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"I planned the match from that hour — dear papa, you cannot think that I shall leave off matchmaking."
Charles Edmund Brock
1906
12.9 by 8.3 cm (5 by 3 ¼ inches), framed, facing p. 12.
Austens's Emma, Part I.
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Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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Mr. Knightley shook his head at her. Her father fondly replied, “Ah! my dear, I wish you would not make matches and foretell things, for whatever you say always comes to pass. Pray do not make any more matches.”
“I promise you to make none for myself, papa; but I must, indeed, for other people. It is the greatest amusement in the world! And after such success, you know! — Every body said that Mr. Weston would never marry again. Oh dear, no! Mr. Weston, who had been a widower so long, and who seemed so perfectly comfortable without a wife, so constantly occupied either in his business in town or among his friends here, always acceptable wherever he went, always cheerful — Mr. Weston need not spend a single evening in the year alone if he did not like it. Oh no! Mr. Weston certainly would never marry again. Some people even talked of a promise to his wife on her deathbed, and others of the son and the uncle not letting him. All manner of solemn nonsense was talked on the subject, but I believed none of it.
“Ever since the day — about four years ago — that Miss Taylor and I met with him in Broadway Lane, when, because it began to drizzle, he darted away with so much gallantry, and borrowed two umbrellas for us from Farmer Mitchell’s, I made up my mind on the subject. I planned the match from that hour; and when such success has blessed me in this instance, dear papa, you cannot think that I shall leave off match-making.” [Chapter 1, pp. 11-12]
Although Emma is speaking with great self-confidence here, the illustrator makes it clear that the capacious umbrella which sheltered Miss Taylor and Mr. Weston did most of the "matchmaking." Presumably when the rather elderly but fashionably attired Mr. Weston procured the umbrellas from a nearby farmhouse (perhaps the very one depicted in the background), he made sure that the one he would share with Miss Taylor would be suitably commodious. Emma's is apparently much smaller. Brock has taken pains to show that Mr. Weston is old enough to be the father of either young woman — indeed, he resembles Mr Woodhouse, as seen in the frontispiece. The arrival of Mr. Weston's son, the dashing Frank Churchill, sets the romantic plot in motion by providing Emma with two possible suitors. Emma too will find her future with the one who is considerably older than she is (George Knightley is almost seventeen years her senior).
Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. R. Brimley Johnson. With coloured illustrations by C. E. and H. M. Brock. 2 vols. The Novels and Letters of Jane Austen. New York & Philadelphia: Frank S. Holby, 1906.
Created 26 March 2026