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It passed to Mrs. Cole, Mrs. Perry, and Mrs. Elton
Hugh Thomson
1905
Photomechanical reproduction of a pen-and-ink drawing
12.3 by 9 cm (4 &frac4; by 3 ½ inches), vignetted
Jane Austen, Emma, facing page 422.
Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.
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“It is to be a secret, I conclude,” said he. “These matters are always a secret, till it is found out that every body knows them. Only let me be told when I may speak out. — I wonder whether Jane has any suspicion.”
He went to Highbury the next morning, and satisfied himself on that point. He told her the news. Was not she like a daughter, his eldest daughter? — he must tell her; and Miss Bates being present, it passed, of course, to Mrs. Cole, Mrs. Perry, and Mrs. Elton, immediately afterwards. It was no more than the principals were prepared for; they had calculated from the time of its being known at Randalls, how soon it would be over Highbury; and were thinking of themselves, as the evening wonder in many a family circle, with great sagacity.
In general, it was a very well approved match. [Chapter LIII, 422-424]
From the accompanying text we know the identities of the four women who are meeting in the high street at Highbury: the chatty Miss Bates (left, doing the gossiping), then Mrs. Cole, then perhaps Mrs. Perry, wife of the apothecary, and finally the rather judgmental Mrs. Elton (right). Thomson gives us a sense of the teeming life of the marketplace and its eighteenth-century buildings serving as a backdrop for the action. All seem to be responding with approbation rather than censure. Missing obviously from the conversation is Mr. Weston, the "he" of the preceding passage whose perspective Thomson may be giving us, even though this scene is clearly subsequent to his telling Miss Bates of the engagement of two of the community's leading lights and their anticipated, somewhat unconventional living arrangements. Miss Bates may be spreading rumour seriatim rather than in single gossiping circle.
Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. Austin Dobson. With forty pen-and-ink illustrations by Hugh Thomson. The Novels of Jane Austen. London: Macmillan, 1896, rpt. 1905.
Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. R. Brimley Johnson. With coloured illustrations by C. E. Brock. The Novels and Letters of Jane Austen. 2 vols. New York & Philadelphia: Frank S. Holby, 1906.
Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. George Justice. 4th edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011.
Austen, Jane. Emma: An Annotated Edition. Ed. Bharat Tandon. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard U. P., 2012.
Last modified 8 June 2026