Thank you for your interest in Austenesque Thoughts. If you wish to subscribe (always at no charge), I would be pleased to offer a promotional code (either US or UK) for one free Audible download of the seventh volume of the Bennet Wardrobe Series: The Pilgrim: Lydia Bennet and a Soldier’s Portion.
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Life, my dear boy, is composed of a thousand mundane moments and may be equally dispersed between joy and trouble. Each, though, like a small pebble resting in a river’s current, contributes to the grand arc of existence, bending it toward its ultimate end.
Lydia Fitzwilliam, Dowager Countess of Matlock (8th), letter to her great-grandson, Viscount Henry Fitzwilliam, November 3, 1883
A staple in romance writing is the concept of “Happily Ever After.” An author offering such a satisfying resolution is a response to an underlying human need that resonates through one hundred generations of storytelling. We pray that, although none of us escapes alive from this life, we do have, never-the-less, the opportunity and the power to organize a happy ending. There is an undeniable hope that the future resting just beyond that far horizon toward which time carries us will meet our fondest dreams and expectations.
Yet, is that what life truly is, a journey from a less happy existence to one of joy? Or are we, as readers and authors, demanding and delivering escapes instead of compositions that challenge notional behaviors?
Are loves blinding, scorching across the heavens in coruscating brilliance? Or, are they a slow-simmering pot of a particularly delectable soup? Are they a blend of both and fraught with pitfalls and detours? Are deaths noble and uplifting? Or are the majority simply pathetic endings: wheezes rather than shouts? Are they only reminders of the transitory nature of all existence?
Jane Austen’s power rests in her exploration of the human condition, admittedly from her somewhat bucolic platform of a country gentlewoman, by sketching universal truths and personality archetypes. She then serves them up to her readers, perhaps not in quite as moralistic a manner as Milton or Pope, but still implicitly asking readers to learn from the actions of her characters. There is joy, sadness, merriment, and boredom.
What I find important is that she offers lessons for those perceptive enough to ‘see’ not ‘look’ at the portrait she paints. Her voice whispers at us across the centuries Do not make flash judgments. Be skeptical of “unchangeable” truths. Listen to advice but decide for yourself what is in your best interest. Reflect. Re-assess.
In Austen, readers gaze into her mirror and wonder if this is how they appear to others. I am convinced that Austenesque authors ought to seek to emulate the good Lady and provide their readers more meat and less gravy. I am suggesting that authors elevate our prose and plots by placing tired tropes onto the shelf and reaching deep into our writing toolboxes. If we are serious about creating literature, then we need to challenge our readers to stretch themselves, their tastes, and their imaginations to guard against our genre becoming stale and predictable.
I have drawn inspiration from the last lines of George Eliot’s magisterial novel of life, Middlemarch.
Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
Eliot closes with lines that explicitly state that a life’s impact is found in the subtleties and not in the grand crescendoes. I am not saying that Darcy and Ellizabeth’s eternal love is without meaning.
I am not suggesting that authors abandon the HEA. Miss Austen herself composed several paragraphs, if not complete chapters, at the end of her works positioning her major players in the firmament of happiness or, at the least, with a satisfactory outcome. However, sending up works in which the only mystery is how the characters arrive at their Happily Ever After does, I believe, shortchange readers. If the HEA is the be-all and end-all of Austen variations—and writers are often constrained to use the one HEA prescribed by Austen—are we in danger of creating derivative and duplicative work? Food for thought for which I have no easy answer.
Enigmatic endings, such as what Virginia Woolf composed for perhaps the greatest novel of the Twentieth Century, Mrs. Dalloway, where readers are left wondering if Clarissa ever discovers herself, may act to energize our genre.
If not the HEA, then what? I believe the solution is to be found in building the rich tapestry of lives fully lived within our books, laid out upon pages—either digital or analog. Those colorful threads can be found in offering our characters the opportunity to act like recognizable human beings. In the process, we readers are provided a glance behind the curtain to apprehend the constellation of moments that make up a three-dimensional life lived in the present (although written in the past) tense.
In the year since their arrival, the Bennets had begun—contrary to Tom’s earlier practice of avoiding large terpsichorean gatherings—a weekly habit of venturing out onto parquet expanses. While their efforts at some of the Latin dances were laughable—although both Tom and Fanny were the first to chuckle and giggle—their Viennese and traditional waltzes were acknowledged to be particularly compelling.
The Avenger: Thomas Bennet and a Father’s Lament, Ch. 36
The Bennets, by this point in The Avenger, have once again found comfort in each other’s company. For many married couples in the late 1940s dancing was a welcome activity. Obviously, I was using them stepping onto the floor at the Netherfield Harvest Ball of 1948 as way to illustrate how Thomas Bennet had changed. However, where before the Bennets had been abnormal to the extreme, now they are behaving in a normal and unremarkable way.
As the letter from Lydia to Henry Fitzwilliam quoted above suggests, lives are not composed of great events but rather are an amalgam of tics, observations, happenings, and comments. Each, when taken individually, may be interesting. When taken as a group, though, they establish a context that allows another to ascribe a deeper meaning. Ultimately, the collection creates that life.
