A Memoir of Jane Austen

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Explanatory Notes 253
seventeenth-century house near Manydown, home of JA’s friends the
Bigg-Wither family.
‘My Dear E.’: no. 146 in Letters, where JA wrote ‘My dear Edward’.
Again the autograph is on deposit in the British Library. In his ‘Biographical
Notice’ of 1818 Henry Austen had slightly misquoted from this
letter the now famous disclaimer about ‘the little bit (two Inches wide) of
Ivory on which I work with so fine a Brush’. JEAL omits a final paragraph
in which JA alludes to the long-running family joke that she is to
marry Mr Papillon, rector of Chawton: ‘I am happy to tell you that M r
Papillon will soon make his offer, probably next Monday, as he returns on
Saturday . . . ’ (Letters, 323).
Charles Knight: Edward Austen Knight’s eighth child, now 13 years old
and a pupil at Winchester College.
123 very superior sermons: Henry Austen was ordained deacon in December
1816 and priest in early 1817, becoming curate at Chawton. See JA’s
letter to Alethea Bigg (24 January 1817), included at p. 126 below: ‘Our
own new clergyman is expected here very soon . . . ’
Lovell is the reader: a reference to Walter Scott’s novel The Antiquary,
published in May 1816. The episode to which JA refers occurs in ch. 18.
In Scott, the hero’s name (a disguise) is Lovel (with one final ‘l’).
Two chapters and a half: In a letter of 4 September 1816, JA had informed
Cassandra: ‘Edward is writing a Novel–– we have all heard what he has
written–– it is extremely clever; written with great ease & spirit;–– if he
can carry it on in the same way, it will be a firstrate work, & in a style, I
think, to be popular.–– Pray tell Mary [his mother] how much I admire
it.–– And tell Caroline that I think it hardly fair upon her & myself, to
have him take up the Novel Line . . .’ (Letters, 319).
vigorous sketches: it is so in Henry Austen’s ‘Biographical Notice’, but JA
wrote ‘spirited sketches’.
how well Anna is: Anna Lefroy had given birth to a second daughter, Julia
Cassandra, in September 1816, only eleven months after her first, Anna
Jemima. Ben was her husband. Writing to Fanny Knight in March 1817,
JA expresses concern at Anna’s frequent pregnancies (she was at this
time recovering from a miscarriage): ‘Poor Animal she will be worn out
before she is thirty’ (Letters, 336).
‘tell him what you will’: a joking reference to a line from Hannah Cowley’s
Which is the Man? (1783), a play in the repertoire of the family theatricals
at Steventon in the 1780s (Austen Papers, 126).
124 Joseph Hall: Mrs Austen’s tenant at Steventon (Letters, 460, n. 4).
Dame Staples: a Steventon villager (Letters, 575).
importunities of a little niece: this is JEAL’s sister Caroline, who tells the
story of the three chairs in MAJA, 177, in this collection.
125 brought to an end in July: according to Cassandra’s memorandum, P was
‘begun Aug t 8 th 1815 finished Aug t 6 th 1816’. In its unrevised version the