To Make Sport for our Neighbours

by Ronald McGowan

  The family physician came, and immediately declared the malady to be a stroke. He bled the patient and advised that he be kept warm and as tranquil as possible, and said that we could only hope for an improvement.

  “In many instances these cases right themselves, to a degree, at least,” he said. “We must wait and see.”

  He left his sovereign sleeping draught, and while Mrs. Bennet was administering it and we were hidden from female ears, I took the opportunity, under the guise of paying him his six and eightpence, to ask his true opinion.

  “My dear sir,” he replied, “you must not expect too much. It is too early to say, but a stroke always leaves its mark. Sometimes that mark is not so pronounced as to prevent the patient from leading a normal life, but such outcomes, I regret to say, are not common. I will say no more, for fear of saying too much. While there is life, there is hope, you know.”

  From that day forward, my father left all details of business to me, and took no more interest in any of his old pastimes, but sat by the fire and mumbled to himself most of the day.

  The news of Mrs. Bennet being once more “in the family way” brought back his old spirit for a while. He would busy himself with extravagant attention to her health and comfort, and regale us all with thoughts of “dishing old Collins yet”, but the birth of a third girl child had its lamentably predictable consequence.

  He took one look at her, made no pretence at joy, congratulations or even interest, and, without another word, took to his bed.

  Three weeks later his valet found him there, cold and stiff. We buried him in the family tomb at St Michael’s, attended by every notable family in the county, as well as all the tenants and villagers.

  Mr. Collins did not put in an appearance.

  Chapter Seven : When I became a man, I put away childish things

  I was now Mr. Bennet of Longbourn, undisputed master of both house and estate, with dozens of tenants dependent upon me and a major figure – if not the major figure – in Meryton society. I had looked forward to this time as my opportunity, finally, to please myself and get on with my own interests rather than following the lead of others. In fact, I found myself more than ever constrained for time, both for family life and for any hopes of continuing with my pet project, as Mrs. Bennet had taken to calling my eternally postponed researches.

  I had inherited from my father not only his estate and fortune, such as that was, but his position on the town council at Meryton, and his seat on the magistrates’ bench. It is a moot point in which capacity I had to deal with the blacker villains, or the greater fools. Heretofore, I had never been wont to seek amusement in either foolishness or villainy, but now discovered that I must invent some means of enduring the interminable prosing of the great and good of Meryton or else run mad.

  So I became a collector of the foibles of others, and a fabricator of a character for myself. The average country gentleman, if he be not inclined to hunting or shooting, or drink, or womanizing, has very little else to do but create a character for himself. Indeed, for what else do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours?

  The Bench, to be sure, was the least trying of these ordeals. The crimes that came before us were commonplace and tedious enough, and for the most part the offenders were depressingly familiar. We all knew that so-and- so would be before us again soon enough for drunk and disorderly, and that nothing we could do would stop such-and-such from beating his wife. So we passed our little sentences and imposed our trifling punishments and moved on to the next. There was always a long enough list to get through.

  Our public pronouncements were, necessarily, unimpeachable and inevitably partook of the pompous. The nature of the law and the possession of a little, brief authority tends to have that effect.

  It was in the opinions expressed behind the scenes that sources of petty diversion could be discovered by the discerning.

  I name no names, of course, but there was no shortage of “hanging judges”, who would take their classification quite literally if only they were not obliged to pass any crime of any consequence at all up to the assizes.

  “Hang them all,” was the constant injunction of a certain person otherwise known throughout the county for the mildness of his temper. “That’s the only way to be sure they won’t do it again. Just making a rod for our own backs otherwise.”

  When I was still new to the Bench I had the temerity to suggest that, although hanging might admittedly be effective in reducing the danger of recidivism, it might, perhaps, be a little extreme if the defendant were later found to be innocent. This shocking, almost Jacobin proposal met, I am glad to say, with all the scorn and contempt it deserved.

  “They’re all guilty,” was the general opinion, “if not of this particular crime, then of some other just as bad that hasn’t been found out yet. Hang them all, and not only will they not do it again, but many, many others will take note of the example, and they will not do it either.”

  I like to assure myself that if the local bench had had the power to try capital cases, their opinions might have been different, but I cannot be entirely convinced.

  The fines and other minor sentences we were empowered to pass upon the miscreants who came before us seemed to have very little effect, but then neither did the awful prospect of appearing before the Assize daunt the defendants in those rare cases of consequence which occasionally had their first hearing in Meryton Town Hall.

  We had, to be sure, very few instances of impersonating a Chelsea Pensioner, or defacing Westminster Bridge, or even of consorting with gypsies for a month on end, although I dare say all three options had their temptations, but we were not short of our capital cases for all that. Our drunken husbands still beat their long-suffering wives to death from time to time, our penurious heirs occasionally plotted against their fathers, our jealous husbands took their vengeance on their rivals, and our petty thieves quite often stole a shilling’s worth.

