Cover

Halftitle

Title

Dedication

To

THOSE MOST CONSTANT AND

DEVOTED JANEITES,

THIS WORK IS,

FOR THEIR APPROBATION AND DIVERSION,

MOST RESPECTFULLY

SUBMITTED,

BY THEIR

DUTIFUL

AND OBEDIENT

HUMBLE SERVANT,

THE AUTHOR.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

BOOK LAY-OUT AND COVER ART: Judy Walker

EDITOR: Robert Lesman; ASST. EDITORS: Michele Middleton and Linda Cirba

RESEARCH ASSISTANTS: Anna Klenkar, Mary Channel, and Nicola Hislop

MENTOR: Jan Neuharth

ERRORS: The Author

FONT: Coldstyle

COMPUTER: 28 years of Apple. Thank you, Steve. Like Jane, you were taken from us long before we were able to let you go. Like Jane, you have added immeasurable joy and enrichment to the lives you too-briefly shared. I know, wherever you are, they are all typing into Macs, talking on iPhones, listening to iPods, dancing to iTunes, and Gabriel is calming the angels in the aftermath of Lion. And, as we all know, there’s no such thing as a Windows-friendly attachment.

This is the place to thank everyone who has been a part of bringing this book out of darkness, and into light. The path has never been direct, has always been long, and largely one of unending questions, leading to yet more research. This book is the product of nothing so much as tenacity, for which I thank my Aunt Doris. She taught me the only lesson better than Nothing is Impossible: that Everything is Possible. They are not the same, and the latter is more powerful than the former.

I wish to acknowledge my debt and gratitude to the many others who have given so generously and graciously of their time, experience, and knowledge: Gillian Dow, Janine Barchas, Gilly Drummond, Jocelyn Harris, Joan Ray, Sarah Kernochan, Barbara Frank, Laurie Kaplan, Len Bosack, Graeme Cottam (a.k.a. Haggerston), Susan Staves, Stephen Lawrence, Elizabeth Garvie Rodgers, Laura Clark, Roger Trilling, Amber Denker, and Juliet McMaster.

Last, but certainly not least, thank you, Jane, for the years of pleasure, escape, inspiration, pithy quotes, guidance, and especially for reminding me that Everything is better with Humour.

VOL. I.

CHAP. 1.

A PERIOD of ten years’ time usually brings many changes, and the Bennet family at Longbourn in the county of Hertfordshire—whilst believing themselves, as families do, to be generally very interesting, and on occasion, extraordinary—was, perhaps to their collective mortification, quite unexceptional. Mr. & Mrs. Bennet and their five daughters, a coachman, a cook, and all of the various servants thought necessary to a large and respectable country family were now reduced to just Mr. Bennet and his youngest daughter but one, Kitty, living in the village manor house with the few attendants who had not retired or followed to the houses of his married daughters. Mrs. Bennet had, alas, been suddenly carried off at Longbourn one particularly nervous afternoon, requiring Mr. Bennet to admit the possibility that her ailments had not been quite imaginary, and consider that he had not actually treated his old friends, Mrs. Bennet’s nerves, with the compassion they merited after all.

Mr. Bennet consoled himself with her loss and subsequent domestic tranquility by spending as much time as possible with Elizabeth, his second daughter and long his favourite, and, occasionally, with Jane, his eldest and most beautiful. Jane, whose beauty and gentle, engaging manners had captivated even her censuring father, now lived with her husband, the rich and amiable Mr. Bingley, and four young children on a creditable estate in the county of Yorkshire. About a year after their marriage, the Bingleys removed from Netherfield in Hertfordshire to Holtham Hall, a low, modern-built house with requisite parallel wings and colonnaded, pedimented front, terraces and gardens, and parkland reaching to the banks of the Don. Elizabeth was now mistress of Pemberley and the wife of Mr. Darcy—though untitled—a man of vast fortune and great consequence, whose seat was not far from Holtham, across the border in Derbyshire. There, she lived with pleasure amidst the best of life’s blessings with her husband and his younger sister, Georgiana.

Always fond of his library and ever-vigilant over its seclusion from the noise necessarily attending a family of “all silly and ignorant” girls (as he had described them, much to the vexation of his wife), at the time when four of his five daughters were married and removed from Longbourn, Mr. Bennet must now be supposed content, and possibly even happy. As a pleasure wished is often a finer thing than a pleasure gained, instead of rejoicing in his solitude, Mr. Bennet found that he did not relish domestic felicity in so unusual a form, and was, as a consequence, often making a visit to some one or other of his married daughters.

The business of Mrs. Bennet’s life—of getting her five daughters well-married—was, at the time of her death, nearly accomplished. Her occupation had been regarded by her family as meddlesome at best, and frequently a positive evil to her two eldest and most rational daughters. A more practical view would have acknowledged the reasonableness of her concerns—if not their form—as, at the event of Mr. Bennet’s decease, his house—indeed his entire estate—was entailed away from his own family on a distant cousin, Mr. Collins; this relation was a clergyman in Kent, currently enjoying the living at Hunsford and its comfortable parsonage. The success of Mrs. Bennet’s stratagems for marrying her daughters well was, therefore, their surest preservative from want and the ennui that must attend a very contracted stile of living; if left to exist on their own unhappily small portions, they were destined to lose not only their home, but their comforts as well.

