Previous articleNext article FreeNotes and DocumentsSpeculations on Spectacles: Jane Austen’s Eyeglasses, Mrs. Bates’s Spectacles, and John Saunders in EmmaJanine Barchas and Elizabeth PicheritJanine BarchasUniversity of Texas at Austin Search for more articles by this author and Elizabeth PicheritUniversity of Texas at Austin Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreMidway through Jane Austen’s Emma (1815), the heroine arrives at the Bateses’ cottage to find Frank Churchill “fastening in the rivet” of the spectacles belonging to old Mrs. Bates. As her grateful daughter Miss Bates prattles on about Frank’s kindness, she mentions the name of someone to whom she had intended to bring her mother’s eyeglasses for repair: “The rivet came out, you know, this morning.—So very obliging!—For my mother had no use of her spectacles—could not put them on. And, by the bye, every body ought to have two pair of spectacles; they should indeed. Jane said so. I meant to take them over to John Saunders the first thing I did, but something or other hindered me all the morning; first one thing, then another, there is no saying what, you know.”1 Although she speaks familiarly of John Saunders, as if he were a local resident or tradesman of Highbury, Austen never mentions him again. Indeed, this alternative fixer of spectacles is such a minor character that Miss Bates’s use of his full name draws attention by its very gratuitousness. That may be Austen’s intention, for the name “John Saunders,” in the context of eyeglasses, had belonged to a well-known London ophthalmologist.John Saunders (1773–1810) was an ophthalmic surgeon in London, active at St. Thomas’s and Guy’s Hospitals in Southwark. Known professionally as an “oculist,” Saunders was the appointed demonstrator in ophthalmology at St. Thomas’s from 1803 until his death. “Saunders was an able surgeon and a skillful operator. He was the first surgeon to devote himself exclusively to ophthalmology and he made significant contributions to this speciality, notably in the management of congenital cataracts.”2 Together with John Richard Farre (1775–1862), Saunders founded a charitable London institution to treat diseases of both the eye and the ear. It soon limited treatment to eye ailments, with the Infirmary for Curing Diseases of the Eye opening for patients in Bloomfield Street, Moorfields, on March 25, 1805, as a charity mainly treating the poor. With the support of life subscribers, annual subscribers, and volunteer contributions, the surgeons performed cataract surgery gratis on those unable to pay.3 Saunders’s first book, Anatomy of the Human Ear, with a Treatise of Its Diseases, the Causes of Deafness and their Treatment (1806), went through three editions. His second, A Treatise on some Practical Points Relating to Diseases of the Eye (1811), was published posthumously by his medical partner Farre. In other words, the eminent name of John Saunders was indelibly associated with eye and ear care for the poor. Given his charitable work and specialties in both hearing and vision, “John Saunders” is, in effect, the ideal medical authority on the collective ailments of Mrs. Bates, who also “does not hear; she is a little deaf you know” (Emma, 168).Jane Austen’s trips to London, her family’s recorded visits to prominent medical men, and her own documented eye troubles increase the likelihood of her knowing about the London oculist named John Saunders, irrespective of whether or not she consulted him personally before 1810.4 Caroline Austen’s comment, “In the earlier stages of her malady, my Aunt had had the advice, in London, of one of the eminent physicians of the day,” is said to refer to consultations closer to the time of the composition of Emma.5 Also in 1815, one of the physicians to the Prince Regent, Dr. Matthew Baillie, attended Henry Austen during an illness witnessed by his sister Jane.6 Various members of the Austen family wore corrective lenses, and Jane’s own letters mention her “weak eyes” and recurring eye irritations, leading one critic to assess “chronic conjunctivitis that began in her early twenties.”7 Any elite London medical consultation for a woman with persistent eye problems might have included a referral to an eye specialist. Many a specialist advertised his skill as oculist in London, and Mr. Saunders at his residence at 24 Ely Place, where he saw private patients until his death in 1810, was only one such option. Whether Austen knew him or not, her eye complaints and her familiarity with London’s medical networks increases her likely awareness of John Saunders’s reputation. If, as Austen so memorably asserted, “an artist cannot do anything slovenly,” her mention of a prominent medical name in Emma during a conversation about eyeglasses must be a knowing nod, not an accident.8Similar logic applies to the definite article attached to the noun “rivet” a remarkable five times in this same scene about the repair of spectacles. Miss Bates describes Frank as obligingly “fastening in the rivet of my mother’s spectacles.