[208] Ibid. p. 196.
[210] We are told in the biographical notice prefixed to Bentley's edition of the novels in 1833, that though Jane, when her authorship was an open secret, was once asked by a stranger to join a literary party at which Madame de Staël would be present, she immediately declined the invitation.
[211] Memoir, p. 89.
[212] She had experienced a similar shock before in the sudden death, by accident, of her cousin, Jane Williams.
[213] This judgment is based on the idea that Elinor and Marianne (admittedly earlier than First Impressions) bore something of the same relation to Sense and Sensibility that First Impressions did to Pride and Prejudice.
[214] Jane Austen and her Country-house Comedy, by W. H. Helm.
[215] Her cousin, Mary Cooke.
[216] This may have been Bullock's Natural History Museum, at 22 Piccadilly. See Notes and Queries, 11 S.v. 514.
[217] In Pall Mall.