The Letters of Jane Austen: Selected from the compilation of her great nephew, Edward, Lord BradbourneAusten, Jane
General
The Letters of Jane Austen: Selected from the compilation of her great nephew, Edward, Lord Bradbourne
Austen, Jane
Austen, Cassandra, 1773-1845; Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 -- Correspondence; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence
She has written to my aunt, and we are all impatient for the answer. I
do not know how to give up the idea of our both going to Paragon in May.
Your going I consider as indispensably necessary, and I shall not like
being left behind; there is no place here or hereabouts that I shall
want to be staying at, and though, to be sure, the keep of two will be
more than of one, I will endeavor to make the difference less by
disordering my stomach with Bath buns; and as to the trouble of
accommodating us, whether there are one or two, it is much the same.
According to the first plan, my mother and our two selves are to travel
down together, and my father follow us afterwards in about a fortnight
or three weeks. We have promised to spend a couple of days at Ibthorp in
our way. We must all meet at Bath, you know, before we set out for the
sea, and, everything considered, I think the first plan as good as any.
My father and mother, wisely aware of the difficulty of finding in all
Bath such a bed as their own, have resolved on taking it with them; all
the beds, indeed, that we shall want are to be removed,--namely, besides
theirs, our own two, the best for a spare one, and two for servants; and
these necessary articles will probably be the only material ones that
it would answer to send down. I do not think it will be worth while to
remove any of our chests of drawers; we shall be able to get some of a
much more commodious sort, made of deal, and painted to look very neat;
and I flatter myself that for little comforts of all kinds our apartment
will be one of the most complete things of the sort all over Bath,
Bristol included.
We have thought at times of removing the sideboard, or a Pembroke table,
or some other piece of furniture, but, upon the whole, it has ended in
thinking that the trouble and risk of the removal would be more than the
advantage of having them at a place where everything may be purchased.
Pray send your opinion.
Martha has as good as promised to come to us again in March. Her spirits
are better than they were. . . .
My mother bargains for having no trouble at all in furnishing our house
in Bath, and I have engaged for your willingly undertaking to do it all.
I get more and more reconciled to the idea of our removal. We have lived
long enough in this neighborhood: the Basingstoke balls are certainly on
the decline, there is something interesting in the bustle of going away,
and the prospect of spending future summers by the sea or in Wales is
very delightful. For a time we shall now possess many of the advantages
which I have often thought of with envy in the wives of sailors or
soldiers. It must not be generally known, however, that I am not
sacrificing a great deal in quitting the country, or I can expect to
inspire no tenderness, no interest, in those we leave behind. . . .
Yours affectionately, J. A.
Miss AUSTEN,
Godmersham Park, Faversham, Kent.
XIX.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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