—The rivet came out, you know, this morning.” At first glance, the wording seems odd when standard spectacles had two hinges whose rivets or small screws might need repair, as now. Surely Frank is fastening “a rivet” in these eyeglasses rather than “the rivet”? But Austen may be deliberately inviting readers to imagine a style of outmoded spectacles worn to comical effect by old Mrs. Bates. Georgian eyewear included several sophisticated styles that hinged on the smooth workings of a single rivet, but the peculiar wording makes the best sense—and solicits a chuckle—if we imagine Mrs. Bates wearing “rivet spectacles,” a primitive style of eyeglasses with no ear pieces dating back to the Middle Ages. Worn in an inverted V shape placed over the bridge of the nose, with the lenses attached by a single rivet, they allowed the wearer to pinch them into place.9 By the middle of the nineteenth century, the pince-nez would become fashionable, with many a Victorian placing their corrective lenses onto the bridge of their nose without ear pieces to hold them in place, just like the old riveted spectacles. In Austen’s day, however, rivet spectacles remained outmoded—a recycled antique rather than a modern pair of eyeglasses. That Mrs. Bates would sport such outdated eyewear—and that her daughter would presume to consult a John Saunders, whose namesake is a leader in ophthalmology—reinforces Austen’s comedic timing. Her awareness of contemporary advances in medical technology allows her to perch Mrs. Bates’s spectacles on the bridge between past and present.To estimate the average price of standard spectacles in Austen’s time is to illuminate both the author’s surprising attention to such a seemingly insignificant object and to assess the validity of Jane Fairfax’s advice to her poverty-stricken aunt that “every body ought to have two pair of spectacles.” In the Georgian era, spectacles became increasingly common, yet still expensive enough to be a coveted portable commodity with a stable resale value. The relative frequency with which these objects feature in records of the Old Bailey for grand larceny, burglary, and pickpocketing provides some clues, for the values entered by the central criminal court for stolen plain “spectacles” or “spectacles and case” in the four years before the publication of Emma vary considerably—from as little as two to thirty-six shillings.10 While this evidence does not pin down the Bateses’ potential investment in sensible eyewear, it implies a wide range of price points to support Jane Fairfax’s practical advice. The list of prices found in An Essay on Vision, dated 1789, by George Adams (1750–1795), an English instrument maker and optician to the Prince of Wales, confirms this sense of wide consumer choice. In the back matter of this fascinating glimpse into Georgian optometry, Adams includes a catalog of optical instruments available in his shop at 60 Fleet Street, London. “The best double-jointed silver spectacles, with glasses” top his list, priced at £1 1s., or a guinea, while an array of lesser options in steel, tortoiseshell, and silver follow in a descending range of prices.11 “Reading glasses” were available from 2s. 6d. to £2 2s. Besides buying new spectacles from a maker of optical instruments or lens manufacturer, a Georgian consumer could purchase secondhand ones from a peddler or pawn shop. Jewelers, in turn, could set lenses in fashionable, high-end frames made with rare metals or studded with precious stones. Eyewear styles and professional nomenclature may have differed, but the range of consumer options was similar to our own.Obtaining a prescription was not so regularized and predictable as it is today, however. Manufacturers made eyeglasses in batches of optical powers, so that consumers could purchase them from the stock of tradesmen, much like selecting ready-made reading glasses from pharmacy kiosks today. The widespread adoption of the trial lens to create highly personalized eyeglass prescriptions would not occur until after 1843. Earlier on, William Porterfield (1683–1760) had invented the optometer to measure sight along a sliding scale, but, as William Rosenthal explains, “It was not until about 1850 that its use became widespread in the United States and England and on the Continent.”12 Since the process of assigning lenses and frames to consumers varied from vendor to vendor and the role of the medical professional in that process continued to evolve over Austen’s lifetime, historians disagree about exactly when refracted lenses were assigned to both frames and their wearers. It may be that before the invention of the trial lens set, people tried on different pairs at tradesmen’s shops until they found one to suit. Rosenthal also acknowledges that as far back as “the beginning of the seventeenth century, a collaboration of Edward Scarlett and his son, along with