LETTER THE FIRST From Isabel to Laura
How often, in answer to my repeated entreaties that you would give my daughter a regular detail of the misfortunes and adventures of your life, have you said 'No, my friend, never will I comply with your request till I may be no longer in danger of again experiencing such dreadful ones.' Surely that time is now at hand. You are this day fifty-five. If a woman may ever be said to be in safety from the determined perseverance of disagreeable lovers and the cruel persecutions of obstinate fathers, surely it must be at such a time of life.
Isabel
LETTER THE SECOND Laura to Isabel
Although I cannot agree with you in supposing that I shall never again be exposed to misfortunes as unmerited as those I have already experienced, yet to avoid the imputation of obstinacy or ill nature, I will gratify the curiosity of your daughter; and may the fortitude with which I have suffered the many afflictions of my past life prove to her a useful lesson for the support of those which may befall her in her own.
Laura
LETTER THE THIRD Laura to Marianne
As the daughter of my most intimate friend I think you entitled to that knowledge of my unhappy story, which your mother has so often solicited me to give you. My father was a native of Ireland and an inhabitant of Wales; my mother was the natural daughter of a Scotch peer by an Italian opera-girl1? I was born in Spain and received my education at a convent in France.
When I had reached my eighteenth year I was recalled by my parents to my paternal roof in Wales. Our mansion was situated in one of the most romantic parts of the vale of Usk.2 Though my charms are now considerably softened and somewhat impaired by the misfortunes I have undergone, I was once beautiful. But lovely as I was, the graces of my person were the least of my perfections. Of every accomplishment3 accustomary to my sex, I was mistress. When in the convent, my progress had always exceeded my instructions, my
1. Illegitimate daughter of a Scottish nobleman Tourism, and Romantic Landscape' at Norton Lit- and a woman who danced in the ballet corps of an erature Online. opera company. 3. Central to the curriculum of female education, 2. River valley in south Wales that had been cel-'accomplishments' were the skills in music, dance, ebrated by William Gilpin in his handbook for and drawing that were supposed to make young tourists in quest of picturesque scenes, Observa-ladies better companions for their future hustions on the River Wye (1782). See 'Tintern Abbey, bands.
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acquirements had been wonderful for my age, and I had shortly surpassed my masters. In my mind, every virtue that could adorn it was centered; it was the rendezvous of every good quality and of every noble sentiment.
A sensibility4 too tremblingly alive to every affliction of my friends, my acquaintance, and particularly to every affliction of my own, was my only fault, if a fault it could be called. Alas! how altered now! Though indeed my own misfortunes do not make less impression on me than they ever did, yet now I never feel for those of an other. My accomplishments too, begin to fade?I can neither sing so well nor dance so gracefully as I once did?and I have entirely forgot the Minuet Dela Cour.5
Adieu. Laura
LETTER THE FOURTH Laura to Marianne
Our neighbourhood was small, for it consisted only of your mother. She may probably have already told you that, being left by her parents in indigent circumstances, she had retired into Wales on economical motives. There it was our friendship first commenced. Isabel was then one and twenty?Though pleasing both in her person and manners (between ourselves) she never possessed the hundredth part of my beauty or accomplishments. Isabel had seen the world. She had passed two years at one of the first boarding schools in London, had spent a fortnight in Bath,6 and had supped one night in Southampton.7
'Beware, my Laura, (she would often say) beware of the insipid vanities and idle dissipations of the metropolis of England; beware of the unmeaning luxuries of Bath and of the stinking fish of Southampton.'
'Alas! (exclaimed I) how am I to avoid those evils I shall never be exposed to? What probability is there of my ever tasting the dissipations of London, the luxuries of Bath, or the stinking fish of Southampton? I who am doomed to waste my days of youth and beauty in an humble cottage in the vale of Usk.'
Ah! little did I then think I was ordained so soon to quit that humble cottage for the deceitful pleasures of the world.
Adieu. Laura
LETTER THE FIFTH Laura to Marianne
One evening in December as my father, my mother, and myself were arranged in social converse round our fireside, we were on a sudden greatly astonished by hearing a violent knocking on the outward door of our rustic cot.8
My father started?'What noise is that?' (said he.) 'It sounds like a loud
4. Sensibility, as a term designating the individual's capacity for sensitive emotional reaction, was celebrated in much late-18th-century literature at the same time that it was studied in medicine, investigations of the human nervous system especially. Sensibility was often linked to sympathy? the ability to enter into the feelings of another per- son?and hence to pity and benevolence, and was in this context assessed as a source of social harmony.
5. Literally, the court minuet?the stately formal dance that in the 18th century would begin a ball and be followed by livelier country dances. 6. Fashionable spa town in the west of England. 7. Port town in the south of England, in Austen's home county of Hampshire. 8. Cottage.
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51 8 / JANE AUSTEN
