Mrs. Bennet Has Her Say Read online

  Then from the bedroom: “The sound you hear, Mr. Bennet, is the clapping of my hands over little Jane’s ears.” Mrs. Rummidge, having positioned herself at the top of the stairs where I was sure to see her, raised her eyes to heaven and made the sign of the cross. She believes herself to be Irish and the mother of many, hence her claim that she is duty-bound to protect them. A likely story.

  May at Longbourn

  Dear Jane,

  I do believe Mr. Bennet will have his boy. Already the quickening is upon me and the black bile rises daily. He is tumbling within my womb so that I cannot hold down food of the least sort and each morning what little breakfast Mrs. Rummidge has managed to urge upon me spills forth into the basin. Who could have imagined that I would be with child so soon and so miserable. I sense a battle brewing between me and this little one. I am fatigued ever so much sooner in the day than I was with oh so easy little Jane. If this one wears me out before he is even born, what will he do once he is here?

  Lest you think me an unworthy mother, please know that I have a mother’s love for him despite the discomfort he is thrusting upon me. Yet it is a love different from what I felt for Jane. This little boy comes from my womb but not my soul. His eyes will not be the deep blue of Jane’s; he will not have the sweetly firm chin of his sister, nor, clearly, her disposition. This child comes from Mr. Bennet, my lawfully wedded husband, and will have some of Mr. Bennet’s traits to be sure. I can only hope they will not include Mr. Bennet’s failure to clip from within his nose and ears the unsightly tufts he seems oblivious to. If I did not pull away from him every now and then and scorn his ardent pleadings, insisting that unless he saw to his personal hygiene there would be no continuance of this so-called lovemaking, I am certain that from his face and neck would sprout a veritable vegetable patch much in need of weeding. I may be a dutiful wife but I am not a gardener. “Tend to your garden, Mr. Bennet,” I said to him more than once, “if you wish me to be fruitful and multiply.” He sighed but obeyed. “With obedience comes reward,” I reminded him. And now he claims that my morning sickness serves as proof that he was right. “Who was right?” I enquire of him. “Wasn’t it I who was right? Was it not I who insisted on clipping and pruning?” He answers as he always does with a twist and a twirl against common sense: “Ah, but my dear, it was I who was obedient.” He chuckled. “And it is my child who rests within.” Another chuckle. “The child within,” I answer, “is not resting, you may be sure of that.” “Ah yes”—and he came close to a chortle—“the boy is master even now.” Lest you have forgot, Mr. Bennet has three utterances: the chuckle, the growl, and a moanful shudder to signal the end of his interminable lovemaking, the absence of the latter the single advantage of this difficult pregnancy.

  Because yes, dear sister, Mr. Bennet and I, always the dutiful wife, did resume relations. Mrs. Rummidge assured me, bless her ignorant heart, that nursing little Jane would ensure that not even the frequent and energetic proddings of Mr. Bennet would end in pregnancy. “Now, ma’am,” she said, “believe me. Suckling the little one will deliver you from another babe until such time as you choose.” And so Mr. Bennet, whose pacing and growling outside my door I could no longer bear, came into my bed. Shudder and moan, moan and shudder as he tilled his soil, and here I am now, miserable and forlorn, with little Jane not yet even a year.

  Do you recall Miss A——, the kind and temperate woman who lived not far from us in Meryton? She who advised us so long ago, “Anything is to be preferred or endured rather than marrying without affection”? Surely she told a truth, but truth does not necessarily rest on fact, in my case the presence of a child within my womb and I without a husband. I wonder if Miss A——, were she to know the facts of my young life, would scorn me or amend her words of wisdom. At the very least, she would preface her statement with “Almost anything.” . . . Or perhaps not, for Miss A—— never married. So far as we know, she never even fell in love. Alas, wisdom comes at a price. Mine certainly has.

  Next month I turn seventeen. I am soon the mother of two and a stranger in this house and to the man who is my husband. I am a stranger to myself. I was too long a child made too soon a woman. What is to become of me?

  Yr Marianne

  On the Trials of Being a Husband

  Mus in pice.