John Hadley (1682–1744), taught the opticians the precise methods used by scientists in measuring lenses. By labeling a lens with a number showing its focus, its strength, precise use, and ability were indicated.”13 That is, the prescription process may have been less efficient and precise than today’s, but it was not utterly chaotic.Eyeglasses belonging to the Austen family provide further clues to both health and economics. In 2012, the Lyme Regis Museum placed a donated set of family spectacles, made of tortoiseshell, in its “Jane Austen cabinet.”14 In accordance with family accounts, the label identifies them as formerly belonging to Jane’s mother, Cassandra Leigh Austen (1739–1827).15 Bennett & Rogers Opticians of Axminster, Devon, have kindly identified for us the prescription as Right +1.50, Left +1.25, that is, custom reading glasses with mild magnification for someone who likely had no need for glasses otherwise.16 Seeing that these spectacles were probably the owner’s final pair, Mrs. Austen seems to have enjoyed relatively good eyesight into her eighties.17 Writing in 1814, when she was in her midseventies, she complains of “weakness in my Eyes” that makes her unable to “wear my spectacles.” She reports, “I write and read without spectacles, and therefore do but little of either.”18 The fact that she could read without them at all in old age testifies to her general good eye health, and the need for only mild magnification. These commonplace frames of polished, sawn tortoiseshell lack maker’s marks and resemble wig spectacles, so called for straight temple pieces that could pierce a wig or hairstyle and rest in the hair rather than wrap around the ears, risking entanglement and irritation (fig. 1). This design, often in tortoiseshell, remained popular with women long after wearing wigs became unfashionable.19 On the inside of the arms of the Lyme Regis Museum’s frames, the tortoiseshell has been left rough, perhaps to ensure a grip against the head by catching on the hair. A slight remaining residue suggests that the temples were covered at one time by a felt-like material. These straight arms, tapering to a point, would have suited reading, but not active tasks. Measuring 11.5 cm between the temples, these glasses fit a narrow adult head. They were donated to the museum in 2012 in a snug protective case of brown leather presumed to be original to the spectacles. Stamped in gold leaf on the inside flap, a label reads: “CARPENTER/ &/ WESTLEY/ OPTICIANS/ 24 REGENT ST./ WATERLOO PLACE/ LONDON.”20 The elegant firm of Carpenter & Westley, which operated from 1808 to 1914, manufactured and sold optical and scientific instruments, including magic lanterns and first-generation kaleidoscopes. Since this firm only began trading in 1835 at 24 Regent Street, near Waterloo Place, the leather case may well have been obtained by Mrs. Austen’s eldest daughter, Cassandra Austen (1773–1845), who may have placed her mother’s eyewear in a new case for safe keeping. Alternatively, the glasses may well have belonged to or been used by the younger Cassandra. Regardless, the Lyme Regis spectacles and their case suggest a sensible investment in eyeglasses and a family visit to a well-known London manufacturer, but not a flashy indulgence in a voguish accessory.21Figure 1. Spectacles believed to have belonged to Cassandra Leigh Austen (1739–1827), courtesy of the Lyme Regis Museum (LRM 2012/1-3 M). View Large ImageDownload PowerPointThree further pairs of sensible spectacles accompanied Jane Austen’s portable writing desk when it was donated to the British Library by Joan Austen-Leigh in 1999. Family tradition holds that all three spectacles, stored for generations in the long side drawer of the desk, belonged to the author.22 One is wire framed, made of steel, while the other two, like the Lyme Regis glasses, are wig spectacles made of tortoiseshell. None bear a maker’s mark. Fragments of string survive around the end of an arm of one tortoiseshell pair (fig. 2). Professional readings of the prescriptions of all three spectacles were taken with an auto lensometer in January 2016. The British Library generously shared the full readouts with us in January 2017, although that information has yet to be made public at the time of this writing.23 Lest anyone think that Jane Austen, as Jane Fairfax advised, owned several identical pairs of reading glasses, the prescriptions on these three pairs differ significantly:Wire frames:right +1.75, left +1.75Tortoiseshell:right +3.25, left +3.25Tortoiseshell with string:right +5.00, left +4.75View Table ImageBefore cautiously speculating about what these numbers might mean, we acknowledge that it may never be certain that Jane Austen wore any or all of these eyeglasses.24 Although they were retained with her writing desk, that desk also held several pieces of memorabilia added by her descendants. Even if all the spectacles were hers, it is unknown whether she had them custom