A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Explanatory Notes 239
lie on her table: JA wrote ‘lay in her House’ (Letters, 206).
where you now are: JA wrote ‘at Manydown’, the home of their good
friend Alethea Bigg, whom Cassandra was visiting.
I detest a quarto: a book size (see note to p. 85 above). A quarto is printed
so as to produce four leaves to each sheet of paper and is therefore usually
larger and more splendid than an octavo. The quarto is a size often
reserved, as JA’s joking comment suggests, for a scholarly and less portable
work. Cf. Crabbe, The Library (1781), ‘Then quartos their wellorder’d
ranks maintain, | And light octavos fill a spacious plain.’
no Government House . . . alter it to the Commissioner’s: a reference to a
detail in MP, ch. 24, the novel JA was then writing.
The following letter: from this point to the end of the chapter is an addition
to Ed.2.
86 curricle: a light, two-wheeled carriage, drawn by two horses abreast and
with a seat for the driver and one passenger.
Sloane Street . . . May 20 (1813): again extracted from a letter
bequeathed to Charles Austen (no. 84 in Letters). JEAL’s main omissions
are of the homelier details of JA’s London visit–– of food eaten and plans
for shopping trips.
the Hog’s-back: ‘A narrow ridge of bare chalk hills between Farnham and
Guildford’ with ‘extensive views over six counties’ (Letters, 416, n. 1).
87 full of modern elegancies: JA did not finish here, but continued: ‘& if it had
not been for some naked Cupids over the Mantlepeice, which must be a
fine study for Girls, one should never have Smelt Instruction’ (Letters,
211).
Henrietta Street . . . March 2 (1814): no. 97 in Letters, again bequeathed
to Charles Austen.
88 different: JA wrote ‘very different’ (Letters, 255).
the ‘Heroine’: Eaton Stannard Barrett, The Heroine; or, Adventures of A
Fair Romance Reader (1813). As JA explains later in this letter, Barrett’s
novel was a burlesque on the style of Gothic romance made popular by
Ann Radcliffe in the 1790s and later parodied by JA in NA.
peace was generally expected: March 1814 saw the fall of Paris to the allies;
Napoleon abdicated in April.
the two-penny post: a reference to the local London letter post, dating
from the late seventeenth century and doubled in price from a penny to
twopence in 1801. In S&S, ch. 26, Marianne Dashwood uses it to send a
letter to Willoughby.
M d B.: Madame Bigeon, Henry Austen’s housekeeper, to whom JA was
to leave a legacy of £50 (see Letters, 339, JA’s will).
89 the rage for seeing Kean: JA wrote ‘Keen’ (Letters, 256); Edmund Kean
(1787–1833), Shakespearean actor. He made his first appearance at