Jane Austen on March 7, 1814, from London to Cassandra in Chawton:

Monday.  Here’s a day! – The Ground covered with snow!  What is to become of us? – We were to have walked out early to near Shops, & had the Carriage for the more distant. – Mr. Richard Snow* is dreadfuly fond of us.  I dare say he has stretched himself out at Chawton too.

Ltr. 98, 5-8 March 1814, p. 259 [Le Faye]

*Le Faye notes Austen’s use of the mythical personifications of winter weather: Jack Frost and Dick Snow [perhaps another reason she does not like the name “Richard”?] 

The Brighton Mail, Sunday, December 25th 1836 (R. Havell)

Here’s my own take on the “Ground covered in snow! – What is to become of us?” indeed!”

Picnic anyone?

Image:  F. Gordon Roe, Sporting Prints of the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries.  NY: Payson & Clarke, 1927.

Copyright @2011, Deb Barnum, of Jane Austen in Vermont