“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession
of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Such is the lively
sentence with which “Pride and Prejudice” begins. Then the author
proceeds to illustrate the statement in her own admirable way.
Mr. Bingley, a young bachelor, well-born, wealthy, good-looking,
agreeable, kindly-disposed--even sensible, while not too clever
for his company, suddenly sets the whole country gentry of a quiet
neighbourhood into a pleasant ferment, by taking a lease of Netherfield
Park, and coming to occupy the house. My readers must remember that it
is nearly a century ago since this happened, for it actually happened.
The charm of Jane Austen’s situations is that they must have happened
thousands of times. Her people all lived, are living still, since
human nature never dies. We may correctly think and talk of Jane and
Elizabeth Bennet, and their father and mother; of Bingley and his
sisters; of Darcy and his sister; as if they were real men and women.
They were and are the very men and women whom our grandfathers knew,
whom we know and visit, like and dislike, marry and refuse to marry.
A few customs have changed: greater breathing-space has come into
every-day intercourse with better education, increased facilities
of helping ourselves, moving about and knowing our neighbours--not
only in the next parsonage and country house, or at most in a popular
watering-place, but in the busy, endless streets of London, or up in
the romantic glens of the Scotch highlands, or still farther away,
in nooks of the Apennines, or recesses of the Black Forest. Such
revolutions on revolutions have occurred in dress, that we have come
back from the antipodes of one fashion to the same fashion again,
looking new and fresh once more on the lithe figures and about the
blooming faces of our nineteenth-century girls. Still we do not
see a young lady, her hair in turret curls, wearing a low-necked
gown long before even her early dinner-hour, and holding above her
head, as a much-needed protection, one of the first specimens of the
original large, green, tent-shaped parasols such as I remember in a
representation of Elizabeth Bennet, when she accompanied Lady Catherine
de Bourgh to their memorable interview in the wilderness on one side of
the lawn at Longbourn. Wildernesses, in their turn, have disappeared;
certain phrases have grown obsolete; but the men and women who led
that kind of life, dressed in a style which, when we do not chance to
be familiar with it, we insist on regarding as _outré_, and spoke in a
manner half racy, half precise, are among us still, and will always be
among us, with merely slight superficial differences.
But I wish to recall, at this moment, the distant date of “Pride and
Prejudice,” in order to say that the arrival of a young man like
Charles Bingley, or “Bingley,” as he is called in the old use of
surnames in conversation, was a much greater event to a country circle
then, than it could be now.
It would still be a good deal--witness the use of the same situation
in the clever modern novel, “Mr. Smith.” But the class of women who
are powerfully affected by Mr. Smith’s appearance on the scene, and
who make him the centre of all their hopes and plans, are altogether
inferior, socially and intellectually, to the women with whom Jane
Austen dealt.
About a hundred years ago “to paint tables, cover screens, and net
purses,” formed the general standard of girls’ accomplishments--a
standard which did not furnish many topics of conversation. It is the
girls’ own fault if they have not wider interests to-day. Therefore,
those among them who are in a fever of curiosity when a new comer
crosses their path, are decidedly lower in the scale, in every respect,
than the gossips were in the time of Jane Austen.
We are first introduced to the Bennets of Longbourn in their animated
discussion of the welcome event in their quiet lives. Soon we know the
family intimately. We find vulgar, shallow Mrs. Bennet assailing her
husband with unvarnished arguments that he ought to be one of the first
to call on their new neighbour “for the sake of his daughters.”
We listen with much amusement to eccentric, witty, Mr. Bennet, who
has married his wife for her beauty, and seeks compensation for her
silliness in laughing at it on all occasions, in those mocking, terse
little speeches, in which he responds to her profuse “my dears” with
an answering flow of “my dears,” while he takes her off, to her broad,
over-blown face, unsuspected by her, at every word.
The two elder daughters are the cream of the family. Jane is lovely and
loveable. Her good understanding is so well balanced by her gentle,
tolerant temper that she is able to bear patiently and tenderly with
her mother’s foibles, including her vain-glory in Jane’s beauty. Jane
is so fair, sweet, and reasonable in the most unassuming fashion,
that she cannot help winning--without any effort at popularity--good
opinions on all sides, even from the most unlikely quarters.
Elizabeth, with her fine eyes, brown skin, light, graceful figure,
nimble feet in dancing, nimble tongue in talking, is a warm-hearted,
softened, womanly edition of the father whose favourite she is. In
answer to the covert reproach once addressed to her, that the wisest
and best of men--nay, the wisest and best of their actions--may be
rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke,
she defends herself frankly yet earnestly, and we feel it is Jane
Austen speaking for herself by the lips of Elizabeth Bennet. “Certainly
there are such people, but I hope I am not one of them. I hope I
never ridicule what is wise and good. Follies and nonsense, whims and
inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I
can.” Withal, this laughter-loving girl, in spite of her naturally
hasty conclusions and rash judgments, struggles so faithfully to be
fair, is so candid in confessing her mistakes and submitting to pay the
penalty when they are brought home to her--she is at once so frank and
fearless, yet so dutiful and reverent in the middle of her innocent
daring, so unselfish and devoted in her sisterly attachment, so true
a woman, so thorough a lady, that while we willingly respect and like
the more faultless Jane, we do more, we love the more tempted and tried
Elizabeth.
