No Thank You, Mr Darcy

by Lucy Tilney

  “On pleasure bent again, eh Lizzy?” said her father who had noted the extra bags waiting in the hall on his next fleeting visit.

  “She’s going to visit Charlotte Lucas,” said Phoebe before Elizabeth could open her mouth.

  Elizabeth explained that Charlotte had a deaconess position in Hunsford where Cousin William had served his curacy.

  “Hunsford?” said Professor Bennet folding his napkin and putting it in his pocket, “Old Arthur Bentley-Lyle found impressive Roman remains there in 1912. Of course, he didn’t want Romans, he wanted Anglo-Saxons, so they filled them in again and wheedled a small fortune out of that de Bourgh fellow to dig up St Ethelburga.”

  “I’ve always thought it must have been awfully nice for the ancient Britons when the Romans came and they could finally have a hot bath,” giggled Lydia. “Do tell us if there are any decent beaux in Kent, Lizzy, we’re a bit short in Hertfordshire.”

  “I don’t think any of us want to hear you talking about beaux,” snapped Kitty.

  “According to Charlotte, a Lady Catherine de Bourgh is the grand dame of the area and has recently funded the construction and fitting out of a hospital entirely for women.” Elizabeth tried to pretend neither her mother nor her younger sisters were actually there.

  “Well, filthy rich,” said Professor Bennet standing up. “I must rush for my train my dear, all my dears. I have a meeting with the Master at noon. He likes his little drama.”

  He glanced curiously at his handkerchief before stuffing it under his coffee cup. Phoebe and Kitty both followed him to the door leaving Elizabeth with Lydia.

  “Kitty has set her cap at Cousin William” announced Lydia as soon as the door closed, “and it started when William accused Mr. Dibley of folding the altar linen wrongly and gave him a wigging and so Mr. Dibley went off in the huff and Mrs. Dibley told Mrs. Purvis that he wouldn’t return as sacristan until William was pushing up daisies with all the other vicars so our dear cousin started taking all the linens and his lacey whatevers for his daily woman to do but he didn’t offer her any more money and you know what she’s like…”

  Elizabeth raised her eyebrows, partly at the idea she should know William’s daily woman and partly at Lydia’s ability to speak without drawing breath.

  “… so she called him a lily-livered fairy and told him to look after his own frillies and then he was rude to her and then her husband came and gave him short shrift and said he was a nancy boy. Now she’s put the word out to all the domestics in Hertfordshire and no-one will work for him.”

  Lily-livered fairy... nancy boy... oh dear... Lydia could still make her laugh but with a gargantuan effort she kept her face still.

  “And what has any of that got to do with Kitty? I don’t think she needs a position as a domestic just yet.”

  Lydia shrugged. She could explain but she chose not to.

  Fortunately for her peace of mind, Elizabeth hadn’t the time to dwell on the gossip that Lydia still managed to hear despite being in internal exile. She put her typed up articles in an envelope to drop at the Post Office, said goodbye to Mrs. Hill, promised a now penitent Phoebe that she loved her, and in less than an hour she and Jane were at the crossroads waiting for the bus that would take them to Meryton and the London train.

  1 A college of the University of Cambridge.

  2 An old word for moving quickly, probably the root of the American ‘skedaddle’.

  THE UNSPEAKABLE LADY

  Once in London, they parted. Jane to make her way to West Hampstead and Elizabeth to catch the train for Hunsford.

  The deaconess’s cottage at Hunsford was a pretty little redbrick house from Queen Anne’s time separated from the church by a laurel hedge and commanding a good view of the glebe meadows. Charlotte had done very well for herself to have such a sweet house and no irritating husband to share it with, even if it was a fraction of the size of Meryton Rectory. Monday was her day off so they drank coffee and chatted away the hours until it was time to meet Mrs. Pringle, the vicar’s wife, and obey a summons to the manor house for afternoon tea.

  Rosings House dated from around 1700 and had been considerably improved by Sir Humphrey Repton around a hundred years later and although surrounded by an area of immense natural beauty the park itself seemed artificial and sterile.

