Hi everyone - I know, the book WAS complete and even has an epilogue, but then as I was posting it on AHA more scenes just decided to invade my mind, refusing to give me any peace until they were typed up. So here we are, two additional chapters - or if you prefer a different kind of epilogue.
For anyone who has bought a copy of the book on Amazon before these were written, I will add these 2 chapters as a small separate Vignette shortly - please contact me by pm for a epub file of the vignette rather than buying it if you already have the main book (it will work just the same on Kindle).
Bonus Chapter - A Further Epilogue part 1
(Four and twenty years after Lydia's last journal extract)
Extracts from the personal journal of Miss Elizabeth (Beth) Westwood, fifteen years of age, of Hillgate Hall, Derbyshire.
Monday the twentieth of March
Hello, my name is Beth. I am not sure where to start or what to write.
Last week I found Mama's journals in a box in the attics. The weather has been atrocious recently, and as we normally do when it rains for days on end, Mama took us all to walk and run around the upper floors of the house. Well, this time, she decided we should make a forest in the attics. I told her you could not have a forest indoors, but she simply laughed and replied that it would not be a proper forest, but we could arrange all the boxes and trunks to make interesting paths we could then use to exercise when we cannot go outside. It does make sense, although I would not have called it a forest myself.
My brother and I got a little bored while Mama and the footman were moving the larger trunks in the places she wanted, so we started opening some of the smaller chests that were carelessly lined up on shelves next to one of the small windows. These are never used, so we thought there would be nothing of interest, but as I said, we had nothing better to do. There is one with the little christening gown that was used for both of us, Mama says it is a family heirloom, made from the dress my great-grand-mother Bennet was married in. It is a little over ornate for my tastes, but Mama adores beads and embellishments. Still, it is nice to have something from our ancestors, so I think we will keep the tradition and use it for the next generations too.
Then I opened a small chest and found some notebooks, all with start and end dates on the cover. I picked them up and asked Mama about them for I could see it was her handwriting; she said they were her journals from before she married Papa; there's more than eleven years' worth of entries, so it will take me a long time to go through them, but Mama agreed to take them down to the study she shares with Papa and keep them on a shelf there so I can read them at my leisure. It is very strange to think of Mama at eleven years old writing her thoughts in a diary. She did warn me that the first two years were very messy as she was very young, so I started with the journal she got on her thirteenth birthday. Her writing is rather messy; I do not mean her hand is bad, for her letters are very well formed, even in the earlier journals, and her handwriting in general is regular and feminine; I mean her sentences seems to jump from thought to thought without any logic or reason.
Anyway, somehow Mama mentioned the journals to Aunt Elizabeth when we went to Pemberley for dinner last Friday, and my aunt gave me this book to start recording my own journey through life. I thought ladies only wrote things that are useful for running their houses or teaching their children, but apparently both Mama and her sister keep a personal journal even now; Aunt Elizabeth said that when she is feeling challenged by life, she likes to read some of her entries from calmer or happier times, and it cheers her up a lot. I think I would like to have something to quickly cheer me up on bad days too, so I will listen to her advice.
Fred is calling me to go on a ride with him, so I will finish here for today.
BW
Wednesday the twenty second of March
I read more of Mama's diary and discussed them with her. She told me that as this is my first journal, I should introduce myself and my family in an early entry, so that my children or their children could easily understand where I am in my life. In fact, she says I should do that for each new journal, as I can then reflect how much I have changed over the months or years. It sounds reasonable enough as I will grow to be more sensible each year and I expect I will have more interesting insights on my family over time. I am of course quite grown up already, but I know that soon I will be a proper lady and I may enjoy looking back at my younger self.
Well, my name is Elizabeth Catherine Westwood, and I am named after my mother's two favourite sisters. Everyone calls me Beth. I am the daughter of James Charles Westwood of Hillgate Hall, not far from Buxton, and Lydia Margaret Westwood, formerly Miss Bennet of Longbourn in Hertfordshire. I also have a younger brother, Frederick William Westwood, who is exactly three and twenty months younger than me. My grandmother Westwood also lives in the dower house on our estate, although Mama invites her to the main house so often, she might as well live with us altogether. We get on very well, Grandma, Mama and I, and I think Fred and I make Grandma happier just by being around her and playing games with her.
