Jane Austen and her works

by Sarah Tytler

With the strongest curiosity, though with no expectation of pleasure, Elizabeth opens the letter, and is still more surprised to find it contains two sheets (the old, spacious sheets) written quite through in a close hand, with the cover also full.

The letter is not a love-letter, or a letter of apology; it is simply a vindication of the writer’s character from the charges which Elizabeth had impulsively brought against it.

In the first part, which deals with the accusation against Darcy for having deliberately separated Bingley and Jane, he begins by making the small atonement of emphatically declaring that he had acted under a mistaken impression. He has been persuaded that, while his friend was rapidly becoming attached to Miss Bennet, she, on her part, was still sufficiently indifferent to him to prevent her happiness being seriously implicated in the affair. In this light, Darcy has thought himself at liberty to take all lawful means to hinder the marriage for his friend’s sake, while he himself was still successfully struggling with his admiration for Elizabeth.

In recapitulating the objections to the marriage, the writer sins afresh, and worse than ever where his reader’s feelings are concerned. He writes some very plain and hard words of the Bennet family which, in the middle of his strong determination to clear himself, he must have known would wound Elizabeth to the quick. He says that the inferiority of her mother’s origin, however much to be regretted, is nothing in comparison with that total want of propriety so frequently—almost so uniformly—betrayed by Mrs. Bennet herself, by Elizabeth’s three younger sisters, and occasionally even by her father.

Apparently, Darcy has relented a little after writing these harsh words, for in the next sentence he does ask her shortly to pardon him. He protests it pains him to offend her. He even goes a little out of his way, to bid her, in her concern for the defects of her relations, and her displeasure with him for unreservedly pointing them out, take comfort from the consideration that she and her elder sister have so conducted themselves as to escape any share of the censure liberally bestowed on the others. He says, with lurking tenderness, under the guise of stern justice, that the exemption is honourable to the sense and disposition both of Jane and Elizabeth.

In proceeding to dispose of her violent advocacy of Wickham’s cause and consequent severe aspersions of his own character, Darcy treats the subject as more serious, and here the higher nature of the man comes in. In proportion to the greater injury done him, he grows calmer, more reasonable, almost magnanimous. With a manly self-restraint and absence of all invective, which are in themselves proofs of his honesty of purpose, he consents to make plain to her, at whatever sacrifices of his pride and reserve, how very different from what she supposes have been his relations with Wickham. He even puts himself to the pain of entrusting to her honour a portion of the story which involves another member of his family, the young sister to whom he is confessedly the best of brothers, in order to complete the exposure of the wholesale misrepresentation, the tangled web of truth and falsehood, with which Wickham has deceived her.

While young men at college together, Darcy knew how far Wickham fell short of the elder Darcy’s good opinion, without attempting to deprive the lad of his patron’s favour. In those days Wickham had shown himself as disinclined, as he was unfit, to take orders; and at the death of his godfather, who had only recommended him to the family living conditionally—on his proving suitable, and on the younger Darcy’s approbation of the presentation—Wickham had announced his objections to the step proposed, and had accepted £3,000 as an equivalent. It was not till after he had failed in studying for the bar, and when he had wasted the money he had received, that he had again applied to Darcy with cool effrontery, professing his readiness to comply with the necessary conditions, and claiming the presentation to the living.

On Darcy’s refusal, Wickham had attempted to revenge himself, and at the same time to secure Georgiana Darcy’s fortune of £30,000 by renewing his acquaintance with Darcy’s sister, and making use of her childish affection for him, until he had sufficiently ingratiated himself with the inexperienced girl of fifteen, to induce her to believe herself in love, and to consent to an elopement with him. Georgiana was only saved from a miserable fate by the affection for the elder brother who had been like a second father to her, which caused her, at the last moment, to refuse to go any further in deceiving and defying him, and to confess to him her foolish intention.

Darcy ends his letter by referring Elizabeth Bennet for confirmation of his account, should she be inclined to question it, to his cousin. Colonel Fitzwilliam, who is acquainted with the entire particulars, and who can have no motive in misleading her.

Then with the revived regret and charity with which a man will say farewell to the woman he has loved—and loves still, in spite of her cruel treatment of him—he bids God bless her, before he signs himself Fitzwilliam Darcy.