Mrs. Bennet Has Her Say Page 4

  The rector and I will christen Elizabeth without her father’s help, then. I will not expect either you or your fine husband, Mr. Phillips, to be on hand this time. It was so good of you both to make the arduous journey to Longbourn for little Jane’s christening during that storm-tossed season. The snow seemed deeper than at any winter within memory, even Mr. Bennet said so, and the winds chilled us to the bone. The memory of Mr. Phillips’s cough remains with me to this day. Your calm presence proved a balm to everyone, even to Mr. Bennet, whose disappointment over little Jane’s sex he could not hide. I must say that had you been able to be present at Elizabeth’s birth your calm demeanour might have prevented such violent outbursts as we were subjected to, not to mention his stomping from the house, shouting that he would make his way to London. Then again, I will confess to a certain relief brought about by his absence. Dear sister, I shall seek forgiveness in the next world; in this one I will seize what happiness I can. Allow me, while memory sharpens experience, to share with you what I call the Coming of Elizabeth:

  A little less than one year had passed since Jane, and again the winds were fierce, a fitting storm for the birth of one who for nine months had been obstinate in my womb. Even Mrs. Rummidge, who insisted on boiling water well in advance of my delivery, agreed that this little one was no Jane and that indeed we had best begin the choosing of names for him.

  Anticipating a son and despite my protestations, Mr. Bennet insisted on the presence of a doctor. A midwife and Mrs. Rummidge’s hot water had done very well during my first labour with Jane, but Mr. Bennet would have none of it this time. He went so far as to import a Dr. Smellie from London to watch over me the moment my water broke. I must tell you, even in my pain, a more formidable figure I never saw and hope never to see again. Like a thundercloud, the doctor banged into my chamber, cape flying, hat clamped atop his head, clutching a leather satchel, which I took to hold his habiliments but which instead held the tools of his trade, among them that new invention, the forceps. I gasped at the sight—like tongs Cook uses to turn the sausages, only larger—and wondered aloud how it might be used. “The infant is occasionally reluctant to join us,” he answered. “This will clasp his head and help him into his new life. Normally only a slight tug is necessary.” His smile revealed a monstrous number of yellow teeth. Silently I prayed that my baby would come willingly. So, too, did the midwife who stood nearby and Mrs. Rummidge, who prayed, too, loudly, spilling hot water as she did.

  But my baby did not come willingly. It seemed as if she would not come at all. It seemed that she preferred to kick and stir and turn about within me, causing me endless pain. She did not wish to come out, nor did it seem that she wished to stay in. She was furious with her dilemma and I the object of her anger. At one minute I thought that my back would break in two and at another that my lower parts would give way altogether. Such pain, like bolts of lightning, came, then went, always to return with greater and greater violence and with greater frequency. The struggling of the child to be born seemed never to end and I cried out for my mother often. Even the midwife, who was surely accustomed to such goings-on, looked stricken. As for Mrs. Rummidge, her bucket was almost empty.

  “Put that water down, old woman,” Dr. Smellie ordered. “This is not the middle ages. You there,” he said to the midwife, “pay attention; you are about to witness the most advanced methods of birthing. But first”—and his yellow teeth loomed large—“we must get you quiet.” With that Dr. Smellie produced from his satchel some vials. Soaking a cloth with a tincture of something smelling so sweet as to sicken me, he showed his yellow teeth at me and said, “Place this cloth over your nose and mouth. Breathe deeply and your pain will be as nothing.” I did as he asked and indeed, the pain receded. But so then did my baby and for a time it lay still. I drifted off and woke to see that everyone was a-slumber. The midwife lay curled at the foot of my bed, Dr. Smellie on the couch nearby, Mrs. Rummidge on the bedclothes, which my exertions had pushed to the floor.