Our closest family and friends are the Darcys of Pemberley and the Robinsons of Artingley Park. Mrs Elizabeth Darcy, whom I was named for, is Mama's second oldest sister and Mama calls her Lizzie, although I prefer using her full name, our name; that is what her husband uses as well, and it sounds so very good when he says it. Hopefully one day I will have someone who wants to call me his Elizabeth as well. Mrs Georgiana Robinson is Uncle William's little sister and Mama's best friend. Pemberley is a huge estate very close to us, only about an hour and a half in the carriage, so we see them a lot, but Artingley is in Yorkshire, over sixty miles north of here, so we cannot go as often. When the Robinsons visit Pemberley we go and stay there as well.
Of course, I have many more aunts and uncles, for Mama was the youngest of five daughters and Papa also has a younger brother and sister, but I am not going to list them all, nor will I include all my cousins as there are too many of them. I also still have my Bennet grandparents, but we do not see them very often now as they are getting too old to travel often, and Hertfordshire is so very far away, and several great aunts and great uncles
My closest friends are my cousins, Janey and Lyddie, or Miss Jane Darcy and Miss Lydia Robinson I should say. Lyddie is the oldest of us at seventeen, then Janey and finally me, although I am only five months younger. I do think my family is unbelievably unimaginative about naming their daughters, as we all seem to be named after some family member or other. Elizabeth was my great-grand-mother Bennet's name, before being my aunt's and then mine, Jane was my great-grand-mother Gardiner's name, and that is also the name of my oldest aunt on the Bennet side, and of course now my cousin's. We are far from the only cousins to suffer from that lack of creativity, as we can boast of another Lydia (Papa's youngest niece), a Mary, a Mary-Jane, a Catherine, a Georgiana, a Francine (Grandma Bennet's name), a Margaret (Great Aunt Gardiner's name). It is bordering on absurdity at this point.
I certainly will not subject my daughters if I ever have any to this ridiculous habit, as I think young ladies deserve their own names; I do not mind being compared to my lovely aunt, for she is wonderful and so very clever, but Janey is less lucky, and although I should not say that, Lyddie is not fond of being constantly asked if she dances as well as her namesake, my Mama, by any new acquaintances who have already met our family. Of course the worst of the lot is our poor cousin, Miss Caroline Rose Bingley, who is nearly nineteen; Caro was named after Uncle Charles' sister, the most disagreeable, raffish, wheyfaced woman you can ever imagine. Aunt Jane insisted that as their oldest girl was named Louisa after Mrs Hurst, Mrs Heddon-Smith (even her name is snobbish) would be upset if she did not have a niece named after her either; that is not fair as Mrs Hurst is not very bright, but good-hearted and kind, Lulu doesn't mind being associated with that sweet aunt of hers.
The Boys have been luckier, as there were fewer men in our families to take names from. Fred is very close to Walter Darcy, who is nearly the same age as him, and both boys absolutely worship our oldest cousin, Ben, who is already two and twenty. That is Bennet Darcy, who is a victim of yet another tradition, that of naming the first son after the mother's family; I think this is ridiculous, and while it is fine for Ben, my poor Uncle William's full first name is Fitzwilliam, which is an abominably long name for a child, for at some point my uncle must have been a little boy.
Frederick's name comes from Papa's best friend when he was young and throughout school and university; we never met him as he was a war hero, an infantry lieutenant who sadly did not return from the Spanish peninsula. I guess we are lucky, Mama and Papa named us after people worth looking up to.
Anyway, that is our close family. I do love spending time in Aunt Kitty's house when we are in London, for she is such a talented artist, and I find my Uncle Denver, Aunt Mary's husband, simply fascinating; he is a naval captain of great renown, and although we see them but rarely, his stories are just wonderful.
I will go and read a little more of Mama's journals now, as I really want to see what type of girl she was at my age and it may help me decide what to write next.
BW
Tuesday the twenty eighth of March
Oh, my goodness, I read some entries Mama wrote when she was fifteen. My poor Mama, how much better I can understand her now. And I admire Aunt Elizabeth even more than before; I always knew my aunt was a fierce defender of anyone she cared about; if you could just see her eyes when anyone attacks our family, you would understand what I mean; but for a fourteen year-old girl, a full year younger than I am now, to challenge a man, an adult man much larger than she was, well, that should not surprise me of her, but it does. It does explain why Mama and her are so close, despite being so very different in character and tastes, and despite the age gap between them.
