Read Jane Austen for Free Online Page B

James E. Austen-Leigh, who included it in his A Memoir of Jane Austen ).
    The Watsons are described as a poor family who live in Surrey and have ‘no close [enclosed] carriage’. Emma Watson has recently returned to the family having been brought up by an aunt. She has a brother Robert of Croydon, whose wife Jane she despises for her narrow-mindedness.
    Emma’s elder sister Elizabeth describes herself as having been ill-used. She had been attached to a man by the name of Purvis, however, another of her sisters, Penelope, whom she had trusted had ‘set him against me, with a view of gaining him herself’. Such treachery, says Elizabeth, ‘has been the ruin of my happiness. I shall never love any man as I loved Purvis’.
    ‘Could a sister do such a thing?’ asks the incredulous Emma.
    ‘[D]o not trust her,’ says Elizabeth, ‘she has her good qualities,but she has no faith, no honour, no scruples, if she can promote her own advantage’.
    A ball is to be held at the White Hart Inn by the Edwards who are ‘people of fortune’ and who live in the ‘best house in the street’. Emma is to attend, but before she does so, her more experienced sister Elizabeth cautions her against a certain Tom Musgrave who, although he has ‘about eight or nine hundred pounds a year’, is ‘a great flirt and never means anything serious’. Nonetheless, Elizabeth stresses how important it is that she and her sisters marry as their father cannot provide for them, ‘and it is very bad to grow old and be poor and laughed at’. Penelope, says Elizabeth, is currently attempting ‘to make some match at Chichester [with] rich old Dr Harding’. Another sister, Margaret, described as ‘all gentleness and mildness … if a little fretful and perverse’, believes erroneously that Tom Musgrave is seriously in love with her. As for Emma’s brothers, Robert ‘has got a good wife and six thousand pounds’, whereas Sam is ‘only a surgeon’.
    The ball is attended by a Captain Hunter (whose brother officer asks Emma to dance); Lady Osborne of Osborne Castle and her son Lord Osborne and daughter Miss Osborne; Mr Howard, ‘formerly tutor to Lord Osborne, now clergyman of the parish in which the castle stood’. Howard is described as ‘an agreable-looking [ sic ] man, a little more than thirty’. In contrast, Lord Osborne is ‘not fond of women’s company’ and does not dance.
    After the ball, when Emma is expecting her father’s ‘chair’ (conveyance) to take her home, Tom Musgrave appears bearing a note from her sister Elizabeth. This is to say that it is impossible for Emma to return home until the following morning because her father has decided to go out in the conveyance himself in order to attend a ‘visitation’ (a visit to the parish by an ecclesiastical superior).
    When Tom offers to take her home instead, Emma declines his offer. This is because she finds him to be ‘very vain, very conceited, absurdly anxious for distinction, and absolutely contemptible in some of the measures he takes for becoming so’. The Revd Howard’s manners, on the other hand, are ‘of a kind to give me much more ease and confidence’. Emma therefore avails herself of her hostess Mrs Edwards’ invitation to stay overnight.
    When Emma does finally return home, she hears her father describing the visitation which he had attended where Howard, who was the preacher, had ‘given an excellent sermon’. Mr Watson was also impressed by the way Howard had helped him up a steep flight of steps when he was suffering with his, ‘gouty foot’.
    When Lord Osborne and Tom Musgrave pay the Watsons an unexpected visit, Emma finds the occasion embarrassing, bearing in mind the ‘very humble style’ in which she and her family were obliged to live, in contrast to ‘the elegancies of life’ which she had previously enjoyed with her aunt.
     
    Jane Austen’s unfinished novel The Watsons is a story with many themes: Emma’s ability to differentiate