it is probable that it is among those that Cassandra is known to have destroyed before her own death, as too revealing of Jane's personal life. A reference to the flames does appear in letter #57 in the LeFaye edition of Jane Austens Letters, which LeFaye attributes to the November 5, 1803 fire known to have occurred in Lymc. The account of a blaze recorded here, however, some ten months later, may in fact be the one to which Jane refers in letter #57. —Editor's note.
2 Lord Harold Trowbridge—rake, scoundrel, second son of a duke, and spy in the service of the Crown—made his first appearance in Austen's journals while both were at Scargrave Manor, the home of her friend Isobel Payne. —iiditor's note.
3 This was a sort of coastal militia, of fishermen and small craft superintended by naval officers, arrayed against possible channel invasion from France. —Editor's note.
4 What Jane suspected was in some part true. By 1804 the British government was actively supporting French Royalist plotters who found refuge on English shores by providing them with bank drafts in the millions of francs; and a certain Captain Wright allegedly carried three separate shiploads of Royalist insurgents to French shores throughout 1803 and early 1804. All were discovered, tried, and, in the main, executed. “I may fairly say,” Napoleon later re called, “that during the months from September, 1803, to January, 1804,1 was sitting on a volcano/’ The assassination attempts culmi nated in Napoleon's unwarranted seizure and execution of the Due D'Enghien, who was of Bourbon descent and falsely accused of as piring to Napoleon's throne, in March 1804; but from Austen's account, it would seem that Royalist efforts continued well after ward. —Editor's note.
25 September 1804, cont.
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A VERY FEW WORDS WILL SUFFICE TO CONCLUDE MY TALE.
The dragoons attempted, and failed, to impede the flight of Sidmouth's boat. After a frantic quarter-hour of firing poorly-sighted blunderbusses across a heaving sea, they gave up the effort, and stood at the water's edge in a degree of ill-humour and rainswept soddenness, that should have been amusing to behold, did not I find myself in so precarious a position. I espied Roy Cavendish, on the periphery of his troops. The Customs man's arms were folded, his hat brim dripped with the dispiriting rain, and there was an expression of dismay on his countenance. I suspected his foul temper would descend upon my head, did I appear.
It was then that Lord Harold advanced upon them.
He had left me at the mouth of the cave, confident that the dragoons might persuade me to caution where his influence could not. With customary coolness, he had torn a length of rag from his white shirt, and affixed it to his pistol end; then he hauled poor Crawford to his feet, and forced the man to serve as shield for their advance through the pelting showers. It remained only to wait until the dragoons” fury was spent, and Sidmouth safely out of the way; and so Lord Harold did.
“Ahoy there!” he cried, waving his makeshift flag of truce as he thrust the reluctant Crawford before him. “Your commander, I pray!”
Cavendish started from his abject ruminations, and stepped forwards to meet the men; and a parley ensued, in the lowest of tones, that seemed to invert the Customs officer's very world. Disbelief o'erspread his features, and something very like shock; and he took a step backwards from Cholmondeley Crawford in utter amazement.
Roy Cavendish was not a man of the Crown for nothing, however—and in a few moments, he had dispatched a squadron of dragoons from their fruitless position on the beach, to retrieve what dignity they might, in a search of Crawford's fossil site; and they discovered there a quantity of silk and other fine stuff, all imported without benefit of the King's custom—and perhaps, most important, a set of horseshoes made crudely on the fossil forge, and marked clearly with the initials GS.
The intelligence thus obtained, and a few low words regarding statecraft, and His Majesty's government, from Lord Harold Trowbridge, ensured that no Naval cutter should be loosed in pursuit of Sidmouth and his party. But all this it was my privilege to learn later, once Crawford was borne away to the Lyme gaol (all threat of fire in that quarter being now contained), and the dragoons dispersed. At Lord Harold's suggestion, Roy Cavendish made it his business to inform the justice of the peace, Mr. Dobbin, of Cholmondeley Crawford's murderous deceit.