Editing Jane Austen (section)

===Tom Lefroy===
[[File:Thomas Langlois Lefroy.jpg|thumb|[[Thomas Langlois Lefroy]], [[Lord Chief Justice of Ireland]], by [[William Henry Mote|W. H. Mote]] (1855); in old age, Lefroy admitted that he had been in love with Austen: "It was boyish love."<ref>Tomalin (1997), 118.</ref> ]]

When Austen was twenty, [[Thomas Langlois Lefroy|Tom Lefroy]], a neighbour, visited Steventon from December 1795 to January 1796. He had just finished a university degree and was moving to London for training as a [[barrister]]. Lefroy and Austen would have been introduced at a ball or other neighbourhood social gathering, and it is clear from Austen's letters to Cassandra that they spent considerable time together: "I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together."<ref>Quoted in Le Faye (2004), 92.</ref>

Austen wrote in her first surviving letter to her sister Cassandra that Lefroy was a "very gentlemanlike, good-looking, pleasant young man".<ref name = "halperin721">Halperin (1985), 721</ref> Five days later in another letter, Austen wrote that she expected an "offer" from her "friend" and that "I shall refuse him, however, unless he promises to give away his white coat", going on to write "I will confide myself in the future to Mr Tom Lefroy, for whom I don't give a sixpence" and refuse all others.<ref name = "halperin721"/> The next day, Austen wrote: "The day will come on which I flirt my last with Tom Lefroy and when you receive this it will be all over. My tears flow as I write at this melancholy idea".<ref name = "halperin721"/>

Halperin cautioned that Austen often satirised popular sentimental romantic fiction in her letters, and some of the statements about Lefroy may have been ironic. However, it is clear that Austen was genuinely attracted to Lefroy and subsequently none of her other suitors ever quite measured up to him.<ref name = "halperin721"/> The Lefroy family intervened and sent him away at the end of January. Marriage was impractical as both Lefroy and Austen must have known. Neither had any money, and he was dependent on a [[Benjamin Langlois|great-uncle]] in Ireland to finance his education and establish his legal career. If Tom Lefroy later visited Hampshire, he was carefully kept away from the Austens, and Jane Austen never saw him again.<ref>Le Faye (2014), xviii; Fergus (2005), 7–8; Tomalin (1997), 112–120, 159; Honan (1987), 105–111.</ref> In November 1798, Lefroy was still on Austen's mind as she wrote to her sister she had tea with one of his relatives, wanted desperately to ask about him, but could not bring herself to raise the subject.<ref name = "halperin722">Halperin (1985), 722</ref>