Within the space of a year, three of my sisters married. First, Lydia eloped with Mr. George Wickham. They’d been living for some time in London, in cramped and not very hygienic conditions, when my uncle Gardiner at last discovered them. Lydia insisted that she did not mind the squalor of their lodgings, for even hardships became the sweetest comforts in the presence of her beloved, and the bed was fortunately of prodigious dimensions.
Jane, also, I’m happy to say, won her prize in the end. Under the influence of his pernicious sisters, Mr. Bingley had cowardly absconded to London, leaving poor Jane to assume, for a torturous period of time, his disinterest. But finding no reward in the city greater than her love, he eventually returned to Netherfield Park and proposed to Jane during a nondescript evening of supper and cards at Longbourn. His offer of marriage, comprising in equal parts steadfast affection and five thousand pounds per annum, was speedily accepted amid cries directed heavenward that we’d been saved—thank you, O sweet and merciful Lord.
This was only the first, however, of two major victories for our family, for never let it be said that Lizzy will suffer to be outdone by her older sister. Not content with marrying the equivalent of one Mr. Bingley, she married two—that is, she married Mr. Own-Half-of-Derbyshire Darcy of sprawling estate (Pemberley), ten thousand pounds per annum, noble and historic stock, and Hamletesque brow.
As for myself, I spent the year learning to keep my own company. I read voraciously. One week: Elizabeth Hamilton’s Memoirs of Modern Philosophers. Another week: Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Wrongs of Woman and Charles Brockden Brown’s Clara Howard. I read with such monastic zeal that even Papa came up to me one day and, observing my furrowed brow absorbing a page of Jane Porter’s four-volume novel Thaddeus of Warsaw, commented whether I meant to overtake him in the speed of my consumption. I created, too, a daily schedule, which regulated my waking hours. My mornings began with rising at least an hour before any of my sisters did in order to take exercise on the estate’s grounds or, if the weather did not permit a brisk walk, to read what I hadn’t finished the evening before. This was always followed by a light breakfast and at least three hours of uninterrupted study, then one hour of musical practice preceding lunchtime.
How grateful I was for my books. In the first throes of my pain, their pages had caught my tears when no comforting hand would. And when I grew stronger, what an anchor they were in my life, a constant dearer to me than any friend, which guarded my spirit against morbidity and despair. It was by their distraction alone that I was able to witness my sisters’ betrothals with equanimity and avoid falling prey, as Kitty did, to infantile fits of jealousy at the good fortune which visited Jane and Lizzy in rapid succession.
When Mr. Collins married Charlotte Lucas, I expected my disappointment to last for a much longer period of time than it did. I admit I surprised myself with my own strength. Awaking one morning soon after, I felt an unprecedented freedom. I realized I could do as I pleased. I could sing and play without having to wonder if my voice and fingering met with that gentleman’s approval. I could read without my mind conjuring even once the image of his face. If no one would speak to me, then I had no cause to speak to them, and my time remained my own. I discovered, too, that because my opinion was valued so little by my family, I could say almost whatever I liked without fear of reprobation. So I practiced this and told Kitty that her bonnets looked just as facile as she was, that the pork at dinner was too tough, and when Mr. Wickham returned to Longbourn with Lydia as his wife, I said to my brother-in-law in a voice audible to everyone, “This isn’t really the outcome you were hoping for, was it?” Fortunately, I received little reproof for my sharp tongue. What with Jane’s and Lizzy’s impending nuptials, Papa saw less reason than ever to involve himself in the concerns of his daughters, and my mother and sisters were far too busy with the writing of invitations in florid script and the choosing of gowns to seriously acknowledge any change in my behavior.
It was around this time that I also began to keep a journal. At first, I used it just for rambling musings of how I had passed each day, but growing bored with this exercise, I began putting to paper observations of my sisters. I offer a few examples below:
Rosy Cheeks is visiting the shops this afternoon to purchase lace for her wedding dress, and Squalling Baby looked very petulant and unhappy indeed that no one among her acquaintances will yet propose to her. We have even less to say to each other these days than we used to.
Queenie has become like Father Christmas and continues to sweep about granting favors to everyone. She has already promised two new dresses to Squalling Baby and a visit to Versailles to Mrs. Church’s younger sister, the Virgin Mary. How good fortune will change some people—and seemingly overnight! I cannot be too harsh on Queenie, though—the fault, I concede, is not entirely hers, for she has been puffed up by so many congratulations and good wishes as would turn anyone’s head. I will admit she looks excessively pretty these days; whether that is the effect of love or the expectation of becoming rich, however, I cannot in all honesty discern.
