Chapter 1
The Bennets of Longbourn
If one were to ask him, Thomas Bennet would be the first to admit he was very naïve when it came to dealing with the fairer sex. Discuss books, intellectual subjects, or even the management of his estate, Longbourn, which was one mile west of Meryton in Hertfordshire, and he was very knowledgeable.
Being the only son—the only child—of his parents, Henry and Elizabeth—called Beth by her beloved husband and friends—Bennet had always known that it was his destiny to be the master of the family estate, which had been in the hands of a Bennet since shortly after King John signed the Magna Carta at Runnymede in June of 1215.
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Bennet’s father had trained him to take over the management of the estate from the time he had been a young lad. The sacred duty he had to perform, in order to be steward of the long and storied Bennet legacy, was impressed on him as was that it was his duty to pass it on to his own son one day. Like all sons of landed gentry, Bennet received a gentleman’s education. He was sent first to Eton and then to Cambridge. He excelled in his studies and was soon acknowledged as a master chess player. He was captain of the chess team and unbeaten in his three years at university. The only thing he regretted about attending Cambridge was that it did not have the Bodleian Library, which was located at Oxford. It did boast of the WrenLibrary, which held an extensive collection, but it was not even half of what the other library boasted. As a bibliophile, Bennet was determined to see the Bodleian one day, even if he would have to hide the fact that he was a Cambridge man.
For five years after he graduated, Bennet worked very closely with his father to learn anything he did not already know about the estate. Father stressed how important it was for him to marry and sire a son.
The need for a son was because Longbourn had an entail to heirs male on it. As his father explained, Bennet was the fourth generation, and the entail was for five. That meant that when he sired a son and said son reached the age of eighteen, the current and future masters could break the entail. His father had highlighted the importance of the estate not falling to the only other eligible line, that of their distant cousins, the Collinses.
Father had explained that in his opinion, his late great-grandfather had erred when he had not excluded the Collins line from being part of the line of succession. He explained that it was his great-grandfather’s younger son, William Bennet, who was a gambler, and not a good one. He had pledged almost half of Longbourn’s lands to cover his debts of honour. Even though Thomas Bennet’s great-great-grandfather could have refused to allow the land to be taken, as his younger son had no authority to pledge it, he ceded the land to his son’s creditors to save William’s life.
The result was that William Bennet was disowned, and his father told him he would never receive another penny from him. It had led to the entail to ensure that no more of Longbourn’s land could be used to pay a debt, sold, or mortgaged. To punish his father, William took the name of the woman he subsequently married—Collins.
When Thomas Bennet had been told all, he agreed with his father that it was obscene that the descendants of the manwho had lost almost half of Longbourn and caused the need for the entail should be allowed to benefit from it. He did not want to criticise his long-dead great-great-grandfather, but the man had made a glaring error when he had written the entail.
While his father was still the master of Longbourn, although he had responsibilities, Bennet had time to read his beloved books. That all changed on the eighth day of January 1784, when Bennet was about to turn four and twenty. The tragedy occurred less than ten miles from Longbourn, on a road much travelled by the Bennets over the years.
Bennet’s parents had celebrated their thirtieth wedding anniversary by spending a few days at an inn in Hertford. It was the same inn where they had met. While they were at the inn, it had been sleeting that day and night. Following that, the temperatures dropped well below freezing overnight. Hence, on the fateful day of their return home, the carriage was negotiating a sharp bend, with a drop on one side when the pair of horses had begun to slip on ice which had been invisible to the coachman. The result was that in their panic, the horses pulled the carriage over the edge. Neither humans nor animals survived the fall.
When his birthday arrived on the twelfth day of February, rather than a celebration, Bennet was mourning his much-loved parents. He decided to mourn for a full year, of which the first six months would be in deep mourning. All of those dependent on Longbourn and the residents of the surrounding area mourned the loss of the good and charitable master and mistress of Longbourn.
Although he was equipped to take on the duties of master, Bennet was not as familiar with his late mother’s duties. In that, the relatively new housekeeper, Mrs Hill was a godsend. Her husband who had been his late father’s valet had been made the butler when the previous one had retired six months before the disastrous accident. Mr Hill acted asBennet’s valet, in addition to his duties as the butler.
Not long after his parents had been interred in the Longbourn Village Church’s cemetery, next to the generations of Bennets who had come before them, a letter arrived. Had he not seen the name Collins as part of the direction, Bennet would have ignored it, but he decided to read it. He had sent a letter announcing the death of his parents, so he supposed this was the reply.
14 January 1784
Collins Farm
Near Faversham
Kent
Mr Thomas Bennet:
It is just and right that your father met his end the way he did. It is us Collinses who are the rightful owners of Longbourn, and you Bennets have cheated us out of our due for too many years. That is why your thieving father and the doxy he married are with the devil now, as they should be.
The only thing which would have been better is if you had been in the carriage as well. Had you been, I would have been able to claim my birthright which your despicable family has withheld from me.
I already have a son, William who is but 1 month old, but unlike you weak Bennets he will grow tall and strong like an oak tree.
If God will be good, he will send you to hell to meet your parents so that I will be able to claim my birthright. If you find a woman who will accept you, I order you to have daughters only. You will not deny me my birthright like the honoured Collinses who came before me were.
Clem William Collins
(Sir, I apologise for the words written above. Mr Collins is illiterate and can be a violent man. He has another man with him who (after a fashion) read what I wrote, so I had to scribe it word for word. As the two turned away from me when Mr Collins was satisfied, I added this before sealing it and writing the direction to tell you that none of the uncharitable sentiments expressed are my own. FD, Curate.)
Bennet wrote a short note in reply telling Collins that all connection between them was at an end.
For his year of mourning, unless he was out in the field taking care of his estate, Bennet kept out of the public eye. Even when his year ended in January 1785, Bennet did not attend many public events. He did begin attending his friends’ homes. He accepted invitations to dinners and other entertainments at the homes of fellow landed gentry like the Longs, Gouldings, Morrises, and Purvises. In addition, Bennet formed a firm friendship with Mr William Lucas, the owner of several shops in Meryton, the general mercantile being one of them. Unlike many in his class, especially those of the first circles, he cared not that Lucas was in trade. He was only concerned with character and he enjoyed the jovial man’s company.
Lucas had been married for a number of years and so far, he and his wife Sarah had two children. Franklin was four and Charlotte recently turned one.
