there was no Mrs. Darcy;--perhaps however I may find her in the Great Exhibition which we shall go to if we have time.""Mrs.

  Bingley's," she said, "is exactly herself, size, shaped face, features and sweetness; there never was a greater likeness. She is dressed in a white gown with green ornaments, which convinces me of what I

  had always supposed, that green was a favorite color with her. I daresay Mrs. D. will be in yellow."

  But Jane went through the whole of the Great Exhibition, and an exhibition of Sir Joshua Reynolds', without finding a resemblance of Elizabeth in either; she said: "I can only imagine that Mr. D. prizes any picture of her too much, to like it should be exposed to the public eye.--I can imagine he would have that sort of feeling--that mixture

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  of love, pride and delicacy." The more she would consent to go on with the characters in Pride and Prejudice, the more she was begged to do it. Fanny wanted a letter, as from Miss Georgiana Darcy; but her aunt said: "I am much obliged to Fanny for her letter;--it made me laugh heartily; but I cannot pretend to answer it. Even had I more time, I should not feel at all sure of the sort of letter that Miss D.

  would write."

  Jane said that Henry would not be settled in Henrietta Street till the autumn, she thought. In the meantime, as he was occupied in the bank for most of the day, she drove about alone in the carriage. The weather was warm and an open carriage delightful. Much as she

  found pleasure and satisfaction in her own work, it seems never to have occurred to her that the author of Pride and Prejudice could advance any claims to consideration on behalf of Miss Jane Austen.

  She said of her thus driving about. "I liked my solitary elegance very much, and was ready to laugh all the time at my being where I was.--

  I could not but feel that I had naturally small right to be parading about London in a barouche."

  In July, Edward Knight brought his family to the Great House again.

  Fanny was now eighteen, and her intimacy with her Aunt Jane grew with the growth of what she had to tell. When she fell in love, her Aunt Jane had to hear all about it; for Fanny was of a serious and practical cast of mind, and on so important a topic she liked to test the reliability and degree of her emotions by laying them before the person whose judgment she admired so much, and with whom the

  most intimate confidence was easy. Anna was very different; Anna's love affairs were impulsive and could be managed by nobody but herself. When her brother Edward had gone back to Winchester after the holidays, she found herself so dull that she got herself engaged to Mr. Michael

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  Terry. The match did not please James and Mary; they did not

  approve of the young man, and it was very awkward and

  disagreeable to a father incapable of taking things lightly, and a stepmother so prone to worry and distress herself, that Anna

  persisted in being engaged in spite of them. But worse followed.

  Anna discovered for herself that Mr. Terry would not do, and threw him over. Her action in doing so showed an unsteadiness that was even worse than her flying in her father's face and forming the engagement in the first place. Anna also was very intimate with her Aunt Jane, but, volatile as she was, she instinctively forbore to talk to her about this sort of affair. Fanny's artless, forthright mind did not engage in anything she could not lay before her aunt with a request for advice or encouragement. The summer at Chawton meant that she could see the latter every day, and in her diary she

  frequently recorded their meetings. "Aunt Jane and I had a very interesting conversation"; "Aunt Jane and I had a delicious morning together." "Spent the evening with Aunt Jane"; and, one August day:

  "Had leeches on for a headache. Aunt Jane came and sat with me."

  Edward as well as his daughter was very happy in the visit; in writing to Frank, Jane said: "Edward is very well and enjoys himself as thoroughly as any Hampshire-born Austen can desire." Henry, too, was so much recovered that he had planned to make a tour in Scotland, and take his nephew, young Edward Knight, with him. The enterprise was a great success. Jane Austen's passion for scenery enabled her to take a vicarious delight in the views seen through her brother's eyes. "I wish," she said regretfully, "that he had had more time and could have gone farther north, and deviated to the Lakes in his way back." But what Henry had seen had given him very great pleasure, much of which he

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  communicated to his sister. "He met," she said, "with scenes of higher beauty in Roxburghshire than I had supposed the south of Scotland possessed." On young Edward, however, these beauties of landscape had been, comparatively speaking, thrown away. He had enjoyed the tour because it was very agreeable to travel with Uncle Henry, but he really cared for the country only as he could hunt or shoot in it. But he was a dear boy, who behaved very well to his father, and was extremely kind to his young brothers and sisters, and his Aunt Jane said: "We must forgive his thinking more of grouse and partridges than lakes and mountains."

  Besides news of the family, she had something to tell Frank of a mutual acquaintance, an old admirer of her own. The Mr. Blackall, who had once told Mrs. Lefroy that if it had been possible he would have liked to improve his acquaintance with the Austen family

  because of Miss Jane Austen, had married at last, a lady called Miss Lewis. Jane remembered him as "a piece of perfection, noisy perfection"; she had always rather liked him; from what she recalled of him, she drew a thumbnail sketch of what Miss Lewis should be like to suit him. She could wish her, she said, "to be of a silent turn and rather ignorant, but naturally intelligent and willing to learn;--

  fond of cold veal pies, green tea in the afternoon and a green window blind at night."

