BRAY VICARAGE: Sept. 7, 1869.

Postscript printed at the end of the first edition; omitted from the second.

Since these pages were in type, I have read with astonishment the strange misrepresentation of my aunt's manners given by Miss Mitford in a letter which appears in her lately-published Life, vol. i. p. 305. Miss Mitford does not profess to have known Jane Austen herself, but to report what had been told her by her mother. Having stated that her mother 'before her marriage' was well acquainted with Jane Austen and her family, she writes thus:—'Mamma says that she was then the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers.' The editor of Miss Mitford's Life very properly observes in a note how different this description is from 'every other account of Jane Austen from whatever quarter.' Certainly it is so totally at variance with the modest simplicity of character which I have attributed to my aunt, that if it could be supposed to have a semblance of truth, it must be equally injurious to her memory and to my trustworthiness as her biographer. Fortunately I am not driven to put my authority in competition with that of Miss Mitford, nor to ask which ought to be considered the better witness in this case; because I am able to prove by a reference to dates that Miss Mitford must have been under a mistake, and that her mother could not possibly have known what she was supposed to have reported; inasmuch as Jane Austen, at the time referred to, was a little girl.

Mrs. Mitford was the daughter of Dr. Russell, Rector of Ashe, a parish adjoining Steventon, so that the families of Austen and Russell must at that time have been known to each other. But the date assigned by Miss Mitford for the termination of the acquaintance is the time of her mother's marriage. This took place in October 1785, when Jane, who had been born in December 1775, was not quite ten years old. In point of fact, however, Miss Russell's opportunities of observing Jane Austen must have come to an end still earlier: for upon Dr. Russell's death, in January 1783, his widow and daughter removed from the neighbourhood, so that all intercourse between the families ceased when Jane was little more than seven years old.

All persons who undertake to narrate from hearsay things which are supposed to have taken place before they were born are liable to error, and are apt to call in imagination to the aid of memory: and hence it arises that many a fancy piece has been substituted for genuine history.

I do not care to correct the inaccurate account of Jane Austen's manners in after life: because Miss Mitford candidly expresses a doubt whether she had not been misinformed on that point.

Nov. 17, 1869.



NOTES.

{0a} The Watsons and Lady Susan are not included in this reprint.

{1} I went to represent my father, who was too unwell to attend himself, and thus I was the only one of my generation present.

{3} My chief assistants have been my sisters, Mrs. B. Lefroy and Miss Austen, whose recollections of our aunt are, on some points, more vivid than my own. I have not only been indebted to their memory for facts, but have sometimes used their words. Indeed some passages towards the end of the work were entirely written by the latter.

I have also to thank some of my cousins, and especially the daughters of Admiral Charles Austen, for the use of letters and papers which had passed into their hands, without which this Memoir, scanty as it is, could not have been written.

{5} There seems to have been some doubt as to the validity of this election; for Hearne says that it was referred to the Visitor, who confirmed it. (Hearne's Diaries, v.2.)

{6} Mrs. Thrale writes Dr. Lee, but there can be no doubt of the identity of person.

{31} 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 pounds. {31a} 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.

{31a} Raikes's Memoirs, vol. ii p. 207.

{35} 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.

{41} Mrs. Gaskell, in her tale of 'Sylvia's Lovers,' declares that this hand-spinning rivalled harp-playing in its gracefulness.

{62} James, the writer's eldest brother.

{63} The limb was saved.

{65} 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.

{66a} 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.

{66b} A very dull old lady, then residing with Mrs. Lloyd.

{68} The Duke of Sussex, son of George III., married, without royal consent, to the Lady Augusta Murray.

{75a} Here is evidence that Jane Austen was acquainted with Bath before it became her residence in 1801. See p.[25].

{75b} A gentleman and lady lately engaged to be married.

{80} 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.

{83} See Wharton's note to Johnson and Steevens' Shakspeare.

{102} This mahogany desk, which has done good service to the public, is now in the possession of my sister, Miss Austen.

{107} At this time, February 1813, 'Mansfield Park' was nearly finished.

{110} The present Lady Pollen, of Redenham, near Andover, then at a school in London.

{117} See Mrs. Gaskell's 'Life of Miss Bronte,' vol. ii. p. 215.

{122} 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.

{126} Mrs. Gaskell's 'Life of Miss Bronte,' vol. ii. p. 53.

{130} This must have been 'Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk.'

{136a} 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.

{136b} The late Mr. R. H. Cheney.

{140} 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.

{142} In transcribing this passage I have taken the liberty so far to correct it as to spell her name properly with an 'e.'

{145} Incidentally she had received high praise in Lord Macaulay's Review of Madame D'Arblay's Works in the 'Edinburgh.'

{146} Life of Sir J. Mackintosh, vol. ii. p. 472.

{149} Lockhart's Life of Scott, vol. vi. chap. vii.

{159} The Fowles, of Kintbury, in Berkshire.

{161a} 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.

{161b} The road by which many Winchester boys returned home ran close to Chawton Cottage.

{161c} There was, though it exists no longer, a pond close to Chawton Cottage, at the junction of the Winchester and Gosport roads.

{162} Mr. Digweed, who conveyed the letters to and from Chawton, was the gentleman named in page[22], as renting the old manor-house and the large farm at Steventon.

{167} This cancelled chapter is now printed, in compliance with the requests addressed to me from several quarters.

{169a} Miss Bigg's nephew, the present Sir William Heathcote, of Hursley.

{169b} Her brother Henry, who had been ordained late in life.

{171} The writer was at that time under twelve years old.

{173} It was the corner house in College Street, at the entrance to Commoners.

THE END