Uncommonly Intelligent Chapter 6: A New Century, a pride and prejudice fanfic

A/N: To help you keep the ages straight, Lizzy turns 9 in April of 1800, and Jane turns 11 in August. Alice Gardiner is 32 and Edward Gardiner is 26.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed, followed, or favored, and a special thanks to those who gave constructive criticism on the plot and/or my writing style.

A few people thought Lady Rutherford's lesson to Lizzy with the giant was too cruel, but I tried to make it clear that she intended only for the giant to steal the cake, not to frighten Lizzy so badly. And I did note that Lizzy had bounced back within a few minutes. In any event, I promise that no children were harmed during that scene, and I may even have Lizzy meet the giant again just to prove it.

Chapter 6: A New Century

The dawning of the 19th century was a time of hope and new beginnings for many, and the Gardiners were among that number. Horace and Margaret Gardiner, Fanny Bennet's parents, were overjoyed to celebrate the marriages of her two siblings.

To everyone's relief, Fanny's older sister Alice, long thought to be on the shelf, married Mr. Walter Phillips, a clerk in her father's office, on the first day of spring in 1800. Mr. Phillips was immediately promoted to partner in the Meryton solicitor's office.

Not to be outdone, Fanny's brother Edward married a beautiful young woman from Derbyshire named Madeline on the first day of summer that same year. Lizzy and Jane were thrilled, for they had met her during a visit to town while Edward was courting her, and liked her very much.

Edward's partner Mr. Mathers decided to retire after a mild heart attack left him with the realization that he should be enjoying the fruits of a lifetime of work, rather than working until he died. He had become a great friend and admirer of Edward Gardiner, and so he sold him his interest in their company for much less than it was worth. Edward was quick to take advantage of his outright control of the company, now called Gardiner Enterprises, for Mr. Mathers had been more conservative than Edward would have liked. The war with France had made merchant shipping much more perilous, but also much more lucrative. Edward took calculated risks that resulted in his company's profits growing rapidly, and it eventually grew into a very estimable firm, with warehouses and an emporium along with a thriving import-export business.

After the happy marriages of Edward and Alice Gardiner, Fanny Bennet, having heard that good things come in threes, had hopes that Lady Rutherford's son Clarence might start seeing Jane as more than a friend, now that he was about to turn 13. But those aspirations, ridiculous to begin with as Jane was not yet 11, died aborning when she learned that Clarence would soon be leaving Netherfield to attend Eton.

That meant not only the dashing of Fanny's dreams, but the end of children's tutors at Netherfield. That aspect of Clarence's departure was not such a tragedy, however, for Jane was now mature enough to profit from independent reading directed by her father, while Lizzy had long since outgrown children's tutors. It had a somewhat greater impact on Mary, who had been going to Netherfield with her elder sisters for two years, but she now had three people at home - Lizzy, Jane, and Mr. Bennet - who could tutor her.

And there was soon to be a fourth. Kitty and Lydia had not yet begun formal lessons by the time Clarence left, but Bennet, having learned from his previous mistake, sought a governess immediately upon Lady Rutherford's notification that she would no longer engage children's tutors.

With Lady Rutherford's help, Bennet was able to find a gently born and extremely accomplished young woman named Miss Landers, whose family had fallen on hard times. She was installed at Longbourn as governess for Mary, Kitty, and Lydia, and was privately told to be sure to work in some instructions on decorum to the young Bennets whenever Fanny was within earshot. Between this, and the living example of Lady Rutherford, Fanny became more soft-spoken and less demonstrative on social occasions.

Bennet wondered at first how he had managed to employ a governess of this quality for such a reasonable salary. He was enlightened when he later learned that Lady Rutherford had, by a strange coincidence, hired Miss Landers' young niece as an upstairs maid at Netherfield around the same time he had hired Miss Landers. He made another entry in his mental ledger of the debts he owed to his neighbor.

Lizzy still traveled to Netherfield regularly to take advantage of the masters Lady Rutherford continued to employ for herself, and Jane and Charlotte joined her when the subjects were of interest to them, especially music and dancing.

But Clarence's departure was as nothing to the next blow that fell on Fanny. Her father Horace had eaten and drunk too much at Edward's wedding, and so was not surprised when his stomach ached the following day. He felt better the next day, but the day after that, his stomach began to pain him again. This went on intermittently for several weeks, until one day the maid hesitantly approached Margaret Gardiner and informed her that Mr. Gardiner's chamber pot had an alarming amount of blood in it. Margaret immediately confronted her husband, and wasn't sure whether she believed him when he said that he was unaware of the blood, although he admitted that he had been having some very bad stomach aches. Mr. Jones the apothecary was summoned, and after palpating Mr. Gardiner's abdomen, his face told all. He believed that Mr. Gardiner had a tumor, and was not sanguine about his chances to last out the year.

