Margaret you will find assiduously courting all accomplishments except that of good humor. As for Olivia, I suspect she does not exist; every time I call, her head is in a book, leaving only a set of limbs sprawled on the hearthrug. I have hopes for Lavinia, who goes on as a young lady of fifteen ought to do, admired and admiring, but for a certain boisterousness of spirit that time and care will cure.

Your father was to have dined with us today, but the weather was so cold he dared not venture forth.

You deserve a longer letter than this, but it is my unhappy fate to seldom treat people so well as they deserve. God bless you! And may God speed your journey to Bath.

Yours very affectionately,

J. Austen

Everybody’s love.

Bath

December 1803

“ ‘So Emma,’ said he, ‘you are quite the stranger at home. It must seem odd enough for you to be here. A pretty piece of work your Aunt Turner has made of it! By heaven!.. What a blow it must have been upon you! To find yourself, instead of heiress of eight or nine thousand pounds, sent back a weight upon your family, without a sixpence... After keeping you from your family for such a length of time as must do away all natural affection... you are returned upon their hands without a sixpence.’ ”

— Jane Austen, The Watsons

“ ‘Poverty is a great evil, but to a woman of education and feeling it ought not, it cannot be the greatest. I would rather be a teacher at a school (and I can think of nothing worse) than marry a man I did not like.’

‘I would rather do anything than be a teacher at a school,’ said her sister.”

— Jane Austen, The Watsons



2 из 285