made or obtained them off the shelf. And yet, with these significant caveats in place, if we treat these spectacles either as chronological prescriptions or as self-care adjustments with ready-mades for the same person, they suggest severe and incremental deterioration. If such great deterioration occurred over a short period of time, perhaps in the year of failing health before her death at forty-one, the second and third sets of spectacles suggest the onset of a severe illness leading to deprivation of sight and serious physical discomfort.25 The prescription for the wire frames is typical both for a young farsighted person and for someone approaching age forty and experiencing mild presbyopia, a common loss of elasticity of the lens of the eye causing an inability to focus sharply for near vision. Usually, this straightforward aging of the eyes occurs midlife, necessitating one’s first pair of reading glasses. Austen’s mother, as suggested by the Lyme Regis glasses, needed less magnification in her eighties than that provided by the wire-framed pair said to belong to her younger daughter. Jane Austen is not known to have worn eyeglasses in her youth, although as early as January 1799, when she was twenty-three, she complains of “weak eyes.” Perhaps she kept the wire spectacles in her portable desk during her final illness because she hoped a return of health would also restore her sight. Meanwhile, she could have acquired both pairs of tortoiseshell wig glasses off-the-shelf or secondhand, attaching string to the last pair so as to keep them nearby when she could no longer see much of anything without them.Figure 2. Spectacles believed to have belonged to Jane Austen, courtesy of the British Library. Left: wire-framed spectacles (British Library Add MS 86841/2); center: tortoiseshell spectacles without string on arm (Add MS 86841/3); right: tortoiseshell spectacles with string on arm (Add MS 86841/4). View Large ImageDownload PowerPointThe prescriptions for all four pairs of eyeglasses, with the Lyme Regis reading glasses as a family control of sorts, might eventually contribute to a more accurate diagnosis of Austen’s final illness, variously declared to be Addison’s disease, tuberculosis, or Hodgkin’s lymphoma.26 As literary scholars, we dare not add to the medical speculations but return, instead, to literary evidence in order to assist with a timeline for the possible degradation of Austen’s sight as measured by the prescriptions of these spectacles. Austen’s productivity, so steady during her years at Chawton, undoubtedly slowed down due to illness in the final year of her life. After finishing Persuasion in August 1816, she dated the first manuscript page of Sanditon “Jan. 27, 1817.” This five-month lull, testifying perhaps to a creative gestation process of several months to plan a new story before committing words to paper, allows for but does not confirm an illness. Also, the handwriting in the surviving fiction manuscripts from that final year does not betray any obvious degradation of vision, for the canceled chapter of Persuasion, the only surviving fragment in her hand from that novel, looks of a piece with the tightly written pages of the Sanditon manuscript. Once she started on Sanditon, she worked fast, without major alterations in her orthography or the size of her script. On March 18, 1817, after writing 22,000 words, she put down her pen, her illness having progressed too far to allow her to continue. After moving to Winchester to be nearer medical care, Austen writes to her nephew James Edward Austen on May 27, “I will not boast of my handwriting; neither that nor my face have yet recovered their proper beauty.”27 Four months later, and after writing only one further letter during the interim, she died on July 18, 1817. Did the deterioration in sight suggested by the increased magnification of these three pairs of spectacles occur over a short or a long period of time? If it occurred before or during the composition of Sanditon, evidence of an accommodation to severe vision loss would surely be visible in the manuscript, even if mitigated by these eyeglasses. Perhaps medical experts can work from this compressed timeline, from mid-March to mid-July 1817, to explain what might have caused such a serious eye decline in such a short time.Whatever the timing of any compromised sight, if indeed the name “John Saunders” in 1815 does nod slyly to a well-known eye specialist and surgeon, Austen’s gesture would be entirely in keeping with the growing preoccupation in her later works with disability and medicine—as well as with her documented support of charitable organizations.28 John Wiltshire points out that the invisible center of Emma is the Highbury apothecary, Mr. Perry; that Persuasion ruminates on ill health and injury; and that the unfinished Sanditon, which opens with an advertisement for a resort physician, is “a manic satire on medical consumerism.”29 Emma is shot through