  Mr. Bennet, you can assume, was nowhere to be found, though in my hazy half-consciousness I imagined I heard the clump of his boots as he paced back and forth along the hallway. Time lost its meaning. Awake, I was wracked with pain; surely something in me would burst from the kicking. I breathed from Dr. Smellie’s cloth and once more fell asleep. This went on, said the midwife, who bless her heart refused to leave me, for a day and a night. “And that Dr. Smellie,” she told me after, “made as if to depart, so impatient was he with you. And then you cried out, ‘O Doctor, help my baby to be born!’ To that he thundered, ‘Push it out, woman, so that my forceps can grasp the head.’” I felt the forceps close to my nether region, which felt to me now quite distended. “Oh, please, sir,” said the midwife, “might it not be possible for that instrument to harm the child? Might it not misshape the head, that so delicate part of a newborn?” “Quiet, woman,” said Dr. Smellie, and I felt the cold metal upon me. Quickly, the midwife moved beneath his arm, came close to me, and whispered, “I believe you are quite wide enough for the baby to come through. One more push, dear child.” I did as I was told and, suddenly, there she was, a caul hiding the red fuzz we would see anon. And there stood Dr. Smellie, forceps dangling uselessly from his hand. His grimace became a scowl as Mrs. Rummidge jumped up and down and sang merrily and of course loudly, “A caul! She is born with a caul! Good luck will follow her all of her life.”

  It was at this moment that Mr. Bennet chose to enter my bedchamber. “A what?” he demanded. “A caul? My son with a scummy cap on his head?!” And he ran out and down the stairs no doubt to his library to find what information he could about cauls. But not even halfway down the stairs he stopped and roared up, “She?! It’s a she?!”

  I have not seen him since. Nor have I seen Dr. Smellie, although the midwife told me not long ago that the good doctor was being investigated for possible burking, that being the murder of patients for purposes of obtaining corpses for medical research. Goodness gracious, who would think that so horrible a crime could happen in this day and age. Thank goodness. I suspect that Elizabeth, in all her infancy, chose to brave the elements of her new world on her own terms; thus was the forceps saved for another day. I shudder to think of it. I know only that it will not see my bedchamber again.

  It seems so long ago and so much has happened since you braved the elements to join us in the rectory where the Reverend Brown dedicated Jane to God and asked for His guidance and protection of so little a child. You brought your very special Christmas cake and Mr. Bennet even opened a bottle of his precious port. We toasted Jane and each other, and for a brief time Mr. Bennet seemed happy and content. His forehead smoothed itself and his lips curled into a tiny smile and I saw him look upon his firstborn with something akin to love. Would that he could do so for Elizabeth. Or me. Perhaps London will bring roses to his cheek, too.

  I must now confess to you, dear sister. It is not just my babies’ good health and, with the exception of Elizabeth’s nightly tantrums, their good spirits that have returned the colour to my cheeks. It is news brought to me by none other than Mrs. Rummidge that a certain officer, recently returned from France, has taken a house in this very county! Could it be that same colonel I once knew and loved and whose most beautiful little daughter rests upon my breast even now? Of course, there must be many officers but somehow I do not think that many of them would seek to find a house so near my own. I have sent Mrs. Rummidge to find out his name. She has taken Elizabeth with her, thus providing me the time to write you such a long, long letter. My cheeks burn.

  Your affectionate and loving sister,

  Marianne

  Ch. 5

  In Which I Visit London

  Cum morosa vago singultiet inguine vena.

  “When you are tormented with fierce desire, satisfy it with the first person that presents herself.”

  —PERSIUS

  I will recount herein certain events and occurrences that surely
will shock those who read this entry. However, I am determined to adhere to truthfulness, and besides, I shall be long gone when once this diary is unearthed. As for myself, I record these events in the hope that doing so will serve as a reminder that certain experiences need not be sought out even once, that unhappy results of happy coincidences may befall even the most upstanding among us, that the search for pleasure can very likely land one in the ditch. In short, take heed of what I write here. It is a warning to those as yet untried and a reminder for those who have been tried and seek to make their lives less wanting.

  You who read this no doubt know me for the bibliophile that I am. Indeed, my happiest days were spent in my library among the books that for me were the stuff of life. And because you may have thought me a man of some learning, you will be surprised to learn that, as a scholar, I am a disappointed man.

  In my youth I had been a lover of the classics, of theatre, and of—O truth, stay close!—brothels. At one time I considered myself something of a Renaissance man, though for how long I could maintain such an estimable title I could not conjure, there being no one at Longbourn to fan the flames of learning. Women and children are apt to douse all fires not of their own making. And so, before all my embers go out, I will travel to London in the hope of re-igniting some or all of them, then return home for another long cold winter, made colder by the reality of not one daughter but two.