  She concluded with the news that many people might have put first.

  Every copy of S. and S. was sold and had brought her £140. So that with the £110 for which she had sold the copyright of Pride and Prejudice she could say: "I have now therefor written myself in to

  £250--which," she added, "only makes me long for more." Then she had a favor to ask. She had "something in hand," which she hoped would sell on the credit of P. and P., "though not half so

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  entertaining"; she said, would Frank mind if she mentioned in it the Elephant, and two or three other of his old ships? "I have done it,"

  she confessed; "but it shall not stay, to make you angry. They are only just mentioned." Frank gave his permission for the names to be used, and so in Mansfield Park William Price, having escorted Fanny to their home in Portsmouth, is greet
ed by his father with the news that Captain Walsh thinks William will certainly have a cruise westward in the Elephant, and that he himself had been on the

  platform for two hours, looking at William's ship, where she lay, close to the Endymion, between her and the Cleopatra.

  Mansfield Park had, in some form at least, reached what is now its thirty-eighth chapter. In September, Jane went to Henry again. He was now settled in Henrietta Street. At the same time Edward arrived with Fanny, Marianne and Lizzie, attended by Mrs. Sace; but the Godmersham party put up in an hotel nearby, excepting Fanny, who was to be with her Aunt Jane. They arrived at quarter past four of a September afternoon, and were welcomed by Henry and by Madame

  Perigord. Madame Bigeon was below, dishing up, and a little after five they sat down to a dinner of soup, fish, bouillee, partridges and an apple tart. Fanny and her aunt had a room with a dressing room leading out of it, and the large bed that had been Eliza's, and were very spacious and comfortable.

  No. 10 had been made very presentable with cleaning and painting, and the Sloane Street furniture; Jane said: "It seems like Sloane Street moved here." There was a large front room which Henry used as a dining and common sitting room, and the back room opening out of it was quite large enough for any drawing room

  accommodation he was likely to want. He did not mean to give

  parties now.

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  Madame Bigeon and Madame Perigord lived near at hand, and came in as often as he wanted them. Madame Bigeon still did all his marketing for him, and with the visitors at No. 10, she was there almost the whole time to do the work.

  On the evening of their arrival Henry took the party to Don Juan at the Lyceum. They had the stage box, and the little girls were

  enraptured, but Jane's delight was "very tranquil." She sat in the back of the box and talked to Henry. The latter had a piece of news and a letter for her to see which were of extreme and delightful interest. He had sent a copy of Pride and Prejudice to Warren Hastings, and Warren Hastings from his retreat at Daylesford had written to praise the novel warmly. Jane could not but be charmed by this approval; but she did wish that Henry had respected her desire of having the authorship kept a secret. Henry, however, was not the man to keep secrets, particularly agreeable ones. Frank, on the other hand, was silent as the grave, and Jane wrote to thank him for it: "Henry heard P. and P. warmly praised in Scotland, by Lady Robert Kerr and

  another lady; and what does he do in the warmth of his brotherly vanity and love, but immediately tell them who wrote it! A thing once set going in that way--one knows how it spreads!--and he, dear creature, has set it going so much more than once. I know it is all done from affection and partiality,--but at the same time, let me here express to you and Mary my sense of the superior kindness which you have shown on the occasion, in doing what I wished."

  But it was impossible to be really annoyed with Henry, when his actions proceeded from brotherly feeling and when staying with him in town was always so festive and amusing. London, as ever, meant shopping;--Edward gave Fanny and Jane £5 each. They set out to make the necessary rounds of the great shops, but they managed first to pay a

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  call of ten minutes or so in Hans Place upon the Tilsons. Mrs. Tilson was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. "Poor woman!" said Jane.

  Fanny, from much experience at home, prophesied that the child would come in three or four days. Free to devote themselves to the serious business of the day, from eleven to half-past three they were hard at it: silk stockings at twelve shillings a pair, cotton at four shillings, ribbons and lace, poplin for dresses, rose color and dark slate; a beautiful square veil for Fanny, some net for a frock for Anna; a set of fingering exercises for beginners at the piano, and a visit to Wedgwood's, where Edward and Fanny chose a dinner

  service. The characteristic productions of the firm showed white classical figures on the black or azure ground; a tea service in the height of the Grecian mode had cups and saucers bordered with a key pattern in black, while the sides and center of the vessels were ornamented with a medallion in sepia of a classical figure beside an altar or a tripod; but the firm also produced more ordinary patterns.

  The dinner service chosen for Godmersham was bordered with small purple lozenges between lines of narrow gold, and was to bear the family crest.

