02/06/2026
On 2nd June 1799 Jane Austen wrote to her sister about a new cloak,
'I like it very much, & can now exclaim with delight, like J.Bond at Hay-Harvest, "This is what I have been looking for these three years."
John Bond was Jane Austen's father's bailiff at Cheesedown Farm in Deane and may even have been Jane's source for Mr Knightley's bailiff, William Larkin, in 'Emma', who,
'...thinks more of his masterās profit than any thing'.
To supplement his income as rector of Steventon and Deane, Jane Austen's father, the Revd George Austen, also ran Cheesedown Farm and John Bond frequently appears in Jane Austen's letters.
In December 1798, she had worried that, in his sixties,
'John Bond begins to find himself grow old, which John Bonds ought not to do...'
George Austen had christened John's children in Deane Church, including his daughter, Elizabeth (Lizzie), in 1783 and in December 1798 Jane wrote about the, by then, 16 year old,
'Lizzie Bond is just apprenticed to Miss Small, so we may hope to see her able to spoil gowns in a few years.'
Miss Small was the dressmaker in nearby Overton.
In 1809 Lizzie Bond was married to Joseph Beal of Overton in Steventon Church by Jane Austen's brother, James, who had become rector of Steventon on his father's death.
When Jane Austen and her parents decided to leave Steventon to move to Bath in 1801, Jane was concerned about what would happen to John Bond and wrote to her sister that their friend and neighbour, Mr Holder, from Ashe Park who was taking over Cheesedown Farm was,
'...perfectly willing to take him on exactly the same terms with my father, & John seems exceedingly well satisfied. - The comfort of not changing his home is a very material one to him. And since such are his unnatural feelings his belonging to Mr Holder is the very thing needful...'
although she goes on to say that another old friend and neighbour, Harry Digweed of Steventon Manor, would have been 'a more desirable Master'.
Years later Jane's brother, James, described John Bond in a poem as 'an honest, grateful man' who served his father 'with activity & zeal' and even tells us that when John Bond's house burned down in 1808, James took him into his own home,
'And now twelve years Have almost slippād away, since he became A thankful inmate of the Parsonage.'
John Bond died in February 1825 and was buried at Steventon Church by Jane Austen's nephew, William Knight.
The Overton to Steventon Jane Austen walking and cycling trails cross the beautiful Hampshire countryside that Austen knew and loved and past the homes of the friends and family that influenced her early years in Steventon where she wrote early versions of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Northanger Abbey.
For detailed directions see www.overtonjaneaustentrails.org
Sources:
Jane Austen's Letters, collected and edited by Deirdre Le Faye
The Åconomy of Rural Life by James Austen in the Complete Poems of James Austen, edited by David Selwyn, The Jane Austen Society, 2003
John Bond: A source for William Larkin? by D Dean Cantrell in the Jane Austen Society Annual Report, 1985, in Collected Reports, 1976 to 1985, p.339