  “A mouse in a pitch barrel.”

  —MONTAIGNE

  It is a truth universally acknowledged that every man in possession of a wife must be in want of a son. I take pen in hand to underscore that very conviction and to offer in writing a defense of my own position in a household suddenly and unexpectedly ruled by women. Perhaps one day this record of events will bring into balance the events of my unfortunate married life. Please understand that with the birth of this second child—another girl—I have been twice disappointed. I feel myself punished for something I did not do and was not guilty of and had only the briefest acquaintance with, that being those few moments during which I planted my seed within this same wife who, against my wishes and no doubt due to all her complaining and whining during the nine months of waiting, had the temerity to spew forth yet another girl! Beyond understanding! The world does not need another girl. One is sufficient to carry out the continuation of life as I believe it should be. This second girl, this Elizabeth so-named for no reason I have been made aware of, is an insult.

  I keep to my library save for meals, but even there I am not provided with the peaceful comfort I have come to expect because upstairs, from Mrs. Bennet’s room, comes the endless squalling of the infant Elizabeth. Morning, noon, night, nothing seems to soothe her, not even my threats. “Do not touch her!” screams Mrs. Bennet from her bed where Elizabeth twists away from her mother’s breast to cast an angry eye on the man—her own father!—who looks as if he means to kill her. Devil child! Her hair has already turned red, her only saving grace, my hair having been once that very colour. There are moments, I will admit, when she is not unpleasing to my eye. But her apoplectic behaviour stems certainly from Mrs. Bennet’s family; nothing in the history of my own peace-loving family would account for the baleful glare and the ear-splitting yowls that come from this fulvous-faced creature, arms and legs beating the air above her and upon anyone beside her, such as her mother. Only Mrs. Rummidge, unaccountably, can quiet her. “Here, here,” she croons as she rocks Elizabeth against her bony chest. “Abide with me, sleep close, sweet dreams.” And for a time Elizabeth becomes an infant like any other, though only for as long as it takes to gather the energy to recommence her violent objection to her father should I poke my head into the room.

  I have taken steps to save my sanity. “I am going to London,” I announced on a day when Elizabeth was particularly noisy. “I will no longer tolerate the tyranny of an infant who by rights should be spanked and put to bed in a room whose walls are thick enough to shut up the racket within.”

  “Mr. Bennet,” answered Mrs. Bennet from her bed, “Elizabeth is but ten days old. It makes no sense to apply punishment suitable for a child much older, if then. You will simply have to put up with Elizabeth’s temper until she can accommodate herself to our world. Sooner or later she will have to take nourishment from me and not from the bottle administered by Mrs. Rummidge. Sooner or later she will find comfort next to me and her sister, Jane, instead of the bony arms of Mrs. Rummidge, who I am beginning to suspect of being a fraud and a liar and no fit company for our children. Are you listening, Mr. Bennet?” There are times when deafness seems preferable to hearing such remonstrance, especially on those rare occasions when Mrs. Bennet approaches common sense. I remained silent. I planned my escape.

  And now, dear reader, at the risk of seeming to complain in a most unmanly way, I must declare to this journal—and to myself—that the life of quiet contemplation, the life I had planned, has never come to fruition. Bear with me. My aim, as I write, is to draw you to a closer understanding of this man whose world—through no fault of his own—is at p
resent intolerable and shows no sign of easing. (Note the underscore.) With the achieving of my majority came the undeniable truth that my home and my garden and my woods and streams and the animals I imagined frolicking within were not mine. They would never be mine, not until the property is legally settled upon my son. Entailment is a curse, especially so with the heir apparent, my cousin, the insipid Collins, and his sycophantic ways. To think that this idiot might one day take his place at Longbourn kept me awake many a night, and so, early on, I took steps to lift that curse. The first was marriage.

