Elizabeth rejoined Darcy, and they went to their bedrooms to wash and change. A momentous occasion, she reflected: the arrival of a new generation that would survive into the 20th century, long after she and her beloved husband were gone.
Darcy extended his hand, and she sighed. Yes, all this would eventually pass to others. But now was their time. Of which she would not waste a single precious second.
She gripped his arm, pulled him into a kiss, and feeling a glow of fulfilment entered the reassuring comfort of her chamber.
Afterword
Darcy’s Redemption (DR) diverges from Pride and Prejudice at the scene where Elizabeth visits Pemberley with the Gardiners. Instead of arriving a day early, Darcy is delayed. In consequence, he learns of Lydia’s elopement too late to rescue the Bennets from disgrace and ruin. After a chance encounter romance is rekindled, but between people who have lost the idealism of youth, and learned that in reality one does not live happily ever after. Their challenge is to make the best of lives that have been irretrievably scarred by mistakes and ill-fortune.
In the prologue the main protagonist is the railway, which grew rapidly in the early years of Victoria’s reign. Darcy and Elizabeth meet at Boxmoor, shortly after this station was opened in July 1837 by the London and Birmingham Railway Company. The early rail network is described in staggering detail in the contemporary (1842) book The Railways of Great Britain and Ireland, by a civil engineer named Francis Whishaw (available from Google Books). In the 1830s, the lines from London and the Midlands were separated; in the 1840s they joined, so that our couple could journey direct from London Euston to Derbyshire.
The Old Bailey Justice Hall is of course a historical location, described with reference to contemporary drawings. All characters in Lydia’s trial are fictional; the procedure is based on actual trials of the period, which can be consulted verbatim (google Old Bailey online). The sentences were indeed harsh: a thief might be hung, or transported, typically for 7 years, 14 years, or life.
At Almack’s all characters are fictional, including the Mountjoy and Molyneux families. So far as I know there was no Earl or Countess of Ballytore, but Julia was modelled loosely on Lady Marguerite Blessington, who travelled to Genoa to meet Lord Byron and wrote a memoir of their meetings (Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of Blessington, published 1850, available from Google Books). Descriptions, and some utterances attributed to Byron, come from this book.
In Florence, locations are real, including Villa la Pietra, which is now owned by New York University (for photos, history, etc., google Villa la Pietra). Note that it is not possible to visit except by arrangement with NYU. It can be viewed from a distance through a gate, at the end of a long cypress-lined driveway. The well-known locations in the city centre are open to the public (Ponte Vecchio, Palazzo Vecchio, Uffizi). Hotel Schneiderff was popular among wealthy travellers at the time, but no longer exists.
The Sibley family and their estate in Essex are fictional. The posts occupied by Frederick Sibley (Fredo) are all historical: there is a Christ’s Church at Spitalfields, and St Paul’s Cathedral had prebendaries. All roads in London existed (Commercial Street, Carter Lane, Chandos Street, etc.). Also historical is the Oxford Movement in Anglican theology which opposed liberalising trends in favour of a return to aspects of traditional Catholicism (see Wikipedia on Oxford Movement). A list of tracts is available (Wikipedia on Tracts for the Times) featuring some of the topics addressed by Fredo.
In Suffolk, Hardwick House is a historical location for which you can find images and a Wikipedia article. The Cullum family is fictional. Lowestoft is a real town on the coast, Halesworth a village nearby, but the houses mentioned in DR are fictional, and in the 1830s there was no Duke of Suffolk.
In London, the outings with Grace and Robert occur at historical sites. Vauxhall had a popular pleasure garden, the Regent’s Park a zoological garden. St Paul’s Cathedral and environs is of course historical, as are Paternoster Row (centre for publishing) and Covent Garden market.
The Lady’s Magazine was a popular monthly for which complete volumes are available from Google Books. Descriptions are mostly based on the issue for January 1830, which includes a correspondence feature (page 53), the source for Elizabeth’s humorous letters (especially Amelia Meanwell). The magazine is packed with stories, poetry, reviews, society news, and fashion, including illustrations printed in colour from engravings. John Allsop, its editor in DR, is fictional, but the office was in Paternoster Row.
The fate of convicts transported to Australia is documented in detail on sites that help modern Australians trace their family roots. The ship that would have transported Lydia, the Broxbournebury, sailed in January 1814 carrying 124 women; the men were taken separately on the Surrey. Lydia’s experiences in DR are typical according to contemporary reports: for more information look at the Wikipedia page on Parramatta Female Factory, or google this phrase.
The photogenic drawings produced by Georgiana’s husband apply the science of the time, and Henry Fox Talbot is a historical figure. The term photograph (literally “light drawing”) was coined around this time and used at a Royal Society presentation in 1839. Many Fox Talbot photos can be found online (just google the phrase), remarkable in their detail; the earliest that have survived come from the 1840s. An alternative method was developed by Louis Daguerre, who made a daguerreotype of a street scene as early as 1838.
Of the historical persons mentioned in DR (Byron, Keats, the Shelleys, Lord Melbourne), the most central is writer, reformer and society beauty Caroline Norton, who became notorious in 1836 when her abusive husband accused the prime minister Lord Melbourne of criminal conversation—Victorian legalese for adultery. In her long dispute with George Norton for control of her life and custody over her children, Mrs Norton highlighted the status of married women as persons with no legal existence. Her struggle is mirrored, on a milder level, by Elizabeth’s tribulations in the novel.
Despite persistent poor health, and wrangling with her husband, Caroline Norton’s writings were prolific. In addition to novels and poems, she wrote long pamphlets in support of her campaigns, and letters to influential people including the queen. As mentioned in DR, she successfully pressed for a Custody of Infants Act, granting mothers custody of their young children. Later she lobbied for the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act, which established the principle by which a married woman has an independent legal status. Two biographies are A Scandalous Woman by Alan Chedzoy (1992), and The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton by Diane Atkinson (2012). A much earlier biography of 1909 by Jane Perkins described her character thus:
Gifted, impetuous, stormy-tempered, with a reckless, specious tongue, with an instinct for taking the lead and getting possession of everything around her: magnanimous and generous, incapable of hoarding injuries and paying back old scores when once the first ungovernable outburst of resentment against them had subsided …
With the help of these biographies, I have tried to respect Caroline Norton’s actual movements in 1838-40 (holidays in the Isle of Wight, trip to south of France, etc.), and her attitudes and personality. Note that she was not a feminist in the modern sense. In an article in The Times (1838), she explicitly denied any tendency to radicalism:
The natural position of woman is inferiority to man. Amen! That is a thing of God’s appointing, not of man’s devising. I believe it sincerely, as part of my religion. I never pretended to the wild and ridiculous doctrine of equality …
In spite of her achievements as a social reformer, Mrs Norton is no longer well-known. But in Victorian Britain she was a major figure. Her poems and novels were widely read, especially by women. Famous authors like Tennyson, Dickens, Thackeray, Disraeli, and Meredith, used her as a model for their characters, or incorporated episodes from her life into their stories. Her struggles highlight the dark side of marriage in Regency and Victorian Britain.
M. A. Sandiford, August 2019
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M A Sandiford, Darcy's Redemption
Darcy's Redemption Page 21