It was snowing a little when I set out but I did not regard it. In my overheated state I even found it exhilarating. The blessed relief of being alone! Of saying the twenty-third psalm as I walked along: “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.” I spoke the words over, mindful of little beyond the reassuring steam of my own breath and the tears running down my face. Anybody passing would have thought me quite mad.
I still have no idea how it happened. Certain it was that I suddenly found myself to be nowhere near Lucas Lodge. I had taken one of the paths to Collins Cottage, the house where the Bushells had once lived but which was now no longer occupied. As far as I could make out though (for the snow was falling fast), it appeared to be lighted up. But when they found me afterwards—chilled to the bone and still babbling of green pastures—they told me that it had been my imagination.
16.
The experience left me badly shaken, and for weeks afterwards—even when I was once more in my own room—I had trouble sleeping. Nan had difficulty persuading me to get up as a consequence, and I spent hours in bed dwelling on my misfortunes, feeling ill-used by my family, and thinking constantly about death and dying. At one stage I was convinced that George had died. I dreamt that he had been thrown from his horse and trampled upon. Similarly Mr. Knowles: I dreamt that he had expired in the Bath Pump Room after drinking purgative liquid. And every morning on waking I feared that my father had died in the night. I was terrified that we would all be cast out of Longbourn to live on the charity of the Gardiners in Cheapside.
I date my melancholia from this time. And although my mind did not immediately serve me another such trick as happened on the path to Collins Cottage, I began to experience odd lapses in concentration. I had trouble playing passages of music—passages I had known for years—and I could no longer read my daily portion of scripture—the print in the prayer book had become too small. Stronger spectacles were tried to no avail. I could be looking at somebody seated only a few feet from me, and of a sudden the person’s face would blur and dissolve—or an inanimate object would start to quiver, seeming to dance out at me.
My reading and studies were now curtailed. Mr. Knowles returned from Bath only to find his services as a tutor no longer required. He was invited to visit as a friend, however, to “cheer poor Mary up,” as Mama expressed it, for the doctors had begun to entertain grave fears for my eyes. I was not permitted to practice my music for more than an hour at a time but I would continue to sit at the instrument, straining to see the black-and-white blur. I was certain that I was going blind.
Hardly a day passed that I did not have a headache and always in the afternoon my stomach began to churn. And the day before my thirteenth birthday I heard a voice—that is to say I imagined a voice—telling me that the Day of Judgment was at hand and to prepare to meet my Maker.
I heard the voice (which sounded remarkably like my father’s) whilst lying abed late, and on rising I saw that my sheets were stained with blood.
Mama, Jane, and Elizabeth were entertaining the new tenants of Haye Park, a Mr. and Mrs. Goulding, when I burst into the drawing room. Jane immediately placed her shawl about me and with a gentle pressure forced me from the room. Nan was then called, and I was bathed and given barley water to drink, and after receiving repeated assurances that I was not about to die, I accompanied Jane downstairs to Papa’s library, where she read to me a passage from Dr. Hunter’s medical book.
After patiently answering my questions, she said: “You ought to have been informed of these matters, my dear Mary.”
She then voiced the same concerns she had raised when I was six years old—that I kept too much to myself, that my room was too far off from the rest of the family &c. She invited me to join herself and Elizabeth on their afternoon walks, and in the evenings when they were making clothes for the poor. “I know that you must not strain your eyes with any close-work, but you might safely tack on the odd pattern. Or simply sit with us and chat. And I would be happy to read to you, and so I am sure would Lizzy. And that way, you know, you might exercise your mind without risk to your eyes. It need not all be on serious subjects. We could read poetry—or even” (smiling) “a novel.”
She then urged me to consider removing to the nursery wing next to Lydia and Kitty. “Believe me, dear Mary, too much solitude is not a good thing.”
I said I would consider it, but I had no intention of quitting my attic room. I told her, however, that it would be a great comfort to me if we could sometimes pray together.