It is good for young readers of the present day to look at Elizabeth
Bennet, and learn to discriminate between the sparkling intelligence
and gay, sweet temper of the good, kind, young girl in her lawful
attractiveness, and the miserable travesty of her in many modern
heroines, in whom profanity and levity do duty for wit, audacious
ignorance for originality, and coarse licence for nobility of nature.
The bond of sisterhood, more than any other relation, seems to have
influenced Jane Austen in her art. With her own closest life-long
friend in her sister Cassandra, the author who so rarely repeats
herself in the circumscribed sphere in which she chose to work, again
and again draws a pair of sisters, for the most part sharing every
joy and sorrow.[14] In two or three cases--those of the Bennets, the
Dashwoods, Mrs. John Knightley and Emma Woodhouse, we have the contrast
between the milder and more serene elder, and the livelier, more
impulsive younger sister, which caused their contemporaries to say that
Jane and Elizabeth Bennet stood for Cassandra and Jane Austen. But the
author’s nephew pronounced against this conjecture. It is said, indeed,
that in gentleness of disposition and tenderness of heart Jane Austen
bore more resemblance to Jane than to Elizabeth Bennet.
Mary Bennet, the third daughter in the household at Longbourn, and the
plainest member of a handsome family, tries to supplement her deficient
personal attractions by such mental acquirements and accomplishments
as are within her reach. These are laboriously learnt for the purpose
of display. In contrast to her sister Elizabeth, she has no natural
shrewdness. She is a pedantic, sententious young goose, with her
elaborate exhibition of worthless knowledge and formal speeches out
of commonplace books. Mary Bennet contrives to render herself as
ridiculous as her younger sisters, Kitty and Lydia, who are precocious,
noisy girls of seventeen and fifteen. They are too unformed and
callow to be treated separately at first, but we have one significant
distinction between them. Lydia, big and bouncing for her age, already
arrogating rights from being the tallest of the family, spoilt by her
mother, invariably takes the lead. Kitty simply runs after her more
headstrong junior. The most individual trait Kitty shows is the peevish
impatience of contradiction which belongs to a weak character.
We may remark, by the way, that Jane Austen, while she cuttingly
condemns pedantry and conceit, never dreams of offering a premium
to sheer juvenility, empty-headedness, and frivolity, after the
example of some of the strange preferences which are presented for the
consideration and edification of nineteenth-century readers.
Miss Lydia and Miss Kitty Bennet spend the chief part of each day
in walking to Meryton, a market town, where a militia regiment is
stationed, which, unhappily for the growth in wisdom of the young
ladies, is situated only a mile from the village of Longbourn, and
Longbourn House, their home.
In Meryton dwells Mrs. Philips, Mrs. Bennett’s sister, the wife
of a country attorney in a lower social grade than the Bennets.
Good-natured, commonplace Mrs. Philips is gratified by her nieces’
company, and willing to indulge them with any amount of dawdling and
gossiping in her house. When no better goal presents itself, the shop
windows, with the latest bonnets and muslins, are always to be had.
Above all, there is the chance of encountering some of the militia
officers in their regimentals--those dazzling red coats, which filled
the imaginations of girls like Lydia and Kitty Bennet, and which were
not without their picturesque merits even in the more reflective eyes
of the elder sisters. Well for girls that they have no regimentals,
worn off parade, to turn their heads to-day. If they are still caught
by the pomp and circumstance of glorious war, and enthralled by its
blatant trumpeting, at least, the “red rags,” which are now for the
most part kept sedulously out of sight, are no longer to blame.
Mr. Bennet calls on Mr. Bingley, as he has always meant to do, in spite
of all his protests to the contrary, but the sisters first meet the
hero at a Meryton assembly.
That was the era of assemblies--subscription balls, in rooms provided
for card-playing and supping as well as dancing, under highly
respectable auspices, given at regular intervals in all the country
towns, and duly patronised by gentle and simple, clergy and laity.
If people stayed all the year round and year after year in their own
quiet country neighbourhood, some recreation must be provided for
them. The assemblies were at once simple and social. The stereotyped
recreations of the last century were dancing and card-playing. If both
were liable to grave abuse, we may still hope that many worthy people
used them temperately and not unconscientiously.
A rousing report had gone beforehand through the ball-goers that the
already popular Mr. Bingley was to crown his popularity by attending
the assembly, and bringing with him twelve ladies and six gentlemen.
The reality falls short of the rumour, but there is consolation to
the belles of the place in the dwindling down of the dozen strange
ladies into Mr. Bingley’s two sisters, one married and one unmarried,
even though the six gentlemen also fade away into a couple, one of
whom is Mr. Hurst, the husband of Mr. Bingley’s married sister. But
for half the time the ball lasts the other gentleman makes up for
every defalcation, and is a power in himself. He is not only a tall,
handsome, distinguished-looking young man, he is also discovered to be
allied to the peerage, and to possess a large estate in Derbyshire,
with an unencumbered rent-roll of ten thousand a-year--and here
gossips’ tongues do not wag too wildly.
