“We spent our Christmas [1813] in Town with our friends,” [1] wrote Fanny to her sister, Esther Esten. Esther would know exactly what Fanny meant. “Town” was London and the “friends” were the Palmer family - their parents, sister Harriet and Esther’s son, eight-year-old Palmer Esten, who was at boarding school in England.
Unfortunately, the family circle was incomplete as Esther, her husband James, and their younger son, Hamilton, were at home in St George’s, Bermuda, where James was the Chief Justice of the colony. Worse still, Fanny’s brother, Robert John, remained incarcerated in a French prisoner-of-war camp in Verdun.
We can imagine the Palmers’ Georgian town house at 22 Keppel Street, near Russell Square, cheerfully decorated for the holiday celebration. We know that there were gifts to open and admire. Charles Austen surprised and delighted his nephew Palmer with “a present of a very handsome Model of the Indian which has been carved on board [the Namur]”[2]
HMS Atalante. Charles Austen’s vessel, Indian, an 18 gun sloop of war, was her sister ship and built to the same design.
Palmer knew the actual Indian well as he had travelled on her several times between Bermuda and Halifax when Charles was serving on the North American Station of the navy. His aunt Fanny probably counted amongst her gifts a smart red morocco pocket diary for 1814.
Fanny Austen’s pocket diary for 1814.
This she used as an accounts book, and it has become an intriguing source about how Fanny managed her household in 1814. Fanny enjoyed the conviviality and festive mood of Keppel street well into January.
I too am going to take a Christmas holiday This means a short break from blogging, but I shall be back, dear reader, in the New Year.
