Prologue
Longbourn, March 1802
“Mr Bennet, you spoil that child and do her no favours by distinguishing her above her sisters,” Fanny Bennet cried. “You have turned her into a hoyden who is a younger version of yourself!”
Frances Bennet née Gardiner, called Fanny by all, was in high dudgeon, as she often was, thanks to her second daughter ignoring her directives. The ten-year old girl, Elizabeth Rose Bennet, called Lizzy, was secure in her knowledge her father would support her over her mother, or any other in the family for that matter.
“Mrs Bennet, why do you disturb my peace with nonsense?” Thomas Bennet barked at the woman who was taking him away from his latest book and the glass of port close at hand. “Who are you to talk when you spoil Lydia and hold Jane above all of her sisters? You are always upset with her because you do not favour Lizzy. In cases where she is not to blame, you still assign the fault to her.”
“How you love to vex me Mr Bennet! Such flutterings, such palpitations I feel, my nerves,” Fanny responded, pointedly not addressing her husband’s accusations. She turned and fled from Bennet’s study. As she made for the drawing room the oft heard, “Hill, my salts!” rang through the halls of Longbourn. Bennet stood and closed his door and then returned to his book, found his place, and after a sip of his port, commenced reading again.
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Bennet had become the master of Longbourn more than fifteen years ago. He had hoped he would have many more years to pursue his scholarly interests before having to take over the management of the family estate, situated near the market town of Meryton in Hertfordshire. Unfortunately, God had not agreed with his plan and when he was two and twenty, his parents had perished in a carriage accident. As the only son, in fact the only surviving child of Henry and Elizabeth Bennet, he had no choice but to begin his time as master of the estate.
In 1788 he was taken with the beauty—golden blonde hair, deep cerulean blue eyes, and a willowy well-formed figure—of Frances Gardiner, who was sixteen at the time, and before she was seventeen, he made her his wife and the mistress of his estate. Unfortunately, once it was far too late to make a change, he decided that with her outward façade, she was of mean understanding, which was the way he then treated her.
Fanny began to behave the same way she was treated, as an unintelligent, vapid, and an inveterate gossip. It was the time her complaints about her nerves came to the fore. She was the daughter of a solicitor, the late Elias Gardiner, who had owned a law practice in Meryton. Fanny had been the youngest of three Gardiner children. The eldest, Hattie—seemed very much like her younger sister in character and intelligence—was married to Frank Phillips who had taken over their father’s law practice on his decease.
The middle Gardiner was their brother Edward. It was apparent that the lion’s share of the intelligence and good sense apportioned to the Gardiner offspring had been bestowed upon him. Gardiner was in trade in the import – export business. He, his wife, and one child (so far), lived in London, on Gracechurch Street near Cheapside, close to his warehouse.
One of the many deficiencies Bennet had not considered when they married was Fanny had not been raised as a gentlewoman so she had no clue how to act as one, never mind raise their daughters as gently born young ladies. He ignored the fact he had never taken the time or trouble to educate her in the ways of the gentry.
One of the things that contributed to Fanny Bennet’s ‘nerves’was Longbourn was entailed to heirs male, and so far all they had were five daughters. Jane had been born in January 1790. Fanny had welcomed Jane into the world with glee, especially as by the age of two when Fanny was close to her lying in with the next child, Jane looked like a facsimile of her mother at the same age. In Fanny’s opinion, which she shared far and wide whether others wanted to hear or not, she was the most beautiful girl that ever was.
As much as Fanny had insisted her second child was to be the all-important son and heir—just as her husband demanded, instead it had been another girl. Worse than that, she favoured the colouring of the Bennets, light olive skin, dark hair, and by five months of age Elizabeth had the same emerald green eyes as her late paternal grandmother. Fanny insisted the babe was wilful for not being the required son.
Next was Mary in May 1794. She was followed in July 1795, by Catherine, who Fanny called Kitty, and in February 1797, Lydia was born. The latter had been a very large babe, and, according to the midwife, caused damage, with the result that Fanny would not be able to have any more children. As they grew, Kitty and Lydia had the Gardiners’ colouring while Mary was a mix of her parents’ families. She had brown, very straight hair, and by the time she was three, Fanny had decided Mary was plain.
To any who heard her extol the looks of some of her children, it looked as if all Fanny cared about was beauty, and by her definition one had to look like her to be beautiful. Hence as they grew and looked more and more like her, Jane andLydia could do no wrong. Kitty was blonde, but a darker shade than the aforementioned sisters. Fanny more or less ignored Mary and Kitty as they did not have Gardiner colouring. As she gravitated to her father, and he to her, Lizzy became her least favourite daughter.
Fanny knew it was not Lizzy’s fault she had not being born a boy, after all it was God who determines what the sex of the babe will be, but the way her husband favoured Lizzy ensured she could not like her second daughter as much as any of her others.