“Certainly, dear. Whenever you wish it.”
But she did not nominate a time, and I felt a stirring of resentment. I watched her walk to the bookshelf and insert Dr. Hunter’s book in its correct place—Jane was a little nearsighted herself—and her graceful movements seemed suddenly an affront. How could such a being who clearly enjoyed (albeit unconsciously) the superiority beauty bestowed feel for someone like myself?
A moment later, she was suggesting we walk outside into the spring sunshine and I at once agreed. On quitting the house, however, she directed our steps to the wilderness, saying: “Should you like us to pray together now, Mary?”
Ashamed of doubting her, I bowed my head, whereupon she began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. I could not join her in speaking the words, my heart was too full, but on raising my eyes I was able to see her—see her clearly, that is. For an instant, she was no longer a blur of barely recognizable features above a blue dress. I had a clear vision of her lovely face.
Elizabeth joined us soon afterwards and we all walked on together, but jealousy soon reared its ugly head. They spoke of the Gouldings and their hopes of finding them pleasant neighbors, and even though they were at pains to include me in their conversation I soon gave up the struggle to listen. I longed to have Jane to myself, but it was not to be. And later I saw that longing as a weakness and told myself not to wish for it.
About a fortnight after my birthday I once more imagined that I heard my father’s voice. As happened before, I was lying abed late, but this time the voice did not frighten me. It was quoting a familiar Bible text—Matthew 5:15: “Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.”
But I soon perceived that there was a message for me within the text, cunningly encoded. The bushel was clearly no ordinary bushel but signified the husband of my old wet-nurse, the drunken Bushell who had so terrified my infant self. Once I understood this, the message was clear. Mama had indeed borne Papa a son, but the Bushells had smothered him and placed their own child—myself—in his place and Papa, having now found them out, intended to enlighten everyone as to what had happened. I would then be banished—sent back to the Bushells to live in poverty and disgrace.
Of course I now know that this was all a product of my sick fancy, but at the time I truly believed it. It seemed to explain so much—my plainness as opposed to my sisters’ good looks and my father’s indifference. I began to look for confirmation in everything they said and did, or more particularly what they failed to say and do, and as everyone knows, “trifles light as air are to the jealous confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ.” I was convinced that they all wished for nothing so much as to be rid of me.
And now, mercifully, my memory becomes as clouded as my vision and there are patches of time quite lost to me. Many people have since told me—and I have no difficulty in believing it—that I was behaving very strangely indeed. When I was not closeted in my room, I was spying on my sisters, trying to overhear their conversations, or sitting talking to myself and smiling. On one occasion—which I do dimly recall—I threw a knife at Lydia across the breakfast table. She had been making faces at me and poking out her tongue—perhaps in response to my own strange staring and smiling. I was banished to my room as a consequence and there confined for several days, speaking to nobody except the servants.
Shortly afterwards, a doctor from Lond
on was called in to attend me.
17.
The doctor’s name was Willis. He was a handsome old, white-haired man and related, so he said, to the Dr. Willis who had treated His Majesty King George. He came recommended by Sir William Lucas, who had met him at the Court of St. James’s and vouched for his skill in treating females suffering from nervous disorders—many of whom, Sir William assured my mother, were titled ladies of fashion.
Had Dr. Willis not possessed such credentials, perhaps my parents might have questioned the treatment he prescribed for me. I was made to sit in a darkened room every morning with a vinegar-drenched cloth wound about my forehead, and at night I was given laudanum to drink (three drops in water) to calm my system after a purge of senna and castor oil.
The treatment lasted several months with Dr. Willis talking about malum hereditarium and repeatedly asking my father whether the Bennet family had any lunatic ancestors.
As can be imagined, I soon became wretchedly weak and suffered several fainting spells—which Dr. Willis said were nothing to worry about, as my inner corruption was being expelled. The only improvement was to my eyesight: I could now distinguish the keys of the pianoforte. In every other respect I felt myself to be much worse. Fortunately, the Gardiners arrived for their regular Christmas visit—the first since the death of Susan—and Aunt persuaded Mama to dispense with Dr. Willis’s services. Had she not done so, I doubt I would have survived.
