1808, 1809

These letters were written at a time when the first great misfortune fell upon the Godmersham family, in the loss of the wife and mother so tenderly loved by all. In the last week of September Elizabeth Austen was confined with her youngest child, and on the 8th of October, after eating a hearty dinner, she was suddenly seized with sickness, and expired before the serious nature of her attack had been fully realized. The first two letters of the series, written just before this event, are in Jane's usual and cheerful spirit, and require no particular comment. The third (No. 45) was Jane's first communication to her sister after the melancholy news from Godmersham, and this and the two subsequent letters are principally upon the same subject. The forty-eighth letter alludes to the approaching marriage of Edward Bridges with Harriet Foote, the sister of his brother Sir Brook's late wife. There are also allusions in this letter to some matters connected with her own mother's (the Leigh) family, which are of no public interest; nor is there anything in the forty-ninth to which I need call attention. In the fiftieth Jane alludes (as elsewhere in subsequent letters) to Lady Sondes' second marriage. This lady was Mary Elizabeth, only daughter of Richard Milles, Esq., of Elmham, Norfolk, who married, in 1785, Lewis Thomas, the second Lord Sondes, who died in 1806, and she subsequently married General Sir Henry Tucker Montresor, K.C.B., of Denne Hill.