Other physicians were consulted, of course, but Mr. Jones proved correct. Mr. Gardiner passed away two months later at the age of 60, and Margaret Gardiner, who seemed to lose all interest in living at that point, did not long survive him.

This forceful demonstration of how quickly a person could go from seemingly good health to death had a profound effect upon Fanny, and Bennet was disheartened to see that much of the progress she had made in controlling her nerves was undone. She had been more tolerant of Lizzy over the previous year, though she still favored Jane, Kitty, and especially Lydia over Lizzy and Mary, and still resented the attention Lizzy got from Mr. Bennet and Lady Rutherford. But the death of her parents combined with the disappointment of Jane no longer being in the company of Clarence made her most apprehensive for the future, and she began to fall into her old habit of blaming Lizzy for not being born a son. And even before this dual tragedy, she had been growing very prickly about what she perceived as Lizzy flaunting her education.

One example of this occurred on the very first day of 1800. Fanny's sister Alice was in Longbourn's parlor, gossiping about who got drunk at the New Year's Eve party held the previous evening in the Meryton assembly hall. Alice, who enjoyed parties immensely, asked Fanny whether they might have a leap day party at the end of February. Fanny thought that was a wonderful idea.

Lizzy, who had been reading quietly in the corner, looked up from her book and said, "No, mama, this is not a leap year."

Mrs. Bennet huffed, "Of course it is. Even I know that 1800 is divisible by four. It seems that all your tutors did not teach you much about mathematics." She looked to Alice for confirmation, who nodded vigorously.

Lizzy, who could read and completely understand a page from Newton's Principia in Latin faster than Mrs. Bennet could read the society column in her newspaper, said, "Of course 1800 is divisible by four, and according to the Julian calendar, it would have been a leap year. But we adopted the New Style calendar in 1752*, and century years must now be divisible by 400 to be a leap year." Mr. Bennet, who had happened to be passing by in time to hear most of this, said, "Lizzy, I will see you in my study. Now."

* (England, along with other Protestant countries, was so strongly anti-Catholic after the Reformation that it was possible to be executed merely for being a practicing Catholic. These countries therefore resisted adopting the new calendar developed under Pope Gregory XIII for as long as possible. By 1750, the Julian calendar was a full 11 days out of sync with the seasons, and England was grudgingly forced to adopt the new calendar, but called it "New Style" rather than "Gregorian" to avoid honoring a Pope.)

Mrs. Bennet looked triumphant, and Lizzy looked defiant, but she followed her father to his study. She began to speak before they arrived, but Bennet cut her off. "Quiet, Lizzy." After they entered his study and he shut the door behind them, he said, "Sit. No, not there. Here," indicating the chair across from his desk, rather than the chair by the window where she usually curled up to read. From that, Lizzy knew she was in trouble, though she did not understand why, for she was sure she was right.

Bennet had gone to a shelf and retrieved an almanac before he sat at his desk. He thumbed through it until he found the page he wanted, scanned it briefly, and said, "Well, Lizzy, to my complete lack of astonishment, you are correct about leap year." Again Lizzy started to speak, and again Bennet cut her off. "I am not finished. You are factually correct, but you need a lesson in tact. More than one, in fact."

He sighed. "Lizzy, what does 'pedantic' mean?"

Lizzy immediately grasped his point. "Oh! Was I being pedantic, papa?"

"You were. Aside from not being respectful to your mother, for which you will apologize as soon as you leave this room, you spoke as if everyone in the room had begged you to lecture them on the details of the calendar."

"But papa, I was only trying to help!"

"Helping people is fine, Lizzy, but you need to learn when your help is not desired, and you need to learn how to impart knowledge without creating resentment. This is important for everyone to know, but it is especially important for you, for you have far more knowledge than - I was about to say most people your age, but I think that qualification is unnecessary. You have far more knowledge than most people, period. But it is a sad fact of life that people often resent, rather than admire, people who are smarter than they are.

"Unless a man is about to accidentally drink poison and you warn him that he poured from the wrong bottle, people will rarely thank you for telling them they are wrong. In fact, they are most likely to resent it, even if you are right, and especially if they are older than you, or consider themselves knowledgeable in the subject at hand, or if they outrank you socially, or, sadly for you, if they are male.

"None of that is fair, but it is the way of the world. And even if none of those apply, nobody likes a pedant. Believe me, there was no shortage of them at Oxford, and at best they were objects of humor behind their backs, and at worst they were universally disliked."

"So I should not correct people when they are wrong?" Lizzy asked.

