A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Explanatory Notes 235
or Probability in it. I declare I do not know whether Laura’s passage
down the American River, is not the most natural, possible, every-day
thing she ever does’ (Letters, 234).
76 a niece . . . amusing herself by attempting a novel: again, the reference is to
JA’s correspondence with Anna Lefroy, at this time still Anna Austen,
who was writing a novel under the title ‘Which is the Heroine?’ In her
manuscript ‘Family History’ (written c.1880–5), Anna’s daughter Fanny
Caroline Lefroy, looking back from old age to events before her own life,
records of her mother’s early attempt at fiction: ‘With no Aunt Jane to
read, to critic[i]se and to encourage, it was no wonder the M.S. every
word of which was so full of her, remained untouched. Her sympathy
which had made the great charm of the occupation was gone and the
sense of the loss made it painful to write. The story was laid by for years
and then one day in a fit of despondency burnt. I remember sitting on the
rug and watching its destruction amused with the flame and the sparks
which kept breaking out in the blackened paper. In later years when I
expressed my sorrow that she had destroyed it, she said she could never
have borne to finish it. but incomplete as it was Jane Austen’s criticisms
would have made it valuable’ (HRO, MS 23M93/85/2/unpaginated).
Although this early attempt was destroyed, Anna Lefroy subsequently
published a novella, Mary Hamilton, in the Literary Souvenir for 1833
and two slight works for children–– The Winter’s Tale (1841) and Springtide
(1842); she also attempted and later abandoned the completion of
JA’s unfinished novel Sanditon.
Chawton, Aug. 10, 1814: extract from a much longer letter full of critical
comment and advice (no. 104 in Letters), written between 10 and 18
August. This portion is from 18 August.
Sept. 9: extract from a much longer letter, written 9–18 September 1814
(no. 107 in Letters).
Sept. 28: extract from a longer letter (no. 108 in Letters), already quoted
from at p. 72.
77 Hans Place (Nov. 1814): again to Anna, within the last few weeks married
to Ben Lefroy–– hence the appositeness of the joke about suitors
being in love with aunts. JA writes from her brother Henry’s London
address (no. 113 in Letters).
your husband: JA wrote ‘Ben’ (Letters, 284).
spilikins . . . cup and ball: like the reference below to the neat appearance
of her letters and her sewing, these examples of JA’s dexterity are from
Caroline Austen’s recollections (MAJA, 171). In the game of spilikins,
thin slips of wood were thrown in a heap and the player had to pull them
off one at a time without disturbing the rest. In the game of cup and ball,
the ball was attached by cord to a stick having a cup at one end and a
spike at the other. The aim was to toss the ball in the air and catch it
either in the cup or (more difficult) on the spike.
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