I am very glad my aunt protected her little sister and helped her become the person she is now, for I love my mother even though her endless energy is a little exhausting at times. I wonder if anyone ever realised how much the younger Mama helped her sisters as well. Papa has told us often enough that he owes his happiness to the Darcys for he would never have met Mama had she remained in Hertfordshire, but I think that without her, my aunt and uncle would not have married as they were determined to be rude and dislike each other from what Mama wrote. I will tell Janey when they come tomorrow, she will love these parts of the diary too, and we will write some of it for Lyddie as again, without Mama and Aunt Elizabeth as her sisters, maybe Aunt Georgiana would also have had a very different future, not quite so happy as her life now is.
As an aside, now I understand why Mama makes us walk indoors if we cannot go outside, it comes from my aunts again. And it explains the picture in Papa's study of a young Mama surrounded by boxes; I knew Aunt Kitty had drawn it but I could not understand why she would have chosen such a setting for a portrait of her younger sister. Well, we will need to show her the attics here when she visits us next, and maybe she will draw a similar portrait of Mama now to go with the one when she was fifteen; I think that would make a wonderful present for Papa.
Mama does have a little bit of a obsession around having shapely legs even now though, and she insists I walk every day too so that I also have nice legs; I actually love walking, in that I am definitely like my namesake, so it is not any bother, but I walk to calm myself, reflect or think about events rather than just because I want shapely legs; that is such an odd reason to walk.
For now though, my dance tutor should be arriving shortly, so I will stop here. I do not think I still need dance lessons, as I have been dancing my whole life, or at least as long as I can remember; nobody living with Mama and Papa can survive without knowing how to dance, not with the many impromptu afternoon or evening dances we have here. It is lucky that my governess can play the piano so well and is always happy to go with Mama's requests for lively music.
I think my Aunt Elizabeth was right, there is pleasure to be had from putting your thoughts down on a clean page of a tidy journal. It does bring you some peace, I will need to thank her again for the journal tomorrow. I wonder if Janey makes regular entries in a diary too, I will need to ask her.
BW
Friday the thirty first of March
I simply cannot believe how many naughty words and insulting expressions my Mama used in her journal! Those words, coming from the woman who has been insisting on us minding our manners all the time, it is simply unbelievable. Although I will not remind her of her use of such vocabulary until after I finish reading all the entries, as they are so very entertaining. And I will certainly ask Grandpa Bennet what that book was next time I see him.
I must say, I have never met Mr Collins and I am quite curious now. I know Mrs Collins for she still visits Aunt Elizabeth every year, and she is a nice enough lady, very calm and collected, and not at all someone I would have expected to marry a really silly man. Yet Mama's comments about her father's cousin are not flattering, not even a little. I think I believe Mama as her descriptions of Uncle Charles and Uncle William were rather spot on. And if anyone ever reads both our journals one day and wonders, my Aunt and Uncle Bingley are still exactly as Mama described; placid and rather dull but very happy in their quiet life. My Janey may be named for our aunt, but luckily she is nothing like her; instead she is full of life and energy just like her mother.
I wish I could have met Mama when she was my age or even younger, she certainly sounds like a lot of fun, even if she also seems to have been quite unruly and a little impertinent. Who would have believe that from the very proper Mrs Westwood of Hillgate Hall, the perfect mistress of the estate, a wonderful wife and mother, a leader in the local society, sister to the grand Mrs Darcy who moves in the first circles. Instead I am discovering a witty and fun girl I certainly would have called a friend, not so very proper after all. Maybe it means that Janey, Lyddie and I will also turn out to be fine ladies at some point, although I doubt it will be in time for Lyddie's coming out in London in April.
We will all be removing to London next week, so I may not have much time to write with all the packing to be done, and the tenants to visit before we disappear for nearly two months. I have been helping Mama with the visits for the past year, and I used to think it was unfair to be asked to do so much at such an early age; I was wrong it seems for Mama does talk about tenants visits in her journal, and she started younger than I did, so I will make an extra effort to be more helpful from now on, as she definitely deserves this from me.
I may not be as demonstrative as Janey, Mama or Aunt Elizabeth, few people can be, but I really do love my family; I think reading Mama's own declaration of love for her sisters has reminded me I need to tell Mama, Papa and Fred how very important they are to me far more often.
BW