But the exultation over such a guest is soon damped by his cold,
reserved manners. The stranger dances once with Mrs. Hurst and once
with Miss Bingley, speaks only to the members of his own party, and
declines any introductions. And Meryton is spirited enough to resent
the inference. If Mr. Darcy considers himself above his company, the
company decline any further homage to his air and figure--even to his
estate in Derbyshire.
In fact, Mr. Darcy is clever, proud, fastidious--conceiving himself
entitled by his many undeniable advantages, which, however, he does not
wear generously and genially, to his pride and fastidiousness.
A man in a similar position may very well be tempted to corresponding
faults still, but even with a later code of manners disfigured by
laziness, self-indulgence, and superciliousness, such arrogant
haughtiness as Darcy betrayed, could hardly now be entertained by a man
of Darcy’s sense and worth, and even if entertained, would no longer
be openly exhibited in modern society. Local magnates were formerly
permitted the tone of small sovereigns, and even when they were from
home they were not required to come down from the heights of their
overweening dignity and exclusiveness.
It is at so early a stage of their acquaintance as this important
Meryton assembly that Bingley, accessible and agreeable to everybody,
and dancing every dance, as a young man ought, shows his admiration
of the sweet young beauty of the room--Jane Bennet, of Longbourn--by
distinguishing her among his partners. He dances twice--one may say
four times, with her--for we must remember that the old social,
quaintly-performed, quaintly-named country dances were generally
arranged in double sets. The couple who danced down the first were
landed, so to speak, at the bottom of the second, up which they had to
work their way, and then dance down a second time. A very respectable
portion of time was thus employed. There were natural and graceful
opportunities afforded for making friends, and for engaging, while
still in a crowd, unexposed to invidious notice and comment, in
cheerful or sentimental, more or less brilliant conversation _à deux_,
but not so much _à deux_ that the speakers could not fall apart and
talk by way of variety to the ladies and gentlemen, whom the couple
were pretty sure to know, standing above and below them in the set.
Jane Austen repeatedly uses these country dances as a means to the
speedy acquaintance of her young people. We have it on record that
she herself had a hearty enjoyment in dancing, and was, like Anna
Maria Porter and Susannah Blamire, a proficient in what was then held
a peculiarly elegant accomplishment for a young lady. She was not,
therefore, likely to undervalue the merely graceful exercise of
dancing. Still, dancing must have been to her, as no doubt it was to
her heroes and heroines, a fitting excuse for conversation--sensible as
well as sprightly, serious enough sometimes, without any consciousness
of incongruity in being in earnest in the middle of a country dance.
I may be told that there is an ample and better provision for a _tête
à tête_ in the conspicuous or the secluded saunter between the rapid
whirls of round dances, but to my mind the earlier mode was the more
daintily decorous, the freer from compromise, not to say the more
social. One is tempted to wish back again the old English country
dances, in which fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, often stood
up in the same dance, and went with merry method through the intricate
mazes with the suggestive names, “The White Cockade,” dating from
the Jacobite rebellion, “The Wind that Shook the Barley,” of Irish
origin, “The Country Bumpkin,” an English measure, “Petronella” and
the “Boulanger,” like the Cotillon, of French descent. Will they not
return, with the Queen Anne furniture and the Gainsborough costumes,
and take their places along with the time-honoured “Sir Roger de
Coverley?”
Mr. Bingley’s promising preference for Jane Bennet in these significant
four dances is artlessly enough hailed by all her friends and
neighbours, and ingenuously owned by herself to her dear sister and
confidante, Lizzy.
It is at this ball, too, that Darcy makes that slighting speech within
earshot of Elizabeth, which starts their acquaintance on an entirely
wrong footing.
Elizabeth Bennet, with her own unapproachable gifts of eyes, and
tongue, and toes, is a belle only second to her sister, and it is an
unwonted experience for her to be sitting down during a couple of
dances for lack of a partner. As if that were not enough, she has the
mortification of hearing the repulse given to the well-disposed but
rash assault which Bingley at that moment makes on his impracticable
friend standing near her.
“Come, Darcy,” cries the amiable, indefatigable dancer, “I must have
you dance. I hate to have you standing about by yourself in this stupid
manner. You had much better dance.”
“I certainly shall not,” declines Darcy. “You know how I detest it,
unless I am particularly acquainted with my partner.” He adds that
Bingley’s sisters are engaged, and that there is not another woman in
the room with whom it would not be a punishment to him to stand up.
Bingley cries out at his friend’s fastidiousness, and maintains he has
never met so many pleasant girls in his life as on that evening, and
there are several of them uncommonly pretty.
“You are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room,” says Darcy,
looking at the eldest Miss Bennet.