  Its mistress, Lady Catherine, daughter of the Earl of Alndale and widow of the late Sir Lewis de Bourgh, Bart., was a tall, slim woman of fifty-five or so, her chestnut hair streaked with grey was cut in a fashionable style and her large dark eyes suggested she had once been a beauty. She was smoking a Russian Sobranie cigarette in a long silver holder as they were announced and merely waved them to their places and as ill-mannered as it was Elizabeth was grateful not to have endured formal introductions. Tea was served by a frosty butler from Royal Doulton’s newest china.

  “Started by a woman, you know,” said Lady Catherine tartly, “but the man got his name on it.”

  “Martha Jones,” said Elizabeth, “but it needed John Doulton’s life savings to succeed.”

  Lady Catherine smiled, “Not just a pretty face, then Miss Bennet. Ah, here is Anne. I see you found Jenkinson, where was she hiding this time?”

  Anne de Bourgh placed a small, bright-eyed King Charles spaniel on the sofa beside her mother.

  “I named her after my late companion,” explained Lady Catherine, “she has twice the conversation and quite ten times the brains. Sit down, Anne, I cannot abide hovering.”

  Anne was tall and slender like her mother and she had her mother’s colouring but her skin was dull and she looked as if she had dressed in a dark corner of a jumble sale hall.

  “I hear you are related to William Collins who was curate here a short while ago,” remarked Lady Catherine once Anne had been given tea and a slice of dense fruit cake which was likely more than she would willingly eat in a week.

  Elizabeth smiled and nodded. Could Charlotte truly have found nothing else to say about her?

  “Well, speak up girl, are you or are not related to Mr. Collins?”

  “I am. Our grandfathers were cousins.”

  Lady Catherine examined Elizabeth for a moment through a pearl-handled lorgnette which she laid on the table beside her.

  “I understand your father’s estate is entailed upon him? A frankly ludicrous situation in this day and age and I see no reason your sister should not inherit. Indeed I informed Mr. Baldwin1 the last time I saw him that it was one of the last great stupidities of the nineteenth century still alive in the twentieth as he is himself, of course.”

  Miss de Bourgh shifted noticeably in her seat.

  “Do stop writhing around, Anne. Of course, Mr. Baldwin was much too worried about Mr. MacDonald2 to listen and I, naturally, have no connection with Mr. MacDonald. I hope your sister marries well and has no need to regret the situation although as sure as I am sitting here, and without having met the woman, I am convinced she would be a better landowner than your cousin. Mr. Collins was given to religiosity and I do not believe in too much religion, Miss Bennet, it always ends with sexual abandon. I had the misfortune to witness him perform Mass on one occasion when my previous chaplain, Mr. Elton, was unwell. I rang up Randall Davidson3 the moment I reached home, Sunday or no Sunday, and I told him on no account would I tolerate an asp in papist’s clothing in the bosom of Hunsford. I presume you are not given to the same weaknesses of character?”

  A vision of Cousin William engaging in sexual abandon did little for Elizabeth’s digestion.

  “I trust not, ma’am.”

  “Do any of your sisters have careers, Miss Bennet?”

  “My sister, Mary, hopes to become articled to my uncle who is a solicitor. The youngest two are a little young yet.”

  “I believe in young women getting out into the world and doing. If Anne were not in such indifferent health I believe she would go to Westminster like Viscountess Astor.4 Wouldn’t you, Anne?”

  Without waiting for a reply Lady Catherine then tur
ned her attention to Charlotte. “I hear you have been making friends with Dr and Mrs. Turner, Miss Lucas?”

  “Mrs. Turner has been a great help. She knows everyone in the parish and can assist me with needy people who may not be churchgoers.”

  Lady Catherine snorted, “Am I to assume Mrs. Pringle here does not know the needy of Hunsford?”

  Mrs. Pringle quivered.