Are not some of the “best” moments in Austenesque fiction found in a breath-taking hot air balloon ride, the whimsey of a ghostly woman bound to a flesh and blood man, or the tickling of champagne bubbles beneath the nose of a young lady at her first ball?
Thus, I arrive at the idea of the Happily Ever Now. Again, Tom and Fanny Bennet are enjoying (and seen to be enjoying) a waltz. They are happy—in this moment, in the Now in which they exist far removed from the Regency. They are demonstrating human resilience and are happy.
They likely will be happy again, but their lives will also be punctuated by sadness. The path from joy to grief and, through recovery, to joy again is, I am convinced, the cycle of human existence. At any stage of life from the moment of birth to the instant of that last breath, we exist solely in our own Present which is the only plane available to us in this universe. Likewise, our characters in the fictional frames created first by Miss Austen and then ourselves are observed in the proximate present—even when in flashback.
The meeting of two eternities—the past and the future is precisely the present moment.
Henry David Thoreau
Perhaps we might look at life—and this assuredly includes the fictional lives of our characters—like a string of pearls. Each orb adds something essential and interesting to the choker or triple strand. Length is not the determinant but rather quality: the more lustrous the pearls, the richer their hue, the more intriguing the necklace. Thus, white and pink can and should alternate with black or purple. Life is not unremittingly cheerful, nor is thoroughly grim.
On the contrary, it is possible to live on in joy when the camera and lights are turned off after the finality of “The End.” However, is it not more reasonable to assume that our characters will continue flickering between joy and sorrow to the end of their days much as they have done in the segment of their lives we have chronicled? I do believe this to be the case.
Here is the universal link to the Amazon site for The Pilgrim: Lydia Bennet and a Soldier’s Portion: mybook.to/PilgrimLydiaWardrobeMP
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This excerpt is ©2019 by Don Jacobson. Reproduction—either electronic or mechanical—without the expressed written consent of the author is prohibited. Published in the United States or America.
This excerpt from “The Pilgrim: Lydia Bennet and a Soldier’s Portion” is found in Book One: Wickham. Here we see the Wickhams awakening at Longbourn in July 1813 the morning after Wickham, Wilson, and Tomkins returned from fighting in Spain. Wickham had been wounded at Vitoria in June.
This is an example of small moments of which lives are made.
Chapter 6
A gentle breeze awakened him. The zephyr cooled his naked flanks, heated by troubling dreams that had roiled his peace. His restless kicking had thrown the top sheet clear off his body. As he swam up into reality, he became aware of another draft, gentle and regular in its coming and going, against his shoulder.
Breaking through the soap-bubble film that had confined his mind, Wickham understood several disparate conditions that assailed his senses.
He comprehended that his long journey from the lines of Vitoria finally was over and that he had arrived at Longbourn. Even if he had not recalled that Hertfordshire had long been the goal of their five-week quest, the scented crispness of laundered linens that filled his nostrils would have placed him in one of the three estates that rose in his memory like the Channel Isles from the darkling sea: Pemberley, Rosings, or Longbourn.
Of course, he would not have been welcome at the Darcy family manor, and Derbyshire would have added several more days of hard travel. Lambton was out.
As for Rosings: Wickham remembered that the colonel and Mrs. Fitzwilliam graciously offered his party accommodations. Kent would have been pleasant and the bedclothes beyond luxurious for soldiers used to dossing down fully clothed, protected against the Iberian pre-dawn chill only by a woolen cloak. However, there were ladies, women unseen for over a year, awaiting the three men just fifty miles up the road.
So, they pushed on toward Meryton, stopping at Horse Guards in town only long enough for Wickham, gingerly entering those august halls, to gain a degree of notice for fulfilling his commission to deliver the marquess’s dispatches.
They were Home.
Next, the lieutenant quickly became aware of an early morning male rising that was evidence of a need to respond to a call of nature. He thought wryly that there were too many wags who would have suggested that his growing tree was evidence of a desire to satisfy a different sort of instinctive cry. This bit of lumber could only be cut down during a trip behind the screen to the chamber pot.
But it was the third situation that momentarily confused him and then filled him with happiness. The calming presence, that slightly humid breath that warmed his shoulder, could arise from just one source: the delectable seventeen-year-old beauty who had been wrapping her loving fingers around his heart since Christmas 1811.
His wishes had been fulfilled; he had survived to return to Lydia!
Now he rapidly began to catalog his surroundings. He rested upon his left side. His wife was supine along his back. He could feel most of her except where his bandages insulated him. Lydia’s steepled hands burrowed beneath his armpit, her face snuggled deeply into the gap between his body and the mattress. Her full bosom pillowed his dorsal region. That sensation did offer a new meaning to the pressure in his loins that was becoming unbearable.
Wickham needed to move before he unaccountably embarrassed himself.
