‘Two umbrellas for us,’ for Jane Austen's "Emma" (1905) by Hugh Thomson (P. 8, Chapter I)

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"Two umbrellas for us."

Hugh Thomson

1905

Photomechanical reproduction of a pen-and-ink drawing

11.7 by 8.9 cm (4 ⅝ by 3 ½ inches), vignetted

Jane Austen, Emma, facing page 9.

Scanned image and text by Philip V. Allingham.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]

Passage Illustrated: Mr. Weston's umbrella was larger than the other, for Emma.

“Ever since the day (about four years ago) that Miss Taylor and I met with him in Broadway Lane, when, because it began to drizzle, he darted away with so much gallantry, and borrowed two umbrellas for us from Farmer Mitchell’s, I made up my mind on the subject. I planned the match from that hour; and when such success has blessed me in this instance, dear papa, you cannot think that I shall leave off match-making.” [Chapter 1, 7]

Commentary

Emma is speaking with great self-confidence here, but the illustrator indicates that the capacious umbrella which sheltered Miss Taylor and Mr. Weston did most of the "matchmaking." Presumably when the elderly but fashionably attired Mr. Weston procured the umbrellas from a nearby farmhouse (perhaps the very one depicted in the background), he made sure that the one he would share with Miss Taylor would be suitably commodious. Emma's is apparently much smaller.

In "I planned the match from that hour — dear papa, you cannot thank that I shall leave off matchmaking," C. E. Brock's second illustration for the 1906 edition makes Mr. Weston's age rather more obvious than Thomson has done here.

Related Material

Bibliography

Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. Austin Dobson. With forty pen-and-ink illustrations by Hugh Thomson. The Novels of Jane Austen. London: Macmillan, 1896, rpt. 1905.

Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. R. Brimley Johnson. With coloured illustrations by C. E. Brock. The Novels and Letters of Jane Austen. New York & Philadelphia: Frank S. Holby, 1906. 2 vols.

Austen, Jane. Emma. Ed. George Justice. 4th edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011.

Austen, Jane. Emma: An Annotated Edition. Ed. Bharat Tandon. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Belknap Press of Harvard U. P, 2012.

Created 24 April 2026