Jane Austen Letters

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A former servant offers his help

Ben Dunford had worked as a postilion, riding one of the horses that pulled a carriage, for Jane Austen's uncle James Leigh-Perrot. Hearing that his former mistress faces a theft charge, he remembers how the couple paid for his care during smallpox and offers to help them in return. The letter shows support reaching the family from a former servant, not only their social equals. The printed source gives no date; it places the letter before the March 1800 trial.

Ben Dunford to James Leigh-Perrot
Date unresolved

White Hart, Bath. [No date.] Honored Sir,—You may have forgot your old postillon Ben Dunford but I shall never forget yours and my mistresses great goodness to me when I was taken with the small pox in your sarvice. You sent me very careful to mothers, and paid a nurse and my doctor, and my board for a long time as I was bad, and when I was too bad with biles all over my head so as I could not go to sarvice for a many weeks you maintained me. the famaly as I lives with be a going thro' Bath into Devonshire and we stops two days at the Inn and there I heard of the bad trick as those bad shopkeepers has sarved my mistress and I took the libarty of going to your house to enquire how you both do and the housekeeper said she sent a pasel to you every week and if I had anything to say she could send a letter. I hope Honored Sir you will forgive my taking such a libarty to write but I wish anybody could tell me how to do you and mistress any good. I would travel night and day to serve you both. I be at all times with my humble duty to mistress and you Honored Sir your dutifull sarvant Ben Dunford. James Leigh Perrot Esq.