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“Clergymen should by no means indulge in excessive romantic behavior regarding their wives. It might give the Lower Classes the wrong ideas.”
-Lady Catherine de Bourgh
It was only three days before Christmas, and I had just settled down at Hunsford Parsonage to look over the household accounts, when I received a message that Lady Catherine de Bourgh wanted to see me on a matter of the utmost importance.
Lady Catherine was our neighbor and my husband William Collins’ patroness and indefatigable dispenser of advice, correction, and reproof. Though I did not share my husband’s affection for her, a summons from Rosings was not one to delay answering, or Lady Catherine would be liable to send another messenger or even, God forbid, come herself to see why her orders had been ignored.
What in theworldcould Lady Catherine want to see me about?
I hurried to get ready, stopping to look in the mirror before I left. I had to make sure my bonnet was tied neatly, and I didn’t look too pink-cheeked and blowsy, or Lady Catherine would say “are you the wife of a clergyman or a milkmaid tromping across the fields?”
I was no beauty and I never had been. I had auburn-brown hair, but it was stick-straight and thick, resistant to all the elaborate curls and styles that were most in fashion now. If you tried to curl my hair with curl-papers it would fall into limp and boneless waves and straighten back almost immediately.
I had ordinary brown eyes and I was medium height, neither attractively tiny and fairy-like or admirably tall and willowy. My skin also had a terrible tendency to freckle.
As for my body, I was round everywhere: heavy breasts, round belly, round hips.
I knew as soon as I saw Lady Catherine her sharp eyes would roam over my round belly, wondering every time if I was expecting an interesting event.
I was not, and my failure prickled uncomfortably at my skin.
But I had always been of a practical turn of mind, so I knew there was no benefit to delaying the meeting with Lady Catherine. But I did reflect on how my practicality had led to me being here, wrapped in a warm cloak against the chill December air, and walking the short distance to the great house of Rosings.
Everyone in my hometown of Meryton had been shocked at my engagement to William Collins, clergyman. My neighbors the Bennet family certainly had been. Mrs. Bennet had been shocked because she couldn’t believe with my plain face I had managed to get married before any of her daughters, and my best friend Elizabeth Bennet had been appalled because she couldn’t believe anyone could bear to marry a man she saw asa pompous fool. My own family was shocked, too, my brothers falling over themselves to shake William’s hand and clap him affectionately on the back, so glad were they to get rid of a wallflower sister they had thought would be a burden on their own homes. But I had no desire to end up passed like a parcel between my brothers’ homes, reduced to the poor relation who would do the fetching and the carrying and sleep in the room without a fire.
My parents wept on William’s neck too, because I was plain and had no portion, and here was a respectable match, a man with all his teeth, who had a good income and no known vices.
And so I married a man I wasn’t in love with and have found it a good bargain, mostly, although there are times when I want more. . .
I felt my thoughts trail off as I reached Rosings, stepping gladly into the warmth of the great house.
I was greeted almost immediately by Lady Catherine herself.
Lady Catherine de Bourgh was a very tall woman in her late 40s, with an imposing shelf of a bosom, an elaborate hairdo that seemed at any moment in danger of collapse, pale blue eyes, and a rather sour expression on her face.
She was not a handsome woman, although my husband had been known to say that she had “a stately visage that was unique for its intellect and delicacy, even among those of the great families, where stately visages are not unknown.”
I caught a glimpse of her daughter, Anne de Bourgh, and some of the other visitors in her sitting room, but Lady Catherine swept me away down the hallway to a different ornately furnished and stuffy sitting room, and waved me into a chair.
“What did you want to see me about?” I asked politely, watching her heave that great bosom dramatically.
“Things,” said Lady Catherine, with sinister import, “have taken a turn for the worse. There is a crime wave at Rosings.”
Lady Catherine was known to be a bit on the melodramatic side, although I never would have admitted such a thing out loud to my husband.
“What has happened?” I asked, arranging myself calmly in the chair.
I wasn’t much to look at, but I was calm in a crisis.
“Pigs,” Lady Catherine said, “aremissing.”
I blinked for a moment.
“Are you sure?” I asked, “that they are not merely misplaced?”
Lady Catherine glared at me. “I think I would Know,” she said, enunciating her words in all capital letters, “Whether a Pig is Merely Misplaced.”
