the
offer of one of her cousins to equip her for the
East Indies, and tho' infinitely against her
inclinations, had been necessitated to embrace the
only possibility that was offered to her of a
maintenance; yet it was one so opposite to all her
ideas of propriety, so contrary to her wishes, so
repugnant to her feelings, that she would almost
have preferred servitude to it, had choice been
allowed her. Her personal attractions had gained
her a husband as soon as she had arrived at
Bengal, and she had now been married nearly a
twelvemonth--splendidly, yet unhappily married.
United to a man of double her own age, whose
disposition was not amiable, and whose manners
were unpleasing, though his character was
respectable.

When Jane wrote this she may have been thinking of her father's sister,
Philadelphia, whose fate is described not very incorrectly, though with
a certain amount of exaggeration, in this passage. That Philadelphia
Austen went to seek her fortune in India is certain, and that she did so
reluctantly is extremely likely. She had at an early age been left an
orphan without means or prospects, and the friends who brought her up
may have settled the matter for her. Who those friends were, we do not
know; but from the intimate terms on which she continued through
life--not only with her brother, George Austen, but also, in a less
degree, with her half-brother, William Walter--it is probable that she
had spent much of her youth with her mother's family.

Her brother George, however, as a young man, was poor, and had no home
to offer her; but the banishment which threatened entirely to separate
the brother and sister proved in the end to have a contrary effect.
Philadelphia did in time come back to England, as a wife and as the
mother of one daughter, and her husband's subsequent return to India
caused her to depend much for companionship upon her English relations.
At Steventon little Betsy would find playfellows, somewhat younger than
herself, in the elder Austen children, while her mother was discussing
the last news from India with the heads of the family.

Our first definite information about Philadelphia is, that in November
1751 she petitioned the Court of East India Directors for leave to go to
friends at Fort St. David by the _Bombay Castle_; bu