Miss Darcy's Diversions
Page 5
“I have it in mind to send my sister to school for a few years, until she is old enough to take charge of her own establishment. Such a place would, ideally, be close both to town and to her aunt’s house in Kent, near Westerham. Both of these places are within a comfortable day’s journey of Highbury, which also looks to me to be the sort of place where my sister could grow and be happy, although she may not think so at first. I regret that it is not possible to find a school with those two properties, that is to say, proximity to both London and Rosings, which is also near to my own home. Alas, nowhere is near Pemberley, or not particularly, at any rate. I should be grateful for any information you could give me about Mrs. Goddard and her school.”
“I have met Mrs. Goddard from time to time,” replied Mr. Knightley, “at the house of my neighbour, Mr. Woodhouse, who is far better acquainted with her than I am.
Unfortunately he is a sad invalid, who suffers from many things, but principally, I think, from his nerves, which make him sorely averse to new acquaintance. In fact, anything new sends him into a perfect frenzy of nerves, so I fear it would not serve any purpose to introduce you to him in the hope of more accurate information.
However…- but I see that Miss Georgiana is more interested in the view from the window, and, indeed, it is a sad thing to ask a young lady such as her to stay sitting indoors on a day such as this. Should you like to run around the gardens, my dear, and perhaps see the ducks on the lake. I will send a servant to show you around.”
He rang the bell, and was answered almost immediately by the butler.
“Jeeves, please be so good as to get Molly to show Miss Darcy around the grounds. She would be particularly pleased with the ducks on the lake, and might be interested in any other livestock, although her own inclinations are to be satisfied in all things. The strawberries are just about ready for picking, and might perhaps also attract the young lady.”
I may have been only ten at the time, but I could tell quite well when I was being got out of the way so that the grownups could talk. However, I was quite sure that my brother would tell me afterwards everything I needed to know, and the strawberries sounded worth investigating, so I made no objection, only conditioning that Fitzwilliam should fetch me when he was finished.
“Be sure you wear your bonnet,” was his parting injunction, “the sun is very strong today, and you know what your headaches are like.”
What an old fusspot Fitzwilliam could be in those days! He still can be, but Elizabeth keeps him in hand, and no-one particularly fusses over me now. Then, I merely gave him one of my looks, as if to signify, teach your grandmother. I have an entire repertoire of looks, but he has never taken notice of them, and he did not do so then. He can be very obtuse at times.
Why Mr. Knightley should think I would want to view his ducks I cannot say. Some ducks are white and some are brown, and some are even yellow or green, but they are all ducks, and when you have seen one you have seen them all. It was not as if I were a five-year-old. Strawberries are a different matter, however, especially as the season is so short, and I have to say that the Donwell strawberries were very good. But one can have enough even of strawberries, and I began to look about me while the maidservant was still lolling on the bench in the arbour near the strawberry bed.
Faint sounds of music coming from a nearby window drew me in that direction. It was a pianoforte, playing some tune I had never heard before.
“Who is that playing?” I asked Molly the maid, who had roused herself to come after me.
“That’ll be Miss Emma, come over from Hartfield, as she does, most days. She’ll be a-biding of her time while the master sees to his visitor. She does have a beautiful hand at the keys, does she not?”
“No, I tell a lie, it can’t be Miss Emma, she always stops there and goes back to the beginning. Can’t seem to get past there, somehow.”
“It must be Miss Jane. She comes over to practise most afternoons when she’s not wanted at Hartfield. Pretty young thing, Miss Jane. Though I suppose I ought to say Miss Woodhouse and Miss Fairfax nowadays. They’re both getting on to when they’ll be coming out. Then folks will start to talk about young ladies visiting an old bachelor at all hours. Yes, that’s Miss Jane, a rare marvel at the piano, she is, and such a voice.”
The unseen occupant of the room had now added her voice to the tune. It rang out, clear and perfectly pitched, to the final chorus –
“Oh, the pricketty bush
That pricks my heart full sore
And if ever I get out of this pricketty bush
Then I never will get in it any more.”
I could not help clapping at the end, although I might have saved my effort, for it was greeted only by the sound of a piano lid being slammed down and footsteps retreating until a door was slammed, cutting off all further sound.
“Aye, that’s Miss Jane,” said Molly, “lovely voice she has, and plays that piano like an angel, but she’s awful shy, and hates being watched or listened to.”
I was not too fond of being watched or overheard myself, and immediately resolved to learn to play the pianoforte. The twisted, childhood logic of this decision escapes me now, but it seemed the perfectly obvious thing to do at the time.
“I shall learn to play and sing like that,” I announced. “I shall make it a condition of my going to school.”
And so I did, with many other conditions and compromises and negotiations. A positive treaty we made of it between us in the end. Fitzwilliam even asked me whether I should like it drafted in a round, legal hand, on parchment and sealed with the family crest, and whether we should travel to Utrecht or Vienna for the signing.
