So began the Austens' life at Chawton--probably a quieter life than any they had yet led; their nearest neighbours being the Middletons (who rented the 'Great House' for five years and were still its inmates), the Benns at Faringdon, the Harry Digweeds, Mr. Papillon the Rector (a bachelor living with his sister), and the Clements and Prowting families. The ladies took possession of their cottage on July 7, and the first news that we have of them is in a letter from Mrs. Knight, dated October 26, 1809: 'I heard of the Chawton party looking very comfortable at breakfast from a gentleman who was travelling by their door in a post-chaise about ten days ago.' After this the curtain falls again, and we have no letters and no information for a year and a half from this time. We are sure, however, that Jane settled down to her writing very soon, for by April 1811 _Sense and Sensibility_ was in the printers' hands, and _Pride and Prejudice_ far advanced. Since her fit of youthful enthusiasm, when she had composed three stories in little more than three years, she had had much experience of life to sober and strengthen her. Three changes of residence, the loss of her father, the friendship of Mrs. Lefroy and the shock of her death,[212] her own and her sister's sad love stories, the crisis in the Leigh Perrot history, and her literary disappointments--all these must have made her take up her two old works with a chastened spirit, and a more mature judgment. We cannot doubt that extensive alterations were made: in fact, we know that this was the case with _Pride and Prejudice_. We feel equally certain that, of the two works, _Sense and Sensibility_ was essentially the earlier, both in conception and in composition, and that no one could have sat down to write that work who had already written _Pride and Prejudice_.[213] There is, indeed, no lack of humour in the earlier work--the names of Mrs. Jennings, John Dashwood, and the Palmers are enough to assure us of this; but the humorous parts are not nearly so essential to the story as they become in her later novels: the plot is desultory, and the principal characters lack interest. We feel, in the presence of the virtue and sense of Elinor, a rebuke which never affects us in the same way with Jane Bennet, Fanny Price, or Anne Elliot; while Marianne is often exasperating. Edward Ferrars is rather stiff; and Colonel Brandon is so far removed from us that we never even learn his Christian name.