  Life at Longbourn has dampened my ardour for all that had been promised in my school years at Grandison’s. Duty has prevailed over courage, habit over adventure. I will turn thirty this year. The world looks bleak. London beckons. I nod yes.

  Ah, London, I had forgotten its assault on one’s senses: it was all I could do to prevent myself from placing my handkerchief over my nose and mouth. I stumbled on a cobblestone, jerking myself awake to my surroundings. The noise of the crowds and the smell of open fires, the roasting meat, the calls from vendors to buy their wares, the waste both human and animal, all was as it had been during my boyhood years at the school not far from where I stood at this very moment. Human and animal excrement was familiar to me; after all, my own manor was surrounded by fields, and the barns of animals came close to my house. But I had not been in London for more than two years and now I felt disoriented, full of a nameless anxiety that made me an easy target for the pickpockets and thieves that roamed the streets. Here the smoke and the smells threatened the very air I took for granted in the country, though, as I would soon discover, London had not changed so very much since my days at school.

  As a boy at Grandison’s my mission had been to survive the seemingly endless cruelties of the masters and my schoolmates; I was but a country lad and a target for humiliation then as I was now, though not, in the former case, by women, who seem to have the upper hand in my present life. At school, Master Winthrop changed all that. Master Winthrop, steeped so far in Latin as to be blind and deaf to events past A.D. 42, and certainly to the life of a boys’ school in the all-too-modern world of London, shimmered with his love of the language. Each term, when he came in his text to Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, Master Winthrop seemed to dance. When he conjugated—cogito, cogitare, cogitavi, cogitatus—he waltzed. When he declined—fortuna, fortunae, fortunae, fortunam—he did a little jig, and always he invited his students to join him. “Step lively, boys,” he was heard to say, knowing full well that the boys would remain seated, slouched in boredom, gazing out the window where the playing fields offered relief from the tedium of Latin. I alone accepted his offer, and from that day forward the ridicule of the boys, the cane of the headmaster upon my backside ceased to trouble me. I had found my place. For four years with Master Winthrop the music never stopped. I began to have thoughts of Oxford and Cambridge.

  However, not one for conversation or much of anything else in the English language, Master Winthrop could not provide me with an ease in society. I did not learn much at all in the way of conversing, except as I could say it in Latin, and so on those occasions when he, tired of my pestering, dismissed me, I turned to silence as my friend. Cicero’s Minus solum quam cum solus esset—“Never less alone than when alone”—became mine and I was happy. Perhaps it was my solitude, my unwillingness to join in on the games and the pranks that boys at Grandison’s found so exhilarating; whatever the reason, I remained on the edges of the school and went unnoticed by anyone who might have become a mentor. My father, albeit well-meaning and well-read, was not a rich man. My years at school had been a drain on his resources, and it came clear to me in my fourth year that monies for Oxford or Cambridge would not be forthcoming. So I returned to Longbourn, where no one spoke Latin, and to my father’s fledgling library, at seventeen a disappointed man. Not long after, my father died, and too soon after that, my mother.

  Over the years at Longbourn I felt myself rusting. My marriage, coming as it did on the other side of youthfulness, kept a few of my wheels up and running, although, were I forced to admit it, neither marital bliss nor even much satisfaction had been mine. Mrs. Bennet’s initial reluctance and eventual passivity had turned the act of joy into something less, not that I would ever abjure my responsibility to beget a son and heir but that I had anticipated a bit of fun in the bargain. And so, in its absence, I felt nary a twinge of guilt when I decided to look beyond the bedclothes of my wife—yes, your mother, should the reader of this account be my son—to the city where experiences of every kind were to be had. Where but in London?

  So you find me, in this year of 1786, on a mission. It is twofold: first and foremost to collect the book I had ordered from Clark’s, my bookseller, and two, to take the pleasure due me from a lady of the evening. No talking required there.

