Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters: A Family RecordAusten-Leigh, William
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Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters: A Family Record
Austen-Leigh, William
Austen, Jane, 1775-1817; Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 -- Family; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Family relationships
You tell me that your good sister Austen has
offered you one or both of her daughters to
continue with you during your stay in that vile
place, but you decline the kind offer, as you
cannot procure them accommodation in the house
with you, and you cannot let those elegant young
women be your inmates in a prison, nor be
subjected to the inconveniences which you are
obliged to put up with.
So Cassandra and Jane just escaped a residence in gaol and contact with
criminals.
Another letter written about this time must have given much pleasure to
the Leigh Perrots:--
White Hart, Bath. [No date.]
HONORED SIR,--You may have forgot your old
postillon Ben Dunford but I shall never forget
yours and my mistresses great goodness to me when
I was taken with the small pox in your sarvice.
You sent me very careful to mothers, and paid a
nurse and my doctor, and my board for a long time
as I was bad, and when I was too bad with biles
all over my head so as I could not go to sarvice
for a many weeks you maintained me. the famaly as
I lives with be a going thro' Bath into Devonshire
and we stops two days at the Inn and there I heard
of the bad trick as those bad shopkeepers has
sarved my mistress and I took the libarty of going
to your house to enquire how you both do and the
housekeeper said she sent a pasel to you every
week and if I had anything to say she could send a
letter. I hope Honored Sir you will forgive my
taking such a libarty to write but I wish anybody
could tell me how to do you and mistress any good.
I would travel night and day to serve you both. I
be at all times with my humble duty to mistress
and you Honored Sir your dutifull sarvant
BEN DUNFORD.
James Leigh Perrot Esq.
The trial took place at Taunton on Saturday, March 29. The old Castle
Hall--where Judge Jeffreys once sat on his 'Bloody Assizes'--said to be
capable of containing 2000 persons, was filled at an early hour. So
urgent was the curiosity, even of the Bar, that the 'Nisi Prius' Court,
which stood at the opposite end of the hall, was not opened for business
that morning--all the counsel on the circuit surrounding the table of
the Crown Bar; while the rest of the hall was thronged with anxious
spectators, many hundreds of whom could not possibly have heard a word
that was said, and were almost crushed to death and suffocated with
heat. Between seven and eight o'clock, Mrs. Leigh Perrot, who had been
conveyed from Ilchester, appeared in the dock, attended by Mr. Leigh
Perrot and three ladies, and the proceedings commenced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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