A Memoir of Jane Austen

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48 A very old Letter
& sist r Childe & all my dear cozens. When you see my Lady
Worster & cozen Howlands pray present th m my most humble
service.’
This letter shows that the wealth acquired by trade was already
manifesting itself in contrast with the straitened circumstances of
some of the nobility. Mary Brydges’s ‘poor ffather,’ in whose
household economy was necessary, was the King of England’s
ambassador at Constantinople; the grandmother, who lived in
‘great plenty and splendour,’ was the widow of a Turkey merchant.°
But then, as now, it would seem, rank had the power of
attracting and absorbing wealth.
At Ashe also Jane became acquainted with a member of the
Lefroy family, who was still living when I began these memoirs, a
few months ago; the Right Hon. Thomas Lefroy, late Chief Justice
of Ireland.° One must look back more than seventy years to
reach the time when these two bright young persons were, for a
short time, intimately acquainted with each other, and then separated
on their several courses, never to meet again; both destined
to attain some distinction in their different ways, one to survive
the other for more than half a century, yet in his extreme old age
to remember and speak, as he sometimes did, of his former companion,
as one to be much admired, and not easily forgotten by
those who had ever known her.
Mrs. Lefroy herself was a remarkable person. Her rare
endowments of goodness, talents, graceful person, and engaging
manners, were sufficient to secure her a prominent place in any
society into which she was thrown; while her enthusiastic eagerness
of disposition rendered her especially attractive to a clever
and lively girl. She was killed by a fall from her horse on Jane’s
birthday, Dec. 16, 1804. The following lines to her memory were
written by Jane four years afterwards, when she was thirty-three
years old. They are given, not for their merits as poetry, but to
show how deep and lasting was the impression made by the elder
friend on the mind of the younger:––