Thursday [June 6]. [Anna] does not return from Faringdon till this evening, and I doubt not has had plenty of the miscellaneous, unsettled sort of happiness which seems to suit her best. We hear from Miss Benn, who was on the Common with the Prowtings, that she was very much admired by the gentlemen in general. * * * * * We began pease[231] on Sunday, but our gatherings are very small, not at all like the gathering in the _Lady of the Lake_. Yesterday I had the agreeable surprise of finding several scarlet strawberries quite ripe; had _you_ been at home, this would have been a pleasure lost. There are more gooseberries and fewer currants than I thought at first. We must buy currants for our wine. * * * * * I had just left off writing and put on my things for walking to Alton, when Anna and her friend Harriot called in their way thither, so we went together. Their business was to provide mourning against the King's death, and my mother has had a bombasin bought for her. I am not sorry to be back again, for the young ladies had a great deal to do, and without much method in doing it. Yours affectionately, J. A. The printing of _Sense and Sensibility_ cannot have been very rapid, for in September 28 there is the following entry in Fanny Austen's diary: 'Letter from At. Cass to beg we would not mention that Aunt Jane wrote _Sense and Sensibility_.' This looks as if it were still on the eve of publication, and it was not in fact advertised until October 31. FOOTNOTES: [207] _Memoir_, p. 80. [208] _Ibid._ p. 196. [209] See pp. 275, 285. [210] We are told in the biographical notice prefixed to Bentley's edition of the novels in 1833, that though Jane, when her authorship was an open secret, was once asked by a stranger to join a literary party at which Madame de Stael would be present, she immediately declined the invitation. [211] _Memoir_, p. 89. [212] She had experienced a similar shock before in the sudden death, by accident, of her cousin, Jane Williams. [213] This judgment is based on the idea that _Elinor and Marianne_ (admittedly earlier than _First Impressions_) bore something of the same relation to _Sense and Sensibility_ that _First Impressions_ did to _Pride and Prejudice_. [214] _Jane Austen and her Country-house Comedy_, by W. H. Helm. [215] Her cousin, Mary Cooke. [216] This may have been Bullock's Natural History Museum, at 22 Piccadilly. See _Notes and Queries_, 11 S.v. 514. [217] In Pall Mall. [218] Theophilus Cooke. [219] See p. 6.