Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/59

 have been tolerable in detail. The probability is that she wrote nothing more for some time; at all events, when she left Bath with her mother and sister in 1805 she had added nothing but this fragment to the valuable stock of writing which she brought with her from Steventon.

Her next home was in Southampton, where her mother took a house with a garden in Castle Square, and there Jane was established for four more years of her fast shortening life. A friend of hers, Martha Lloyd, to whom she constantly refers in her letters, came to live with them, and this was a source of great happiness to Jane, who frequently mentions her in terms of warm affection. Ultimately Miss Lloyd married Frank Austen, Jane's youngest brother; but this connection, which would have given her so much pleasure, did not take place till several years after Jane herself had passed away. The Southampton house was a pleasant one, but the Austens never took root comfortably there, and it is significant of how little Jane felt at home in it, that she wrote absolutely nothing during her four years of Southampton life; not even as much as she had accomplished at Bath. She had come under circumstances of loss and sorrow which would probably have made any place unattractive to her, and her mother and sister evidently shared her feeling, for as soon as an opportunity occurred of changing their home they gladly seized it.

This opportunity came through Jane's second brother, Edward. He owned two estates, both left to him by a distant cousin, and he offered a home at either to his mother and sisters. Godmersham Park, in Kent, was one of his places; Chawton House, in Hampshire, the other; and Mrs. Austen and