A Memoir of Jane Austen

More oxford books @ www.OxfordeBook.com
Fore more urdu books visit www.4Urdu.com
222
Explanatory Notes
Reminiscences of Caroline Austen, ed. Deirdre Le Faye (1986), 6–7. Caroline
compiled these reminiscences in the early 1870s, after the publication
of her brother’s Memoir. She got her account of the accident, which
occurred in 1804, the year before she was born, from her mother Mary
Lloyd Austen. JA’s poem, composed in 1808, to commemorate what she
describes in stanza 11 as ‘this connection in our earthly date’ (the fact
that her friend died on JA’s birthday), was the first of her works to be
published after the six novels. It was included in Sir John Henry Lefroy’s
Notes and Documents relating to the Family of Loffroy . . . by a cadet
(1868), 117–18. The manuscript (apparently in JA’s hand) of the version
held by the Lefroy family is now in Winchester Cathedral Library (Gilson,
M124 and M1343). This version has thirteen stanzas, two more than
JEAL prints in the Memoir. For the fuller version, see Catharine and
Other Writings, ed. Margaret Anne Doody and Douglas Murray (1993),
238–40. The version printed by R. W. Chapman in Minor Works, 440–2,
derives from that in the Memoir rather than from one of the manuscripts,
and prints the two missing stanzas as an appendix rather than inserting
them in their appropriate place, as stanzas 4 and 5. According to David
Gilson, ‘Jane Austen’s Verses’, Book Collector, 33 (1984), 25–8, there are
four known manuscripts.
50 reconcile herself to the change: biographers have speculated much about
this incident in JA’s life and how it affected her. JEAL’s informant was
Caroline Austen, who got the details from their mother, Mary Lloyd
Austen, who ‘was present’ when the news of the move to Bath was
broken to Jane in November 1800. Caroline wrote to her brother: ‘My
Mother who was present said my Aunt Jane was greatly distressed’ (transcript
of Caroline’s letter, 1 April [1869?], NPG, RWC/HH, fos. 4–7,
included in the Appendix). Another family account, deriving from Fanny
Caroline Lefroy, Anna Lefroy’s daughter, tells how JA ‘fainted away’
when told of the imminent departure. It is this version which is recorded
in the authorized family biography of the next generation (Life &
Letters, 155–6), where the authors add, on no discernible grounds, that
Cassandra’s destruction of her sister’s letters for the period 30 November
1800 to 3 January 1801 ‘was a proof of their emotional interest’. See the
Introduction for further consideration of this episode.
not to expect too much from them: this is Caroline Austen’s view as
expressed in correspondence with her brother as well as in her own
memoir, MAJA: ‘There is nothing in those letters which I have seen that
would be acceptable to the public . . . they detailed chiefly home and
family events’ (p. 173, in this collection). Their half-sister Anna Lefroy
writes vaguely, ‘Letters may have been preserved’ (RAJ, 162 also printed
here). The Memoir makes use (much expanded in Ed.2) of the letters that
these three, James Austen’s children, had from their aunt to themselves.
It draws on the further letters which Caroline inherited after Cassandra’s
death in 1845 and on those inherited in turn by Charles Austen’s eldest