Miss Jane Austen... In Real Life

Saturday 30 January 2010
Letter #2, To Cassandra, from Steventon, “Our party to Ashe to-morrow night will consist of Edward Cooper, James (for a Ball is nothing without him), Buller, who is now staying with us, & I – I look forward with great impatience to it, as I rather expect to receive an offer from my friend in the course of the evening. I shall refuse him, however, unless he promises to give away his white coat.” – Jane Austen, 14 January 1796

Ashe was where the Lefroy’s lived. I posted a picture of it in letter #1, the first entry. The friend she refers to here would be Mr. Tom Lefroy. He was visiting the Lefroy family at this time. There is much discussion of him, and a bit of discussion of his white coat, in the first letter.

This entry and one coming up make me believe that she did care enough for him to marry him. Even though I realize that she had a great wit and humor, and I also realize that because she is not here to ask we can, all of us, pick and choose how we wish things to be, I still choose to believe that she would have married him, if he would have asked.

They were both penniless, and it is said that Madam Lefroy put a stop to their “romance” because of it, but when you consider that money was such a factor in all of Jane Austen’s stories, maybe, this made a distinct impression upon her, coupled with the fact that Cassandra had not married her fiancé, Mr. Tom Fowle, because he did not make enough money, and this situation, also, had such a sad ending. When you think about it, it seems like money is the third person in all of her stories.

Buller must have been Richard Buller, the son of William Buller, who was a friend of her father, George Austen.

Richard and Jane wrote to each other, so they must have been friends.

Here is a link to William Buller in Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Buller