A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Explanatory Notes
well;–– her expectations for herself were never beyond the extreme of
moderation, & she thinks with you that my Uncle always looked forward
to surviving her’ (Letters, 338–9).
to another correspondent: a short extract from no. 161, in Letters, where Le
Faye conjecturally dates it 28/9 May 1817 and from College Street Winchester.
JA and Cassandra had arrived there as recently as 24 May, in a
last attempt to seek medical advice which might delay the progress of the
illness. This is JA’s last known letter and the first to be published: it is
only known through Henry Austen’s use of extracts from it in his ‘Biographical
Notice’ (1818). Le Faye further conjectures that the letter’s
recipient was Mrs Frances Tilson, wife of Henry’s partner in the now
failed Austen, Maunde, & Tilson bank in London (see Le Faye, ‘JA:
More Letters Redated’, Notes and Queries, 236 (1991), 306–8). In his
‘Notice’ Henry made it quite clear that the letter was written ‘a few
weeks before her death’ (p. 142), which makes JEAL’s insertion of it
into a narrative of Spring 1816 the more surprising. R. W. Chapman, the
first editor of the collected Letters, thinks, naturally enough, that Henry
himself may have been the recipient (see Letters (1932; 2nd edn., 1952),
note to Letter 147).
‘My Dear E.’: JA wrote ‘My dear Edward’. This is no. 142 in Letters, and
JEAL is now drawing on materials which do relate to Summer 1816. He
is himself the recipient of the letter, the autograph of which is now on
deposit in the British Library.
your mother: James Austen’s second wife, Mary Lloyd. In her Reminiscences,
48, Caroline Austen records under the year 1816: ‘My mother was
very unwell [for a] great part of this summer, and in August she was
advised to go to Cheltenham. Aunt Cassandra accompanied us.’
121 finesse: artifice, trick.
Mary Jane: Frank Austen’s eldest daughter, then aged nine.
cleared off the rest yesterday: in JEAL’s edited version of this letter a
section is here omitted detailing various family comings and goings––
trips to London and Broadstairs–– in which JA is not included. It concludes
with an interesting postscript mentioning a forthcoming journey
to France by Henry and two of his Godmersham nephews. For the full
text, see Letters, 315–17.
go to Oxford and not be elected: JA first wrote ‘must not go to Oxford’ and
then cancelled ‘not’. The election in question was presumably JEAL’s
award in 1816 of a Craven Founder’s Kin Scholarship at Exeter College,
Oxford.
122 improvement: JA wrote ‘improvements’, a precise term in landscape gardening
at this time. Cf. MP, ch. 6, where the foolish Mr Rushworth is
looking to improve the grounds on his estate.
Mrs. S.... Tangier: Mrs Sclater of Tangier Park, Hampshire, a