  These latter cases were the ones more prone to be a source of amusement rather than depression, for they were cases in which it might possibly lie within our power to affect the outcome. The lengths to which my colleagues would go to avoid the danger of being compelled to pass the case to the Assize, where a capital sentence could not be avoided, were a comedy in themselves.

  Completely ignoring the actual evidence and basing their judgements on personal knowledge of the accused or the plaintiff was standard procedure in each and every case, of course.

  With major felonies, however, there was usually someone, either on, or near the Bench to make it known that -

  “Old Tom’s a jolly good fellow, really, when he’s not in drink, and he has a wife and seven children to support. He must have been desperate even to think of stealing. I’ll see to it that he doesn’t do it again, and anyway, Snooks can well afford it, the prices he charges my wife for her fripperies, he must be coining money.”

  Or

  “Snodgrass is one of us, you know, and would never have been driven to this if he hadn’t been hounded so by his tailor for the trifle he owes. You wouldn’t see old Buffy’s son hang for a miserable few guineas, would you?”

  This sort of plea if made openly, in court, by the defendant would be sure to meet with resistance, if only for appearance’s sake, but when made behind the scenes, by another Justice of the Peace, it would be accepted as a professional courtesy, a courtesy also invariably extended to the local gentry and their families. In such a case, the efforts that were made to induce a witness to depose that the valuable item whose loss he had reported and which had been found in the possession of the defendant, or which the defendant had sold to some notorious receiver, had cost him but elevenpence-halfpenny were such as would have done justice to Moliere.

  The reactions of the wives of Meryton, on discovering that their treasured possession, particularly their trinkets and keepsakes from their beloved were worth less than a shilling were even more worth the observing.

  And yet that odd halfpenny coul
d cost a man’s life. I should hate to be thought guilty of any such heinous offence as a tendency towards mere democracy, but I cannot help wondering whether a society in which a man’s life is worth no more than a halfpenny, or even a shilling, is perhaps, M. Voltaire notwithstanding, not entirely the best of all possible worlds.

  To tell the truth, the two days a week I was obliged to spend in Meryton Town Hall were a trial in every sense of the word, the meetings of Meryton Town Council even more so than those of the Magistrates’ Court.

  There the questions to be determined were even more otiose, and the whole place was little more than a talking shop and drinking club. Paupers would, occasionally come upon the parish, but almost never before the town council. The upkeep of the roads within the borough had long since been devolved upon a series of turnpike companies, and, since there was very little to spend them on save his own stipend, the assessing and collection of the rates could safely be left to the Town Clerk. Its chief purpose seemed to me to be to enable the worthies of Meryton to have a convivial evening away from their wives and families occasionally, while enjoying the comforting sensation of doing their civic duty. Certainly, we resorted rather more to beef than to books, and consumed much more port than paper.

  In those days, I was quite as assiduous in my devotion to duty as the next man, and it was from just such a meeting that I was summoned by the arrival of my third daughter.

  Chapter Eight : To a father waxing old, nothing is dearer than a daughter

  Mary, I confess, was the first of my children who was not welcomed with unalloyed delight. After Jane’s birth, hopes were high of a boy on the second attempt. Elizabeth was not the longed-for son, I admit, but the little pet was so charming and taking in her ways that we scarce noticed her gender. Mrs. Bennet and I, at least, still had hopes of an heir.

  Third time unlucky, however, seemed to make all the difference. It did not help that my father took it so seriously to heart. So seriously, in fact that, shortly afterwards, he took to his bed, and died but a few weeks later, as much of disappointment as of anything else.

  He was scarce older then than I am now, and his passing cast a gloom over the house which I fear must have affected little Mary even as she lay in her cradle. Never have I seen a child more solemn and serious, and the infant foreshadowed the studious young lady into which she grew as the years passed by.

  Not that the little creature was not always eager to please, but somehow, right from the beginning, she never seemed to strike the right note.

  Perhaps her earliest days made a difference in her character. It is an old debate, nurture versus nature. The wet-nurse we had employed for Jane and Elizabeth, a cheery, young matron, married to one of our own farmworkers, was neither cheery nor married any more. Her husband had been killed in a farming accident, and she had moved out of the district to live with her cousins over the other side of St. Albans. The only alternative we could find was of a very different temperament.

  I met her only the once, for, of course, Mrs. Bennet dealt with all these matters normally. She struck me as a very morose, almost sour young woman, not at all like young Mary Watkins, but she had a young child of her own, and Mrs. Long had recommended her very highly. She was a Methodist, apparently, or it may have been a Baptist or some other outlandish sect much given to dwelling upon the Commandments and little else. We made nothing of this. In my childhood, all of Meryton had been regular churchgoers, but, since the arrival of a particularly persistent Methody preacher, non-conformists were becoming not uncommon. They gave no trouble, and were, in many ways, model members of the community. If I thought about it at all, I dare say I considered a little fear of God not a bad thing for a small child to learn.

  And in many ways, Mary turned out an ideal daughter, if only she had become possessed of ideal parents. When she came back from her wet-nurse she was a very solemn little child, to be sure, and never romped with her sisters, nor even displayed a smile upon her face, but she was perfectly biddable and amenable in all things, a text-book “good little girl” - if you used the same textbook.

