1835-1837] The Death of Jane Wedgwood 269 



world. She has been in love with her father's coachman for 

 10 years and is now quite resolved to marry him. Her 

 father is in despair about it, and says he will shoot himself 

 if she does, and he and the other sisters are so ill that they 

 think they will die of it. The coachman is drunken and a 

 bad man, and engaged to the cook, but Miss X. remains 

 quite steady in her purpose and as she is 25 nobody can stop 

 her. . . , l 



Fanny Allen wrote to Emma (March 2, 1836): "Did I 

 tell you what success your beasts met with at the school ? 

 I have been trying my hand at a lion, but it looks like nothing 

 at all. I wish you would do me a bear and a lion, good- 

 sized, any leisure time of yours, and let them be by you for 

 any opportunity that may happen in the next 5 or 6 months. 

 The beasts your acquaintance here are all well. Clio wins 

 her way with everyone. John's particular love to you. 

 You have won his heart completely." 



These " beasts ' were cut out in paper, for which art 

 my mother had a particular talent, though I remember 

 pigs as being her chefs d'oeuvre. 



Jane, Mrs John Wedgwood, who had never had good 

 health, died quite suddenly at Shrewsbury, where she had 

 gone to consult Dr Darwin. 



Fanny Allen to her niece Emma Wedgivood. 



MY DEAR EMMA, CRESSELLY, Ap. 25, 1836. 



We were totally unprepared for the intelligence 

 from Shrewsbury yesterday, it seems yet to me like a 

 painful dream that makes me restless. One's under- 

 standing as well as one's eyes are holden sometimes with 

 regard to the illness of those dear to one; and it has been 

 so in this instance more than in any other case I ever 

 remember. Almost every word and action of hers during 

 the past winter is before me, and I can think and speak of 

 nothing else; and my own foolish blindness is before me 



1 Strange to say, Miss X. was believed to be happy in her married 

 life. She lived according to her husband's position and brought up 

 her children in the same rank. 



