Pride and Prejudice and Kitties, стр. 13
“I see what you are feeling,” replied Charlotte—“you must be surprised, very much surprised—so lately as Mr. Collins was wishing to marry you. But when you have had time to think it over, I hope you will be satisfied with what I have done. I am not romantic, you know. I never was. I ask only a comfortable home; and considering Mr. Collins’s character, connections, and situation in life, I am convinced that my chance of happiness with him is as fair, as most people can boast on entering the marriage state.”
SIR WILLIAM LUCAS lost no time in informing the Bennets of his daughter’s good fortune in entrapping (as Mrs. Bennet regarded it) Mr. Collins for her future mate.
The news threw Mrs. Bennet into a pitiable state. She reduced Mr. Bennet’s favorite chair to shreds at the thought of Mr. Collins and Charlotte mewing secretly in anticipation of the prosperous hour when they would assume possession of Longbourn. To further affront her, Mr. Collins sniffed all the Bennets’ furniture and actually sprayed the rug in Mrs. Bennet’s best parlour! Lady Lucas, too, came to visit often to triumph over poor Mrs. Bennet in quite a territorial manner.
Lady Lucas came to triumph over Mrs. Bennet in quite a territorial manner.
“I cannot bear to think that Mr. Collins and Charlotte should have all this estate,” Mrs. Bennet hissed to her husband. “Mr. Collins has a scrawny thin end-tail. It is nothing at all to Jane’s, but because she is a female she is disregarded and Mr. Collins will go on marking my rugs and calculating the number of mice who inhabit our park. It is all quite insupportable!”
Mrs. Bennet was really in a most pitiable state. The very mention of any thing concerning the match threw her into an agony of ill humour, and wherever she went she was sure of hearing it talked of. The sight of Miss Lucas was odious to her. As her successor in that house, she regarded her with jealous abhorrence. Whenever Charlotte came to see them she concluded her to be anticipating the hour of possession; and whenever she spoke in a low voice to Mr. Collins, was convinced that they were talking of the Longbourn estate, and resolving to turn herself and her daughters out of the house, as soon as Mr. Bennet were dead. She complained bitterly of all this to her husband.
“Indeed, Mr. Bennet,” said she, “it is very hard to think that Charlotte Lucas should ever be mistress of this house, that I should be forced to make way for her, and live to see her take her place in it!”
“My dear, do not give way to such gloomy thoughts. Let us hope for better things. Let us flatter ourselves that I may be the survivor.”
“The work is rather too light & bright & sparkling;—it wants shade;— it wants to be stretched out here & there with a long Chapter—of sense if it can be had, if not of solemn specious nonsense—about something unconnected with the story; an Essay on Writing, a critique on Walter Scott, or the history of Buonaparte.”
Jane Austen’s letter to her sister Cassandra, 4 February 1813, commenting on Pride and Prejudice
VOLUME II
JANE RECEIVED A second letter from Caroline Bingley in which her claw marks were even more pronounced than on the first, though Jane chose to overlook them. According to Miss Bingley, her brother and Georgiana Darcy were on the brink of a felicitous union of their respective nine lives (making a total of eighteen, unless, as a dashing young cat at Oxford, Mr. Bingley may happen to have forfeited one or two). The friends and well-wishers of the happy couple awaited the moment when their understanding would be announced—an event that must bring Caroline ever closer to becoming mistress of Pemberley.
As a dashing young cat at Oxford, Mr. Bingley may have forfeited one or two of his nine lives.
Elizabeth could feel nothing but indignation towards a cat, such as Mr. Bingley, who might sleep here or sleep there to oblige his designing friends and remain insensible to the fact that back at Longbourn, poor Jane was taking twenty-three-and-a-half-hour naps to avoid dwelling on what must only make her unhappy. Could, Elizabeth wondered, the irresolute Mr. Bingley really have forgotten his ball and the precious moments he spent rolling it under the dining room table with Jane?
Mrs. Bennet, meanwhile, complained constantly about how ill-used she was by all the cats in the kingdom. None of them had any regard for her poor nerves, or cared if her wet food was left out to get dry, or her favorite toy got lost under the sofa. To make matters worse, Lady Lucas, who was all out for what she could get, came on purpose to Longbourn one morning to show off an especially juicy vole she had captured, lording it over poor Mrs. Bennet who had hardly had the strength to lift a paw under the heavy weight of recent disappointments and reversals.
Mr. Wickham frequently kept company with the Bennets during this gloomy interval. Now that Mr. Darcy had left the neighborhood, Wickham became even less reserved in communicating all he had suffered at the paws of Mr. Darcy. By now, all the cats in the neighborhood were sensible of the injuries Wickham had endured, and all detested the proud ill-tempered Darcy, except for the mild-mannered Jane, who suggested he might merely (as is the case of many a seemingly ill-natured cat) be misunderstood.
Mrs. Bennet still continued to wonder and repine at his returning no more, and though a day seldom passed in which Elizabeth did not account for it clearly, there seemed little chance of her ever consid ering it with less perplexity. Her daughter