  Winnowing Mrs. Bennet out from all the girls keen to become my wife had not been an easy task, but at least until recently the result of my efforts, that being marriage, had not been particularly painful or inconvenient. Indeed, asserting my conjugal rights in the bedroom had proved not only convenient but pleasurable, reducing the necessity for trips into the village or to London to quiet the storms within me. Mrs. Bennet was comely; she was young and strong and not averse to my bedding of her. After the birth of Jane, she seemed agreeable to a certain amount of activity, even took occasional but undeniable enjoyment from my frequent forays into her bed. I quite enjoyed the flush in her cheek, her perfect little bosom, and the way her nipples retracted whenever I came near, though now as I think on it and on my somewhat limited experience, those nipples ought to have puckered out, not in. No matter. She could no more hide the pleasing curve of her waist than she could the suppleness of her limbs. Granted, she seemed to go to some trouble to cover herself; I had never seen so many bedclothes on one bed. But she could not help the dark curls that sprang from beneath her cap nor the shine in her dark blue eyes, sometimes tears, yes, but sometimes a ready spirit.

  No matter, all that is behind me; for this wife of mine and her baby Elizabeth have ruined not only my present but my future. Such perfidy is beyond forgiveness. I will journey to London and pick up a book or two, and who knows what further adventures may come my way. After all, it is not my fault that things have not come out right. Besides, while London may be noisy it can offer nothing as unnerving as the eternal bawling and wailing from the bedroom above. In fact, I may find once more the man I was before this monumental betrayal. My sensibilities, many of them I recall as quite exquisite, may be restored.

  As if to remind me of what I was fleeing, Mrs. Rummidge stood at the head of the stairs and screeched, “Shame on you running off to the city of sin and corruption whilst your dear ones struggle to survive! I swear on my virginity the sainted Jesus will come looking for you!” “Shhh,” I heard another voice, unmistakably my wife’s, say. “Let him go. You cannot miss what you did not want in the first place.”

  I slammed the door on my way out. “I have married a shrew,” I muttered, “and she just seventeen.”

  On my way down the walk I began to whistle, a tune recalled from my youth, “Constant Billy.”

  Ch. 4

  November at Longbourn

  Dear Sister,

  He has departed the scene, though not, alas, forever. He has gone to London, he says to purchase a book, though I know better. I did not come to this marriage completely ignorant of the ways of men. Do you recall Mindy Sharpton, she being left an orphan at an early age and forced to find her own way in the village? Did we not feel sorry for her even after we discovered her and the tailor’s boy, Billy Cummings, locked in a tussle in the alley behind the shop? We hastened on but no detail had escaped us, not the frayed hem of her petticoat, not the mud on the soles of her boots, nor Billy’s trousers around his ankles, nor the sickening sight of his mouth stretched into a rictus the likes of which we hoped never to see again. (Little did I know that I would too soon see just such a sight, and in my marriage bed at that!) Poor Mindy Sharpton with only one path left to her, and that trodden by men of the village whose respectability was unquestioned. I remember asking dear Mother why a man, Mr. Broadley the leather merchant, a husband and father, would seek out the company of a girl like Mindy Sharpton. Mother stiffened. “Now, young lady,” she said, “leave well enough alone. It is the way of all men and has ever been such.” We knew better than to persist with our questions and so, with a shrug, we grew further and faster into the womanhood that was our fate.

  Am I not a Mindy Sharpton? Am I not a foolish girl who cast propriety to the winds and fell head over heels into the arms of a stranger? You might well ask, dear sister. You never ever called my behaviour into question; you never ever scolded me. You simply put your arms around me there in the little bedchamber in the house of our childhood and held me safe. “Hush, dear Marianne,” you said over and over and smoothed my hair. What else you could have said I cannot imagine. Surely you were as ignorant as I of a future with a child and without a husband. Surely you were almost as frightened as I. The two of us—you and I—shared a desperation unknown to respectable young ladies, ladies like those Mother predicted her daughters would become. I betrayed her as only a daughter can betray a mother. Had she lived she would have known the shame of my indecency. She would have seen me as less than Mindy Sharpton, for after all, I did not have poverty to excuse my behaviour; I did not need to exchange my skirts for coin; I did not need to become a whore; and yet in her eyes I did. Illness is never a blessing, but in this instance it carried her off and saved her. But nothing saved me.

