Edward Knight's Family

Edward page 54

Elizabeth Austen, later Knight, continued.
'... Aunt Jane had lived, visiting the Pagoda, where I believe she sometimes wrote – and insisting on inspecting the cow houses to see if I could identify her final girlhood's climb with Marianne. After these separate occupations the newly-married couple departed from Godmersham, going first to Wingham and later to Dane Court "and these," comments their daughter Caroline, "began one of the most perfect life-long attachments of sixty-two years."

We must now pass over the greater part of these years. How rich they were, in joys and sorrows. Fifteen sons and daughters grew up in Dane Court, the house was filled with the laughter of children and with the coming and going of sons as they grew to manhood and entered their professions – with the love affairs of the daughters as they walked with their lovers in the garden wood. There were the long anxious years of the Crimean War, in which five of the sons were engaged – and when news travelled very slowly. There was the Naval son, George, wounded in the Burmese War and coming home to die. There was the enrichment of the births of grandchildren, and their constant visits. There was the interest of the father's active life, both as a landlord and as a Member of Parliament – and later, the ...'

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