The weeks during which they waited for the banns to be read were frequently a fevered torture for both Darcy and Elizabeth. Mr. Darcy remained committed, as he always had, to act with chastity and probity, and to never engage in any behavior that would be unworthy of him as a gentleman before their marriage had been solemnized by the church. And he resolutely stuck to this resolution, though the desperate flames of passion burned bright and hot between him and Elizabeth.
For her part… Elizabeth would have much preferred they married by special license, and then, as Shakespeare once had a character exclaim, in far less pleasant context: "To bed, to bed! Come, come, come, come, give me your hand. To bed, to bed, to bed!"
They delayed so long because the banns were quite respectable of a thing to do, and Mrs. Bennet wished to throw a grand wedding, and to bring all her daughters to Meryton again.
Whilst often a wedding was celebrated chiefly by those distant members of a family through letters rather than through visits, all Elizabeth's closest did come to Meryton to be there with her on Mrs. Bennet's great day when her daughter married ten thousand a year (and very likely more), and when the happy couple was breakfasted at Longbourn in such grand style that Mrs. Bennet would receive praise on occasion from those less lucky matrons of the neighborhood who could only look upon Mrs. Bennet with green faced envy for several years more.
Mary and her husband came earliest to Hertfordshire, as the earl by whom he was employed had been drawn early to London for matters of business he wished to settle before the little season started in full swing. This earl was an acquaintance of Darcy's and he sent a letter along with Dr. Smith.
It felt decidedly strange to Darcy, after so long dancing with the simpering daughters of the greatest families in the land to be now married to a woman who had a connection to the employed secretary of an acquaintance of his.
But Darcy decided, after a momentary feeling of discomfort that not only did it not matter, but he liked the connection to such a fine scholarly mind.
For Elizabeth's part she had the most pleasure in seeing Lydia, who she had not seen for the longest time. Lydia had turned out better than Elizabeth could have expected when she was wildly young, as opposed to simply young. She happily embraced Elizabeth, and cried with Jane, and she had added maturity to her enthusiastic bouncy lust for life that she retained possession of.
Lydia had a son barely old enough to travel safely, and who soon adored all of his doting aunts. The young man Lydia had married was to Mr. Bennet's complete shock making a good go of his business in the north, and Lydia spoke as the young wife of a tradesman, full of the details of machines, and leases, and the difficulties of finding good hands. Also the ways that the children and wives of the workers could also be put to work in the mill, allowing the whole family to earn productive wages, which was a notion that Elizabeth thought rather unpleasant, to think of children laboring for hours a day inside an enclosed building, instead of being free to run about, but she also could understand the difficulty of finding the best way to turn one's hand towards making enough money to survive in an often difficult world.
By the time Lydia arrived, Darcy had come to see his earlier expectation of splendid connections and dowry as laughable. So when Elizabeth teased him about having a tradeswoman for a sister after they had listened to Lydia explain with great enthusiasm the particulars of how to find the best supplies of cotton and the best markets for the sale of woven cloth from her husband's mill, he laughed at himself and Elizabeth, and proclaimed himself entirely happy and satisfied.
"I have a new list, you must understand, my dear, of what I wish for in a wife."
"You do, Mr. Darcy? A list — what a responsible way to treat such a serious issue. Now I imagine a great gentleman such as yourself must have many items of importance on it — after all, you have the choice of the finest women in England."
"I confess I do have a long set of vital points upon this list. I want a woman who is intelligent, charming, clever, and who has the finest eyes. Those eyes must pierce my heart like beams of golden sunlight, and her lips ought to be red as coral, and her nose shaped like… uh…"
"Keep going." Elizabeth grinned at him encouragingly, and enthralled.
"A hawk's… or a carriage dog's… no. Not that. Or hmmmm…"
"It seems, Mr. Darcy, though you may be tall as the columns of a great building, and handsome as a famed statue made by Michelangelo, and noble and brave as a Hercules from legend, and as wealthy as a monarch—"
"Of a tiny principality."
"And as good as a saint with halo and wings, it shall fall to me to be the writer, the master of metaphor in this family."
"Drat." Darcy grinned at her. "I had so hoped to be the best at everything."