“Oh! she is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld,” vows Bingley,
with effusion. “But there is one of her sisters sitting down just
behind you who is very pretty, and I daresay very agreeable. Do let me
ask my partner to introduce you.”
“Which do you mean?” asks Darcy, and, turning round, he looks for a
moment at Elizabeth, till, catching her eye, he withdraws his own, and
coldly says, “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me,
and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies
who are slighted by other young men. You had better return to your
partner, and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me.”
Was ever heroine so put down in her own hearing? Elizabeth, we are
told, remains with no very cordial feelings towards the offender, but,
being the bright young girl she is, she makes stock of the incident
by telling the story with great spirit among her friends; and for the
superb Mr. Darcy there is a proper punishment preparing.
Mr. Bingley’s sisters are drawn with a few fine touches. They are
fashionable, stylish-looking women, each possessing a fortune of twenty
thousand pounds. They have a great opinion of their own claims, and a
corresponding disdain of what they reckon the greatly inferior claims
of others. With all their polish and _savoir faire_, which enable
them to be entertaining when they like, they are always arrogant and
ill-bred, and can be insolent when provoked.
Yet even Mrs. Hurst and Miss Bingley are attracted by beautiful, gentle
Jane Bennet, and drawn into the semblance of a friendship for her.
They are too independent and too far removed, as they conceive, from
such rivalry, to experience any jealousy, or to take alarm on their
brother’s account, till matters have gone a considerable length between
Bingley and Jane.
Among other minor characters in the book are the Lucas family, who
occupy the next county house, and are the nearest neighbours of the
Bennets, and on intimate terms with them. Charlotte Lucas, the eldest
daughter, a plain-looking, but sensible and agreeable young woman of
seven and twenty, is Elizabeth Bennet’s great friend after her sister
Jane. Charlotte’s father, Sir William, has been in trade, from which
he has retired on the accident of receiving the honour of knighthood.
He was always civil and obliging, and from the great era in his life
he became elaborately courteous, with _bourgeois_ fine manners. He is
profuse in good-natured--sometimes _mal-à-propos_--compliments. Thus,
at a large party at Lucas Lodge, the host blandly praises Darcy--for
his dancing of all things, and then, struck with the notion of doing a
gallant thing, arrests Elizabeth Bennet, who is passing them: “My dear
Miss Eliza, why are not you dancing? Mr. Darcy, you must allow me to
present this young lady to you as a very desirable partner. You cannot
refuse to dance, I am sure, when so much beauty is at hand.”
Have we not all known, at some period in our lives, the
well-intentioned, obtuse, complacent, slightly Brummagem Sir William,
who can be terrible, without the slightest suspicion of it, on
occasions?
Elizabeth draws back, and refuses the partner very decidedly, and her
resistance does her no harm with the gentleman, though he has really
not been unwilling to lend himself to Sir William’s clumsy move.
In truth, the stately, grave Mr. Darcy, after refusing to see anything
worth the trouble of bestowing his notice in Elizabeth Bennet--after
taking the greatest pains to convince all his party that she has not
got a good feature in her face--becomes keenly alive to the charm of
that face, and captivated by the animation and archness which neither
fear his censure nor solicit his favour. For Elizabeth simply regards
him as the man who makes himself disagreeable everywhere, and who
has spoken slightingly of herself. She is happily careless of his
pretensions. What are his birth, estate, intellect, and person to her?
With her it is “handsome is that handsome does.”
And Darcy, with all his faults, has enough sterling manliness and merit
to be not piqued, but strangely attracted by her easy indifference
to his worldly advantages, combined as it is with the girl’s quick
intelligence and happy, winning playfulness.
We appreciate, too, the independent spirit which causes Darcy to
make no secret of his change of opinion; not that it is a matter of
much consequence to his mind, for a Darcy of Pemberley can never
lower himself in his own eyes, or those of his world, by marrying the
daughter of a poor, second-rate country gentleman, whose wife has
been taken from an inferior professional circle. What is a great deal
worse, the whole family of the Bennets, with the exception of Jane and
Elizabeth, are more or less objectionable--Mr. Bennet in indulging his
caustic humour in total disregard of the figures his wife and daughters
cut in society; Mrs. Bennet, in continually exposing her vulgarity
and folly; Mary Bennet, in rendering herself a laughing-stock by her
assumption of learning and wisdom, with small claims to the same. As
for Lydia and Kitty Bennet, while there are militia officers in Meryton
the girls will flirt with them; and while Meryton remains at a mile’s
distance from Longbourn, the younger Miss Bennets will go there every
day.
But Darcy, in the face of the pronounced dislike to the second Miss
Bennet entertained by his friend’s sisters--one of whom is laying close
siege to Darcy’s hand and heart--calmly revokes his judgment, announces
his admiration of Elizabeth’s eyes, and defends her vivacity from the
charge of pertness. It is in vain Miss Bingley, with her eyes sharpened
by jealousy, takes the woman’s method to drive him from his position
by chaffing exaggeration of his sentiments, and malicious predictions
of his future experiences with his mother-in-law; asking him if he
will have his Elizabeth’s uncle, the attorney’s, portrait, opposite
that of his uncle, the judge’s, and whether it may not be advisable
for him to restrain that something in the coming Mrs. Darcy’s manners
which borders on impertinence. Darcy stands to his colours, so far as
admiring Elizabeth Bennet, and owning to the admiration, are concerned.