"I am not saying that. I am saying that before you do, consider factors other than whether the person is correct.

"First, you do not even need to ask yourself whether your correction is desired. Unless someone explicitly asks you for your opinion, the answer is almost certainly not. And even when someone asks your opinion, especially in regard to themselves, they very likely want a flattering response, rather than an honest one. Every husband knows that 'Do I look good in this dress?' can have only one answer.

"Also, consider whether the correction is necessary. In the case of a man about to get on the wrong stage, the answer is yes. But if someone attempts to quote Shakespeare in a friendly conversation, and gets both the quote and the play wrong, what harm is done? What need is there for correction? What did you accomplish just now other than calling off a party?"

That last comment hit home, and Lizzy's eyes widened. "Oh! I did not think of that!" Still, she could not resist pursuing the subject. "But papa, what if people make fun of someone behind his back for being wrong?"

"Then you might wait until you can correct him without anyone else hearing. And even then, you will cause much less resentment if can find a pleasant way to do it. Instead of saying 'You are wrong,' you could say something like, 'I may be mistaken, but I always thought that quote came from As You Like It. Would you like to bet a farthing on it?' Or in other circumstances, when someone is performing a task the wrong way, you can say something like, 'I know of someone who got good results doing it this way.' Attributing the knowledge to someone else will not only cause less resentment toward you at the time, but also later, if it should turn out that it is you who were wrong.

"For never doubt it, you can be wrong. Almost everything you think you know is uncertain. A book on history may be biased; a book on science may be out of date; an eyewitness may be mistaken, or even lying. While it is true that the probability of you being wrong is much lower than for most people, it is never zero. For thousands of years, there was no fact more certain than that the sun, moon, and five planets revolved around the earth. When I was born, there was no fact more certain than that there were six planets, including the earth, orbiting the sun. But when I was at Oxford, everyone was stunned when a new planet was discovered, and now there are seven. Who knows but that they may discover more in the future?

"So do not withhold information when it is asked or needed, but do not go on at length, and do not act as if you are the fount of all wisdom. Make your answer brief, and attribute it to a book you read. If they wish to argue, the worst they can say is that the book you read must be wrong, for you did not name yourself the source. And if by some miracle they wish you to elaborate, then you may go into more detail.

"Just remember that when you say you know something, what you almost always mean is that you were taught something. The men who spend their lives in laboratories may occasionally discover something truly new, but all that most of us know came from someone else, even the very words we use to think and speak."

After their conversation, Bennet chuckled to himself. He had been quite pedantic about not being pedantic. And he realized ruefully that he had been far more pedantic for most of his life than Lizzy had ever been. Ah, he mused, but it's so much easier to see the faults in other people than in ourselves!

But as he thought about what he had told her, he realized that he had stumbled onto something. Lizzy was getting almost all of her knowledge from books. While it was true that she took long walks observing nature, and spent hours in her stillroom, that was not an efficient way to gain experience. He resolved to talk with Lady Rutherford about giving Lizzy a practical education.

Lady Rutherford was enthusiastic about the idea. She and Bennet began having Lizzy observe as often as possible whenever something needed to be built or repaired on either estate. Shoeing a horse, mending a roof, even preparing the soil for crops, whatever might impart knowledge of how and why things were done the way they were done was fair game. Mrs. Bennet had the idea that gentlewomen did not cook their own food, but both Bennet and Lady Rutherford thought that any knowledge was worthwhile, so Lizzy began spending time in Netherfield's commodious kitchen, and soon became the darling of Madame Beaumont, Lady Rutherford's excellent French cook.

When they found that Lizzy enjoyed these practical sessions more than studying in a library, they resolved to find more opportunities for her. The daily maintenance of long-established estates like Longbourn and Netherfield was not especially varied or exciting, so they decided to proactively hire the time of craftsmen, rather than wait for their haphazard appearance. They paid craftsmen and tradesmen to spend a few hours showing Lizzy what they did, and how they did it. If Lizzy expressed interest in learning more, they would pay for more time.

And there were very few subjects that Lizzy was not interested in. Bennet drew the line at her actually swinging a hammer, but she learned what went into making a wheel or building a shed or repairing a roof. She spent time in her uncle Phillips' office, in her uncle Gardiner's warehouse, and in the workshops or offices of virtually any craftsman or businessman they could find who was willing to allow her to observe and ask questions for a few hours at a time in exchange for payment, as if it were onerous to show off to a pretty young lady. Her temporary tutors were uniformly astonished at the intelligence of her questions, for she read as much as she could about their crafts or professions before observing them. Thus, her questions were not "What do you do?", but "Why is it done this way, rather than that way?" And from blacksmiths to bankers, cobblers to coopers, gunsmiths to glaziers, it typically took her no more than a week to be able to thoroughly understand the techniques used, and to be able to tell good work from bad, how long it should take, and how much it should cost.

