castle square, monday (january 30).
my dear cassandra,—i was not much surprised yesterday by the agreeable surprise of your letter, and extremely glad to receive the assurance of your finger being well again.
here is such a wet day as never was seen. i wish the poor little girls had better weather for their journey; they must amuse themselves with watching the raindrops down the windows. sackree, i suppose, feels quite broken-hearted. i cannot[151] have done with the weather without observing how delightfully mild it is; i am sure fanny must enjoy it with us. yesterday was a very blowing day; we got to church, however, which we had not been able to do for two sundays before.
i am not at all ashamed about the name of the novel, having been guilty of no insult toward your handwriting; the diphthong i always saw, but knowing how fond you were of adding a vowel wherever you could, i attributed it to that alone, and the knowledge of the truth does the book no service; the only merit it could have was in the name of caleb, which has an honest, unpretending sound, but in c[oe]lebs there is pedantry and affectation. is it written only to classical scholars?
i shall now try to say only what is necessary, i am weary of meandering; so expect a vast deal of small matter, concisely told, in the next two pages.
mrs. cooke has been very dangerously ill, but is now, i hope, safe. i had a letter last week from george, mary being too busy to write, and at that time the disorder was called of the typhus kind, and their alarm considerable, but yesterday brought me a much better account from mary, the origin of the complaint being now ascertained to be bilious, and the strong medicines requisite promising to be effectual. mrs. e. l. is so much[152] recovered as to get into the dressing-room every day.
a letter from hamstall gives us the history of sir tho. williams's return. the admiral, whoever he might he, took a fancy to the "neptune," and having only a worn-out 74 to offer in lieu of it, sir tho. declined such a command, and is come home passenger. lucky man! to have so fair an opportunity of escape. i hope his wife allows herself to be happy on the occasion, and does not give all her thoughts to being nervous.
a great event happens this week at hamstall in young edward's removal to school. he is going to rugby, and is very happy in the idea of it; i wish his happiness may last, but it will be a great change to become a raw school-boy from being a pompous sermon-writer and a domineering brother. it will do him good, i dare say.
caroline has had a great escape from being burnt to death lately. as her husband gives the account, we must believe it true. miss murden is gone,—called away by the critical state of mrs. pottinger who has had another severe stroke, and is without sense or speech. miss murden wishes to return to southampton if circumstances suit, but it must be very doubtful.
we have been obliged to turn away cholles, he grew so very drunken and negligent, and we have a man in his place called thomas.
[153]
martha desires me to communicate something concerning herself which she knows will give you pleasure, as affording her very particular satisfaction,—it is that she is to be in town this spring with mrs. dundas. i need not dilate on the subject. you understand enough of the whys and wherefores to enter into her feelings, and to be conscious that of all possible arrangements it is the one most acceptable to her. she goes to barton on leaving us, and the family remove to town in april.
what you tell me of miss sharpe is quite new, and surprises me a little; i feel, however, as you do. she is born, poor thing! to struggle with evil, and her continuing with miss b. is, i hope, a proof that matters are not always so very bad between them as her letters sometimes represent.
jenny's marriage i had heard of, and supposed you would do so too from steventon, as i knew you were corresponding with mary at the time. i hope she will not sully the respectable name she now bears.
your plan for miss curling is uncommonly considerate and friendly, and such as she must surely jump at. edward's going round by steventon, as i understand he promises to do, can be no reasonable objection; mrs. j. austen's hospitality is just of the kind to enjoy such a visitor.
we were very glad to know aunt fanny was[154] in the country when we read of the fire. pray give my best compliments to the mrs. finches, if they are at gm. i am sorry to find that sir j. moore has a mother living, but though a very heroic son he might not be a very necessary one to her happiness. deacon morrell may be more to mrs. morrell.
i wish sir john had united something of the christian with the hero in his death. thank heaven! we have had no one to care for particularly among the troops,—no one, in fact, nearer to us than sir john himself. col. maitland is safe and well; his mother and sisters were of course anxious about him, but there is no entering much into the solicitudes of that family.
my mother is well, and gets out when she can with the same enjoyment, and apparently the same strength, as hitherto. she hopes you will not omit begging mrs. seward to get the garden cropped for us, supposing she leaves the house too early to make the garden any object to herself. we are very desirous of receiving your account of the house, for your observations will have a motive which can leave nothing to conjecture and suffer nothing from want of memory. for one's own dear self, one ascertains and remembers everything.
lady sondes is an impudent woman to come back into her old neighborhood again; i suppose[155] she pretends never to have married before, and wonders how her father and mother came to have her christened lady sondes.
the store-closet, i hope, will never do so again, for much of the evil is proved to have proceeded from the gutter being choked up, and we have had it cleared. we had reason to rejoice in the child's absence at the time of the thaw, for the nursery was not habitable. we hear of similar disasters from almost everybody.
no news from portsmouth. we are very patient. mrs. charles fowle desires to be kindly remembered to you. she is warmly interested in my brother and his family.
yours very affectionately,
j. austen.
miss austen, edward austen's, esq.,
godmersham park, faversham, kent.