"But your list, what else is on your new list of traits for a wife?"
"There is in truth only one essential item."
"And what," Elizabeth asked when Darcy paused, "is this essential item?"
"That she be you."
And though it was trite, and really not an excessively clever thing to say at all, Elizabeth swooned, and kissed him, and she was so delightedly happy. The gooey feelings in her heart made her melt like hot butter, and kept her happy as a bubbly boiling pudding on Christmas day. The feeling of love filled Elizabeth from the tips of her fingernails to the tips of her toenails to the tip of her, apparently, hawklike carriage dog's nose.
Kitty and her husband also came from Lyme.
Darcy had no influence in the Navy, so he could not help that gentleman to gain the employment that was made so difficult to find by the reduction in the service following the end of the war, but he did like Captain Caron quite well and heartily encouraged the man to visit Pemberley with his wife whenever he wished.
Georgiana and her husband, and Darcy's cousin General Fitzwilliam came and ensured that there was an ample supply of Darcy's blood present. Georgiana soon was set entirely at her ease by Elizabeth, and the two spent hours in conversation whose principal subjects were Elizabeth's books — Georgiana had many ideas for what Elizabeth ought write next — and stories about Darcy which Elizabeth begged to hear so she could to tease Darcy about them.
Lady Anne de Bourgh came with her clergyman Mr. Collins and the friend of all of them, Charlotte Collins. Darcy's aunt had desperately wanted him to marry Anne, but Anne was still unmarried, and she seemed to have happily blossomed in the years since her mother's death.
Anne de Bourgh would always be a small, rather sickly looking woman, but she was no longer cowed and quiet. Rather she laughed and smiled, and became almost immediately the dearest of friends with Elizabeth, exclaiming, "Charlotte has told me so much about you!"
To which Elizabeth replied, "She has told me a great deal about you!"
General Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth also chattered and laughed with each other quite happily. Darcy loved to see those of his family who he loved most love Elizabeth. He was quite sure she would in general be loved or admired by all who met her from amongst his staff, tenants, acquaintances and family.
Two days prior to the wedding, Bingley hosted another large ball at Netherfield in honor of Elizabeth and Darcy, and during that ball he forgot again all his other guests, danced thrice with Jane, and talked with her half the night.
There was little doubt in the mind of any of those who watched that another marriage was in the offing, soon as an appropriate passage of time had occurred.
However Bingley during the supper remembered himself long enough to toast Mr. Darcy, and good naturedly tease him, saying that he had often doubted that his friend would ever settle upon a woman as being good enough, and then he met Elizabeth who was quite clearly too good for him. But that Bingley's wits and skills as a matchmaker had prevailed, and she accepted him in the end.
The day that Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy embarked together upon that great voyage which is the wedded state, and became proclaimed before God, the community, their family, and each other as the companions of their future life, dedicated to worshipping each other with their bodies, had the most perfect weather possible in December.
In Elizabeth's view it was as though the sky and the ground wished to celebrate her happiness with her — cold but sunny, with a dusting of beautiful snow upon everything. The air was as clear as a crystal glass, and the briskness brought a rosy color to everyone's cheeks.
The ceremony was simple, but well attended, with another crowd waiting in the cold to praise the happy couple after their nuptials, the happy result of cupid's arrows had been solemnized.
The two made the poetic oaths from the Book of Common Prayer to each other, smiling brilliantly with each word said, and meaning each and every promise with their hearts entire. And then the ring was placed upon Elizabeth's finger, and she felt entirely delighted, for some part of her had never truly believed until now that she would ever marry, and ever have a man upon whom she could happily depend as a helpmeet and a support in all the stresses, struggles and anxieties of life, a man who in turn could depend upon her.
She was proclaimed by the rector who she had known since she was a girl as Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy, the wife of the best man she had ever known.
They were herded from the church by the cheering crowd, all laughing and delightedly happy, and when they were put into the fine wedding carriage, purchased by Darcy's amused desire to fulfill Mrs. Bennet's wishes, fresh for the occasion, the two kissed each other passionately as they were driven off and away into the future.