  Textbooks, of course, are just what Mary has always been interested in since first she could toddle far enough and reach high enough to pull a volume from the lowest shelf in the library. Her interest at that age, however, was for exercise more masticatory than mental. Left to herself, she would happily spend her time chewing their covers and drooling all over the pages with gusto and quite evident delight.

  I have been known to devour a good book myself, and I am normally in favour of encouraging an appetite for literature, but not in the literal sense.

  To give her credit, she always preferred the more serious works, and avoided mere novels and other cheap volumes. Whether this denoted a taste for learning, literature, or merely leather I am still at a loss to say.

  To say that we were desperate by the time we set about engendering our next child would be an exaggeration. I will, however, admit to some little anxiety as to the future prospects of three portionless daughters.

  I could think of one way, and one way only of ensuring their future after my own demise. Breaking the entail upon Longbourn would enable me to settle sufficient upon each of them to ensure a respectable competence. But to break the entail I would need the consent of the heir. Such consent would never be forthcoming from Mr. Collins, and even to raise the subject with him would certainly cause more harm than good. To succeed in such a project I needed a more amenable heir, who could only be the son of my body, as the lawyers say.

  I will not admit to Kitty being a disappointment, either. I am proud of all my daughters, each in her own way, and refuse to be disappointed in any of them. But her health has always been a concern. She was a puling, sickly baby, and progressed through her puling, sickly childhood to grow into a young lady who seemed determined to model herself upon the consumptive heroines of the worst kind of sentimental novel. She developed the art of the cough to a level which might have been envied by Mozart. Where other young ladies played or sang, Kitty coughed, and wondered why more young men were not attracted.

  I am as selfish as the next man, I own, and found myself less than delighted at the thought of yet another portion to find. I did the best I could for her, however, calling her after her great-aunt Catherine, a pious maiden of ninety-two, who had lived upon half her jointure for the past fifty years and had absolutely no-one else to whom she could reasonably bequeath the surplus thus accumulated. I might as well have named her Pamela, however, or Clarissa, for all the good it did. All poor Kitty received when her great aunt passed away was a set of mourning jewellery, the balance going to various charities for the relief of indigent gentlewomen.

  I am all in favour of piety and good works and so forth, but surely, but if such were her wishes, who could have epitomized the indigent gentlewoman more perfectly than her own great-niece, or indeed, nieces?

  Thereafter we continued trying, in a desultory, half-desperate sort of way, but when Lydia was born two years later, I, for one, tacitly admitted defeat, and I believe that Mrs. Bennet did so too.

  The very name of our last child, Lydia, seems to me to signify how much our hopes had languished with her birth. I have never confided this to anyone but these pages, but from the day of her birth our only realistic hopes for the future lay in economy. I must cut our expenses and somehow lay by enough money to provide competences for my daughters. I calculated that if I should live another twenty years, and if we could reduce our outlay so as to save half my income – which, indeed, ought to be possible, a family ought to be able to live on a thousand a year – by the end of that time my purpose ought to be accomplished.

  I had reckoned, of course, without Mrs. Bennet, who could never be convinced that two and two added up to four when she wanted them to make five, and whose promises of retrenchment invariably gave rise to more expense than ever.

  The singular mode of economy with which she responded to all my objections invariably made things worse.

  �
�But, Mr. Bennet,” she would say, “by buying the sarsenet instead of the shantung I have saved all of five guineas. I could put that five guineas towards a ten guinea pelisse. But if I content myself with a paisley shawl instead that will be another five guineas saved, making ten in all. Now with those ten guineas I can afford a new surtout……”

  All my careful and frequent explanations, that none of the money created by these ‘savings’ actually existed, fell on perpetually stony ground. Nothing could convince Mrs. Bennet that she was not the most economical and saving wife in Meryton, grievously misunderstood and unappreciated by her husband. If she had been right on just one of those heads I should have been more content, but we must all make shift to live with our lot.

  Chapter Nine: whose daughters ye are as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.

  Looking back upon these pages, I see that at some point what began as a commonplace book where I could jot down my thoughts has developed into a sort of Secret History of my immediate family. So be it, then. I shall be my own Procopius, and hope to be as frank about my own shortcomings and the foibles of those about me as the original was of Justinian and Theodora.

  It is an extra task, to be sure, to keep me away from my Great Project, but I am old enough now, and cynical enough withal, to know that that endeavour is never likely to be finished, and find that I am quite content to furnish myself an excuse for neglecting it.

  Reason tells me that my girls are as silly, and inconsequential, and unimportant in the scheme of things as any others, but I am fond of them, for all that, and would wish them to have some record of my feelings for them when I am gone. The old maxim Litera scripta manet may work both ways, I am aware, but the stout lock upon my desk will forestall any embarrassment meanwhile.

  Each of my daughters has been a delight to me in her own peculiar way. Each has progressed through the same stages in her own, distinctive, fashion.