LETTERS OF JANE AUSTEN
An allusion in letter No. 24 (written November
20, 1800) to James Digweed’s compliment to
Cassandra respecting the fall of two elms, suggests
the quotation from a letter published by
Mr. Austen Leigh, of the date of November 8,
in that same year: — “Sunday evening. We have
had a dreadful storm of wind in the fore-part of
this day which has done a great deal of mischief
among our trees. I was sitting alone in the dining-room
when an odd kind of crash startled me;
in a moment afterwards it was repeated. I then
went to the window, which I reached just in
time to see the last of our two highly valued
elms descend into the sweep; the other, which
had fallen, I suppose, in the first crash, and
which was the nearest to the pond, taking a more
easterly direction, sank among our screen of
chestnuts and firs, knocking down one spruce fir,
breaking off the head of another, and stripping
the two corner chestnuts of several branches in
its fall. This is not all. One large elm out of
the two on the left-hand side as you enter what
I call the elm walk was likewise blown down; the
maple bearing the weather-cock was broke in
two, and what I regret more than all the rest is,
that all the three elms which grew in Hall’s
meadow and gave such ornament to it are gone;
two were blown down, and the other so much injured
that it cannot stand. I am happy to add,
