Fitzwilliam Darcy's Memoirs
Part 2
Christmas Day, December 1853
It occurred to me, during the long and bleak night that has just passed, that I can do better service, offer no truer tribute to my dear wife than to document the details of her place in my life, my heart and our home, upon these blank pages. Alas, writer I am not. I show, according to my late friend Bingley's jocular allegations of old, a propensity to use long words where shorter ones would be equal to the task. Words, long or short, are proving inadequate now, and my pen, once described as moving uncommonly fast, resists every attempt I make to implore it; chronicle the events of my life with her, every subtle feeling, every delicious day spent. For whom do I write this? For our children? They will one day, perhaps, find some degree of comfort in these pages, and local historians, who for many years have by rule displayed a discomfiting and surprising interest in Pemberley and the Darcy family, will no doubt relish the opportunity to examine the publicised yet private thoughts of a man long viewed as unreasonably repressed. I have always had a predisposition toward seclusion. I was accustomed to refrain from great displays of feeling, such was my temper, and such it is now. Yet these pages inspire openness in me, a hitherto unknown freedom of mind is evolving and if there were any part of me not entirely taken over by grief I believe I would be at risk of becoming quite consumed by the emotion. That I have pen and paper enough to satisfy this urgent need for expression is a relief. All that I might otherwise feel compelled to speak aloud shall be inscribed here. Elizabeth looks quite at rest which consoles me a little and while her repose makes for a pleasing image of death it does nothing by way of soothing the tight agony of grief that binds me. Her skin, the palest I have ever seen it, appears quite youthful suddenly and there is, I am convinced, the faintest whisper of a smile upon her lips. Yes it is a faded smile; a response to some swiftly remembered amusement? I think not. Amusement never shewed on her lips in quite the explicit way it filled her eyes and I cannot believe her to have been diverted at such a time. I read more from that last and now unchanging smile and swear I know its cause. I kissed her. One last time, while she still breathed but barely lived, I kissed her and wish that the moment had been my last as well as hers.
Christmas Day, December 1853
It occurred to me, during the long and bleak night that has just passed, that I can do better service, offer no truer tribute to my dear wife than to document the details of her place in my life, my heart and our home, upon these blank pages. Alas, writer I am not. I show, according to my late friend Bingley's jocular allegations of old, a propensity to use long words where shorter ones would be equal to the task. Words, long or short, are proving inadequate now, and my pen, once described as moving uncommonly fast, resists every attempt I make to implore it; chronicle the events of my life with her, every subtle feeling, every delicious day spent. For whom do I write this? For our children? They will one day, perhaps, find some degree of comfort in these pages, and local historians, who for many years have by rule displayed a discomfiting and surprising interest in Pemberley and the Darcy family, will no doubt relish the opportunity to examine the publicised yet private thoughts of a man long viewed as unreasonably repressed. I have always had a predisposition toward seclusion. I was accustomed to refrain from great displays of feeling, such was my temper, and such it is now. Yet these pages inspire openness in me, a hitherto unknown freedom of mind is evolving and if there were any part of me not entirely taken over by grief I believe I would be at risk of becoming quite consumed by the emotion. That I have pen and paper enough to satisfy this urgent need for expression is a relief. All that I might otherwise feel compelled to speak aloud shall be inscribed here. Elizabeth looks quite at rest which consoles me a little and while her repose makes for a pleasing image of death it does nothing by way of soothing the tight agony of grief that binds me. Her skin, the palest I have ever seen it, appears quite youthful suddenly and there is, I am convinced, the faintest whisper of a smile upon her lips. Yes it is a faded smile; a response to some swiftly remembered amusement? I think not. Amusement never shewed on her lips in quite the explicit way it filled her eyes and I cannot believe her to have been diverted at such a time. I read more from that last and now unchanging smile and swear I know its cause. I kissed her. One last time, while she still breathed but barely lived, I kissed her and wish that the moment had been my last as well as hers.