The Novels and Letters of Jane Austen/Volume 11/Letters of Jane Austen, Part 1/Letters of 1801
1801
Mr. and Mrs. Leigh Perrot were the uncle and aunt who lived at Paragon, Bath, and it would seem that the Steventon family, having made up their mind to settle in Bath upon Mr. George Austen's giving over his clerical duties to his son, made the Perrots' house their head-quarters whilst they looked about for a fitting abode. Cassandra Austen seems to have been visiting, first at Mrs. Lloyd's and then at Kintbury, for to these places the letters are addressed. They have not many allusions which require explanation, being chiefly occupied by observations regarding the search for a house, the people whom Jane encountered at Bath, and the news they heard of the sale of their effects at Steventon Rectory. I suppose “the Chamberlaynes” to have been the family of the Rev. Thomas Chamberlayne, rector and patron of Charlton, who married in 1799 Maria Francesca, daughter of Captain Robert Walter, R.N., and whose eldest son is described in “Burke’s Landed Gentry” as Thomas Chamberlayne, of Cranbury Park and Weston Grove, Hants—which, by the way, the unwary reader must not confound with the Weston to which Jane and Mrs. Chamberlayne walked, which was, of course, the Weston by Bath, celebrated for the battle of 1643, in which the Royalist Sir Bevil Grenville lost his life, and which was fought on Lansdown, mostly in this parish, from which the present Marquis of that name takes his title.
It will be seen that there is an “hiatus” in the letters after 1801, for I have discovered none between May in that year and August, 1805. During this period the family lived in Bath, first at No. 4 Sydney Terrace, and afterwards in Green Park Buildings, until Mr. Austen’s death. Before the move to Southampton, which occurred later in the same year, Jane went to pay a visit to her relations in Kent, from which county the next letters were written.