During the next two months Jane remained in Kent, and here again the comparison with the pocket-books enables me to make out the allusions in the letters. "Her sister in Lucina, Mrs. H. Gipps" (Letter 64), was, before her marriage, "Emma Plumptre," whose sister, "Mary P.," was a great friend of my mother's; her other two chief friends being "Mary Oxenden," daughter of Sir Henry Oxenden, of Broome, afterwards Mrs. Hammond, and "Fanny Cage," of all three of whom we find frequent mention in the letters. The "Mr. K.s" who "came a little before dinner on Monday" were Messrs. Wyndham and Charles Knatchbull, the first and second sons of my grandfather, Sir Edward Knatchbull, by his second wife, Frances Graham, and "their lovely Wadham" was their cousin, son of Wyndham Knatchbull, of London, and afterwards the owner (on his brother William's death) of Babington, in Somersetshire. Wyndham Knatchbull was twenty-seven in 1813, as he was born in 1786. He was afterwards the Rev. Dr. Knatchbull, Rector of Smeeth-cum-Aldington, and died in 1868, at the age of eighty-two.

Mr. J. P. is Mr. John Pemberton Plumptre, grandson of the John Plumptre who married Margaretta Bridges in 1750. His father married a Pemberton, whence his second Christian name, and he himself married in 1818 Catherine Matilda Methuen, daughter of Paul Cobb Methuen, of Corsham House, Wilts; but, having only three daughters, Fredville came, on his decease in 1864, to Charles John, the son of his brother Charles. Mr. Plumptre represented East Kent for twenty years, from 1832 to 1852, having been returned as "an unflinching Reformer," but afterwards seeing reason to ally himself with the Conservative party. This caused much anger among his former political friends, and was the occasion of some amusing election squibs, one of which I remember. It was written in 1837, when Mr. Rider, whose property was in West Kent, contested Mr. Plumptre's seat in the Liberal interest. The squib was a parody on the song, "Oh where, and oh where, is your Highland Laddie gone?" the words "Jockey Rider" being substituted throughout for "Highland Laddie"; and the verse, "In what clothes, in what clothes, is your Highland Laddie clad?" was thus transformed -- blue, it should be observed, being the Liberal colour in East Kent: --In what clothes, in what clothes, is your Jockey Rider clad?

He's clad all o'er in Blue -- but that Blue is very bad;
For it's all second-hand, being what J. P. Plumptre had!

"Norton Court" was the residence of the Mr. Lushington, who came to Godmersham during this visit of Jane's, and who was afterwards, as the Right Hon. Stephen Rumbold Lushington, for some years Patronage Secretary of the Treasury, sat in several Parliaments for Canterbury, afterwards served as Governor of Madras, married the daughter of Lord Harris, and died at Norton Court in 1868, in his ninety-fourth year. He was a pleasant and agreeable man of the world, and I am not surprised to find that he made a favourable impression upon Jane. The most amusing thing I remember to tell about him is in connection with the celebrated East Kent election in 1852, when Sir E. Dering and Sir B. Bridges did battle for the seat vacated by Mr. Plumptre, and the latter won. Soon after the contest, I had a long talk with Mr. Lushington, who had very warmly espoused Sir E. Dering's cause, and who loudly declared that his defeat had been in a great measure owing to illegal expenditure on the part of Sir Brook, which he vehemently denounced, and expressed himself very strongly in favour of purity of election and as a hater of bribery of any sort. Presently, however, our conversation drifted into a talk about old times, and the days when he was Secretary of the Treasury before the Reform Bill of 1832. We talked of the Dering family, of their Borough of New Romney, which used to return two members, and of the present Sir Edward Dering's uncle, who managed the Surrenden estates during his long minority. Upon this subject our lover of purity of election waxed wroth. "A confounded old screw he was!" he exclaimed. "I was always ready, on the part of the Government, to give him a thousand for the seats, but the old fellow always insisted upon two thousand guineas, and I had to give him his price!" Whatever his views, however, upon such matters, he was certainly a favourite with the ladies, his musical talents being one of his recommendations, for I find an entry in my mother's pocket-book of one year "Mr. Lushington sang. He has a lovely voice, and is quite delightful." I gather from a similar source that he was generous with his "franks," another way to ladies' hearts of which unfortunate M.P.'s have been deprived by the progress of modern improvements. Mystole, to which allusion is made in the sixty-fifth and sixty-sixth letters, was, and is, the seat of the old Kentish family of Fagge. At the present moment it is let to Colonel Laurie, lately M.P. for Canterbury, but at the date of our letters it was occupied by the Rev. Sir John Fagge, rector of Chartham (in which parish Mystole is situate), who had, as the letters show, a wife (Miss Newman, of Canterbury, who survived her husband thirty-five years, and died in 1857), four sons and five daughters, all of the latter of whom Jane seems to have been lucky enough to find at home upon the occasion of her visit.

The Mr. Wigram who is introduced as the friend of Edward Bridges would have been mentioned more favourably by Jane if she had known him longer and better. I only knew him as a man somewhat advanced in years, who lived in Grosvenor Square, where I have had the honour of dining with him more than once. But, undoubtedly, he was a most kind-hearted and good man, a warm friend, of a generous and benevolent disposition, and quite agreeable enough to justify his parents in having called him Henry (see Letter 66).

The Mrs. Harrison mentioned in the sixty-ninth and seventieth letters must have been Mrs. Lefroy's sister, née Charlotte Brydges, who had first married Mr. Branfill, and, after his death in 1792 (leaving her with a son and daughter), Mr. John Harrison, of Denne Hill, who died in 1818 without issue. The madness is, of course, a pleasantry of the writer, since neither family was afflicted with more than the ordinary insanity which mankind enjoy, although both had plenty of that ability which sometimes appears like madness to those who do not happen to possess it.

The seventieth letter is the last from Godmersham, and begins by describing a dinner party at Chilham Castle. "The Bretons" were Dr. Breton and his wife. He was a gentleman little in stature, somewhat odd in appearance, and eccentric in character. He married Mrs. Billington, and had the rectory of Kennington, between Godmersham and Ashford, where he lived and died. My mother chronicles this gathering as "a better party than usual," and by "bits and scraps" of it Jane herself was "very well entertained." Then comes an amusing account of a concert at Canterbury to which she went, with my mother and Miss Clewes, and where the races of Bridges and Plumptre seem to have come in force from Goodnestone and Fredville, and to have had a pleasant time of it. My mother says of this concert that she had "an enjoyable cose with sweet Mary Plumptre," which corresponds with the account in the letter. The next letter -- for I do not doubt there was a "next" from Godmersham -- would probably have given us an account of the Canterbury ball, which was to take place on the following Thursday, but unfortunately it is not forthcoming. All the same, however, the ball did take place, for the pocket-book informs me: "We went to the Canty. Ball; good company, but no dancing; officers idle and scarcity of county Beaux. Sophia (Deedes) and I only danced the 2nd, and her partner was an officer, mine Wm. Hammond; white sarsnet and silver, silver in my hair."