15 April 1802
Longbourn
Hertfordshire
Mr Collins:
This estate is not now, nor has it ever been yours, or any other Collins’s birthright. Someone in your family began the lie about Longbourn being the birthright of the Collins line. I repeat: It never was, and it is not now.
Not only that but you do not seem to know the difference between the heir and what you are, theheir presumptive.
As you did me the courtesy of telling me (1 year later) that your father is dead, I will return it in kind. My wife, who bore me 5 daughters not 4, passed away in June of 1796. As I am a widower, it is my right to remarry, and if I do and my wife givesme a son, then you will have no claim on my estate.
Also, speaking of facts, it was me who broke with your father for celebrating the death of my late beloved parents. I see no profit in keeping your connection.
T Bennet
It was short and to the point. Bennet was not sure if the simpleton would understand the words in his letter. He was sure that the myth the Collinses told themselves was embedded in this Collins’s consciousness.
~~~~~~~/~~~~~~~
The second epistle arrived after Easter and reopened old wounds which Bennet had fought so long and hard to leave in the past.
19 April 1802
Holly Run
Near Truro
Cornwall
Bennet:
I know I have waited more than 5 years to write to you since Mr and Mrs Nichols informed me that your wife died in childbirth. There was a good reason for my delay.
My wife and I decided to wait, and in fact, not mention your wife’s passing to Melissa because she seemed happy in her marriage. At least as happy as she could be with a man who was not you.
I write to you now due to a tragedy of untold proportions, which occurred six months past.
I do not know how to tell you this gently, so I will just write it. Melissa and her family (husband, 2sons and a daughter) had gone to Mousehole, which is a fishing village with a long beach on Cornwall’s coast in autumn of the previous year. There was an outbreak of smallpox and the whole family was lost.
Unlike my wife and I, who both took Mr Jenner’s vaccine, my son-in-law refused to allow his family to have it. He believed the cure would make them sicker than if they ever had the disease. He was wrong and was the first to succumb.
Mrs Morris and I rushed to Mousehole, knowing we would not be allowed to leave until the infection burnt itself out.
By the time we arrived, one of our grandsons had joined his father in heaven. It was clear that Melissa and her other two children would not survive.
It was then, with her being a widow, I informed her of your wife’s passing.
Her dying wish was for me to tell you that she never stopped loving you. She and her children went to their final rewards a day later.
As you know, Melissa was our only child, and with her sons gone, it is only my wife and me who are left of the family. I think that there is a family of very distant cousins, but we know not where they are, or if any remain living. I will have it investigated to see if I have a familial heir.
I beg your pardon, if as I suspect it has, this letter upsets your equanimity.
In sorrow,
Morris
