Miss Jane Austen... In Real Life

Friday 12 February 2010
Letter #2, To Cassandra, from Steventon, “How impertinent you are to write to me about Tom, as if I had not opportunities of hearing from him myself. The last letter that I received from him was dated on Friday the 8th, and he told me that if the wind should be favourable on Sunday, which it proved to be, they were to sail from Falmouth on that Day. By this time therefore they are at Barbadoes I suppose.” – Jane Austen Thursday 14 January 1796

Tom; Revd Tom Fowle (1765-13 February 1797). He was Cassandra’s fiancé. He had a small parish in Allington, Wilts. which he had received from Lord Craven in 1793 and was also one of Lord Craven’s domestic chaplains. Lord Craven asked him to go with him as chaplain to the campaign in the West Indies.

Tom and Cassandra had become engaged sometime in 1792. They had not married because they had hoped to receive a more valuable parish from Lord Craven in Shropshire. Tom and Cassandra had just spent time together in Kintbury with his parents before he left for the West Indies.

As the distance between England and Barbados is 4,185 miles or 6,734 kilometers it is not likely that Tom was in Barbados yet, but it is very sweet of Jane to suppose this part of his trip would be over.

It is interesting that in 1796 William Wilberforce was working very hard to have the slave trade abolished and Tom was heading out with Lord Craven on a slave trade mission.