Elizabeth is so thoroughly without suspicion of her modified conquest,
that when she finds Mr. Darcy looking at her, listening to her, and
taking up his station in the quarter of a room where he can see and
hear her better, she is so puzzled for his reasons, that she is
compelled to conclude there is something about her peculiarly repugnant
to his taste and sense of propriety; and being of the temper which she
supposes, she fancies he takes a certain satisfaction in reckoning
up her deficiencies. When he asks her to dance, she is so surprised
that she accepts the unwelcome honour before she knows what she is
doing; and then, provoked with her mechanical compliance, she seeks
revenge in trying to behave in the manner most disagreeable to him.
She will go down the double set in unbroken silence, so far as the
conversation rests with her; and she is aware young Darcy is a quiet,
grave man, while she is well known as a ready, gay talker. All at once
it strikes her that a solemn mute performance of their duty as dancers
may be exactly what he wishes; and then she challenges him, in an
archly-defiant speech, to make conversation for her. After all he is
nothing loth, though she does provoke and offend him by the determined
conviction she constantly shows that they are two persons of entirely
different characters and inclinations, and by her wilful, half-jesting
misunderstanding of his feelings and opinions.
On one occasion he is led into the admission that he has an unyielding
temper. His good opinion once lost is lost for ever.
“That is a failing indeed,” cried Elizabeth. “Implacable resentment is
a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well; I really
cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me.”
The girl’s mingled light-hearted banter and vehement antagonism form,
after all, part of her fascination; and we are told that against any
affront they inflict she has a powerful pleader in the feeling she has
already excited in Darcy’s breast.
The progress of Bingley’s lover-like attentions to Jane, and Darcy’s
brisk skirmishing with Elizabeth, is considerably accelerated by
a visit of almost a week’s duration paid perforce by the girls to
Netherfield.
Jane had been invited to dine with the two ladies of the house, to
relieve their dulness in the absence of the gentlemen, who were dining
with the officers in Meryton. She had been detained by rain in the
first place, and by a violent cold in the second.
Elizabeth hearing of her sister’s illness, and being unable to procure
the carriage, set out and walked the three miles between Longbourn
and Netherfield. She was fearless of fatigue, or the accusation of
unfeminine, unladylike independence of escort. She was equal to muddy
roads, intervening stiles, and the cool reception she was likely to
receive from Miss Bingley, so that Elizabeth could but relieve her
anxiety concerning Jane, reach her, and be a comfort in nursing her
through her little illness.
Elizabeth arrives with draggled skirts and rosy cheeks. She cheerfully
surmounts Miss Bingley’s and Mrs. Hurst’s contemptuous amazement at
what they regard as Miss Eliza Bennet’s uncalled-for Amazonian feat.
At last they are under the necessity, in common civility, of requesting
Elizabeth to remain with her sister; and the patient, suffering Jane is
ill enough for the moment to make Elizabeth thankful that she has come,
and to justify her in the step she has taken.
Besides, Elizabeth is gratified by the master of the house’s cordial
reception, and by his unfeigned anxiety on behalf of his invalid guest.
As to the fact that Darcy is successful in silencing the strictures of
the ladies of the house on the “fright” Miss Eliza Bennet has chosen to
appear before them, by dwelling on the additional brilliancy the early
walk has lent to her complexion, and by maintaining that certainly
the expedition proves her to be a most affectionate sister, Elizabeth
remains profoundly ignorant of his championship.
Two new figures appear on the stage. The first is Mr. Collins, the
vicar of Hunsford, in Kent, and the cousin, hitherto a stranger to
the Bennet family, who, by the terms of the entail, succeeds to the
Longbourn estate after Mr. Bennet’s death. He proposes a friendly
visit, in a letter which is the reflex of the writer, who is a stupid,
narrow-minded young man, while yet perfectly respectable and not
ill-intentioned. His pompous self-importance, in which there is some
family likeness to the leading mental traits in his cousin Mary Bennet,
is blended with an equally natural subserviency and obsequiousness,
with such a breadth of skill and comicality, that he is one of the
great artist’s triumphs.
Jane Austen was a good woman and a good church-woman. She was a
clergyman’s daughter, and two of her brothers were clergymen. The
parsonage as well as the hall had a special place in her novels. In
“Mansfield Park” she insisted on the honourable office of a clergyman.
She was the last person wantonly to bring disrespect on her father’s
cloth, but she was also the most sincere of women and of artists. She
was acquainted with the Collins type of clergymen, which had replaced
the still more accommodating, even vicious, family chaplain, under
the lower and coarser moral standard of previous generations. Her Mr.