Vienna would have suited me very well, as we should never have got back in time for the beginning of the school term, but, somehow, I did not quite dare take him at his word.
But she who treats at the start, yields in the end, and we both of us knew what my fate would be.
So it was, that my childhood ended with that Pemberley summer, and I left Derbyshire that autumn, to be made into a lady.
Chapter Six :School days
My schooldays were, I think, as happy as most, that is to say, not particularly. That is not to say, however, that they were particularly unhappy neither. They were a reasonable mixture of both, which may make for rather tedious reading, but is, I think, much more true to life.
Were it not that Fitzwilliam can do no wrong, however, I might have questioned his choice of Mrs Goddard’s school.
I believe the establishment was a pretty fair example of girls’ schools at the time. Indeed, I have reason to believe that it was better than average. The slanders I had attempted to pass off on my brother notwithstanding, the girls were well-fed and housed, and there was no cruelty of any kind. The teachers were neither hostile nor indifferent, but actively interested in their charges and determined that they should do well.
That was the trouble. Active interest in my doings was something to which I was by no means accustomed, and I did not take to it kindly. Lady Catherine had essentially left us to it in the nursery, and the summer with my brother had left me feeling that I no more needed supervision than he did. What my teachers thought of as ‘taking an interest’ I considered to be meddling, and their idea of assistance struck me as interference.
They were, I believe, genuinely desirous of my ‘doing well’ with them. Their ideas of ‘doing well’, however, were not quite the same as mine. Reading competently- as long as the subject was not too complicated -, writing a fair hand, reckoning up an account, sewing a fine, straight seam, creating menus, these were the things on which the school set great store. Lessons in music, French and Italian might be had, as ‘extras’, but any approach to any subject beyond these was regarded as unladylike. Indeed, Mrs Goddard’s approach to girls’ education might well have been based upon the famous Mrs Malaprop. I remarked so, myself, to her face, when I had grown more bold by use, but found her quite in agreement with that character’s words when I read them out to her-
Then, Sir, she should have a supercilious knowledge in accounts; --
and as she grew up, I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries; -- but above all, Sir Anthony, she should be mistress of orthodoxy, that she might not mis-spell, and mis-pronounce words so shamefully as girls usually do; and likewise that she might reprehend the true meaning of what she is saying. -- This, Sir Anthony, is what I would have a woman know; -- and I don't think there is a superstitious article in it."
“Quite right, my dear,” was her comment. “I might add that I do not think a familiarity with the works of such as Mr Sheridan overly desirable in a young lady neither, but in this case I shall make an exception. I dare say you have been in Turner’s back room again.”
She meant well, but Fitzwilliam had already told me what he expected of an educated young lady, and I despaired of meeting his requirements.
I believe my brother settled on the school in the end as being in a location both near town and as near equally convenient for Pemberley, Rosings, and Fitzwilliam Towers as might be, the idea being, presumably, that visits from my nearest and dearest would thereby be encouraged. I fear he had reckoned without the undoubted fact that somewhere equally convenient for all tends also to be equally inconvenient for all, and the projected visits never materialised.
Fitzwilliam did his duty, conveying me there at the beginning of every term and rescuing me at the end of each. His half-term visits were meticulously paid, too, and always a treat.
Other diversions were few indeed. The Earl, I believe, never thought twice about me all the time I was there, but that is only to be expected. He thinks only of dogs and guns at the best of times. Captain Fitzwilliam called twice in the first term, while he was still quartered in London, but then was sent to Spain, whence it would not be reasonable to expect much in the way of morning calls.
As for Lady Catherine, apart from the occasional state visit to Pemberley, and the even more occasional trip to London, she does not travel. The mountain does not come to Mahomet; Mahomet comes to the mountain.
My solitary state was thus in marked contrast to that of my schoolfellows, who were, for the most part, daughters of minor gentry, or even yeomanry of the neighbourhood, sent there to be out of the way at home, but with enough of family nearby to be not forgotten, or short of invitations for weekends and evenings.
My own social status tended to bar me from such gatherings. What could the presumptive heiress of Pemberley, with thirty thousand pounds of her own, have to do with farmers’ daughters?
Farmers’ daughters, to be brutally honest, were what most of the pupils were, attending by the day and returning to their parents in the evening.
Even among the parlour boarders, supposed to be a most superior set, there was only one girl, apart from myself, who was not local, and she was the daughter of ….somebody. Exactly who, no-one seemed to know.
This mystery was none other than Harriet Smith, the girl who had shown me around when I first visited the establishment. It might be assumed from such an occurrence and from the common singularity of both our positions that we should become fast friends. In fact I rather hoped it would, at first at least, but it never happened.
Our tastes were too different and our abilities too unequal. Besides, she was several years year older than I, and these things assume a great significance in childhood. I resented this advantage in age, and was inclined to take every kindness and mark of distinction as condescension.
