Jane Austen’s May 1801 Letters: Letter 37

Plans for the Austens to rent a house in Green Park Buildings have fallen through, on account of the damp.  Jane and Mrs Chamberlayne (possibly a distant connection of Mrs Austen’s) are becoming friends of a kind, though Jane, who is acid-sharp about most of the people she meets in Bath, makes no exception for her.  The description of their walk to Weston, a village north-west of Bath, each competing to walk faster than the other, is very funny!

More unsatisfactory house hunting; more dull parties: no one and nothing escapes Jane’s acerbic wit.  Though amusing, one senses mounting depression behind the comments in this letter.