A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Postscript
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.
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