Letter 14, Post 6

Tuesday 17 December 2013
To Cassandra, from Steventon, "I have received a very civil note from Mrs Martin requesting my name as a Subscriber to her Library which opens the 14th of January, & my name, or rather Yours is accordingly given, My mother finds the Money.-Mary subscribes too, which I am glad of, but hardly expected.-As an inducement to subscribe Mrs Martin tells us that her Collection is not to consist only of Novels, but of every kind of Literature &c &c-She might have spared this pretension to our family, who are great Novel-readers & not ashamed of being so;-but it was necessary I suppose to the self-consequence of half her Subscribers." - Jane Austen, Tuesday 18-Wednesday 19 December 1798

This is a very good post about circulating libraries in Jane Austen's time.
http://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/the-circulating-library-in-regency-times/

As for Mrs. Martin, the notes in the back of the book say she was "probably the Mary Martin who was landlady of the Maidenhead Inn and also held the Excise Office at Basingstoke 1791." There is an article written in the Basingstoke Gazette by Robert Brown on 22 October 2013 about the history of and the re-opening of the Maidenhead Inn which states that the Inn was kept by Mary Martin in 1784, but by 1790 the ownership changed to the Duke of Bolton of Hackwood Park (originally Thomas Orde, 1746-1807). The name of the Inn was changed to Bolton Arms. In 1815 the Inn closed.

Here is a link to this article:
http://www.basingstokegazette.co.uk/communitynews/memory_lane_old_pictures/10754361.History_repeats_itself_at_inn/?ref=rss

Letter number fourteen was written in 1798, but for the conclusion of this story we go to letter number twenty-three which was written Saturday 25-Monday 27 October 1800. Jane amusingly wrote to Cassandra, "Our whole Neighbourhood is at present very busy greiving over poor Mrs Martin, who has totally failed in her business, & had very lately an execution in her house.-Her own brother & Mr Rider are the principal creditors, & they have seized her effects in order to prevent other people's doing it.-There has been the same affair going on, we are told, at Wilson's, & my hearing nothing of you makes me apprehensive that You, your fellow travellers & all your effects, might be seized by the Bailiffs when you stopt at the Crown & sold altogether for the benefit of the creditors."

There was a Mrs. Ryder we discussed in letter number ten who was the Draper/haberdasher in Basingstoke. Perhaps she and Mr. Rider or Ryder were close friends with Mrs. Martin, both being working women in that era.

Does anyone else have the feeling that there could be a television series about this neighborhood? It could be narrated by Jane Austen and have a Little House on the Prairie feel to it where everyone knows everyone, some get along, others are a little more hard to love, but everyone stops what they are doing and join together when there is trouble.

Just like Mr. Bennett said, "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn."

I hope you have a good day today!
Terrie