“We must think the best”
Jane Austen died 198 years ago today, on July 18, 1817.
Sarah Emsley shares some of Jane’s words of hope on her blog today.
Originally posted on Sarah Emsley:
“We must think the best & hope the best & do the best.” Jane Austen wrote this line in a letter to her sister Cassandra on November 26, 1815, when their brother Henry was very ill, and I’ve returned to it many times over the years that I’ve been studying her life and letters. Henry has been hoping he’ll be able to travel to Oxford for a few days, but although he “gets out in his Garden every day … at present his inclination for doing more seems over” and “his feelings are for continuing where he is, through the next two months.” “One knows the uncertainty of all this,” Jane acknowledges, “but should it be so, we must think the best & hope the best & do the best.”
This is not the “syringa, iv’ry pure” of Cowper’s line, but I thought it was pretty anyway. “I could not…
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