  There are times when shame for the deceit with which I entered this marriage threatens to overwhelm me. But then, I look to my little Jane and wish with all my heart that Mother could be here to love her. All would be made right again . . . and . . . So Mr. Bennet travels to London to embellish his library? Of course he does. If indeed he does purchase a book I know what its subject will be, for I have seen what rests on his library shelves, hidden behind the volumes of birds and beasts he boasts of. “Ah, my dear,” he has exclaimed more than once, “how much we have to learn from the world about us! The birds, do they not make you wonder how such flight is possible?” I am to look at him in admiration, impressed by his wisdom and intelligence. I am to be grateful for his attention. I am to look on him as my superior. “I urge you, my dear wife, to prepare yourself for the motherhood that awaits. Pray, leave off your contrariness and heed my counsel. It is certain that your mood would improve, as would the well-being of our children, especially that of my sons. We must look to the future.” Tra-la, I want to say, I prefer the past.

  And then came Elizabeth and with her the blame that fell upon me. He thought to comfort me: “I am not blaming you,” he said, and added, “but it is your fault.” Elizabeth and I are the reason Mr. Bennet is making his way to London. If he thinks to punish me by his absence I am content to have him think so inasmuch as his departure recalls a bit of the freedom I felt as a girl, before Mr. Bennet showed himself on my horizon, and returns to me some of the joy I felt in the company of my dear colonel. Such happiness must have showed itself at once because Mr. Bennet was no more out of the door than Mrs. Rummidge said, “O ma’am, your cheeks are rosy! I have not seen their colour since little Elizabeth came to us.” Mrs. Rummidge at this moment held the baby in her arms as she does during most of her waking hours, quieting Elizabeth by way of some mystical spell I know not of. I am grateful to the woman, no matter that my daughter may be becoming bewitched; she is at least quiet. My strength is returning, as is the colour in my cheeks, as is my desire to see what lies beyond the upstairs chamber of my lying-in. Little Jane, sweet and compliant in her crib, babbles a bit and waves her little fingers in my direction; she takes my milk hungrily and often; she grows plump and rosy, just like her mother, and soon she will walk on her own. She is nothing like her little sister, although, given the difference in fathers, one ought not be surprised.

  And so I am left to amuse myself and, dear sister, I am doing so though not as my husband would wish. In his absence I can return to Pamela. Alas, her misfortunes multiply with each page, caused by her Master, who pursues her unceasingly. Do you wonder at my affinity for this poor child? I will say, however, that her Mas
ter, unlike mine, brings her beautiful clothes: a silk nightgown, silken petticoats, laced shoes, Holland linen, and fine stockings, even a swan-skin undercoat. Good girl that she is, she refuses them and sews for herself flannel undercoats and rough shifts. Now, were Mr. B. to offer me fine silken garments, I would never for a moment refuse them, though of course, unlike Pamela, I am a married woman whose virtue belongs to the past. I shall add one additional difference between Pamela’s Master and mine: Pamela’s is handsome though nonetheless loathsome in his pursuit of this virginal girl. Oh, what luxury it is for me to while away the hours when I am detached from my babes amidst the pages of Mr. Richardson’s novel.

  But it is not just Pamela who provides my amusement. A unique sort of amusement comes from the slim volumes hidden on Mr. B.’s library shelves whose pages, as thin as the skin of onions, detail females like Mindy Sharpton in congress with men who resemble, dare I say, Mr. Bennet. So many and such varying ways of securing male pleasure I find astounding. I pray you will not think me too immodest, dear Jane, but I have no one else, certainly not Mrs. Rummidge, with whom to share my discoveries. I pray that you do not scold me for what I write: The drawings show figures whose outlines are smudged by fingers certainly not mine; they are upside and down, the male one way, the female the other, the female atop the male, sitting, lying, and she even standing with the male behind. Now, how is such discomfort supposed to pleasure him? Well, I will have ample time, with Mr. Bennet away, to reach an understanding of such positions. He thinks me lacking in curiosity? If only he knew how well versed I am in the world about him.