1 The celebrated Beau Brummel, who was so intimate with George IV. as to be able to quarrel with him, was born in 1771. It is reported that when he was questioned about his parents, he replied that it was long since he had heard of them, but that he imagined the worthy couple must have cut their own throats by that time, because when he last saw them they were eating peas with their knives. Yet Brummel’s father had probably lived in good society; and was certainly able to put his son into a fashionable regiment, and to leave him 30,000/. (Raikes’s Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 207.) Raikes believes that he had been Secretary to Lord North. Thackeray’s idea that he had been a footman cannot stand against the authority of Raikes, who was intimate with the son.
1 See ‘Spectator,’ No. 102, on the Fan Exercise. Old gentlemen who had survived the fashion of wearing swords were known to regret the disuse of that custom, because it put an end to one way of distinguishing those who had, from those who had not, been used to good society. To wear the sword easily was an art which, like swimming and skating, required to be learned in youth. Children could practise it early with their toy swords adapted to their size.
1 Mrs. Gaskell, in her tale of ‘Sylvia’s Lovers,’ declares that this hand-spinning rivalled harp-playing in its gracefulness. [Sylvia’s Lovers (1863), Ch. 4.]
1 James, the writer’s eldest brother.
1 The limb was saved.
1 The invitation, the ball dress, and some other things in this and the preceding letter refer to a ball annually given at Hurstbourne Park, on the anniversary of the Earl of Portsmouth’s marriage with his first wife. He was the Lord Portsmouth whose eccentricities afterwards became notorious, and the invitations, as well as other arrangements about these balls, were of a peculiar character. [John Charles Wallop, Earl of Portsmouth (1767–1853). He was briefly a pupil of Revd George Austen in 1773. For further details, see Letters, 564.]
1 The father of Sir William Heathcote, of Hursley, who was married to a daughter of Mr. Bigg Wither, of Manydown, and lived in the neighbourhood.
2 A very dull old lady, then residing with Mrs. Lloyd. [Mary Stent, died 24 December 1812, described in Caroline Austen’s Reminiscences, 7.]
1 The Duke of Sussex, son of George III., married, without royal consent, to the Lady Augusta Murray.
1 Here is evidence that Jane Austen was acquainted with Bath before it became her residence in 1801. See pp. 26–7 [and my note at p. 26° ‘Edward and Jane Cooper’].
2 A gentleman and lady lately engaged to be married [The original reads ‘Stephen Terry & Miss Seymer’.]
1 It seems that Charles Austen, then first lieutenant of the ‘Endymion,’ had had an opportunity of shewing attention and kindness to some of Lord Leven’s family.
1 See Wharton’s note to Johnson and Steevens’ Shakspeare. [The Plays of William Shakespeare (2nd edn, 10 vols., London, 1778). The reference is to Thomas Warton (1728–90) (not Wharton).]
1 This mahogany desk, which has done good service to the public, is now in the possession of my sister, Miss Austen. [The desk may be that purchased by JA’s father in 1794 (Fam. Rec., 83). It was bequeathed by Cassandra to her niece Caroline and descended in the Austen-Leigh family. It can now be seen in the British Library.]
1 At this time, February 1813, ‘Mansfield Park’ was nearly finished. [The reference is to the ‘round game’ in MP, Ch. 25.]
1 The present Lady Pollen, of Redenham, near Andover, then at a school in London.
1 See Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Life of Miss Brontë,’ vol. ii. p. 215.
1 It was her pleasure to boast of greater ignorance than she had any just claim to. She knew more than her mother tongue, for she knew a good deal of French and a little of Italian. [See pp. 70–1 above.]
1 Mrs. Gaskell’s ‘Life of Miss Brontë,’ vol. ii. p. 53.
1 This must have been ‘Paul’s Letters to his Kinsfolk’ [published by Murray in 1815].
1 A greater genius than my aunt shared with her the imputation of being commonplace. Lockhart, speaking of the low estimation in which Scott’s conversational powers were held in the literary and scientific society of Edinburgh, says: ‘I think the epithet most in vogue concerning it was “commonplace.”’ He adds, however, that one of the most eminent of that society was of a different opinion, ‘who, when some glib youth chanced to echo in his hearing the consolatory tenet of local mediocrity, answered quietly, “I have the misfortune to think differently from you—in my humble opinion Walter Scott’s sense is a still more wonderful thing than his genius.”’—Lockhart’s Life of Scott, vol. iv. chap. v.
1 The late Mr. R. H. Cheney.
1 Lockhart had supposed that this article had been written by Scott, because it exactly accorded with the opinions which Scott had often been heard to express, but he learned afterwards that it had been written by Whately; and Lockhart, who became the Editor of the Quarterly, must have had the means of knowing the truth. (See Lockhart’s Life of Sir Walter Scott, vol. v. p. 158.) I remember that, at the time when the review came out, it was reported in Oxford that Whately had written the article at the request of the lady whom he afterwards married. [JEAL does not appear to know that Scott wrote the earlier of the two reviews.]
1 In transcribing this passage I have taken the liberty so far to correct it as to spell her name properly with an ‘e.’
1 Incidentally she had received high praise in Lord Macaulay’s Review of Madame D’Arblay’s Works in the ‘Edinburgh.’ [Edinburgh Review, 76 (Jan. 1843), 561–2.]
2 Life of Sir J. Mackintosh, vol. ii, p. 472. [R. J. Mackintosh, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honourable Sir James Mackintosh (2 vols., 1835).]
1 Lockhart’s Life of Scott, vol. vi. chap. vii.
1 The Fowles, of Kintbury, in Berkshire. [Eliza Lloyd, elder sister of Martha and Mary, had married her cousin Fulwar Craven Fowle, a former pupil of JA’s father at Steventon and brother of Cassandra’s dead fiancé Tom Fowle.]
1 It seems that her young correspondent, after dating from his home, had been so superfluous as to state in his letter that he was returned home, and thus to have drawn on himself this banter.
2 The road by which many Winchester boys returned home ran close to Chawton Cottage.
1 There was, though it exists no longer, a pond close to Chawton Cottage, at the junction of the Winchester and Gosport roads.
2 Mr. Digweed, who conveyed the letters to and from Chawton, was the gentleman named in page 24,° as renting the old manor-house and the large farm at Steventon.
1 This cancelled chapter is now printed, in compliance with the requests addressed to me from several quarters. [Not included here.]
1 Miss Bigg’s nephew, the present Sir William Heathcote, of Hursley. [JEAL’s boyhood friend, who probably lent the letter for use in Ed. 2 of the Memoir.]
2 Her brother Henry, who had been ordained late in life.
1 The writer was at that time under twelve years old.
1 It was the corner house in College Street, at the entrance to Commoners. [Henry Dyson Gabell, headmaster of Winchester College, 1810–23.]
1 No likeness ever was taken of Miss Austen; which the editor much laments, as he is thereby precluded from the gratification of prefixing her portrait to this edition. [The editor means that no likeness was taken by a professional.]
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