Another period of confused thinking and another birthday—my fourteenth—followed before another doctor, Dr. Jack, was called in. I disliked him on sight. He was young and fast-talking with an answer, it seemed to me, for everything. With my father, he adopted a man-to-man heartiness I found particularly offensive.
“If Mary were older, Mr. Bennet, I would have no hesitation in recommending marriage. By far the best thing for her in the circumstances, the best antidote, you understand me?” And here he had actually winked at Papa and shot a look at me before continuing: “The virgin disease, we call it, melancholia. Because of the weaker texture of their brains, young females are more susceptible.”
Dr. Jack then caused a rope to be rigged up in the garden to which a chair was attached, and every morning I was made to sit in this chair while he rotated it, explaining to Papa that my mind and body would thus be forcibly reunited. “The fear I have induced in Mary by swinging her so strenuously will drive out all her irrational fears.” He added in an undertone: “The rhythmic nature of the exercise will also be beneficial.”
But after a few weeks he seemed to forget about the swing; he arrived at Longbourn clutching a tattered old book entitled Discourse of the Preservation of the Sight; of Melancholike diseases; of Rheumes, and of Old age. “I turned it up last night, sir,” cried he to my father. “It is precisely Mary’s condition—explains it all—her weak eyesight—’tis Mary to the life.”
He thrust the book at Papa, who took it most willingly. (Papa encouraged Dr. Jack because he found him so entertaining.) “It describes how we all see—the process—we do not see forwards but backwards. Our eyes roll inwards and look at our brains. But the brain of the melancholic is suffused with black bile so that they see only blackness.” Here Dr. Jack closed his own eyes as if to illustrate the condition. “Mary must be bled, Mr. Bennet. There’s nothing else for it.”
So I had then to endure the ordeal of being bled—compared to which the fear of being swung was but a fleabite. I fainted when they first showed me the leeches and when Dr. Jack applied them (two to each temple) they had to forcibly restrain me.
Those were dark days for me. Cure after cure was tried, with Dr. Jack impatient to try everything and failing to test any one thing thoroughly. To quell my so-called religious enthusiasm, he had me inhale ether, and to cure the laxity of my nervous fibers, he dosed me with asafetida. But both treatments were soon left off—to my great relief, I confess—and he moved to dripping hot wax onto my palms in the hope that the pain thus caused would distract me from the pain within my mind.
In the end, however, it was Dr. Jack’s passion for Jane that was his undoing. I had long sensed it coming on. Jane was mildly interested in matters medical and she had questioned many of Dr. Jack’s measures. In the presence of the beautiful Miss Bennet his glib talk had faltered. On finding that strawberries were her favorite fruit he procured some at great expense from a succession house and presented the Bennet household with a basketful.
Altogether, it was a curiously stealthy sort of courtship, with Dr. Jack exercising all the patience he failed to display in his professional capacity. Apart from the strawberries and sundry medical pamphlets he pressed upon her, he made Jane no token of his affection and she remained quite unaware of his passion for her.
One day, however, his natural ardor asserted itself. On arriving at Longbourn, and learning from Mama that Jane was abed with a cold (“Do pray step up and see what you can do for her, dear Dr. Jack.”) he so far forgot himself as to make violent love to Jane. There followed a shocking scene with Jane obliged to flee her own bedchamber (pursued by Dr. Jack, protesting the purity of his intentions) and Mama predictably being thrown into hysterics.
But no sooner did I learn that Papa had given Dr. Jack his marching orders than I felt—not sorry—Dr. Jack had subjected me to too many half-baked cures for me to feel sorry—but I felt that I might have done more to promote my own recovery. I wondered whether I really wanted to get well, to have my brain set to right. In many respects the dark world inside my head had become preferable to the loveless reality of Longbourn.