With all this practical knowledge and her boundless energy, it was only natural that Lizzy should begin helping her father run Longbourn. Mr. Whitney, Lady Rutherford's steward, had previously taught Lizzy to keep the accounts for an estate. Now Lady Rutherford had him give Lizzy a graduate course in all aspects of estate management, and under his tutelage, Lizzy developed an expert's eye. The man Bennet had hired to replace his corrupt steward had not really been a policy maker; he had merely been a liaison to Bennet's tenants, for since Longbourn bordered Netherfield, Bennet had relied on Lady Rutherford's steward in undertaking joint projects, and on Lizzy to maintain his ledgers.

Bennet knew not what Pandora's Box he had opened, for it did not take long for Lizzy to start pestering him about four-crop rotation, drainage improvements, and other ways she saw to increase Longbourn's profits. After consulting Mr. Whitney, Bennet instituted some of Lizzy's suggestions and was not surprised to see that they indeed increased his profits -which he duly invested with Edward Gardiner.

One other new practice that resulted in unexpected benefits was Lady Rutherford's plan to help Lizzy perfect her accents in various languages by temporarily exchanging servants with her extensive network of relations. Europe had been in turmoil, and not only because of the revolution in France - there had been relatively recent wars involving Russia, Prussia, Austria, the Ottoman Empire, Sweden, and others. Poland had literally been wiped off the map. All of this produced a sporadic flow of refugees from all walks of life. Most of them were poor, but it was not unheard of for people of gentle or even noble birth to have to flee their homes without being able to take their riches with them. Some of them found their way into the service of one of Lady Rutherford's family or acquaintances, and were only too pleased to spend a fortnight conversing with Lizzy in their native tongues, rather than doing menial household chores.

Lizzy used this opportunity not only to perfect her accents, but to learn about different countries, cultures, and customs. When she heard the life stories of some of the servants from their own lips, it impacted her in a way that reading the same type of story in a book could not. She realized more than ever how lucky she was to be gently born, and how hard life could be for those not so fortunate. In fact, the stories were so uniformly sad that at first she suspected Lady Rutherford of deliberately finding tragic cases to teach her humility. But when she tested this theory by talking to the servants at Longbourn and Lucas Lodge, it became apparent to her that a hard life was the rule, rather than the exception, for anyone not of gentle birth.

It affected her treatment of servants and tenants for the rest of her life. It also helped her learn things about life outside of Meryton that she had never found in books. Most importantly, she learned how to converse easily with people of all stations, and to draw them out by her genuine interest in their thoughts and experiences.

By the time Lizzy was 11, she was all but running Longbourn. Lizzy and Jane had learned to ride at Netherfield, where Lady Rutherford, with a mother's over-protectiveness of Clarence, had stabled some of the most gentle and imperturbable horses to be found anywhere. Lizzy therefore had no fear of horses or riding, and was able to ride around Longbourn and inspect the tenant homes and fields as she learned estate management from Mr. Whitney.

Bennet and Lizzy concocted a scheme for when Bennet had to negotiate contracts. He would insist that the meeting be held in his study, and would have one of his daughters start playing the piano with vigor when the businessman's carriage was seen approaching the house. He would then apologize to the man that since his daughter's piano practice made the rest of the house so noisy, he hoped he did not mind if his daughter Lizzy could sit in the corner of his study and do her lesson in Greek while they met. Lizzy, with a dress and hairstyle designed to make her look even younger than she was, obviously posed no threat to the man, and he would readily agree. Lizzy, of course, would listen to the negotiations, and if she heard anything that she knew to be false, or realized that a clause was disadvantageous, she would wait a minute or two and then pretend to have trouble with her Greek, saying, "Papa, I cannot get this passage right. Should it be..." and then switch to Greek. She would tell Bennet her concern, and he would question her if necessary, also in Greek, and then return to the negotiation. A few minutes later, he would go back to the point Lizzy had raised, and improve his position.

Bennet and Lady Rutherford were of one mind in protecting Lizzy. Although there was probably money to be made by exhibiting her, both found the idea abhorrent. Nor did Bennet give any consideration to the idea of Lizzy writing papers under an assumed name. He did allow Edward Gardiner to sell some of her perfume creations in his emporium, but only at a price that guaranteed they would not become widely distributed. Nor was it difficult to convince Mrs. Bennet to conceal the fact that Lizzy made her perfume, as Fanny was most pleased that nobody in Meryton but the Bennets had access to it.