Elizabeth Newark - The Darcys Give a Ball

And here it is necessary, dear Reader, that I offer you some account of the main events of Charlotte’s life since her marriage. Her first child, a large boy, was born a year after her marriage (a ‘young olive-branch,’ as Mr. Collins called him, when writing to Mr. Bennet). The boy was christened William Rosings Collins, a combination of what Mr. Collins felt was his due and of homage to Lady Catherine. Even at birth, he was the type of baby that can best be described as aggressively legitimate. In both face and form he resembled his father and, as he grew, the resemblance became still more pronounced. Mr. Collins was noisily proud of him.William became a heavy, non-athletic boy of limited intelligence but good conceit, assertive at the dinner table, timid away from it. His father, naturally, intended him for the Church.

Charlotte’s next child, born two years later, was also a boy ( Jonathan Lucas Collins), but he came from a different mold. He was slight in stature and not handsome, but he inherited his grandfather Lucas’s social nature and his mother’s intelligence. Jonathan was a merry soul, loving to his mother and friendly to all the world. (William, of course, was inclined to bully him.) Charlotte was too wise to favor Jonathan, but her eyes smiled when she looked at him.

The following year, Charlotte miscarried.

Two girls came next, Catherine and Anne Maria, two years apart. They were a dull and dutiful duo, with their mother’s coloring and their father’s brains. Catherine, in looks, was considered a fine girl; Anne (compared with her sister) was musical. Then came another miscarriage. Charlotte was low in health and spirits for some time, but her fifth living child, another girl, christened Elizabeth Jane, was a changeling. She was born prematurely after a difficult pregnancy and reared with a quiet desperation by Charlotte that withstood her husband’s petty importunities and Lady Catherine’s recommendation to put the sickly baby out with a good wet-nurse and stop neglecting her parish duties (by which she meant dining at Rosings on command).

Elizabeth Jane, known at home as Little Eliza, grew to delight her mother’s heart. From some errant gene (from the Bennet connection, shall we say?), Eliza developed an impish sense of humor. She was small and in looks resembled her mother, gray-eyed and brown-haired, in no way striking. But her love of life illuminated her face; she drew the eye. As soon as she could walk, she tried to dance. Catty and Annie, as her sisters were known, united in trying to suppress her, but in vain.William ignored her, but Jonathan was her protector and her friend.

Two more babies, boys, followed with the passing of time, a year apart. Both died within the year, of the flux. Charlotte had no more children.

Lady Catherine de Bourgh succumbed to a stroke, brought on by excessive self-esteem and a carefully hidden fondness for port wine (taken, of course, medicinally). She spent six months in bed before she died, unable to walk and barely able to talk, imposing her will on her house with constant thumps on the floor of a stout, silver-topped walking stick that had belonged to her late husband.When too frustrated, she was inclined to strike out at the nearest body, in a way reminiscent, if she had but known, of Mr. Collins’s late father. At her death, Rosings, her estate, passed under the family trust to her daughter, Anne.

Shortly after her mother’s death, Anne married. She was then in her late thirties. Her husband was a former Archdeacon of Marchester (he resigned the post on his marriage), and also a noted organist. He was a man considerably her senior, long known to the de Bourghs. Anne retained the de Bourgh name, and the Venerable Mr. Crabapple acted as prince consort to his pale, delicate, middle-aged lady. Never having been beautiful, disappointed in the failure of her mother’s scheme to marry her to her handsome cousin, Mr. Darcy, Anne de Bourgh took to piety and won herself a husband through good works and Church attendance. His fondness for the architecture of Rosings was also a factor. Mr. Crabapple won Miss de Bourgh by his kind and fatherly demeanor (in such contrast to the well-meaning but smothering tyranny of her mother), and his masterly organ-playing. An instrument was installed at Rosings, and the rooms rang with the strains of Bach and Handel. The housekeeper, Mrs. Jenkinson, formerly Anne de Bourgh’s companion (in whose sitting-room long before Elizabeth Bennet had been bidden to practice), kept her door firmly closed.

Rosings thereafter hosted a steady stream of bishops, missionaries, deans, rural deans, rectors, vicars, and aspiring curates, together with their wives and offspring. All this was not to Mr. Collins’s liking. He felt continually over-watched, his sermons criticized, and his habits weighed in the balance.

But Mr. Bennet was dead at last, and his estate, entailed as it was (to Mrs. Bennet’s oft-voiced disgust), passed to Mr. Collins.

Mr. Bennet had died quietly of heart failure, one summer evening, alone in the library he loved.When he was found, his fingers were still caught between the pages of a book. While his heir gloated, Mrs. Bennet indulged in strong hysterics, and his daughters mourned.

Mr. Collins was agog to make the move to Longbourn. Now he could escape from the Anglican backbiting and religious infighting of his Rosings neighbors, give up his parish duties, and live the life of a country gentleman, for which he felt eminently suited. He began to talk casually of huntin’, shootin’, and fishin’. He considered for at least a week buying a sporting dog, though dogs of all kinds brought on violent attacks of sneezing; he would never have one in the house, though Jonathan and Eliza begged. Charlotte, with a tact born of her affection for Elizabeth Darcy, curbed her husband’s impatience to move to Longbourn.

“My dear Mr. Collins, this will not do. Think of Mrs. Bennet’s distress if we descend upon her with her husband barely in his grave. You, with your natural kindness and condescension, will be the first to understand her feelings and I know, in your generosity, you will give her time to plan her future life.”

Her method of dealing with Mr. Collins was always to ascribe to him the principles and virtues she wished he possessed. By tactics such as this, she could often persuade and guide him to a high standard of public behavior.