Of the five Bennet sisters, Mary, the middle sister, had the greatest and most unexpected change of state and fortune. Mr. Collins’s first wife, Charlotte Lucas, was the eldest daughter of Sir William and Lady Lucas, the Bennets’ neighbours in Hertfordshire. Sir William had been a successful country tradesman, and upon receiving a knighthood, retired with his wife and large family to Lucas Lodge on a modest income, and a newly acquired distaste for his business. Charlotte had been Elizabeth’s particular friend and companion before Charlotte’s marriage, when at the desperate age of seven-and-twenty, she had accepted Mr. Collins not for love, but for the security of an home and comfortable establishment. Charlotte had died the following year in child-bed, leaving Mr. Collins the legacy of an infant daughter.

Charlotte’s marriage to Mr. Collins, for all of the differences in their reason and understanding—his obsequious flatterings and pompous absurdities, and her good sense and strength of mind—(and contrary to the general expectation) had been an happy one. Charlotte’s intelligence, taste, and method had promoted Mr. Collins’s respectability as well as his happiness, adding method and œconomy to his way of living. He had been attached to his steady and capable wife, and felt the loss of his companion and benefactress of everything that resembled domestic comfort and companionship, with a genuine grief. While absurdity is no armour against proportionate pain, few of Mr. Collins’s acquaintance could appreciate the form of his sorrow—insupportable as was his usual conduct—now made infinitely worse with his grave retrospections and dolorous countenance. His heavy features and unfashionable dress, rendered even more unflattering with the addition of mourning bands, and lugubriousness occasioned by a self-pity unmitigated by reason or reflection, unfortunately united to make empathy less likely than ridicule.

Even Lady Catherine, Mr. Collins’s patroness and mistress of the Hunsford manor of Rosings, was unable to redirect Mr. Collins’s grief through the usual mechanisms of insult and interference. Arrogant, dictatorial, and disdainful of the feelings of everyone of inferior rank and consequence that—as the widowed daughter of an Earl and the present Mr. Darcy’s aunt—encompassed nearly everyone of her acquaintance, Her Ladyship had been so affable and condescending as to advise Mr. Collins of his unsuitability, respecting both situation and aptitude to the raising of his daughter, and very generously recommending that Charlotte’s people should have the care of her. Even the deferential Mr. Collins had been deeply shocked by Lady Catherine’s frank assessments at such a time and had, for some days, not called at Rosings with quite his usual frequency. However, as it was impossible Mr. Collins’s behaviour could be otherwise than that which Lady Catherine vouchsafed to advise, he accordingly went into Hertfordshire for assistance and sympathy. Had Lady Catherine foreseen that the product of her officiousness would establish another Miss Bennet, this time as the new mistress of the Hunsford parsonage, she willingly would have left off all such congenial hints in the future.

In the months following his Charlotte’s death, when able to depute his duties to some parishless curate, Mr. Collins filled his days in solitary walks in the pathways adjoining Lucas Lodge in Hertfordshire. There, his perambulations would often take him near to the park at Longbourn. In this place he would—with a remarkable frequency—discover Mary Bennet seated in the copse reading one of her accustomed tracts on religious subjects and self-improvement. As she read from Fordyce or More, or some other writer of a serious stamp, he would gratefully spend many an hour listening to that which he should already have known, and, in the solemn recitation of those thread-bare proverbs and platitudes, received what assistance he might to assuage his present affliction. For the first time in his life, Mr. Collins’s reflections produced a consciousness of his own want of attention to those instructions best suited to the restoration of his peace in those hours of change and loss. Had he attended with greater industry to the philosophy of his religion, he began to understand, he might have spared himself some portion of suffering. He honoured Mary for her application and taste, and believed himself indebted to her as the mechanism of his apperception, and the more secular benefits found in her singular sympathy for his grief.

In short, just after a year had closed following Charlotte’s death, Mr. Collins was convinced that he had again found his true partner in life, one whom he could admire and respect for the improvement of her mind, as well as the gentleness of her temper. A more rational view might describe Mary’s amiability as preoccupation, but the difference is of little consequence; it suited Mr. Collins’s views of feminine virtue that Mary provided empathy as a balm to his sorrow in the form of those admirable books which contain the most common-place of wisdoms. Mary, often the object of ridicule within her own family for her peculiar turn of mind and unfashionable pursuits, rejoiced in having found a friend who could appreciate the value of her studies and the unusual nature of her accomplishments. In as short a time as could be considered decent, Mr. Collins brought Mary to Hunsford as his wife, and mother to his child. The Lucases must have had their disappointed hopes in Mr. Collins’s second marriage, but more’s the pity that Mrs. Bennet did not live to see Longbourn restored to its rightful ownership, in recompense for the grievous choice of his first.

