Emily Collins' mother did everything in her power to ensure that Emily would have a good dowry. Emily had recently become aware that at least half her mother's pin money was put away for this reason and that, wherever possible, economising in other household expenditures took place for the same purpose. That is not to say that Emily's mother was in any way mean or miserly, merely that she was far more prudent than the previous mistress of the house. She kept a good table and received many visitors, and she did not hesitate to aid her nieces and nephews, but nor did she fail to mend what other women might have replaced, and she was always willing to assist the servants in order to keep the numbers employed to a minimum. In this way she had saved a sum of four and a half thousand pounds- fifteen hundred in the first six years of Emily's life, at Hunsford, and then five hundred pounds a year since their move to Longbourn.
Mrs. Collins very much hoped to have increased that sum to eight thousand pounds by the time she brought her daughter out, and she secretly desired to make it an even ten thousand, though this would require a concerted effort and her husband's support. To this end she had recently talked him out of buying their daughter a phaeton for her next birthday and begged him to present the girl with a small gift and put the rest aside.
"My dear Mrs. Collins," he had said to her, "your concern does you credit. I know you do not want to raise an indulged and spoilt child, but I can see no harm in such a gift, extravagant as it may be compared to others we have given her. Did you know that Lady Catherine -Lady Catherine de Bourgh!- presented her daughter with a phaeton for her thirteenth birthday? And no one can say that Miss de Bourgh, or Mrs. Hartley as she is now known, has turned out badly."
"No indeed," Mrs. Collins replied, when her husband, at length, had finished. "I do not fear you spoiling Emily, you are a most careful father and temper your generosity with sensible thought. I am thinking not of safeguarding Emily's character, but her future."
Mr. Collins gazed at her, all astonishment, and Mrs. Collins felt compelled to continue.
"My dear Mr. Collins, you know better than anyone that this estate is entailed away from the female line, and that our daughter stands to inherit nothing of it. What the Miss Bennets were in Emily's situation, and you were the heir, you were a most attentive cousin- so kind! So generous! So willing to extend an olive branch and secure their comforts. But we cannot hope for the same. Your cousin is not unattached and his son is still in leading strings. The only security our daughter will have is that which we can save for her now."
Mr. Collins, still unnaturally reduced to silence, turned away from her and paced the room.
"My dear Charlotte," he said at last, "you are quite right. I would not like to see our daughter in the unenviable position that my dear cousins were in."
Not, Mrs. Collins thought, that a lack of dowry had significantly hindered at least two of the Bennet girls from making the most eligible of matches.
But then, she reflected, the eldest two sisters had a quality to them that, Mrs. Collins quietly admitted to herself, her own child did not possess. Emily Collins had her mother's dark hair and her father's eyes and very good teeth but Mrs. Collins knew that these features she loved so well- the round face and rosy cheeks and the Lucas nose- were undeniably plain. Mrs. Collins was not a beauty, and nor had she produced one.
Then again, few people's beauty lasted their entire marriages, whereas a dowry, carefully invested, would.
Emily Collins had been a long time coming. There had been a time in the first year of her marriage that Mrs. Collins had thought, had hoped… but it was not to be. She had lived four years at Hunsford and had begun to seriously doubt the arrival of any children before Emily had come into the world. Mr. Collins had been the one to name her, and to have her birth announced in the local papers, and when the congratulations for the birth of Miss E. C. Collins began to arrive, Mrs. Collins' smile had been somewhat cynical.
She was not ashamed to admit that she had kissed her husband enthusiastically when he had shyly informed her the the C stood not for Catherine as she had supposed.
"The next one we will call William," she had laughed.
There was no next one. But if Mrs. Collins had any determination in life, it was to be content with her lot, and she treasured the one child she had borne.
"My dear," her husband had said to over dinner at the parsonage, when it became clear that there would be no further need for the crib, "you may have come from a large family, but I did not. Do not be uneasy, I am sure that with such devoted parents- and such superiors neighbours- our daughter will not want for company as some only children do."
Scooping potatoes onto his plate he added, "you know, my dear, before we had Emily I prayed and prayed, and I vowed that I would be content with whatever the Lord gave me. And how he blessed us, Charlotte! Why, is she not the finest girl you have ever seen? She is perfection itself! In you and her, my dear, all my prayers have been answered."
Affection swelled in her heart, and Mrs. Collins swallowed, surprised to find she had a lump in her throat. She leant across the table to squeeze her husband's hand, and this tenderness lasted even through his next comment.
"Indeed, living near Rosings has been a blessing in that regard too- for we have been shown a very fine example of an only daughter."
Six months later they had been obliged to remove themselves from their noble patroness and her only daughter when Mr. Collins inherited Longbourn.
Some of Mrs. Collins' friends were very pleased to be settled at moderate, or indeed lengthy, distances from home. But Mrs. Collins was very pleased to be back in her childhood neighbourhood. Both her parents were still alive and in good health, and only the eldest and youngest of her brothers still lived at Lucas Lodge, though all her other siblings were within ten miles.
She was also pleased to see Emily become better acquainted with her cousins, especially with the present Miss Lucas, Mrs. Collins' eldest niece, a girl of eleven who lived at Lucas Lodge.
Sir William Lucas and his wife were doting grandparents who spared no expense, which was just as well as on the occasion of her thirteenth birthday Miss Emily Collins received nothing of note from her father. A new pair of gloves and a letter giving her permission to put a new bonnet on the account at the milliners.
But Emily's mother noted that the master of the house pronounced a newfound love of mutton over venison, and rediscovered an old love of gardening, and found that old Mr. Bennet's desk and chairs were perfectly serviceable after all, and that, once the estate costs had been paid, a full half of their income that year went to their daughter's dowry fund.
Mrs. Collins was most certainly pleased with her lot in life. But Mr. and Mrs. Bennet were not the only couple in Hertfordshire whose determination to live in a genteel manner had come at the expense of their daughters' dowries.
Mrs. Collins had chosen her fate with her eyes wide open, and bore no resentment again her parents, or against her more prosperous or prettier friends. And, when all was said and done, she was content.
But, as she bent over her mending, carefully stitching up her winter gloves, she couldn't help but think, is it not natural for a mother to want a little more for her daughter?
A short one-shot I wrote a few months ago. Feedback welcome.