Collins is not unprincipled or unconscientious, but his patroness
engrosses his small, mean mind, and usurps the rights of his other
parishioners; until, to give satisfaction at the great house--to come
in there as an acknowledged, privileged dependent--to carve a joint--to
help to make up the card-table--to amuse the old and the young--to pass
away a dull hour--to take upon himself any troublesome task he can
appropriate, are looked upon by him as at once among his chief duties
and greatest advantages.
With unshrinking, incisive hand, Jane Austen did good service to all
the churches by aiding in ridding them of despicable toadies.
Mr. Collins is all in a piece, while he is of complex fabric, with his
haunting self-consciousness, his perpetual references to his “humble
abode,” and his “revered patroness, Lady Catherine,” with her splendid
establishment at Rosings, to which he is so affably summoned several
times a week. His densely thick-headed, sycophantish homage is extended
to Lady Catherine’s kindred in the person of her nephew, the resisting,
disgusted Mr. Darcy. Mr. Collins’s self-complacent, over-done, heavy
civility is bestowed freely on everybody, and he promises liberally
beforehand formal letters of thanks to his hosts for their esteemed
hospitality.
Such a man, however diverting to her strong sense of the ludicrous,
cannot but be odious in other respects to Elizabeth Bennet, yet it is
at Elizabeth’s feet that he lays his dull, conceited, exasperatingly
considerate proposals.
Lady Catherine is of opinion Mr. Collins, as a clergyman, should marry
soon. His solid merits and unexceptionable position in life warrant him
in seeking a wife. He is led to Longbourn with the laudable intention
of making some reparation to his fair cousins for the circumstance
that, on the death of their respected father, Mr. Collins must inherit
the property; and in Elizabeth he flatters himself he has found the
excellent, charming, economical young woman who will at once secure
to him the felicity he is entitled to expect, and satisfy the just
expectations of Lady Catherine.
To the extreme mortification of her mother, but with the entire
approval of her father, Elizabeth declines the obliging proposal. The
scene is unique and unapproachable, in which the sublimely confident,
quite unembarrassed Mr. Collins does not so much plead his cause
solemnly as unfold his credentials, while Elizabeth refuses him in
stronger and stronger language, for the suitor will not accept his
_congé_, and persists in attributing it to the becoming coyness of “an
elegant female.”
At last Elizabeth escapes, referring Mr. Collins to her father,
protesting in despair that whatever his answer may be, at least Mr.
Collins cannot interpret Mr. Bennet’s behaviour as the becoming coyness
of “an elegant female.”
Mr. Collins’ heart is scarcely touched, but his vanity--thick-skinned
as it is--has received a wound, for which, however, there is a speedy
cure, since within three days he transfers his suit with the happiest
result to Elizabeth’s friend Charlotte Lucas, who has not hesitated to
plan this conclusion.
Elizabeth is amazed and hurt at the absence of right principle and
feeling on the part of Charlotte, who has been so quickly wooed and
won--nay, who has herself stooped to woo a man for whom she can have
neither respect nor regard.
But in Jane Bennet’s remonstrances against the hard terms which
Elizabeth uses when speaking of the marriage--in the emphasis with
which the elder sister dwells on Mr. Collins’ respectable establishment
as well as his unblemished character--above all, in the way in which
Charlotte’s choice is made to turn out tolerably well for her in the
end, we find that Jane Austen, while revolting at the conduct which she
herself could never have practised, is inclined so far to endorse the
reasoning of the prudent, steady gentlewoman who has offended against
Elizabeth’s nobler instincts.
“Without thinking highly either of men or matrimony,” Jane Austen says
of Charlotte Lucas, “marriage had always been her object: _it was
the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small
fortune, and, however uncertain of giving happiness, must be their
pleasantest preservation from want_. This preservation she had now
obtained; and at the age of twenty-seven, without having ever been
handsome, she felt all the good luck of it.”
Poor Mrs. Bennet’s chagrin is complete. She is deprived of the
opportunity of “marrying” one of her daughters very fairly. Lady Lucas
is to have a daughter married first. And Charlotte Lucas is eventually
to supplant Mrs. Bennet in her own house of Longbourn. Can the irony of
destiny go farther?
The other new comer appears in a fresh officer who joins the militia
regiment in Meryton. He is a Mr. Wickham, a young man of exceedingly
attractive looks and manners, being as universally agreeable and
sympathetic as Darcy is the reverse.
Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Wickham are mutually struck with each other on
their introduction in the High Street of Meryton, and the impression
at first sight is confirmed when they spend an evening in company
together, at a tea and supper party given by Mrs. Philips, the Bennets’
aunt.
Wickham’s place in the round game of cards for the young people is
between Elizabeth and her boisterous young sister Lydia, who would
have proceeded to engross the gentleman had it not been for the rival
attractions of the game of “Lottery Tickets,” and her zeal in acquiring
mother-of-pearl fishes--the old counters.
Elizabeth and Wickham are permitted to talk together and to discover
how their views and tastes coincide. Not the least bond of union is
the confirmation of Elizabeth’s worst prejudices against Mr. Darcy.