  “I am sure Mrs. Turner does, of course, although as the doctor’s wife it is none of her concern,” Lady Catherine ignored Mrs. Pringle, “she is exactly the kind of woman who, having given herself nothing better to do, would get involved with the lower classes. A fool, an utter fool. You know who her father is, don’t you? Professor Arnold Pearson, who was one of the foremost proponents of the University of Oxford conferring degrees on women, and what does his daughter do? Marries a country doctor of no fame, no fortune, and no family. If I had been born a generation later I would have taken every opportunity but Matilda Pearson who had it all given to her on a plate could find nothing better to do at the age of twenty-one but marry a nobody and devote herself to raising a child who should have been admitted to an institution at birth.”

  She fixed a gimlet stare upon Charlotte who in turn looked peaceably at her teacup as if Lady Catherine had remarked upon the range of curtain fabric in Harrods rather than expressing a desire to commit a child who had both parents to an institution. It was at this moment that Elizabeth found herself in a familiar dilemma, her common sense told her to remain silent but another sense which might be called mischievous, suggested she follow through.

  “Why should the child have been put in an institution?”

  The other three cringed but the words were spoken.

  “She is unable to walk; she cannot eat or attend to her own bodily functions without assistance. She is a drain on her mother’s health and the family’s resources; in time will become a burden upon society. I have always said, Miss Bennet, women are not breeding machines. A woman has a right to control the number of children she has and a duty, a paramount duty, to ensure that those children be they female or male, will become good and useful citizens. Women of Matilda Turner’s natural intelligence, and I hazard that is a substantial percentage of the women of good birth in this country, should not be held back by child-bearing or rearing and certainly not by the needs of physically and mentally subnormal offspring. It would have been better for society and for the creature itself if it had been put in an establishment and forgotten about. ”

  “But, ma’am, I believe children are rarely well cared for in such places.”

  Lady Catherine snatched up her lorgnette and peered at Elizabeth, “My, you give your opinion readily. I am sure once you have seen the girl you will agree that the early departure of Barbara Turner from this world would have been no great loss to society and would have enabled her mother to at least make the best of a foolish, foolish, choice and produce one or two healthy, intelligent children. Unfortunately, I fear she is the type to have five or six given the choice which so-called natural tendency I am utterly against. Pregnancy and childbirth and forever running after children destroys a woman’s health. I made it perfectly clear to Sir Lewis de Bourgh that I would have one and only one and that is what I did. I am excessively pleased that the better sorts of people in the country are paying attention to my views on birth control.”

  She paused for breath and glared at Elizabeth before continuing, “Certainly I believe that the respectable working class, respectable I said, should have large families to work in the mills and to provide a hard-working, reliable servant body. The undeserving poor, gypsies, various foreigners, cripples, and the mentally deficient should, of course, be prevented from breeding altogether. Would you like another cup of tea, Mrs. Pringle? My nephew brought it from Fortnum & Mason and it is a quite a delightful blend. Fitzwilliam has excellent taste.”

  Elizabeth was never quite sure when she thought about it later, how she managed to hold out her cup for more tea or push the indigestible cake around her plate, without grabbing the teapot and pouring its contents over Lady Catherine’s head.

  Charlotte turned the conversation to a scheme for helping the sons of labourers find apprenticeships and, after being allowed to hold forth for some time on the duty of self-betterment, Lady Catherine was persuaded to promise a significant sum of money towards it. Elizabeth sighed to herself, she would never have the forbearance never do Charlotte’s job, not for all the tea in Fortnum & Mason.

  1 Stanley Baldwin, the current Prime Minister.

  2 Ramsay MacDonald, shortly to become Britain’s first Labour prime minister.

  3 The Archbishop of Canterbury. Lady Catherine is, of course, a name dropper.

  4 Britain’s first woman MP.

  HUNSFORD SOCIETY

  Halfway through the ordeal, the butler reappeared to inform Lady Catherine that her nephews, Colonel Fitzwilliam, and Mr. Darcy, had arrived. Elizabeth’s better self fought the desire to glare at Charlotte. Couldn’t she have warned her about the family connection? She had no desire to see Mr. Darcy again after the speed with which he had extricated himself from her when he knew about Lydia much less in his own aunt’s drawing room but there was no escape and she steeled herself for an unpleasant few minutes. His expression was as severe as she had ever seen it, he barely smiled when reminded of his acquaintance with Mrs. Pringle and Charlotte, and for Elizabeth, he found only the stiffest of bows. His cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam was, by contrast, almost as open of countenance and friendly as Mr. Bingley. She liked him straightaway.

