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Marriott wrote to Warren Hastings from India in 1765, ten years before Jane Austen was born. Hastings supported Jane’s aunt, Philadelphia Hancock, and was godfather to her daughter Betsy, Jane’s cousin. The biography quotes Marriott sending greetings to Betsy and George; only those fragments appear below. It identifies Marriott only by surname.
little ("great" I believe I should say) Betsy Hancock,
good hearty shake by the hand to George; I suppose if I were to go to kiss him he would give me a box on the ears.—Write me particularly how these little ones go.
Betsy is Eliza Hancock’s childhood name. She later used the surnames de Feuillide and Austen after marriage. The identity of “George” is uncertain; this extract does not establish that he is Jane’s father or Warren Hastings’s son. These are two pieces of a longer letter. The British Library catalogue lists Randolph Marriott’s letters.
Extract from Life and Letters (1913), p. 34.