A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Explanatory Notes 251
personal affection for Darcy and Elizabeth: in two letters to Cassandra of
29 January and 9 February 1813 (nos. 79 and 81). The relevant extracts
are printed at pp. 83 and 84 above.
119 ‘to see your Jemima’: this was Anna Jemima, eldest daughter of Ben and
Anna Lefroy, born 20 October 1815. JEAL here paraphrases no. 135 in
Letters, a scrap only: ‘As I wish very much to see your Jemima, I am sure
you will like to see my Emma, & have therefore great pleasure in sending
it for your perusal.’ Emma was announced as published on Saturday 23
December 1815, and it is not possible to date the scrap of letter closer
than December 1815 or January 1816.
‘. . . no one but myself will much like’: JEAL’s Memoir is the source for this
now famous authorial comment. The family view was that the character
of Emma was, perhaps unintentionally, based on Anna Austen Lefroy
(Fam. Rec., 208, on the authority of Fanny Caroline Lefroy’s ‘Family
History’).
subsequent career of some of her people: these subsequent adventures of her
characters are preserved from the memories of Anna Lefroy and JEAL.
The anecdote relating to Mr Woodhouse was added in Memoir Ed.2. Life
& Letters, 307, records a further example of the post-print continuations,
spun for the amusement of JA’s nieces and nephews: ‘According to a less
well-known tradition, Jane Fairfax [in E] survived her elevation only nine
or ten years.’
120 some family troubles: apparently a discreet reference to Henry Austen’s
bankruptcy, which occurred in March 1816. But the letters from which
JEAL goes on to quote date from April and May 1817 and refer to the
disappointment felt in the Austen family at the will of James Leigh
Perrot, Mrs Austen’s brother, who had died on 28 March 1817. As he
was childless, his sister’s family reasonably expected immediate benefit
under his will, and since Henry’s bankruptcy had hit several members of
the family hard they were much in need of this. However, although he
made generous provision for the Austens in the longer term, Uncle Leigh
Perrot left everything to his wife for her lifetime. For the Leigh Perrots,
see notes to pp. 37, 58, and 59 above. As chief beneficiary on Mrs Leigh
Perrot’s death in 1836, JEAL would obviously be discreet in recording
this disappointment as he was earlier in his omission from the Memoir of
Mrs Leigh Perrot’s prosecution for theft. But family tradition, as well as
her own correspondence, suggest that the terms of the will were a considerable
shock to JA and even exacerbated her illness (Fam. Rec., 221–3).
a letter . . . to Charles: no. 157, where it is dated 6 April 1817. JEAL prints
a severely edited extract. JA wrote: ‘I have been suffering from a Bilious
attack, attended with a good deal of fever.–– A few days ago my complaint
appeared removed, but I am ashamed to say that the shock of my Uncle’s
Will brought on a relapse . . . I am the only one of the Legatees [JEAL
alters this to ‘party’] who has been so silly, but a weak Body must excuse
weak Nerves. My Mother has borne the forgetfulness of her extremely