Thursday 6 May 2010

Thursday 6 May 2010

Okay, so we begin again, picking up where we left off.

Letter #2, To Cassandra, from Steventon, “Tell Mary that I make over Mr Heartley & all his Estate to her for her sole use and Benefit in future, & not only him, but all my other admirers into the bargain wherever she can find them, even the kiss which C. Powlett wanted to give me, as I mean to confine myself in future to Mr Tom Lefroy, for whom I donot care sixpence. Assure her also as a last & indubitable proof of Warren’s indifference to me, that he actually drew that Gentleman’s picture for me, & delivered it to me without a Sigh.” – Jane Austen, Thursday 14 January 1796

Mary would have been Mary Lloyd. She was with Cassandra visiting Mr. and Mrs. Fowle, who were Mary’s aunt and uncle on her mother’s side.

Mr. Heartley was probably one of the Hartley’s from Bucklebury, Berkshire.
As far as I can tell the Rev. Winchcombe Henry Howard Hartley would have been the Hartley in residence in 1796. He was the vicar of Bucklebury. He married Elizabeth Watts on 21 August 1809.

This is Bucklebury House before the fire.

This is current day Bucklebury!

There was a fire that destroyed a lot of the first house. The current day photo is a restoration of the servants quarters! Still very pretty! The Hartley family still lives there today.

It looks to me like Jane made a pretty big sacrifice for Mr. Lefroy. Mr. Heartley had quite an estate to hand over to Mary.

This is a link to information about the family and the house.
http://www.berkshirehistory.com/castles/bucklebury_house.html

Mr. C. Powlett, Charles Powlett; he may be a bit more interesting than he seems at first mention. He was born in 1765, so he would have been around thirty or thirty-one in 1796. Jane had just turned twenty.

His linage was from the 3rd Duke of Bolton. He was raised by his uncle, Charles, mostly at Hackwood Park, where ‘he became acquainted with rank and fashion in abundance, which somewhat unsettled him for the sphere to which his ill-starred fortunes destined him’. He attended Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1781, but he did not finish. He held quite a few different Bolton family livings as rector and in 1790 was Chaplain-in-Ordinary to the Prince of Wales.

This was how Hackwood Park looked around 1830.

This is a picture from the air in 1995.

He married Anne ‘Nancy’ Temple in November of 1796.

He had some trouble and had to leave England for France in 1827. He died in Brussels in 1834.

Someone jumped the gun and wrote an obituary notice for him in 1830 which described him as ‘cheerful, benevolent, conscientious, and virtuous’, but the biographer also added that, ‘His person was diminutive, and his limbs not well formed. He had a quick apprehension, and an excellent memory; but he was somewhat deficient in judgment and profundity. His opinions were apt to run to extremes, and to be lightly taken up, and lightly abandoned. He was a little too free of his advice, which was given with a self-sufficiency not always well received.’ Hum – maybe this sounds like Mr. Collins?

In any case it is apparent he did not obtain a kiss from Jane.

And Mr. Lefroy, well… sigh,,,

Warren; John-Willing Warren (1771-c.1831), He was most likely a student of Mr. Austen's at Steventon, c.1785 and went on to Oxford and, also, contributed to The Loiterer, a magazine Jane Austen's brothers published while they were at Oxford. He became a barrister-at-law and a Charity Commissioner. He married in 1807.

I wonder if warren drew a picture of Mr. Lefroy as a way of teasing her. Mr. Lefroy was being teased about her at Ashe. Their behavior must have warranted the notice of everyone around them, so she was probably being teased also, if so, she did not seem to mind.