Mrs. Bennet standing there, waved her handkerchief, as tears fell from her eyes. She turned to Mr. Bennet and said, "God has been very good to us!"
"That he has, Mrs. Bennet. That he has."
Afterword
This book had a major change in structure and tone from the first draft to the second. I'd initially planned the story to have a rather bitter Elizabeth who was quite angry at her father for refusing to save any money, and she would develop a belief that she needed to somehow provide dowries for Jane's daughters, and this would become an all-consuming worry.
Elizabeth and Mr. Bennet argued quite fiercely, and rather horribly — I wrote several excellent scenes where they say mean things to each other that I removed in the end. A few lines I liked exceedingly are lost forever to the depths of my deleted scenes bin.
Oh well.
Such is the life of an author removing things he likes in isolation to make the whole better.
I decided almost immediately when I started reading through the rewrite that I wanted to focus on the lighter elements of this story. The tone of the way that Elizabeth thinks about herself, in that grand third person is (in my humble view) funny and adorable, with just enough pathos for flavor. I liked that tone, and the sort of novel that fit cohesively with that tone a great deal more than I liked the idea of those bitter arguments.
My storyteller brain consistently makes up stories where things go horribly wrong, and that I wouldn't personally want to read. Part of this is in the name of conflict and high drama — which if you read any creative writing book, you will be told that you must have death overhanging every scene, and have the potential for disaster always being present.
Creative writing books, at least the ones that I've stumbled across, tend to be written by thriller writers, not romantic comedy writers.
Having said that, I on occasion like a bit of angst as much as the next reader, it just needs to work right, and be balanced and fit. Also, I had an additional crass and mercenary reason to prefer to turn this story into a romantic comedy rather than a drama.
As I write this afterword I do not know how well you, my reading public, shall collectively like this novel. Nota bene: If you do like this book, I would love it if you left a review telling the rest of the reading world that you liked it and why. Also leave a review if you hated the book — either with specifics or that always entertaining, "A stain upon the name of the fair Jane Austen, and the worst crime against English usage I have ever read".
Your author in his dim and distant college days was a math major who planned to figure out how much you should be charged for health insurance as a profession. Drawing upon that rather scandalous past, I recently made a spreadsheet where I compared the data on how all of my books have sold. I found to my surprise both that shorter books have made more money per book than longer books, and that comedies usually found a bigger audience than sad drama stories.
Apparently on average, the audience of us who like novels written by one of the greatest comic writers of all time, prefer novels that are more comic than tragic.
Singular.
This particular book is not fun all the way through at all, even with the changes I have made. The first half of the book is mostly funny or lighthearted, but then Jane's husband died. This book is rather like A Dishonorable Offer which had a couple of quite delightfully funny scenes, but also some very painful moments for the characters.
In any case, I decided that I didn't want to publish and finish editing a story with a bitter Elizabeth who is really angry at her father, while pretending not to be. So all the Mr. Bennet scenes were rewritten to mostly just include bantering.
And I also pulled out the tools from the book I'd been reading when I edited A Compromised Compromise and made a great deal of effort to stick lots of alliteration and polyptotons, which is a fancy word for using a word as two different parts of speech right next to each other, like from Shakespeare: "Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle: I am no traitor's uncle." Or from the Beatles, "Nothing you can do that can't be done, nothing you can sing that can't be sung."
On which topic, my book recommendation right now is not another Pride and Prejudice book but Mark Forsythe's Elements of Eloquence. It is engaging, entertaining, and enlightening.
I will also note I often am drawing little fragments of lines and images from Hungarian poems and music. In studying the language I created a bunch of flash cards with the text from my wife's favorite songs or from famous poems, and as a result some bits have been read by me five to ten times.
One of the clearest examples of this that I recall is Elizabeth saying that "Life is not like a novel for girls," which is basically a paraphrasing of a line from one of my wife's favorite songs. Another case which is unrecognizably distorted if you don't know the source is a line in the first Elizabeth POV chapter which refers to "The great sinful city, whose name is London."
There is a song titled Budapest by a famous Hungarian singer, Cseh Tamás (the family name first, Hungarian style) that had a line "and it has a name too, Budapest."
