A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Explanatory Notes 233
Miss Edgeworth’s, E.’s, and my own: JA wrote: ‘Miss Edgeworth’s, Yours
& my own’ (Letters, 278). The alteration is significant. All three of James
Austen’s children tried their hand at writing novels and turned to their
aunt for advice. JEAL, who was called Edward in the family, is not likely
to have made this alteration as a flattering reference to himself, but his
half-sister Anna in copying her letter from JA for him to use in the
Memoir may well have considered this a tactful or a modest change. Miss
Edgeworth is Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849), Irish novelist and educational
writer, much admired by JA. Her novel Belinda (1801) is one of
the works described in the narrator’s defence of the novel as a literary
form in NA, ch. 5: ‘only some work in which the greatest powers of the
mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human
nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of
wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language.’
two of her nieces. One says: JEAL’s half-sister Anna and his sister Caroline.
The first two extracts are from Caroline’s account (see MAJA, in
this collection, where it appears with slight verbal differences).
two of her other nieces: named in Caroline’s account as ‘Mary Jane and
Cassy’ (MAJA, 174)–– that is, Frank Austen’s daughter Mary Jane
(1807–36), and Charles’s daughter Cassandra Esten (1808–97). This second
extract from Caroline’s account was added by JEAL to his Memoir in
Ed.2.
73 of another niece: extracted from Anna Lefroy’s account, but heavily
edited, removing mention of the preference for Cassandra over JA in the
intellectually insipid atmosphere of Godmersham Park, Edward Austen
Knight’s home. (See the fuller account in RAJ in this collection.)
A nephew of hers: identified by Deirdre Le Faye as Frank Austen’s second
son, Henry Edgar Austen (1811–54), who was only 6 years old when JA
died (‘Jane Austen’s Nephew–– A Re-identification’, Notes and Queries,
235 (1990), 414–15). JEAL is at this point paraphrasing something
recorded by his sister Caroline (MAJA, 170). The section ‘A nephew of
hers . . . her enlivening influence’ was added in Ed.2.
quizzed: ‘to quizz’ is ‘to make fun of’. ‘She never abused . . . less prevalent
now than it was then’, was added in Ed.2.
74 Mr. Gell to Miss Gill, of Eastbourne: JEAL is the first to publish this
verse. There are at least two surviving manuscripts (David Gilson, ‘Jane
Austen’s Verse’, Book Collector, 33 (1984), 28–9). In Memoir Ed.1 it was
also reproduced as an apparently autograph manuscript facsimile, where
it appears as two stanzas, with each of the four printed lines forming two
short lines. In the manuscript version, ‘eyes’ and ‘ease’ are thus written
out with the consequent loss of some of the playful punning of JEAL’s
printed ‘iis’ and ‘ees’. Minor Works, 444, appears to base its text on this
manuscript version. The illustration from Ed.1 is reproduced in this
edition at p. 78.