Julie KlassenManage the inn, Jane, save it. Have a mission in life. Discover that work worth doing is about more than profit and toil. It's about using the gifts and ability you've been given to serve your fellow man and please your Maker.
About This Quote
Jane Austen was thinking of her nephew, Edward Austen Knight, who had just died. Edward was the second son of Jane's brother Henry. We know that Jane was contemplating Edward's future at Oxford or Cambridge when she wrote this letter to his mother. Jane says she is preparing the inn for him to manage, because she believes in him having a mission in life. She hopes he will discover his work worth doing is not about profit and toil, but about using the gifts and abilities he's been given, to serve others and please God.
This is essentially what she taught her nephew. She wanted him to follow in her footsteps as a writer. Jane was thinking of Edward as he worked hard at Oxford or Cambridge. He worked hard at Oxford, studying classics with his friend Charles Churchill.
He studied Latin with the famous scholar Samuel Johnson. And he worked hard at Cambridge, studying divinity with Professor John Tillotson and medicine with John Hunter. When Edward reached adulthood, Jane never doubted that he would become a minister of the church like her brother Henry. But, unfortunately, Edward's life took another turn .
He became an actor instead of a minister of the church. He became an actor with some fame during his short lifetime. Jane wanted Edward to use his gifts and abilities to serve others instead of using them only for himself. She wanted him to go on to become a famous actor just like she did.
It sounds like she thought it would be more exciting than being a minister of the church on a quiet country parish by the river Thames where she lived for most of her life as a spinster lady who raised her two nieces (she had no children) after her own children were grown and gone .
Source: The Innkeeper Of Ivy Hill
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