Posted by The Mysterious H.C. on July 29, 1997 at 13:00:05:
In reply to Mr. Woodhouse's expiration date posted by Jessamyn on July 27, 1997 at 15:29:15
] ] ] And C) taking her up to town for the season, once her dear old Dad departs after, what is it, two years or so?
] ] ________
] ] I thought that JA said that he lived, and just let them go to Donwell after two years. Did I misread that?
] ________
] Actually, according to the book they married pretty promptly and Knightley moved in with the Woodhouses (there's a rather complicated thing about Mr. Woodhouse's chickens being raided and scaring Mr. Woodhouse into thinking it a good idea). I was actually referring to one of those things that Austen apparently told her family to continue the story in later years.
] According to the introduction to my (turn-of-the-century) edition of Emma, written by a Mr. Joseph Jacobs,
] "Family tradition has even reported several additional incidents about the lives of the characters of "Emma" which would otherwise have not been known to us. Thus the letters placed before Jane Fairfax, which she swept away unread, contained the word P-A-R-D-O-N. We are not altogether surprised to hear that the valetudianarian Mr. Woodhouse only survived Emma's marriage, and kept Knightley away from Donwell, two years."
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I have the exact quote from James Edward Austen-Leigh's 1870 Memoir on my Jane Austen sequels page (this doesn't include the statment about how long Jane Fairfax lived, but it includes all the other family traditions).