A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Explanatory Notes 215
heard) to play in company; and none of her family cared much for it’ (see
p. 170).
35 ‘The master’s eye . . . serve yourself’: both self-explanatory sayings, implying
the advantages of self-reliance.
Catherine Morland . . . her father’s parsonage: the reference is to NA, ch.
23, where Catherine, the heroine, is being shown the kitchen and
domestic offices of Northanger Abbey, all of them to her dismay modernized
and with no trace of medieval privation. The narrator observes:
‘The purposes for which a few shapeless pantries and a comfortless scullery
were deemed sufficient at Fullerton [her father’s parsonage], were
here carried on in appropriate divisions, commodious and roomy.’
36 useful articles . . . in the old-fashioned parlour: in a letter from Steventon to
Cassandra (1 November 1800) JA appears to be sewing shirts to send out
by the half-dozen, as they are finished, to their brother Charles who is
waiting to set sail (Letters, 53). But see also JA’s letter complaining of the
ungenteel behaviour of a Mrs A[rmstrong], who ‘sat darning a pair of
stockings the whole of my visit’ (quoted in Ch. 4 below). One senses
already a generational self-consciousness about the display of such
homely activities as she advises Cassandra ‘I do not mention this at home,
lest a warning should act as an example’ (Letters, 94).
I have been told: the source of the story of little Frank (known in the
family as ‘Fly’) Austen’s pony and his scarlet suit, made in fact from his
mother’s wedding-dress, may be JEAL’s half-sister Anna Lefroy, who
got other childhood tales from Frank himself, now Sir Francis, in 1855
(see Fam. Rec., 44–5 and 260, n. 34). These details are not included in
Ed.1., which omits the section: ‘The early hour . . . conspicuous figure in
the hunting-field.’
pattens: wooden soles, and mounted on iron rings, for raising the normal
footwear out of the mud. The source for this detail is Anna Lefroy. See
p. 157.
Gay . . . Patty takes the name: John Gay, Trivia (1716), book 1, ll. 281–2.
37 Cowper . . . three-legged stool: a reference to one of JA’s favourite poets,
William Cowper (1731–1800). In Book 1 of his long poem The Task
(1785), he fancifully traces the evolution of the sofa from the stool: ‘Thus
first necessity invented stools, | Convenience next suggested elbowchairs,
| And luxury th’ accomplish’d SOFA last’ (ll. 86–8).
Mr. Leigh Perrot . . . the Patten a clog: James Leigh (1735–1817), Mrs
Austen’s brother, added Perrot to his name in 1751 in order to inherit the
estate of his maternal great-uncle Thomas Perrot. Some of JA’s books
were probably gifts from this uncle (David Gilson, ‘Jane Austen’s Books’,
Book Collector, 23 (1974), 27–39). He also stood surety for Henry Austen
when he was appointed Receiver-General for Oxfordshire, losing
£10,000 on Henry’s bankruptcy in 1816. Punning epigrams seem to have
been a speciality in the Leigh and Austen families, and JEAL records two