I have a new Pride and Prejudice novel mostly done that should come out about two months after I publish this novel. I am really excited about that one. The working title is Overhearings Less to the Purpose, and the premise is that at Rosings Darcy overhears Elizabeth telling Charlotte what she really thinks about Darcy. And Darcy then decides that even though he of course no longer wants to marry her, he must charm Elizabeth into thinking more kindly upon him.
Darcy discovers that he is bad at charming women.
Several of the scenes in this book are in my view the funniest things I've ever written, and when I started doing the second draft edit, I could not stop laughing. Of course I find my own books particularly funny, because they happen to be written by someone who has exactly my sense of humor, but Overhearings Less to the Purpose transcends simple jokes to create several really good farcical situations.
Currently I have 45,000 words done, and I need to write three or four new scenes that should leave it at a short novel length 55,000 words or so.
Sign up for my mailing list if you want to find out when Overhearings Less to the Purpose and my other future books come out. Also maybe ask your representative to support laws restricting the right of companies to engage in anti-competitive measures. Initially this paragraph had a mention of following me at the big 'A' company that ships things or where ever it is that you were reading the book.
However, apparently, on Apple's sales platform books are not allowed to mention other platforms where you can buy the same book. I'd not be at all surprised if the policies at the big aforementioned shipping company are similar, and that company certainly engages in lots of anti competitive practices. Partially this is just the way the world it is, but both as small consumers and producers of things we need to make sure we use our collective power that can be exercised via the government to control giant companies when they are engaged in practices that hurt everyone else.
I don't at all feel confident that the policy I'm right now annoyed by actually should be banned. There are reasonable arguments for allowing Apple to refuse to allow a book sold through its website to say that you could buy that same book elsewhere, and there are reasonable arguments for saying that the company which is the biggest e-book seller should be allowed to strongly encourage as many independent authors as possible to exclusively publish their books with them - by the way, due to those policies, there are several books, I've written and published that are in fact not available at Apple, or anywhere but that specific e-book seller.
However, these policies, created by companies as large and powerful as Apple and the company whose name must not be found by an algorithmic word search are the sort of thing which should be viewed with skepticism and oversight.
And now this is the part of the afterword where I ask you to donate to people who are very poor and need help. Rather than writing a new argument, I'm going to copy out what I wrote in several of my earliest books three or four years ago on the subject of donating:
I hope you do not mind if I finish this book by suggesting you donate to Doctors Without Borders. Let me explain why it is extremely important to me to interrupt your book, a book you paid for, with a fundraising appeal.
Last summer my brother graduated from college. For the ceremony they sat a thousand relatives of the happy escapees into the real world on folding chairs in the beating sun and made them wait. And wait. And wait. On hard plastic chairs.
While we waited for the long march of engineering students to their seats to begin, so we could listen to the speeches the college had arranged for the grads to be sent off with, a projector cycled through photos of the graduating class. Each photo had a sentence where the student said what they wanted to do now that they had graduated. Make money appeared once or twice. Make Mom and Dad proud was far more common. Find a job was occasional.
By far the most common response, however, what around a third of the students said, was some variant of, "I want to make the world a better place."
Do you?
I do; I hope you do too.
I, like most of you, improve the world directly through my work. My best guess is that you collectively have spent at least a hundred times as many hours reading my first books as I spent writing them. I have changed literally years of lived human experience. That is a great reward for an author, but we all improve the world by being part of it. Someone's life is certainly better because of what you do.
But I want to do more. We can do more.
Donations save lives. We can literally do what superheroes do. So help me make the world a better place by supporting Doctors Without Borders, and make yourself a little bit more like Superman.
You are at least vaguely aware of the statistics about preventable death. You have heard touching stories that end with the child living because of a lifesaving donation. You don't need to be told why you should donate to Doctors Without Borders or another organization that alleviates suffering. You already know.
So just do it.
Please, please, please. Be the change you want to see in the world. Do something which will make your children proud. Make the world a better place. Donate something: one percent of your income or ten dollars a month; something. Act to make a world where everyone has basic medical care.
Thank you, everyone, for reading, and I hope you loved the book.
Timothy Underwood
Budapest, November 2019