To Make Sport for our Neighbours

by Ronald McGowan

  Imagine my surprise, therefore, when the real reason for these afternoons off was divulged to me the day before we were due to return to London en route to Longbourn.

  Casaubon’s air as he entered the room we had been using as a study that morning was strangely nervous, and before I could even greet him he addressed me-

  “Mr. Bennet, I have a request I must make of you, and I sincerely hope that you will see fit to grant it.”

  “What is it?” I replied, “If you wish to be acknowledged as joint author of our work when it is published, I assure you that such was always my intention.”

  “It is not that, although I thank you for your kind intentions. It is of a more personal nature.”

  “Well, speak it out, my friend, and all I can do to help you shall be done.”

  “I am even more grateful to hear you say those words, but, still, it is so great an imposition….”

  “Come along, sir, spit it out. I promise you to consider your request as favourably as I can, though it be for half my kingdom and the hand of my daughter in marriage.”

  My attempt at jocularity fell flat, however, for now he looked more shamefaced than ever, and I recollected, too late, that a sense of humour was not his prime characteristic.

  “That is just it,” he said, “although the offer of half your kingdom I take to be mere hyperbole. But Miss Mary has impressed me so much these past weeks with the virtues of her character, her diligence and her erudition that I find I will miss her when I return to Cambridge more than I ever though possible. I earnestly desire to make her my lifetime’s companion, and I believe she harbours sentiments not unlike mine. Her hand in marriage is precisely what I have come to ask of you.”

  So this was the reason for his strange neglect of our studies since the night of the ball. And I had thought myself so fortunate in securing as my assistant one who would never be so ensnared. But he was an unexceptionable match, save for one thing.

  “I rejoice to hear what you say,” I replied, “but are you in a position to marry? You will have to give up your fellowship, will you not?”

  “You need have no fear for our project, Mr. Bennet, I assure you. I have thought about this a great deal before approaching you. I intend to live near enough to Cambridge to be able to consult the college libraries whenever there is need. Our collaboration will go on as before, rather better perhaps, with no college duties to distract me.”

  “That is a great comfort, to be sure,” I replied. I did not add that if he thought a wife would provide less distraction from his work than mere “College Duties” he would find himself sadly mistaken. “but what I had in mind was rather how you propose to support a wife, indeed, to live yourself, without your fellowship to support you.”

  “Mr. Bennet,” was his reply, “you have never questioned me about my personal affairs, and I honour you for it, but, in truth, the college fellowship could never have been for me more than a temporary arrangement. I hold at any rate the living of Lowick, as you know, and my brother is unmarried, and has destroyed his health by his intemperance. I fear my inheritance cannot long be delayed. The family estate is rather nearer the town of Middlemarch than it is to Cambridge, but both of them are well within a day’s ride. If you care to make enquiries you will find that your daughter will be quite adequately provided for. The marriage settlement, too, I believe will be satisfactory. Say that I have your blessing in my endeavours and you will assure my lifetime’s gratitude and my lifetime’s happiness.”

  “That, young man, is the sort of thing you should be saying to Mary rather than to me, but, certainly, if my daughter’s sentiments concur with yours, you have my hearty agreement. I think you may already have calculated Mrs. Bennet’s reaction to such news.”

  I decline to put down the effusions of gratitude with which this announcement met, and which had to be silenced by my leaving the room with a promise to send Mary to speak to her suitor.

  I found all my womenfolk in the drawing room, fiddling, as ever, with ribbons and needles.

  “Mary,” I said, “pray attend upon Mr. Casaubon in the study. I believe he has a point on which he particularly wishes to consult you.”

  I was thus imprecise in the hope of preventing an effusion of matchmaking frenzy from Mrs. Bennet.

  Fond, foolish hope! I believe she must have been waiting for the announcement for weeks for she jumped up forthwith and immediately began calculating when and where the ceremony should be and who should be invited.

  All this was nothing, however to the extravagant praise which was lavished both upon her daughter and my assistant when they emerged from the study with smiles upon their faces.

  Chapter Thirty-six Magnaque pars mei vitabit Libitinam

  I will spare the reader a description of the wedding. Nor will I go into details about the manor of Lowick, save to say that enquiries confirmed that, were Mary the heiress of Longbourn, such an alliance would not be beneath her, while even the revenues of the parish would be more than adequate for her comfort.

  I will, also pass over the death of the squire of Lowick a year after the nuptials, and the removal of my new son and daughter to the Manor House. He had not long survived my own, dear wife, and the demise of a comparative stranger could not be of much consequence to me at such a time.

  But let other pens dwell on pain and misery. Instead, I shall pass straight on to the joyous event of the birth of a son to the new squire and his lady. Had it been a daughter, she should have been Jane, after her grandmother. As it was, they named him Edward, after my own father.

  I greatly value all my grandchildren, even more than my sons and daughters. I have observed this tendency in others, and cannot possibly deny it in myself, to prefer the third generation over the second. When I am at Pemberley or Netherfield, nothing gives me greater delight than to romp with the little ones. I am, of course, in my dotage.

  I admit, nonetheless that young Edward holds a special place in my heart. Whether it be from the dispositions of both his parents, or from their efforts at his upbringing, this young man shows a scholarship and erudition that puts both his father and myself to shame. We two have long acknowledged, to ourselves, if to no-one else, that our great work will never be finished in our lifetimes. It is to Master Edward, therefore, that we look for our futurity.

  I confess I have been no great shakes at anything for most of my life, which now is nearly over, and that I have achieved very little during its course. The thought “For what else do we live, but to give sport to our neighbours?” has been not far from the surface of my mind for most of my years.

  Now, however, I have an enduring consolation in my old age. That my daughters are all well-bestowed is a comfort, to be sure, although I could have wished for a more congenial abode for Lydia than a garrison town in the Sugar Islands, and cannot help thinking that Kitty might have done better for herself than the new curate at Pemberley. I call him new, though it has been sixteen years now since Kitty first met him while visiting her sister. How quickly those years have passed, and how little I have achieved of the tasks I set myself! And how little time can there be left?

  But, “non omnis moriar”, and “magnaque pars mei” will endure in young Edward, who, both his father and I are certain will finally complete our great work. When “A Key to All Mythologies” is at last, published, under the names of Casaubon, Casaubon and Bennet, the world will, in due course, be astonished.

  And so, I pen these concluding lines in the sure and certain knowledge that, though my own life has been bounded and constrained by the necessities imposed by my inheritance, in centuries to come, long after those of Wickham, Bingley, or even the great Mr. Darcy have been forgotten, the name of Francis Bennet of Longbourn will live on.

 

 

 
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