Letters of Jane Austen
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1796
THE first two letters which I am able to present to my readers were written from Steventon to Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra in January, 1796. The most interesting allusion, perhaps, is to her “young Irish friend,” who would seem by the context to have been the late Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, though at the time of writing only “Mr. Tom Lefroy.” I have no means of knowing how serious the “flirtation” between the two may have been, or whether it was to this that Mr. Austen Leigh refers when he tells us that “in her youth she had declined the addresses of a gentleman who had the recommendations of good character and connections, and position in life, of everything, in fact, except the subtle power of touching her heart.” I am inclined, however, upon the whole, to think, from the tone of the letters, as well as from some passages in later letters, that this little affair had nothing to do with the “addresses” referred to, any more than with that