As it turned out, Dr. Jack’s final advice—set out in a letter to Papa written the day after his dismissal—was both sound and prescient. He recommended a complete change of scene for me, citing as his authority no less a personage than the Chief Physician of the Manchester Lunatic Asylum. “Dr. Ferriar believes” (Dr. Jack had written) “that lunatics recover faster when removed from home. In his view, the attention they receive at home makes them worse, whereas amongst strangers, they are forced to exert their faculties and behave themselves.”
Happily, this advice coincided with an invitation from Mr. Knowles’s mother for me to stay with her in Bath, where she was now a permanent resident. And it was in Bath that, finally, I began to recover.
1.
I arrived in Bath just a fortnight before my fifteenth birthday, and apart from a couple of unhappy visits to Longbourn, I did not leave the place until after I turned seventeen. Much may happen in two and a half years, and in my own case, with the encouragement of Mr. Knowles’s mother, I became by degrees less nervous, less inclined to fancy myself ill, and in company, more cheerful and confident.
My eyesight also improved, and although this was attributed to my drinking the waters, I believe it had more to do with a regimen of regular walks, good plain food, and having to perform many little tasks about the house, for Mrs. Knowles was not wealthy and kept but two servants. Our lodgings were very comfortable nonetheless, a suite of rooms in Edgar Buildings, situated on the edge of the fashionable part of town and within walking distance of the Pump Room.
Soon after my arrival, Mr. Knowles obtained a position as tutor to two young boys in the nearby village of Charlcombe. He always visited us on Sundays, however, escorting us to Bath Abbey for divine service and dining with us afterwards.
With Mrs. Knowles I had much in common. The widow of a clergyman, she was an intensely spiritual woman and extremely fond of music. But here any resemblance ended, for Mrs. Knowles had been a beauty in her youth and was still at the age of fifty a remarkably handsome woman. She had great purple eyes (wreathed with the crow’s foot but still brilliantly expressive), a classically straight nose with pinched nostrils, and bright white hair, which she wore elaborately coiled. Despite the discomfort of persistent bouts of rheumatism, she walked always with an upright back and firm step. Mr. Knowles was devoted to her.
She set me a fine example. Whatever the weather or the state of her health, she never emerged from her bedch
amber later than eight o’clock, and I was expected to do the same. If the morning was fine, we would repair to the Pump Room, there to drink the waters and to greet her numerous acquaintance. We rarely stayed longer than half an hour, however, as Mrs. Knowles disapproved of idle gossip.
Later, I would go to Queen Square for my lessons, and in the evening, we would attend the concerts of the Bath Harmonic Society. If there was no concert, we might go to a public lecture or to the theater—Mrs. Knowles was extremely fond of the drama. We rarely went to private evening parties, as she did not care for cards. (She did not care for balls either, but for me that was no hardship.)
At home in the evenings we took turns to read aloud to each other, always concluding with a scene from Shakespeare and a portion of scripture. Mrs. Knowles now suggested I transcribe some of my favorite passages into a special book—known ever afterwards as “Mary’s Commonplace Book”—so that I might memorize any uplifting thought or wise remark: “No excuse now, my dear Mary, for you to be tongue-tied in company.”
But alas it would be the Commonplace Book, or my misuse of it, which spoilt my first visit to Longbourn. On entering the house after an eight months’ absence, a host of memories, most of them unhappy, rushed in on me, and the smell of the vestibule—a blend of beeswax and chilly tiled floor—quite overset me. When Lydia and Kitty ran to welcome me, it took all my self-control not to repulse them.
Small wonder then that I resorted to the Commonplace Book whenever I felt nervous (and there was rarely a family gathering when I did not feel nervous). And the aimlessness of Longbourn days, so different from my Bath regimen, did not help. When I lay abed late in the morning, there was nobody to remind me of my duties—no governess to supervise my studies.
The Forgotten Sister: Mary Bennet's Pride and Prejudice Page 7