It might be expected that Mary would make a very sober and ridiculous parent. But as is so often the case, necessity made a virtue. Mary found that in being a mother to Miss Collins, she had an opportunity to put her studies into practise, and to be of real use. She was an endless source of comfort, inspiration, and information to her husband and, if the parsonage at Hunsford did not have the same elegance that it had under Charlotte, it now had the benefit of an union of equal intellect, similar turns of mind, and a genuine mutual respect. In less time than he scarcely could have thought it possible, Mr. Collins was once again the happiest of men, and, in a form she could never have imagined, Mary was the mistress of an home, a wife, a mother, and a necessary addition to her parish. In time, even Lady Catherine came to be so persuaded of Mary’s abilities as to ask Mary to help her with a specific quotation, or assist her in writing some little speech. These requests pleased and delighted Mr. Collins, and were a source of supreme pleasure to Mary, although it is perhaps best that these requests were never so frequent as to turn Mary’s vanity to writing more than the occasional paragraph for the benefit of the public.

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.

Kitty grieved most over the loss of her mother, naturally being most similar to her in temperament. Once the initial shock and melancholy had faded, Kitty learnt to value the increased consequence of Miss Bennet, mistress of Longbourn, and came to regard herself as not the loser by the exchange. In the absence of comparison with Elizabeth’s intelligence and lively wit, and Jane’s grace and beauty, all that remained to cloud Kitty’s joy was the prospect of her father dying and she being unprovided-for, perhaps an unreasonable concern with two sisters well-married. She was heiress to other collateral blessings as well. Her father could praise the change in her mind, which had an effect that many might not consider wonderful: Kitty became less frivolous, less insipid, and more rational to the point where her father could scarcely remember a time when she was otherwise than his favourite daughter. And, although every year that passed lessened Kitty’s chances of finding an husband, each year like-wise increased Mr. Bennet’s comfort in having an agreeable companion in his old age, who was heard to say, “Now, Kitty, we may thank your mother for our being so comfortable and content; had she greater success, you would be carried away by some squeamish youth or another, and I would have been left to sit miserably all day alone in my cap and powdering gown!” Kitty would rejoin, “Oh! Dear Papa! That must never be!” usually several times of a day.

Jane and Bingley became the delighted parents of a little boy within the first year of their marriage. The Bingleys were natural parents: fond, indulgent, and attentive. Indeed, Jane had always been sure of a large family, and her own had answered every expectation. There were four healthy children within eight years, each valued as the best of blessings. Jane was very comfortably situated with a loving husband, a generous income, and the assistance of as many servants such a fortune provides; yet Elizabeth could see that Jane was obviously very tired. As the years went on and Jane became a mother to one, and then two, and then three, and then four, and now looked forward to the expectation of a fifth child in twice as many years, Elizabeth found that she could not discredit the effect of such a succession of children that had dulled Jane’s mind and restricted her liberty. The constant confinements and loss of sleep and leisure must surely be a trial to even the most fond of mothers.

If Elizabeth had any expectation as to the extent of her future family, her fortune was to take a different turn. In the early years of her marriage, Elizabeth had been sadly grieved that she and Mr. Darcy continued childless. Not of a nature to give herself over to lamentation and bitterness, especially over a circumstance that was in the hands of Providence, Elizabeth sought other employments to fill her hours. She had always been a great reader, and took pleasure in walking in the Pemberley park, driving out with her husband or sister, and visiting the other families—particularly the poor—within Pemberley’s parish. And, although she was a married woman, she saw no reason to neglect her music, her correspondence, or other accomplishments she had pursued with pleasure before she was become Mrs. Darcy.

To add to her better resignation on the subject was Mr. Darcy’s own philosophy, that repining over the inevitable was foolish. To his credit as a rational man and a compassionate husband, he assumed the disappointment of childlessness on himself:

“Elizabeth,” he said, “your family have their share of children; it seems an habit of my own family to produce few offspring: Lady Catherine has one child, Colonel Fitzwilliam has one brother, and I continued an only child for many years. I have always been of the opinion that our lack of issue was no fault of yours, but rather the propensity of our line to be parsimonious in the family way. If no other source of consolation is available,” he added with a smile, “we may look to Dr. Malthus for approval.”

With her husband’s solemn assurances that he did not regret his marriage to her as the cause of no heir, his generous and reasonable reflections on the matter, and his half-jest that, “should Georgiana never marry, one of the Bingley boys will do very well,” Elizabeth could have no further cause to repine. She had daily the very pleasant female society of Georgiana, and could visit the Bingleys whenever she chose. Mistress of her days, spent in the informed intercourse and agreeable companionship of her husband and his sister, Elizabeth regarded her own as the best of blessings. Elizabeth was as happy as even the wife of Mr. Darcy should be.

CHAP. 2.

IT IS WISDOM long-accepted that a man cannot serve two masters; it must be considered equally improbable that there exists an house in England of sufficient size to serve two mistresses. Yet despite the common expectation, Georgiana and Elizabeth Darcy not only shared Pemberley, but found great happiness in doing so. When Elizabeth was first come to Pemberley, all order had been nearly over-thrown by an unusual punctiliousness for the feelings and consequence of the other lady, each wishing to shew the greater deference and courtesy.

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