  “Our deaconess has been persuading me to contribute to one of her good causes,” said Lady Catherine. She frowned and looked at the colonel, “Take your hands out of your pockets, Ranulf, it is a mystery to me how the army has never managed to teach you decent posture. Now, why don’t you both give Miss Lucas ten shillings?”

  Each man obediently gave Charlotte a banknote like small boys handing over contraband to nanny. Elizabeth tried not to laugh and continued to fervently hope that the arrival of those more interesting personages might result in her dismissal but it was not to be. Clearly, Lady Catherine did not often have company to share with them.

  “Miss Bennet here is from Hertfordshire. I believe you have recently been in Hertfordshire, Darcy. Didn’t that friend of yours, the one with the aeroplanes, buy himself a little estate there? I don’t know why he bothered, new money will always be new money.”

  “Yes, Aunt Catherine, and I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Bennet at the Netherfield Christmas ball.” Darcy looked as if he would rather be anywhere else.

  “I see. I am most put out, Fitzwilliam, that you remained in Hertfordshire for Christmas. You were expected in Grosvenor Square by Lady Claire’s family. Sophia… that is Sir Lewis’s cousin, Lady Clereborough, Miss Bennet… was most disappointed. You and Lady Claire make such an admirable couple. You ought not to have spent the festivities away from her, Fitzwilliam.”

  And Christmas away from you your niece too, thought Elizabeth, although it was now clear why Lady Catherine disapproved of Georgiana’s existence and was anxious to hasten her return to India. Poor Georgiana holed up alone at Pemberley unless one of her cousins brought her to London. Was it possible Mr. Darcy shared his aunt’s disapproval of people from other cultures? What else would keep him away from a girl, such a close relative, entrusted to his care? She spent the rest of the visit mentally reviewing everything Georgiana had said about her uncle while noting that, despite his aunt making perfectly horrific statements about race, religion, and class that he uttered not one word of opposition. By the end of the afternoon, any good opinion she had formed of him in Gunter’s was disappearing faster than a plate of fresh doughnuts in front of Cousin William.

  “I am always glad to leave Rosings,” said Mrs. Pringle as they reached the paling that separated the park from the site of the old parsonage, “no matter how elegant it looks or how fine the tea is, I always find it oppressive. You must come and drink tea in
the vicarage, Miss Bennet, where you will find the conversation and the cake, much more congenial. I can introduce you to little Barbara Turner too, whose condition is not half as bad as Lady Catherine insists, and even if it was, she would deserve all the love in the world.”

  “You will find no argument from me there,” said Elizabeth, “from the moment she made it clear the poor child ought to have died in an institution I knew I had never disliked anyone as much in my life.”

  The village of Hunsford was a pretty little place with a mixture of buildings going back to the middle-ages with only a new village hall and a new rectory to indicate it had entered the modern age. To the north lay the Victorian factory town that shared its name and on the other three sides, the lush, rolling countryside of Kent spread around providing glorious walks for those like Elizabeth who loved them.

  The next day, while Charlotte was working Elizabeth explored much of the park and then made her way to the vicarage for morning coffee. The rectory was a mid-19th century structure some way from the mediaeval church. One of Sir Lewis’s recent ancestors having decided the rectory spoiled the picturesque had solved the problem by relocating the rector. Still, like everything else in Hunsford it had chocolate box quality enhanced by a rambling English cottage garden and the cheerful face of Mrs. Pringle at the window.

  “I thought you might like to meet Barbara,” said Mrs. Pringle as soon as they were settled and the maid was pouring aromatic dark coffee into fashionable rustic pottery, “so I’ve arranged for our second cup to be at the doctor’s house.”

  “I should like that very much indeed,” replied Elizabeth wondering how accurate Lady Catherine had been malice notwithstanding.