  Dear reader, what follows here is from memory and forces me to revisit humiliations past and present. So forgive me for what I am about to do. I must write about my travails as if they were happening to someone else. I will write about myself as another person, distant from the person I am now, and therefore less harmful to my constitution. Let him be known henceforth as Edward. He is an honest and clear-eyed young man through whose eyes we shall see circumstances as they happened. I shall wipe my dampened brow and join you posthaste. To horse!

  EDWARD, HIS STORY

  Edward had had enough of virgins. His wishes ran now to a girl tried if not true, and so he arrived at Mrs. Brown’s house, secure that he would be welcome, for he had visited in times past, the first when he was but a boy at Grandison’s and a kinder head boy had taken him in hand and led him here where in short order he became a man. Since then, with each visit, Mrs. Brown’s had become a destination where he found warmth and satisfaction. He felt in his pocket for his sheath, his friend and protector against diseases of the flesh. He looked forward to its use.

  The front parlour was as it had been: two pier mirrors and a buffet with several plates of cold meats and mustards, fruits and cheeses, two chairs too stiff for sitting in for long. Mrs. Brown herself came forward. “Ah, good sir, I see you have returned to us. It has been too long.” She offered a small plate of savouries—anchovies on toast—which he declined with a smile. “Yes, indeed,” he answered her. “It is with pleasure I put myself in your care. You have never disappointed me.”

  Mrs. Brown smiled and smoothed her hands along the silk of her gown. Her bosom, which threatened to spill over the neckline, showed that, while Mrs. Brown was not old, neither was she young. She was, in the parlance of an earlier time, a beldam, perhaps even a grandmother. “I have someone in mind for you,” she said. “I have just hired a young woman to look after my linen. She is quite lovely and as yet unused. I charge you to treat her with respect for I have great plans for her and do not wish to frighten her off.” For a brief moment, as he gazed at Mrs. Brown, Edward wondered if at some point in his life he would find himself missing as many teeth as the beldam who stood before him. He tried not to stare. He pulled himself up and said, “I thank you, madam, but my request is different this time. Have
you someone, someone like Bella who was my friend during my last visit, someone accustomed to the profession?”

  “Bella is no longer with us,” said Mrs. Brown, frowning, then brightening. “But I can offer you Martha, perhaps our most experienced girl yet charming in her own right. May I summon her?”

  Martha appeared, pretty and well-mannered. With a smile she extended a hand and led him to her room above. Edward was optimistic.

  Alas, his best-laid plans did not bear fruit. His sheath, so ready at hand, never left his pocket for Mr. Bennet could offer nothing that could be sheathed. Despite Martha’s teasing of his hair and prolonged chafing of his member, despite the cordials she insisted he drink, despite all her efforts and his, he remained unmoved. “Let us rest a while,” said Martha. “Your journey has tired you. Surely so fine a man as yourself will rise to the occasion in due time.” But his enthusiasm dimmed as his capacity diminished. The time for striking was past; the iron never got hot and Edward took leave of Mrs. Brown’s establishment with a woeful frown and a heavy heart.

  He paid little attention to where he was going and before he knew it he found himself in Drury Lane where a signboard proclaimed “Sarah Siddons is Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.” He would rather it had read “Sarah Siddons is Lady Macbeth,” a most rewarding play when last he read it in his library at Longbourn. Nonetheless, he bought a ticket. So far his journey to London—the vacation intended to ease his disappointment in his wife and his worries over the entailment and most of all his boredom with his life—was an utter failure. Perhaps this play, first encountered when he was a boy at Grandison’s and thus mostly ignored, would provide at least a distraction. The Prologue promised “two hours’ traffic of our stage,” not long enough to purge his mood but short enough to keep him awake and perhaps restore his memory of how the play ended. The price of admission, two shillings, allowed him a seat in the first gallery; for a lesser amount he could have sat on the benches in the pit, where scholars, critics, and ladies of prey seated themselves. But he was not a scholar and he had had enough of women for hire, and the boxes at five shillings were beyond his pocket and his class. At two shillings, the first gallery was his due, as was a bit of Shakespeare. After all, what reason did he have to be in this great city save to capture what pleasures might arise or, in his case, he thought sadly, did not rise. Perhaps this play would surprise him as it had not in his youth. “Two households, both alike in dignity . . .” intoned the Chorus. So far so good.