A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Explanatory Notes 209
A Memoir, 263). The fragment of verse is again James Austen’s, from a
poem ‘To Edward On planting a lime tree on the terrace in the meadow
before the house. January 1813’, to be found in the same volume as the
verses quoted above, where it reads ‘the little spireless Fane, | Just seen
above the woody lane’ (HRO, MS 23M93/60/3/2). The Edward of the
poem is James’s son, James Edward, the writer of the Memoir, known as
Edward in the family.
26 Mr. Knight . . . representatives of the family: JA’s father was a distant
cousin of Thomas Knight, and the connection was strengthened by his
adoption of the Austens’ third son Edward (see note to p. 16 above).
While the Digweeds rented the larger part of the Steventon estate from
Mr Knight, George Austen had use of a 200-acre farm as a further source
of income (Fam. Rec., 14).
Mr. Austen’s powers of teaching: from 1773 George Austen supplemented
his clerical income and the needs of his ever growing family by taking as
boarders in the rectory private paying pupils from good families. The
success of the scheme may have led to overcrowding at Steventon and
caused the need to send Cassandra and Jane away to school, if only
temporarily (Fam. Rec., 23, 39; Tucker, 31–2). In his ‘Biographical
Notice’ of his sister, Henry Austen recalled how their father was ‘not
only a profound scholar, but possessing a most exquisite taste in every
species of literature’ (see p. 137 in the present collection).
then no assessed taxes: beginning in 1784, with fixed taxes on such items
as horses, hackney coaches, windows, and candles, the prime minister,
William Pitt, managed a highly lucrative taxation policy. In a letter of 24
January 1813 JA writes to Cassandra of a journey she took with a Mrs
Clement and her husband ‘in their Tax-cart’, an open cart used mainly for
work purposes, on which was charged only a reduced duty (Letters, 198).
employed on farm work: the reference is to a passage in P&P, ch. 7, where
Mrs Bennet discusses with her daughter Jane whether the horses are
available for private pleasure (to draw the coach) or for work on the farm.
In the fictional case, the comparative economic restriction that the
inability to keep dedicated coach horses suggests serves to further Mrs
Bennet’s matchmaking schemes. The passage anticipates Mary Crawford’s
failure to appreciate the difference between city and country living
and that horses are needed for harvesting when she wants her harp
transported (MP, ch. 6).
Edward and Jane Cooper: the children of Jane Leigh Cooper, Mrs
Austen’s sister, and the Revd Dr Edward Cooper. Mrs Jane Cooper died
in October 1783 from the typhus fever infecting Mrs Cawley’s Southampton
household in which JA, Cassandra, and their Cooper cousin Jane
were then boarding. JA, too, was severely ill with it. Of the two cousins,
Edward (1770–1833) wrote dull sermons, which are mentioned
unenthusiastically in JA’s letters to Cassandra on 17–18 January 1809 and
again on 8–9 September 1816, where she writes: ‘We do not much like