1796

The first two letters which I am able to present to my readers were written from Steventon to Jane Austen's sister Cassandra in January 1796. The most interesting allusion, perhaps, is to her ‘young Irish friend,’ who would seem by the context to have been the late Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, though at the time of writing only ‘Mr. Tom Lefroy.’ I have no means of knowing how serious the ‘flirtation’ between the two may have been, or whether it was to this that Mr. Austen Leigh refers when he tells us that ‘in her youth she had declined the addresses of a gentleman who had the recommendations of good character and connections, and position in life, of everything, in fact, except the subtle power of touching her heart.’ I am inclined, however, upon the whole, to think, from the tone of the letters, as well as from some passages in later letters, that this little affair had nothing to do with the ‘addresses’ referred to, any more than with that ‘passage of romance in her history’ with which Mr. Austen Leigh was himself so ‘imperfectly acquainted’ that he can only tell us that there was a gentleman whom the sisters met ‘whilst staying at some seaside place,’ whom Cassandra Austen thought worthy of her sister Jane, and likely to gain her affection, but who very provokingly died suddenly after having expressed his ‘intention of soon seeing them again.’