I was in no mood to be patronised by the daughter of anybody, let alone the daughter of ….somebody, and was not as yet practised enough in the ways of the world to hide my resentment sufficiently. Still, Harriet, and her real bosom friend, Elizabeth Martin, while not precisely gremial, were the nearest I had to friends in Highbury.
Miss Martin was a perfect example of a farmer’s daughter, and, I admit, none the worse for it. Cows and chickens were her concern, not novels and music, and she was only at the school to learn enough arithmetic to keep accounts, and enough of the social graces to pass among the restricted society of the county yeomanry.
She was Harriet’s constant companion, and never failed to refer to her as ‘the prettiest girl in the school’, which I thought showed a remarkable want of judgement, since I myself was much sturdier, shapelier and more rosy-cheeked than Harriet, who was only a poor, thin little creature, and not nearly so tall as I, although she was so much older.
She was a sad, thin little creature in her accomplishments, too, never having read anything but the occasional chapbook, and totally incapable of stringing two notes together on the old spinet in the common room.
She had very little to say for herself, as a rule.
Mrs. Goddard, and the teachers, and the girls and the affairs of the school in general, formed naturally a great part of her conversation—and but for her acquaintance with the Martins of Abbey-Mill Farm, it must have been the whole. But the Martins occupied her thoughts a good deal; she spent two very happy months with them, every summer, and for weeks afterwards would talk of nothing but the pleasures of her visit, and describe the many comforts and wonders of the place, speaking with so much exultation of Mrs. Martin's having "two parlours, two very good parlours, indeed; one of them quite as large as Mrs. Goddard's drawing-room; and of her having an upper maid who had lived five-and-twenty years with her; and of their having eight cows, two of them Alderneys, and one a little Welch cow, a very pretty little Welch cow indeed; and of Mrs. Martin's saying as she was so fond of it, it should be called her cow; and of their having a very handsome summer-house in their garden, where some day they were all to drink tea:—a very handsome summer-house, large enough to hold a dozen people."
"Mr. Martin”, I asked, when she first mentioned his name, not yet having tired of the entire subject “ is not a man of information beyond the line of his own business? He does not read?"
“Oh yes! – that is, no – I do not know – but I believe he has read a good deal – but not what you would think anything of. He reads the Agricultural Reports, and some other books that lay in one of the window seats – but he reads all them to himself. But sometimes of an evening, before we went to cards, he would read something aloud out of the Elegant Extracts, very entertaining. And I know he has read the Vicar of Wakefield. He never read the Romance of the Forest, nor The Children of the Abbey. He had never heard of such books before I mentioned them, but he is determined to get them now as soon as ever he can
And so she would go on, prattling for hours on end of the pleasure of pigs and the delight of ducklings. And this was the least vacuous of my new companions!
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that, although I was not exactly unpopular at school, I found no-one with whom I could form a bosom friendship. I am perfectly convinced that it was largely my own fault that this should be so. I am a Darcy: I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding; certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their offences against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper has been called resentful. I do not believe that to be true, but it is true that my good opinion, once lost, is lost for ever.
So it was that I led a somewhat solitary existence at Highbury, with little to divert me from observing the foibles of my fellows save for the circulating libra
ry. That proved to be unexpectedly good for such a small village. I suppose I should have reasoned that, although out of the way, Highbury was not so very far from London for those possessed of their own means of transport, that is. Not being so possessed, it seemed to me as effective a place of exile as Siberia, or the Antipodes. To say that by the waters of Highbury I sat down and wept when I remembered Pemberley would not be too exaggerated a description of my first term there, at least, but that was before I had discovered what might be borrowed from the back room of the village shop, where stood the bookshelves crammed with volumes that were changed monthly. Very few of Mrs Goddard’s girls were possessed of both the money to pay the subscription demanded and the will to spend it on anything apart from confectionery and frippery, and, indeed, to be seen with ‘one’s nose in a book’ was to male oneself a mark for every girl who cared to enquire about the colour of one’s stockings, but I did not care.
The library at Rosings had been full of books, but they were all volumes of ancient histories and recondite enquiries, mostly of an eschatological nature, the late Sir Lewis de Bourgh having been something of a millenarian, and convinced, from his researches into certain obscure histories of the Franks, that the world was to end, not at the thousandth anniversary of our Saviour’s birth, but at the thousandth anniversary of the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire, that is to say, in the year 1800. When it failed to do so, he took it as a personal insult, and retired to his bed to enjoy a decline, expiring there shortly after the year’s end, which at least saved him the inconvenience of witnessing that same empire’s end at the hands of the Corsican Tyrant some five years later. Pemberley library was much more stocked with books of general interest, but these too were mainly works of history and philosophy, both natural and moral.
In that little room behind the village shop, however, I discovered the novel.
I know quite well what it is fashionable for the world to say about novels. While the abilities of the nine- hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogised by a thousand pens, there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit and taste to recommend them. “I am no novel-reader—I seldom look into novels—Do not imagine that I often read novels—It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss--?” “Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.