How was Mrs. Bennet to be settled? That was the question. Mary and Kitty, who had lived together in Meryton since the death of Kitty’s clergyman husband, Theodore Philpott, only two years after their marriage, conferred over their teacups with Mrs. Philips, who was also now a widow and in very comfortable circumstances. Mr. Philips’s business affairs had prospered (his specialty was conveyancing) and, when he died, of apoplexy, he was a warm man. Mary Bennet had married her Uncle Philips’s senior clerk, a kind but homely man of the name of Shrubsole, and Mr. Shrubsole had taken over much of Mr. Phillips’s clientele on his death and was making a comfortable living.

Letters circulated between the Meryton contingent and the sisters whose homes were farther away. Mrs. Bennet had always planned to live with her favorite daughter, Lydia, but this was not to be.

“La, Mama,” said Lydia, shrugging a plump and careless shoulder, “That would not be at all the thing. You know my dear Wickham and me are always on the move. You would find it prodigious unpleasant.”

Captain Wickham was at that time stationed in Bristol. Mrs. Bennet was reluctant to accept this dictum, but a short visit to Lydia in her latest Bristol lodgings with her six children (one teething), her constantly changing servants and nursery maids, the visits from the bailiff, and her often-absent husband, changed her mind. Jane Bingley and Elizabeth Darcy conferred anxiously with Aunt Gardiner on the degree of their duty to their mother, but luckily Mrs. Philips came to her sister’s rescue, inviting Mrs. Bennet to share her home in Meryton.

The partnership throve. The two widows (their caps a miracle of black lace) gave whist and loo parties for their numerous acquaintance (a goodly number of widowers and rackety retired army officers among them) and enjoyed themselves hugely. Mrs. Bennet found her new way of life so much to her liking that she almost forgot to resent the Collinses. Mary and Kitty were within easy reach and were frequent visitors, Lydia and Wickham came when no one else would have them, and Jane and Elizabeth sometimes broke a journey in order to spend a night. The only time Mrs. Bennet became conscious of her nerves was when her grandchildren stayed too long.

Once this move was made, the way was open for Mr. and Mrs. Collins and their family to move to Longbourn. It was a fateful day. Despite a light drizzle,Mr. Collins paced his new possession foot by foot, outdoors and indoors, rejoicing in every shrub and tree in the grounds, and every handsome piece of furniture and elegant drapery in the house. He had, in the past, enjoyed criticizing Mrs. Bennet for her extravagance and love of show; now he felt there was nothing that was not due to his own consequence. The one fly in his ointment was the marked absence of books in the library, which had been established by Mr. Bennet; the books had been his own to do with as he willed, and he had chosen to leave them to his favorite daughter, Elizabeth. They now rounded out the already splendid library at Pemberley. Mr. Collins seldom read and had no interest in literature, but this did not prevent him from feeling disgruntled every time he eyed the empty shelves.

Eliza Collins was four years old when the move to Longbourn was made, and she grew up on terms of friendly intimacy with the families of Mary Shrubsole, née Bennet, and such of Charlotte’s brothers and sisters, now married, who lived nearby. By the time she was seventeen, she was lively, loving, imaginative, and amusing. She would never be a beauty, but only strangers commented on her lack of inches and pointed little face. Her father was uncomfortable with her; he preferred his eldest son, recently made Vicar of Highbury and married to a Miss Eugenia Elton, and his elder daughters, who were prim, plump, and self-righteous.

But Charlotte rejoiced in her changeling.

It was about this time that Henry Darcy, Elizabeth Darcy’s second son, came down from Oxford.

Mr. and Mrs. Darcy had been blessed with three children: a son and heir, Fitzwilliam, known in the family as Fitz, now twenty-five; a second son, Henry de Bourgh Darcy, twenty-two; and a daughter, Elizabeth Juliet, at eighteen one of the recognized beauties in the County of Derbyshire (rivaled only by her cousin, Amabel Bingley). Fitzwilliam was a stalwart young man, in appearance resembling his father, concerned with the management of the estate, with horse breeding, and the excitement of the hunt. Ever since he had reached his majority he had been in love with his cousin, Amabel Bingley. The younger son, Henry, was quite different. He was studious, literary, thoughtful, of a slighter build than his brother but strong and active and a skillful wrestler. He was a notable horseman. Juliet, the only girl, loved dancing, parties, and admiration (not necessarily in that order).

Elizabeth’s marriage had prospered. Secure in Mr. Darcy’s love and support, her courage had risen with every attempt by County society to intimidate her. His pride in his “dearest, loveliest Elizabeth” had fortified her against such snobberies and attempted put-downs as came her way, and Mr. Darcy had his own ways of letting such impertinent people know that if they wished to be invited to Pemberley, their behavior towards its mistress must be impeccable. Her own intelligence and sense of humor had helped her to make a success of her life as chatelaine of Pemberley. She loved her husband, her children, and the estate, in that order, and blossomed with the years. She had kept her slender figure, to the envy of Jane, who was beautiful still but, after five children, much fuller in body.

Henry Darcy’s father presented him with a splendid thoroughbred gelding for his twenty-second birthday, celebrated at Oxford, and Henry chose to make his way home on horseback. Riding across country to reach Pemberley, he decided to break his journey and visit his mother’s old home and his Longbourn relations, whom he did not know. He had been only eight when he last stayed there with his grandfather, a crusty old man with an odd sense of humor. Fitz, the high stickler, already at Eton, had thought him eccentric, but young Henry had enjoyed the old man’s company, and spent hours with him in the library, Henry on his stomach on the rug, picking his way through a book of myths, maps, and monsters, and Mr. Bennet reading Addison, Swift, or John Donne. Henry was sorry when his grandfather died.