A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Explanatory Notes 257
wood or iron that fills its corner in peace and quietness. The case is very
different now; she is still a poker–– but a poker of whom everyone is
afraid’ (The Life of Mary Russell Mitford, ed. L’Estrange (1870), i. 305–
6). Mitford does, however, qualify the description a few lines later when
she observes that the friend from whom she has it is, owing to a family
legal dispute, not on good terms with the Austens. The further postscript,
detailing Mitford’s accusation and JEAL’s rejoinder, appeared in
Ed.1 but was omitted from Ed.2. R. W. Chapman restored it in his 1926
reprint of Ed.2.
HENRY AUSTEN, ‘Biographical Notice of the Author’ (1818)
The ‘Biographical Notice’ has a special importance as the first attempt to
provide the public with the details of the novelist’s life, presenting her by
name in its opening page, though not on the title-page, as the author of S&S,
P&P, MP, and E. Written within months of JA’s death, it was prefixed to the
posthumously published NA and P (issued late in December 1817, dated
1818). JEAL drew on details from this short notice in his Memoir as well as
using it as the sole authority for one of JA’s latest letters. The ‘Biographical
Notice’ has remained widely known in the twentieth century, through its
reprinting in R. W. Chapman’s continuously available Oxford edition of The
Novels of Jane Austen (1923).
Jane Austen’s fourth brother, Henry (1771–1850), had a colourful and
varied career. After St John’s College, Oxford, he took up soldiering with
the Oxford Militia, was later partner in a London banking firm, was declared
bankrupt in March 1816, and in December 1816 became a clergyman in the
Church of England. He acted informally as Jane Austen’s literary agent.
According to family tradition, he was Jane Austen’s favourite brother.
137 D’Arblay and . . . Edgeworth: Fanny or Frances Burney (see note to p. 20
above); and Maria Edgeworth (note to p. 72 above), both contemporary
women novelists much admired by JA.
138 stanzas replete . . . and vigour: Henry Austen’s reference to the comic
verses ‘When Winchester races first took their beginning’, written by JA
on her deathbed, caused the next generation of the family much discomfort.
This may explain why the reference is excised from his ‘Memoir’
of 1833. The verses were not published until 1906. See note to p. 130
above.
139 her eloquent blood . . . her modest cheek: paraphrasing John Donne, ‘her
pure and eloquent blood | Spoke in her cheeks’, from ‘Of the Progress of
the Soul. The Second Anniversary’ (1612), ll 244–5.
141 Gilpin on the Picturesque: William Gilpin (1724–1804), author of Three
Essays: on Picturesque Beauty; Picturesque Travel; and on Sketching Landscape
(1792).
Johnson in prose . . . Fielding quite so high: see notes to p. 71 above, where
JEAL appears to be drawing on Henry Austen’s ‘Biographical Notice’.