Wickham happens also to be a Derbyshire man, and he has actually been
brought up in the most intimate relations with the Darcys. Wickham’s
father was the confidential agent of Darcy’s father, who had been
George Wickham’s godfather, and had charged himself with educating
and providing for the lad. By appearing to respond unwillingly to the
roused curiosity of Elizabeth, and by the flattery of giving her the
idea that he is confiding in her alone, the young man manages, without
seeming to be publicly proclaiming his wrongs, to convey to her the
information of how badly he has been treated by young Darcy. This
haughty, hard, unscrupulous man has defrauded his early companion of
the church living bequeathed to him by his godfather. Darcy has a young
sister, Georgiana, who had been very fond of her father’s favourite
when he petted and played with her as a child, but her brother has
infected her with the inordinate pride and selfishness of the family,
and set her also against Wickham.
Elizabeth drinks in the whole story, which is a testimony to her own
acuteness, is full of pity for Wickham and of wrath against Darcy.
The younger Miss Bennets have teased Mr. Bingley to give a ball, which
comes off with great _éclat_ at Netherfield. The host’s attentions to
Jane Bennet are the talk of the room.
Mrs. Bennet goes so completely off her head that, to the intense
mortification and shame of Elizabeth, she overhears her mother
enlarging on her eldest daughter’s brilliant prospects to Lady Lucas,
at the supper-table, with so little reserve, that Elizabeth is sure
Darcy, who is opposite, is listening--first with grave surprise, and
afterwards with an unsuppressed expression of scorn.
Indeed, poor Elizabeth is doomed to experience anything rather than
pleasure at the long-looked-forward-to, much-talked-of, ball at
Netherfield. In the earlier part of the evening she is disappointed
by the non-appearance of Wickham with the other officers; and she is
full of resentment against Darcy for having either deprived him of
an invitation, or caused the injured young man to avoid the painful
encounter, though he had expressly told his warm adherent that it was
not for him to go out of Mr. Darcy’s way.
Under the irritation produced by this suspicion, Elizabeth, when
Darcy seeks her out, turns upon him with serious instead of playful
antagonism. She mentions Wickham’s name, for the express purpose of
observing Darcy’s annoyance. She provokes him to the cold observation
that Mr. Wickham is well qualified to attract friends, but it remains
to be seen whether he is equally fitted to retain them.
Elizabeth’s blood boils at the insinuation from the man who has so
wronged her friend.
Then, as if the evil genius of the family had been at work, not Mrs.
Bennet alone, but more of Elizabeth’s relations, make themselves
obnoxious to censure and ridicule. Mary in her conceit consents, with
her weak voice, to sing an after-supper song; and when it is received
with forced approval, she volunteers to give another, amidst the covert
smiles of her audience.
Elizabeth looks in agony to her father to interfere, lest Mary should
go on singing all night; and he crowns the trying situation by one of
his most ironical, disconcerting speeches.
“That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough.
Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit.”
One word on the terribly keen young eyes with which Elizabeth Bennet
sees the faults and follies of her family, including her mother’s
silliness, and the objectionable behaviour of her father in amusing
himself at the expense of his wife, so as to risk rendering her an
object of contempt in the eyes of her children.
No doubt, Elizabeth Bennet does not dream of being anything save
respectful and dutiful to her father and mother, whom she addresses
commonly with the old-fashioned, ceremonious “Sir” or “Madam.” The
partiality of the former to her not only fills the young girl with
honest filial pride, but it touches her indescribably at a crisis in
her history. She seeks to screen her mother, and she strives to improve
her younger sisters.
Elizabeth Bennet would have died rather than proclaimed the
shortcomings of her family--far less have been so lost to all wholesome
shame as to have made game of what formed her greatest affliction. She
is removed, by a world of good principle and good feeling, from those
heroines of the present day whose authors write as if they considered
the absence of all reverence and tenderness, in the sacred relation
in which children stand to parents, as a mark of emancipation from
old-fashioned prejudices, of freedom from what is goody-goody, narrow
and obsolete. These desperately ill-bred, benighted, worse than heathen
young people, in their professed confessions to the public, or their
confidences to their fellow-puppets, speak evil of dignities with
a vengeance, have nothing save an ugly grimace or a heartless gibe
for all that is honourable in years, wisdom, or virtue, and for all
that is holy in natural affection. They pour forth their railings and
mockings at the authors of their being with an absolute profanity,
a base disloyalty, and an absence of common decency in their family
disclosures, which would be altogether horrible and hideous, were it
not also absurdly false and despicable, as well as odious.
Elizabeth Bennet was a very different being--an essentially Christian
and civilized gentlewoman.
But one is impelled to wish that, especially where her mother was
concerned, there had been a greater reluctance, even an incapability,
to judge and condemn--a piteous veil drawn by the strong over the
weak, in a relationship in which these attributes ought to have been
reversed. For, whether the offence be wickedness or vulgarity,--
“A mother is a mother still,
The holiest thing alive.”
Jane Austen would have said probably that if Elizabeth Bennet’s nearest
relations were guilty of impropriety and folly, she could not help
seeing it. We know that the author herself was very happy in the
family relations of which she proved herself worthy. She was a devoted
daughter and loving sister, tempted to rest content with her own family
circle, and to refuse, with a certain refined churlishness, other and
wider associations. She may have been in his position who
“Jests at scars that never felt a wound.”
