[Mrs. Heathcote] writes me word that Miss Blachford is married, but I have never seen it in the papers, and one may as well be single if the wedding is not to be in print.
Your affectionate Aunt,
J. A.
In August 1815 the Lefroys moved from Hendon, and took a small house called Wyards, near Alton, and within a walk of Chawton. Wyards is more than once mentioned in our letters.
This is the last letter we possess dealing with Anna's story; and we can understand that the attention of either writer was soon diverted from it by more serious considerations: that of Anna by family cares, that of her aunt by Henry's illness and bankruptcy, and by her own publication of Emma and subsequent failure of health. The last history of the MS. was sad enough. After the death of her kind critic, Anna could not induce herself to go on with the tale; the associations were too melancholy. Long afterwards, she took it out of its drawer, and, in a fit of despondency, threw it into the fire. Her daughter, who tells us this, adds that she herself—a little girl—was sitting on the rug, and remembers that she watched the destruction, amused with the flame.
A similar fate befell a tragedy written at a very early age by Anna's little sister Caroline, who was her junior by about twelve years. Caroline believed it to be a necessary part of a tragedy that all the dramatis personae should somehow meet their end, by violence or otherwise, in the last act; and this belief produced such a scene of carnage and woe as to cause fits of laughter among unsympathetic elders, and tears to the author, who threw the unfortunate tragedy into the fire on the spot.
Caroline, however, continued to write stories; and some of them are alluded to in a series of little childish letters written to her by her Aunt Jane, which survive, carefully pieced together with silver paper and gum, and which are worth preserving for the presence in them of love and playfulness, and the entire absence of condescension.
December 6.
My dear Caroline,—I wish I could finish stories as fast as you can. I am much obliged to you for the sight of Olivia, and think you have done for her very well; but the good-for-nothing father, who was the real author of all her faults and sufferings, should not escape unpunished. I hope he hung himself, or took the sur-name of Bone or underwent some direful penance or other.
Yours affectionately,
J. Austen.
Chawton: Monday, July 15.