  The expeditions were not all of them of a pleasant nature, as Lizzie and Marianne had to be taken to the dentist.--Jane said: "Going to Mr. Spence's was a sad business and cost us many tears; unluckily we were obliged to go a second time before he could do more than just look." Edward went with the children both times; the second visit took an hour, and in it Lizzie's teeth were filed, and pronounced to be of a very perishable nature, while poor Marianne had two taken out. When the extractions had been decided upon, Jane, with Fanny and Lizzie, went into the next room, where they heard "each of the two sharp, hasty screams." Fanny's teeth were examined also, and Jane said: "Pretty as they are, he

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  found something to do to them, putting in gold and talking gravely."

  He wanted them all to be brought to him again in two months' time, but Edward would not promise. Jane was not at all pleased with Mr.

  Spence; she said she could understand that the little girls' teeth might be in a critical state, but that "he must be a lover of teeth and money and mischief to parade about Fanny's."

  For their second visit to the theatre, to see Garrick's Clandestine Marriage, Jane was put into the hands of the hairdresser. She said:

  "He curled me out at a great rate. I thought it looked hideous, but my companions silenced me by their admiration." As she was

  accustomed to wearing a cap, she had thought that, with nothing but a bit of velvet round her head, she might catch cold, but she did not;

  "the weather," she said, "is all in my favor."

  When the visit to Henrietta Street was over, Jane went back with the party to Godmersham. Henry's establishment, to say nothing of

  Edward's, had accustomed her for the moment to a state of luxury and elegance quite removed from the simplicities of Chawton, but it had not made her less mindful of the affairs of the cottage. She wanted to know if they had begun on the store of new tea, and on the new white wine. "My present elegancies have not yet made me indifferent to such matters. I am still a cat if I see a mouse."

  The principal happening at Godmersham in September was the

  annual fair at Goodnestone. The development of shops and stores all over the country makes it difficult for us to understand the

  importance of fairs to those living out of range of the towns in the early nineteenth century. The booths supplied a bewitching variety of goods, from the severely practical to the altogether frivolous. Jane described the Goodnestone Fair as that famous one "which makes its yearly distribution of gold paper and colored persian

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  through all the family connections." To be on the spot, Fanny went for a day or two to her grandmother at Goodnestone Farm; Lizzy and Marianne accompanied her, and so did their father, who had been repenting very much of his promise to do so, and had hoped the day would turn out wet, but unfortunately for him the morning was

  perfectly clear. Jane was writing in the library, and had it therefore entirely to herself; she thought of Cowper's Alexander Selkirk; "I am mistress of all I survey," she said, and added that if she liked to repeat the whole poem there was nobody to stop her.

  She constantly sent news to Chawton of the children. She

  disapproved rather of Edward and George, who were now at home: they seemed to think of nothing but field sports out of doors, and showed themselves idle and greedy in the house; but afterwards she wished she had not said this; she was touched by their both staying to the Communion Service on Sunday. As she said: "After having much praised or much blamed anybody, one is generally sensible of something just the reverse soon afterwards." In the evening, at least, their occupation was innocent enough: they
sat side by side making rabbit nets, "as deedily . . . as any two Uncle Franks could do."

  But the boys were inclined to be something of a nuisance. At

  Chawton there was a Mary Doe; the little girls had left a hare behind and told her that if she would look after it till they came again they would give her something for her trouble. Mary had been gathering nuts, with some idea that the young Mr. Knights wanted them, and Cassandra wrote about this in her letter. Jane read that part of the letter to the old nurse Sackree, and Sackree did not approve at all.

  "She saw some signs of going after her in George and Henry, and thinks if you could give the girl a check, by rather reproving

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  her for taking anything seriously about nuts which they said to her, it might be of use."

  The thirteen-year-old Lizzie had had a letter from her Aunt

  Cassandra, and her Aunt Jane was much amused by her saying that she would answer it, but she had so much to do, it might be four or five days before she could. Jane said: "This is quite her own message spoken in rather a desponding tone."Louisa, who was nine, sent best love and "a hundred thousand million kisses."

  Jane was glad to hear that Alethea Bigg and her sister Mrs.

  Heathcote, with their friend Miss Charlotte Williams, had been at Chawton and found much to approve of in the cottage. She was

  delighted by the warmth of Charlotte Williams' appreciation;

  besides, Miss Williams had the eyes Jane always admired. "Those large dark eyes always judge well. I will compliment her by naming a heroine after her."

  On October 13th Charles arrived at Godmersham with his wife, little Cassy and the baby. They were so late that dinner had reached the stage of dessert, and their coming had been given up for that day by everyone but Jane. She and Fanny hurried out to the hall to meet them; little Cassy was so tired and bewildered that at first she did not seem to know anybody, but by the time they reached the library she had kissed her Aunt Jane very affectionately. "It was quite an evening of confusion as you may suppose--at first we were all

 

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