Of all the Longbourn family, Lydia and her husband were the least changed by the passage of time, if an exchange of one cheap situation for another, and increase in domestic discord can be discounted as change. Mr. Bennet’s youngest daughter, Lydia, had foolishly eloped with a man of no fortune and less honour. Mr. Bennet had subsequently endeavoured to suppress all recollection of Lydia, due to the iniquity of her elopement with Mr. Wickham several weeks before they could be forced to marry. It was Mr. Darcy who, well previous to his engagement to Elizabeth, had seen to the proper regulation of the scandalous behaviour of the young and foolish couple. Wickham had long been obliged to move from regiment to regiment, each time staying only until the good-will of his fellow officers had been superseded by disagreements over his debts, imprudence, and extravagance. Lydia had learnt nothing of either prudence or gratitude, and lived in constant dependence upon the generosity of her sisters—the Darcys aware that, if they did not contribute further themselves, the Bingleys would be unable to refuse yet more expense in the discharge of the Wickhams’ interminable debts—as the accepted expedient for their very survival. Lydia, if not her husband, was only barely welcomed even by the generous, good-natured Bingleys, and, through Darcy’s love for his wife and the civility of his sister, was occasionally tolerated at Pemberley.

Whilst Lydia lived at Longbourn, her constant folly and unchecked imprudence had led her elder sister, Kitty, into emulating her habits of idleness and ignorance. Once removed, however, from the principal disturber of her reason and the constricted mind of her mother, and in the frequent company of her two older sisters and their husbands, whose regulated tempers and liberal minds produced the welcome effect, Kitty became more susceptible to remedy. In less time than could have been anticipated to effect a complete reversal of every notion of behaviour, Elizabeth ceased to have any apprehension of Kitty’s arrival and could look forward to seeing her at Pemberley with almost as much pleasure as the visits of her favourite sister, Jane. Left with the responsibility of directing Kitty’s happiness, Mr. Bennet now wished earnestly for his remaining child a suitable match with a respectable gentleman of sufficient means, or failing that, a lawyer or man of business, or even a yeoman farmer with a creditable property and a generous temper, a wish surprisingly similar to her mother’s ambitions.