A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Explanatory Notes
98 chaplain to a distinguished naval character about the court: JA writes at this
point in her manuscript the marginal note ‘Mr. Clarke’. A comparison
with the extract from Clarke’s letter of 21 December 1815, no. 132,
quoted in the note to p. 97 above, shows that JA is here drawing on it
virtually verbatim. Clarke was, of course, weaving autobiographical
details into his proposals–– he had been a naval chaplain from 1795–1799.
tithes: literally ‘tenths’, the tithe being estimated at one-tenth of the
produce of the land in a parish, to be paid for the support of its church
and clergy. In practice, it was a specific assessment landholders paid to
constitute the clergyman’s income. It could lead to serious inequalities
between rich and poor parishes and between curates, who might do most
of the work but be paid very little, and the rector who enjoyed a good
income. Again, see Clarke’s letter quoted in note to p. 97 above.
99 Often reduced to . . . work for her bread: JA is glancing slyly at the fashion
for sensational adventure in the contemporary female novel. Ellis-Juliet,
the heroine of Fanny Burney’s The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties
(1814), undergoes various sufferings in a downward spiral of poverty,
trying to earn her living as a music teacher, performer, and seamstress. A
more direct comparison can be found in Mary Brunton’s Self-Control
(1810), where the heroine Laura Montreville resolves somewhat
impractically to earn a living for herself and her invalid father by selling
sketches: ‘Could she but hope to obtain a subsistence for her father, she
would labour night and day, deprive herself of recreation, of rest, even of
daily food, rather than wound his heart, by an acquaintance with poverty’
(ch. 15). Laura’s many sufferings eventually culminate in escape by canoe
from a wilderness confinement in the region of Quebec. For JA’s humorous
response to this novel, see her letter to Cassandra, quoted in the note
to p. 75 above.
Kamtschatka: modern Kamchatka, a peninsula at the eastern extremity of
Asia, acquired by Russia in the eighteenth century. The setting is chosen
for its improbability–– even surpassing the remoteness of Quebec. Doody
and Murray (Catharine and Other Writings, 361, note to p. 232) suggest
that JA is here alluding to Madame Sophie Cottin’s Elizabeth; or, Exiles
of Siberia (1806), another tale concerned with the heroine’s unlikely
sufferings for the sake of her father. It was translated into English in
1809.
and living in high style: in Ed.1, Chapter 7 ends at this point.
Mr. Murray of Albemarle Street: John Murray III (1808–92), son of JA’s
publisher (for whom, see note to p. 82 above). JA’s own estimate of
Murray is somewhat more qualified than JEAL’s. In her letter of 17
October 1815 to Cassandra, she describes him as ‘a Rogue of course, but
a civil one’ (Letters, 291).
Hans Place . . . (1815): no. 126 in Letters, the original being in the John
Murray Archive, 50 Albemarle Street, London.