In the weeks leading up to their wedding, Mr. Darcy visited Longbourn frequently, and on every occasion, brought gifts intended to endear him to a family that had previously thought ill of him. It was during such a visit that he and I found ourselves alone, and though I was occupied with writing in my journal, he came over to engage me in conversation. The awkwardness which characterized our meeting at Netherfield Park had since been forgotten, and I’d succeeded in restoring myself to his original impression of me, as “a very rational young woman.”
“There are some books waiting for you in the other room,” he began. “I thought you might enjoy them.”
Brightening, I asked what titles he had brought for me this time.
“An epistolary novel called The Wild Irish Girl, a work by Plutarch, and one I know you’ll relish as much as I did—Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist, which is about a boy who creates all kinds of mischief by impersonating the voices of others.”
I admitted this sounded delightful and thanked him for his trouble. Then I returned to my journal writing, but it wasn’t long before he asked me what I was working on.
“Oh, I’m keeping a diary,” I admitted.
“Georgiana has kept a journal for the last three years,” Mr. Darcy said, brotherly pride getting the better of him.
When I didn’t offer an opinion, not being acquainted with his sister, he continued: “I’m very curious what you have to write, Miss Bennet. Will you not read aloud even a small glimpse of your daily reflections while your sisters happen to be out of the room?”
Handsomeness in a man can certainly be as persuasive as beauty in a woman. I found myself turning the pages of my journal, looking for the most innocuous entry I could find. But before I was able to locate one, Lizzy returned, and when she saw Mr. Darcy sitting with me, her generous nature bubbled to the surface.
“Mary, I think I shall hold you to the obligation of visiting me at least two times each year at Pemberley,” she said, beaming. “Mr. Darcy wouldn’t mind. Would you, Mr. Darcy?”
The gentleman insisted that it would be a pleasure. “Then it is settled!” Lizzy shouted, for she did everything in the days leading up to the wedding with exuberance. “You shall come and stay with us at Pemberley, Mary. I promise I will write to you and send a carriage when we are ready.”
Mr. Darcy’s visit that day prompted the following entry in my journal, which I wrote outdoors in the company of Papa’s ancient and drooling sheepdog:
Louis XIV has brought me more books. I have counted his gifts since his engagement to Queenie and calculated that he is responsible for at least a third of the new titles I’ve read since ghastly Mr. Church went off with his new bride.
Rosy Cheeks called Queenie away on some errand, and I was left alone again with le Roi Soleil. He repeated his earlier request, which was to hear an excerpt from my journal, and I chose a selection I’d written on Squalling Baby and how I’d discovered her one night in her room embracing her looking glass and kissing it. It did not take Louis XIV long to figure out who Squalling Baby was, and once he did, we laughed so much that Mother Hen, Rosy Cheeks, and Queenie all came downstairs to see what the matter was. Neither of us would give anything away, however, and I confess it a rather delicious feeling to share an inside joke with one as respectable as the Sun King.
He has promised to bring me Eliza Parsons’s The Castle of Wolfenbach on his next visit, and we are to make an intellectual exercise of counting how many times the words “faint” and “weep” appear over the course of two volumes. We are both agreed that the surfeit of sentimentality found in Gothic novels is deserving of the cruelest ridicule possible, though they remain the most amusing of books to digest.
THE DAY OF the wedding did not disappoint. Jane and Lizzy had decided to get married together, and all was as it should be on such a happy occasion. The weather was fine; the guests were splendidly attired; the grooms looked as handsome as they ever did, if not a little smug. In our small and placid community, the air felt rife with miracle. Perhaps it was my imagination which endowed the brides with an almost unearthly loveliness, but they seemed less human than nymphs. The sight of them rendered me a bit tearful, and I had to borrow Kitty’s handkerchief. I confess I surprised myself with my weeping, which was as much inspired by the triumph of seeing my two sisters in their fine marriages as it was by the desire which filled my own heart upon witnessing their great happiness. Their audience may well have been invisible; for the rest of the day’s revelry, the young lovers noticed only themselves, and when the hour came to leave, they had hardly time for waving goodbye to us, bound already in each other’s arms.
Lizzy and Mr. Darcy were not married half a year before her promised invitation arrived, and I embarked on a journey to that estate, which had come to occupy in my mind a near legendary status: Pemberley.