Timing It: The Watsons

For those of you who haven't read my Behind the Quill series—especially Behind the Quill: Timelines and Behind the Quill: My Current and Future Projects—I’ll add the links to those. I recommend reading them if you aren’t sure what’s happening here. Since I haven’t written a blog post in a while, I decided to update my Jane Austen research projects with what I’ve most recently been working on: creating a more exact timeline for The Watsons to be used in my collective Austenverse.

The First Step: Choosing the Year

The Watsons is a short, unfinished fragment, but the one thing Jane Austen gives us immediately is a perfect starting point. The very first line states:

“The first winter assembly in the town of D—— in Surrey was to be held on Tuesday, October 13th.”

That’s all we need to anchor the entire timeline.

Between 1790 and 1817, there are exactly four years where October 13th fell on a Tuesday: 1795, 1801, 1807, and 1812.

The manuscript paper was watermarked 1803–1804, so many scholars assume she wrote it around that time. But for anyone completing The Watsons themselves, these four years are your only valid options.

Hair Powder and the Tax Act: Narrowing Down the Options

The biggest internal clue for dating The Watsons is the reference to powdered hair.

Elizabeth tells Emma:

“The Edwards have a noble house, you see, and live quite in style. The door will be opened by a man in livery with a powdered head, I can tell you.”

The wording makes powdered hair sound unusual, even old-fashioned. This matters, because:

The Duty on Hair Powder Act 1795 (35 Geo. 3. c. 49) was an act of the Parliament of Great Britain which levied a tax on hair powder.

The act stated that everyone wishing to use hair powder must, from 5 May 1795, visit a stamp office to enter their name and pay for an annual certificate costing 1 guinea (equivalent to £100 in 2020). Certain exemptions were included: the Royal Family and their servants; clergymen with an income of under £100 a year; and members of the armed forces who were privates in the army, artillery soldiers, mariners, engineers, non-commissioned officers, subalterns, officers in the navy below commander, yeomanry, militia, fencibles, and volunteers. A father with more than two unmarried daughters could buy two certificates that would be valid for any number he stated at the stamp office. The master of a household could buy a certificate for a number of his servants, and that certificate would also be valid for their successors within that year. [Wikipedia]

This makes 1807 and 1812 extremely unlikely, because hair powder would have been rare and expensive by then—certainly unusual enough to require rewriting the reference.

This leaves 1795 and 1801 as the most realistic choices.

1795:Powdered wigs would still appear, especially for formal servants, but already in decline due to cost.

1801:Powdered wigs were still used by butlers and legal professionals. Robert (a solicitor) wearing a powdered wig fits perfectly, and a nouveau riche family like the Edwards could easily keep an old-fashioned, “stylish” livery servant despite the tax.

Both years work—just for different reasons.

Why I Chose 1801 for the Austenverse

Although 1795 also works, I chose 1801 for my collective Austenverse for two reasons:

1. Character Ages:I want most major Austenverse characters born in the 1780s, to line up with the explicitly stated birth years of the Elliot sisters in Persuasion.

2. Universe Consistency:Placing The Watsons in 1801 allows it to overlap more naturally with the Austenverse timeline I’ve built around Refined and Returned, The Watsons, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, and Sense and Sensibility.

That said, for a future version truer to Austen’s own era, I may choose 1795 instead. If you pick 1795, all the hair-powder details still fit.

The Fragment’s Internal Timing: A Three-Week Story

One very useful aspect of The Watsons is that the entire fragment takes place across three weeks. We know this because:

• Tuesday, Oct 13: the winter assembly

• Oct 14: Emma returns home

• 2–3 days later: Lord Osborne and Tom Musgrave visit

• The following Wednesday: the hunting party (Emma and Elizabeth refuse)

• 7–10 days later: the letter from Robert and Jane announcing they’ll bring Margaret

• Another 3 days: Mr. and Mrs. Robert Watson stay at Stanton Parsonage and leave on Oct 29

If you follow the 7–10 day range, the most logical internal sequence is:

• Oct 26: Robert, Jane, and Margaret arrive

• Oct 29: they leave

This also happens to be the day the fragment ends.

Why I Think Parliament Stopped Austen, Not the Common Theory

There are endless theories about why Jane Austen abandoned The Watsons:

• The Watsons were “too low” socially.

• Mr. Watson’s death would plunge them into misery.

• The plot was too bleak for a “young lady.”

• She got bored of the characters.

• It hit too close to her own family’s financial troubles.

But I think there’s a simpler, much more practical explanation:

Parliament.

Here’s why.

1. Lord Osborne is clearly meant to be the main male lead.

Despite later family claims that Emma was destined to marry Mr. Howard, this doesn't match Austen’s typical pattern:

• Austen never kills a character with speaking lines. Mr. Watson speaks in the text, so killing him off is unlikely.

• Mr. Howard has one line in the entire fragment and no actual presence.

• Lord Osborne, however, has:

  • multiple scenes

  • actual dialogue

  • a clear narrative role

  • early romantic framing

  • repeated appearances and references

He is obviously being set up as the primary male figure.

2. Parliament began on October 29 in 1795 and 1801.

And October 29 is the exact day:

• Robert and Jane leave Dorking, and

• Austen abruptly stops the fragment.

If Lord Osborne is required back in London for the opening of Parliament, Austen may have realized that:

• He would disappear from the story for weeks or months.

• She had introduced him before establishing him as a romantic lead.

• Emma had not yet formed opinions about him.

• The story structure needed him present, not suddenly removed.

I think she put it aside intending to come back, realized she had boxed herself in, and then real life intervened.

Given her family’s upheavals around this time, she likely never returned.

Final Thoughts

Creating a calendar for The Watsons is surprisingly straightforward once you anchor it on Tuesday, October 13. The real challenge is choosing the year, and that choice affects everything from hair powder to Parliament.

For my Austenverse timeline, 1801 is the best fit.For an Austen-faithful or historically exact version, 1795 also fits perfectly.

Either way, the internal logic of the fragment supports a tight three-week timeline ending on October 29—coincidentally (or not) the same day Parliament opened and the same day the manuscript stops.