She could hardly perhaps realise, though she excelled in realising, how
a good, affectionate girl, while forced in her sense and sincerity to
condemn the failings of her kindred, yet instinctively shuts her eyes
to them, so far as she can do so without moral injury to herself and
others; or sees them through a half-shrouding mist of eager respect
and faithful fondness for the merits which, in most cases, we may be
thankful, balance the failings.
Besides, Jane Austen was very young when she wrote “Pride and
Prejudice,” and gentle in some respects as youth may be, it is not
from it that we are warranted in expecting charity. Youth at its
best--a very sweet best, but with its sweetness consisting mainly of
the unbounded promise of still better things--is in its ignorance,
rashness, and unshaken self-confidence, impatient of all wrong-doing,
nay, of all blundering, and intolerant to the wrong-doers and
blunderers. It would be to rob the bountifulness of riper years of
one of their chief gains if we were to deny them their prerogative of
greater long-suffering with stupidity and pity for error.
In none of her other novels was Miss Austen quite so unsparing in her
censure and withering in her satire--sufficiently provoked though it
was--as in “Pride and Prejudice.” She is gentle to the comparatively
harmless, kindly silliness and selfishness of Lady Bertram in
“Mansfield Park;” while she is really tender, with a touch of pathos,
to that worthiest and most lovable of old chatterboxes, Miss Bates, in
“Emma.”
The Netherfield ball is fatal to Jane Bennet’s interest, innocent as
Jane is of any of the family misdemeanors on the occasion. Bingley has
to leave the next day for London, from which he certainly means to
return soon. But his sisters and friend suddenly make up their minds
to follow him, with the intention, if they can manage it, that the
household shall not come back to Netherfield for the winter. Caroline
Bingley communicates the news of the step, which takes the whole
neighbourhood by surprise, in a plausible note to the victim, Jane.
Elizabeth reads between the lines, and discerns the truth, that the
sisters and Mr. Darcy have at last taken alarm, and are bent on putting
an end to the attachment on Mr. Bingley’s part before it has gone the
length of a declaration, by detaining the naturally light-hearted,
easily-impressed young fellow among the excitements and distractions of
the town, away from Netherfield.
The sequel shows the conspirators successful. Sweet Jane Bennet is
ruthlessly jilted, while bearing no malice, and insisting in her
confidential intercourse with her sister that the affair has been all
a mistake, caused by her fancy, the partiality of her friends, and
Bingley’s amiable desire to please. She declares she is sure she will
soon forget it, and be as happy as before.
In the meantime, Jane has to endure the mortification of hearing her
mother lament, openly and loudly, over the ill-usage which her daughter
has received.
The modern match-making mother has more guile, if she is not more
delicate-minded, than to betray her feelings in a similarly unreserved
fashion.
Elizabeth hotly resents the wrong done to her dear and gentle sister,
is furious with Darcy and Miss Bingley, and begins to despise Bingley
for proving a mere tool in the hands of his friends, whose interference
in his affairs has been utterly unjustifiable.
Elizabeth and Wickham’s mutual preference goes no further. She says
afterwards that every girl within visiting distance of Meryton lost her
senses for a time where the winning young officer was concerned. But
she herself did not lose her senses to such an extent as to be beyond
recovering them; though the only remonstrance which reached her was on
the indiscretion of allowing herself to be drawn into an attachment
and engagement with a penniless officer, while she herself was little
better provided for in a worldly sense, so that their marriage must
either be impossible, or an event long deferred.
The warning, no doubt, has a mercenary ring, especially for young
readers; but such worldly considerations were simply held reasonable
in Jane Austen’s days, and reckless disregard of consequences and
headstrong wilfulness in marriage, as in any other affair in life, were
not qualities held up for admiration.
At the same time, Jane Austen was too true a woman not to deprecate
what amounted to cold-blooded, calculating caution in marriage.
More than once she exposes its fallacy and danger, and she has
devoted a whole novel to show the injury which may be inflicted by
over-carefulness on the part of a well-intentioned friend, and by
over-submissiveness on the side of an amiable girl, in breaking off an
engagement with a young man who had only his high character and hope of
rising in his profession as hostages to fortune.
Elizabeth Bennet and Wickham’s mere liking for each other rather
dwindles away after a time than meets with a sharp check; and
Elizabeth considers that if they had been sufficiently in love they
might have justifiably faced the risks of a long engagement and a
poor marriage--even while she tries to be so hardened and cynical a
philosopher as to think and say that Wickham is doing what he ought in
withdrawing his attentions gradually from her, and setting himself to
pay his addresses to a girl in Meryton who has nothing in particular to
distinguish her save that she has recently inherited a fortune. This
worldly argument is forced work by Elizabeth, and when she is a very
little older and wiser she recants, and is affronted by the coarseness
of sentiment into which her determination to be indifferent and
reasonable had led her.