The mattress, comfortable as it was, was also the barrier to hoisting himself up unassisted. If he was to see a man about a horse, he would have to awaken the angel of his dreams.
Lord, I am thinking like Bingley! My younger brother becomes like a gap-toothed stripling boy when he speaks of his “dear Jane,” a silly smile gracing his face as his eyes become unfocused. Odd as it may sound, I understand the man, at least when it comes to my fixation upon a Bennet sister.
Wonder if Darcy acts like this when he considers Mrs. Elizabeth—oh wait, he does. I remember that first time I saw Darcy react to her when I was talking with the girls on Meryton’s High Street. My ‘old stick’ playmate was just as besotted as Bingley but in a way that only someone who had known him for over twenty-five years would recognize.
As Corporal Rosenthal would have succinctly put it, I was such an arshlocher in those days.
I cannot begrudge Darcy his wealth or happiness any longer—at least not since I have discovered the treasure into which Lydia has grown!
However pleasant Wickham’s musings may have been, his immediate need outweighed any other considerations.
He cleared his throat, successfully disturbing his bedmate. After a bit of demure snorting and lip-smacking as she, too, joined her husband in the land of the living, Lydia rose onto her elbow and looked over Wickham’s upper arm. “Is aught amiss, George?”
Wickham chuckled. He had been longing to hear just that tone, so dappled and drowsy, colored by her time in the arms of Morpheus. Her unbound hair tickled his cheek.
His reply allayed any concerns although, upon reflection, it was full of serious elements. “No, my sweet. I must relieve myself behind the screen. However, I am unable to rise without assistance from this delectable cradle, so much like an infant I am. I fear the pain my awkward movements will bring. Wilson always found a way to get me on my feet. Of course, I have seen him lift a cannon limber so the gunners could replace a broken wheel.
“I worry that I may be too much for you.”
Immediately, he felt a flurry of linens as his wife leaped from the bed to scurry around the bedstead.
He beheld a vision in white with hands planted upon her hips. There in front of him stood Lydia Wickham, blonde curls haloing her head and shoulders. Her entire body was concealed beneath the folds of a snowy sheet, wrapping her in its pristine arms, creating an extra modesty shield for which Wickham was oddly thankful. Her rich emerald eyes flashed at him—although whether it was in anger, or not, he was unsure—as she prepared her rebuttal.
“Now, husband,” she cried, “you forget that you are speaking to a daughter of Eve!
“We are constitutionally made to bend and lift, whether as gentlefolk to hoist our babes or, for those of lower station like milkmaids, heavier tasks.
“You, dear sir, will pose little challenge for me, I assure you!”
So saying, she held out her hands to him, in the process releasing her protective cover that slithered down her tall frame and puddled around her feet.
A pretty blush stained her features as Wickham frankly admired the womanly curves rounding beneath her thin cotton night rail.
Lydia grabbed his hands. Wickham clamped his eyes closed, leading her to falter.
She urgently wondered, “Did I injure you?”
Wickham laughed but kept his eyes shut. “No, my good wife. The only pain you caused was one of anticipation when I considered how we both are clad for a less formal, but more enjoyable, greeting than we were yesterday on the front drive after I exited the carriage.”
The young matron shook her head in mock exasperation, enjoying the lieutenant’s teasing. “George, you are incorrigible. Let me help you out of bed. Whilst you are relieving yourself, I shall ring for coffee and chocolate.”
She shifted Wickham into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Her next move lifted him to his feet where he wobbled and then steadied. Taking one step and then another under Lydia’s watchful eye, Wickham shuffled behind the Chinese screen hiding the chamber’s chair of ease. Lydia stepped over to the bell rope and signaled for her maid. While George was occupied, Lydia padded over to the wardrobe and pulled out a wrap—one of her treasures, an azure silk creation—a gift from her aunt and uncle Gardiner.
A soft scratching at the door alerted her. Bare feet crossing the walnut-stained floorboards, worn by over a century of Bennet soles, brought her into hushed conference with the girl who served as lady’s maid for the three younger women. Main-floor news was delivered, and above-stairs instructions were given. Lydia closed the door, looking at her husband who had emerged from behind the folding wall.
She addressed the man, still pale but appearing much more in form than he had after yesterday’s coach ride. “All right, dearest, back to bed with you. Sarah is fetching coffee. That is all you will be permitted until Darcy’s physician, Mr. Campbell, offers us other instructions concerning your diet. Sarah just told me that he is with Papa.”
She settled Wickham on his side once again and rearranged the top sheet. She knelt in front of him. “If you require nothing else from me, I am going to collect my things and step into Mama’s sitting room to get dressed for the day. I doubt that either Laura or Annie is in any position to help. Sarah will conduct the doctor upstairs and leave James to assist in the examination.”
A firmer knock tipped the next draft of visitors. Her clothes bundled in her arms and her eyes modestly cast toward the floor, a barefoot Lydia stepped past a square-shaped redhead dressed as a gentleman and carrying a leather bag. The silent wife scurried down the hallway to the mistress’s suite.