Austen, Jane

(1775 -1817)

Information

Jane Austen made frequent trips into Kent to visit her brother Edward at Godmersham Park near Canterbury. Her route sometimes took her through Dartford where she is recorded as stopping at least twice at one of the town’s four Post Inns, the Bull and George in the High Street which ceased to be a public house in the 1970s. On one occasion in October 1798, her return journey was enlivened by the misdirection of a piece of luggage which had to be recovered before she and her parents could sit down to their evening meal. Ten years later she stopped for breakfast at the same inn on the way down to Godmersham and in a letter to her sister Cassandra made another slighting reference to the food: ‘ the same bad butter’.
This is how she described her previous visit to Cassandra.

Quotations

‘Bull and George’, Dartford:
Wednesday October 24 [1798]
We have got apartments up two pairs of stairs, as we could not otherwise be accommodated with a sitting-room and bed-chambers on the same floor, which we wished to be. We have one double-bedded and one single-bedded room; in the former my mother and I are to sleep. I shall leave you to guess who is to occupy the other. We sate down to dinner a little after five, and had some beef-steaks and a boiled fowl, but no oyster sauce. I should have begun my letter soon after our arrival but for a little adventure which prevented me. After we had been here a quarter of an hour it was discovered that my writing and dressing boxes had been by accident put into a chaise which was just packing off as we came in, and were driven away towards Gravesend in their way to the West Indies. No part of my property could have been such a prize before, for in my writing-box was all my worldly wealth, 7l., and my dear Harry’s deputation. Mr Nottley immediately despatched a man and horse after the chaise, and in half an hour’s time I had the pleasure of being as rich as ever; they were got about two or three miles off.