th all its faults both of deficiency and
redundancy. I know that its value in their eyes must depend, not on any
merits of its own, but on the degree of estimation in which my aunt's
works may still be held; and indeed I shall esteem it one of the
strongest testimonies ever borne to her talents, if for her sake an
interest can be taken in so poor a sketch as I have been able to draw.

BRAY VICARAGE:
Sept. 7, 1869.

_Postscript printed at the end of the first edition; omitted from the
second_.

Since these pages were in type, I have read with astonishment the strange
misrepresentation of my aunt's manners given by Miss Mitford in a letter
which appears in her lately-published Life, vol. i. p. 305. Miss Mitford
does not profess to have known Jane Austen herself, but to report what
had been told her by her mother. Having stated that her mother '_before
her marriage_' was well acquainted with Jane Austen and her family, she
writes thus:--'Mamma says that she was _then_ the prettiest, silliest,
most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers.' The editor
of Miss Mitford's Life very properly observes in a note how different
this description is from 'every other account of Jane Austen from
whatever quarter.' Certainly it is so totally at variance with the
modest simplicity of character which I have attributed to my aunt, that
if it could be supposed to have a semblance of truth, it must be equally
injurious to her memory and to my trustworthiness as her biographer.
Fortunately I am not driven to put my authority in competition with that
of Miss Mitford, nor to ask which ought to be considered the better
witness in this case; because I am able to prove by a reference to dates
that Miss Mitford must have been under a mistake, and that her mother
could not possibly have known what she was supposed to have reported;
inasmuch as Jane Austen, at the time referred to, was a little girl.

Mrs. Mitford was the daughter of Dr. Russell, Rector of Ashe, a parish
adjoining Steventon, so that the families of Austen and Russell must at
that time have been known to each other. But the date assigned by Miss
Mitford for the termination of the acquaintance is the time of her
mother's marriage. This took place in October 1785, when Jane, who had
been born in December 1775, was not quite ten years old. In point of
fact, however, Miss Russell's opportunities of observing Jane Austen must
have come to an end still earlier: fo