Jane Austen's Family by Maggie Lane

Author:Maggie Lane [Maggie Lane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780719813788
Publisher: Robert Hale
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

On 9 October 1801 Hastings Capot de Feuillide died, aged fifteen. His physical and mental state of health had ever been a source of worry to Eliza, who replied, twenty days after her son’s death, to Philadelphia’s letter of condolence:

I am much obliged by your kind participation in an event which though, as you rightly consider it, a desirable release has greatly affected my spirits. So awful a dissolution of a near and tender tie must ever be a severe shock, and my mind was already weakened by witnessing the sad variety and long series of pain which the dear sufferer underwent – but deeply impressed as I am with the heart-rending scenes I have beheld I am most thankful for their termination, and the exchange which I humbly hope my dear child has made of a most painful existence for a blissful immortality.

In addition to my affliction on poor Hastings’ account, I have undergone much anxiety concerning Henry, who for five months never enjoyed an hour’s health. His complaints were a cough, hectic pain in the side and in short everything which denotes a galloping consumption in which I believe all his acquaintance thought him. At length a prescription of Dr Baillie’s (who had already tried a variety of medicines to no purpose) removed some of the above symptoms, and from that time he has mended so fast that he is now nearly as well as I had always known him to be previous to this attack.

I conclude that you know of our uncle and aunt Austen and their daughters having spent the summer in Devonshire. They are now returned to Bath where they are superintending the fitting up of their new house. Their eldest son James is in possession of Steventon where he has made such alterations and embellishments that it is almost a pretty place – not however that I have seen it, for you know that I am not given to visiting and have taken near four years to accomplish a journey to Godmersham Park, for which place I purpose setting out tomorrow morning. Mrs E.A. produced her seventh child about six or seven weeks since.

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