A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Explanatory Notes 221
47 bartlemew-babby: a Bartholomew doll–– someone gaudily dressed, so
named after the fair traditionally held around 24 August (Feast of St
Bartholomew) at West Smithfield, London.
cry rost meate: publish one’s good luck foolishly.
Pera of Galata: south of Constantinople; in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries this district was home to most European diplomats to
Turkey.
48 a Turkey merchant: one trading with the Near East generally and dealing
in luxury items. The late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw
their heyday, when fabulous fortunes could be made.
Right Hon. Thomas Lefroy . . . Ireland: (1776–1869), mentioned by name
in JA’s earliest extant letters, where she records for Cassandra their brief
romance over the Christmas holidays of 1795–6 when she was just 20. By
15 January 1796 she is writing: ‘At length the Day is come on which I am
to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, & when you receive this it will be over––
My tears flow as I write, at the melancholy idea’ (Letters, 4). Almost three
years later, in November 1798, she has news of him, reluctantly provided
by his aunt, her friend Mrs Anne Lefroy, that ‘he was gone back to
London in his way to Ireland, where he is called to the Bar and means to
practise’ (Letters, 19). Tom Lefroy practised as a barrister in Dublin,
married in 1799, had nine children, and became Lord Chief Justice of
Ireland in 1852. These letters, by that time in the possession of Fanny,
Lady Knatchbull, were not known to JEAL when he made reference to
the incident in the Memoir; but the story was not forgotten in family
tradition. Both Caroline Austen and Anna Lefroy shared versions of it
with their brother. As usual, Caroline pressed for discretion if not total
silence: ‘I think I need not warn you against raking up that old story’,
which she admits to having from their mother Mary Lloyd Austen.
Anna, on the other hand, writing to JEAL’s wife, is far less discreet and,
having married into the Lefroy family, has a different perspective on
events. Before the Memoir was published Tom Lefroy had died, and in
August 1870 his nephew T. E. P. Lefroy (who had married Anna Jemima,
Anna Lefroy’s eldest daughter) wrote to JEAL communicating his
uncle’s late admission ‘that he was in love with her’ but that ‘it was a
boyish love’. T. E. P. Lefroy continued: ‘As this occurred in a friendly, &
private conversation, I feel some doubt whether I ought to make it public.’
In the event, JEAL confined himself to the extremely guarded paragraph
printed here. (See the transcript of Caroline Austen’s letter, 1
April [1869?], NPG, RWC/HH, fos. 4–7, printed in the Appendix; also,
Le Faye, ‘Tom Lefroy and Jane Austen’, Jane Austen Society Report
(1985), 336–8, for Anna Lefroy’s version; and R. W. Chapman, Jane
Austen: Facts and Problems (1948), 58, for extracts from T. E. P. Lefroy’s
communication to JEAL.)
49 To the Memory of Mrs. Lefroy: for details of Mrs Anne Lefroy, see note to
p. 44 above. An account of the accident which killed her can be found in