Her biggest lament and worry was what would happen if Mr Bennet died, which she was convinced would be sooner rather than later, then she and her daughters would be evicted from Longbourn to starve in the hedgerows. Fanny was aware her dowry of five thousand pounds was invested in the four percents and that generated her allowance of two hundred pounds per annum, paid out to her quarterly. That amount was all well and good when her husband was alive, but when he passed, it would be the same amount, not a penny more, for all five of them, unless one or more of her daughters were well disposed in matrimony. All the girls had as a dowry was a share of the five thousand, and that was only after Fanny passed away. In fourteen years of marriage, her husband had not added anything to his daughters’ dowries.
The problem was Bennet had been an indolent man, long before he inherited the estate. He always sought the path which would cause him to expend minimal energy and effort. He would only exert himself and leave his study for cases in which he had no choice. Due to this, Longbourn’s income had fallen from close to four thousand pounds per annum to barely above two thousand. Rather than expend the effort to rein in his wife’s overspending on everything, Bennet mocked, teased, and generally disrespected her, both privately and publicly. She had not a clue what a budget was—and Bennet did nothing to educate her—never mind keeping her to one, soshe spent money indiscriminately on fripperies, dinners one would expect in a royal palace, and clothing for herself and her favourite daughters.
When his brother-in-law Edward Gardiner begged him to move Fanny’s dowry to him to invest and also send him an annual amount to build dowries for his daughters, Bennet had nodded his head and then done nothing as he could not bother himself.
The lie he told himself was as the estate would one day devolve to a distant cousin, it was not worth the effort to maintain the income levels or save. He ignored the fact the entail only awarded estate income to the new master from the time he inherited. That way if he had done as Gardiner had prompted, and also maintained the income levels of Longbourn, the benefit would have been to his daughters, not as he told his wife, the Collinses, who were next in line to inherit the estate after Bennet went to his final reward. In addition, he had his own reasons why he chose not to increase his daughters’ portions.
Bennet had no time for his wife and daughters, with one exception, Elizabeth. He had ensured, from a very young age, that she was like him in many ways. She was a bibliophile, extremely intelligent, had a personality similar to his, was already rather proficient at chess, and she could hold her own in debate with him. Although he had no son, in many ways he related to his Lizzy as if she was the son he did not have.
It did not hurt, when she was younger, she had been more inclined to play with the boys in the neighbourhood rather than her own sex. Lizzy climbed trees, skipped stones on the pond, and could physically best many of the boys of her age, even though like Bennet’s late mother, she was rather petite. She loved walking or riding all over the estate and would often times come home dirty from head to toe. The more his wife decried her penchant to return with the hem of her dresses covered with six inches and more of mud, the moreBennet encouraged her.
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Jane and Elizabeth, regardless of the fact they were as different in character as chalk and cheese, were the closest of sisters. From the time Lizzy was two and had been able to play with the then four-year-old Jane they had been inseparable.
Jane was serene, never showed her emotions, and did not like getting dirty outside, or anywhere else for that matter. Elizabeth on the other hand was quick to anger, had the same sardonic wit as their father, vivacious, impertinent, and loved to argue. Although their mother would constantly tell Elizabeth her looks were ‘nothing to Jane’s’ and, on the other side, Elizabeth could do no wrong in their father’s eyes, it did not come between the two eldest Bennet sisters. Despite all of the differences in temperament and character, as they got older they only became closer one to the other.
On the other end of the age spectrum in the household were Kitty and Lydia. At five, Lydia’s forceful temperament had begun to assert itself, and as she was, in her mother’s eyes, a lively girl who reminded Fanny very much of herself at the same age, she could do no wrong. Although Kitty was more than one and a half years Lydia’s senior, in order to garner some of her mother’s attention Kitty followed Lydia around and deferred to her in all things.
Mary was lost in the middle. Jane and Lizzy had one another, and the same, in their own way was true of Kitty and Lydia. With her mother calling her plain and her father ignoring her, which to be fair was the same for all of the Bennet sisters save Lizzy, Mary decided the only way to distinguish herself was to become the most accomplished of the sisters. Unfortunately, with the spendthrift ways of her mother, and her father only interested in purchasing more books and port, no money was available for a music master so the only option Mary had was a widow who gave lessons in Meryton. For that she had to use her own pin money.
Another area Mary decided where she could rise above her sisters was with regards to piety. Hence she spent much time reading the Bible and memorising passages she could recite at times where she thought they fit. The problem was at a young age, she did not understand the nuances and she lacked the self-confidence to approach Mr Pearce, the vicar of the Longbourn Village church, to ask him to explain the meaning behind the verses she was reading.
Unlike most gently bred children, the Bennet sisters were not educated by a governess. Fanny Bennet had railed against the need for one, to which her husband had capitulated without argument to maintain the peace. She had claimed she was able to teach them whatever they needed to know, ignoring the fact she had not an inkling as to how a gentlewoman should be educated. As far as she was concerned, as long as she taught her daughters how to make themselves appealing so they could catch a man, like she had attracted their father, they did not need to know more. With no son, the only way to secure her own future, and that of her daughters was for all, or at least one of them, had to marry very well, to save them from the entail, hence, Fanny intended to bring her daughters out at fifteen. In her own way, Fanny loved all five of her daughters. She was genuinely afraid of them being left in genteel poverty when her husband was called home to God.
