Frampton-On-The-Hill has never seen such mirth!

'Jane Austen' selects the most agreeable drolleries

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Sheridan's delightful comedies always reduce me to vapours. In the summer of my seventeenth year, I persuaded Papa to allow me to stage a family production of The School For Scandal. I was a game Maria, but my idiot brother Henry was abhorrently drunk, made a mess of Teazle, careered into the set and dealt a fatal blow to the chaise longue. Papa was appalled, although the Fringebiscuits were most complimentary!

The Hendersons from London

Mama's cousins are staying - and they are a most diverting couple! Henrietta wears gentlemen's boots, takes snuff, and hammers out Gypsy songs on the pianoforte; Peter plays topless backgammon with the servants and has broken seven vases. Frampton-On-The-Hill has never seen such mirth (although Papa says they should be 'lined up and bayonetted').

Joseph Grimaldi

Truly the finest clown to have trod the boards, and a garlanded winner of the Fosters Commendation for Humorous Diversion. Last summer, myself and Mary-Beth saw him in Harlequin's Wedding at Bath. What felicity! Mary-Beth laughed so hard that her bonnet flew clean off and blindsided a parson. She has since, hounded by scandal, run off with the regiment to Gaulier.

George Stubbs' Miss Ann White's Kitten

Cat paintings! What larks!

Lord Roy 'Corpulent' Brown

A favourite of my brother Henry, who insisted upon his inclusion. Henry is an idiot.

Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto

My sisters shudder and gasp at these Gothic works, but I find them curiously amusing. A fine gentlemen called Conrad is, for no reason, crushed on his wedding day by a centurion's helmet the size of a carriage. A monk and a peasant are chased through a sewer. Someone has a strange scar. Someone is stabbed in a church. Perfumed garbage!