with numerous references to medical professionals and their advice—from Highbury’s omnipresent Mr. Perry to the London physician Mr. Wingfield, who attends John Knightley’s family in Brunswick Square. Although Harriet Smith’s “sore-throat” does not appear to warrant even Mr. Perry’s care, when she has “a tooth amiss,” she is eager to “consult a dentist” in London, where Mrs. Churchill likewise seeks treatment during her final illness (Emma, 118, 492). If the fictional John Saunders is indeed an instance of Austen name-dropping, perhaps she hints that the Bateses’ “very narrow income” means that they could not afford the expertise of an elite surgeon—or, as Jane Fairfax recommends, two pairs of eyeglasses each—unless such services were free (Emma, 91). In effect, Austen may deliberately mention Mr. Saunders in order to promote his pioneering charity, which continued to provide eye care for the poor even after the death of its founder.These wider medical concerns matter because, then as now, the surname of Saunders is too common to limit any possible allusion by itself, while the first name “John” is more generic still. On April 23, 1805, Austen herself mused about the identity of a Mr. Saunders: “I wonder whether Mr. Hampson’s friend Mr. Saunders is any relation to the famous Saunders whose letters have been lately published!”30 The title of “Dr.” was mainly reserved for clerics or academics, so that even a surgeon such as oculist John Saunders was a plain “Mr.” Yet he is not known to have published his letters.31 No editor of Austen’s correspondence has identified “the famous Saunders,” precisely because in isolation the surname lacks an obvious single referent.32 Famous or not, on November 21, 1809, a flesh-and-blood Mr. Saunders failed to impress Austen’s niece Fanny Catherine Knight: “We all dined at Mr. Hampsons; met a Sir John & Lady Head & Miss Cuthbert & a Mr. Saunders & spent a very stupid eveng.”33 No matter the true identity of this dull Mr. Saunders who orbited Austen’s family, the triangulation of Mrs. Bates’s broken spectacles with the dominant medical concerns of Emma and the naming of John Saunders unlocks a pleasing puzzle in the novel.Name-dropping, both direct and indirect, is a recognized feature of Austen’s realist fiction. In Mansfield Park, for example, the name of the celebrated landscaper Mr. Repton appears in a conversation about improvements, while in Emma the actor David Garrick gets a passing mention in a conversation about a poem pulled from a contemporary miscellany: “We copied it from the Elegant Extracts. It was Garrick’s, you know” (Emma, 84). Jane Austen also habitually plucked surnames from real life in order to bestow their reputational association upon her fictional characters.34 A typical recycled name occurs, for instance, in Pride and Prejudice when, during the heroine’s tour of the portrait gallery at Pemberley, the name of the housekeeper Mrs. Reynolds invokes the great portraitist Sir Joshua Reynolds.35 Although the name “John Saunders” is not an instance of full-blown celebrity name-dropping, it may be yet another quiet example of Austen constructing her fictional world out of elements from her daily life.At the start of our investigation into this minor ocular mystery, we did not expect that a mere name in Emma, casually dropped by Jane Austen with a wink and a nod during a comic scene about eyeglasses, would lead us to objects that might reveal something so grave and personal about her final months. In fact, when we approached the British Library about testing “Jane Austen’s spectacles,” we thought we were asking for information on one extant pair of eyeglasses—not three. The slight oddity that these spectacles present to us, as perhaps one of the only physical traces of an author about whom precious little is known, may offer an unexpected glimpse into her sudden physical decline. This brief investigation into British ocular history magnifies both the intimacies of Austen’s medical history as well as the broader networks of her real and fictional worlds.Since writing the above, we have learned that the British Library entertains the notion that their trio of eyeglasses testifies to Jane Austen suffering from cataracts due to arsenic poisoning.36 In the wake of this startling declaration, which received much press coverage, we were contacted by a member of the Ocular Heritage Society who feels that all three pairs of the British Library eyeglasses may postdate Austen’s death in 1817. In particular, the thin wire-framed spectacles may be an example of the lightweight specs that were mass-produced decades after her death. We feel the central purpose of our own article, which is to provide a wider context for understanding Austen’s use of the name of an actual eye specialist in Emma, remains untouched by doubts about whether the British Library spectacles themselves are contemporary to Austen. We are gratified that this sleuthing about old eyeglasses is