Day 4

“I have crossed the Atlantic four times, and have been once to the East Indies, and back again... I never was in the West Indies. We do not call Bermuda or Bahama, you know, the West Indies.”
Mrs. Croft: news of the world for a parched drawing room.

In 1808, Jane Austen’s sailor brother Frank took the soundings (depth measurements) for this map of St. Helena. The Austens, family of cartographers, knew well the place where Napoleon was finally exiled in 1815. Wars’ end, unknown future for Persuasion.

Map of St. Helena, “The N.W. Bank of Soundings by Captain F. W. Austin R.N. in 1808.” Published by the Hydrographic Office, 1816. Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin

“She could only hang over little Charles, with most disordered feelings. [Captain Wentworth’s] kindness in stepping forward to her relief—the manner—the silence in which it had passed—the little particulars of the circumstance–with the conviction soon forced on her by the noise he was studiously making with the child, that he meant to avoid hearing her thanks, and rather sought to testify that her conversation was the last of his wants, produced such a confusion of varying, but very painful agitation, as she could not recover from, till enabled by the entrance of Mary and the Miss Musgroves to make over her little patient to their cares, and leave the room.”

Disordered, silence, little particulars, noise, avoid hearing, her conversation, confusion, varying, painful, little patient, cares, leave the room.