On this day in 1808. . .

One hundred and fifth in an occasional series of excerpts from Jane Austen's letters.

How many marriage proposals did Jane Austen turn down?

The story of poor Harris Bigg-Wither, whose December 1802 proposal Austen accepted and then rejected the next day, is reasonably well-documented. Austen’s niece Caroline heard the story from her mother, who witnessed the aftermath, and years later, Caroline shared the details with her brother, James Edward Austen-Leigh, as he worked on his 1869 memoir of Jane Austen.

But did Jane Austen receive a second proposal from someone else? That’s the intriguing, if speculative, backstory to the letter that Jane Austen wrote to her sister, Cassandra, exactly 217 years ago today (#61 in Deirdre Le Faye’s standard edition of Austen’s correspondence).

Cassandra, who was in Kent visiting the family of the third-oldest Austen brother, Edward, had recently sent along some interesting news: the Rev. Brook Edward Bridges, a younger brother of Edward’s recently deceased wife, was engaged to marry one Harriet Foote, whose late sister Eleanor had been married to yet another Bridges sibling. And apparently, the Bridges family were not members of Harriet's fan club.

“Your news of Edw: Bridges was quite news,” Jane writes to Cassandra. “I wish him happy with all my heart, & hope his choice may turn out according to his own expectations, & beyond those of his Family—And I dare say it will. Marriage is a great Improver--& in a similar situation Harriet may be as amiable as Eleanor.—As to Money, that will come You may be sure, because they cannot do without it.—When you see him again, pray give him our Congratulations & best wishes.”

The authors of Jane Austen: A Family Record, a detailed biography compiled by Austen descendants in 1913 and updated by Le Faye in 1989, detect “a note of relief” in Austen’s oh-so-hearty congratulations—perhaps, they speculate, because a few years earlier, Austen had herself rejected a proposal of marriage from the same man.

The evidence for this conclusion is as follows:

--In August 1805, the twenty-nine-year-old Jane visits the Bridges family home and, in a letter to Cassandra, reports spending a pleasant evening with Edward* Bridges, who was about four years her junior. “It is impossible to do justice to the hospitality of his attentions towards me; he made a point of ordering toasted cheese for supper entirely on my account,” Jane writes. (#46)

--In June 1808, Bridges reappears briefly in Austen’s correspondence: Austen visits his mother and reports, “Her son Edward was also looking very well, & with manners as un-altered as hers.” (#55)

--Four months later, in October 1808, Austen tells Cassandra, “I wish you may be able to accept Lady Bridges’s invitation, tho’ I could not her son Edward’s.” (#57)

It doesn’t seem out of the question that the “invitation” Austen tantalizingly referenced was another marriage proposal.** But it doesn’t seem certain, either. As is so often the case in the Austen biography game, the clues are so fragmentary that reaching a conclusion inevitably requires speculative leaps.

An evening snack, unaltered manners, a rejected invitation, warm congratulations: Does it all add up to thwarted romance? You decide. If toasted cheese be the food of love, play on.

* Six of the seven Bridges boys, sons of Sir Brook Bridges, were named . . . Brook. You can see how this might have gotten confusing if they hadn’t gone by their middle names.

** Unsurprisingly, the creators of the delightful biopic Miss Austen Regrets decided there was a proposal, casting Hugh Bonneville as a kind, wistful Bridges.