drawing out additional information and creating welcome occasion for further debate and analysis of this understudied topic in Austen’s life and work.NotesCorrection: This article was corrected and reposted on April 10, 2017, to change two words on p. 6.We would like to thank the staff of the British Library and Lyme Regis Museum for their generous assistance during the research for this article as well as Dr. David Fleishman for judicious and cautionary advice on dating the Austen family spectacles.1. Jane Austen, Emma, ed. Richard Cronin and Dorothy McMillan (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 255. Subsequent quotations from this text are cited parenthetically.2. D’Arcy Power, “Saunders, John Cunningham (1773–1810), ophthalmic surgeon,” ed. Noel Rice, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004–), http://www.oxforddnb.com, doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/24698.3. London Infirmary for Curing Diseases of the Eye under the Direction of Mr. Saunders, oculist, No. 24 Ely Place; Dr. Farre, No. 30 Charter-House Square, Consulting Physician in Cases Requiring Medical Aid; Instituted, 1804, Opened for the Cure of Patients on 25th March 1805, and Supported by Voluntary Contributions (London, 1808), https://archive.org/stream/b22470980#page/n0/mode/2up. Saunders and Farre address this impressive published report of data on patient care to the board of governors and supporters of the charity.4. Jane Austen suffered troubles of ear as well as eye, writing, “I am much obliged to you for enquiring about my ear, & am happy to say that Mr. Lyford’s prescription has entirely cured me. I feel it a great blessing to hear again” (Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen, October 7–9, 1808, in Jane Austen’s Letters, 3rd ed., ed. Deirdre Le Faye [Oxford University Press, 1995], 144). Mr. Lyford was a surgeon in Basingstoke.5. Caroline Austen, My Aunt Jane Austen (London: Jane Austen Society, 1952), 15.6. Deirdre Le Faye, Jane Austen: A Family Record (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 518. Le Faye argues that Dr. Baillie’s report to the prince about Jane Austen’s arrival in town resulted in his indirect request to dedicate her next novel to him.7. Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen, January 21–23, 1799, in Le Faye, Letters, 36; Annette Upfal, “Jane Austen’s Lifelong Health Problems and Final Illness: New Evidence Points to a Fatal Hodgkin’s Disease and Excludes the Widely Accepted Addison’s,” Medical Humanities 31 (2005): 3, doi:10.1136/jmh.2004.000193. Upfal argues that Austen’s eye troubles, as instanced in the letters, provide diagnostic clues to a life-long illness.8. Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen, November 17–18, 1798, in Le Faye, Letters, 20.9. A single rivet to a chain or handle could fasten both scissors glasses, held in the hand from below, and the lorgnette, also held rather than worn, and often tucked away in a case. Both these styles seem a little too sophisticated, however, for poor old Mrs. Bates. They also do not explain why Miss Bates testifies that without the rivet “my mother had no use of her spectacles—could not put them on.” No need to “put on” scissors glasses or lorgnettes, and no reason why ordinary spectacles might not be temporarily functional, although awkward, with only one working temple piece or arm. See J. William Rosenthal, Spectacles and Other Vision Aids: A History and Guide to Collecting (San Francisco: Norman, 1996).10. Sixteen criminal cases at the Old Bailey between October 1810 and December 1815 assign values to stolen spectacles, not counting thefts of silver or bejeweled spectacles.11. George Adams, An Essay on Vision, briefly explaining the fabric of the eye, and the nature of vision: Intended for the service of those whose eyes are weak or impaired: Enabling them to form an Accurate Idea of the True State of their Sight, the Means of Preserving it, together with Proper Rules for Ascertaining when Spectacles are Necessary, and How to Choose them without Injuring the Sight. By George Adams, Mathematical Instrument Maker to his Majesty, and Optician to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales (London, 1789), https://archive.org/details/b21284192.12. Rosenthal, Spectacles, 308.13. Ibid., 32.14. Mrs. Diana Shervington, a descendant of the Austens, donated these eyeglasses to the Lyme Regis Museum (LRM 2012/1-3 M) in 2012.15. Donated by Mrs. Shervington along with the glasses and case were a number of family items: bone counters inscribed with alphabet letters, bone spillikins for the game jackstraws, a mother-of-pearl tatting shuttle used to make lace, bone counters and box for the game merelles, leather gloves and cotton mittens, a kerchief with lace edging, and a finely worked woman’s cap.16. Coincidentally, the college for the Association of British Dispensing Opticians, where Bennett and Rogers trained, is now housed at Godmersham